The head of Big Apple public schools admitted Monday it will be “very difficult” for the city to comply with the state’s new class size mandate — despite declining enrollment.
Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels, testifying during a City Council hearing, tampered expectations that the Department of Education could hit its mandated 80% compliance with the law by the upcoming school year.
“I think it’s going to be very difficult to get to 80% by September,” Samuels warned, adding that the city’s compliance rate currently stands at 64%.
The 2022 law requires New York City classrooms to have no more than 20 to 25 students, depending on grade level, by the 2026-27 school year. The city must hit 100% compliance with those caps by the following 2027-28 school year.
The limits are set at 20 students for K-3rd grade, 23 for grades 4 to 8 and 25 for high school.
The anticipated failure to meet those levels comes despite sharply declining enrollment in the nation’s largest public school district.
The system saw a decrease of nearly 17%, or about 164,000 students, in enrollment between the 2014-15 and 2023-24 school years, according to the Citizens Budget Commission think tank.
The number of enrolled pupils was projected to shrink by another 70,000 by the 2033-34 school year, according to the CBC. In 2024-25, there were 906,248 students enrolled in city public schools, according to the DOE.
Samuels was joined at Monday’s hearing by School Construction Authority President and CEO Nina Kubota, who echoed the need for an extended deadline to meet the class-size law.
“I would say yes, it would be beneficial,” she said when pressed by the education committee chair, Council Member Eric Dinowitz, on whether a deadline delay would help.
The SCA, which identifies and manages the design, construction and renovation of school facilities, was taking a “a 360 degree view of the school portfolio, going subdistrict by subdistrict, looking at both individual schools as well as clusters of schools, to identify targeted solutions,” Kubota said.
The CBC suggested the city get relief from the mandate, claiming an extension could save upwards of $1.6 billion next year in the already-inflated city budget.
“The mandate drives taxpayer resources to low-need, high-demand schools — an ineffective use of resources,” the nonprofit group wrote in testimony presented to the council Monday.
“In school year 2024-25, $170 million was directed to the lowest-need quartile of schools.”
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s current $127 billion preliminary budget plan includes nearly $543 million in new spending for the next school year to reduce class sizes.
State Sen. John Liu, who championed the class-size law, recently told The Post he would be open to relaxing the rigid timeline.
“Mayor Mamdani has committed to complying with state law and reducing overcrowding in NYC public school classrooms even though the inaction of the previous administration has exacerbated the difficulty of doing so,” he said earlier this month.
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