A proposal to limit enrollment at New York City schools without enough space to comply with new class size caps has emerged as a flashpoint for parents and teachers, sparking heated debate over whether the city should shrink some of its most popular programs.
The approach — one of dozens that a working group could recommend to the schools chancellor — would likely apply to the city’s most overcrowded schools that already lack sufficient seats to meet the demand.
“This plan will directly impact my family next fall when my child applies to high school,” Shane Harrison, a parent of a seventh grader said at a public hearing Tuesday night. “So while I support smaller class sizes, by eliminating school seats, even temporarily, you place the burden and the sacrifice on families to meet the new limits.
“For high schools in particular, cutting seats would have a devastating cascading effect” on applicants’ chances of being matched with their top choice schools, she said at the meeting, which focused on Manhattan and Brooklyn schools.
The new class size law caps kindergarten through third-grade classes at 20 students; fourth- through eighth-grade at 23 students; and high school at 25 students. A fifth of classrooms fell below the mandated levels this fall, with the remainder to be phased in over the next four years.
Other parents and teachers warned against pitting families against each other.
“We should really be prioritizing the young people here,” said a parent of elementary and middle school students and a former public school teacher at the Tuesday meeting, “and not just our own children — not like our one or two children, but like the children of the city we all choose to live in together.
“If we could all come together and ensure that all of our classrooms are high-quality classrooms, there wouldn’t really be much to argue about,” she added.
The legislation offers exemptions for over-subscribed programs but does not include specifics on how to qualify. Any exclusions would need to be approved by both the teachers and principals unions.
“At our school, we don’t have empty classrooms. We don’t have space. We have enrollment that is growing almost every year,” Staten Island teacher Jason Ilkowitz said at a session Wednesday night for schools in that borough, Queens and the Bronx.
“To reduce the class sizes will only help the students become better learners, become more engaged with the material. It will help teachers give more individual attention to students,” he added. “I hope the waivers that may be out there are not utilized by principals who are worried about funding.”
The working group’s draft proposals fell into six buckets related to enrollment, the need for more space and teachers, instructional implications, funding and special education.
One recommendation was that local education officials should push the state and federal government for financial backing, and send extra money to principals on top of the local school funding formula to cover the costs of hiring more teachers.
“This recommendation is really about how schools will be given the money to reduce class size,” said Johanna Garcia, the chief of staff for state Sen. Robert Jackson, a Manhattan Democrat. “The largest way the DOE distributes funding to schools is through the Fair Student Funding Formula, which allocates funding based on the number and the needs of students enrolled.”
“Fair Student Funding can incentivize larger classes,” she added. “When classes are larger… schools can use the extra funds for guidance counselors, teacher coverage and all the other things that we mean when we talked about robust programming.”
Other proposals involved relocating some preschool programs out of district school buildings, and merging schools that are located in the same building when appropriate.
The working group suggested the school system offer a pay bump and other perks such as transportation and parking for hard-to-staff positions. The focus on recruiting and retaining teachers comes as the need for more classrooms grows but the workforce shrank nearly 3% last school year to under 76,000 teachers, figures in the Mayor’s Management Report showed.
An analysis from the Independent Budget Office released last week echoed that trend, showing few teachers left during the 2021-22 hybrid school year — but then there was a drop in retention the next year, magnified during last school year.
The task force also proposed that the School Construction Authority hire more real estate agents who earn a commission to find sites for schools, compared to the four agents the agency currently keeps on retainer.
A final report by the working group is expected by Oct. 31.
