In June and September each year, classroom temperatures spike when the city experiences a heat wave. It is outrageous to expect students to learn and teachers to teach in these circumstances.



When record rainfall caused serious flooding in New York City on Sept. 29, city officials were caught off guard and then botched communication with schools about how to deal with it. There are much better ways to deal with a significant weather event. 


Lowering class sizes in New York City is not an experiment, a wish list item, an “unfunded mandate” or just another expenditure competing for city Department of Education funding. It’s the law. 

On Aug. 28, 1963, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. captivated an audience of 250,000 people at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom with his soaring “I Have a Dream” speech. Sixty years later, the dreams invoked that day by these civil rights icons have not been fully realized. 

The motion picture, television, digital media and broadcast news writers are not reaping the benefits they are due from the explosion of streaming service content Their wages have stagnated and their working conditions have deteriorated. 

This May, New York City joined a nationwide shift in the teaching of reading when Schools Chancellor David C. Banks announced that all elementary schools over the next two years must adopt one of three evidence-based curricula that are grounded in phonics and foundational literacy skills. But the implementation of new reading curricula in a school system as large and diverse as New York City's is not going to be easy.