A recently passed state law to shrink class sizes in New York City could cost at least $1.6 billion each year to employ an additional 17,700 teachers, according to an analysis by the Independent Budget Office released Wednesday.
The projections topped the city’s own estimates to comply with the law, which the Adams administration has repeatedly criticized as a costly mandate that pits competing school priorities against each other for a finite amount of cash.
“Our analysis provided some caveats about how implementation … may come into conflict with fiscal constraints and hiring challenges,” said Louisa Chafee, director of the publicly funded watchdog agency.
Analysts found the price tag could reach up to $1.9 billion based on the average salary for newly hired teachers plus raises approved by the teachers union in a new contract this week.
The bulk of that money would need to be spent on schools with higher grade levels, where students have more class options and, for example, could not be shuffled between biology and chemistry for their science credits.
The estimates surpassed the city’s own estimate of $1.3 billion, which pre-dated the contract between the city and the United Federation of Teachers. The city will receive $756 million in state funding split between class size reduction and other priorities next school year, the analysis showed.
The class size legislation signed into law last year caps kindergarten through third-grade classes at 20 students; fourth- through eighth-grade at 23 students; and high school at 25 students.
The administration has continued to distance itself from the new law, even after it was passed.
“We were not big proponents of the class size bill,” Schools Chancellor David Banks said on CBS New York over the weekend.
“Listen, I’m the chancellor. I want to see all schools have small class sizes, right?” he added. “But the reality is that the research tells us the small class sizes are not the end-all-be-all.”
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