Amid omicron surge, NYC schools prepare to reopen after winter break
New York City teachers and students prepared to return from winter break Monday to schools with ramped up testing and other measures designed to contain the spread of the surging omicron variant. The reopening of the country’s largest school district was greeted with apprehension among some parents and teachers unnerved by a surge in cases […]
NYC school COVID testing is falling short, some educators say
As city officials investigated whether a slew of positive COVID cases should close down Millennium Brooklyn High School, science teacher Mike Stivers tried to get swabbed on Tuesday during the school’s weekly testing visit. Stivers and other teachers were turned away. They hadn’t filled out the newly required consent forms three days earlier — before […]
Special education tuition hearings shift to NYC trials agency to address backlog
From Chalkbeat December: The de Blasio administration is transferring oversight of a backlogged special education complaint system — where filings typically take months or years to resolve — from the education department to a city entity that operates administrative trials. The shift was codified earlier this month in a memorandum of understanding between the city […]
NYC expands translation of special education plans, but onus still on parents with limited English to request it
Parents of students with disabilities who don’t speak English have long struggled to get their children’s learning plans translated into their native language, a crucial barrier to advocating for extra help or ensuring they are receiving the correct services. Officials are now taking more significant steps to address the issue. Last school year, the education […]
NYC Mayor-elect Eric Adams names education transition team members. Here’s who made the cut.
Mayor-elect Eric Adams on Friday unveiled his transition teams, including about 100 members who will advise the mayor-elect on education issues. As mayor, Adams, who will be sworn in on Jan. 1, will also lead the nation’s largest school system with roughly 1 million students. Among the leads on the transition team is David Banks, […]
Low pay for some NYC preschool directors is ‘discriminatory,’ lawsuit claims
The union representing certain pre-K leaders is suing the New York City Education Department over what the union calls “discriminatory” salary gaps that fall largely along racial lines. At issue are the sharp pay disparities between directors who work in community-run programs, which contract with the education department to provide free and subsidized care for […]
77 Percent of principals and District Leaders said They Have Struggled to Hire a Sufficient Number of Substitute Teachers
“A nationally representative survey, conducted by the EdWeek Research Center Sept. 29 to Oct. 8, found that 77 percent of principals and district leaders said they have struggled to hire a sufficient number of substitute teachers. More administrators pointed to difficulties hiring subs than any other staffing position. Before the pandemic, the national average fill […]
Only 1 in 5 NYC students took last year’s state tests, making results almost moot
From Chalkbeat: About a fifth of New York City’s third through eighth graders took the state’s English and math exams last school year, when a majority of students learned remotely and the tests were deemed optional, according to data released Thursday by the state education department. With only about 20% of students in the five […]
