Mayor Requests Funding for NYC Schools
ALBANY – New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani’s newly-appointed school superintendent made a proposal to the state Legislature on Thursday, seeking an additional $602 million to recruit 6,000 new teachers for the city’s schools.
This request follows a significant $14 billion in school aid allocated for cities in the governor’s recent executive budget plan. Earlier, the Department of Education had already spent $450 million to add 3,700 teachers to the workforce.
Additionally, lawmakers and the governor had pledged over $2 billion in capital funding to city schools in 2022, aimed at enforcing class size limits. These limits are crucial; after all, it’s not just about counts or forms—it’s really about ensuring every child receives the attention and support they deserve from their teachers, as Samuels pointed out.
“Besides regular annual hiring, we will need to bring on at least 6,000 more teachers, which will cost about $602 million each year,” he noted.
Interestingly, this figure is considerably lower than the $1.5 billion that former Mayor Melissa Avilés-Ramos had sought from legislators just last year.
The 2022 law imposes a cap that restricts class sizes to 20 students in kindergarten to high school, while grades four through eight can have no more than 23 students. High school classes are capped at 25, per state regulations.
Former Mayor Eric Adams’ administration raised concerns about this cap, deeming it an unfunded mandate, and faced challenges in recruiting sufficient teachers to meet these criteria.
Senator Jim Tedisco (R-Schenectady) also inquired about comments from Mayor Mamdani regarding potential reductions in gifted education programs in city schools. In response, Samuels assured that “the mayor never intended to phase out or eliminate talent.”
First Deputy Vice-Chancellor Isabel Dimora mentioned that while no immediate changes to gifted programs are planned for the next academic year, there’s discussion around possibly delaying these programs to a later age.
“We might consider starting these gifted initiatives at a slightly older age than four or five,” Dimora explained.
On a different note, one area where Samuels does not need to plead is for increased mayoral control over New York City schools. Typically, this has been a negotiation topic among lawmakers and the governor, but in this instance, Hochul included a four-year extension of the mayor’s powers in her budget proposal.
