New York City’s top education officials seem to be reneging on a promise to keep certain class sizes this school year below thresholds set by the state, according to a revised draft plan quietly released this summer.
The apparent reversal could increase the number of students in some classrooms of 25 kids or fewer, advocates warned — just as class sizes are supposed to shrink citywide under a new state law.
The city Education Department “made only one promise in ensuring progress in compliance with the caps for the coming school year,” read a letter last week to education officials, signed by roughly 230 parents, teachers and advocates.
“But after parents and advocates pointed out that there was no additional or targeted funding allocated for class size reduction,” it continued, “[the Education Department] has now omitted that one promise from its revised July draft plan.”
In the city’s first class size reduction plan, released in May, education officials said they would “ensure that schools with classrooms that currently meet the class size mandate have appropriate funding to continue to maintain these class sizes” this school year.
But the revised proposal, updated at the end of July and not pushed out to reporters like the initial draft, tossed language that committed to maintaining class sizes and with funding attached.
The state law does not require classes that reach compliance to stay at those levels while the mandate is phased in, so long as the city is meeting systemwide benchmarks.
“The plan was updated to include extensive additional detail and information about our efforts to plan for implementation,” said schools spokesman Nathaniel Styer.
Regulations limit kindergarten through third-grade classes to 20 students; fourth-through-eighth-grade to 23 students, and high school to 25 students. A fifth of classrooms must come into compliance with the legislation this fall and every year after that, until all classes that did not receive waivers fall below the threshold by 2028.
About 39% of core subject classes citywide last school year were already at or below caps required under state law by 2028, city data show. Even before the policy changes, public school classrooms had been shrinking with a reduction in student enrollment. The average class size dropped from 26 to 24 during the pandemic, according to the plan.
Leonie Haimson, executive director of the advocacy group Class Size Matters, which spearheaded the letter, told The News there was nothing in the budget or otherwise that would have backed the initial guarantee of “appropriate funding.”
“When we asked parents [and] teachers if their schools had classes that made the caps last year that will not make the caps next year, we heard from several who said yes,” Haimson said. “They knew of no efforts or support from [the Education Department] to allow them to keep them.”
Styer, the schools spokesman, pointed to funding initiatives this school year that could be used by principals to hire staff and reduce class sizes.
Those include a revamped local education funding formula that sends more money to schools serving students in poverty; $215 million in state funding that is earmarked for smaller classrooms, among other purposes, and $180 million in federal pandemic aid so that schools have the same initial budgets as they did last fall.
“Most significantly, nothing has changed [from the initial to the revised plan] about our school funding for the ’23-’24 school year,” Styer said.
The draft is not a final plan and is still subject to negotiations with the teachers and principals unions.
The new omission comes as local public schools are expected to stem the tide of decreasing enrollment.
Projections released in May estimated approximately 767,500 students would enroll in kindergarten through 12th grade this upcoming school year — a 0.6% decrease since last fall and by far the smallest annual drop since the pandemic began. (The projections do not include some special education and alternative programs.)
But the number of school-age children across the five boroughs has likely grown since those projections were released, with an influx of families with children seeking asylum in the city. Those students are frequently enrolled in the schools closest to their shelters.
Top education officials, including most recently the state education commissioner, have also raised equity concerns about the class size law. According to the revised plan, 64% of classes in schools with the highest economic need are already at or below caps, compared with 26% of those with the least need.
“The fact remains, implementation of this legislation requires substantial new investments in schools and buildings,” said Styer, “as well as significant, hard tradeoffs to be made, given the inherent equity challenges in the law that have been raised recently, like decreasing enrichment opportunities in favor of lower class size.
“We believe those tradeoffs must be thoroughly explored and considered by the public as we work to implement this law,” he said.
The revised plan — more than double the length of the original — outlines some of the measures the city is considering to reduce class sizes.
Some schools already have the room needed to have fewer students per class, and others could get there by reprogramming the space. But education officials estimate there are 400 to 500 programs — between a quarter and 31% of schools — that may not be able to comply with the mandate in their current spaces.
According to the plan, the city is taking a look at its capital investments to meet the need, as well as strategies to use existing spaces “more efficiently” — such as unused classrooms, repurposed administrative rooms, split-siting schools or co-locating them with other programs, and even how remote learning may ease the need for physical space.
Education officials are also analyzing enrollment and teacher hiring trends, and how to best allocate funding so that it reduces the class sizes of the neediest children first. Recommendations from a parent and advocate working group are expected in October.
