NEW YORK \u2014 Education advocates made a last-ditch effort Thursday to persuade New York City officials to request a delay of the state\u2019s class-size law before Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani takes office.<\/p>\n
The 2022 law caps class sizes between 20 and 25 students, depending on their grade level. The city has two more school years to reach full compliance, but only until Saturday to recommend the state grant a pause.<\/p>\n
The coalition behind the public plea \u2014 Educators 4 Excellence, Robin Hood, and EdTrust-New York \u2014 warned the last stretch of the phase-in could divert resources from high-need schools and strain the education system\u2019s budget, particularly amid federal funding threats from President Trump<\/a> and promises of free child care<\/a> under a Mamdani administration.<\/p>\n \u201cMayor-elect Mamdani needs financial flexibility to build on our school system\u2019s progress, not constraints that work against equity,\u201d Richard Buery, CEO of Robin Hood, said during a virtual press conference.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a one-time opportunity to hit a temporary pause button \u2014 the only time allowed by law,\u201d added Buery, a former deputy mayor under Mayor Bill de Blasio who oversaw the universal pre-kindergarten initiative. \u201cIt gives the new mayor a chance to get his hands on this puzzle. We should not waste it.\u201d<\/p>\n Spokespeople for Mayor Adams and NYC public schools did not say if such a request is under consideration, with just days left until a Saturday deadline as part of a legally mandated financial impact statement.<\/p>\n Nor is it clear if Mamdani would support such a move. The mayor-elect has been a vocal supporter of the law, promising on the campaign trail to quickly hire thousands more teachers<\/a> to comply with it. His representative did not immediately return a request for comment.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is urgent not only to fulfill the class-size law,\u201d Mamdani said in the final weeks before Election Day. \u201cBut this is also an urgent part of reckoning with the state of our education system today \u2014 a system where we have proficiency levels of just 57% for math, 56% for reading<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe cannot disentangle these statistics from the fact that we have been refusing to hire the additional teachers that would be critical to transforming what is possible within our schools.\u201d<\/p>\n Evan Stone, CEO of Educators for Excellence, insisted that if a pause is approved, the mayor-elect could still move forward as planned. Alternatively, Mamdani could push for changes to the law, such as reducing class sizes in low-income neighborhoods or elementary schools, and using the leftover funds to back his promised child care expansion.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think that anybody on this call would tell you that we shouldn\u2019t reduce class size,\u201d Stone said. \u201cIs that the best use of resources in this moment of constraint and risk, particularly coming from the federal level?\u201d<\/p>\n EdTrust-New York put it more bluntly. In an analysis<\/a> of class-size funding allocated to principals this year, the organization found schools serving the most Black, Hispanic and low-income students received smaller allocations than those serving the fewest.<\/p>\n \u201cThe federal government has got their target on us, they\u2019re looking at us, they\u2019re cutting programs to magnet schools<\/a>,\u201d said Arlen Benjamin-Gomez, the group\u2019s executive director. \u201cSo, it\u2019s really a time to assess what\u2019s the best use of our dollars right now, and this is not the best use of our dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n State Sen. John Liu, chairperson of the New York City Education Committee and the class-size law sponsor, said it\u2019s the city\u2019s legal obligation to lower class sizes<\/a>, and questioned whether Nov. 15 has to be a hard deadline to discuss flexibility in the law.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s somewhat hard to pause something that was never started in the first place,\u201d said Liu, who endorsed Mamdani before the Democratic primary<\/a>. \u201cTo the extent that the timeline needs to be modified, let\u2019s talk about it. But we cannot pause something without any kind of plan in place.\u201d<\/p>\n The city has provided funding to hire more teachers<\/a> and converted some school spaces into classrooms, but it has largely avoided the most costly or disruptive proposals to lower class sizes, such as capping enrollment and finding or constructing new school buildings. The law also allows for some exemptions, and eight of them have already been approved for specialized high schools, including Mamdani\u2019s alma mater, Bronx Science,<\/a> and Stuyvesant High School.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no reason to pause,\u201d said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers union, which also endorsed Mamdani and pushed for the law\u2019s passage. \u201cThis initiative is working. We owe it to our students and educators to stay the course.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 Education advocates made a last-ditch effort Thursday to persuade New York City officials to request…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4245,22690,22691,8288,22815,6709,9,56,63,65,64,22689,22693,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-39112","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-class-size","9":"tag-class-sizes","10":"tag-education-advocates","11":"tag-elementary-schools","12":"tag-financial-flexibility","13":"tag-mayor-bill-de-blasio","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-ny","16":"tag-nyc","17":"tag-nyc-headlines","18":"tag-nyc-news","19":"tag-pause-button","20":"tag-richard-buery","21":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39112","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=39112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}