As a new state law limiting class sizes in New York City’s public schools goes into effect, teachers, parents and advocates are warning that classes are getting larger, not smaller.
“The trends are going in the wrong direction,” Leonie Haimson, executive director of the group Class Size Matters, said Tuesday morning during a press conference organized by the city’s teachers’ union.
State lawmakers passed the law limiting class sizes last year, over the objections of Mayor Eric Adams and Schools Chancellor David Banks, who called it an “unfunded mandate.”
Last week, the education department celebrated the first increase in enrollment at city public schools in the last eight years. But the figures also underscored the challenges facing the city as the class size law is phased in over five years starting this fall. Average class size increased across all grades compared to last school year, according to Haimson.
Haimson, who has long advocated for smaller classrooms, said the city is likely to be out of compliance with the law by next year. City officials have said they expect to be in compliance only for the first two years of the law.
“It is just wrong,” United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said at the press conference outside the Brooklyn Landmark School, noting that some 300,000 students are in oversized classes.
But education department spokesperson Nicole Brownstein said the city will need more funding to comply with the law.
“We continue to call upon our partners in state and federal government to support us with additional funding,” she said.
Research has found a correlation between smaller class sizes and academic achievement, as well as student behavior.
The city’s Independent Budget Office has said the city would need to hire 17,700 teachers to meet the class size mandate, costing between $1.6 billion and $1.9 billion annually. And that’s just for personnel. The city will also have to identify additional space for smaller…
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