Leonie Haimson is a public school activist in New York City who fights for smaller class size, student privacy and against privatization of public funds.
She wrote on her blog:
Please email Comptroller Lander and ask him to audit DOE charter rent spending and lack of matching funds for public schools – more on this below.
ask the comptroller to audit DOE’s charter rental payments now!
Last Thursday, September 18, 2025, several large charter school networks held a protest rally in Cadman Plaza and a march across the Brooklyn Bridge to push for the continued expansion of the charter school sector. This was apparently provoked by the fact that the leading candidate for Mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has said he opposes allowing more charter schools to open, especially since they have reached their legal cap in NYC under state law.
Liz Kim, reporter at Gothamist, got hold of a tape of a speech that Eva Moskowitz, CEO of the largest charter school chain, Success Academy, gave to her Charter Management Staff and 158 new teachers, exhorting them to attend this march and rally, and to make at least five “phone-to-action” calls to their elected officials.
In the speech, Moskowitz harshly reprimanded those who had not yet done so: “You did not do the phone-to-action because you thought, ‘This is not very serious,’” she said. “So I want to just reset for all of you. It is an existential threat.” And:
“We have faced threats throughout the last 20 years, we have a core competency in political threats, unfortunately. But this is one of these moments where there is heightened risk, policy risk, political risk, and so we are going to do what we’ve always done, which is to stand up for children and families in a massive way in Cadman Plaza to speak our minds and to make sure that government works for children and families. … government doesn’t naturally work for the people. It has to be forced and made to work for the people. So we’re doing two things. One is this parent mobilization, and the second is our phone to action campaign.
And our goal is to send elected officials, two million messages. Now, teachers, you’ll do a network one now and then when you get to your schools, you’ll do a local one. But I have to say that I was a little disappointed in the network, because only 25% of the network was doing the phone to action. …And you know, would be natural for you not to understand we have these nice offices, Aren’t they nice? Very nice.
You guys [work] for a not for profit, you are highly compensated. You could say, What? What? Me worry? What’s there to worry about? But there’s a lot to worry about, and this is not a theoretical worry. We lived through eight years of Bill de Blasio. The first thing he did when he became mayor is he threw out three of our schools.”
This is untrue. De Blasio did not kick out three of her schools; he rejected three Success charter co-locations that had been proposed by Bloomberg before he left office but not yet implemented. De Blasio also accepted co-locations for five other Success charter schools.
In any event, after a barrage of negative television ads, DOE officials were browbeaten into finding and renting private space for these three Success charter schools at city expense for $5.4K – $11K per student. By last year, the number of Success charter schools rented directly by DOE had risen to nine, with buildings added under both Mayor de Blasio and Mayor Adams, at a cost of $14.3 million annually. By renting these buildings directly and failing to ask Success to rent the buildings themselves, they are sacrificing 60 percent reimbursement from the state for those expenses.
At the meeting, Moskowitz was clear that she was requiring all network staff and teachers to both make phone calls and participate in the rally:
“When we ask you to do phone to action, you kind of do it. You can’t make people chase you down. … we’ve kind of gotten loosey goosey here and just know your managers are going to hold you accountable to an extraordinary standard of performance. … When your network are giving a directive, I think we’re getting a little democratic here. We are quite hierarchical.
There is a chain of command, and when your boss asks you to do something, assuming it’s not unethical or a question of conscience, you do the task. Are we clear? I do not want to have to chase people down for phone to action. Is there some argument or particular reason? Anyone live in New Jersey? Okay, that’s not an excuse. I hate to tell you, list your 120 Wall Street address and get it done. ….”
She then told her staff and teachers to take out their phones and make all five phone calls to elected officials right then and there.
According to a report in Labor Notes, Success Academy employees were also required to send emails to elected officials, and were ordered to “submit screenshots of these emails to their managers to confirm they had sent them.”
Success Academy was not the only charter chain to make participation in the rally mandatory for staff, parents and students. It was also required by the Zeta charter chain, founded by Emily Kim, former attorney for Success Academy. A document sent to staff at Zeta Charter Schools made this clear:
“100% attendance expected from all Zeta families, students, and staff. Each student must attend with a parent/guardian to ensure the safety of every child. Students cannot attend the rally without an adult family member or authorized chaperone.”
Students, their parents and staff had to arrive at Zeta at 6:30 AM to get on the bus to Cadman Plaza, according to the schedule. If parents wanted to bring their younger children, they had “to bring their own seats for the bus ride to the rally,” presumably meaning they had to pay for their own transportation to get to Cadman Plaza.
Teachers at Zeta were told it was their responsibility to get parents to attend:
“All teachers must ensure 100% completion through family follow-up calls Mon., Sept. 8th- Wed., Sept. 10th. Your Principal and Operations Director will share a school-wide tracker to follow up and log all family calls accordingly.”
There is a real question about whether mandatory attendance at a political event or forcing teachers to make political phone calls is legal. The day after the rally, on Friday, John Liu, Chair of the Senate NYC Education Committee and Shelley B. Mayer, Chair of the Senate Committee on Education sent a letter to NY State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa and John King, Chancellor of State University of New York, whose agencies authorize and oversee charter schools.
Senators Liu and Mayer expressed “great concern that many charter schools in New York City cancelled classes and pressured students, families, and staff to participate in a political “March for Excellence” on September 18, 2025. We urge the state to conduct a thorough investigation into potential violations of state law.”
They also pointed out how“canceling classes during a school day and forcing families and students to engage in a political rally is an egregious misuse of instructional time and state funds. We urge SUNY and the State Education Department to exercise their oversight authority and fully investigate this matter to determine any possible violations of state law, and if such violations are found, to claw back a portion of state per capita funding from each school administration that engaged in this event, and to take steps to ensure future misuse of student’s precious school time does not continue.”
Though they didn’t specify any laws that might have been broken, in 2023 Governor Hochul signed into law Senate Bill 4982, which prohibits employers from coercing employees into attending or participating in meetings where the primary purpose is to communicate the employer’s opinions on religious or political matters. The law also holds that the courts may impose monetary penalties on employers who do this, and that employees can seek “equitable relief and damages” in court if they do.
In any case, this is not the first time that Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy have been found guilty of breaking laws. Repeatedly, her charter schools have been shown to deny students their legal rights, violating their privacy, and pushing out those who do not make the grade either in terms of behavior or test scores. A sample of these documented violations are listed at the end of this blog post.
Evidence of inflated charter rental payments and missing matching funds
Another issue of great concern is how charter schools now drain more than $3 billion dollars annually from the DOE budget, plus charge more than a hundred million dollars per year to DOE in rental subsidies. NYC is the only district in the nation that is obligated to either co-locate charters in public schools or help pay for their rent in private buildings. This applies to all new and expanding charter schools since 2014, after they go through a perfunctory appeal process, according to a law pushed through by then-Governor Andrew Cuomo and the charter lobby. The amount spent on their rental expenses by DOE has risen sharply over time –though 60% of these expenditures are supposed to be reimbursed by the state.
In 2019 and 2021, Class Size Matters issued two reports that provided evidence that DOE had overspent on rental assistance to charter schools by $21 million. We also revealed suspicious charges for rental subsidies paid by DOE to several charter schools, including those run by Success, that owned or subleased their own buildings.
In one case, the rent for two Success Academy charter schools housed at Hudson Yards increased from approximately $793,000 to over $3.4 million in one year – more than quadrupling , causing DOE to pay $3 million in rental subsidies for those two schools alone in 2020.
We also found that public schools co-located with charter schools were owed millions of dollars in matching funds for facility enhancements, compared to the amounts required by state law. From 2014 to 2019, 127 co-located public schools were owed a total of $15.5 million.
Please email Comptroller Lander and ask him to audit these programs
Shortly after the release of our second report, in March 2022, Senator John Liu, Senator Robert Jackson, and Rita Joseph, chair of the Council Education Committee, sent a letter to Comptroller Brad Lander, urging him to audit this spending, based upon our troubling findings. I recently learned that no such audit has been conducted. An analysisalso shows that Lander has audited fewer DOE programs than any other NYC Comptroller since 2003 at this point in office.
We are now engaged in examining DOE own reports of their spending on charter school rent, which continues to rise sharply higher each year, as well as their continuing failure to provide sufficient matching funds to public schools for facility upgrades and repairs.
Please email the Comptroller now and urge him to launch an audit on these programs before he leaves office in January, by filling out the form here.
Where it says, “Your Suggestion,”please write:
“I urge you to audit DOE spending on charter rent, especially charter schools that own or sublease their own buildings, as well as charters whose buildings DOE rents directly and thus is unable to receive 60% reimbursement from the state. Also please audit the lack of public school matching funds, as there is evidence that they continue to be owed millions for facility upgrades.”
Feel free to rephrase this in any way you like.
On my blog, at the end of this post, is a list revealing the documented pattern of Success Academy violations, including failing to provide students with their mandated services, repeatedly suspending them for minor infractions, violating their privacy, and pushing them out when they do not conform to rigid behavioral expectations or do not score high enough on standardized exams.
2. If you haven’t already, please also fill out this brief survey on class sizes at your school this year. So far, from the unscientific sample of teachers and parents who have responded, class sizes have increased in as many schools as have decreased, despite the fact that more than 700 schools received funds to lower class size. If DOE is simply pushing up class sizes in the schools that did not receive this funding, that would be a matter of great concern.
Thanks to the tireless work of Leonie Haimson, Class Size Matters, and her hardy band of parent advocates, New York City is reducing class sizes to meet the requirements of state law. After 25 years of failed “reforms” like high-stakes testing, competition, merit pay, and choice, the city is finally embarked on a reform that has a solid research base and actually helps students. Teachers can devote more time to each students. Discipline problems will be less.
Ahead of a key deadline to reduce class sizes, New York City’s sprawling school system will spend upwards of $400 million as it races to fill 3,700 new teaching positions by the fall, new data shows.
Under the state’s 2022 class size law, 60% of classrooms must comply next school year with caps between 20 and 25 students, depending on grade level. It’s expected to be the first time schools have to make real changes to abide by the regulation.
To meet that benchmark, principals developed and had approved 741 school-specific plans in exchange for more funding. Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos and her deputies revealed during a City Council hearing on Tuesday that costs associated with those plans will top $400 million, paid for with a combination of state and city funds.
While nearly all schools will use those dollars to bring on more teachers, some also expect to hire about 100 assistant principals or convert spaces into classrooms.
Leonie Haimson, the executive director of Class Size Matters in New York City, is a tireless advocate for reform policies that work. She has spent years collecting research about the benefits of class size reduction and prodding legislators to take action.
She wrote recently about the cross-pollination between New York State and Michigan, where state school board leaders used her research to advocate for lower class sizes.
She wrote:
On April 5 and 6, the Network for Public Education, on whose board I sit, held its annual conference in Columbus, Ohio. More than 400 parents, teachers, advocates, school board members, and other elected officials gathered to learn from each other’s work and be re-energized for the challenges of protecting our public schools from the ravages of budget cuts, right-wing censorship, and privatization.
It was a great weekend to reconnect with old friends, meet new ones, hear from eloquent education leaders, and participate in eye-opening workshops. I led a workshop on the risks of using AI in the classroom, along with Cassie Creswell of Illinois Families for Public Schools, and retired teacher/blogger extraordinaire, Peter Greene. You can take a look at our collective power point presentation here.
At one point, Diane Ravitch, the chair and founder of NPE,introduced each of the board members from the floor. When she told me to stand, I asked her to inform the attendees about the law we helped pass for class size reduction in NYC. She responded, you tell it –and so I briefly recounted how smaller class sizes are supposed to be phased in over the next three yearsin our schools, hoping this might lend encouragement to others in the room to advocate for similar measures in their own states and districts.
Perhaps the personal high point for me was the thrill of meeting Tim Walz, on his birthday no less, who said to me that indeed class size does matter. Here are videos with excerpts from some of the other terrific speeches at the conference.
Then, just four days ago, Prof. Julian Heilig Vasquez, another NPE board member, texted me a link to this news story from the Detroit News:
State Board of Education calls for smaller class sizes after Detroit News investigation
Lansing — Michigan’s State Board of Education approved a resolution Tuesday calling for limits on class sizes to be put in place by the 2030-31 school year, including a cap of 20 students per class for kindergarten through third grade.
The proposal, if enacted by state lawmakers, would represent a sea change for Michigan schools as leaders look to boost struggling literacy rates. Across the state, elementary school classes featuring more than 20 students have been widespread.
Mitchell Robinson, a Democratic member of the State Board of Education, authored the resolution and said action on class sizes was “overdue.”
“Smaller class sizes are going to be a better learning situation for kids and a better teaching situation for teachers,” said Robinson of Okemos, a former music teacher.
A months-long Detroit News investigation published in April found 206 elementary classes — ranging from kindergarten through fifth grade — across 49 schools over the 2023-24 and 2024-25 years that had at least 30 students in them. Among them was a kindergarten class at Bennett Elementary, where the Detroit Public Schools Community District said 30 students were enrolled.
Less than a month after The News’ probe, the Democratic-led State Board of Education, which advises state policymakers on education standards, voted 6-1 on Tuesday in favor of Robinson’s resolution. The resolution said lawmakers should provide funding in the next state budget for school districts with high rates of poverty to lower their student-to-teacher ratios in kindergarten through third-grade classrooms.
By the 2030-31 school year, the resolution said, limits should be instituted to cap class sizes at 20 students per class in kindergarten through third grade, at 23 students per class in fourth grade through eighth grade, and at 25 students per class in high school.
“Many studies show that class size reduction leads to better student outcomes in every way that can be measured, including better grades and test scores, fewer behavior problems, greater likelihood to graduate from high school on time and subsequently enroll in college,” the resolution said.
The resolution added that the Legislature should increase funding to ensure schools are “able to lower class sizes to the mandated levels.”
In an interview, Pamela Pugh, the president of the state board, labeled the resolution an “urgent call” for action. Pugh said the board hasn’t made a similar request in the decade she’s served on the panel.
…Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have called for action on class sizes after the reporting from The News and as Michigan’s reading scores have fallen behind other states.
During her State of the State address in February, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said just 24% of Michigan fourth graders were able to read proficiently. Michigan invests more per student than most states but achieves “bottom 10 results,” the governor said.
“I think the science would tell us that we’ve got to bring down class sizes,” Whitmer said in April.
On Wednesday, state Sen. Darrin Camilleri, D-Trenton, said he was open to a conversation about timelines for implementing class size limits and about how schools could achieve the proposed standards with staffing and physical space.
As I read the story, I was delighted, of course; and noticed that the class size caps cited in the resolution were identical to those required to be phased in for NYC schools. I also noted language in the resolution that echoed the words in some of our research summaries.
I reached out to Diane to ask her if she knew whether Mitchell Robinson had attended the NPE conference, and she confirmed that indeed he had. I then emailed him to ask if our New Yorklaw had played any role in his decision to introduce the resolution, and he immediately responded,
“Leonie, your work in NYC was the direct model and inspiration for this resolution! I was in your session in Columbus, and went home motivated to put together the resolution, using the figures from your bill and the research base on the website.”
He cautioned me that the proposal still has to be enacted into law, and that it would be “an uphill battle,” as Republicans hadretaken the state House.
Then he added: “But that doesn’t mean we sit on our hands for another 2 years—we need to stay on offense and advance good ideas whenever we can.”
I wholeheartedly agree. This resolution and what may hopefully follow for Michigan students reveals just how importantgatherings like the NPE conference are to enable the exchangeof ideas and positive examples of what’s occurring elsewhere. This sort of interaction can be vital to our collective struggle,not just to defend our public schools from the attempts of Trump et.al. to undermine them, but also to push for the sort of positive changes that will allow all our kids to receive the high qualityeducation they deserve.
Class Size Matters is one of the most effective—if not the MOST effective—advocacy organizations for public schools in New York City. Its leader, Leonie Haimson, fights for reduced class sizes, more funding, and the privacy of student data. I am a member of the board of Class Size Matters.
On June 12, CSM will hold its annual awards dinner. The awards are called the Skinny, in contrast to the Broad Award, which was given to districts that raised test scores, closed schools, and used metrics inappropriately.
I will be there to celebrate the award winners, who are parent-members of the Board of Education who stood strong for students, teachers, and well-funded public schools.
Please join us!
Class Size Matters Skinny Award Dinner
START:Wednesday, June 12, 2024•6:00 PM
END:Wednesday, June 12, 2024•9:00 PM
LOCATION: 1st floor•124 Waverly Pl. , New York, NY 10011 US
Leonie Haimson is a tireless advocate for better public schools and reduced class sizes. She leads a small but powerful organization called Class Size Matters. I am a member of her board (unpaid, of course, as she is).
CSM is powerful because Leonie is tireless. She attends meetings of the City Council, the Panel on Education Policy (I.e., the Board of Education); she testifies at City Council hearings and goes to Albany to testify when the education committees meet. She finds lawyers to work pro bono and files lawsuit to seek more funding for the schools. She works with parent groups to support or oppose the latest decision by the mayor. She meets with elected representatives. She writes op-Ed’s for the local press. She almost single-handedly collapsed Bill Gates’ inBloom, which hoped to collect personally identifiable information about every student in every state. She scrutizes the budget of the NYC public schools, even more intensely than those who are paid to do it. She once blocked a bad deal that saved the city $600 million, by exposing the sordid record of the contractor.
The elected officials in Albany are now considering whether to renew mayoral control of the public schools. Michael Bloomberg persuaded the Legislature to give him control soon after he was elected in 2001. He promised all sorts of miraculous improvements. He would be accountable, he said.
Leonie testified recently at a hearing on mayoral control and explained that mayoral control did not increase accountability. In fact, it decreased accountability. No one listened to parents. One of Bloomberg’s chancellors (his second, who lasted only 90 days) mocked parents who expressed their grievances at a public hearing.
The mayor hired a lawyer with no experience in education to be the schools’ chancellor. He did not trust educators and surrounded himself with people from the corporate sector.
The mayor had a majority of appointments on the city’s “Panel on Education Policy,” a toothless replacement for its Board of Education. When the members of the Panel threatened to reverse one of his decisions, he fired the disobedient appointees on the spot and replaced them with others who served his wishes.
The mayor could do whatever he wanted, regardless of the views of teachers, parents, students, communities. Beloved public schools that served the neediest of students were closed and replaced with small schools that did not accept the neediest of students. He opened scores of charter schools that were free to reject or exclude students they did not want, then crowed about their test scores. (Now a private citizen, Bloomberg continues to give hundreds of millions to charter schools; no big deal for him, as his assets exceed $60 billion).
Leonie stands on a solid foundation of knowledge, experience, and persistence. Sometimes I think she wins battles because the electeds don’t want her to pester them anymore.
She is the undisputed champion of reduced class sizes.
Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters, has been fighting for class size reduction for years. She responds here to the Chingos paper.
Haimson writes:
Comments on paper by Matthew Chingos and Ariella Meltzer, “New Class Size Mandate May Reduce Education Equity in New York City”
The primary claim made in this paper is that lowering class size would inequitably benefit white and Asian students rather than Black and Hispanic students, who tend to have lower class sizes already in NYC public schools.
However, several points appear to undermine that claim:
As much research shows, Black and Hispanic students as well as students in poverty tend to gain twice the benefits in terms of increased learning and non-cognitive skills from smaller classes compared to their peers. Thus class size reduction is one of only a very few reforms that have been proven through rigorous research to narrow the achievement/opportunity gap and represents a key driver of education equity;
Only 8% of high-poverty NYC schools already comply with the class size caps in the law, according to the Independent Budget Office;
The estimates in this paper in Table A2 project that Black students would see their class sizes reduced on average to 16.7 students per class, the smallest class size of any group, with Hispanic, low-income, and students with disabilities second at 17.3, a highly equitable outcome. English language learners would come next at 17.4. In short, all high-needs groups would receive smaller classes than non-low income students ( t 17.6), White students (at 17.7) or Asian students (at 18 students per class).
Finally, the paper’s findings also show that English language learners students at the elementary school level are more likely than non-ELLs to have large classes even now, and thus would likely gain substantial benefits from class size reduction as well.
There will be challenges for sure, to ensure that lowering class size doesn’t drain more experienced teachers from the neediest schools, but this could be avoided by targeting high-poverty schools first for class size reduction, as the law requires.
In addition, there are several studies that suggest that class size reduction may lower teacher attrition, especially at the highest-poverty schools, so that in the long run, the effort may lead to a more effective, stable, and experienced teaching force over time.
Our questions are these:
Why cite the IBO cost estimates of 17,700 additional teachers needed, of $1.6 to $1.9 billion annually while relegating DOE’s far lower estimates of 9,000 new teachers at $1.3B to a footnote? Did the authors decide one estimate was more authoritative than the other, and if so why?
The authors also cite an early School Construction Authority estimate of $30B-$35B for capital expenses, yet the SCA has admitted that this was “a back of the envelope” estimate and now has been omitted from the DOE’s July version of their draft class size plan, as compared to the earlier version submitted in May.
Leonie Haimson has been leading the campaign for class size reduction (CSR) for more than 20 years. When I first met her in 2010, she convinced me that the research on class size reduction was overwhelming. It also happens to be the most important priority for parents. She is relentless. I am proud to be a board member of Class Size Matters, the small but mighty organization that Leonie founded and leads, on a budget that is a shoestring. For her dedication, hard work, and persistence, I add Leonie Haimson to the blog’s honor roll.
The campaign for CSR achieved its greatest success when the state legislature passed legislation to reduce class size, and after weeks of wondering, Governor Kathy Hochul signed the law.
Class Size Matters issued the following press release.
For immediate release: September 9, 2022
Contacts: Leonie Haimson: 917-435-9329; leoniehaimson@gmail.com Julia Watson: 978.518.0729; julia@aqeny.org Randi Garay and Shirley Aubin: infocpacnyc@gmail.com
Yesterday, Governor Hochul signed the class size bill passed overwhelmingly last June by the Legislature that would require NYC to phase in smaller classes over five years. The only change from the original bill is that the implementation will now begin in the fall of 2023, rather than this September.
Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters, said, “Thank you, Governor Hochul, for listening to the research showing that class size matters, especially for kids who need help the most, and for heeding the pleas of parents and teachers that it’s time to provide true equity to our students, who have long suffered from the largest class sizes in the state. We are eager to help the Chancellor, the UFT and the CSA put together an action plan to make sure that the implementation of this necessary improvement in our schools goes forward in an effective and workable manner.”
“For years, New York city parents, teachers and advocates have demanded smaller class sizes to benefit all public school students,” said Wendy Lecker, Education Law Center Senior Attorney. “Now that Governor Hochul has signed the class size reduction bill championed by Senators Robert Jackson and John Liu, City schools finally have another important tool to ensure their students receive a constitutional sound basic education.”
Parent leaders Randi Garay and Shirley Aubin said, “As the co-chairs of the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council, which represents all the Parent Associations and Parent Teacher Associations in the city’s public schools, we know that smaller classes have been a top priority of NYC parents for decades and how desperately they are needed. In the wake of the pandemic and with the infusion of new state and federal funds, we believe that smaller classes are not only more critical than ever, but more achievable as well. Thank you to the Governor for seeing the importance of smaller class sizes and signing the bill into law.”
“Students in New York’s public schools will be better off thanks to the class size reduction bill that Gov. Hochul signed yesterday. By signing this bill into law, she is sending a clear and important signal that she is on students’ side. We applaud the Governor for her commitment to New York’s students, especially as we are moving toward the third and final year of the State’s Foundation Aid commitment,” said Marina Marcou-O’Malley, Operations and Policy Director, Alliance for Quality Education.
Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters, asks you for your help. The state legislature overwhelmingly passed a bill to require reduced class sizes in NYC. Governor Hochul has not sign it yet. If she doesn’t sign within 39 days, it’s a “pocket veto.” At the same time, NYC Mayor Eric Adams plans to cut the budget for schools. This would certainly make class size reduction impossible. Act now!
On June 3, the NY State Legislature passed S09460/ A10498, a long-needed bill to require NYC to lower class sizes, by a vote of 147 to 2 in the State Assembly and 59 to 4 in the State Senate. It calls for class size caps to be phased in over five years in all New York City public schools, whose students have long struggled from being jammed into the largest class sizes in the state.
Instead of abiding by the intent of this bill, Mayor Adams and the City Council agreed to a budget that will cut school budgets by at least $215 million, making it likely that class sizes will increase rather than decrease next fall.
Please sign this petition to Gov. Hochul to sign the class size bill as soon as possible, so that NYC schools can get on the right track towards improving learning conditions rather than undermining them. The petition is co-sponsored by Class Size Matters, the Alliance for Quality Education, NYC Kids PAC and the Education Council Consortium.
If you are like me, your head is spinning about the conflicting signals about New York City’s public schools. The state legislature voted to mandate smaller class sizes, which will cost money, but the City Council voted to cut the schools’ budget.
Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters, encourages everyone to fight back. She has spent more than 20 years arguing for reduced class sizes as the most effective reform for schools.
Here is her message:
Dear folks –
Sadly, late Monday night the NYC Council agreedto a city budget that will make at least $215M in cuts directly to schools, by a 44-6 vote. These egregious cuts, the largest since the Great Recession of 2007-2008, were made despite billions more in the city’s reserve fund, an expected city budget surplus of more than $1B next year, and nearly $5B in unspent federal stimulus funds meant for our schools. These cuts will likely cause class sizes to increase and the loss of critical services for kids, who are still recovering from the disruptions caused by more than two years of the pandemic.
There are three things you can do now to help us fight back:
1.Sign our petition to Gov. Hochul, urging her to sign the new state class size bill, S09460/ A10498,as soon as possible, passed by the New York State Legislature on June 3 by a vote of 147 to 2 in the Assembly and 59 to 4 in the State Senate. Once she signs the bill, it will give us a legal avenue to try to reverse or limit the damage of these inexcusable cuts. The petition is co-sponsored by NYC Kids PAC, AQE and the Education Council Consortium.
2. You can also let DOE know directly how you feel about these cuts at the final C4E hearings tonight, Wed. June 15. You can sign up here, starting at 5 PM; the hearings begin at 6 PM. The public comments are required to be summarized, posted and sent to the NY State Education Department to help them decide whether to approve the city’s C4E plan. It goes without saying that “Excellence” will be harder to achieve than ever in our schools, given these devastating cuts. Some additional talking points are here.
3. Please also attend our Annual Skinny Award celebration, on Monday June 27, in which we will honor the state leaders who made the new class size bill possible. You can find out more about our honorees and how to purchase your tickets here. This is the first fundraiser Class Size Matters has held in three years — and we can really use your support. The education leaders who will be there to receive their awards also deserve your thanks.
But don’t forget to sign our petition to Gov. Hochul today! I will be up in Albany tomorrow and will deliver it to her office if there are enough signatures by then.
This is the single most powerful reform that will help students, especially the neediest students, who will benefit from smaller classes and more teacher attention.
Class size reduction matters more than school choice or teacher evaluation or other expensive but ineffective fads.
A special shout out to Leonie Haimson, the unpaid executive director of Class Size matters, who has fought this battle with all her time and energy for years.
I’m proud to say that I am a board member of Class Size Matters and Leonie is a board member of the Network for Public Education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 