The city’s schools funding formula is expected to pass as it stands, despite some who have been pushing for changes for years—including members of a 2019 task force whose recommendations were never released by the city.
Mayor Eric Adams was expected to rally Monday morning to push state lawmakers to renew the policy, which gives City Hall the power to appoint the schools chancellor and most members of the decision-making Panel for Educational Policy. City Limits wants to hear from residents on what they think should be done.
New York legislators have until June 30 to decide if they want to extend mayoral control again, and if so, for how long. If they choose not to extend, they need to come up with a new system, since few legislators seem interested in reverting to the school board structure that was in place prior to 2002.
“We have all been on our path to accepting COVID-19 as a part of our lives, but let’s not forget that the stakes are higher for some.”
Undocumented teens cannot apply to New York City’s Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP), which advocates say offers a number of educational and economic benefits. “For some, it’s as simple as a summer job that provides them with extra income but for others, it can be the start of a lifelong career.”
There were roughly 145,723 English language learners (ELL)—representing 13.3 percent of all students, including school-age and preschool students—in New York City public schools last year. Two years after the pandemic hit the city, there are several academic areas in which ELLs have not recovered.
The DOE and the Public Schools Athletic League (PSAL) are required to launch 200 new teams in the next two years, part of a settlement over disparate access to sports for Black and Latino students. The change comes at time of increasing competition for sports fields and courts: The city turned down a quarter of the permit requests it received last year, up slightly from before the pandemic.
State lawmakers on Friday held a hearing to consider whether to extend mayoral control of city schools for another three years. City Limits takes a look back at our early coverage of the nearly 20-year-old policy, which was intended to provide a “a radical jolt” to faltering NYC public schools at the time, following in the foot steps of cities like Chicago and Boston.
Youth and advocates are optimistic, saying Gov. Kathy Hochul’s budget takes important steps to expand resources, but that more needs to be done to make up for years of ‘chronic underfunding’ across the system.
By training and paying students to support their peers on the path to college, not only do schools reduce their student-to-counselor ratio, they also make an investment in the student leaders themselves.
City Limits uses investigative journalism through the prism of New York City to identify urban problems, examine their causes, explore solutions, and equip communities to take action.
Founded in 1976 in the midst of New York’s fiscal crisis, City Limits exists to inform democracy and equip citizens to create a more just city. The organization is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit funded by foundation support, ad sponsorship and donations from readers.
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