Welcome to a new school year, and the first year of the phase-in of smaller classes, according to the new state law. Unfortunately, we have already heard of schools where class sizes have increased substantially compared to last year. We anticipated this would occur, given cuts to Fair Student Funding and the fact that DOE eliminated the only promise in their initial class size plan: that those schools which had achieved the class size caps in the law last year would be given support to retain them this year.
Our letter to DOE, criticizing the lack of any real class size plan, and signed onto by more than two hundred NYC advocates, parents and educators, was reported in the Daily News, including the DOE’s omission of any pledge to ensure that class sizes would not increase this year.
Please fill out our brief five-minute survey for parents, teachers and other school staff, to report on the size of your school’s classes this year. All your info and your school will remain anonymous unless you indicate otherwise.
Parents: if you don’t know how large your children’s classes are, ask them or their teachers. If you find out that they are excessively large, you can reach out to your principal and/or School Leadership Team to ask if anything can be done about it. If you don’t get a response, a petition signed by you and other parents to urge the hiring of another teacher can be effective. If your child's class sizes violate the UFT contractual limits, set over fifty years ago, you can also reach out to your child’s teacher or chapter leader to ask whether they intend to file an expedited grievance.
But please, do fill out our survey as soon as you can. This information is critical in our fight for smaller classes and to persuade the state to ensure that DOE makes progress on this issue.
Thanks for your support, Leonie
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