Class clowns

Abill advocates are itching to push through the City Council before members turn into pumpkins at year’s end would mandate many more square feet of floor space per public-school student, way above and beyond the 20 square feet required now. (The original bill mandated 35 square feet per kid; a new version with a lower number is reportedly being crafted, but it’s still unseen.) The real purpose is to stretch beyond the Council’s true legal authority and force down average class sizes. This is a very dumb, very costly idea.

Pre-pandemic, there were about 26 kids per class in New York City on average. Overall enrollment has since dropped, driving those numbers down 5%, including a decline of more than 11% for grades K-5, to about 21.6 kids per class.

All things being equal, it would be nice to have even lower class sizes. But all things are not equal. The Department of Education says the legislation would “require the building of hundreds of thousands of new seats across the city, and be incredibly disruptive to the school system as a whole.”

Requiring the spending of many billions to hire many thousands more teachers assumes there’s an endless supply of outstanding educators. There isn’t, and teacher quality is the most important inschool determinant of student learning. Those same resources could better be put to better use raising entry-level teacher pay, or bringing art and music to all kids, or improving after-school offerings.

For anyone who forgot, New York City schools already spend more than $28,000 per student, putting our system tops among the nation’s 100 largest. A rigid new mandate would drive that figure far higher, rather than more wisely allocating the $38 billion already coursing through the system.

The United Federation of Teachers’ Michael Mulgrew, who of course is the wizard behind this curtain here, is playing the COVID card, saying “health concerns are the most immediate” reason to back the bill. But it wouldn’t begin taking effect until Fall 2022 soonest. Huh?