NYC Public School Parents: New class size reports released - showing which schools are complying with the class size law and which are "exempted"

Wednesday, November 19, 2025

New class size reports released - showing which schools are complying with the class size law and which are "exempted"

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).