{"id":38756,"date":"2025-11-13T21:45:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T21:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/38756\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T21:45:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T21:45:09","slug":"nyc-faces-key-decision-regarding-public-school-class-size-this-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/38756\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC faces key decision regarding public school class size this weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York City’s public school system faces a key decision involving class size<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since 2022, New York City has been under a state law mandate to make classes smaller at city schools. About 60% of the work has been done. By Saturday, the city needs to decide whether it plans to be 80% compliant by next year, or pause the work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mandate will have unintended consequences, advocate says<\/p>\n

“There’s never been a mandate like this in any state across the country,” Evan Stone of Educators for Excellence said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stone is advocating for a pause. He says that, while smaller classes are important, Educators for Excellence research suggests getting to 100% compliance would lead to resources being taken away from the schools that need them most.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The evidence is clear. Those classrooms are in our higher income communities. It would move teachers from harder-to-staff schools in low income communities to wealthier communities,” Stone said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

$1 billion class size budget could potentially be redeployed<\/p>\n

The decision needs to be made before Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani<\/a> takes office, but it’s an equality issue that would seem to align with what Mamdani campaigned on. A pause would give the Mamdani administration the chance to use the $1 billion class size budget for other things, such as universal child care, a pillar of his campaign<\/a> estimated to cost around $6 billion per year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mamdani visited a Brooklyn child care center<\/a> Thursday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“In a single year, it was measured that our economy paid the cost of about $23 billion in the absence of affordable child care. On the question about timeline and phases, these are the conversations we’re having over the course of this transition,” Mamdani said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It’s also not clear if Mamdani will be consulted on the deadline, or if he would consider using the class size money to help fund child care.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mamdani’s staff did not take CBS News New York’s questions Thursday, or respond to multiple requests for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We have also reached out to City Hall and are awaiting their remarks.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York City’s public school system faces a key decision involving class size.\u00a0 Since 2022, New York City…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38757,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,24,55,54,3059,56],"class_list":{"0":"post-38756","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","11":"tag-new-york-city-news","12":"tag-new-york-city-public-schools","13":"tag-ny"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38756","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=38756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}