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.

The state's new class-size law designated the 2022-23 school year as a planning year, but there is little evidence the city Department of Education has done any planning to implement it. In fact, the city’s recent budget proposal and co-location decisions suggest that it is willfully ignoring the law. 

It is a crucial year for New York City public schools as educators continue to help students recover from pandemic learning loss and isolation while welcoming some 14,000 newly arrived migrant children. But for the second year in a row, Mayor Eric Adams wants to slash education funding in the budget.