Nov. 18. 2025
New class size reports were
released yesterday, showing that as of this fall, DOE achieved the legal goal
of 60% of classes in compliance with the class size law. They actually achieved
64% but this figure was the result of exempting 123 schools and 10,535 classes
from their calculations. You can check your schools' compliance rate overall
and by grade here; Table
C - Class Size Compliance by School (Open external link) as well as their
reported class sizes here: School
Data .
Yet the DOE’s official class size
plan submitted to the state in July exempted only
eight schools specifically rom lowering class size – the
eight specialized high schools (even though seven of them received some funding
for class size reduction).
Yet now, not only are nine
schools exempted for 'overenrollment' – the eight specialized high schools plus
La Guardia high school- but also 114 additional schools, spread over nearly
every district.
On average, these schools have more than half of their classes
exempted from meeting the caps this year, as the DOE claims there is new space
planned and funded for these schools or nearby to alleviate their overcrowding.
To make things worse, in many cases, the DOE didn’t even inform principals or
School Leadership Teams that they were granted these exemptions, no less the
reasons why.
Moreover, a quick perusal of
these schools and their numbers suggest how unlikely is their claim that an
actual plan or funding exists to provide the exempted schools with sufficient space. For
example, six schools are “exempted” in District 6, because supposedly there is
funding and a plan to eliminate their overcrowding. Yet according to the just-released capital plan, as well as Table
D of their reporting shows only one of these schools, PS 187, is due to get an
annex with 342 seats. How that one annex would alleviate overcrowding in the
other five schools remains unexplained.
Secondly, the DOE’s new Financial
Impact Statement asserts that they would have to spend $18 billion dollars
to create enough space to achieve the class size caps, which works out to about
100,000 more seats; yet only $6 billion dollars have been allocated for this
purpose in the capital plan to build about 33,000 seats.
Third, even if the capital plan
were fully funded, the same Financial Impact Statement mentions that the DOE
will not promise to alleviate overcrowding or meet the class size caps at these
new schools even after they are built, because they don’t plan to align their
enrollment policies with the class size goals in the law, meaning that “planned and sited projects may not
always result in direct alleviation of identified schools.”
There are so many inconsistent
figures and claims between their Summary
Document and Financial
Impact Statement, and between those documents and the official
DOE class size “plan” submitted to the state in July that I cannot mention them
all here. But these inconsistencies, together with the number of exemptions
suggest how haphazard the DOE planning efforts have been, and how unreliable
their intention to comply with the law really is. As I said to Chalkbeat, “It just underlines and emphasizes the
fact that they don’t have a serious plan, and they never have.”
Anyway, take a look at what the
class size info says about your school in the spreadsheet at School
Data and the grade-level compliance levels and exemptions listed at Table
C - Class Size Compliance by School s – and if the data is accurate or not. Whether your school
received an exemption or not, remember that according to the UFT, this
exemption is for this year only and not permanent, and dependent on evidence
and assurances from DOE that they will supply more space to your school or
nearby in the near future.
If your school did receive an exemption,
please ask your principal, district superintendent, or the School Construction
Authority at servicedesk@nycsca.org where the new school(s) or annexes are included in the capital plan
that will provide your school with sufficient space. And let me know if you hear back and if so, what they
say.
In any case, make sure you also
ask your principals whether they are planning to apply for class size funds
next year and if not, why not.
The deadline for filling out the application (which is misleadingly called a
“survey”) is December 3. If your principal is unresponsive, ask
your School Leadership Team, whose mandated members include the PTA president
and the UFT chapter chair. Email us at info@classsizematters.org if you have questions.
Below are links to all of the
relevant DOE class size documents, spreadsheets and data. As usual, they are
scattered so widely across three webpages they are difficult to find– whether
purposely or not.
Thanks Leonie
Class
Size Implementation Report [halfway
down the page]
These documents fulfill the
reporting requirements laid out in Education Law Section 211-d. These reports
are as of November 15, 2025.
Summary
Document (Open external link)
Table
A - Contracts for Excellence Funding & Classroom Teacher Data by School
(Open external link)
Table
B - Enrollment Projections (Open external link)
Table
C - Class Size Compliance by School (Open external link)
Table
D - Capital Planning (Open external link)
Financial
Impact Statement
November
Class Size Report for 2025-2026
These documents reflect the
reporting requirements under Local Law 522 on Class Size. For required class
size reporting implementation under NYS Education Law Section 211-d requiring
New York City to report on the progress of implementing new class size caps,
see this
document (Open external link).
Class
Size Policy
Planning for SY2026-2027
[Most of these documents are
behind principal sign-in walls, but if you want access to these documents,
check out our website
here.]
Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
