{"id":115602,"date":"2026-01-28T21:55:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T21:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/115602\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T21:55:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T21:55:07","slug":"meet-eric-dinowitz-the-new-chair-of-nycs-city-council-education-committee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/115602\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Eric Dinowitz, the new chair of NYC\u2019s City Council education committee"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York\u2019s free daily newsletter<\/a> to get essential news about NYC\u2019s public schools delivered to your inbox.<\/p>\n

The nation\u2019s largest school system is now under new oversight.<\/p>\n

City Council member Eric Dinowitz, whose district spans the northwest Bronx, was recently tapped to chair the council\u2019s education committee. He\u2019s taking over from Rita Joseph, who held the post over the last four years<\/a>. Joseph will now helm the council\u2019s higher education committee, the post Dinowitz previously held.<\/p>\n

Among the committee chair\u2019s most significant powers is to convene oversight hearings that require top Education Department officials to publicly testify on crucial issues facing the city\u2019s schools. Past hearings have drawn attention to flaws with the special education system<\/a>, school segregation, and a botched attempt to pivot to remote learning<\/a> during a snowstorm.<\/p>\n

Dinowitz\u2019s first oversight hearing next month will focus on mayoral control of the city\u2019s schools<\/a>, a governance system Mayor Zohran Mamdani criticized during the campaign, but now says he wants to keep.<\/p>\n

The new committee chair\u2019s ties to city schools run deep \u2014 \u201cK through career\u201d \u2014 Dinowitz recently quipped. He grew up attending public schools in the Bronx and graduated from Bronx Science, one of the city\u2019s vaunted specialized high schools. He taught in the public school system for more than 13 years before running for City Council in 2021, following in the footsteps of his father who represents the Bronx in the state assembly. <\/p>\n

We caught up with Dinowitz about his experience with the city\u2019s schools, his assessment of the system, and what issues he wants to prioritize. Here are six takeaways from that conversation.<\/p>\n

He got his start teaching students with disabilities<\/p>\n

Dinowitz launched his career in education through the city\u2019s Teaching Fellows program<\/a>, a fast track into the classroom for career changers and recent college graduates. The experience was overwhelming. But he wound up in a classroom that included a mix of students with disabilities and general education students, which meant he had a co-teacher to learn from. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re thrown right in,\u201d he said. \u201cI got to experience teaching with another teacher, seeing what they did, what worked, what didn\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n

He mostly taught at schools in his home borough, including Bronx Theatre High School, Celia Cruz Bronx High School of Music, and then briefly at NEST+M, a Manhattan gifted and talented program.<\/p>\n

Special education is a perennial focus of the education committee, and Dinowitz indicated he will prioritize it, too. He pointed to the city\u2019s growing costs for special education placements<\/a> in private schools, the need to better integrate students with disabilities<\/a> with general education peers, and ensuring student learning plans, known as individualized education programs, or IEPs, reflect the help students actually need rather than being a compliance exercise.<\/p>\n

Phaseout of Regents exams is top of mind<\/p>\n

The requirement that students must pass Regents exams \u2014 standardized tests that students must pass to graduate \u2014 has created perverse incentives, Dinowitz contends.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf a superintendent comes in and says, \u2018We\u2019re going to strictly look at your Regents scores and your credit accrual,\u2019 you\u2019re incentivizing principals to take money out of things like the arts,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Officials are in the process of phasing out Regents exams<\/a>, and Dinowitz said he will be watching closely as city and state leaders think through new graduation standards and how they will affect teaching and learning. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to make sure that the assessments measure what we want the kids to do and who we want them to be,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Small schools should be merged<\/p>\n

As enrollment declines have accelerated since the pandemic, the city is facing a glut of small schools<\/a> that are expensive to run and often struggle to offer a full range of programs. <\/p>\n

Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels has indicated mergers may be necessary<\/a> to tackle the problem, moves that often generate fierce pushback. Dinowitz said he agrees with Samuels, noting some small schools can\u2019t support specialized programs for students with disabilities \u2014 or electives that draw in students.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere typically isn\u2019t critical mass for a lot of those programs,\u201d he said. \u201cI do believe mergers should be on the table.\u201d He noted those decisions should be made carefully with opportunity for community input. <\/p>\n

Looking for a clearer vision from City Hall<\/p>\n

Mamdani said little about how to improve the city\u2019s public school system<\/a> on the campaign trail \u2014 and Dinowitz said he\u2019s looking for a larger vision.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to be talking a lot more about education,\u201d he said. \u201cIt sounds like Mayor Mamdani is still formulating exactly what he wants to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Open to school integration efforts \u2014 but don\u2019t touch the SHSAT<\/p>\n

Mamdani and Samuels have indicated that they want to pursue school integration efforts, which former Mayor Eric Adams largely ignored, though they have said little about their plans.<\/p>\n

On the campaign trail, Mamdani suggested he was open to rethinking admissions<\/a> to eight specialized high schools that admit students based on a single test and enroll few Black and Latino applicants. He wound up reversing that position, saying the exam should stay.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m glad he backed away from that,\u201d said Dinowitz, who, along with Mamdani, attended Bronx Science.<\/p>\n

Still, Dinowitz said he is open to other modes of school integration such as rezonings or merging schools with different racial demographics, something Samuels pursued as a superintendent<\/a> in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Dinowitz emphasized any changes should include community input. <\/p>\n

\u201cPeople who are going to be affected by policy need to have a seat at the table,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Creative solutions to class size mandate<\/p>\n

One of the biggest challenges facing the Education Department is a state mandate to slash class sizes<\/a>, which will require hiring thousands of new teachers and cost billions of dollars<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The state should pony up more funding to fulfill that requirement, Dinowitz said. He also encouraged the city to pursue creative solutions like staggering school schedules on campuses that have limited space to shrink classes and avoid capping enrollment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure there\u2019s any single variable more impactful to student learning than class size,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up for Chalkbeat New York\u2019s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC\u2019s public schools delivered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[51239,4146,9,24,56,63,65,64],"class_list":{"0":"post-115602","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-chair-of-the-city-councils-education-committee-eric-dinowitz","9":"tag-chalkbeat","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-city","12":"tag-ny","13":"tag-nyc","14":"tag-nyc-headlines","15":"tag-nyc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}