The City of New York must stop hemming and hawing about the Department of Education’s new class size mandate and start focusing on solutions that will finally allow school kids to receive the sound, basic education to which they are entitled.
Last year, Gov. Hochul signed into law historic legislation (S9460) that would, at long last, begin to reduce class sizes in New York City public schools over a six-year period.
Most viewed this as good news. After all, who doesn’t want smaller class sizes? Research consistently demonstrates that smaller class sizes lead to improved student outcomes across every measurable metric. Everything from test scores, classroom engagement and behavior, attendance and graduation rates improve when class sizes are not excessively large.
For more than 30 years, NYC schools have been bursting at the seams with overcrowded classes due to a combination of underfunding, inadequate teacher staffing, and most disturbingly, an unwillingness by various mayoral administrations to take the problem seriously.
Yet in every school budget hearing I’ve attended as a state senator, school chancellors from different administrations have always said the same thing — they’d love to lower class sizes; they just don’t have the money to do it from the State of New York.
And they were absolutely right! For decades, Albany was shortchanging New York City schools on Foundation Aid, which is the funding formula the state uses for local school districts. Foundation Aid was created in 2007 following the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit in which parents accused the state of not providing enough funding for schools to provide a sound, basic education. After many years of rulings and appeals, the state’s highest court ruled in favor of parents, due in large part to NYC’s excessive class sizes.
It took decades, but as of this year, and for the first time ever, the state is finally fully funding Foundation Aid to New York City to the tune of $1.6 billion more in baseline funding. It’s new money, but it’s not a blank check. It is to be used to provide a sound, basic education, which cannot be achieved without reducing class sizes, according to the 2007 lawsuit.
It’s no coincidence that the class size bill passed last year either. In fact, the only reason it passed at all is that it took the state three years to completely phase in this increase in Foundation Aid. Now that it’s complete, the class size mandate is, in effect, a funded mandate.
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While it may have been a valid excuse to blame NYC’s overcrowded classes on the state’s underfunding for so many years, the new increase to Foundation Aid means that can no longer be the reason to dodge reducing class sizes. Still there appears to be a glitch in the matrix with the repeated cries from the mayor and a vocal contingent of skeptics with little faith in government competency who have sought to discredit the idea of smaller class sizes by calling it an “unfunded mandate” that would force cuts in other program and services.
Even the NYC Independent Budget Office released a report last month stating the obvious fact that the class size bill will cost money and require the (gasp) hiring of more teachers! The IBO report states, “This legislation is specifically focused on class size reduction and does not provide additional funding to meet the new requirements.”
To be clear, the Legislature never would’ve passed this bill if the funding wasn’t there, and so it is frustrating to see this analysis of the bill miss the mark by ignoring the parallel Foundation Aid funding that made it possible in the first place.
At the end of the day, the city will need to build out school infrastructure and hire more teachers, and it now has the Foundation Aid to pay for it. To be sure, these are challenges, but they are short-term obstacles that can be overcome as soon as the administration stops kicking and screaming about the money it already has and begins to proactively plan how to use its increase in Foundation Aid to provide a sound, basic education.
NYC’s overcrowded classrooms were not created by Mayor Adams’ administration, but it has fallen to his administration to resolve. With enrollment at all-time lows after COVID, the timing is perfect for him to begin using the six-year phase-in to identify sites for new schools, build out the system, and hire new teachers with the historic $1.6 billion in additional Foundation Aid provided by the state.
It’s time to “Get Stuff Done,” Mr. Mayor.
Liu chairs the state Senate Committee on New York City Education and was the sponsor of S9460.