Dylan Lopez Contreras sat waiting for a copy of his class schedule in a sunny fourth-floor room of his Bronx high school as his counselor walked in wearing a “Free Dylan” button attached to the strap of his messenger bag.

Dylan stood, and Hedin Bernard lifted Dylan’s more-than-6-foot frame off the floor in a tight bear hug.

It had been more than 10 months since Dylan set foot in ELLIS Preparatory Academy, a high school geared toward older, newly arrived immigrant students. The last time the two had seen each other, Dylan’s hair was dyed purple and just covered his ears. Now, it fell below the 21-year-old’s shoulders and the purple dye had faded to yellow.

Last May, in a Manhattan courthouse after his asylum hearing, making him the first known New York City public school student detained during President Donald Trump’s second term. The Venezuelan native became the public face of an , remaining in custody until .

After Dylan’s arrest, his mom Raiza’s . Ever since then, Bernard has, along with ELLIS founding Principal Norma Vega, led the school’s efforts to rally behind Dylan, which included helping to put Raiza in touch with lawyers and advocates, organizing a student letter-writing campaign, and supporting a fundraiser for the family. With Dylan’s return to ELLIS, they hope he can focus on “what will happen, not what did happen,” Vega said.

But the jubilation of Dylan’s return has been mixed with frequent reminders of the looming threat of immigration enforcement facing him and other ELLIS students.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, released Dylan while he awaits a decision on an appeal in his . An immigration judge , and the appeals process could take years, according to his lawyers from the New York Legal Assistance Group. But ICE has the ability to take him back into custody at any time and requires regular check-ins, his lawyers said.

Shortly after Bernard reunited with Dylan Tuesday morning, as Dylan scarfed down a donut and drank coffee poured from Bernard’s thermos, the counselor invited him to join a college trip that week.

ELLIS staffers believe that is the surest path out of poverty. The trip would visit three colleges in upstate New York.

Dylan glanced down at his leg, where a black ankle monitor had been attached as a condition of his release. With his travel restrictions, Dylan knew he likely couldn’t attend.

But that didn’t slow down the ELLIS staffers for long. Later that morning, Bernard asked a colleague to invite college representatives to ELLIS, so Dylan wouldn’t have to leave school to meet them.

Dylan’s detention still lingers

The swiftness of the changes over the past two weeks has been hard for Dylan to comprehend.

After months in Moshannon Valley Processing Center, a Western Pennsylvania detention facility, Dylan had , flanked by Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani, thanking his supporters in Spanish from under the blue brim of a New York Knicks hat.

He had been sleeping on a thin cot in a cell with more than 70 men. Now he was in his own bed, cuddled with his younger siblings, ages 8 and 10, who had asked to sleep next to him. And after losing about 30 pounds in detention because he often couldn’t stomach the food, Dylan had a phalanx of adults at ELLIS showering him with .

“It’s a big contrast, to go through so much mistreatment, and then come back to people who love and support you,” he said in Spanish.

Still, his thoughts drift back to a friend in detention nicknamed “El Mayor,” or the elder, who has already called Dylan to let him know how happy he was to hear about his release and to ask if he could use his public profile to advocate for the release of others. (Dylan did exactly that at his press conference.) As long as those men remain in detention, Moshannon Valley is “not going to feel very far away,” he said.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson denied that there were any problems with the conditions at Moshannon. “All detainees are provided with proper meals, water, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers,” the spokesperson said. “In fact, ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens.”

ELLIS staffers said reintegrating Dylan into school will mean helping him catch up on all he missed over the past 10 months while also processing the ongoing trauma of his detention.

While Dylan was incarcerated, his classmates ., prepared for or taken Regents exams they needed for graduation, and kept up with the guitar lessons Dylan enjoyed before his arrest.

Letters from his classmates helped sustain him as his detention stretched from days to months, and his optimism for a quick release faded. He watched new detainees — including grandparents and young kids — come and go while he remained locked up.

Dylan had no formal education in detention. But he was determined to do what he could to keep up with his English.

He practiced speaking with cellmates from places like China and the United Kingdom and to advocate for better treatment from the guards.

He devoured manga and Marvel comics donated by the advocacy group ROCC NYC, which played a critical role in supporting his family and keeping public attention on his case. He scoured an English dictionary from the facility’s library to learn new vocabulary but had no one to check his pronunciation. And he tried to read some classics, such as Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and “Chronicle of a Death Foretold” by Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez.

When he returned to ELLIS last week, Vega stopped him in the hallway to hand him a gift from a staffer in her district office: a copy of Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” another classic Dylan had asked to read but couldn’t get a copy of.

Dylan, who had fled Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro’s repressive regime, had been , and spent 10 months in ICE custody, had said he wanted to understand Dante’s nine circles of hell.

ELLIS gears up to help Dylan adjust

Staffers at ELLIS are accustomed to helping students navigate all kinds of trauma, but they’d never had a student return from long-term incarceration, Bernard said.

Dylan’s counselors at ELLIS plan to refer him to a Spanish-speaking therapist through a mental health clinic located on the first floor of ELLIS’ building, Bernard said. And staffers will watch for any signs that he is struggling.

They’re also hoping to give Dylan chances to enjoy himself outside academic courses, though his ankle monitor is complicating those plans. His counselor enrolled Dylan in a swim class, but Dylan worried about getting the device wet.

Schools in New York are required to continue enrolling students through age 21, but state law doesn’t stop them from staying longer if the school agrees, Vega said.

ELLIS staffers don’t want to keep Dylan in high school longer than necessary but are encouraging him to stay for two years, so he can master English before applying to college.

In the meantime, he is eager to earn money to help his mom and siblings with rent. He hopes to take a bartending course so he can work at night without interfering with his school schedule.

Dylan worked long hours as a delivery driver before his arrest, and Bernard remains concerned about how long he’ll want to stay in school.

Staffers at ELLIS are working on finding him an internship that allows him to make money while learning new skills and burnishing his college resume.

Dylan said he’s willing to stay at ELLIS “as long as it takes.”

Dylan and ELLIS face an uncertain future

Dylan’s arrest, and the aggressive escalation in immigration enforcement it represented, cast a long shadow over ELLIS over the past 10 months, .

Students had begun to talk more openly about self-deportation. Pressure to abandon school for work grew as students confronted their diminished prospects for building a future in the U.S. And ELLIS’ enrollment, like that at immigrant-heavy schools across the city, has declined as border crossings slowed to a trickle.

Many of the ELLIS students who greeted Dylan Tuesday with tearful hugs and exclamations like “bienvenidos, loco!” (welcome back, crazy!) had endured their own brushes with immigration enforcement.

Dylan saw a friend whose mother was deported while he was in detention, leaving her without a way to pay rent or look after her toddler during school hours. Dylan’s is considering returning to Ecuador in part because of the fear of ICE. Another student saw Dylan’s ankle monitor and asked a staff member what the device did, adding that her dad had one too, Bernard said.

And when Dylan greeted two fellow Venezuelan students, one asked if he’d had to sleep on the floor — noting that’s where he’d slept after being detained while crossing the border. “I know the floor,” Dylan responded with a wry smile.

During lunch time, Dylan settled into a booth with friends and munched on mozzarella sticks. He had a newfound appreciation for school cafeteria food.

His friendships were what Dylan missed most about ELLIS, and there was lots to catch up on. The conversation soon turned to an ordinary high school concern: Dylan had to figure out what color to dye his hair next.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .

New of these schools, shared exclusively with ����Ӱ��, was published Thursday by Education Reimagined, a national nonprofit that helps schools implement . It’s an approach where young people have ownership of their education, learn in their communities and show their knowledge through multiple ways, not just tests, according to the nonprofit. 

Over the 2024-25 school year, Education Reimagined studied in St. Paul, Minnesota; in LaFayette, New York; and in Mukwonago, Wisconsin —  a mix of urban, suburban and rural communities that enrolled a total of 388 K-12 students. More than 45% had individualized education programs or 504 plans — documents that spell out how needs will be met under the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

“In all the sites we studied, the systems are designed to fit the learner and their needs, not the other way around,” said Khara Schonfeld, one of the organization’s researchers. “They’re seeing differences as the norm as opposed to the exception. That means learners are showing up.”

That included mindsets that shifted how staff understood learning differences and student potential; different organizational structures; and key daily practices for student support and success.

The approach has produced positive academic results. At Norris School District, students with IEPs increase reading performance by an average of 8 percentage points and math by 4 percentage points per trimester. Avalon students with IEPs consistently for students with IEPs on math and reading tests. 

In the LaFayette Central School District, the opening of LaFayette Big Picture in 2008 correlated with graduation rates for students with IEPs in the district rising from a range of 50% to 70% to a scale of 95% to 100%.

Students who enrolled in these schools also experienced a decline in behavioral incidents and became more engaged in their education, according to the research.

“A lot of the learners came with past trauma, including education trauma — they had a hard time in previous schools,” she said. “So it all really focused on this idea of healing and making sure that they felt safe and cared for. We had a couple of alumni say, ‘I went to the school. I can talk to anyone about anything that I want to get or find out because the school taught me how to do that.”

Schonfeld said common accommodations students with disabilities need in traditional classroom settings are provided to everyone — a key factor in the learner-centered system’s success.

In Minnesota’s Avalon School, staff begin each day with a session where students and their advisors connect in a sensory-friendly setting  — an environment that reduces stimuli like harsh lighting and loud noises. Norris School District’s single campus, where 75% of the students have IEPs, celebrates small accomplishments that might go unnoticed, such as a student’s ability to hold an entire conversation, the case study said.

Leadership structures are also different at these schools. Avalon, a charter school, has a teacher-majority board that allows educators to redesign schedules and positions. LaFayette Big Picture School pairs students with mentors, while Norris School District has staff meetings every day.

Some daily practices include offering internships onsite to ensure students don’t have to be “ready” to travel outside the building to experience career education. The schools also interpret disruptive behavior as communication about unmet needs rather than misconduct, according to the research. For example, Avalon School uses a strategy called relational repair, where educators ask reflective questions after a disruptive behavior to build trust with students. At Norris, students are taught to name feelings to help staff find the right support during a behavioral incident.

This learner-centered framework has a positive ripple effect with families and educators, Schonfeld said. Parents of students at all three schools have shared they no longer have to fight for their child’s special education accommodations. 

Teachers also feel more supported and satisfied with their jobs, the researchers found. Avalon School has maintained a 90% year-to-year retention rate over two decades, with current teachers averaging 10 years of experience. At LaFayette, more than half of the staff have been at the school for at least nine years.

The report, released this month by the education reform nonprofit Available to All, builds off The new report found overlaps and similarities among dozens of redlining maps from 1938 with school attendance zones in New York City, Long Island, Westchester County as well as upstate cities, such as Albany, Buffalo and Niagara Falls.��

The report also identified New York as “one of many states where a parent can be arrested and criminally charged for using an incorrect address to get their child into a high-quality school,” with one such incident occurring as recently as .��

The state’s laws and regulations make it “one of the strictest systems of residential assignment in the country,” the report said, adding it limits a to take advantage of — a practice that allows students to attend public schools outside their assigned district.

“There’s this paradox of New York, where it’s run by progressive politicians, it’s a very democratic state,” said Tim DeRoche, founder of Available to All, “but it’s the most segregated.”

Across the United States it’s common for sections of the same town or city, neighborhoods and streets to have communities that look vastly different from one another because of historical government-led housing segregation.

Redlining, the practice of drawing boundaries around neighborhoods based on race and denying mortgage assistance to areas considered “hazardous” or “undesirable” typically housing people of color, was more than 50 years ago. Despite this, many public services, including , still perpetuate inequitable access to resources and opportunity based on housing.

While school districts themselves are drawn through legislative processes, districts are often given autonomy when drawing attendance zones for schools. Both boundaries, the report said, “carry on the legacy of redlining in New York.”

“Public schools must be ‘,’ and … if you look at the system we have across the country, you can see that we are falling so far short of that — and the primary reason for that is that we assign kids to schools based on their address,” DeRoche said. 

The report used Public School 19 and Public School 16 as examples. Both schools are in the north Bronx’s school District 11 and are located about a mile from one another — a 20-minute walk — but serve contrasting populations.

The Bronx

Attendance zone boundaries for P.S. 19 “mirror, almost perfectly, the area deemed to be ‘desirable’ by the racist redlining map drawn by federal government bureaucrats in 1938,” the report said. Whereas P.S. 16’s boundaries fell directly in a declining area, according to the 1938 map.

The remnants of redlining are echoed in both schools’ data — where P.S. 19 educates a population that is 43% Black and Latino and two-thirds low income, with 62% reading proficiency. That compares to P.S 16’s 88% Black and Latino student body, 95% of whom are low income with grade level reading just over 30%.

Schools like P.S. 19 “become almost quasi-private schools,” DeRoche said.

There were many examples across the New York City Public Schools system, as well as several upstate school districts.

Manhattan

Queens

“It’s really hard to find a place [in New York] that’s not segregated or a school district that’s not experiencing either racial segregation or some sense of class segregation,” said Kris DeFilippis, a former assistant superintendent in the New York City Department of Education, who is now a clinical professor at New York University. “Not much has changed. … Wherever those lines were drawn [in the 1930s], it has largely stayed the same, unless there’s been a movement toward gentrification.”

In Albany, New York’s capital, New Scotland Elementary School was zoned over neighborhoods identified as desirable in 1938. The school serves a student population that is less than half Black or brown (41%) and low-income (47%) with reading scores near 60%.��

Just about two miles away at Giffen Memorial Elementary School, more than three-quarters of students are Black and Hispanic (84%) and qualify for free and reduced priced lunch (84%). Less than a quarter of students at Giffen Memorial read on grade level (21%).

Much of Giffen Memorial’s attendance zone lines up with 1938 redlining declining areas.

Albany

“You wouldn’t see these massive gaps [in demographics and student achievement] between two schools two miles away … if those two schools were truly open to kids,” DeRoche said. “The government has to be enforcing that in some way. How are they enforcing it? Well, they’re enforcing it with these maps. The kids on the wrong side of the line aren’t eligible to go to the public school that’s a mile [or two] from their home.”

In upstate New York, while there’s access to charter and magnet schools, school choice within a district is limited among traditional public schools. Students are generally required to go to the school in their attendance zone, “unless there are exceeding circumstances,” DeFilippis said, “but that is rare, it just doesn’t happen.”

In New York City, “it’s a bit different,” DeFilippis continued. Students typically attend a local elementary school before choice options open up in middle and high school grades across the metropolitan area  – creating its own challenges and limitations when it comes to admission to later grades.

“There’s almost like a false narrative that in New York City students can go where they want,” DeFilippis said, “but it’s not entirely accurate.”

For a student, traveling across the city to attend a school that works best for them can be difficult and it may also be challenging to get into competitive schools because they “haven’t had the same experiences at the lower grades that their peers have had,” DeFillipis said. So, ultimately, the current setup, “does not lead to equitable outcomes for Black and brown students, or low-income students, at all.”

The report recommended possible solutions for lawmakers to consider, such as decriminalizing address sharing, requiring every public school to reserve at least 15% of seats for students who live outside the zone and allowing students to enroll in any public school within a three-mile radius of the child’s home.

The underlying principle, DeRoche said, is to “just decrease the link between where you live and which schools you’re allowed to attend.”

“These policies have been bad, not just for educational opportunity, but I think they’ve affected urban development and I think they’ve affected how our cities work and don’t work,” DeRoche said.

New York City students with a passion for STEM — and an interest in artificial intelligence — may soon have a high school dedicated to training “the next generation of technology professionals.”

But families in Manhattan’s District 2 are pushing back against for , a new screened admissions high school that would take the place of the tiny, girls-only Urban Assembly School of Business for Young Women. Next Generation would be the first city public school to focus its curriculum on AI and computer science.

As details of the two proposals emerged over the last month, so have dual tensions: What should fill the space left by Young Women in Business, and how private technology companies and their artificial intelligence products could shape the curriculum at Next Generation.

Much of the opposition to Next Generation has come from families at a middle school also in the Broadway building, Lower Manhattan Community School. Also known as LMC, parents at the school have called on the department for years to expand enrollment from grades 6-8 up to grade 12.

The Panel for Educational Policy, the board that votes on new schools and closures, is expected to consider the proposals for Next Generation and Business for Young Women at its April 29 meeting.

The Education Department released both proposals on March 6, the day after the city’s eighth graders received their high school acceptance offers. If approved, Next Generation would welcome its first class of ninth graders in the fall. (The plan to close Business for Young Women in June is not contingent on Next Generation’s approval.)

Despite not having the green light yet, Next Generation has already held three virtual open houses. Its states the school is “set to open” in fall 2026, noting that applications would open March 19.

Parents ask: ‘Why this school and why here?’

Manhattan High Schools Superintendent Gary Beidleman introduced the idea for Next Generation Technology High School at a .

Panel for Educational Policy members and families of the three co-located schools at 26 Broadway — in addition to LMC and Business for Young Women, Richard R. Green High School of Teaching shares the building — said that meeting was the first time the district school community had been notified of the proposed STEM- and technology-focused screened high school.

At the Feb. 25 announcement, Beidleman said Next Generation grew out of his experience as a summer 2024 , and that Google and OpenAI are part of the planning team for the school. One of the school’s goals, he said, is to “expand pathways connected to high-growth technology careers” and provide advanced STEM and technology programming for NYC students. Next Generation also plans to offer a summer internship program with Carnegie Mellon University.

Caleb Haraguchi-Combs, founding principal and project director of Next Generation High School, said in an information session that the school would utilize . How much of this AI-powered, AI-focused Google coursework would comprise the curriculum is still in flux, according to the proposal’s .

The school’s academic description includes similar or identical language as found on the Google Skills website: Next Generation’s “special access to technology industry mentors,” “technology certifications,” and “curriculum that adapts to the dynamic changes in the technology field” are offerings advertised on the homepage of the Google Skills site.

Officials and families question new school proposal process

The community and Panel for Educational Policy members have asked questions about the fast proposal process, speaking to uncertainty around admissions for the coming school year.

in a letter to the Panel for Educational Policy that the proposal seemingly came out of nowhere, and families were not provided adequate engagement opportunities before its release. Panel Chair Greg Faulkner said he has received hundreds of similar letters from parents since the community learned of the incoming proposal in late February.

High school offers were released March 5, ahead of the panel’s vote and months before the proposed school would open. It remains unclear how the Education Department would handle screening requirements — such as interviews or assessments — after the main admissions cycle has concluded. The Office of District Planning did not respond to questions about how enrollment would work for this fall.

of the school, created by the Next Generation’s founding principal and program director on March 8, had under 100 signatures at the time of publishing.

A public hearing is scheduled for April 14, two weeks before the panel’s vote.

“I would love more transparency around why the department chooses certain schools to go in certain places,” said Sarah Calderon, a parent at Lower Manhattan Community School. “When we asked the superintendent, ‘Why this school and why here?’ he said he had no data on district demand.”

Beidelman told parents at the Feb. 25 District 2 meeting that expanding Lower Manhattan Community “was not an idea that was on the table.”

The Education Department receives many proposals each year, including some from outside New York City, said Sean Rux of the Office of New School Development.

“This was the proposal that spoke to us,” Rux said.

Families push to expand Lower Manhattan Community School

The plan to close the underenrolled Business for Young Women school has been percolating for a few years — with just 91 students this year, it’s the smallest district high school in the city, said Education Department officials.

Families at Lower Manhattan Community School say they have pushed for years to expand into a 6–12 model, and would like to move into the space used by Business for Young Women, if closed.

“A proposal to expand LMC could potentially open up sixth grade admissions to applicants citywide, but we have not been given the opportunity to even submit a proposal,” said Anne Hager, a parent of a sixth grader at Lower Manhattan School.

At a PTA meeting with Education Department staff on Wednesday, LMC’s Student Leadership Team presented its case to expand the school instead of opening Next Generation.

A new 6-12 would eliminate the need for LMC students to go through a second, onerous application process, something that students with disabilities would especially benefit from, they said. The presentation also cited Department of Education data from 2024 that showed 6-12 schools have nearly three times higher demand than their 6-8 middle school counterparts.

compared with citywide averages.

The department’s proposal focuses largely on space at the Broadway campus, estimating that Next Generation would serve roughly 450 students by its fourth year. All three schools can comfortably co-locate, according to the proposal, though its capacity calculations do not allot for significant expansion for either Richard R. Green High School or LMC.

Debate over AI timing and oversight

Next Generation’s proposal arrives amid over artificial intelligence in schools.

The school initially marketed itself in information sessions and on social media as an “AI school,” though DOE officials later clarified that students would learn about artificial intelligence rather than be taught by it.

“Students need to be creators, not consumers, of technology,” Beidleman said at the Feb. 25 meeting. “Lessons learned from the past show us that new tech in place creates an opportunity.”

Some parents have argued that broad use of an AI platform in public schools should not be allowed before comprehensive guidelines have been released by the city.

Greg Faulkner, who chairs the Panel for Educational Policy, said he first learned of the proposal after receiving Next Generation’s last month. Since then, the panel has received hundreds of letters from parents opposing the plan and raising concerns about the lack of community engagement so far.

“I have two major hesitations with this: We don’t know what kind of AI involvement there will be. The development team has not provided a playbook for how that will look,” Faulkner said. “And in reading the response letters from District 2 parents, I see that proper engagement and process was not done.”

At a District 2 town hall on March 5, Chancellor Kamar Samuels said the Education Department expects to release AI guidance in the coming weeks and will provide a 45-day window for community feedback once it’s published.

Five Community Education Councils have passed resolutions calling for a two-year moratorium on artificial intelligence use in schools. But calls for broad AI guidelines implemented at the city level are nothing new; of an AI-powered reading program in 2024 after former Comptroller Brad Lander called for a citywide playbook.

“I think the question of teacher capacity and teacher shortages, the research on kids and AI, is still nascent, and the DOE’s lack of its own AI policy leads me to question the timing of any AI school,” said Calderon, the parent at Lower Manhattan Community.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .��

There has been considerable debate in schools and among policymakers on how best to ensure American students are keeping pace academically. Research shows the COVID-19 pandemic and school shutdowns had a significant negative impact on students’ learning.

This debate over academic proficiency, while well-intentioned, is ultimately failing our children. It completely overlooks that American students are falling behind on a much-more important developmental goal: moral proficiency.

The failure to emphasize kindness, respect and character in our schools is encouraging other behaviors to fill that void. An epidemic of bullying pervades classrooms and affects students across the country. The numbers tell the story: According to a Pew Research Center released last year, nearly 60% of teens identify bullying as commonplace in their schools. One in five say it’s extremely common, and among teens it was cited as the second biggest problem affecting students today. Previous studies have found that two in five students say they were bullied on school property, and nearly half reported being victims of cyberbullying.

Three years ago, we lost our 17-year-old son to bullying. We sent a healthy, happy 16-year-old boy to a new school excited to make friends. He was kind to everyone, a leader, and wanted a life in public service. This made him a target. His reputation was destroyed by lies spread in person and online over the course of a year, beginning with a school election. While he stood up for himself until his final breath, he suffered in plain sight and — unnecessarily, avoidably and alone.

After his death, we learned that many schools, including our son’s, have no legal obligation to protect your child from bullying. We became advocates for change. No child should have to endure the same cruelty, anguish and pain as Jack did. 

This campaign for change took an important step forward in October when New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the to combat bullying in schools and extend protections already afforded to public school students to those in the state’s independent schools. A diverse coalition of caring legislators and faith-based and independent school leaders worked with us to pass the law, giving half a million private school students in New York the most basic human right: to feel safe. The law ensures that when a child comes forward or bullying is witnessed, the school is obligated to act promptly: investigate, communicate and respond. 

But these policy changes are a solution to an epidemic that needs a bigger fix than new laws. We know the cure. Bullying is like an insidious disease that grows unchecked in cultures where character and kindness are not cherished.

The chief mission of our schools must be teaching skills and values for life, not just improving test outcomes. That means respect for others and their differences. It means civility; not just reading the student handbook but living it. And it means calling out — and addressing — behaviors and actions that threaten the school climate for everyone. 

Bullying cannot be viewed as acceptable or endurable behavior. The old adages that it will “toughen them up” or “is part of growing up” are archaic and misguided. The bullying our kids experience today is not simple playground teasing — our children do not feel safe in school anymore, and because of social media, that fear follows them home. Ask yourself: How can you learn algebra in the classroom if you are afraid of what could happen in the hallway?

Only have protections in place for every child. This is unacceptable. We need to help the remaining four million private and parochial school students at risk. Anti-bullying mandates actually reaffirm the mission of our schools: teach the whole child. We hope the Jack Reid Law is a wake-up call. Laws are meaningless symbols if not lived. Climate and culture matter. It must start with school leaders and flow through the entire system of the school: from the chemistry teacher to the gym coach and to each child.

Kindness and bullying are both contagious. One is free; the other cost us our entire fortune — our beloved son. Which one do you want in your school?

As New York City schools ramp up their focus on job readiness programs, a parent board overseeing high schools is calling on the Education Department to implement career aptitude assessments for all ninth and 11th graders.

“It helps with the ever popular question of ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’” said Lawrence Lee, one of the sponsors . “It’s a big world with lots of different options and choices. I think many people look around and think their choices are only what they can see around them.”

, like other schools across the state and nation, are increasingly focusing on career education. There are more than 130 career and technical schools plus over 260 career and technical programs offering internships, apprenticeships, and job-focused courses across the five boroughs. But often, students are left to navigate a complicated application process without guidance on how various programs, electives, internships, career and technical tracks, and postsecondary paths might align with long-term goals, the high school council board members said. They believe the career aptitude assessments can help students reflect on their choices to improve how they select courses and work toward real-world goals.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

“By 11th grade, those decisions directly affect college applications, workforce credentials, and financial planning. Rather than leave those moments to chance, these assessments can give students the agency to better understand their own talents and to see multiple futures for themselves,” said Deborah Alexander, one of the resolution’s sponsors.

Education Department officials said they will review the resolution, but added they currently use platforms that offer interactive career exploration activities and generate tailored career options based on students’ interests.

“This career planning is also embedded in 1:1 advising, ensuring each high schooler receives personalized support in mapping out their next steps,” Education Department spokesperson Isla Gething said in a statement.

The high school council members want students to take “developmentally appropriate, research‐based” assessments in the fall of freshman year and spring of junior year, saying it will help provide more guidance especially for students from historically underserved communities and those learning English as a new language.

“Some students grow up surrounded by professionals who talk openly about their work and pathways, but many do not,” Alexander said. “That difference can shape who sees themselves as an engineer, a nurse, a filmmaker, an entrepreneur, or who never considers those possibilities at all.”

The online career assessment industry has exploded in recent years: An across the country use off-the-shelf advising tools from more than 20 companies, and many others use custom tech tools.

Some research suggests that career aptitude tools can help students better understand their strengths, that might otherwise not have been on their radar. Some experts suggest the tech tools can also help erode , when it comes to career advice.

But evidence of how effective these tools are remains scarce, which is why education research organization MDRC has embarked on a long-term analysis of two of the tech tools, expecting to release results in the summer. Though the tools offer schools a way to advise students without having to hire more counselors — doing deep dives into what kinds of careers fit a student’s aptitudes and personality as well as what kind of degree to pursue and potential salary ranges — they often need, said Rachel Rosen, a senior research associate at MDRC.

“They’re not perfect,” Rosen said of the tools. “They are better if there is a teacher or an adult who will take the information and really work closely with the students on understanding how it can help them think creatively about what the tools are saying.”

While MDRC researchers don’t yet have definitive answers on whether the tool helped reduce bias, they did find that by the time students take the assessments, they already have some of their own assumptions about who they are and what kinds of careers they might do, Rosen said.

“They felt like they knew themselves better than the tool,” she said, and while the tools still had potential, “they need some good adult guidance to go with them.”

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .

New York City received more than 50,000 applications for its free preschool programs in just two weeks, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said on Friday.

That number is about half of the total applications the city received last year for its 3-K and prekindergarten programs — some 94,840. But families of 3- and 4-year-olds still have nearly a month to apply, and many families often wait until the end of the application window since applications are not accepted on a first-come, first-served basis.

Applications remain open through Feb. 27.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

“Every child deserves access to free, high quality childcare – and we’re making sure families across the city know that now is the time to enroll in 3-k and pre-K,” Mamdani said in a statement.

Mamdani seems to be taking a page from Mayor Bill de Blasio’s playbook, when the former mayor launched the city’s massive free pre-K program a decade ago and made outreach a major focal point. De Blasio’s administration to get the word out, particularly in low-income neighborhoods where families were less familiar with the city’s new offerings, and staffers called families of 4-year-olds across the city to encourage them to apply.

Former Mayor Eric Adams, however, did not focus as much on outreach, complained City Council members, who fought for more funding to to families. Last year, about 1 in every 5 seats for the city’s free child care programs for children ages 4 and under, or more than 27,000 of roughly 136,000 seats, went unfilled,

The new mayor has a vested interest in making sure : Not only did he vow to strengthen the city’s 3-K program and ensure that it’s truly universal, showing the demand for the city’s existing programs will help shore up support for his 2-Care program for the city’s 2-year-olds.

In her recent executive budget proposal, Gov. Kathy Hochul to help New York City roll out its 2-Care program and committed to invest $500 million over two years in the program. The city is aiming to create 2,000 new child care seats for 2-year-olds in high-need areas of the city in the fall, then grow to 8,000 seats the following year, and reach all of the city’s 2-year-olds by the end of Mamdani’s first term.

On Friday, Mamdani visited a home-based child care provider in Manhattan’s Chinatown as a way to show his commitment to the providers who operate out of home and often offer care that is culturally and linguistically responsive to families in their communities.

The administration will likely have to rely heavily on home-based providers to scale up its 2-Care program, which will pose many logistical hurdles. That from losing kids to 3-K and pre-K programs and the COVID pandemic. More recently, the Trump administration’s have affected the immigrant-heavy workforce, advocates and providers have said.

Emmy Liss, a former de Blasio administration staffer who is heading the mayor’s Office of Child Care, acknowledged that not all home-based providers fared well in the rollout of the city’s 3-K and pre-K programs.

“We want to work closely in partnership with them in this next phase of work, because we cannot do this work without them,”

Families can apply to 3-K and pre-K online through or by calling 718-935-2009. City officials said any family that applies by the deadline will receive an offer.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .

Sorry kids, New York City students will still not have a traditional snow day, no matter how many inches fall.

School will be in session on Monday, whether in-person or remote, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said on Friday as he provided an update on the preparations for a potentially massive winter storm heading to the area over the weekend.

The mayor said he will make the final decision by noon on Sunday whether classes will pivot to remote learning. The city is also canceling Sunday’s Public School Athletic League activities as well as any other Sunday school events.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

“I have to apologize to the students that we’re hoping for a different answer for a traditional snow day,” Mamdani said during a press briefing on the storm, acknowledging that the city has no flexibility in its calendar to cancel instructional days.

New York City schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels said the city was committed to swiftly sharing information about schools.

“We know that families need timely, clear information to plan their schedules,” Samuels said.

He also said that schools will be flexible in their approach to remote learning.

“No one is asking kids to be on a device for six hours and 20 minutes,” Samuels said. “Some learning will be synchronous. Some will be asynchronous. You can still have your hot chocolate, you can still go out and enjoy the snow.”

Education Department officials are encouraging students and staff to log in to remote learning platforms over the weekend to make sure they can connect and to avoid technical glitches Monday morning, according to a letter to principals obtained by Chalkbeat. School leaders were also encouraged to stagger school start times for each grade level by 15-minute increments “to ensure a smooth login experience,” the email states.

The National Weather Service is predicting , and the city is gearing up. Schools across the five boroughs are reaching out to their students to ensure they have devices and understand how to log on in the event of a remote school day.

This is the first major logistical test for the mayor and his new chancellor. A big chunk of the city’s nearly 900,000 students — all high school students and those attending 6-12 schools — already had the day off for a teacher professional development day. But the day might be complicated for many parents of young children: They might be frustrated with remote learning and prefer that their kids play outside, or they might be scrambling for child care, especially if they must work in-person.

Many families also depend on schools to provide their children breakfast and lunch.

Schools last closed in-person classes because of snow two years ago, and it did not go well: , despite efforts to . The Education Department subsequently conducted another drill, but it was optional, .

“We are preparing for the possibility of remote such that we do not repeat those mistakes of the past,” Mamdani said.

Samuels recalled the 2024 remote snow day as a “day that will live in infamy” and said, “We’ve stress tested the system, both in person with students logging in and as well. We’ve had simulations so we are prepared now.”

The most recent test, Samuels said, was in December.

“We’ve increased the capacity to make sure that we can house as many students as possible on that day,” Samuels added. “So we now have the capacity of having a million students logging at the same time within 60 seconds.”

The mayor and chancellor offered conflicting messages this week about whether closing school altogether, with no remote learning, could be an option. Samuels that remote learning would be required if school buildings are shuttered, though Mamdani that he was mulling a traditional snow day.

Changes to the school calendar make cancelling school difficult, if not impossible.

The city stopped having traditional snow days in 2020, deciding that schools could instead offer remote learning to help meet the mandated 180 instructional days as more holidays have been added to the calendar.

The state allows certain professional development days to count toward that number, and because of that, New York City students are only in

Mamdani emphasized the steps the city is taking to prepare for the storm.

More than 2,000 sanitation workers are going to start 12-hour shifts starting Saturday evening as the city issues a hazardous travel advisory for Sunday and Monday. He urged people to take the storm seriously and stay home.

The city’s subway and bus system is expected to be operational, said Janno Lieber, CEO of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .

Does your child’s public school have a library?

The City Council now requires New York City’s Education Department to report data on school librarians and library access.

The first-ever report of public school library data was released last month, and revealed that across 1,614 public schools, 1,016 have a library. Yet, there were only 273 full-time librarians and 12 part-time librarians.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

Research access to school libraries with certified librarians tends to result in better academic performance and higher graduation rates at those schools. One showed that a loss of librarians is associated with lower reading scores.

City Council passed school librarians data law after years of advocacy from parents and librarians who warned of a drastic loss in librarians across the city. In 2023, school budget item lines to find that nearly a third of schools with more than 700 students did not have a librarian listed in their budget, even though state standards require all secondary schools with more than 700 students to have a full-time certified librarian.

This year’s data paints a similarly dire picture, and advocates have concerns about both what the data reveals and the accuracy of the data itself. For one, they are critical of the method the Education Department used to report on the number of schools that have libraries. Also, having a library space without a librarian remains a concern.

“Even if all the numbers are accurate, it still … paints a picture that there’s still so much work that needs to be done,” said Roy Rosewood, a school librarian in Queens who’s been advocating for librarians since 2013.

Rosewood and other advocates are concerned that the Education Department used a school’s operating hours as a proxy for the school’s library hours, according to the data. Advocates and librarians told Chalkbeat that this is not a reliable measurement of a library’s open hours, since libraries can often be shut down for testing, meetings, or other purposes.

“Last year, the library was pretty much closed all of April and May for testing,” said one librarian who is untenured and spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “A lot of times when they shut down the libraries for testing, they don’t even put the librarian to proctor those tests. So we’re not even in the space that is closed down.”

For those two months, she spent most of her time in the teachers’ cafeteria and periodically, she walked around the school with a cart of books for students to check in or out.

Advocates also pointed out the importance of having a librarian, not just a library.

“A physical space means nothing,” said Jenny Fox, a New York City public school parent and founder of Librarians = Literacy, an advocacy group focused on raising awareness about the city’s library desert. Fox said she spends a lot of time educating people on what librarians do, something that is often misunderstood or overlooked.

“They’re not just checking books in and out. They’re teaching your kids about media literacy, safety online, how to vet an article for truthfulness,” Fox said. Librarians build their own curriculum, help students with research skills, and are one of the only people in the school who interact with every child.

An Education Department spokesperson said the department recognizes that school libraries are “essential,” and noted, “There’s still room to grow, and we will continue expanding these numbers to bring more knowledge, books, and a culture of reading to more students.”

On his fourth day as New York City schools chancellor, Kamar Samuels visited a Brooklyn school, and parents and educators pressed him about the lack of librarians. He agreed that school libraries were “critical,” saying when schools in the districts he worked in got libraries put into their buildings, “you could see the difference in the culture that changes.”

Parts of the City Council’s school library law have yet to be implemented. State law states that students in seventh and eight grades are receive at least one period of library and information instruction per week. Only about 20% of K-8 schools and junior high schools have a full-time librarian, according to a data analysis from Librarians = Literacy, suggesting the law’s requirements aren’t being met. The anonymous librarian said she is only teaching four library classes, but there are about 60 classes of seventh and eighth graders at her school.

The data on the number of students in those grades who receive library instruction is set to be released on June 1. Next year’s data will also include information such as the number of non-licensed school librarians that are assigned to help fill the librarian gap, the number of hours per day licensed librarians are assigned to do school library work, and more.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to revamp the way the state’s schools teach math.

Hochul announced the plan in her annual State of the State address on Tuesday, along with several child care and education initiatives she has previewed over the past week. The governor’s broader agenda includes funding a ; expanding pre-K and child care vouchers statewide; growing a ; bolstering the state’s teacher training pipeline; and building on free community college for adults who want to train for high-demand careers.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

The governor’s office released few details about the plan to overhaul math, but in its outlining Hochul’s priorities for the year, state officials compared it to existing efforts to revamp literacy instruction. The governor has worked with teachers and school districts to adopt evidence-based “science of reading” practices that focus on phonics and explicit reading instruction, state officials wrote.

Similarly, Hochul said in her Tuesday speech that it is time to get “back to basics” in math. “My hope is for New York students to be the most academically prepared in the country,” Hochul said.

To that end, she will introduce legislation to require the State Education Department to provide school districts with best practices for teaching math and guidance on selecting math curriculums that align with state standards.

The state will also require the State University of New York and the City University of New York to offer extra training in evidence-based math instruction to teachers, especially in New York’s districts with the lowest math performance.

“With these proposals, New York parents can rest assured that there is no better place for their children to learn and thrive than here in our state,” Hochul said.

New York City is already several years into an experiment in mandating and standardizing school curriculums in the name of evidence-based teaching practices. Well before the state rolled out its curriculum recommendations, former Mayor Eric Adams introduced a teaching overhaul called NYC Reads, which required elementary schools to use one of three city-approved reading programs.

At the same time, under a math reform called NYC Solves, the city required high schools, and later some middle schools, to adopt a standardized curriculum for algebra.

Some educators and experts contended that it didn’t make sense to introduce a math overhaul in high school, and lacked the vocabulary or tools to follow what was being taught.

New York City’s new schools chancellor, Kamar Samuels, seems to agree.

Math reform should start with elementary schools, he “If we don’t do math well,” Samuels added, students won’t “be ready for the jobs that exist, much less the jobs that don’t.”

Samuels also argued for a balancing a “back-to-basics” approach to math that emphasizes memorization and math facts with a focus on creative problem-solving. Conceptual understanding is important, Samuels said, but parents “look back at me and say, ‘My kid is in fourth grade and doesn’t know the times tables.’”

“We think of [times tables] as an old thing, but we absolutely need to incorporate it so that our parents can believe in what we do again,” Samuels said.

The jury remains out on whether New York City’s curriculum mandates have improved performance. The Adams administration they said were evidence of positive results, but education experts say it’s too soon to draw conclusions.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

Every morning, all of the roughly 100 seniors at Kingsborough Early College Secondary school start their day taking classes together at CUNY Kingsborough Community College.

In the afternoon, they hop on a yellow school bus and head back to their school on the Lafayette educational campus about 15 minutes away.

Kingsborough juniors make the reverse trek. They start their morning at the Lafayette campus then take the bus to the community college for afternoon classes.

By the time the students graduate high school, most have earned associate degrees from CUNY Kingsborough. In fact, the majority — 57% — of CUNY Kingsborough students are not stereotypical college students. They’re high schoolers, according to a from a New York coalition of advocates and education institutions.

CUNY Kingsborough is one of six community colleges across the state where high schoolers make up the majority of students. It could be the harbinger of something bigger. As dual enrollment programs — where high school students take college courses and earn college-level credit — are expanding in New York state and elsewhere.

The state Education Department is making these programs a priority. It recently requiring institutions to not only report their dual enrollment partnership agreements but also to provide data on enrollment and outcomes. The idea is to help officials and educators get a better grasp on the variety of dual enrollment programs and find ways to ensure the programs reach more students who are underrepresented in higher education.

The stakes are high: According to a 2024 , workers will need a bachelor’s degree for 66% of “good jobs” in 2031 — defined as one that pays a minimum of $43,000 a year nationally to workers ages 25-44.

The state’s proposed rules, which it’s expected to adopt early next year, will mark the state’s first consistent policy governing these programs. Additionally, the state to support dual enrollment and other early college programs to focus on enrolling more students from low-income families.

Several studies have celebrated dual enrollment programs for helping put students on a path to college by exposing them to high-level coursework.

At Kingsborough, the program has proven so successful that many of its students not only complete higher education degrees, they eventually return to work at the school. Of the school’s 80 staffers, 16 are graduates, its principal, Tracee Murren, said.

And there’s one other very obvious benefit dual enrollment programs frequently offer: Students can save money by earning college credits, often for free, before they finish high school.

Early college programs help families save on average $13,000 on the cost of a bachelor’s degree, said Alexandra Wilcox, deputy director of the , the group that studied the state’s dual enrollment expansion.

Research has found students in these programs are also more likely , , and earn a within six years.

“It really is a game changer in terms of being able to save time and money to a degree,” Wilcox said.

But a deeper understanding of the types of programs, who they’re serving, and what their outcomes are — the things the state is proposing to capture — will ultimately strengthen dual enrollment programs, said Wilcox.

Though New York pioneered dual enrollment programs, launching them more than 50 years ago, the state’s approach in terms of policy and funding has been “inconsistent and unpredictable,” Wilcox said.

NYC has range of early college programs

Across New York state, dual enrollment jumped 15% year-over-year, the alliance report found. It now has the nation’s third largest number of students in dual enrollment with more than 176,000, behind California and Texas.

In New York City, the majority of dual enrollment students are in , where they take college-level courses at CUNY for free, generally as an add-on to their regular high school courses. But there’s rising interest in the early college approach, which integrates college courses more deeply into the curriculum. About 30,000 students take College Now courses while roughly 3,500 students take CUNY classes through early college courses, a CUNY spokesperson said.

Nearly 45 out of the city’s 400 high schools offer early college programs, according to the city’s MySchools lookup tool.

The early college model traces its roots to , which opened in 1974 to provide students who struggled in traditional schools with an opportunity to take courses at LaGuardia Community College in Queens, where the school is still located.

Some early college programs do not screen students based on their academic records, like Pathways in Technology Early College High School, known as P-TECH. That school launched in Brooklyn in 2011 and across the boroughs that offer a six-year program, grades 9-14, each affiliated with different CUNY institutions. Students at these schools can graduate with an associate degree in a STEM field at no cost.

Other programs are highly selective. Bard College, a liberal arts school in Annandale-on-Hudson, has four New York City campuses, where Bard professors teach students, who go through a rigorous admissions process involving a test and interview. The newly opened — which partners with Delaware State University, a historically Black institution — also admits students based on GPAs, a writing exercise, and a video submission. The HBCU Early College students take online classes through Delaware State.

Access to dual enrollment programs shifts

At , which opened in 2006, the school targets students who are underserved in higher education — those “not typically selected for gifted and talented,” Murren said.

The school starts in sixth grade, admitting students through a lottery. Demand for it is high: Roughly 1,000 students apply for 100 seats every year.

Roughly 40 to 50% enter the program reading below grade level, Murren said, and the school takes an intensive approach to ensure they’re ready to read dense college-level material as they reach the upper grades. Middle schoolers also have an advisory class every day to ensure they have the “mental fortitude” to take on college-level work, she said.

The students take their first college class in ninth grade, a Spanish course, stretching it from one semester to the entire year to make it slower and more digestible, Murren said. The school intentionally starts with a foreign language since it’s a course that many four-year colleges require and has no prerequisites.

Professors from CUNY Kingsborough Community College come to the Lafayette campus to teach the freshman and sophomores in the afternoon, and the school has an extended day to accommodate these courses.

Balancing high school and the more advanced college courses simultaneously isn’t easy, Murren acknowledged. But her staff is committed. There’s low teacher turnover, and they get to know most students from the age of 10.

The students, for the most part, take their college classes together once they start attending the CUNY campus, maintaining a sense of community.

Murren said the students also support each other, characterizing their approach in this way: “‘We’ve been going through this together, and I don’t want you to fall off, so I’m going to make sure that you don’t.’”

She added: “We should never doubt what our students are capable of, their abilities, and their tenacity really shines through when given the opportunity.”

Historically, many high schools have used dual enrollment programs as an acceleration strategy instead of also a strategy to promote college access, said John Fink, a researcher at the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University.

But that’s changing. Research into dual enrollment is also shifting away from addressing whether it works and instead trying to understand how to make it work better — and for more students, not just the top students who are “already acing everything,” he said.

The key question, Fink believes, is how to make sure that families know there’s free college available to New York City high schoolers.

“Even though you think that word would get out, it doesn’t,” he said, “[but] when it’s implemented as a purposeful path to debt-free college … that marketing also helps sell the high school.”

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at

Naomi Veerasammy and her 2-year-old daughter leave their Jamaica, Queens, apartment weekday mornings by 6:30 a.m. and head to the home of whichever friend or relative has agreed to watch the toddler that day.

Veersammy, a paraprofessional at a public elementary school, relies on a rotating cast of relatives and friends to watch her daughter for little to no pay, so she can still make it to work by 8 a.m. on the city bus.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

The single mom nets under $2,000 a month in income and can’t afford full-time day care, which costs between .

“It’s very, very hard on me financially, mentally, physically to find a sitter for my daughter every day,” Veersammy said, adding that her daughter needs stability.

Hoping for more stable child care, Veerasammy applied for worth an average of $300 a week for kids up to age 13 from low-income families across the state.

Veerasammy met , but the city . She’s now on a waitlist that has mushroomed to 10,000 city children. It’s a glaring indication of both the exploding child care affordability crisis for the city’s middle- and low-income families and the insufficiency of the current publicly funded options to help defray those costs, experts said.

The massive waitlist is also an acute crisis in and of itself — one that threatens to and shutter .

Andrea Davilar, a family child care provider in St. Albans, Queens, currently has only four of her 12 full-day seats filled. She suspects there are families on the waitlist who are interested in enrolling their kids, but can’t until they receive vouchers.

“Are they trying to force us out of business?” she said of the city’s waitlist. “They have to remember we are the backbone behind the workforce.”

Losing family child care providers is something the city can ill afford at a time when incoming Mayor Zohran Mamdani is hoping to — an expansion that would likely lean heavily on home-based programs.

That’s part of why some observers are encouraging Mamdani to make clearing the voucher waitlist his first step on what could be a long road to building free child care.

Issuing vouchers to those 10,000 kids would bring “virtually free child care immediately” to a wide swath of city families, said Lauren Melodia, an economist at the New School’s Center for New York City Affairs who studies child care.

“It’s not the big vision … but you want to be able to deliver services to people while you’re building the big vision,” she added.

Mamdani’s transition team didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Vouchers are a key tool for infant, toddler, after-school care

The vouchers can be redeemed at a wide range of child care providers or even used to pay approved relatives or friends. They’re an especially critical resource for families with kids 2 and under who don’t qualify for the city’s free 3-K and prekindergarten programs as well as those who need care outside of school hours.

Separate from the vouchers, the city funds a limited number of free seats for kids 2 and under from low-income families. But families often don’t know about the seats or how to apply, experts have said. Roughly 40% of those seats .

Officials in Mayor Eric Adams’ administration said the voucher program’s costs are soaring because of the program’s popularity, an increase in the voucher’s value, and a growing number of families who are supposed to receive subsidized child care as a condition of their federal welfare benefits.

Officials predict the city will need a total of $2.9 billion from the state in the upcoming budget — $1.8 billion more than the city typically receives — just to maintain the program.

Melodia, the economist, said the cost of providing vouchers to all the families on the waitlist for a year would be more modest: around $155 million.

Gordon Tepper, a spokesperson for Gov. Kathy Hochul, said “no one has done more to support and expand child care statewide” than the governor, noting that she has doubled funding for the voucher program and wants to reach universal child care.

Demand for vouchers boomed as eligibility widened

The voucher program’s current budget crunch traces back to a .

Prior to the pandemic, the city to families receiving federal cash assistance, whose child care the city is required to subsidize because their benefits come with work requirements.

Those work requirements relaxed during the pandemic, keeping more families at home with less need for child care. The number of vouchers going to those families fell from over 55,000 in 2017 to under 19,000 in 2022.

That drop, combined with a one-time infusion of federal relief funds, allowed Hochul to significantly expand the eligibility criteria for the vouchers, opening them to families who make under 85% of the state median income, or roughly $114,000 a year for a family of four.

At the same time, Hochul nearly doubled the value of the vouchers, from an average of $154 a week in 2019 to $301 a week last year. The change made the vouchers more attractive to families and providers — and expensive for the state.

City families flocked to the vouchers. Enrollment in the low-income voucher program

The changes created a major budget cliff.

After federal pandemic aid dried up, city officials resumed enforcing work requirements, bringing an expected surge of families who receive federal assistance to request vouchers.

To avoid kicking thousands of families out of the program each month, city officials asked the state, which has historically funded most of the voucher system, to commit an additional $900 million to the $1 billion city program.

Hochul eventually agreed to free up an additional $350 million for the program, contingent on the city chipping in the same amount.

That infusion allowed the city to continue offering vouchers to the majority of families who were already enrolled, city officials said. But it wasn’t enough to enroll new families.

Starting last May, the city began placing eligible new applicants for low-income vouchers on a waitlist, which has grown from to its current 10,000.

Parents on voucher waitlist are desperate for relief

For families stuck on the waitlist, shouldering the costs of child care on their own often comes at the expense of other basic needs.

Milana Kochishvili, a mother of two elementary school children in southern Brooklyn, applied for vouchers after her husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, leaving the family to rely on her $72,000 annual income as a payroll specialist at a plumbing company. But she has been on the waitlist for months.

The only after-school option that works with her schedule costs about $800 a month. With $4,500 a month in take-home pay — nearly half of which goes to pay rent — it’s an expense she can’t afford.

“I’m in a position now where I can only afford basics,” she said. “God forbid the car breaks or something like that, that’s it.”

Adams recently , with a pledge to add 20,000 seats by 2027. But for some parents who work longer hours, the schedule of the city’s free programs don’t fit their needs.

Kimberly Watson, a single mom of an elementary student in Brooklyn, works as a caseworker in a hospital and needed an after-school program with longer hours. The private program she found costs $450 a month — an untenable expense for Watson, who takes home roughly $2,700 a month in income and spends $1,200 on rent.

She applied for a child care voucher and cleared the eligibility threshold, but was placed on the waitlist. Paying for child care has left her behind on some utility bills — and even on her rent, she said.

Getting a voucher would mean she can “just cut back on one thing that I have to worry about so I can catch up on other things.”

For Veerasammy, the paraprofessional with a 2-year-old, there could be some economic relief on the horizon: that would give paraprofessionals a $10,000 recurring annual bonus.

But she said that money would go toward paying off credit card debt, leaving her still in need of a voucher.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .

That sounds exciting but it spells disaster for the place we most depend on human growth: schools. As counterintuitive as it may sound, this is a moment where we actually need less technology in the classroom to help students learn to read and write.

This threat comes at a time when most American students are already struggling with the basics. Earlier this month, the National Assessment of Educational Progress reported that 12th-grade reading scores have sunk to their lowest level in more than three decades. Barely a third of American high school seniors read at a proficient level. 

Layer on top of this collapse a technology that lets students outsource reading and writing entirely, and you create a perfect storm of ignorance. We risk raising a generation fluent in prompting a chatbot but incapable of critical thought. As , “Massive numbers of students are going to emerge from university with degrees, and into the workforce, who are essentially illiterate.”

This isn’t the first time untested ideas have been foisted on classrooms in the name of progress. In the 1990s, the “whole language” movement promised to revolutionize reading instruction by moving away from phonics and toward guessing words from context. The theory was novel. The results were disastrous. Reading scores fell. An entire generation was left behind. 

Today, AI is already being marketed by some as a new cure for literacy. The group  has launched a program called Rethinking Reading: AI for Literacy Achievement, promising that “AI can help expand access, personalize instruction, and support educators in new ways.” But we already know what works: systematic phonics, structured literacy and direct instruction on vocabulary, reading comprehension and expository writing skills. Once again, we risk unproven ideas being rushed into classrooms, dooming another generation to an even worse fate. 

Writing and reading are not separate tasks from thinking; they are thinking. To struggle with words on a page is to clarify, deepen, and expand your mind. Literacy is the serum that gives us the superpower of deep, symbolic thought. But if students let AI do the writing and reading for them, they skip the most important lesson: critical thinking. 

In this new paradigm, the focus becomes what students produce, when the goal should be giving students the tools to learn how to learn for the rest of their lives. Giving new or struggling readers AI as a tool before they are proficient will permanently relegate them to understanding the world through the prism of a large language model. Their screens may be full of words, but their minds will be empty of thought.

For adults, the calculation is different. If you already know how to read and write, AI may help you synthesize ideas or accelerate output. Teachers can use these tools for planning and scheduling. But for children, the goal is not speed or efficiency. The goal is learning how to learn. That requires time under tension — sitting with ideas, wrestling with words, developing the patience and stamina that deep thinking demands.

I know it may sound backwards, but for this reason classrooms don’t need more AI technology. They need less. They need books, foundational literacy instruction and teachers who challenge students to think for themselves. 

The legislation I’ve drafted will accomplish this by directing the New York State Education Department to prohibit the use of artificial intelligence in K-8 classrooms, except for diagnostic purposes or explicit instruction interventions. This will still allow AI to play a controlled role in diagnostics, helping educators spot weaknesses and target interventions. But the heart of school must remain human: reading, writing and thinking without a machine.

AI may unlock scientific discovery for the world’s greatest minds. But if children never learn to read, write and think, it will stunt the potential of the world itself. The threat is not that machines will out-think us. The threat is that we will stop thinking altogether. That is why policymakers must resist the temptation to see AI as a shortcut for America’s literacy crisis. There are no shortcuts. If we want the next generation to lead in an AI-powered world, the first step is the oldest one: teach every child to read.

New York City schools with fewer students than projected will not have to give back money midyear, Education Department officials announced Monday, as the public school system saw its biggest enrollment drop in four years.

Enrollment in the city’s K-12 and preschool programs fell by about 22,000, or 2.4%, compared to last year, according to the Education Department’s preliminary numbers. A total of 884,400 students were enrolled in the city’s traditional public schools as of Oct. 31, according to the figures.

Nearly two-thirds of the city’s roughly 1,600 schools had fewer students than projected, officials said. In past years, those schools would have had to pay back a total of more than $250 million to the city. But those funds will now stay with schools.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

“As we navigate enrollment fluctuations and uncertainty around federal funding, we’re committed to providing stability and ensuring every school has the resources it needs,” schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos said in a statement.

The remaining third of schools whose enrollment was higher than projected will receive extra money to account for the additional students, officials said, but didn’t say how much that will cost.

In some ways, Mayor Eric Adams’ parting gift to schools could become a headache for the next mayor, who will have to confront the costly but popular initiative.

City officials did not immediately offer an explanation for the enrollment drop, but it’s likely that changing immigration patterns played a role. Over the three school years prior to this one, city schools absorbed an influx of roughly 50,000 migrant students.

That surge helped offset declining enrollment, keeping the city’s student numbers relatively flat between 2022 and 2024. But immigration into the and has ground to a halt under President Donald Trump’s enforcement efforts. Adams has closed many of the emergency shelters the city opened to house migrants.

Several educators at schools with large immigrant populations have noticed sharp enrollment declines this year, driven by existing students leaving and fewer new ones showing up.

“We definitely have seen a decline this year in our schools that serve newcomers,” said John Sullivan, the superintendent overseeing transfer schools geared toward older high school students, at a hearing last week with the City Council.

Manhattan’s Liberty High School Academy for Newcomers is down about 200 students this year compared to its average enrollment in recent years, Sullivan said. More students learning English are dropping out of school early to take jobs, he said.

ELLIS Prep, another high school in the Bronx geared toward older newcomers, has , Principal Norma Vega said. The school is down about 30 students from last year and roughly 20 students under its projection for this year. That meant Vega would have had to pay back roughly $333,000 if the city had followed through with the midyear clawback.

Keeping that money will allow her to continue funding field trips, computers for students, and extra tutoring, she said.

Vega already missed the deadline for this school year to cut teachers, which means she would have started next school year with a deficit and likely would have lost her English as a New Language coordinator, one of her newest hires.

“It’s a blessing” to not have to pay back the funds midyear, Vega said.

Before the pandemic, schools typically had to give money back to the city during the middle of the school year if they enrolled fewer students than projected. (Those that enrolled more students would get extra funds midyear.)

The policy to keep school budgets afloat despite enrollment, known as being “held harmless,” was initially enacted during the pandemic when many schools saw their rosters dwindle but had mounting needs to support students academically and emotionally.

Enrollment citywide has been on the decline for a decade, but went into freefall during the pandemic, . This year’s enrollment decline is the largest since the 2021-22 school year, when enrollment fell by around 36,000 students, or 3.8%, from the previous year.

The city halted the hold harmless only to

Last school year, the decision not to claw back school budgets midyear meant schools hung onto $157 million they would have otherwise had to give back. City officials to ensure that no schools started out this school year with less funding than they had at the start of last school year.

This year’s total is far larger, given the steeper enrollment decline.

Emily Paige, the principal of Urban Assembly Unison, a small Brooklyn middle school, said she was on the hook for roughly $100,000 because of enrollment losses — enough to cover an entire teacher salary.

While the hold harmless policy is widely popular among school staff and families, it can be an unsustainable practice, some observers say, artificially inflating schools’ budgets and creating even more difficult financial decisions down the road as the city confronts increasingly expensive small schools.

The union representing principals, the Council for School Administrators, or CSA, claimed the move as a victory for its members, saying in an email to principals on Sunday its “top priority” this year has been ensuring the city kept its promise to hold schools harmless.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .

Therefore, the response begins at City Hall.   

Education leaders and equity advocates reject the idea that standing up for students and protecting funding are mutually exclusive. Both can and must be pursued. Every child in New York City deserves to feel safe, seen and supported in school. The new administration should be guided by that commitment. 

EdTrust-New York has expressed to work closely with the Mamdani administration to fulfill the long-standing promise of free, universal child care for children age two and under, as well as full access to Pre-K and 3-K. Families across the city still pay up to $26,000 annually for child care, and too many remain on waitlists.

Meeting this demand requires sustainable funding, additional child care sites, a well-paid workforce and full-day programs in neighborhoods where families live. Such investments would give all children a strong start. 

New York City must also confront the alarming reality that nearly half of fourth graders score below basic proficiency in reading, with even worse outcomes for Black and Latinx students. While initiatives like NYC Reads and NYC Solves mark progress, they need ongoing support and expansion.

EdTrust-New York encourages the Mamdani administration to continue expanding multilingual materials, provide interventions for English learners and students with disabilities, and ensure that all educators receive training in the science of reading. At the same time, the city should work toward developing a comprehensive adolescent literacy plan to support middle and high school students.

Mamdani’s leadership should reflect a deep commitment to a curriculum that honors the identities and experiences of all students. Fully implementing culturally responsive education means expanding Black, Native American, AAPI and Latin studies, as well as giving educators the training and tools needed to teach the curricula. The city’s schools also need greater investment in collective care teams, educators, counselors, nurses and social workers who can provide the academic and emotional support students need.

Segregation continues to divide New York City students by race and class. The incoming administration has an opportunity to take meaningful steps toward integration by encouraging all districts to create integration plans, using admissions models such as lottery. The city also needs to recruit and retain more educators of color and publicly report school integration data to track progress. 

The Mamdani administration should also protect and support immigrant students and multilingual learners, who face growing threats from federal policies and systemic barriers. Schools can strengthen scaffolds in literacy and math, expand bilingual curricula  and provide mental health services for students facing trauma.

In addition, older immigrant students should have access to the full high school experience, not just for language acquisition or diploma-completion programs. Higher education partners can also play a vital role also by expanding financial aid and creating safe, supportive pathways for undocumented students to attend and graduate from college. 

Improving school climate is another key priority, particularly the need to shift from exclusion and punishment to belonging and support. With more than a third of students chronically absent — especially Black, Latino, and those from low-income backgrounds — and many affected by punitive discipline, the city can invest in restorative justice and mental health programs.

That should include funding restorative initiatives in all schools, training educators in healing-centered approaches and increasing weighted funding for the most-affected student groups. 

Under mayoral control, New York City has achieved important system-wide progress, such as the expansion of universal pre-K and the launch of NYC Reads. Mamdani should maintain this structure but ensure stronger accountability and input from parents and students. He can build on this success by ensuring that parents, students and caregivers, who should be granted voting power on Community Education Councils, have meaningful influence over district policy decisions. 

Finally, the Mamdani administration should expand access to college and career pathways. Too few students can enroll in college in high school programs that boost college success. Let’s expand these programs citywide, closing access gaps and strengthening support in college. That should include proven initiatives like CUNY’s ASAP and ACE, which help students persist and graduate despite financial emergencies. 

As Mayor-elect Mamdani prepares to lead the nation’s largest school system, he inherits both profound challenges and enormous opportunities. This moment offers a shared chance to build a public education system that not only aspires to equity but truly delivers on that promise. 

was originally reported by Jennifer Gerson of . .

She’s a centrist Democrat and newly minted grandmother born and raised in Buffalo whose first childhood home was a trailer by a steel plant. 

He’s a Democratic socialist and a newlywed, born in Uganda and raised mostly in New York City by a renowned film director and a Columbia University professor.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic mayoral nominee in New York City, are an unlikely political pairing in many ways. But what brings them together is a shared interest in affordable child care — specifically the idea of making it universal for New Yorkers. 

It’s a policy Hochul has stressed while talking about her support for Mamdani, who is likely to be named the winner of the city’s mayoral race after polls close Tuesday. 

“I’ve had conversations with Assemblymember Mamdani about how we can get to universal child care. I believe we can. I believe that,” Hochul said this month at an event with Mamdani at the Boys & Girls Club of Queens in Astoria.  

Experts in child care policy and the politics around it see the shared ground for these two politicians — even if they don’t agree on all the details — as emblematic of how critical the issue has become to many voters, particularly younger ones. It’s especially true in New York City, which is heavily Democratic, and the state, which is solidly so. 

Reshma Saujani, the founder and CEO of Moms First, a national group organizing on paid leave and affordable child care, said that she’s seen a shift in the past two years and that “universal child care is quickly becoming a platform issue on every single Democratic platform.” 

Amanda Litman, the president and co-founder of Run for Something — which recruits and supports young, progressive candidates to run for local and statewide office — said affordability is the issue defining millennial candidates’ races right now, as evidenced in the Mamdani campaign. The fact that child care figures so prominently is no surprise, she said, since for many millennials, struggling to afford child care is part of their lived experience. 

“Politicians who want to win and who want to be seen as fighting both for families but also for the future of the economy will position themselves accordingly,” Litman said.

Enter the unlikely partnership of Mamdani and Hochul. 

“I think we’re at a turning point,” Hochul said in a phone interview with The 19th. “There’s a larger narrative around this now.” 

But for her, the issue is nothing new. 

“I’ve been talking about this long before there was a mayor’s race with this position, and I’m glad we have other people who are supporting my position,” Hochul said. “As a mom-governor, this is personal and it’s something I raised in my first budget and I raised again this year. I love that people are talking about it through an affordability lens as well.”

Hochul said that years ago she had to leave a job she loved on Capitol Hill because she couldn’t find affordable child care. She’s concerned about how little has changed since — she’s now watching her own children, who have begun having children of their own, encounter the same issue.

As governor, she in the state, giving families up to $1,000 per child under the age of 4 and up to $500 per child from 4 to 16. This spring, Hochul also announced a in child care, including $110 million for new child care facilities, repairs to existing sites and new home-based programs. She also for child care assistance so that families of four making up to $108,000 are eligible for child care that costs just $15 per week. 

According to , the average annual cost of child care in 2024 for infants and toddlers in family-based care was $18,200, up 79 percent since 2019; for  center-based care, it was $26,000, up 43 percent since 2019. 

In her address in January, Hochul expressed her desire to create a roadmap for universal child care for New York state, forming a task force and considering revenue streams outside of raising taxes. 

Mamdani has proposed for New York City children six weeks through 5 years old and has discussed to do so. But the mayor of New York City does not have the power to raise taxes — to fund his proposal, he needs the assistance of the governor’s office. 

However, raising taxes is something Hochul has not expressed support for: Even after her appearance at a rally with Mamdani on Sunday was met with she in an interview on a Fox News podcast the following day: “I will say one energetic rally does not get me to change my positions. I assure you.”

Hochul told The 19th that it would take approximately $7 billion — more than the city’s police budget — to fund universal child care in New York City and close to $15 billion to implement it statewide.

In a statement, Mamdani’s spokesperson Dora Pekec told The 19th, “After rent, the number one cost facing families is child care — it’s driving working families out of this city, which is why Zohran Mamdani has made universal child care a cornerstone of his affordability agenda. Zohran is grateful for Governor Hochul’s partnership on the issue and looks forward to making universal child care a reality for all New Yorkers alongside her.” 

Hochul said she is happy to see that the conversation about child care has been shifted out of the realm of “women’s issues.”

“It’s about time that we have more than just the moms,” she said. “Having a mayoral candidate like Zohran Mamdani embracing this as well shows that this is not a gender-specific issue at all, and I think that’s the progress we’ve been needing.”

The Mamdani-Hochul alliance speaks to politicians’ belief that action on child care is critical to winning Gen Z and millennial voters who are feeling shut out of the promise of economic mobility.

“I’ve always said this, but whoever basically fixes child care will win the ballot box. … It is such a pain point and such a deciding factor for so many families and the trajectories of their lives,” Saujani said.

Rebecca Bailin founded New Yorkers United for Child Care two years ago when the city’s universal preschool program for 3-year-olds was under .  Since then, she has organized over 10,000 New York City parents around the issue of universal child care in the city. 

“In all my years of organizing, I’ve never seen something so resonant. People were ready for this because it really hits home. Yes, we care about our children and all the benefits of child care in terms of their development. But also this is about being able to work. This is about living our lives without totally going broke,” she said. 

Bailin pointed to recent data that shows that parents with children under the age of 6 are . 

She said her coalition includes low-income and middle-class parents who are feeling the financial burden of child care, but also those watching this struggle and seeing the toll it takes — something that is now reflected in Mamdani’s campaign. 

“This is aunties. This is friends who are sick of seeing their friends leave the city because they want a more affordable city and want to keep the community that they’ve come to love and not lose people when they start families. This is employers who want their employees to be able to afford the city,” Bailin said.

She credits Hochul for understanding this dynamic — and early. 

“Governor Hochul is hearing what people are saying. She’s understanding that this is a real crisis moment, not just for the city, but the entire state and the entire country,” she said.

Mamdani’s embrace of universal child care as an issue has laid bare an interesting gender dynamic. 

“I have been saying that for way too long, this was a ‘women’s issue’ — that people would say, ‘You made a choice to have children. This is your problem. Figure it out,’” Hochul said. “I think we’re seeing this transition from ‘It’s a you problem’ to ‘It’s a collective, societal problem.’ And that’s a very positive dynamic and one I’ve been working for for a long time.”

Political experts echoed the importance of Mamdani embracing the issue.

“It is rare that you see a young, childless dude talking about this issue. I think that he’s a really good messenger for this because it is not built into his bio — the way that most of his campaign is not built into his bio — but about what he’s hearing from voters,” Litman said. 

She said this is why the Mamdani-Hochul alliance on this issue is a strong one. “It’s not just, ‘The woman is trying to get it done,’ but they can send the message of, ‘It’s the public servants who are trying to get things done.’ I hate this reality, but this is the reality and this is the reality that gets us to a place where we don’t have to spend some $30,000 a year on child care.”

Saujani stressed that getting universal child care in New York City would have a huge impact nationwide. Seeing a city of this size — and a state this diverse — funding and implementing this would be a strong signal that child care is not just a personal problem for a family to fix, but an economic problem that the government can and should manage. 

“Voters are drowning. They’re being priced out of the American dream,” Saujani said. Reducing the cost of child care is “not just a sound bite, but a real reality that people are looking for when asking, ‘Have you changed my life? Have you helped me thrive, not just survive?’”

This story was originally published on The 19th.

New York City’s troubled yellow school bus system is in the spotlight once again, with threats of a service disruption and looming mass layoffs due to a contract dispute with the city.

The city’s largest school bus companies notified the state Department of Labor that they are preparing to shut down operations and lay off employees on Nov. 1 if they don’t receive a contract extension, the New York Post .

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

Lawmakers, advocates, and city officials immediately condemned the bus companies’ threat, with schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos calling the move “deeply upsetting and an act of bad faith.”

The timing of the bus company’s push, just before November’s mayoral election, for a five-year extension that would outlast the incoming mayor’s first term, “effectively bypassed the oversight of voters and elected officials who manage these vital services,” Aviles-Ramos said.

Mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani agreed, telling reporters at an unrelated Tuesday press conference that the oversight panel in charge of approving the contract “is right to not give in to the threats.”

The bus companies argue they have no choice because their temporary contract is expiring and they can no longer operate without a longer-term agreement.

The episode is the latest in a long history of over how to manage the sprawling yellow bus system, which relies on a patchwork of largely for-profit companies to ferry some 150,000 students across nearly 19,000 routes each day. All told, the city spent nearly .

Parents and advocates hope this clash can draw renewed attention to problems in a system notorious for , , and a .

“There’s this tug of war over the money,” said Sara Catalinotto, the executive director of the advocacy group Parents for Improving School Transportation. “But this is a service, and without it these kids are discriminated against.”

What’s the history behind these bus contracts?

The current dispute springs from a disagreement over how to handle the city’s “legacy” school bus contracts, which date back to the 1970s and are typically renewed every five years. They most recently expired in June.

In the months before the contracts expired, city Education Department officials signaled they were interested in rebidding the contracts, or soliciting offers from a new set of companies to more efficiently for contract violations.

Simply renewing the existing contracts gives the city “far less negotiating ability … because we have to continue with this same set of vendors,” Emma Vadehra, the Education Department’s former deputy chancellor, in May.

But city officials say they can’t move forward with rebidding without the option to offer something called the “Employee Protection Provision,” or EPP.

That protection — built into the legacy contracts for decades — ensures unionized bus workers laid off by one company are prioritized for hiring by other companies, at their existing wages. Drivers and union officials consider the provision a dealbreaker — and would almost certainly strike without it.

But city officials say a 2011 state court decision prohibits them from inserting EPP into new contracts if they rebid — and only allows them to keep EPP if they extend existing contracts. The only fix, city officials say, is changing state law — an effort that has so far stalled in Albany.

Without that state legislation, city officials faced a choice: inking another five-year extension or pushing for a shorter-term contract in the hopes state lawmakers quickly clear the way for a rebid.

Who is opposed to a five-year contract renewal?

While the city moved ahead with negotiations for a five-year extension, a growing number of advocates, parents, and flooded meetings of the Panel for Educational Policy, or PEP — the body that approves Education Department contracts — to push for a shorter-term contract.

“Do not vote yes to extend for some long period of time,” said Christi Angel, a parent leader in District 75, which serves students with significant disabilities who disproportionately rely on busing, at the September PEP meeting. Roughly . “Don’t reward bad behavior,” Angel said. “This is a broken system.”

Their arguments quickly gained traction in the PEP, where multiple members expressed their opposition to a five-year extension at September’s meeting.

The panel is expected to vote on the five-year extension next month, after the mayoral election, said PEP Chair Greg Faulkner, though he would prefer to wait until the new mayor takes office in January.

“Shouldn’t the mayor-elect have some say in a billion dollar contract?” said Faulkner. “I just think that’s sound governance.”

Why are the city and bus companies at odds right now?

Over the summer, the city and bus companies agreed to two emergency extensions to keep service running, the second of which expires on Oct. 31.

Without a guarantee of an active contract after that date — since the PEP is not voting this month — the bus companies claim they have no choice but to consider layoffs.

The city, however, had “long planned” to offer an emergency extension for November and December, and officials delivered the agreement to the bus companies on Monday, Aviles-Ramos said.

The PEP only votes on those extensions after they’ve already taken effect, Faulkner noted.

The bus companies, he said, are attempting to “create confusion in order to hold us hostage for a longer term agreement.”

The bus companies reject that assertion and say they simply cannot survive any longer on emergency extensions, which don’t allow them the kind of long-term certainty they need to operate their businesses.

“Banks will not finance 30-day extensions, buses can’t be bought, payroll cannot be paid,” said Sean Crowley, a lawyer representing several companies. “Enough is enough!”

The companies claim that they have already worked out the contours of a new five-year contract extension with the city and are just awaiting the PEP’s approval, though Faulkner said the Education Department hasn’t yet presented the PEP with the contract.

What happens from here?

A spokesperson confirmed that several bus companies had received the city’s offer for another emergency contract extension and were reviewing the documents.

Aviles-Ramos said the city is working to get “alternative transportation services” in place if that falls through.

But even if the bus companies and city do manage to avoid a service shutdown Nov. 1, the episode raises larger questions about how to make lasting improvements in the troubled system. Ongoing make that task even harder.

The bus companies argue that the five-year contract agreement they sketched out with the city would achieve many of those goals, including stricter accountability to ensure drivers use GPS tracking, more staffing to field parent complaints, and monetary penalties for companies that underperform, according to testimony submitted to the PEP in September.

But critics continue to push for a shorter-term extension to give the state legislature time to pass EPP legislation, and clear the way for a rebid.

Mamdani has not offered specifics about how he would manage the school bus system, but said Tuesday that given the many concerns about yellow bus service, any contract extension deserves a “hard look.”

Some reformers point to changes already underway. Under Mayor Bill de Blasio, the city overseen by the city.

Matt Berlin, the CEO of that nonprofit, called NYCSBUS, and former director of the city’s Office of Pupil Transportation, believes the nonprofit model has “a lot to offer the city” and could expand.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .

Yet as her 30th anniversary working as a special education teacher for the approaches, Lengen increasingly feels disillusioned: still happy in her work, but distraught about remaining in what may be the only profession in New York that hasn’t gotten a substantive raise — in absolute terms, much less adjusting for inflation — in three decades. Any modest rate increases the state’s early intervention providers (which include teachers like Lengen and a range of therapists) have benefited from, were generally counterbalanced by cuts. “As a 30-year veteran with a master’s degree, I am working twice as hard as when I started in early intervention, and making less now,” Lengen said.��

Over the same time period, New York’s hourly minimum wage has , from $4.25 in the mid-’90s to more than $15 now. The average salary for public school teachers jumped from in the mid 1990s to about in 2023-24, according to the National Education Association. And, while New York state data is elusive, nationally the for chief executives climbed from nearly $6.4 million in 1995 to more than $20 million in recent years.

The Economic Policy Institute’s Elise Gould, who researches wages and economic inequality, said she knows of no precedent for a job where the absolute pay hasn’t risen in 30 years. “It’s a little hard to believe,” she said.

Early intervention providers deliver critical services including speech, physical and occupational therapy to children from birth through age 3 who have a range of developmental delays and disabilities. When done well and promptly, that it can reduce the need for costly special education services, as well as other public assistance down the road, and improve life outcomes. 

Early intervention systems are state-led and designed, and the mix of specific funding sources can vary considerably across states. New York relies on a combination of private insurance dollars and county, state and federal funding, including Medicaid, to serve approximately 70,000 children. 

Many of the therapists, special education teachers and others who provide early intervention services are not salaried employees. In New York, they are paid a fee for service rate that is set by the state. After providing the service, they submit a claim for reimbursement and are paid either by Medicaid if the child is eligible, or by the state, which draws from a combination of funding streams. 

For many services, including the specialized therapy and support that Lengen provides, that rate was higher in the 1990s when early intervention began in New York state, than it is today. For instance, a published by The Children’s Agenda, a Rochester-based group which has advocated for increased pay for providers over the years, found that a standard visit — at least 30 minutes — was reimbursed at a statewide average of $79 in 1994, compared to $69 in 2022. Brigit Hurley, chief program officer at the group, said that according to a recent staff analysis, “reimbursement rates would need to increase by 240% to have the same spending power as it did when the early intervention program began.”

People in the field say it’s typical for therapists, who all have at least a master’s degree, to earn between $50,000 and $70,000 a year — far less than they could make doing the same work in a different, often less stressful, setting.

“If you were a governor or a legislator and were stuck at your 1995 salary, would you stick around for that job?” said Amanda Wilbert, the regional director of Step by Step Pediatric Services in Rochester, an agency that coordinates early intervention services. Two of the young occupational therapists Wilbert oversees left earlier this year for jobs doing the same work in a nursing home. The positions came with an approximately $30,000 raise, bringing their pay from about $60,000 to $90,000, and better benefits, Wilbert said.

Partly because of that pay-induced exodus, advocates say that New York in terms of timely delivery of early intervention services to kids. In the spring of 2024, after a long, hard battle by advocacy groups, a pay boost appeared to be on the horizon. a 5% rate increase for in-person early intervention services, plus an additional 4% for those working in rural and underserved parts of the state. But so far, therapists have yet to see that bump, with final approval pending with the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. (In late September, federal officials did approve the 4% for those working in underserved areas, but it’s unclear when it will be implemented, or how many providers it will reach.)

Meanwhile, with the Trump administration having recently slashed Medicaid by trillions of dollars, the long-delayed full increase might not get the federal stamp of approval for the indefinite future, according to advocates, and the system will likely continue to bleed providers. Said Lengen: “In the end these kids are losing out, and it’s a very vulnerable population.”

New York is hardly an anomaly. Other states — both red and blue — report similar challenges, including Texas, Rhode Island and Illinois. In Illinois, a 2024 into the finances and pay in early intervention found that the median annual income for independent contractors in the field was about $71,000, which is significantly lower than typical incomes for similar roles in the state. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual wages for a speech and language pathologist in various settings in Illinois is about $88,000 and for physical therapists, it’s about $104,000. As in New York, that disparity has caused many early intervention professionals to leave the field, with the number of speech therapists in the program dropping 13% between 2018 and 2023, and physical therapists falling 16%, according to the 2024 report.

The problem is only likely to worsen nationally, said Elisabeth Burak, a senior fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Children and Families. States will struggle to raise rates for any service that’s funded partially through Medicaid, she said. 

No one knows exactly what the fallout from the Medicaid cuts will be, but untold numbers of families with children could be booted off the program. At the same time, the amount of money states get for Medicaid-eligible families could shrink, forcing state policymakers to make tough decisions about how to make up the losses. “States are already having a hard time but it has the potential to get a lot worse,” said Burak.

New York’s early intervention program was created in 1993 and it’s had a rocky history with compensation. The first significant rate decrease occurred in the late 1990s, according to the state compiled by The Children’s Agenda. Rates stayed the same for over a decade. And then , there were two cuts, said Brigit Hurley, chief program officer at the group.

A few years ago, in 2022, some providers in New York, including physical and speech therapists, . But that “didn’t bring the pay above when the program started,” said Hurley. And the across-the-board pay bump that the brought hope to many providers, but without final approval at the federal level for the 5% bump, they still haven’t seen the increase. 

“I’ve had providers tell me they are getting paid less now than when they graduated 30 years ago with a master’s degree,” said Hurley. “It’s a really dire situation.” 

Much — and on particularly bad days, most — of early intervention professionals’ work is uncompensated: travel time to homes; “no shows” when the families aren’t available; lesson planning and other preparation for the sessions; communication with families between visits; equipment and supplies; mandated annual continuing education sessions; extensive reporting that’s required on each case.

“This year and last year … I come home after seeing four to nine kids and I’m at the computer for two to three hours doing reports,” Lengen said. “With [26] kids on my caseload, that’s a lot of reports to do.”

Lengen, 62, graduated in 1985 with a bachelor’s degree in special education and, a few years later, earned a master’s in reading. She worked for nearly a decade in K-12 classrooms, and then shifted to early intervention around the time the program debuted in New York in the 1990s. Initially, she worked for an agency and made a full-time salary. But she left the staff position in 2004 when the agency stopped providing early intervention services. “The pay was decent, but it was a big learning curve on my part,” she said.��

Today, Lengen works in homes and child care programs, supporting kids and their caregivers, often coaching the latter on how to manage challenging behaviors. She also winds up filling gaps left by other holes in the intervention system, like supporting children with autism in their sensory development. “I end up doing a lot of sensory play since most of the kids don’t have occupational therapists — ,” she said. 

Since she began working independently over 20 years ago, the demands of the job — including higher caseloads and increased reporting requirements — have increased but the stagnant pay hasn’t come close to keeping up with inflation and the rising cost of living. There were the two pay cuts across the board — 10% in 2010 followed by another 5% in 2011 — and, nearly a decade later, special educators were overlooked when some therapists got the modest bump in 2022. “At that point, I was really thinking long and hard about leaving early intervention,” Lengen said. 

Despite her financial advisor’s recommendation that she at least consider working in a school district, Lengen decided to stick around, noting that she loves the work and didn’t want to start over late in her career. But many other early intervention providers have left the field.

When Sandra Ribeiro started providing physical therapy through early intervention in 2000, she said, “we were some of the highest paid across our profession, and we had support.”

At that time, all of the early intervention providers involved in a child’s case would gather monthly with each family to coordinate services and brainstorm what could be changed or improved. But that practice began to erode more than a decade ago when the state stopped paying professionals for the time spent in those meetings. 

Ribeiro has a doctorate in physical therapy, and is fluent in five languages (Portuguese, French, Italian, Spanish and English). That’s a huge asset in the many multilingual homes she’s visited. She points out that providing in-home therapy to an incredibly diverse group of families — some cooperative and supportive of her efforts and others less so — is a complicated assignment. 

“It requires a high skill level to be able to work with a very young child to start with,” she said, “and then you have to be able to incorporate the family.” Still, she found it deeply rewarding to see the progress a child could make when delays and challenges were addressed early in life. One grateful family still sends her a Christmas card every year, even though the “child” she helped is now 24 years old. “I don’t think you can get that in other settings — you’re not a fixture of the home,” she said.

Over the years, not only did Ribeiro’s pay fail to rise significantly, but it also became much more difficult to get reimbursed for her work at all. “If you forget to do one little thing on your paperwork it gets kicked back and it can be months before you get paid,” she said. Over the last decade, there have been some in the program, and that has led to stepped up reporting requirements and auditing for all. 

On weeks when everything went very smoothly — and there were no last-minute cancellations or no shows — Ribeiro would clear $1,500. But many weeks there were hiccups beyond her control that cut into that income. Two and a half years ago, she decided she had had enough and left early intervention for a job teaching physical therapy at LaGuardia Community College in New York City. Most experienced therapists she knows have also left the state-run program over the years, Ribeiro said. 

“We all know that when you go into health care it’s not for the money,” she said. “But you have to be able to say to yourself, ‘My work is worth something.’ And a lot of therapists have been so demoralized they shy away from early intervention even though in our hearts we would love to still be in those homes.” 

Since Ribeiro left the field, the payment issues have only gotten worse. Over the last year, scores of New York providers have faced because of glitches with the state’s new data and payment portal, the .

Meanwhile, across New York state, countless families no longer have access to critical therapies because of the steady attrition from the field. Rural families have been especially hard hit. In the remote Tri-Lakes region of northern New York, Katie Wheeler’s 3-year-old daughter missed months of early intervention services that she was entitled to because of a shortage of providers. 

Diagnosed with autism around the age of 2, the child qualified for in-home special education services and speech therapy. In early 2024, she was assigned a special ed teacher who came to her home two or three times a week, but a few months later, when the state dissolved the agency providing those special education services, the toddler lost access to that support for about a year. She received speech therapy virtually last winter; in-person early intervention sessions weren’t an option due to the lack of providers in the region. The virtual sessions went surprisingly smoothly for the toddler. “It worked so well, I was surprised,” said Wheeler. “They really pour their heart into what they are doing, and she grew immensely.”

At the start of 2025, however, New York’s virtual early intervention providers learned that they would be getting a sizable pay cut. Ironically, the rate cut for telehealth services, as they are officially known, was initiated to free up funds for the pending 5% increases for in-person services in the state, which is still awaiting approval from the federal Medicaid office.

Wheeler’s daughter’s speech therapist, along with most other virtual providers in her county, promptly quit, which Wheeler says she entirely understands. “We were not given anyone else because there was no one else to be given,” she said. The family did pay out of pocket for some speech therapy, but in the six months that her daughter went without early intervention services over the winter and spring, Wheeler said she could see significant regression. When she was in speech therapy, the child could name an animal when shown a picture, and make its sound, for instance; but without services, much of that language slipped away. 

When the girl became old enough to receive special education services through school, there was another months-long delay to get services set up. In an effort to access more robust special education services, the family recently moved to nearby St. Lawrence County. Wheeler knows that most families would not be able to take such an extreme and expensive step.

With the recent loss of virtual providers, she said, “there are going to be so many kids without anything.”

Research has shown that timely receipt of early intervention, in the years when the brain is developing far more rapidly than at any other point, is critical to child development, and can improve life outcomes far down the road. Many children who receive early intervention do not in kindergarten, including slightly less than half of those with developmental delays, according to one 2007 study.

When delays and challenges aren’t addressed in the early years, they show up — often aggravated — in schools, where there’s rarely the time and resources to address them. “Kids are going to preschool and kindergarten with lower skills than ever,” said Amanda Wilbert. “They’ve never gotten services, and they desperately need them.”

There are many reasons, advocates say, that it’s been such a long struggle to increase pay for early intervention providers in New York. The isolated instances of fraud have been cited by some state officials as a reason for not investing more, said Hurley.

But the unprecedented rate freeze — which long predates the fraud — also speaks to the societal and political invisibility of babies with developmental delays and disabilities, according to early childhood advocates. And it speaks to the invisibility of an overwhelmingly female labor force whose work occurs largely in the private space of the home. 

For now, with the slashes to Medicaid, the push to increase rates in New York is on the back burner, although it is not totally off the table. Hurley and others say they remain committed to advocating for changes that will improve the system, including studying alternative models for delivering services.

Lengen said that many months ago, she stopped looking for the 5% rate increase promised a year and a half ago to finally provide a small boost to her income. “At some point, you stop believing that it’s going to come,” she said.

But unlike so many others, she has no plans to go anywhere. “I hate the fact that the state and county don’t think we are worth giving money to,” she said. “But I love the job and the families,” she added, noting the joy that comes from teaching and playing with the littlest learners on their level.

“I will work in early intervention until the day I can not get up off that floor.”

The Trump administration demanded that New York City scrap policies designed to protect transgender students by Tuesday evening or it will discontinue millions in grant funding earmarked for magnet schools.

That would affect about $15 million city officials were expecting from the federal government next fiscal year, which the city has used to support . City officials say they expected $36 million for the remaining duration of the grants. Federal officials said they would not revoke funds that have already been distributed.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

If the city doesn’t change its policies regarding transgender students, “the Department’s Office for Civil Rights cannot certify they are in compliance with all civil rights laws, and therefore cannot award the magnet school assistance program funding for the next fiscal year,” U.S. Department of Education spokesperson Madison Biedermann wrote in a statement Tuesday morning.

On Sept. 16, federal education officials that they were “deeply concerned” with policies allowing transgender students to participate in sports and use bathrooms and other facilities in accordance with their gender identity.

On Friday, city officials requested 30 days to consider whether to appeal the Trump administration’s decision to withhold the grant funding, though federal officials appear to have rejected that request in favor of a Tuesday evening deadline. Biedermann said the tight timeline was because the federal government must certify compliance with civil rights laws before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

The move represents one of the first known threats from the federal government to withhold funding from New York City’s Education Department in line with its contested interpretation of federal civil rights laws. The Trump administration has mounted an aggressive push to roll back protections for transgender students and has targeted districts in , , and .

Mayor Eric Adams in line with the Trump administration’s wishes. His comments appear to have opened an unusual rift with schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos, who recently said the current rules are consistent with the city’s values.

Craig Trainor, the U.S. Department of Education’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, asserted in the Sept. 16 letter that the city’s policies violate Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination at education institutions that receive federal funding. The letter singled out the magnet school grant program and was sent to at least three school districts, .

Shortly thereafter, Adams in public appearances and interviews, drawing strong rebukes from state education officials and civil rights groups who noted that state law and city guidelines forbid denying access to facilities based on a person’s gender identity.

Liz Vladeck, the city Education Department’s top lawyer, requested a month to consider challenging the Trump administration’s move holding up the grant funding.

In a , she asked the federal Education Department to “please explain the nexus between your interpretation of Title IX and the [magnet school] grant funding that is being discontinued.” The letter also asserts that the move “deprived the NYCDOE of the procedures and due process required by federal regulations.”

Adams has denied that the funding threat motivated his recent comments about bathroom policies and acknowledged he has little power to directly change them because they are enshrined in state law. But he has held to his position.

“I don’t know what parent of a little girl would be comfortable with a boy walking into the shower where their baby is,” he said in a Monday . “I’m just not going to support that.”

A spokesperson for Adams did not respond to a question about what showers the mayor was referring to, or if there were any examples of the city’s policies for transgender students causing problems in schools.

The Trump administration has in a bid to get him out of the mayoral race to help former Gov. Andrew Cuomo defeat Zohran Mamdani, a Queens assemblyman and the current frontrunner. A City Hall spokesperson previously denied that Adams’ new interest in reconsidering the city’s policies was related to a potential job in the Trump administration.

Aviles-Ramos, the schools chancellor who was appointed by Adams, has suggested city policies would not change, a rare instance of the schools chief diverging from the mayor’s messaging.

“To date, you know, those policies remain in place, and we’re going to continue to uphold them as part of our values here in New York City Public Schools,” Aviles-Ramos said during a .

City Hall and Education Department spokespeople denied there was any rift between the mayor and chancellor.

“Withholding funding that benefits all students — simply because of a specific policy we have no power to change — is unwarranted and wrong,” Kayla Mamelak Altus, an Adams spokesperson, wrote in a statement.

“While Mayor Adams may not agree with every rule or policy, we will always stand up to protect critical resources for our city’s 1 million students. On this issue, the mayor and chancellor are fully aligned: we must follow the law, support our students’ identities, and keep them safe at all times.”

City officials did not indicate how they plan to respond to the Trump administration’s latest demand that they change their policies by Tuesday evening.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .

In response, a new approach is taking shape: learner-centered ecosystems. These networks refocus K-12 education around young people and whole communities, not just schools, by redesigning and reshaping how school districts operate: where learning occurs (not just in one classrooms, but in libraries, parks and workplaces); how students’ long-term developmental needs are met (not semester by semester); who educates and mentors children (not just certified teachers, but mentors, artists, business leaders and neighbors); what grading looks like and how it counts toward college and career preparation (not just standardized test scores, but participation in local projects that matter to them and earn them credit). Organizations, businesses, cultural institutions and families work together to create more personalized, relevant learning pathways for young people.

Since 2023, 12 participating teams from around the country have joined Education Reimagined’s  , a national effort to bring this system redesign effort to life. Each is creating a shared vision for learning, building partnerships and tackling challenges like providing transportation, ensuring adequate staffing and making sure out-of-school learning counts for in-school credit.

The locales and challenges are diverse, ranging from big cities like Dallas and New York to very rural towns in Missouri and North Carolina, with both struggling and flourishing economies. The participants are diverse as well, ranging from rural and suburban school districts to youth development organizations and urban charter school networks. All are testing out ways to make learning relevant, connected to young people’s interests and rooted in local needs and opportunities.

In Ojai, California, for example, declining public school enrollment led an organization called to partner with the Ojai Unified School District and other groups to create a flexible, . Young people take on hands-on projects — like robotics, farming or music production — and earn credit through the district’s independent study program. Each student works with an adviser who helps them reflect on their goals and growth, both academically and personally.

In Brooklyn, New York, the team at is developing a learning site at Floyd Bennett Field, a former airfield and national park. Supported by Launch Schools charter organization and NYC Public Schools, the first group of high school students will begin this fall. Momentum for the $40 million effort is growing, with approximately $10 million raised so far — including a recent $4.3 million commitment from the city.  The kids will focus on local climate challenges and solutions such as sustainable agriculture and hydroponics. Working alongside partners like the , students will choose projects that blend hands-on problem-solving with real community impact — like restoring wetlands, designing solar-powered systems or monitoring air and water quality — while learning with college instructors and nonprofit partners.

In Missouri, is working with more than 350 businesses and organizations, along with the school board, educators and families, to expand everyday learning beyond the four walls of the classroom. Liberty serves 12,000 young people from pre-K to 12th grade. Every week, 30 to 35 field trips connect students across the district to learning opportunities of their choice in various fields. Through an internship program called Network 53, students spend up to six hours per week onsite at various companies, earn high school and college academic credit, and, in some cases, are paid for projects in career paths of their choice. Students work with attorneys, physical therapists, professional sports teams and tattoo artists. 

At the high school level,  more than 30 courses involve students with helping business partners solve unique problems. In one example, kids created artwork to beautify old electrical boxes in downtown Liberty. Most recently, the district partnered with William Jewell College and to create a that gives students college credit for addressing real-world challenges — as serious as working to prevent network attacks in war zones like Ukraine. Participating young people earn Market Value Asset credentials that can translate to post-secondary schooling and professional life.

In North Carolina, is linking the state’s booming tech economy to the energy of its young people. Through an interdistrict network of SparkLabs, collaborative spaces that feel less like classrooms and more like design studios, young people explore technology fields, build skills and collaborate with peers.  

Through self-paced, peer-supported projects, they earn credit for work that matters to them, like building robots, designing their own video games or developing apps to help them manage their spending. They work alongside tech industry pros, including teams from Apple and SAS, and solve real-world challenges for companies through . This year, students organized a statewide “” tech competition, where they showcased inventions and projects in match-ups against SparkLab students from across the state.

These efforts are still works in progress, but as they take root, earning funding and momentum, they demonstrate the difference it makes when young people play a role in shaping the future of their communities. As these 12 teams share what they’re learning with one another through the national Lab, they’re uncovering common challenges and building collective solutions.

These learning networks are not about abandoning school, but about expanding what counts as education. They represent a commitment to personalized, relevant and real-world learning that helps young people thrive. Communities become more connected and stronger in the process, because education isn’t just about preparing kids for the world. It’s about co-creating the world with them.

Everyday teachers and school counselors are seeing students of all ages grapple with the stress and uncertainty caused by their migration or immigrant experience. How could we reassure them that they belong when the leaders of our country are saying otherwise?

Amid the federal climate of cruelty, billions in possible budget cuts for K-12 education, and threats of mass deportation, we can find some answers to these daily questions close to home. As educators from the City University of New York – Initiative on Immigration and Education (CUNY-IIE) we have created for aspiring and in-service educators in our state.��

These ad-hoc solutions will certainly help when the school year resumes. But they are not enough. With the federal government poised to cancel funding for programs that include support for English learners, it will be up to the states to step in to provide programming and access for all their students. 

Here in New York, we are calling on the state legislature in Albany to enact two bills in the upcoming session that will codify the support for our immigrant students and better prepare educators to meet this moment. 

Currently, educator preparation programs in New York State do not require content on immigration policy and law and their intersection with education. Thus, many educators feel unprepared to teach and support immigrant-origin students effectively. This must change.

Last session, Democratic State Sen. Robert Jackson introduced , with its counterpart bill, A8033, introduced by Democratic Assembly member Gabriella Romero. Both of these bills required colleges to include content on immigration policy and immigrant integration in all of their education programs. Educators would also be instructed on multilingual ways to educate students with immigrant origins.

The second bill, and A8034, introduced by the same lawmakers, required continuing education for teachers and administrators  related to trauma-informed practices to support immigrant students. This legislation aimed to ensure that teachers are regularly updated on best practices to work with students who may be bringing trauma inflicted by immigration into the classroom. 

Although these bills did not pass committee consideration in this recent legislative session, their passage in the upcoming session would ensure that our teachers, administrators, and school counselors are better equipped to serve immigrant students. If these measures are enacted, New York would become one of the first states to mandate immigration as a topic for educators, setting a standard for education programs nationwide. 

In turn, this would signal to other states, particularly those with large immigrant populations, that it’s essential to enact similar measures to ensure educators are fully equipped to teach immigrant-origin students. 

The teaching of immigration and the immigrant experience impacts us all, as the literacies of citizenship are part of the very core of our Constitution, and the mapping of our country’s history. Teaching about U.S. immigration and the immigrant experience is about sustaining and amplifying our democracy, and it is particularly imperative in spaces — in and outside of the classroom — where immigrant voices may not be at the center.

While we wait for New York state lawmakers to do what’s right – and necessary – CUNY-IIE will continue to offer resources to better prepare teachers in preK through 12^th grade. A bilingual third-grade teacher in Washington Heights authored the CUNY-IIE professional development module titled “.” The module can be used by schools across the state so that educators can learn to recognize and respond when immigrant students may have experienced trauma.  

On the higher education level, CUNY-IIE has also produced a guide for professors who prepare teachers. In the fall, our team will release this multimodal immigration-focused resource that higher education faculty can consider for their coursework, regardless of their educational subfield.  

Our program also brought together 10 education faculty members from across the CUNY and SUNY systems. They redesigned their course syllabi to ensure immigration is included, because almost all educators work with immigrant students. The faculty members also developed an immigrant-focused assignment. One instructor is planning to have students research the history of a new or longstanding immigrant group in their region.

This is, of course, all triage. We’re responding as best we can to the daily onslaught of deportations, immigration restrictions, and purposefully cruel measures of this second Trump administration. Because immigrants continue to be a central part of New York state communities, the education of children who were born here to immigrant parents or who recently settled here must be a priority. 

We have already started this work because we see the urgent need. Now it’s time for lawmakers to create systemic changes for our education system to ensure that teachers are prepared and immigrant students are not an afterthought.  

Reading and math scores shot up across New York City’s public schools last school year, according to state test results released Monday.

Among students in grades 3-8, nearly 57% of students were considered proficient in math, an increase of 3.5 percentage points. The gains were even sharper in reading. About 56% of students were proficient in the subject, a 7 percentage point increase.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

Those gains come after Mayor Eric Adams has made overhauling reading instruction , an effort that has won support from union leaders and in this November’s election. Top city officials argued Monday that their efforts are bearing fruit, as all elementary schools were required to use city-approved reading curriculums last school year through an initiative known as NYC Reads.

“This is what happens when we stay focused on evidence-based instruction and never lose sight of what’s possible for our young people,” schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos said in a statement.

Experts said the test score gains were encouraging, but cautioned that many factors can influence them and it’s impossible to isolate the effect of the curriculum overhauls.

“It’s at least suggestive that there’s real improvement,” said Aaron Pallas, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College who has studied school performance and accountability systems. Results from a also hinted at some progress.

At the same time, Pallas noted test scores increased statewide by a similar magnitude as in New York City, which “does tamp down a little bit that it’s something special New York City is doing.” The city’s overall proficiency rates are slightly higher than those statewide, where 53% of students are proficient in reading and 55% are proficient in math.

City Education Department officials also mounted an targeting students who were at the cusp of passing the exams, which may have played a role in the test score increase. Some experts criticized that approach because it could create incentives for schools to focus on students close to proficiency rather than those furthest behind.

Officials noted that reading scores increased more sharply in earlier grades that were subject to the reading curriculum changes. There was an 11.6 percentage point jump in reading proficiency among students in grades 3-5 who were in the first phase of schools that started using the new curriculums two years ago. Among the second phase of schools, which implemented the curriculum changes last year, reading scores increased 10.4 percentage points.

Overall, Pallas said that more data is needed to draw firm conclusions about student proficiency over time. “If there’s real growth, it should be sustained. And that requires looking at scores over the next couple years,” he said.

Michael Mulgrew, president of the teachers union, said in a statement that the test score increases are “a testament to the hard work by New York City educators and our students. He singled out Aviles-Ramos, noting she “fought the Education Department] bureaucracy to make sure the needs of students and school communities came first.”

The continued to reflect deep disparities between different student groups, though in some cases those gaps narrowed somewhat.

Black students, for instance, posted the largest test score increases in reading and math in the city’s public schools of any racial group. But they still lag their white and Asian American peers.

About 75% of Asian American students and 73% of white students were proficient in reading compared with 43.5% of Latino children and 47% of Black students. (Black students’ proficiency jumped about 8 percentage points.)

Meanwhile, nearly 81% of Asian American students and 75% of white students passed state math exams while only 43% of Black and Latino students were considered to be on grade level.

Only 29% of students with disabilities were proficient in math and nearly 27% were in reading. Even as students with disabilities made some gains in reading and math, the gap between those children and their nondisabled peers widened slightly.

Among students learning English as a new language, nearly 30% were proficient in math and 12.5% were proficient in reading — a gain of more than 4 percentage points in both categories.

The state exams have undergone a series of tweaks in recent years that have to draw comparisons from the results year over year. For the last two years, the tests have remained stable, meaning the results should be comparable.

The state Education Department has expanded computer-based testing in lieu of paper exams and all students will take digital versions of the test next school year. Pallas said it is unlikely that will dramatically skew the results, though some schools have struggled with .

Curious about school-level test results? Here is a searchable breakdown of math and English scores across all of the city’s public schools. (Charter schools are included in the table but not in the district’s overall numbers above.)

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at . Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

Take New York, for example. In its latest “, the Education Law Center adjusted school spending figures relative to their regional labor market costs. It gave New York’s school funding system an A for the total amount of money it sent to public schools, a B for the distribution of those funds among schools and an A for the amount of money it spent relative to the state’s overall gross domestic product per capita.

Overall, New York came out as one of the top-rated school funding systems, if not the highest-rated.

And yet, New York students perform slightly below national averages. While its schools $33,970 per student, $15,509 more per pupil than the rest of the country, in Fiscal Year 2022 its students overall student performance in fourth-grade math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — the “Nation’s Report Card.”

But it’s not just New York. The relationship between school spending and student outcomes is weaker than you might imagine. To make the fairest comparison possible, I used the Education Law Center’s spending figures, which are adjusted for cost-of-living differences, and the from the Urban Institute.

The graph below shows the results for 2022, the latest year for which comparable spending figures are available. As you can see, New York is an extreme outlier: It spent more than any other state, and its results were in the bottom half. Other high-spending states like Vermont, New Jersey and Connecticut also got pretty poor results given their investments.

Which states do well on this metric? Texas, Florida and Mississippi all stand out for getting strong student outcomes despite not spending that much.

What about staffing levels? Education is mostly a people business, and the bulk of school spending goes toward salaries and benefits. But staffing levels are also not well correlated with student outcomes.

The graph below shows the number of staffers for every 500 students — think of a typical elementary school — versus the same demographically adjusted fourth-grade math scores as above. Here, Vermont and Maine stand out as having exceptionally high staffing levels without positive student outcomes to show for them. Meanwhile, Mississippi, Texas and Florida all stand out as states showing strong student test scores without high levels of staffing.

These are merely correlations, and readers should not take these arguments too far. For example, Matt Ladner, a senior adviser for The Heritage Foundation, made the case in a that the states that increased spending the most over the last two decades did not see equivalently large achievement gains. But it would harm students in, say, New York or Vermont, if state policymakers decided that schools needed to cut back on spending or staffing.

That’s because the on school finances suggests that a $1,000 increase in annual per-student spending improves test scores by 0.008 standard deviations and boosts college-going rates by 2.8 percentage points. Infusions of federal ESSER funds produced similar, albeit smaller, effects. Perhaps no one was or is with the magnitude of the returns on increased spending for public schools, and the gains are small enough that you can’t just eyeball them on a chart, but they are statistically significant and academically meaningful. Moreover, this research shows that school spending does cause test scores to rise. It would be irresponsible for policymakers to ignore these general trends.

At the same time, it is fair to note that the gains from higher spending are small, and policy is not made in a vacuum. Some places, especially the Mountain West, probably could see real gains from higher spending. Meanwhile, other places, especially in the Northeast, could benefit from more time thinking about cost effectiveness and how to drive improvements without additional funds.

The best modern example of the latter is Mississippi. Mississippi is the poorest state in the country, and it would not have been a positive outlier on these types of charts 10 or 20 years ago. But since 2013, the state has put in place a number of policy changes, including new curricular materials, a muscular school accountability system focused on the students who are the furthest behind and a third grade reading requirement that brought greater attention to children who struggle with the basics. Some of these initiatives even cost money, but they didn’t add up to that much relative to the state’s overall education budget, and they helped students in Mississippi their peers in higher-spending states.

It’s hard to have these types of nuanced conversations when some advocates continue for more money, even in well-funded states and communities, while others have — and using — the modest gains from spending increases as evidence in favor of school choice or other reforms. For policymakers, the only way to correctly understand the nuances of school spending is to recognize that it matters while also understanding its limitations. 

More than 400,000 K-12 educators across the country will get free training in AI through a $23 million partnership between a major teachers union and leading tech companies that is designed to close gaps in the use of technology and provide a national model for AI-integrated curriculum.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

The new National Academy for AI Instruction will be based in the downtown Manhattan headquarters of the United Federation of Teachers, the New York City affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, and provide workshops, online courses, and hands-on training sessions. This hub-based model of teacher training was inspired by work of unions like the United Brotherhood of Carpenters that have created similar training centers with industry partners, according to AFT President Randi Weingarten.

“Teachers are facing huge challenges, which include navigating AI wisely, ethically and safely,” Weingarten said at a press conference Tuesday announcing the initiative. “The question was whether we would be chasing it or whether we would be trying to harness it.”

The initiative involves the AFT, UFT, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic.

The Trump administration . More than 50 companies to provide grants, education materials, and technology to invest in AI education.

In the wake of and , Weingarten sees this partnership with private tech companies as a crucial investment in teacher preparation.

“We are actually ensuring that kids have, that teachers have, what they need to deal with the economy of today and tomorrow,” Weingarten said.

The academy will be based in a city where the school system , claiming it would interfere with the development of critical thinking skills. A few months later, then-New York City schools Chancellor David Banks , pledging to help schools smartly incorporate the technology. He said New York City schools would embrace the potential of AI to drive individualized learning. But concrete plans have been limited.

The AFT, meanwhile, has tried to position itself as a leader in the field. Last year, the union and funded pilot programs around the country.

Vincent Plato, New York City Public Schools K-8 educator and UFT Teacher Center director, said the advent of AI reminds him of when teachers first started using word processors.

“We are watching educators transform the way people use technology for work in real time, but with AI it’s on another unbelievable level because it’s just so much more powerful,” he said in a press release announcing the new partnership. “It can be a thought partner when they’re working by themselves, whether that’s late-night lesson planning, looking at student data or filing any types of reports — a tool that’s going to be transformative for teachers and students alike.”

Teachers who frequently use AI tools report saving 5.9 hours a week, according to . These tools are most likely to be used to support instructional planning, such as creating worksheets or modifying material to meet students’ needs. Half of the teachers surveyed stated that they believe AI will reduce teacher workloads.

“Teachers are not only gaining back valuable time, they are also reporting that AI is helping to strengthen the quality of their work,” Stephanie Marken, senior partner for U.S. research at Gallup, said in a press release. “However, a clear gap in AI adoption remains. Schools need to provide the tools, training, and support to make effective AI use possible for every teacher.”

While nearly half of school districts surveyed by the research corporation RAND have reported training teachers in utilizing AI-powered tools by fall 2024, . District leaders across the nation report a scarcity of external experts and resources to provide quality AI training to teachers.

OpenAI, a founding partner of the National Academy for AI Instruction, will contribute $10 million over the next five years. The tech company will provide educators and course developers with technical support to integrate AI into classrooms as well as software applications to build custom, classroom-specific tools.

Tech companies would benefit from this partnership by “co-creating” and improving their products based on feedback and insights from educators, said Gerry Petrella, Microsoft general manager, U.S. public policy, who hopes the initiative will align the needs of educators with the work of developers.

In a sense, the teachers are training AI products just as much as they are being trained, according to Kathleen Day, a lecturer at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. Day emphasized that through this partnership, AI companies would gain access to constant input from educators so they could continually strengthen their models and products.

“Who’s training who?” Day said. “They’re basically saying, we’ll show you how this technology works, and you tell us how you would use it. When you tell us how you would use it, that is a wealth of information.”

Many educators and policymakers are also concerned that introducing AI into the classroom could endanger . Racial bias in grading could also be reinforced by AI programs, according to research by The Learning Agency.

Additionally, Trevor Griffey, a lecturer in labor studies at the University of California Los Angeles, that tech firms could use these deals to market AI tools to students and expand their customer base.

This initiative to expand AI access and training for educators was likened to New Deal efforts in the 1930s to expand equal access to electricity by Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer. By working with teachers and expanding AI training, Lehane hopes the initiative will “democratize” access to AI.

“There’s no better place to do that work than in the classroom,” he said at the Tuesday press conference.

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at .