Just after midnight, Kathryn Robb, who said she was abused by a family member throughout her childhood, filed her claim 鈥� making her case the very first of the nearly 11,000 that would follow, she told 社区黑料. The campaign to pass New York’s Child Victims Act and Robb herself had been fighting for a dozen years, meeting with governors and multiple state legislators.

When it was finally signed into law by then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo in February 2019, 鈥渋t was just an unbelievable victory,鈥� said Robb, now an attorney with who directs its Children鈥檚 Justice Campaign. 鈥淚t was a blood, sweat and tears 12-year effort.鈥� 

Before that, the criminal and civil statutes of limitations for most childhood sexual abuse cases in New York started when the victim turned 18 and ended when they turned 23. The Child Victims Act extended that deadline to age 55 for civil cases and 28 for criminal ones. It also opened a one-year window for adult victims who missed those original cut-off dates to file civil claims against their alleged perpetrators and any private or public organizations that shielded their abusers.

Once COVID hit and courts largely shut down, Cuomo, who himself would , signed an executive order extending the window an additional 12 months. 

In all, 10,787 cases were filed by 14,592 plaintiffs alleging past abuse 鈥� thousands more than in any other state that passed similar lookback legislation. In California, the most populous state in the country, 1,150 plaintiffs filed such cases during its most recent window, according to the advocacy organization  

Moving forward, New York鈥檚 extended statute of limitations covers anyone younger than 23 at the time that the Child Victims Act was approved. The new rules also removed a requirement that any survivor planning to sue a public institution, such as a school, had to first file a 鈥渘otice of claim鈥� within 90 days of the abuse 鈥� a stipulation which runs counter to demonstrating how long it typically takes victims to report.

鈥淲hen this happens to children, they bury it,鈥� said Cynthia LaFave, an attorney who worked on nearly 500 Child Victims Act cases. 鈥淚t鈥檚 like a cancer that鈥檚 buried inside of them, and it just festers. It may take many years for them to realize it鈥檚 actually a good thing to bring it out into the open.鈥�

鈥淚f we didn鈥檛 have this extension to the age of 55, many of these cases would never be brought,鈥� she added.

The Child Victims Act makes New York one of at least 30 states and territories which have re-upped previously expired child sex abuse claims with either a lookback window or age limit revival law, according to Child USA. California was the first to do so since the organization started tracking these bills in 2002. 

Late this summer, California legislators moved to the state鈥檚 latest revival law, which was adopted in 2019 and has resulted in enormous payouts by public entities, including Los Angeles Unified School District borrowing to settle sex abuse cases brought by former students. Gov. Gavin Newsom to either approve or veto the measure.

Some states, such as Delaware, doing away with civil statutes of limitations for child sexual abuse claims altogether moving forward. A that would lift them for past cases as well is expected to be re-introduced in January.  

This swell of legislation, largely concentrated in the past decade, has come in response to the growing understanding of what the aftermath of these crimes actually looks like. One Child USA of more than 1,500 plaintiffs who filed childhood sexual assault claims against the Boy Scouts of America found that on average, the abuse wasn鈥檛 disclosed for 29 years and the majority didn鈥檛 speak of it until they were By that point in their adulthood, legal recourse is largely unavailable.

The nation鈥檚 patchwork of laws means that for many survivors justice 鈥渄epends sadly on where you live and where you were abused,鈥� said Helene Weiss, a partner at Marsh Law Firm, which is handling about 1,000 Child Victims Act cases. 鈥淚f you were abused in the wrong state, sorry you can鈥檛 file a lawsuit.鈥�

She鈥檚 hopeful another window will open across New York.

鈥淭here are still a lot of survivors out there who didn鈥檛 hear about the law until it was too late,鈥� she said. 鈥淥r they鈥檙e just calling in now because they saw something on the news about it 鈥� unfortunately, we can鈥檛 do anything to really help these people.鈥�

In 2022, a second lookback window was opened 鈥� broader in its scope of eligible crimes, but narrower in geography, covering only New York City. The allows survivors of any gender-based violence to initiate civil lawsuits against perpetrators or institutions regardless of when the abuse occurred. This included sexual violence as well as domestic violence; physical or verbal assault and battery; human trafficking; and false imprisonment. The original window to file claims closed in February 2025; re-opened in January 2026 and runs through July 2027.

Faith Colson is an advocate who made a delayed report to Chicago police seven years ago about abuse she experienced at the hands of her high school physics teacher. The abuse, which started when she was 17, continued until she was 21. 

鈥淗aving a lookback window and suing someone is not as good as just not having been abused period,鈥� said Colson, whose former teacher was ultimately prosecuted and convicted. 鈥�(But) I can assure you that being able to know that my abuser can’t hurt someone has helped me a lot to heal.鈥�

Marci Hamilton, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and founder of Child USA, said the lookback windows corrected an unrealistic expectation around reporting childhood assaults while also compelling institutions, like schools, to answer charges that they both enabled sexual abuse and kept it hidden.

鈥淲e only know what we know about child sex abuse cover-ups because of the civil lawsuits,鈥� she added.

LaFave believes that when her clients file a complaint, it changes the way institutions look at the problem and forces them to respond to it differently in the future. 鈥淭hat,鈥� she said, 鈥渋s a wonderful thing.鈥�

鈥淲hen you鈥檙e abused as a child, it changes everything for you. (The burden) isn’t going to be taken away because there’s some settlement or there’s some money paid or even if there’s an apology,鈥� LaFave said. 鈥淏ut if they at least know that they鈥檙e doing something good for children today and tomorrow 鈥� that is probably the most powerful thing.鈥�

Warning: This story contains graphic descriptions of child sexual abuse.

Going to high school in Dutchess County, New York, in the 1960s, there was no late bus. For one star athlete at Our Lady of Lourdes High School, that meant regularly hitchhiking the 25 miles between school and home after practice.

It was during those lonely treks, he said, that his new coach and gym teacher, Vincent Dutkowski, would stalk him in his car, offering to give him a ride, trying to coax him back to his apartment. By this point, Dutkowski had already sexually molested him multiple times, he said, grabbing his buttocks and his testicles in pickup basketball games in the school gym, plucking out his pubic hair. A few times, when he was alone with Dutkowski in his office, the coach would pull down his gym shorts and his jock strap and fondle him. 

鈥淚鈥檇 be walking down Market Street in Poughkeepsie and he鈥檇 pull up next to me,鈥� the man, in his 70s, told 社区黑料 in March, asking not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of his story. 鈥淗e called me Irish. 鈥業rish. Get in the car.鈥� And I’m a 17-year-old kid trying to maintain my varsity status, starting status, and he’s the coach. Also he is 鈥� was 鈥� 6鈥�3鈥�, 240 pounds. At the time, I’m barely 6 feet and 160. So he鈥檚 a huge man.鈥�

Once trapped in the car, he said, Dutkowski鈥檚 hands were everywhere, groping his genitals through his clothes and 鈥渢alking all sorts of really filthy sexual talk.鈥� The young athlete started altering his route home, taking different downtown streets so his coach wouldn鈥檛 find him. But sometimes he did. 

The last ride he took, he said, Dutkowski turned left toward his own apartment instead of right toward the bridge and flipped open his coat to expose his penis. The student yelled at the 36-year-old man to stop the car and let him out and he scrambled away. 

After that, he said Dutkowski benched him, even though it was his senior year and he had started every game of his high school career. He was humiliated and couldn鈥檛 understand why no other adult ever asked him what happened. When he tried to quit the basketball team, he said, the coach told him he wasn鈥檛 going to play him but if he stayed, 鈥淚鈥檒l leave you alone and you can pitch (baseball) in the spring time 鈥� and we keep this between the two of us.鈥�

That鈥檚 where it sat for 39 years until the alleged victim, by then a successful lawyer and civil litigator, decided to confront it. He said he deposed himself for two hours on videotape and sent a verified statement to the Archdiocese of New York and Our Lady of Lourdes. It was 2004 and he got a letter back from the archdiocese鈥檚 general counsel telling him the statute of limitations had run out on his complaint. 

It was too late.

An 鈥業nsane鈥� Number of Cases 

In 2019, New York state passed the Child Victims Act, which allowed any living survivor of childhood sexual abuse to bring a civil case during a two-year lookback window and permanently extended the statute of limitations from age 23 to 55 for future civil cases.

That opening resulted in 10,787 cases being filed by 14,592 plaintiffs. Among them is the former Our Lady of Lourdes student, one of at least five who named Coach Dutkowski, a who died in 2012 , as their abuser.  

Elements of the complaints against Dutkowski 鈥� an alleged serial predator who moved among schools, using his power and authority to coerce and silence his victims 鈥� run throughout the Child Victims Act cases. To understand the full scope of the role schools played in those nearly 11,000 lawsuits, 社区黑料 searched all 62 New York counties and combed through thousands of court documents, identifying at least 1,973 complaints that accuse a school, educator or other district personnel.

That means that more than 18% of all the New York state cases 鈥� or nearly 1 in 5 鈥� attest that a child was sexually abused, assaulted or raped by an adult who had access to them through their school. 

In many counties, that share was even higher: In Suffolk County, for example, 36% of all cases involved schools and in the Bronx, nearly 40%. And in Franklin County, on New York鈥檚 far northern border, survivors in an overwhelming 75% of the CVA cases filed accused school employees of abuse.

The numbers from 社区黑料鈥檚 analysis are considerably higher than the 13.4% of cases attributed to K-12 schools in a more narrowly focused review of the New York Child Victims Act cases done by the advocacy organization . They also provide greater context to the frequently cited estimate that 1 in 10 K-12 students will be subject to sexual misconduct by an adult by the time they graduate, according to a and mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act.

鈥淭hat鈥檚 an insane number for one period of time where a window was open,鈥� said Kathryn Robb, director of the Children’s Justice Campaign at the advocacy organization 鈥淎nd how many possibly couldn鈥檛 file after the window had closed.鈥�

Robb, who spent over a decade helping to draft and pass the New York bill, added that because so few survivors ultimately report their abuse, the tally of school-based complaints is likely a significant undercount. But the number who did come forward, she said, 鈥渁llows a justified alarm to be sound[ed] for both the public 鈥� parents, grandparents, people, guardians 鈥� and also our lawmakers and leaders.鈥�

社区黑料’s investigation reveals the sheer magnitude of cases involving New York educators although the vast majority of teachers, administrators and school personnel do not sexually harm the children in their care. At the same time, the cases present a rare level of visibility for the former students whose pain and trauma went unrecognized when they were young.

By delving into scores of cases, 社区黑料 was also able to glean what it is about schools themselves 鈥� their physical structure, their institutional practices, the dynamics among the adults who work there 鈥� that contributes to children being preyed upon, year after year and decade after decade, in a place where they are legally required to be.

The alleged abusers in these cases held an array of roles across all types of schools 鈥� public, private, residential and religious. The accused were classroom and special education teachers, bus drivers, school psychologists, priests, maintenance workers, coaches, principals, school doctors and occupational therapists. Victims ranged from pre-schoolers in a in New York’s Catskill Mountains to on Long Island.

In the most egregious cases, alleged perpetrators assaulted students for decades, amassing hundreds of victims. Multiple teachers were credibly accused of sexual abuse in one school, and then permitted to quietly move on to a new one.  

The abuse detailed in the complaints spanned nearly 70 years, with some reported incidents dating as far back as the 1950s and others as recently as 2018. In many cases, school leaders had reportedly been told of previous or ongoing abuse and turned a blind eye, allowing it to continue unchecked, 社区黑料 found. 

Numerous students alleged their teachers facilitated their abuse by allowing their adult perpetrators to regularly pull them out of class and take them to a private office, empty classroom or other secluded area in the school where they were sexually assaulted. 

Complaint after complaint describes how the physical abuse came after periods of grooming, some that lasted years. This included encouraging students to stay back after school for extra help, offering rides home and finding ways to get enmeshed in young people鈥檚 personal relationships 鈥�  鈥淗e crawled into your life. He got complete trust,鈥� one survivor told 社区黑料 of his alleged abuser.

In extreme cases, the students either babysat for or lived with their abusive teacher or principal.

All the complaints state that the victims suffered lasting harm from what they endured as children. A key underpinning of the Child Victims Act is that those who are subjected to sexual abuse at a young age are often unable to speak of it publicly until well into adulthood and long after the civil statute of limitations would have lapsed. 

鈥淭he number one (pattern) is that they all feel it was their fault. That they feel guilt. That they feel that they caused this. They feel they can鈥檛 trust anyone in authority,鈥� said attorney Cynthia LaFave, who is handling some 470 Child Victims Act cases in partnership with the firm Jeff Anderson & Associates. 鈥淚t has given them so much depression, anxiety. A lot of them now have substance abuse disorders because that鈥檚 their way of escaping it.鈥�

The former Our Lady of Lourdes student, a grandfather of five, passed away in late August without seeing his case resolved. He told 社区黑料 earlier this year that he had yet to share what happened to him in high school with his adult sons and the way he told his wife was to have her watch his self-made deposition. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and traced addiction issues he developed in his 40s to his teenage years.

鈥淪omewhere along there, towards the 1990s, I became an alcoholic and that affects your marriage, your kids and my job,” he said. “(The abuse) was the impetus. If I was on the edge of a cliff, genetically or whatever, those events pushed me off to become an alcoholic.鈥�

The New York archdiocese declined to comment on the allegations against Our Lady of Lourdes or Dutkowski. The coach’s accuser did note that the church offered to pay for therapy sessions after he first notified them of his complaint in 2004.

At least have passed similar lookback windows or age limit revival laws for child sexual abuse claims in the last 20 years, including California and West Virginia. But New York, which is now looking to against school-based child sexual abuse, has produced by far the greatest number of cases. Seven years later, the vast majority still await resolution. 

Of the 10,787 CVA cases filed in New York courts, roughly 8,000 had progressed beyond the initial filing as of February 2026. Of those, just under 3,000 had been settled or otherwise disposed of, leaving nearly 63% still pending, according to 社区黑料鈥檚 analysis of public records obtained from the New York State Office of Court Administration. That means victims, who may now be in their 60s or 70s and have waited most of their lives to seek justice, are still waiting.

Marci Hamilton, a University of Pennsylvania professor and Child USA鈥檚 founder, sees great value in the civil cases. They get at not just the alleged perpetrator, she said, but the institutions, like schools, that protect the abuser and their own reputations. That creates an opportunity to change a deep-seated culture of secrecy and self-preservation.

鈥淲hat we’re trying to do with these windows is catch up: catch up to all those victims that were abused and were given no access to justice,” she said. “But the real goal is to make sure it doesn’t happen again, so that we’re not just seeing a wave of thousands of lawsuits, (one) after another.鈥�

鈥榃here鈥檚 the Justice?鈥�

James Marsh is a leading attorney in child sex abuse cases whose clients include survivors of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. His Manhattan-based Marsh Law Firm has represented roughly 1,000 of the Child Victims Act plaintiffs.

鈥淭he fact that there were so many cases in so many different places really illustrates the scope of this problem, both historically and ongoing,鈥� Marsh told 社区黑料, referring specifically to school-based abuse. 鈥淭his is a problem that has not gone away.鈥�

In July, the what it called 鈥渁 national K-12 initiative to crack down on sexual predators in schools,鈥� citing instances where schools failed to investigate credible reports of abuse or allowed accused perpetrators to change roles or transfer schools. The administration, which recently  that investigates sexual abuse claims, said it was targeting 20 districts it suspected of falling short. None are in New York.

The 1,973 CVA cases involving New York schools were spread over 54 counties with the largest number in Manhattan, or New York County, with 345; the Bronx with 256 and Brooklyn, or Kings County, with 227. 

When looking at all the CVA cases, the highest volume can be found in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Nassau counties. Those places also have among the most cases that were still unresolved. Nearly 80% of all complaints that were at one point active in Brooklyn were still pending, as were 79% of those in Manhattan and three-quarters of those in the Bronx, according to 社区黑料鈥檚 analysis.

The exception is Nassau County on Long Island where the courts have cleared more cases than anywhere else in the state, resolving 606 of 681 cases, leaving just 11% still pending. Over 100 of the Child Victims Act cases brought in Nassau name schools.

Attorneys and advocates say the long delays are due to a backlog created by the pandemic, a dearth of judges, battles between defendants and their insurance companies over who is liable for payment and an otherwise overwhelmed court system.

That’s of little comfort to Bob Druger, who first filed his case against the Syracuse City School District in 2019, alleging years of abuse by a counselor and track coach nearly 40 years earlier. Over the past seven years, he said, his case has dragged on, cycling through numerous judges. 

He gave the first part of his own deposition 鈥� a grueling process for many survivors 鈥� two years ago, and is still waiting to complete that critical pre-trial step.

鈥淚鈥檓 so disappointed in the legal system,鈥� he said. 鈥淭hey made these laws to get some kind of justice 鈥� whatever that is 鈥� but where鈥檚 the justice? 

Druger’s case is one of 26 school-based complaints filed under the Child Victims Act in Central New York鈥檚 Onondaga County. Of the 163 total number of cases that had moved forward there by February 2026, 74% remained outstanding. 

Serial Predators and Serially Abusive Schools

Rudy Tremaroli first ran a church- and school-affiliated community center in the 1960s and then moved over to Mount Carmel school where he was given a private office and worked as a janitor and basketball coach. 

Tremaroli is accused of abusing hundreds of children over three decades. Several of the CVA complaints describe him as “one of the most prolific pedophiles in the history of the Archdiocese of New York.” 

Other court documents recount: “In the middle to late 1980s, in an effort to convince a victim that his repeated sexual assaults were appropriate, Tremaroli bragged that he had seen the penises of most of the male students at Our Lady of Mount Carmel School for the past thirty (30) years.”

In his various roles, he would allegedly befriend and groom students who were using the gym before and after school and on weekends, ask them about their interest in girls, isolate them from their peers and sexually assault and abuse them. The abuse ranged from groping and kissing to forcing children to perform oral sex and sodomizing them with a cigar holder, a sports trophy and a screwdriver handle, according to court records. It took place on school and church grounds, at the community center and at Tremaroli鈥檚 home. 

He also forced his victims to pose for naked photos, creating a substantial collection of child pornography, which the complaints allege church officials removed from Tremaroli’s apartment after his death. He was later accused of distributing the images to Mount Carmel鈥檚 principal, James Irwin, who allegedly helped Tremaroli photograph his victims.  In the CVA cases, Irwin is accused of , a second grader in 1991. He was arrested in 2000 in Westchester County and criminally charged with seven felony counts of promoting an obscene sexual performance by a child. He later pleaded guilty, .

allege that both the school and the New York archdiocese were aware of Tremaroli鈥檚 ongoing abuse, yet they did nothing to stop it. The complaints say Tremaroli鈥檚 鈥渞eign of terror鈥� did not end until his death in 1992. Lawyers for Mount Carmel and the archdiocese denied any wrongdoing in their court filings.

The archdiocese declined to comment on the Tremaroli cases for this story. The sprawling entity, which encompasses Manhattan, the Bronx, Staten Island and seven counties north of New York City, in May offered to to settle claims filed by 1,300 survivors under the Child Victims Act.

Accused serial abusers like Tremaroli can be found across all types of schools in the CVA cases.  According to court records, they include:

, a fifth-grade teacher in Erie County鈥檚 Kenmore-Town of Tonawanda Union Free School District, who was named in 35 Child Victim Acts cases, accusing him of sexually abusing dozens of boys from 1962 until 1992. Werner鈥檚 behavior was allegedly so bold that his 11- and 12-year-old victims said they and their classmates had to 鈥渞egularly and repeatedly鈥� watch as he assaulted boys in the classroom. At least one survivor recounted another teacher walking into the room, seeing him being fondled by Werner and walking out. Without the benefit of insurance money, the district paid to settle the cases in 2022, borrowing $10 million of that sum. It acknowledged that the alleged misconduct by Werner, who  at age 91, 鈥渋s reprehensible 鈥� both now and back then.鈥� They said multiple administrators from 30 years ago testified that if they had known about their colleague鈥檚 alleged abuse, they would have acted. A district spokesperson told 社区黑料 no witnesses could identify evidence that the district was notified about Werner鈥檚 alleged misconduct prior to the CVA lawsuits being filed and it was a 鈥渂usiness decision鈥� to settle given the 鈥渆xtreme costs鈥� of facing 35 separate trials. Chris O鈥橞rien, the plaintiffs鈥� attorney, said a former PTA mom gave a sworn deposition where she recounted that the teacher had molested her 11-year-old son and being assured by him that it wouldn鈥檛 happen again. The principal died in 2015, according to The Buffalo News.

 a child psychologist at a New Hyde Park middle and high school on Long Island whose sexual behavior toward students was so blatant that both kids and teachers openly referred to him as 鈥淔esta the Molester.鈥� More than 20 former male students brought cases naming Festa and the Herricks Union Free School District and multiple complaints assert that in 1978, 鈥�79 and 鈥�81, students and parents separately reported sexual abuse and assault by Festa to school administrators, but nothing was done. Festa remained in his job for a dozen years, allegedly abusing multiple students, until his 1993 arrest and indictment in a separate case involving 11 child sex-abuse charges. Festa, who died in 2011, pleaded guilty to three counts of sodomy. The district, which denied any wrongdoing in court filings, declined to comment on the Child Victims Act allegations.  

, a third-grade teacher, was the subject of 44 complaints filed against him in Islip鈥檚 Bay Shore Union Free School District. Bernagozzi is accused of abusing male students in the classroom and when he would take them on outings to baseball games, local beaches and Broadway shows. In February, he was convicted in a separate criminal case of sexually assaulting three former students, with the Suffolk County district attorney as 鈥渙ne of the most prolific serial pedophiles of our time.鈥� In May, the 77-year-old Bernagozzi was sentenced to in prison. As of January 2025, the Bay Shore district had paid out just over $55 million to settle 17 of the CVA cases naming the former longtime teacher. It has since settled an additional 24 cases for an undisclosed amount, according to the plaintiffs鈥� attorneys. A case that went to trial resulted in a $25 million verdict against the district in November 2024. In March 2025, ; his ruling is currently being appealed. 

Bernagozzi is one of a number of predatory teachers accused of leveraging his charisma and connections to garner a reputation among families as 鈥渢he teacher to get,鈥� as one victim, L.J., recently described him to 社区黑料.

L.J., who had Bernagozzi as a teacher in the mid-1980s, requested to be identified only by his initials, saying his children don鈥檛 know what happened to him as a boy. L.J. recalled his initial excitement to learn he鈥檇 be in Bernagozzi鈥檚 third-grade class and 鈥渧ery quickly (being) made the teacher鈥檚 pet.鈥� His seat was at the front of the room 鈥� directly in front of Bernagozzi, sometimes even sitting on his lap 鈥� and he gained special privileges not bestowed on other students.

Swiftly smaller boundary crossings escalated into full-blown sexual abuse, he said, both in the school building and on outings Bernagozzi would plan for L.J. and other boys. He would also put on plays that required the boys in his class to wear tights, and 鈥渄uring lunch break or after school he would put the tights on you,鈥� L.J. said. 鈥淗e kept baby powder with him. So he powdered you up, skin-to-skin, and let his fingers go wherever.鈥� 

After one particularly traumatizing encounter, L.J. said he reported the abuse to his mom, who promptly went to the school to confront both the principal and Bernagozzi. L.J.鈥檚 mom gave a sworn deposition and also testified about those conversations with Bernagozzi and the principal, who is now deceased, brought by another Child Victims Act plaintiff against Bay Shore schools.

After his mother took action, L.J. said the physical abuse stopped immediately, but Bernagozzi was not fired and he had to remain in the man鈥檚 class for the rest of the year. The report also came at a cost: He said Bernagozzi cornered him in a hallway, grabbed him and 鈥減ut the fear of God into me,鈥� asking, 鈥淲hat did you say? Who did you tell?鈥� His doting affection disappeared.

鈥淚 was no longer the fair child I was earlier. I was moved away from his desk. No attention,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t went from having access to a candy drawer and marking your own papers to being completely ignored and isolated.鈥�

L.J.鈥檚 reaction to this shift as a small boy has led to lasting shame and confusion: 鈥淚 almost craved his attention 鈥� all the attention, whether it be the abuse and everything else 鈥� when he shunned me. I would try to rub his back and all this stuff. That fucked me up for a while, just in my own head,鈥� said the now-lawyer, who recalls decades spent self-sabotaging and questioning his worth.

Today, he describes his school鈥檚 action as 鈥渢he exact playbook of what not to do,鈥� saying it facilitated and enabled not only his abuse, but that of dozens of other boys. 

鈥淚 swear to God, I still am getting chills right now, that there were multiple victims after me 鈥� after they knew,鈥� he said. 鈥淎nd then I found out that other people before me had told them, and some teachers or (the) principal had said something. And that, to me, is evil.鈥�

Neither the Bay Shore school district nor its attorney responded to requests for comment. 

Bernagozzi鈥檚 criminal attorney, Steve Politi, told 社区黑料 that his client 鈥渧ehemently denies ever doing anything sexually inappropriate to anyone ever. So that covers anyone who is saying anything from any time period 鈥� That includes males, females, adults, children, everyone. He鈥檚 never done that in his whole life.鈥�

When asked about Bernagozzi鈥檚 recent conviction on five charges, including sodomy and sexual conduct against a child, Politi said 鈥渁n appeal will be starting immediately,鈥� because the trial was 鈥渦nfair.鈥� He said his client was deprived of his right to a fair trial, including 鈥渁 distortion of the evidence and horrific rulings by the court.鈥�

The Child Victims Act cases reveal instances where a single individual, like Bernagozzi, is at the center of the alleged sexual abuse for many years and others where the alleged abusers change over time, but the school remains the constant factor across decades. 

This is especially true of residential schools where the abuse seems endemic to the institutions where it allegedly occurred. 社区黑料 found over 200 CVA cases filed against residential treatment centers and facilities. These plaintiffs, sent there as children by social services, Family Court or their home districts to live and attend school, were highly vulnerable. Many were already traumatized, dealing with various disabilities or mental illnesses, while the adults who worked there had full control over their young lives. 

These cases include:

, founded in 1862 as a boarding school for troubled children, operated a therapeutic residence and a special education school on its New Windsor campus until it was shut down by the state Education Department in 2009. The state found an ongoing host of safety and educational violations that it deemed In 2007, the institution came under fire when two female staffers were arrested on charges of raping two 16-year-old male students.  One of the women pleaded guilty to statutory rape and was sentenced to three months in jail, while the other was convicted of endangering the welfare of a child and sentenced to a year in jail.  While the CVA complaints maintain such alleged acts were part of a decades-long pattern, McQuade鈥檚 then-CEO told a local newspaper he thought it was the .  McQuade has since been named in at least 11 Child Victims Act cases with allegations of sexual abuse involving multiple staffers spanning from the 1960s to the 1990s. 

, founded in 1854 by the De La Salle Christian Brothers as a place for 鈥渙rphaned and abandoned boys,鈥� is named in at least 34 complaints that spanned from 1950 to 2010. The victims, who ranged in age from 8 to 18, were sent to the Albany therapeutic residence and school by the courts as an alternative to juvenile detention or by social service agencies. Their alleged abusers were both male and female and comprised religious and lay staff members, including priests, brothers, counselors, teachers, adult head dorm prefects, a teacher鈥檚 aide and a coach. One became a trustee of the school and another was honored with a memorial service at LaSalle after his death in 2007. The school bills itself as offering 鈥渟pecialized treatment鈥� for families and youth dealing with trauma, including sexual abuse. 

, located on 180 acres in Westchester County, was founded in 1851 as the New York Juvenile Asylum to provide residential care to orphans and 鈥渄elinquents.鈥� It moved to a farm in where a was created to educate its at-risk, all-male population. Children鈥檚 Village is named in at least 52 CVA complaints, spanning from 1965 to 2009. The cases allege ingrained patterns of sexual assault and rape, where younger, weaker boys were preyed upon both by older students and adult staff in a ritual called 鈥減lucking.鈥� Many of the complaints attest that the victims told adult employees 鈥� counselors and teachers, among others 鈥� about the attacks, but that nothing was done. In at least one instance, a victim says he sought protection from an adult, who then started sexually abusing him as well. One lawyer whose client arrived at Children鈥檚 Villagedescribes the abuse he allegedly suffered there as occurring at 鈥渁 stunning scale over a period that amounted to pure torture.鈥�

Neither Children鈥檚 Village nor its attorney nor the lawyer representing McQuade Children鈥檚 Services responded to requests for comment. St. Christopher鈥檚, Inc., which also operated a residential treatment center and school in Westchester, took over McQuade and then filed for bankruptcy in 2024 in the face of . Children鈥檚 Village, which contracts with the Office of Refugee Resettlement , is also now for alleged mistreatment and physical abuse of these young people.

A LaSalle spokesperson pushed back against any assertion that students placed in its residential school were particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse, saying throughout its 172-year history LaSalle 鈥渉as not wavered from its core values and role as a refuge for troubled youth. It has offered care and support to tens of thousands of young people. It is well-known and respected in both local and national circles for its program and treatment of youth suffering from childhood trauma.鈥� 

He said the school did not become aware of any sexual assault allegations against its employees 鈥� including the staffer who went on to become a trustee or the one who had their memorial service at the school 鈥� until the CVA cases were filed many years later. 

Amos Guiora is a law professor at the University of Utah and director of the , which works to criminalize bystanders and enablers of abuse. He argues that in not directly responding to these alleged violations, schools and their employees actively empower those who do harm. 

鈥淚f we don鈥檛 address the ecosystem of enabling, not a damn thing will change,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he teachers know they can get away with it, because they know the school’s prioritization is not the child, but the school. The perpetrator is the indirect beneficiary.鈥�

Hamilton, of UPenn and Child USA, sees far-reaching reverberations when institutions place the adult first. 

鈥淲hen someone is identified, you’re potentially protecting 100 children,鈥� she said. 鈥淪o it’s not just this one important adult, it’s all the children 鈥� in the past, present and future.鈥�

鈥楪rooming is a Process, Not an Act鈥�

In the fall of 1980, a Syracuse University graduate student named Conrad Mainwaring started coaching and counseling students at the local high school, a quick seven-minute drive from campus, according to

There, Mainwaring, a former Olympic track athlete for Antigua and Barbuda, began working with a 17-year-old Nottingham High School senior: Bob Druger, the plaintiff who has spent the last seven years awaiting a resolution to his Child Victims Act case.

As a swimmer and cross country runner, Druger, now 63, remembers his early excitement to work with Mainwaring, who he described as 鈥渧ery well-spoken and fast talking,鈥� with an English accent. Druger was impressed by his Olympic career and purported connections to other acclaimed athletes. If you wanted to be a star, Mainwaring told students, you had to work with him.

Mainwairing quickly “infiltrated” Druger鈥檚 friend group and life, he said, giving him books to read, telling him he was 鈥渘umber one in his squad, you鈥檙e above, you鈥檙e different from other people,鈥� and even attending family dinners at his house, including with his father, who taught biology at Syracuse for 50 years.

鈥淟ooking back at the amount of energy and time he put into me 鈥� I don鈥檛 know how he could do anything else,鈥� Druger said, recognizing the groundwork that was being laid for his abuse.

Quickly, the interactions turned sexual 鈥� both in the counselor鈥檚 office at the high school and back at Mainwaring鈥檚 Syracuse dorm room. The 29-year-old would tell Druger it was all part of his training to build mental fortitude and ultimately help him succeed as an athlete. 

Sometimes, the abuse would occur 鈥渋n the middle of the school day in the office, giving me a blow job and hypnotizing you to make you think it鈥檚 OK,鈥� said Druger. 鈥淢asturbating you or whatever.鈥�

Druger describes the sexual assaults as 鈥渁lmost mechanical.鈥� While Mainwaring was abusing Druger, he鈥檇 talk to him, telling him the acts would 鈥減ush you to uncomfortable situations and the more you can tolerate it mentally, you can use that for your 鈥� sport,鈥� he said.

The manipulation was so powerful that for years, Druger said he didn鈥檛 realize that what happened to him was abuse. Until recently, when he connected with other survivors and identified his experience as assault, he hadn鈥檛 told a soul about it 鈥� not even his wife. Coming to terms with the reality, he said, has meant his 鈥渨hole world is sort of rocked apart.鈥�

And even now, the physical element feels like 鈥渁 tiny part of it.鈥�

鈥淚t was more like emotional, mental, spiritual abuse than anything else,鈥� he said, adding, 鈥淗e just kind of put a spell on you, and made you believe.鈥�

Druger describes his response as 鈥渉ard to understand, unless you’re in it,鈥� yet his story shares a trait seen throughout the roughly 2,000 accounts reviewed by 社区黑料: a potent grooming process.

Authors of one found that grooming behaviors were present in 100% of the 24 school-based abuse cases they examined.

Based on court documents and interviews with dozens of experts, it is more common than not for survivors to take years 鈥� even decades鈥� not just to report abuse, but also to recognize it as such, at least in part because of that calculated and predatory process.

While there is no universally accepted legal definition of grooming 鈥� and federal law doesn鈥檛 designate it as a distinct crime at all 鈥� 20 states have moved to pass laws specifically defining it as the process of manipulating a child in order to gain their trust and sexually abuse them. It is criminalized as a felony in 18 of those states, including Wyoming and Missouri, which passed legislation in March 2026, according to

is not one of them, and doesn鈥檛 currently criminalize or define grooming children, though there are a patchwork of laws that criminalize elements of it, like enticing a child under 17 into a secluded area or car for sexual purposes.

鈥淲hat I see anecdotally with my education cases is a lot of grooming. A lot of stuff that鈥檚 hard for me to prove,鈥� said attorney Kat Thomas, who represents Druger and other survivors. The Child Victims Act didn鈥檛 close any of New York鈥檚 grooming law loopholes, Thomas said. 

Even in states where legislation does exist, it can be challenging to recognize and prosecute it on the ground.

鈥淕rooming is a process, not an act, and it involves behaviors that looked at individually 鈥� like gift-giving, emotional dependency 鈥� 鈥� [are] ambiguous,鈥� said Jessica Schidlow, senior policy analyst and legislative counsel at Enough Abuse.

These behaviors only become legible as grooming once they are looked at in retrospect or as a pattern, she said. And legislation that requires proof of sexual intent, 鈥渕isses the window where intervention could actually prevent abuse. So it鈥檚 really that fine line in the middle that is very difficult to get at,鈥� she added.

Even four decades later, it鈥檚 hard for Druger to parse through exactly what impact Mainwaring had on his life.

鈥淚 always thought I did better because of Conrad鈥� he said, because through his grooming process, Druger got more invested in school.

Now an acclaimed eye surgeon in Syracuse, Druger has degrees in biology, psychology and chemical engineering from Syracuse, as well as an MD and a Ph.D. in molecular biology and biochemistry. He also owns a martial arts gym and 鈥渨ork(s) out like mad.鈥�

鈥淚 just have a million things that I鈥檓 doing, and so you sort of say, 鈥榃ell, that鈥檚 successful.鈥� But, you know, maybe I鈥檓 doing that 鈥斺�� he paused, his voice breaking, as he began to cry. 鈥淪orry. It鈥檚 hard to talk about all of this,鈥� he added, pausing again. 鈥淢aybe I鈥檓 doing that to block out the other shit.鈥�

鈥淓specially this thing,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 just too overwhelming.鈥�

Crossing Boundaries

The grooming process frequently begins with seemingly innocuous conversations or texting that can eventually escalate into physical abuse, said Charol Shakeshaft, distinguished professor emerita at Virginia Commonwealth University and a leading researcher on childhood sexual abuse. Her for the U.S. Department of Education includes the widely cited 1-in-10 students statistic on the incidence of K-12 sexual misconduct.

To stop the practice in schools, it鈥檒l take a combination of thoughtful laws and mandatory institutional policies that define grooming behaviors and require training and reporting, she said. 

Without those, it鈥檚 easy for other adults in the building to dismiss behaviors they might flag as questionable, but not necessarily identifiable as abuse 鈥� a practice numerous advocates, survivors and experts reported as common.

Shakeshaft, who authored , said adults in schools will cross a boundary and, if they鈥檙e not called on it, they鈥檒l normalize their behavior and then cross another boundary and another until they 鈥渆nd up in a physical, sexual relationship with the students.鈥�

鈥淚’m not saying that it’s the fault of the school that people cross boundaries and sexually abuse kids, but what I am saying is that by not doing the supervision, the training, we provide an environment in which abuse can occur,鈥� she added.

This common practice of 鈥渢urning a blind eye鈥� to childhood sexual abuse comes from a number of places, experts told 社区黑料. In some cases, it emanates from a misconception about who typically abuses kids: so many have been taught to fear 鈥渟tranger danger,鈥� that they鈥檙e 鈥渘ot going to ever question the teacher in the next classroom,鈥� said Faith Colson, a survivor advocate who made a delayed report to police seven years ago about the abuse she experienced as an Illinois high school student in the early 2000s.

In others, teachers are fearful that a report could ruin their colleagues’ future and they don鈥檛 feel they have sufficient evidence to risk that. And even when complaints of inappropriate behavior are escalated, schools often choose to handle them internally because they don鈥檛 鈥渨ant the scandal,鈥� said attorney Jeff Herman, whose firm Herman Law has handled some 2,000 Child Victims Act cases. 

鈥淚 don鈥檛 think that the people in my school acted with malice. I don’t think there was a cover-up,鈥� said Colson. 鈥淚 don’t think they wanted me to be abused or (were) actively trying to help him abuse me, but by ignoring those inappropriate behaviors 鈥� by doing nothing, they were communicating to him they would do nothing. And so that emboldened (him).鈥� 

In other cases, however, it appeared the accused teachers acted with complete license, flaunting their sexual abuse of students. One particularly , alleges that three teachers across a middle and high school in Central New York 鈥榮 Oswego County, separately and together, sexually assaulted four girls, ages 12 to 15, between 1967 and 1974. 

On some occasions, one of the accused teachers, James Middaugh, would allegedly assault two of the girls at once, forcing them to both perform oral sex on him then vaginally rape one in the other鈥檚 presence. In two separate incidents, Middaugh and another of the teachers, Jerry Frare, are accused of abusing two of the victims simultaneously in the back of Middaugh鈥檚 car.

Marsh, whose firm represented the women, called it 鈥渙ne of the most shocking cases I think I鈥檝e ever seen.鈥�

Middaugh, Frare and the third accused teacher, Ronald Smith, behaved so carelessly and flagrantly, according to the complaint, that the sexual abuse was essentially an open secret in the Phoenix Central School District. At one point, another teacher approached one of the girls and allegedly said, 鈥淩on Smith said you weren鈥檛 a virgin.鈥� 

Middaugh also once publicly confronted one of the girls 鈥渋n a jealous rage鈥� about 鈥渁nother boy,鈥� according to the court documents, screaming that she was a 鈥渇ucking slut鈥� and a 鈥済oddamn whore.鈥� The complaint says this was observed by another teacher and that other district employees and volunteers knew Middaugh and Frare were meeting the underage girls at a local bar 鈥渢o fraternize outside of school.鈥�

During a long phone interview in June, Frare forcefully denied all the allegations against him, saying, 鈥淭here is not a single thing in that whole report that’s true about me. Every single sentence that my name is in, is untrue.鈥� The first time he read the complaint back in 2020, he said: 鈥淢y lungs collapsed. I lost my breath.鈥�

He confirmed having taught one of the plaintiffs, Janet Russo, and remembered her as a good student, but denied ever having any inappropriate contact with her. 鈥淚 have no idea,鈥� where the allegations came from, he added.

Frare acknowledged having been close friends with Middaugh 鈥� he recalled them going bowling together on snow days and the older teacher being in Frare鈥檚 1983 wedding party 鈥� but said charges that the two simultaneously sexually assaulted students in Middaugh鈥檚 car were 鈥渞idiculously untrue.鈥� He said Middaugh drove a 鈥渓ittle sports car鈥� back then, a two-seater. He laughed and said 鈥渦ntrue鈥� about the assertion that he and Middaugh would socialize with their female students at a local bar. 

Frare, who taught with Middaugh at Dillon Middle School, said he never saw or had any knowledge of him engaging in inappropriate relationships with students, describing him as a 鈥渧ery well-respected鈥� and “charismatic” teacher. He said he did not remember Smith, a music teacher and the band director, at all. The complaint alleges that in 1974, when she was 13, both Smith and Frare sexually abused Janet Russo.

Middaugh, who died , taught in the Phoenix schools for 13 years. Public records obtained by 社区黑料 show he lost his license in January 1994 on 鈥渕oral character鈥� grounds after the New York state Education Department learned that during his time there he 鈥減rovided two 8th grade students with cigarettes and alcohol and had sexual contact with said students which included sexual intercourse and oral sex.鈥�

That same month, Smith鈥檚 license was revoked on the same grounds after the department found that during his 1976-77 school year at Phoenix 鈥渉e engaged in a sexual relationship with a tenth grade student, which included several instances of sexual intercourse and oral sex which occurred on school grounds. Some two years later similar allegations were made by several additional complainants which resulted in Ronald L. Smith鈥檚 resignation from the district effective April 23, 1979.鈥� Smith died in 2025.

Frare, now in his mid-70s and retired after a 30-year teaching career in another district, did not go through the same process, although public records show he voluntarily surrendered his license in February 2025, not long before the Phoenix CVA cases .

In a September phone call, Frare said he agreed to relinquish his license based on 鈥渂ad advice鈥� from an education lawyer. Again denying the abuse allegations, he said he made the choice thinking it would allow him to avoid a legal fight, that it 鈥渨ouldn鈥檛 come to light鈥� and would have no real impact on his life since he stepped away from the classroom years ago.

“I think back now, and I certainly made a mistake in doing that,” he said. “I should have just stood my ground 鈥� like I will have to do now 鈥� and make sure that the truth comes out.”

Attorneys with Marsh Law Firm would not discuss the cases鈥� disposition.

Christopher Byrne, then-interim superintendent of Phoenix Central School District, said in May that while they take all allegations 鈥渧ery seriously,鈥� the district was not able to comment on specific legal cases. 鈥淥ver the years,鈥� he added, 鈥渟chool policies, reporting requirements, employee training, and student protections have evolved significantly, and the district continues to follow all state-mandated child protection and reporting protocols.鈥�

The state Education Department findings on Middaugh and Smith suggest that others in the small, rural district with may well have been aware of the alleged abuse. Colson, the Illinois survivor, wants educators to understand the need to act in those circumstances.

“You have to say something, because you may be the only person that sees it and doing nothing keeps the child trapped,” she said. “They cannot save themselves.鈥�

This is particularly true because perpetrators often target the most vulnerable students with the fewest resources, according to a number of attorneys who represent survivors.

This includes, 鈥渒ids who are poorer, who are on scholarships, who are the youngest in their class, who don鈥檛 live in the same part of town, whose home lives aren鈥檛 stable, etc.,鈥� Daniel Mullkoff, a partner at Wang Hecker, wrote in an email to 社区黑料.  鈥淵oung people who are already fighting to just make their way in the world and get a leg up are the ones who often are subjected to the worst, tragic abuses.鈥� 

Evading Punishment, Time After Time

After graduating from Nottingham High, Druger enrolled as a freshman at Syracuse University, where Mainwaring鈥檚 abuse continued for at least another three years, he said. It didn鈥檛 stop until the coach left Syracuse in 1985 to work in admissions at Colgate University, about 40 miles away.

What Druger didn鈥檛 know at the time was that his schools weren鈥檛 the first places Mainwaring reportedly had gone to abuse boys. Nor would they be close to the last.  

A 2019 ESPN investigation uncovered of Mainwaring鈥檚 abuse across two continents, four states and dozens of years 鈥� though Druger said he鈥檚 since connected with scores more.

鈥淓very place he went, he was found out, kicked out and he would set up shop (at) the next place,鈥� said Druger.

In this way, Druger鈥檚 story embodies another commonality of countless cases of educator sexual abuse: a practice colloquially known as 鈥減assing the trash,鈥� in which the accused adult is allowed to quietly resign or retire before moving onto another school. According to one widely cited estimate, perpetrators on average move to before they are stopped. 

社区黑料 discovered dozens of such cases. According to court records, they include: 

, a band teacher at Stokes Elementary School in Rome, New York, was offered 鈥渞etirement with no criminal charges filed against him,鈥� after an 11-year-old student reported that he sexually abused her in 1989-90, according to A separate filing alleged that Carletta similarly abused other elementary school students while teaching at another school within the same district 15 years before. While Carletta was able to move onto yet another school 鈥� this time a pre-K 鈥� without ever facing accountability, the student was punished and 鈥渇orced to be in a separate self-contained class room,鈥� according to the complaint. When reached by phone in June, Carletta sounded confused at times, saying 鈥渋t鈥檚 a little hard to remember鈥� events from three decades ago. But he adamantly denied all allegations, saying they were 鈥渃ompletely untrue. I have never sexually abused any student.鈥� He also asserted his belief 鈥渢hat entire situation鈥� is 鈥渄ead and buried by now.鈥� In , a school counselor said she interviewed the plaintiff at the time she first came forward about the alleged abuse by Carletta and then, at the district鈥檚 request, five other female students who described the same 鈥渋nappropriate sexual ‘TOUCHING’ and ‘RUBBING'” by the band teacher. She said she took copious notes, which she was directed to hand over to the assistant superintendent. She never saw the notes or the students again, she stated, adding, 鈥淭o my knowledge, no action was taken against Mr. Carletta nor to protect female students from what he was doing to them.鈥� The case was .

alleged they were abused repeatedly in the late 1970s and early 鈥�80s by , who was hired to teach in their elementary school less than a year after being criminally charged and sentenced for sodomizing a student at his previous New York school. When he applied to Tri-Valley Central School District in rural Sullivan County in 1972, Wales was still on criminal probation, according to the complaint, and he asked in writing that the district not contact his employer 鈥� a home builder where he took a job after being forced to leave teaching and where his boss was aware of his arrest record. Tri-Valley apparently honored that request and also did not attempt to contact his former district. Wales was, this time at school, and charged with sexually abusing male students. where he served one year in jail, Wales provided the district attorney with he admitted to sexually abusing over his years at Tri-Valley Elementary School, . The district prevailed in the case, both in the lower court and The appellate court ruled Tri-Valley didn鈥檛 have an obligation to further investigate Wales鈥檚 background when they first hired him because his teaching license was valid and he provided letters of recommendation from his old district. It also found there was not enough evidence to show the district could have foreseen that Wales was a sexual threat to children, notwithstanding community speculation about why he spent so much time alone with young boys outside of school, taking them fishing and having them come to his house. The district did not respond to requests for comment. When reached in July at his Florida home and asked about his child sex abuse convictions and his teaching career, Wales responded, 鈥淭hat鈥檚 very nice, but I鈥檓 91 years old and I鈥檓 not interested.鈥�

, the coach and gym teacher from Our Lady of Lourdes High School, was hired there despite having been charged and convicted of molesting two students at a Wayne, New Jersey, public school three years before, according to court records. He eventually went to prison for while teaching in South Carolina 鈥� decades after allegedly abusing the former player who he benched and other students at Our Lady of Lourdes and Seton Catholic High School in New York in the 1960s and 鈥�70s.

A case involving New York City’s prestigious Dalton School shows not only how an accused abuser can escape accountability, but continue to prosper. A former student at the Manhattan private school that in 1986, when she was 14 years old, she was offered free tuition and housing at the home of the headmaster, Gardner Dunnan. As part of the arrangement, she was supposed to act as the family鈥檚 helper. 

The girl鈥檚 childhood had been difficult, so when this opportunity arose, her family leapt at what seemed like an unrivaled chance to 鈥渇undamentally 鈥� improve (their daughter鈥檚) prospects in life,鈥� according to court records. 

In the fall of her freshman year, without any formal application process, the Brooklyn teen enrolled at Dalton and moved in with the approximately 45-year-old headmaster and his family. At first she was grateful for this setup, which provided 鈥渢he first real stability she experienced in her childhood,鈥� according to records. But this false sense of safety was quickly shattered when Dunnan began sexually assaulting her in September 1986, according to the complaint.

Dunnan sexually abused her on four separate occasions between September and January of the following year, in his apartment and at the family鈥檚 second home in New Jersey, the complaint says. The first time it happened, the girl alleged she was walking from the bathroom back to her room in a towel, just after showering. The headmaster was lying on the couch in the living room and called her over. He pulled her on top of him, removed her towel and began to grope her and 鈥渞ub her naked body.鈥�

The night Dunnan assaulted her for the final time, he allegedly entered the girl鈥檚 darkened bedroom in the Manhattan apartment, climbed on top of her and thrust his genitals against hers through their clothes. It was then that his wife walked past the room. Moments later, the complaint states, Dunnan ran out and the girl heard shouting. Later that night, his wife kicked her out.

The girl moved back in with her father 鈥� nearly two hours away from Dalton 鈥� and after her academics took a hit that spring, transferred to a different high school. In the decades since, she has 鈥渟uffered intense emotional harm,鈥� according to court records, believing the assaults were her own fault and keeping the abuse a secret. 

A decade later, in 1997, Dunnan was forced to resign from Dalton after he had an affair with a  married teacher whom he supervised. The board cited  鈥�,鈥� in pushing him out. The headmaster, meanwhile, chalked up the professional violation to his 鈥渆motional and personal needs.鈥�

Despite the circumstances of his exit, the president of the board of trustees for his work, and he was immediately hired as an advisor to the provost of Columbia University, who was then a Dalton board member. He went on to run The School at Columbia University, a private K-8 school created by the university, according to his . As recently as 2017, Dunnan was working as the academic dean at another New York City private school, Avenues, followed by a one-year stint as a senior advisor at Success Academy Charter Schools. He lists himself as still working as a college admissions consultant. 

鈥淚鈥檓 particularly proud of the fact that almost all of the students I have worked with have found a school that is a perfect fit for them,鈥� he boasts on his profile.

Dunnan, who in court filings, did not respond to requests for comment. The plaintiff settled her case sometime around 2021 for an undisclosed amount. 

A Dalton spokesperson said in a written statement that he was limited in what he could share about specific allegations because of the litigation and out of respect for student privacy. He went on to describe the safeguards now in place.

 鈥淒alton has clear policies and boundary guidelines for appropriate interactions with students, which are published annually in the employee handbook. In addition, we conduct pre-employment screening and ongoing training of all employees,鈥� he said. 鈥淐urrently, at the time of hire, all employees are fingerprinted, and we conduct a background check. Every two years all employees complete a mandated reporter training, and annually they attend boundaries and sexual harassment prevention trainings.鈥�

Many of the incidents of alleged abuse in the CVA complaints occurred before New York state made criminal background checks mandatory for public educators in , but numerous experts and advocates say background checks alone do not go far enough. Since many allegations are handled internally or are never prosecuted, they leave no criminal paper trail. 

A 2010 U.S. Government Accountability Office found four key factors that lead to 鈥減assing the trash,鈥� including performing inadequate background checks and failing to follow up or inquire about 鈥渢roubling information regarding criminal histories鈥� on job applications

The 2015 Every Students Succeeds Act was meant to help combat this practice by including a directive that any K-12 institution receiving federal funding needed to institute safeguarding policies, yet most states have yet to respond, according to research conducted by .

Only have passed legislation to strengthen hiring practices and screen out educators who might be sexual safety risks or to make sure current employees engaged in misconduct are disciplined appropriately. Of those, only 13 states require school administrators to contact former employers to ask about a candidate鈥檚 history.

New York is not one of them. To this day, the state has no law beyond traditional fingerprinting, and employees are not always included in that mandate.

Druger, the former Syracuse student, holds his high school鈥檚 hiring practices 鈥渂latantly responsible for a lot of what happened. It was their job to protect me and they didn鈥檛 鈥� If anyone had done even a half-ass job, I would never have met Conrad, and I wouldn鈥檛 be involved in any of this.鈥�

The Syracuse City School District did not respond to requests for comment. At the time of the 2019 ESPN investigation, of Mainwaring ever having been a staff member or a sanctioned volunteer in the district. Syracuse University told 社区黑料 it could not comment because of the ongoing litigation.  

After decades of being passed from school to school and state to state, Mainwaring was eventually sentenced to in prison in 2024 for abusing young boys decades before at a Massachusetts summer camp. Even then, the criminal conviction was only possible because of a stipulation that stops the clock on the commonwealth鈥檚 statute of limitations if the perpetrator leaves the state.

New York is a Legal Outlier 

While advances in code of conduct policies, criminal background checks and mandated reporting laws have helped to protect some students over the past three decades, 社区黑料鈥檚 reporting found that significant loopholes still remain 鈥� especially in New York. 

In October 2025, Enough Abuse and Prevent Child Abuse America did a of five recommended types of child abuse laws. New York had passed only three: mandating child sexual abuse education in schools; establishing a child sexual abuse task force and requiring student safety poster laws. Missing was employing standard screening tools, beyond a criminal background check, to prevent schools from hiring abusers.

The state is also a significant outlier in that it doesn鈥檛 specifically criminalize educator sexual misconduct. This means that once a student turns 17, the age of consent in New York, it is no longer illegal for their teachers to engage in a sexual relationship with them. This leaves older students, who can remain enrolled in public school up until they鈥檙e 21, unprotected. Many of these students tend to be those with disabilities, leaving young people already at a heightened risk with the fewest protections against abuse, said Terri Miller, president of the advocacy organization S.E.S.A.M.E. 

It also puts the Child Victims Act, which seemingly protects all children until they鈥檙e 18, at odds with the age of consent, meaning, 鈥淵ou have some really murky law and litigating it can get complicated,鈥� according to Helene Weiss, a partner at Marsh Law Firm who represents survivors. 

In comparison, 39 states and D.C. have adopted statutes that specifically criminalize the sexual abuse of children by anyone working in or associated with schools and by people in positions of authority over a student, many beyond the age of consent, according to Enough Abuse. In Massachusetts, where the age of consent is 16, the governor signed into law in  July.

While New York has no such prohibitions on educators, the state does criminalize sexual relationships in so-called vulnerable 鈥渢reatment-provider鈥� contexts, like doctors and patients.

鈥淎 patient, by law, is incapable of consent. 鈥� but that doesn鈥檛 exist with teachers (and students)?鈥� said an incredulous Thomas, Druger鈥檚 attorney. 鈥淟ike what? How the hell? If anything, it鈥檚 even worse.鈥�

The state also on the prevalence of child sexual abuse. And once abuse has been found, educator disciplinary records are particularly challenging to access in New York, unlike in where that information is easily found online.

鈥淲hile you can get the disciplinary records of (N.Y.) podiatrists, hairdressers, lawyers, doctors, you cannot get the disciplinary records of teachers online,鈥� said Marsh. 鈥淭here鈥檚 no place to even look for them 鈥� regarding the professionals that have the most contact with children.鈥�

Further obscuring access to information about many of these cases are the nondisclosure clauses written into some settlement agreements, according to numerous attorneys and survivors who spoke with 社区黑料 about this issue.

鈥淐onfidential settlements are not out of the ordinary, but ones that limit survivors from speaking about their experiences, even with family members, can have a chilling effect,鈥� said Weiss. 鈥淭hey can discourage other survivors from coming forward, shield institutions from accountability and prevent communities from understanding whether misconduct is isolated or systemic.鈥� 

While some attorneys argued that NDAs can help to protect survivors, most interviewed by 社区黑料 pointed to them as yet another tool for silencing victims, one that allows abuse to occur behind a veil of secrecy. Private schools almost universally request these confidentiality agreements when settling CVA cases, multiple attorneys said.

As these cases have worked their way through the courts, critics have raised concerns about, sometimes jeopardizing funding for today鈥檚 students in order to hold accountable teachers from decades ago.

As of October 2024, New York City alone paid over $160 million to settle more than 150 general Child Victims Act cases 鈥� most of them filed against its Department of Education, according to an investigation by the news organization . They found that in some cases, the educators named in suits were still employed and teaching, even as the city paid to settle abuse claims.

Some schools are insured for these types of incidents, but a number of insurance companies have refused to make payments, citing the school鈥檚 negligence or the age of the cases 鈥� a practice and legal experts have criticized. 

In November, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul that allows school districts to issue bonds for up to 30 years 鈥� instead of 15 鈥� to pay for CVA claims, in an attempt to give schools greater flexibility and financial stability.

Advocate Michelle Denault, in Illinois, said critiques around the high costs of settlements are disturbing, noting, 鈥淚t’s one of those things that I really struggle with 鈥� that we’re worried about our wallets instead of fixing our culture.鈥� 

Witnessing decades of past abuse and a steady drumbeat , those close to the issue argue hefty financial consequences may be the only thing capable of forcing change or accountability.

鈥淭he reality in this space is that adults prefer and protect adults, and the need of the adult being accused is always so much more important than the need to make sure they don鈥檛 do it again,鈥� said Hamilton. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 why we have an epidemic of cover-up, not just child sex abuse.鈥�

Disclosure: Amanda Geduld attended Dalton School and graduated in 2011. Her father, Buzzy Geduld, is a former member of Dalton鈥檚 board of trustees and led its investment committee. Their involvement with the school came after former headmaster Gardner Dunnan鈥檚 tenure.

The law created an opportunity for individuals to seek justice from their accused abusers and the institutions that shielded them by temporarily setting aside the statute of limitations that would have otherwise barred their civil complaints.

But the Child Victims Act also opened a much wider window, one that allows for a clearer understanding of how child sexual abuse occurs at a systemic level across many decades. That is what 社区黑料 set out to uncover by combing through the almost 11,000 New York cases that were filed and identifying, examining and analyzing the ones that involved schools.

Here are the top five things we discovered:

Nearly 1 in 5 of the Child Victims Act plaintiffs allege school-based abuse

社区黑料 identified at least 1,973 complaints that accuse a school, educator or other district personnel. That means that more than 18% of all the New York state cases 鈥� or nearly 1 in 5 鈥� attest that a child was sexually abused, assaulted or raped by an adult who had access to them through their school. The numbers from 社区黑料鈥檚 analysis are considerably higher than the 13.4% of cases attributed to K-12 schools in Child USA鈥檚 of New York鈥檚 Child Victims Act. They also provide greater context to the frequently cited estimate that 1 in 10 K-12 students will be subject to sexual misconduct by an adult by the time they graduate. In some New York counties, the percentage was far greater: In Suffolk County, for example, 36% of all cases involved schools and in the Bronx, nearly 40%. And in Franklin County, on New York鈥檚 far northern border, survivors in an overwhelming 75% of the CVA cases filed accused school employees of abuse.

New York leads in the number of cases, and the majority of them remain unresolved

At least have passed similar lookback windows or age limit revival laws for child sexual abuse claims in the last 20 years, but New York has produced by far the greatest number of cases. Seven years later, the vast majority still await resolution. Of the 10,787 CVA cases filed in New York courts, roughly 8,000 had progressed beyond the initial filing as of February 2026. Of those, just under 3,000 had been settled or otherwise disposed of, leaving nearly 63% still pending, according to 社区黑料鈥檚 analysis of public court records. Brooklyn and Manhattan had the biggest backlogs, with nearly 80% of their cases still pending. Nassau County on Long Island had the best track record, clearing 606 of its 681 cases, leaving just 11% still pending. 

Serial abusers and serially abusive schools

社区黑料 was able to identify the patterns that produced some of the most egregious accounts of sexual abuse and alleged predators: namely that victims were resoundingly ignored. Virtually all of the cases involving school-based serial abusers 鈥� teachers or other school staffers accused of sexually assaulting, raping and sodomizing dozens of students across decades 鈥� also included accounts of students and sometimes their parents, telling school principals and others in power about the abuse and nothing being done. In some cases, including that of a Catholic elementary school coach and janitor in the Bronx accused of sexually assaulting hundreds of boys between the mid-1960s and the early 鈥�90s, the abuse appeared to be an open secret in the larger community, as well. 鈥淏esides, he was so loved in the neighborhood, even though everybody knew. Everybody knew in the neighborhood what was going on 鈥� but he was loved by all of the adults,鈥� one plaintiff said in his deposition. Similarly, the hundreds of cases filed against residential treatment centers, where at-risk students live and go to school on the same campus, assert that children confided in multiple adults, including government social workers assigned to their cases, begging in vain for protection from abuse they could not escape.

New York is a legal outlier

A now pending in the New York state Senate would criminalize grooming and predatory misconduct toward a child enrolled in school, but 社区黑料鈥檚 reporting found that significant loopholes still remain in the state with the greatest number of CVA cases. Right now, New York doesn鈥檛 specifically criminalize educator sexual misconduct. This means that once a student turns 17, the age of consent in New York, it is no longer illegal for their teachers to engage in a sexual relationship with them. In comparison, 39 states and D.C. have adopted statutes that specifically criminalize the sexual abuse of children by anyone working in or associated with schools and by people in positions of authority over a student, many beyond the age of consent, according to Enough Abuse. New York also on the prevalence of child sexual abuse. And once abuse has been found, educator disciplinary records are particularly challenging to access in New York, unlike in where that information is easily found online. 鈥淲hile you can get the disciplinary records of (N.Y.) podiatrists, hairdressers, lawyers, doctors, you cannot get the disciplinary records of teachers online,鈥� attorney James Marsh told 社区黑料. 鈥淭here鈥檚 no place to even look for them 鈥� regarding the professionals that have the most contact with children.鈥�

Lasting damage

The Child Victims Act recognizes that those who were sexually abused as children are typically unable to speak about it until well into their adulthood, when the criminal and civil statutes of limitations have already lapsed. The pain and trauma of that early abuse was still very much present in all the survivors that we spoke to for this story. One, assaulted as a third grader and now in his late 40s, told us that the very process of pursuing his CVA case brought back the self-destructive behaviors he thought he had quieted years earlier. He also sends his own children to private school: 鈥淚 distrust school districts.鈥� Another survivor, a grandfather of five who had yet to tell his adult sons what happened to him in high school, said he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and developed addiction issues in the 1990s: 鈥淚f I was on the edge of a cliff, genetically or whatever, those (abusive) events pushed me off to become an alcoholic.鈥� Bob Druger, an acclaimed Syracuse eye surgeon with multiple other advanced degrees and his own martial arts studio, connects his intense level of professional achievement and constant workouts to his abuse. 鈥淚 just have a million things that I鈥檓 doing, and so you sort of say, 鈥榃ell, that鈥檚 successful.鈥� But, you know, maybe I鈥檓 doing that聽鈥斺�� he paused, his voice breaking, as he began to cry. 鈥淪orry. It鈥檚 hard to talk about all of this. 鈥aybe I鈥檓 doing that to block out the other shit. Especially this thing. It鈥檚 just too overwhelming.鈥�

This was just the latest in a string of disturbing incidents involving this educator that I had witnessed and reported to my bosses throughout the school year, hoping they would investigate and intervene. To my knowledge, nothing was ever done: the educator was protected; the school was protected; the student was not.

My interest in writing an investigative story about school-based sexual misconduct 鈥� and the systems and players that allow it to persist 鈥� was largely born from that experience. New York鈥檚 Child Victims Act opened an avenue to do that deep-dive reporting. First passed in 2019, the law extended both the criminal and civil statutes of limitations for child sex abuse claims moving forward while creating a lookback window for adult survivors to sue their alleged childhood abusers and the institutions that shielded them.

That second chance was seized upon by more than 14,000 plaintiffs who filed nearly 11,000 complaints between 2019 and 2021. We wanted to know the extent to which schools and educators were implicated in those allegations, which went as far back as the 1950s and stretched to as recently as 2018. For me, that meant manually combing through thousands of court records using the New York State Court Electronic Filing system. 

Between January 2024 and May 2026, I searched Child Victims Act cases in all 62 New York counties, asking the filing system to identify those that included the word 鈥渟chool鈥� in the defendant鈥檚 title. I read through those complaints to determine whether it fit our definition of school-based abuse, meaning the alleged perpetrator had access to the child through their role as a school employee.

In a vast number of cases, the alleged assault also occurred on school grounds 鈥� an empty classroom, private office or other secluded area in the building 鈥� but it often carried over to other locations: a teacher’s car, a class outing or an overnight school trip.

Recognizing some cases had been missed in that first attempt, I later asked the AI tool Claude to make a list of all residential treatment centers in New York state either currently operating or that had been operating at some point over the past 75 years. I then searched the court filing system for each of these facilities to see if they had been named in a Child Victims Act case. Once those cases were identified, either my editor, Kathy Moore, or I read through those additional complaints.

After culling out duplicates, I was able to identify at least 1,973 complaints that accuse a school, educator or other district personnel. That means that more than 18% of all the New York state cases 鈥� or nearly 1 in 5 鈥� attest that a child was sexually abused, assaulted or raped by an adult who had access to them through their school. In some counties, that percentage was much higher. 

We were able to create an interactive map showing how all these cases were distributed across New York state, the country鈥檚 fourth most populous and a widely divergent place that encompasses New York City, home to , and Hamilton County in the Adirondack Park, the most in the eastern United States with just 5,000 people. The five counties that comprise NYC accounted for 5,285 CVA cases; Hamilton County had just one.

We also created a searchable database so that readers can examine the scores of school-based complaints and other related court filings on their own.

A further analysis allowed us to break down the school-based cases by type: public, private, residential or religious. Catholic schools played an outsized role in the last category. One of the most painstaking parts of the process involved cases where the accused abuser was a priest, who served roles in both the church and its parish school. We only included such examples if the clergy member was clearly identified as acting in a school-based capacity 鈥� as a teacher, counselor or administrator, for example 鈥�  and primarily had access to the student because of that position. In most of these cases, we also confirmed that the abuse occurred on school 鈥� rather than church 鈥� grounds.

For over 100 of these more convoluted cases, I did a second review and then Moore did a third.

We counted almost all abuse allegations that occurred at residential treatment or private boarding schools where the line between students鈥� living and educational space is fluid and accused abusers often move freely between the two. We did not include cases in those settings where the alleged abuse was solely student on student, though many of the residential treatment complaints assert that children were being simultaneously raped and assaulted both by their peers and the adults on campus charged with protecting them. We did count the cases that also implicated adults.

The narratives in all the Child Victims Act complaints are disturbing, but reading through nearly 2,000 of them gave me visibility into the victims鈥� pain and trauma. It also allowed me to detect patterns that underscore alleged school-based abuse: adults who dismiss or ignore complaints, enabling the worst serial predators to abuse children for decades; the institutional set-up that seemingly turns some schools into breeding grounds, meaning the adults and the students change, but the abusive behavior does not; and the instinct to protect the adult鈥檚 career and the school鈥檚 reputation over the child鈥檚 safety. 

This tendency allowed accused abusers to quietly resign rather than be held accountable, the complaints charge. Many of them moved on to new schools, only to repeat the alleged predatory pattern. 

We made extensive efforts to reach out to every school, district and living person named in our story at least twice, by phone and email, when contact information was available. In cases where this wasn鈥檛 possible, we attempted to locate individuals through personal websites, their former employers, LinkedIn, LexisNexis and other people search engines. We also used the court records to identify attorneys for each defendant we name in the story and reached out to them at least twice, by phone and by email, with a detailed list of our findings. 

For cases where we did not successfully make contact, or where the individual is deceased, we noted that in the story. For some alleged perpetrators, I filed public records requests with the state Education Department for their licensure information, discipline records and retirement payouts. For one, I traveled to Central New York to question him about the allegations in person. I tracked down and spoke to another, a 91-year-old retiree criminally convicted of child sex abuse in two separate New York public school districts, now living in Florida. 

I interviewed over three dozen advocates, attorneys, professors and survivors across the state and country. Finding CVA plaintiffs in school-based abuse complaints who were willing to be part of this story was challenging. Victims carry heavy shame 鈥� two of the survivors in our story have yet to tell their own children what happened to them 鈥� and they run the risk of possibly harming their ongoing legal fight or endangering their financial settlement, many of which have confidentiality or nondisclosure agreements attached. 

The identities of all anonymous survivors quoted in our story are known to me and my editor, and all of their legal cases were reviewed.

For a majority of these plaintiffs, there is no end in sight to their civil cases. The law was meant to give victims, who were dismissed or silenced as children, another chance at justice, but five years after the lookback window closed, that promise remains unfilled. Public record requests I filed with the New York State Office of Court Administration asking for the total number of cases filed by county and their disposition allowed us to reveal for the first time that nearly 63% of all the Child Victims Act cases that moved beyond the initial filing were still pending as of February 2026. In some counties, 75% to 80% or more remained unresolved.

New York is one of at least 30 states that have enacted lookback windows or age limit revivals laws, but it has by far produced the greatest number of cases. I wanted to determine if there are particular elements to New York鈥檚 laws that have led to such high levels of sex abuse accusations against educators. I waded through statutes to determine the patchwork of prevention and enforcement regulations that exists in different states around sexual abuse in schools. It turns out that New York鈥檚 fall short by several measures, including a failure to recognize how child victims are groomed by their abusers or to protect students once they reach age 17.

A now pending in the state Senate would criminalize grooming and predatory misconduct toward a child enrolled in school. In first-degree cases, school-based abusers would be added to the sex offender registry. Schools would be required to train staff on grooming and update their mandatory reporter training for sex abuse offenses. And it would strengthen background screenings for prospective hires, requiring schools to review employment history.

Many thanks to the attorneys, advocates and experts who spent countless hours helping me to understand this complex and ongoing issue. My deepest gratitude goes to the survivors who trusted me and 社区黑料 with their stories and encouraged us to share them in the hopes they will make schools 鈥� and the young people in them 鈥� safer from sexual abuse than they were.

When Croton-on-Hudson鈥檚 youngest students returned to school earlier this month, a familiar 鈥� and increasingly controversial 鈥� classroom tool was missing from their desks: iPads.

A new districtwide policy prohibits the devices in kindergarten through second grade with few exceptions. Instead, teachers are emphasizing traditional, hands-on learning through activities like games, puzzles, and pen-and-paper assignments.

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The screen-free classrooms arrived after a grassroots effort from local parents in Croton-on-Hudson, an affluent, highly educated suburban village on the Hudson River,听40 miles north of Manhattan.

Formed in July 2025, the Croton Community Collective has amassed more than聽400 local members, built a network of parents who鈥檝e tried to give their children a screen-free childhood, reshaped the school board, and secured several changes limiting the use of educational technology in instruction

It鈥檚 part of a larger push by the community, where many parents have pledged to delay giving their children smart phones. Volunteers have stocked scores of local businesses with boxes of books and magazines, so that kids have a screen-free way to pass the time while waiting for a haircut or sitting at a diner. And over聽100 families have installed landlines in their homes to help children stay connected sans cell phones.

鈥淲e want Croton to be famous for being a town that brought back childhood, at home and at school,鈥� said local parent聽Jill Anderson, who founded the coalition. 鈥淲e want people to move here for their kids to have a different life, like the way it used to be.鈥�

Ed tech has become a fixture in classrooms nationwide in the past decade. Today, most US children spend at least part of their school day on a laptop or tablet. Advocates say the shift in instruction is key to preparing students for聽, while critics say it sets students back, citing research that has linked excessive screen time to聽,听, and聽.

A growing number of parents and teachers are mobilizing to put the brakes on the trend.

Danny Zeliger, a local parent who teaches high school English in another district, is one of them. A decade ago, when he was instructed to have his students use an online grammar and writing program, he remembers looking out at a classroom full of students absorbed in their screens and thinking, 鈥溾��

So Zeliger does not allow his own young children to use iPads. But at a parent orientation for his daughter鈥檚 school just聽over a year ago, he learned that teachers regularly provided them to students in the classroom.

鈥淵ou can imagine how hard it is to not give your kid an iPad at home, and then the first one they receive is from their kindergarten teacher,鈥� he said.

As a member of the Croton Community Collective, Zeliger said he鈥檚 excited by the district鈥檚 new guidelines.

In addition to the early elementary school changes, students in grades聽3 and 4聽now share iPads from classroom carts rather than keeping individual devices at their desks. Fifth graders are no longer allowed to bring their iPads home at the end of the school day, and sixth graders can鈥檛 take them home on weekends. Teachers have stopped using online read-alouds, letting students watch videos during snack and movement breaks, or offering technology as a reward for students who finish work early.

And at the high school level, teachers are also instructed to limit the use of devices and avoid relying on video-based lessons.

More districts could follow in Croton鈥檚 footsteps soon. A bill filed聽by Sen. Andrew Gounardes last month would sharply limit screen use in schools and 鈥�.鈥� New York City Public Schools has taken its own approach, announcing a one-year moratorium on student-facing generative AI and caps on screen time through middle school.

Croton Superintendent Stephen Walker said the聽1,500-student district鈥檚 new approach is to ensure technology 鈥渆arns its way into a classroom rather than becoming a default resource within each student鈥檚 experience.鈥�

But it took Croton time to get there.

For more than a year, ed tech and screen time have been a recurring source of discussion 鈥� and at times, tension 鈥� at Croton school board meetings, as parents questioned how children were using devices in the classroom.

At a聽June 2025 meeting, for example,听Don Laird told board members that he鈥檇 made the 鈥渉eartbreaking鈥� decision to withdraw his children from the district due largely to concerns over screen time. For several years, the district had provided all of its elementary and middle school students with iPads. Laird said his kindergartener would come home describing advertisements he had seen on classroom screens, his teacher showing a video of someone reading a book instead of reading it aloud, and students watching videos during snack time.

鈥淭hese aren鈥檛 isolated incidents,鈥� Laird told board members at the time. 鈥淭hey paint a picture of a classroom where technology is being used to subdue and distract students rather than engage and develop them.鈥�

Six months later, in December,听Claire Benoist told the school board that her 5-year-old daughter was watching videos on YouTube and online learning platforms in kindergarten throughout each school day. 鈥淲e feel that we are feeding our kids brainrot, and it is being disguised as ed tech,鈥� she said.

The group started making concerted efforts to get the district to implement three of its priorities: enforcing the state鈥檚 cell phone ban throughout the entire school day, including during passing periods and lunch; keeping young children off iPads; and ensuring school-issued devices are not being sent home after school.

Parents zeroed in on the聽May 2026 school board election as a way to make sure they were taken seriously. In聽April, the Croton Community Collective held a packed forum asking board hopefuls to discuss their views on ed tech. While the group did not directly endorse any candidates,听two of its members ran on platforms that prioritized reducing screen time in schools and both went on to defeat incumbent candidates, including one who had been on the board since聽1998.

Around the same time, the push to rein in ed tech was gaining momentum both nationally and across New York: The American Federation of Teachers, a national labor union, unveiled its 鈥溾�� policy framework, and the New York State United Teachers union issued a statement advocating for strict, developmentally appropriate limits on tech use.

By the time the board election approached, the Croton-Harmon school district had already started reexamining its technology usage, Walker told New York Focus. In March,听 reducing its spending on ed tech software by聽nearly 33 percent and stopped sending devices home with K-5 students. According to聽, average daily screen use from January through April began to decline over the previous year.

In June, the district held a teacher summit to discuss ed tech in the classroom, and shortly after, it told teachers it would adopt new guidelines for screen use, step up enforcement of the phone ban, and prioritize pen-and-paper instruction.

Walker said he鈥檚 heard from more parents concerned about screens than on any other issue over the course of his career.

鈥淭his was one of those times when we were able to say, 鈥楾here鈥檚 a movement here, and there鈥檚 an impetus to ask some really challenging questions about our system,鈥欌�� he said.

The district allocated around聽$40,000 to replace digital tools with high-quality, analog resources including manipulative math games, new class sets of books, workbooks, dictionaries, and puzzles. The hope is that the district will save some money in the long term by canceling its subscriptions to online learning programs and no longer having to keep up with a 1-1 device program.

So far, it鈥檚 been an adjustment for some local teachers.

Losing access to digital learning resources feels 鈥渓ike the rug was pulled out underneath us,鈥� said聽Tara Carlucci, who has been teaching kindergarten in the district for two decades.

Last school year, she said her students used iPads at learning stations to practice handwriting and learn to count. But while she believes that most teachers used technology responsibly, she understands why the changes were necessary to address educators who have become overly reliant on it.

Kindergarten teacher聽Dana Buckhout echoed the sentiment, noting that she is still trying to figure out how to differentiate instruction for struggling students who used the iPad as a tool. But since the school year started a couple weeks ago, she said she鈥檚 really not feeling the loss of devices.

鈥淚t feels so troubling when you are just one person trying to reduce technology, or even if it鈥檚 just one grade level or school,鈥� she said. But acting collectively creates more impact, she said. 鈥淲e鈥檙e all fighting for the same thing, because obviously there needs to be a shift.鈥�

This story originally appeared in , a nonprofit news publication investigating power in New York. .

The discussion on NY Inspires, the state鈥檚 ambitious plan to overhaul secondary education, centered on the decision to decouple the state鈥檚 Regents exams as a graduation requirement, beginning in the 2027-28 school year. Students will still take the exams, administered , to meet federal accountability rules. But graduation will no longer be tied to scores.

While EdTrust-New York supports additional flexibility for graduation requirements, we are deeply concerned the state is moving forward with this change without putting an alternative system in place to measure whether students are ready for success after high school. 

Now is not the time for New York to weaken the state鈥檚 only objective measure of high school readiness. Doing so could mask the deep challenges facing our schools and students while making it even harder for parents, employers and colleges to determine whether students have the skills they need to succeed after graduation. 

State, national and international data show that New York students continue to struggle with reading and math. In 2025, the state鈥檚 graduation rate reached 85%, yet only 56% of students passed the Algebra 1 Regents Exam. And on the 2024 NAEP, only 31% of 8th graders entering high school were proficient in reading. Just this week, the that U.S. 15-year-olds scored near their lowest levels in reading and math since 2000. 

These numbers reveal a clear disconnect between the assessment data showing a math and literacy crisis, and what the New York State Education Department (NYSED) considers college and career readiness.  

Standardized assessments such as Regents exams are far from perfect. But they are not responsible for New York鈥檚 poor reading and math outcomes. Simply changing graduation requirements will not solve the underlying problem: New York is failing to prepare its students 鈥� particularly Black and Latinx students, students from low-income households, students with disabilities and multilingual learners 鈥� with the foundational skills they need for post-secondary success.  

Even more alarming than the policy itself is the poor roll out of NY Inspires. As the new school year gets underway, schools still face significant confusion and a lack of guidance about how they will measure proficiency in core high school subjects instead of Regents exams for current high school students in less than a year. 

If the state Education Department truly wants to create a new graduation standard and position New York as a national leader preparing students to become 21st Century learners, it should not eliminate Regents exams as a graduation requirement without first establishing a credible alternative. State leaders should provide schools with clear expectations, reliable measures and the resources they need before they weaken an existing statewide standard.  

When state leaders roll out poorly thought-out policies, the students most likely to suffer are those whom our school system already serves least well. New York should also learn from the experiences of states such as Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, which attempted similar competency-based graduation reforms before scaling them back or abandoning them amid concerns about equity, inconsistent definitions of proficiency and an inadequate educator capacity and training. 

The state should pause the implementation of NY Inspires, including the elimination of Regents exams as a graduation requirement. Before moving forward, the department should make a concerted effort to provide schools with the guidance, rubrics, and statewide calibrations they need to implement NY Inspires effectively, equitably and transparently. 

New York can and should rethink how it measures student readiness. But it should not remove the measuring stick before it has built a better one.

New York City is expected to release its school policy for artificial intelligence on Wednesday, with a ban on student-facing AI tools for 2-K through eighth grade, according to four people briefed on the plans and Education Department documents obtained by Chalkbeat.

Under the new rules, the youngest children in the nation鈥檚 largest school system 鈥� those in its early childhood programs, elementary schools, and middle schools 鈥� would not have access to generative AI, including chatbots and AI tutors, sources said.

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The guidelines bar schools from giving individual devices to students in preschools through second grade, though classrooms will be allowed to have smart boards, sources said. For students in grades 3 to 5, the policy recommends limiting screen time on individual devices to 30 minutes and 45 minutes for middle school students.

High schoolers are expected to have restricted access to AI, but might be able to use it for literacy, career readiness programs, and in five pilot programs at an unspecified number of schools, according to the Daily News, . Screen time recommendations depend on subject matter and school approach.

The restrictions would represent a significantly more aggressive stance against AI and screen time in schools than the city had taken. Education leaders across the country are likely to be watching as they also grapple with how students should interact with the fast-changing technology.

鈥淵ounger students need hands-on learning, social interaction, play, and teacher-guided instruction,鈥� Education Department officials wrote in a presentation outlining the policy obtained by Chalkbeat. 鈥淩outine individual screen use can crowd out those experiences.鈥�

In high school, the presentation continued, 鈥渟tudents need guided preparation for a world and economy increasingly driven by AI and new technologies -paired with instruction on how AI works, its biases and risks, and how to evaluate its outputs.鈥�

Teachers will be allowed to use approved AI tools for such instructional tasks as lesson planning, translation, and drafting communications, according to the presentation. They will not be allowed to use the technology for grading, behavior monitoring, counseling, or developing special education plans.

City officials are in the process of creating a task force that will offer input on the policy鈥檚 implementation going forward, multiple people briefed on the Education Department鈥檚 plans said.

An Education Department spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.

Multiple people said there would be some exceptions to the policy to account for regular assessments in reading and math that students typically complete on computers, as well as for some student groups, including English language learners and students with disabilities.

When the city unveiled its preliminary AI guidelines in March, forcing the city to rethink its approach and delay its timeline for a comprehensive policy by about two months, leaving little time for schools to prepare for the change before the first day on Sept. 10. It鈥檚 unclear how the Education Department plans to enforce the policy.

The initial guidance used a traffic-light framework to delineate risk levels of different AI uses in the classroom, mainly by teachers. Student AI use 鈥� one of the thorniest issues educators and families are currently confronting 鈥� got little attention.

The city seemed caught off guard by the momentum of grassroots parent groups calling for an AI moratorium, with thousands of people signing a petition to stop the use of generative AI in schools and scores voicing their concerns at school board meetings.

More than half of City Council members use in schools, citing concerns about learning and mental health. Samuels acknowledged in May that indicating that the final version would have more stringent rules on AI use, especially for younger students.

In July, as the city hashed out its new guidance, until officials released the new policy, who worried they would not have access to key software programs, such as electronic gradebooks and platforms to communicate with families, when welcoming students back to school next week.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at

More than a decade ago, Queens teacher Nicole Radosti Pipia鈥檚 fifth- and sixth-grade students seemed to love reading novels in school. 

鈥淭he Giver鈥� by Lois Lowry was prized for its mystery. 鈥淲onder鈥� by R.J. Palacio taught them about kindness and acceptance. 鈥淔reak the Mighty鈥� by Rodman Philbrick showed them the power of friendship. 

Now, she said, they don鈥檛 read any. Instead, students often spend class time reading excerpts and short stories to better prepare them for the sorts of questions they鈥檇 encounter on standardized exams.

The demands of her school鈥檚 reading program leave no room to study novels, the English teacher said.

鈥淲e鈥檙e told that we cannot deviate from the program, and if you have to do the program, there鈥檚 literally no time,鈥� Pipia said. 

Another New York City middle school teacher, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation, said her school taught novels before the pandemic. Now, 鈥渋t can be done, but not with the constraints placed on us as teachers,鈥� she said. 

For the past few years, her school has required her to have her students 鈥� most of whom are English language learners and struggling readers 鈥� spend half of each 40-minute class period, four days a week, completing an online targeted reading intervention program, she said. They often end up clicking through the program and visiting Spotify and YouTube instead. The remainder of the period is devoted to the school鈥檚 core curriculum, which does not require novel studies. 

The classroom library she spent a decade building has become 鈥減urely decorative,鈥� she said. With teachers no longer using books, her school is 鈥渓iterally throwing them away.鈥� Even if she had the time to teach a book, the veteran teacher said, her students either have no interest in reading or barely know how. 

鈥淗alf of them have never read a book,鈥� she said. 鈥淚n 10 years, we went from kids reading multiple novels in class to them having never opened a book.鈥� 

All New York City elementary schools and most middle schools use one of three city-approved reading curricula. Two of them 鈥� EL Education and Wit and Wisdom 鈥� require full-length books, while HMH Into Reading and Into Literature do not.

In a statement provided to New York Focus, New York City Public Schools Press Secretary Nicole Brownstein emphasized that English class is 鈥渘ot the only time students have access to full texts.鈥� 

鈥淟iteracy is foundational for every child鈥檚 success and every New York City Public Schools student has access to whole books both in their classrooms and via the citywide digital library,鈥� she said, adding that there was a 14 percent increase in digital book checkouts last school year compared to the year prior. 

There鈥檚 limited data on how much students are actually reading in school. In New York state, where districts have significant autonomy over curriculum, reading programs can vary widely depending on the district, campus, and even classroom. 

For more than a decade, classrooms across the state have been shifting away from full-length books and toward shorter literary works, largely to align with state learning standards and assessments. In interviews with New York Focus, English teachers from across the state lamented that teaching novels has also become more challenging because students have less stamina for or interest in reading them anymore 鈥� even in districts that still encourage it.

鈥淚 teach fewer novels because the kids simply cannot handle it,鈥� said Lori Atkinson, a 37-year high school English teacher at the rural Copenhagen Central School District in the North Country.

Atkinson has seen a slump in endurance and attention span. She cited the impact of the Common Core, a set of academic standards for English and math that most US states, including New York, adopted in the 2010s. It placed a greater emphasis on students鈥� ability to analyze short, complex passages of text. (In 2017, New York  and adopted a similar state-specific set of standards.) 

鈥淚 believe the decline in reading happened when we were forced to excerpt everything, because when you excerpt, you are not building stamina or background knowledge,鈥� Atkinson said. 鈥淚t became all about standardized tests and trying to get the mark that you were proficient.鈥� 

But Atkinson primarily blames students鈥� lack of reading skills on technology, social media, and the rise of artificial intelligence. Teenagers addicted to instant gratification do not have the concentration and skills they need to stay engaged through a long novel, she said, and turn to AI to generate summaries for required reading.

When Atkinson taught ninth and 10th grade in the 1990s, she typically taught five novels and a Shakespeare play each year. Now, teaching 11th and 12th grade, she considers herself lucky to get through three books. She said she used to lend out 20 books a week to students, and now lends out one or two a month. 

The challenge extends beyond novels. Atkinson said that when she assigns a two-page article at the beginning of class, she often sees about half the class stop reading within three minutes. 

Even things that were once a treat are now a challenge to their attention spans. Last school year, after her seniors read 鈥淩emarkably Bright Creatures鈥� by Shelby Van Pelt, she showed them a five-minute movie trailer for the Netflix adaptation. She said most of the teenagers stopped paying attention halfway through. 

Saranac Lake Central School District in the Adirondacks, where high school English teacher Kelsey Francis has worked for 26 years, still encourages educators to teach full-length texts. 

In recent years, however, the number of books Francis can get through during the school year has dropped dramatically. She attributes that, in part, to how AI has affected teaching and learning. Francis has largely stopped assigning homework because she expects students will turn to AI to complete it. Instead, students have to do most of their work by hand in class. 

Making those changes has left significantly less class time for reading. 

It also takes students much longer to get through a book. Since the pandemic, Francis said, she鈥檚 seen a major decline in student vocabulary skills and stamina. 

鈥淭hey fatigue after more than a few pages,鈥� she said. 鈥淚f I were to ask them to independently read for 30 minutes, that is going to be really tough.鈥� 

English teacher and education consultant Emily Aierstok had a similar experience in her Capital Region school district. 

Because students have shorter attention spans, she鈥檚 had to slow down the pace of reading assignments. Instead of assigning two chapters of reading for kids to do at home, she now assigns one. And in addition to requiring 20 minutes of independent reading for homework, she now begins each class with five minutes of reading time to support struggling readers. 

But last school year, Aierstok鈥檚 seventh graders read eight books through in-class and independent reading 鈥� the most in her 26 years of teaching English. She said she鈥檚 been able to overcome challenges with student stamina and interest by giving her students agency in choosing which books to read. 

New York state鈥檚 English Language Arts standards require that students read 鈥渂oth shorter-text and excerpts, as well as full-length works.鈥� In a statement to New York Focus, State Education Department spokesperson JP O鈥橦are said the agency is committed to ensuring all students have access to skilled instruction, but also noted that local school boards and districts are responsible for selecting curricula and instructional materials. 

鈥淓xposing all students to grade-level reading materials with age-appropriate complex ideas and language is critical to mastering the learning standards and developing the knowledge and skills necessary for success beyond the classroom,鈥� the statement reads.听

Fewer than half of New York students in grades 3鈥�8 are proficient in reading, according to state data. Jeff Smink, deputy director at the advocacy group EdTrust-New York, said students鈥� lack of exposure to full-length books has contributed to the state鈥檚 literacy crisis. 

Smink said it鈥檚 important for students to read full-length books to build stamina, learn about context, and develop a love for reading. But he鈥檚 also concerned that too many students don鈥檛 have the foundational skills to reap the benefits of reading and said that teachers should be focused on building literacy earlier.

鈥淛ust giving a book to a kid that doesn鈥檛 have those foundational reading skills is also problematic and can lead to disengagement,鈥� he said. 

Atkinson, the Copenhagen teacher, said it鈥檚 critical teachers continue teaching students full-length books to 鈥渞ewire their brain鈥� and show students the rewards of persistence. Younger educators are not being taught the importance of novel studies in college and in teacher preparatory programs, she said, so it鈥檚 up to veteran educators to spread awareness. 

鈥淚f we never teach them a novel, then shame on us because we鈥檙e the ones who are not giving them the opportunity to build those skills,鈥� she said. 鈥淚f all we expect from them is an excerpt, then all we鈥檙e going to get from them is the bare minimum.鈥� 

This was originally published by .

But the 鈥渢echlash鈥� took a turn last week when seven families in a Philadelphia suburb sued their school district in federal court for not allowing families to opt their children out of using the internet.

The 8,500-student Lower Merion School District adopted a Aug. 17 that limits the use of devices in elementary school and doesn鈥檛 assign laptops or iPads to students until they鈥檙e in fifth grade. 

The policy tries to strike a balance between recognizing that 鈥渇amilies have different perspectives on student access to technology,鈥� while still 鈥渕aximizing the educational value of technology resources.鈥� But in June, the board repealed a that allowed  parents to refuse internet-connected devices for their kids. 

Citing research on the addictive nature of online sites and the harmful effects of social media, the parents accuse the district, Superintendent Frank Ranelli and seven board members of creating 鈥渁n environment that is unhealthy, unsafe and invasive for students.鈥� The complaint argues that the policy denies parents鈥� rights to make decisions about their children鈥檚 鈥渦pbringing and education鈥� and puts kids at risk of accessing online pornography and violent videos. One child, according to the lawsuit, began 鈥渃ompulsively playing an online poker game on his school device.鈥�

In a statement, the district said it 鈥渄enies the allegations and will respond further through the judicial process.鈥� But officials also noted that not all of the parents have students in the district. Of the seven families bringing the lawsuit, just three have students still enrolled. The rest have children described as 鈥渆ligible to attend鈥� this fall. One family enrolled their kids in a private school, according to the complaint.

An 鈥榰nusual lawsuit鈥�

The case is the latest move by the EdTech Law Center, led by a husband and wife legal team in Texas, to force districts to significantly restrict internet use. Andrew and Julie Liddell, who are working with a representing the parents, also have several active cases against ed tech vendors, including , an online learning platform, and  , a student information system. In a statement, Andrew Liddell said he believes the case 鈥渋s the first of its kind.鈥� It鈥檚 not typical, experts say, for disputes between parents and districts over tech use to end up in court. 

鈥淭his is an unusual lawsuit,鈥� said Stacy Hawthorne, board chair for the Consortium for School Networking, a professional organization. It鈥檚 difficult, she said, to bring a constitutional challenge over a school board鈥檚 policymaking authority. 鈥淐ourts generally have not given individual families a veto over a district鈥檚 instructional or technology policies.鈥�

The lawsuit comes about a week after Education Secretary Linda McMahon said during a CNN interview that to request something different if they think an ed tech tool, especially one using artificial intelligence, is not right for their child. 

In response to parents鈥� concerns and warnings from researchers about the effects of too much screen time, several states are . Last week, New York lawmakers that would make paper-and-pencil tasks the predominant means of instruction in elementary classrooms. 

Kelly Clancy, a Brooklyn mom of three who serves on a local community education council in the New York City Public Schools, said parents are 鈥渞eally excited鈥� about the bill and that advocacy groups 鈥渁re planning a major statewide push.鈥� But she thinks most parents are more interested in seeing districts adopt strict screen time policies rather than opting out. 

鈥淧arents want to trust their kids鈥� schools to put learning first,鈥� she said. 鈥淣o one wants to reach the point of litigation.鈥� 

Ed tech organizations and the have called for limiting overuse while thoroughly vetting programs to ensure they improve learning.

鈥淣othing should replace that one-on-one teacher interaction with students,鈥� McMahon said during her CNN spot. 鈥淎re we looking at it as recreational screen time or are we looking at it as tutorial screen time? There is a right balance to be used in the classroom.鈥� 

Hawthorne, chair of the Consortium for School Networking, said she doesn鈥檛 expect similar lawsuits to become common, and that most disputes over screen time, privacy and AI 鈥渨ill continue to play out through school board deliberations, elections and state policymaking.鈥� 

But she urged districts to take parents鈥� concerns seriously and to explain how their use of technology supports learning and protects kids online.

鈥楾eacher-led education鈥�

The debate between Lower Merion district leaders and parents flared up in the spring when, according to the complaint, device use 鈥渉ad grown intolerable to many parents.鈥� 

Yair Lev, the lead plaintiff, has two children at Cynwyd Elementary in the district and helped organize Pencils Over Pixels to advocate in favor of maintaining the opt-out policy. When Ranelli, the superintendent, and local school administrators began telling parents they couldn鈥檛 opt out, the conflict escalated.

Lev, a cardiologist and professor at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, sent numerous emails to board members asking them not to 鈥渆liminate parent protections.鈥�

In a July message, he described an earlier conversation in which he said the superintendent told him that parents who object to Chromebooks and online curriculum 鈥渨ere welcome to leave the public school district and go to private school.鈥�

at previous meetings by some parents demanding to opt their children out of using devices, the district ultimately moved the final vote on the policy to Zoom and allowed no public comments. The district is also adopting a new program that allows both to monitor device use.

In a statement shared with 社区黑料, Lev said he has no plans to pull his kids out of the district.

“We are not willing to sacrifice the public schools and community we love,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e simply seek to preserve our right as parents to choose a teacher-led education for our children without mandatory technology requirements.”

This year鈥檚 startling , followed by last year鈥檚 , has some experts asking: Did something go wrong with the test itself?

There is no clear evidence there is a problem, experts emphasize, but the unusually wide swing in scores warrants careful investigation, multiple testing experts told Chalkbeat this week.

鈥淢y instinctive reaction is there may have been an issue last year that we missed,鈥� said Marianne Perie, who consults with states on testing. 鈥淭his kind of big increase followed by a big decrease is surprising.鈥�

Perie co-chairs New York state鈥檚 technical advisory committee, a panel of experts paid by the state to oversee the testing process. She spoke to Chalkbeat about the trends in her personal capacity, she said. The committee is set to meet next month to review the results in detail and seek to better understand what might explain the changes, Perie said.

Half of New York City students on last year鈥檚 tests, down 6 percentage points from the year before, according to preliminary results released last week. The share of third, fourth, and fifth graders who met grade-level standards in both New York City and state.

The sharp test score swings in those grades immediately sparked theories about what could explain them. Some educators and families if the was a factor. Others pointed to a literacy shakeup in New York City that has been .

Last week, EdTrust-New York, a nonprofit advocacy group, called for an independent audit of the state鈥檚 reading tests. Officials 鈥渘ever adequately investigated or explained last year鈥檚 dramatic gains, making this year鈥檚 reversal difficult to interpret,鈥� the group said in a .

JP O鈥橦are, a spokesperson for the New York State Education Department, said the agency 鈥渢akes this decline seriously and will conduct a detailed analysis to better understand where students are experiencing challenges.鈥�

Simona Beattie, a spokesperson for NWEA, the state鈥檚 testing vendor, said in a statement, 鈥淎t this stage, we have not found any anomalies through our standard due diligence process, which includes corroborating results with an external third party.鈥�

鈥淕iven this, we have high confidence in the accuracy of the results,鈥� Beattie added.

In New York City, the share of third graders scoring proficiently on the reading test fell by 14 percentage points, after rising by 13 points the year before. There were also substantial shifts in fourth and fifth grade scores on the test in both the city and state. Seventh and eighth grade reading scores essentially held steady. Math scores ticked up across the state but were flat in New York City.

Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels said in a statement that the scores merit 鈥渞igorous analysis so we can ensure we鈥檙e measuring what students are learning.鈥�

The fluctuations in elementary reading scores were quite unusual and surprising, said Benjamin Shear, a testing expert at the University of Colorado Boulder. 鈥淚t requires further scrutiny, questioning, and digging.鈥�

What鈥檚 behind the reading score drop? Experts weigh different theories

City officials and after last year鈥檚 dramatic surge in elementary reading scores, arguing that the was paying off.

Now, the teachers union is pointing to the declines as evidence of problems with the city鈥檚 curriculum mandate and . But that does not explain the broad test score declines across the state, including districts that have not made similar curriculum changes.

In general, testing experts, known as psychometricians, say that a number of theories are worth considering to explain large shifts in scores: changes in student demographics, , , and .

Figures released by the city indicate there were no major changes in the number of test-takers in early grades. The share of city students considered low-income in elementary grades also held fairly steady. And while the state finished its transition in the spring to computer-based testing, that wouldn鈥檛 explain swings in fifth grade, where digital assessments have been .

EdTrust-New York noted that in contrast to state scores, there was steady progress on New York City schools administer at least three times a year.

Emily Oster, a Brown University education economist who has test scores across the country, published a this week questioning the plausibility of New York鈥檚 score changes. She suggested that there may have been a technical error in comparing the results year to year.

In an email to Chalkbeat, Oster acknowledged there is no definitive proof for this. But, she said, the reported results are 鈥渘ot consistent with nearly everything else we know about student learning.鈥� She noted that fourth graders鈥� reading scores had jumped last year, but that same group of students, now fifth graders, have seen scores fall back this year.

Asked about Oster鈥檚 post, O鈥橦are from New York鈥檚 education department said: 鈥淪peculation is not a substitute for data 鈥� Our ongoing review of the preliminary data has not identified any of the issues she outlines in her conjecture.鈥�

An over 200-page documented the process to ensure the accuracy of the 2025 results.

Scott Marion, a testing expert with the Center for Assessment, said he鈥檚 naturally suspicious of a large change in scores that doesn鈥檛 persist the following year. To him, it鈥檚 implausible that the rise and fall of scores represents real differences in achievement or teaching practices.

鈥淚t doesn鈥檛 make sense to me,鈥� he said.

Marion says that perhaps more questions should have been raised about the sharp score increase last year. In his experience, education officials are eager to have testing experts investigate unusual declines, but not unusual increases.

Andrew Ho, a Harvard professor who serves on New York鈥檚 technical advisory committee, said he believes the shifts probably point to real changes in student learning, even if the actual swings aren鈥檛 as extreme as the exams suggest.

鈥淲e should absolutely look at the test, but we should absolutely also look at what the test is likely revealing,鈥� he said.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at

Schools can鈥檛 鈥渋mplement鈥� those facts any more than auto factories can 鈥渋mplement鈥� climate science or the Detroit Tigers鈥檚 general manager can 鈥渋mplement鈥� baseball analytics. 

Put simpler: the science of reading represents what we know about how kids learn to read and what practices 鈥� like explicit vocabulary and phonics instruction 鈥� support that learning. But it is not, in and of itself, a model to simply apply to a classroom. 

This hasn鈥檛 stopped some critics from worrying that this research consensus requires a narrow, inflexible teaching approach that is inappropriate for some kids. In particular, advocates for English learner students in have expressed concerns that the science of reading is not suited for these children. Some have worried that reforming literacy instruction in English could distract 鈥� or even discourage 鈥� schools from supporting English learners as they develop in their home languages as well. 

Fortunately, from Joanna Yip, a policy lead at the Education Trust-New York, an education advocacy organization focused on civil rights in that state, outlines a constructive path forward to 鈥渃enter the needs of multilingual learners as part of a comprehensive approach to literacy instruction for all students.鈥�

Yip鈥檚 report provides a series of recommendations for improving literacy for English learners in the state. For instance, it calls for state leaders to overhaul future literacy training with support from experts with knowledge of English learners鈥� linguistic development pathways. Teachers should leave those training sessions with strategies for advancing English learners鈥� oral language development, as well as a heightened awareness of the ways that these students鈥� emerging bilingual abilities can strengthen their literacy skills in both of their languages.

It also suggests they ensure that teachers can provide 鈥渆vidence-based literacy support across P-12 for students who are new to the country and in the initial stages of literacy development in English.鈥� that these students benefit when teachers help them 鈥渂ridge鈥� knowledge and skills from their first languages into English. A young student might, for instance, be a confident reader in Spanish or Arabic; effective literacy instruction will help her strengthen those skills and also use them to improve as a reader in English.

It also argues that this greater systemwide commitment to English learners鈥� literacy should include expanding access to programs that support their bilingualism and biliteracy. Programs that teach English learners in both languages are especially well positioned to help students grasp the core components of language from grammar to syntax and beyond. That is, when English learners are learning to read in multiple languages, they can compare and contrast them to deepen their understanding of each. 

As my co-author and I wrote in an article : 鈥淐rucially, these (sorts of) activities extend the core research often cited as Science of Reading, but they do not replace them.鈥� Teachers do not need to avoid, modify or deviate from the consensus on how best to teach English literacy when working with English learners. Just like English-dominant children, these students benefit from the science of reading鈥檚 core components, things like the explicit teaching of vocabulary and phonics, as well as instruction that helps children practice smooth, fluent decoding of text. 

For English learners, quality literacy instruction in English means , like supporting their development in their first languages and helping them make connections with elements of the English language. 

Yip鈥檚 report credits New York for its 鈥渟trong history of supporting multilingual learners,鈥� and notes that this 鈥渃an serve as a foundation for future state policy development.鈥� It is true that New York has been a gateway destination for linguistically and culturally diverse immigrants to the United States since the Colonial Era. As such, its K鈥�12 schools have deep institutional experience providing multilingual children with opportunities to learn English, acclimate to English-dominant U.S. society and .听

In recent years, the state has made considerable efforts to improve how public schools serve these children, most notably through its 2014 and 2025 . The toolkit offers ideas for how teachers can support English learners鈥� English literacy in multilingual settings. For instance, while English and Spanish do not share perfectly identical phonological structures, there are some points of overlap. Teachers can use these similarities and differences to help students鈥� literacy in both languages. 

They can, , show students that the letter 鈥渇鈥� makes the same sound in English as it does in Spanish, while also instructing students in the many other ways that English spelling can represent that sound (i.e. 鈥減h鈥� as in 鈥減honeme鈥� or 鈥済h鈥� as in 鈥渆nough鈥�). 

However, the report charges that New York schools have not done enough to incorporate English learners in their recent literacy reforms, relying mostly on voluntary guidance and 鈥渦neven implementation鈥� instead of systemic improvements. What鈥檚 more, it notes that literacy teaching and instructional materials that are not research- or evidence-based remain too common in New York public education 鈥� which harms English learners and English-dominant students alike. 

For instance, in 2024, the state launched a major literacy reform that provided $10 million in funding to the New York State United Teachers, its main teachers union. The funding supported professional development for teachers around literacy instruction鈥� that the resulting training did not align with the research behind the science of reading.

Yip鈥檚 recommendations are excellent and would bring New York more fully into alignment with the research on how English learners learn best. While these students鈥� linguistic development is unique, as they are simultaneously growing language proficiencies in more than one language, the early literacy research that we refer to when we talk about the science of reading is also useful guidance for teaching them to read in English.听

In other words, they should not miss out on the phonics instruction, explicit teaching of vocabulary and other foundational elements of the science of reading that help all students learn to read. If New York is able to systemically advance these priorities in its literacy instruction without abandoning its long and deep commitment to students鈥� multilingualism and multiliteracy, that would be a model for other states 鈥� particularly those blessed with large numbers of English learners 鈥� to follow. 

The views expressed here are Conor P. Williams鈥檚 alone, and do not reflect those of his employer or any other affiliated organizations.

Roughly 2,000 families received offers for a spot in the inaugural year of 2-K, New York City鈥檚 new free childcare program for 2-year-olds, officials announced Tuesday.

Around 5,700 families applied for the , which were restricted to priority neighborhoods in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx.

鈥淭oday represents a monumental step on the path to universal childcare here in New York City,鈥� Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at a press conference Tuesday morning in the Bronx. Mamdani made a key campaign pledge.

鈥淲e are writing a better chapter for 鈥� the generations of New Yorkers many years from now who will start families here in our city and who will not need to worry about leaving their job or moving out of the neighborhood they love to make it all work,鈥� he said.

The release of the offers comes after city officials spent months spreading the word about the new program with events such as a 鈥� in Manhattan鈥檚 Fort Tryon Park and a judged by Cardi B and Lin-Manuel Miranda.

The initial interest in 2-K comes as welcome news for Mamdani after his administration鈥檚 efforts to boost publicity for the city鈥檚 3-K and prekindergarten programs Those programs, while wildly popular and oversubscribed in some neighborhoods, have in other parts of the city.

Officials didn鈥檛 share any details about how the initial round of applications and offers were distributed between the priority neighborhoods: Washington Heights and Inwood in Manhattan, Canarsie and Brownsville in Brooklyn, Ozone Park and the Rockaways in Queens, and Fordham, Belmont, Riverdale and other nearby neighborhoods in the Bronx.

Emmy Liss, the executive director of the mayor鈥檚 Office for Childcare and Early Childhood Education, said the 鈥渕ajority鈥� of the children who received offers live in the priority districts. Officials prioritized applicants who have siblings at the program they applied to, or were already attending that program, and those who live in the same district, Liss said.

More than 80% of applicants got into one of their top three choices, and more than half got into their first choice, officials said. Families that applied and didn鈥檛 get an offer will automatically be added to waitlists.

In a press release Tuesday morning, officials said that the application results from this year would help guide the expansion of the program next year. Mamdani has pledged that the program will grow to 12,000 seats next year and expand citywide by the end of his first term, though Gov. Kathy Hochul has only committed funding for the first two years. A found that it will likely cost around $9 billion to provide free universal childcare for all children under age 5, about $5 billion more than the city is currently spending,

Officials haven鈥檛 yet shared where the additional 10,000 2-K seats for next year will be located, except that they will likely add seats in the priority neighborhoods and some of the new seats will be in Staten Island, the only borough not a part of this year鈥檚 2-K rollout.v

Seats are split between center and . Unlike 3-K and pre-K, which mostly follow the K-12 school calendar, .

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .

When students return to school this fall in the Salamanca City Central School District in Western New York, a new kind of teacher will be ready to greet them. The small, rural district located on the Seneca Nation reservation is set to be one of the first in the country to put a humanoid robot in a classroom. It will not replace the classroom teacher, but is programmed to provide learning support to both students and educators. 

At a board meeting last month, the Cattaraugus County school district agreed to purchase the robot from Realbotix, a tech company, along with an artificial intelligence teacher鈥檚 assistant program allowing students to interact with an avatar of the robot on laptops. 

鈥淭his deployment in a working school district represents a landmark moment for both AI and humanoid robotics,鈥� said Andrew Kiguel, CEO of Realbotix, which is currently building the robot. 鈥淪alamanca marks the beginning of a new era where humanoid robots and intelligent AI assistants become standard tools in STEM 别诲耻肠补迟颈辞苍.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

The female robot, named Sally, will have a 鈥渓ifelike appearance鈥� with silicone skin and long brown hair, Kiguel said in an interview with New York Focus. It will be stationary in a seated position but have a wide range of upper-body movements and facial expressions.

Students will use a unique identification code when interacting with the robot during class, allowing it to access their learning data and provide personalized support based on their past communication with the avatar, Kiguel said. 鈥淭hey鈥檒l be able to say, 鈥楬ey, I鈥檓 student number 1234,鈥� and then the robot will be like, 鈥楬ey, we were talking about this yesterday, do you want to continue that conversation?鈥� 鈥澛�

Salamanca plans to introduce the robot and avatar in its high school AI and robotics courses, which use developed by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak to prepare students for high-demand tech jobs. The district plans to expand it to high school students in other classes if the pilot is successful. 

Salamanca Superintendent Mark Beehler explained the district鈥檚 embrace of AI. 鈥淢any schools are taking the easy solution of simply banning it, but I have found that students will find a way around most rules that schools put in place,鈥� Beehler said in a written response to questions. 鈥淚 also believe it is critical for schools to teach proper use of technology, not simply exclude it.鈥� 

During and after school hours, students will be able to use the avatar to receive help with assignments. Kiguel said students could upload photos of homework for feedback, ask the avatar to generate lessons on topics that interest them, or receive real-time translations in over 100 languages. Unlike other Realbotix robots, Salamanca鈥檚 robot will not have advanced features such as facial recognition and recording. 

The robot will also serve as a classroom resource. If a teacher loses their place during a lesson or needs a prompt on what comes next, Kiguel said, they can ask the robot for guidance because it has been loaded with the district鈥檚 curriculum. 

The products cost the district $57,590, according to  attached to the school board agenda. Kiguel said the price was discounted; the company鈥檚 website lists the M-Series robot, the model purchased by the district, at a starting price of $95,000. 

The plan has sparked debate online, with some calling it a forward-looking, innovative step for the district and others expressing concern about the broader implications of further integrating AI into schools, particularly in an underserved area. 

Salamanca is the only incorporated city in the United States located entirely within a Native American reservation. The school district serves roughly聽1,300 students, including聽32%聽who identify as American Indian or Alaska Native and聽79%聽who are economically disadvantaged.听

鈥淲e already have so many issues in our community, including environmental issues. I just don鈥檛 understand the concept of adding AI onto that,鈥� said local parent Sierra Abrams, who learned about the technology in a . 鈥淏ringing it into the school district is contradicting everything we believe, in my opinion.鈥� 

For the past few months, the company has worked to establish guardrails to ensure student safety. Kiguel said the robot and avatar were trained on the district鈥檚 curriculum and will always redirect the conversation back to education. References to suicide, self-harm, or other flagged terms would automatically alert school administrators.

In a demonstration for New York Focus, Kiguel told the avatar that he was being bullied at school and wanted to get revenge on the student. 

鈥淚鈥檓 really sorry that happened to you. Being picked on and having rocks thrown at you is not okay, and that must have felt upsetting and maybe even scary,鈥� the avatar responded. 鈥淭he best next step is to tell a trusted adult at school right away, like a teacher, counselor or principal, and let your parent or guardian know, too.鈥� 

Beehler emphasized the importance of safety and privacy, noting that the robot and avatar operate on a closed system that is not connected to the internet, and that Realbotix will not have access to personally identifiable student information. 

To avoid AI-generated inaccuracies, Beehler said Realbotix trained the robot and avatar to say, 鈥淚 don鈥檛 know,鈥� instead of generating fabricated or misleading responses known as 鈥�AI 丑补濒濒耻肠颈苍补迟颈辞苍蝉.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

The Trump administration has promoted the expanded use of AI and technology in education. Early in his second term, President Donald Trump  establishing a taskforce to help integrate AI into curricula and teacher training. In March, First Lady Melania Trump entered a White House technology summit  and invited guests to envision a future where robots educate children in literature, science, art, philosophy, mathematics, and history. 

At the same time, there has been  nationwide, with parents forming groups to push for stronger oversight of AI, and clearer guidelines to limit screen time and ensure digital resources are used appropriately in schools. In May, the New York State United Teachers union called for strict  and screen time in schools, and earlier this month, New York City Public Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels announced  until the school system finalizes guidance on artificial intelligence later this summer. 

The classroom marks a new venture for Realbotix, a Toronto-based robotics company formerly known as Tokens.com, that helped customers use cryptocurrency to rent 鈥渄igital land鈥� in the Metaverse. In April 2024, the company acquired Simulcra, the Las Vegas parent company behind RealDoll, which has spent decades  and later expanded into sex robots that remain on the market today. 

In a statement to New York Focus, a spokesperson explained that over the past two years, Realbotix has built a new team focused on education, health care, and wellness applications, and that Realbotix and RealDoll do not share employees, payroll, physical locations, or technology. She said Realbotix 鈥渋s pursuing a transaction with a Nasdaq-listed company that is intended to separate the businesses at the ownership level鈥� with completion expected by September. 

In recent years, Realbotix has worked to expand its presence in commercial settings. Still, it is best known for its 鈥渃ompanion robots,鈥� which are different from sex robots and intended to address what it鈥檚 described as a 鈥渓oneliness epidemic.鈥� Kiguel has previously said the company鈥檚 goal is to produce robots and AI that are 鈥渋ndistinguishable from humans.鈥� 

Beehler, Salamanca鈥檚 superintendent, said the partnership with Realbotix began after a former colleague met an investor at a dinner and discussed the possibility of bringing the company鈥檚 robots into the education sector. He was initially cautious about the partnership because it represented uncharted territory for both Realbotix and the school district. But he said the company was receptive to feedback and willing to adapt its products for the unique demands of an educational setting. 

The superintendent acknowledged concerns about students鈥� increasing screen time and emphasized that AI and robotics should support, not replace, the human connections at the center of education. 

Beehler said the district will measure the success of the program primarily through qualitative feedback from both students and teachers. 

Ryan Schaaf, associate professor of educational technology at Notre Dame of Maryland University, said he was optimistic about the initiative, but cautioned that its success hinges on thoughtful implementation, with teachers actively monitoring and guiding students鈥� interactions with AI. 

Schaaf acknowledged the backlash against AI in education, but said ignoring the technology is a mistake. 鈥淚t gives students a true disadvantage because once they leave school, they are going to be immersed in AI technologies.鈥� Instead, he argued that schools should balance AI-assisted learning with traditional instruction to prepare students for life after high school.

State Senator George Borrello, who represents Salamanca and surrounding areas of Western New York, said the program could help level the playing field for students by providing tutoring access to those who might not be able to afford private options and sparking greater interest in STEM. 

Borrello said local leaders have long struggled with keeping young people from leaving Upstate New York after high school. He said investments in technology and STEM education could help show students they can pursue fulfilling, high-paying careers in tech while still building their futures in rural communities like Salamanca.

鈥淥ne of the biggest things we see right now in technology is people fearing what the future will be with AI. Will it replace the workforce? Will it grow out of control?鈥� he said. 鈥淚 think this is a great way to get not just the kids but the teachers and the parents more comfortable with what the future may hold.鈥�

This was originally published on .

So I asked the members of my what they wanted to say to this administration. They responded with recommendations for curriculum, discipline, technology, afterschool programming and teacher quality. 

Maria K. spoke for hundreds when she wrote, 鈥淚鈥檇 strongly urge to reconsider eliminating G&T programs for grades K-2. 鈥� If the objective is equality, then programs should be expanded, and underprivileged groups should be given wider access.鈥�

鈥淐reate more of what is in demand rather than redistributing what already exists among different socioeconomic and ethnic groups,鈥� Adam C. concurred. 鈥淩einvest resources in schools that provide what families are specifically looking for: specialized high schools, academically screened middle and high schools, and high-performing zoned middle and high schools.鈥�

鈥淓veryone should have a default, large zoned high school that provides tracking by academic subject,鈥� former Citywide Council on High Schools member Rachel Fremmer said. 

Regarding the quality of educators, one parent wished, 鈥淚 would LOVE for all teachers to have education on how to recognize when a child is bored or struggling in school.鈥� S. Meng from Queens suggested, 鈥淪urvey which districts have higher percentages of lower-level students and employ better teachers with higher pay for that district to bring up the overall level average.鈥�

鈥淲e need highly qualified teachers who hold themselves to the same academic standards we expect our children to meet,鈥� agreed Natalie Iarko. 鈥淭eachers should model strong writing, communication and subject knowledge. My son’s pre-K teacher wrote in all lowercase with no punctuation. We need higher expectations for those entrusted with educating our children.鈥�

鈥淭eachers have given up on chaotic classrooms,鈥� lamented CN. 鈥淜ids do whatever they want while the teacher attempts to teach until they all give up and watch cartoons together. I’ve spoken to many parents, and we are uniformly disappointed in the lack of discipline in school. It is basically low-value childcare. I went to low-ranking public schools in Queens, and even we got yelled at for clowning around in the classroom. Why won’t teachers discipline anymore?鈥�

鈥淧arents should be given the ability to formally evaluate teacher and administrator performance annually,鈥� a Manhattan mom proposed. 鈥淭hese evaluations should be part of broader performance evaluations for school faculty and officials, tied to compensation and career advancement.鈥�

鈥淪trengthen discipline for both teachers and students,鈥� Acel M. contributed. 鈥淚f a teacher is not performing, make it easier to replace or downgrade or terminate them. Bad behaving kids should be disciplined and be expelled as a last measure.鈥�

鈥淪afety is important,鈥� J.C. stressed. 鈥淚n my son’s elementary school, there were children who were violent (repeatedly starting fights, etc.) and were simply moved to another classroom instead of detention or expulsion. As my son was the victim of this, I would like to see safety/protection measures for the victims of school violence, especially at the middle and high school levels.鈥�

But families weren鈥檛 merely concerned with what happens during the school day.

鈥淓very elementary school should offer afterschool programs such that parents don鈥檛 have to pay extra for childcare coverage until 5 p.m. every day,鈥� one mom chimed in. 鈥淲orking parents need this essential support.鈥�

鈥淥ur kids need to have opportunities to be creative, work with adults and other kids and heck 鈥� PLAY,鈥� Helen K., Queens mom of two, insisted. 鈥淣YC schools need to admit that the adoption of individual devices and online learning platforms for students is a failed experiment. In our middle school, there is rampant non-educational use of their devices. Let parents opt out of devices and online platforms!鈥�

H.D. suggested: 鈥淏ring back pen and paper coursework and tests!鈥� Then, on another note, offered, 鈥淪hare resources among neighborhood schools such as for music. Third Street Music School has partnerships with some schools. A more citywide effort would be great.鈥�

Finally, 鈥淎 Black mother from District 9, Bronx,鈥� summarized, 鈥淪chools don鈥檛 need blame 鈥� they need thoughtful, targeted investment. If children face more obstacles outside the classroom, then inside the classroom they should have the city鈥檚 strongest teachers, experienced principals, enrichment programs, arts, music, science, tutoring, counseling and the resources that help children thrive. Retain experienced teachers, support school leaders, expand tutoring and enrichment, and focus on long-term student success.鈥�

The parents have spoken. The mayor and chancellor have promised to listen. Will they follow through?

Mom Carin Rosenfeld already has concerns. 鈥淚 would like transparency regarding the process itself. How were [working group] participants selected? How were families and educators notified? What efforts were made to ensure broad representation rather than participation by only those already connected to political or educational networks? If City Hall and the chancellor truly want to hear from constituents, the process must be open, widely publicized, accessible and transparent from the beginning, not limited to a select group of stakeholders whose identities and selection criteria are unknown to the broader public. Public engagement in NYC education feels performative rather than substantive. If more parents truly knew what was happening in our schools, there might be a full-scale parent uprising!鈥�

Preschoolers with disabilities in New York City will gain access to an unprecedented set of programs and services thanks to a major expansion in special education announced Tuesday by Mayor Zohran Mamdani and New York City Public Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels.

The nation鈥檚 largest school system is investing $67.5 million in special education as families across the country fear the needs of their children with disabilities will go unmet amid the federal Department of Education鈥檚 continued dismantling.

In New York City, young learners will be able to participate in three programs designed specifically for students with autism that were previously only available to K-12 students. They will also have access to initiatives for students with emotional disabilities or in need of adapted academics and life-skills training. The programs will be available starting in the fall in 14 of the city鈥檚 32 community school districts. The majority of them are located in areas with some of the highest concentrations of working-class and immigrant families in the city. 

鈥淐hildren with disabilities should not be forced to travel across the city just to get the education they deserve,鈥� Mamdani said in a statement. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 why we鈥檙e bringing those classrooms closer to home and taking another critical step toward making Pre-K truly universal. Every child deserves to learn and grow in their community, and every family deserves a public education system that meets them exactly where they are.鈥�

The specificity of the investment is unprecedented in New York City, where . 

鈥淔or the first time, we鈥檙e giving young children with autism and other disabilities the same high-quality, specialized instruction that has delivered real results for our older students,鈥� Samuels said in a statement. 鈥淭his investment is about strengthening the foundation and when we get early childhood education right, we set children up for a lifetime of success.鈥�

To expand special education services to the city鈥檚 youngest learners, New York City Public Schools will hire hundreds of staffers to help lower evaluation delays; assist families through the process of creating a legally binding personalized school roadmap for children with special needs, known as Individualized Education Program (IEP); and provide more bilingual assessment options. Overall, more than half of all children in New York City come from homes where a language other than English is spoken and in the majority of those homes, that language is Spanish. Among the new hires will be 35 psychologists, social workers, speech evaluators and occupational therapists across 10 additional Preschool Regional Assessment Centers, or city-run evaluation hubs that identify children ages 3 to 5 who qualify for special education services.

The Special Education Itinerant Teacher program will also grow, with an additional 29 therapists and specialists to support children attending community-based 3-K and pre-K programs. According to city officials, the placement of more special education teachers in general education preschool classes will help boost the number of small children with IEPs in inclusive learning environments.

In June, the Trump administration announced that the and rehabilitative services 鈥� a move that advocates and parents said will make it more challenging for millions of students to access services and for their families to appeal for help when needed. 

The transitions at the federal level concern Chris Treiber, vice president of advocacy services for AHRC New York City, which serves individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. 

鈥淲hen you move services out of the U.S. Department of Education and start to put them in other places like the Department of Health and Human Services and then also into the Justice Department, you kind of lose all of the expertise and the specialized support that the U.S. DOE provided for so many years to so many states,鈥� Treiber said. 鈥淚t’s all going to be basically evaporated.鈥�

In a statement, State Sen. Robert Jackson, a Democrat whose district includes several Black and immigrant neighborhoods in Manhattan, pointed out how families with disabled children have long had to fight simply to get basic support, a concern often raised by critics of the Trump administration鈥檚 gutting of the federal Education Department.

鈥淔or generations, families of children with disabilities have been asked to navigate systems that too often made support feel distant, delayed, or conditional,鈥� Jackson said. 鈥淭his investment reflects a different promise: that the doors of public education must open early, fully, and with dignity.鈥�

Maria Odom, executive director of Advocates for Children of New York, drew a connection between special education for preschool children and universal childcare, which Mamdani and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul launched in January.

鈥淐hild care can only truly be universal if every child has access to a program that meets their needs,鈥� Odom said in a statement. 鈥淲e thank Mayor Mamdani for making this important investment, which will help ensure more preschoolers with disabilities receive needed, legally required support. Access to high-quality specialized programs during these critical early years can have a lasting impact on children鈥檚 development while helping make New York City a more affordable and appealing place to raise a family.鈥�

Advocates like Treiber and Jenn Choi of Jenn Choi Advocates LLC, which provides parents with support through the IEP process, told The 19th they welcomed the preschool special education expansion. Still, both raised concerns about the logistics and reach of the new effort. 

Choi hopes it gives economically disadvantaged families greater access to services. 鈥淭here’s a lot of parents in the city who know how great these programs are,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hese programs are very popular in neighborhoods like District 15 where the income is higher, but maybe they’re not as popular in other areas where there isn’t a cultural history of how important these programs are within the community.鈥�

Choi also would like officials to work toward making these specialized programs available to all students who need them; one student she advocated for went without speech, occupational and physical therapy for two consecutive years, she said.

Treiber, for his part, wondered how the city plans to adapt programs designed for older kids to the preschool set. He also noted that many children in pre-K did not receive the early intervention services they needed from ages 0-3 and as a result, they might need even more intense support in preschool.

Most importantly, he wants officials to communicate effectively with families about the new programs. 

鈥淭hey have to be able to provide some concrete information to families so they understand either the parameters of what’s being offered here or maybe the limitations,鈥� Treiber said. 鈥淟ike if I put my kid in this program, a parent should understand that they may not have a program for my child the following September when they turn 5 and go into kindergarten. It’s just important for parents to be as informed as possible so they can make really smart, informed decisions about their kids’ education.鈥�

was originally reported by Nadra Nittle of . .

New York school districts will soon begin revamping math instruction under a new law aimed at improving test scores 鈥� but the effort comes amid sharp debate over how math should be taught. 

鈥�,鈥� passed as part of the state budget last month, requires school districts to use 鈥渆vidence-based鈥� methods in elementary school math classrooms. 

It directs the State Education Department to develop best practices for teaching math in grades K-5 by January, and requires that school districts complete a survey verifying their alignment with those standards by September 2027. The budget also sets aside $2 million for the teachers鈥� union to administer a training course and another $2 million for regional pilots supporting districts with low math performance.

The structure mirrors Governor Kathy Hochul鈥檚 signature literacy initiative, which  as having weak accountability measures and using a questionable union-developed training course. 

Transforming math education could be even more challenging. 

Unlike 鈥渢he science of reading,鈥� which relies on a widely embraced framework, educators and researchers are less aligned on what counts as evidence-based instruction in math. While most states have adopted laws or policies related to the science of reading,  have done so with math, leaving New York with few models to draw from. 

Advocates say those ongoing debates over math instruction, coupled with the state鈥檚 decision to model the initiative on its literacy reform, could hamper progress. For state leaders, the effort鈥檚 success could help transform New York from one of the Northeast鈥檚 lowest-performing states in math into a model for improvement. For students, it could shape their access to higher education and high-paying jobs. 

But only if it鈥檚 implemented properly. 鈥淚 think there鈥檚 a big lack of understanding of what proper instruction is, and there鈥檚 a really big disconnect between 鈥榚vidence-based practices鈥� and teacher training programs,鈥� said Erica Fanning, math researcher and school psychologist at the City School District of Albany. 

As with reading, the stakes are high. Research shows that math proficiency is one of the strongest predictors of future adult earnings, high school graduation, and college enrollment. 

Improving math education is also key to reducing educational inequities: On the 2024 NAEP eighth-grade math exam, Black and Latino New York students scored below white students by 26 and 30 points, respectively. New York was ranked 38th in the nation for fourth-grade math, behind all other Northeastern states besides Maine, and 17 points below top-ranked Massachusetts. 

Hochul said the initiative aims to ensure New York students are 鈥渢he most academically prepared in the country.鈥� If the effort fails, advocates say, students of color and those from low-income backgrounds have the most to lose.

Across the country, schools have seen a decade-long  in reading and math performance that was exacerbated by the pandemic. That鈥檚 spurred a wave of reform, including a high-profile push based on the science of reading. This phonics-based approach is grounded in the idea that reading isn鈥檛 innate and must be explicitly taught through skills like sounding out words. When New York enacted its Back to Basics plan in 2024, it joined at least  that had implemented similar policies. 

Math instruction, by contrast, has received relatively little attention. The push to change how children learn math is still in its infancy. That鈥檚 in part because there鈥檚 little agreement on the best approach.听

On one side of the so-called 鈥渕ath wars鈥� are advocates of more explicit, teacher-led instruction who argue that students should first build fluency in foundational skills 鈥� such as memorizing multiplication tables or working through a math problem step by step 鈥� before they can understand deeper concepts. On the other are proponents of inquiry-based instruction, which emphasizes student problem-solving and exploration of mathematical ideas before formal procedures are introduced. 

Many New York schools use curricula that align with the latter. But critics, including special education researchers, say it can reduce student confidence, hinder learning of foundational skills, and cause struggling students to fall further behind. Ben Solomon, a math researcher and associate professor of school psychology at the University of Albany, said there鈥檚 a time and place for both pedagogies 鈥� but he and other 鈥渟cience of math鈥� advocates believe students should primarily receive explicit instruction before moving on to more conceptual lessons.

The lack of consensus makes it difficult to know what the law counts as 鈥渆vidence-based teaching techniques and materials.鈥� The clearest indication so far came last year, when NYSED released eight briefs outlining 鈥渂est practices鈥� in numeracy and math instruction. Written by Deborah Loewenberg Ball, a professor of education at the University of Michigan, and TeachingWorks, a project at the university, the briefs take the more conceptual approach, arguing that explicit instruction should 鈥渂e grounded in meaning and understanding of why the procedures work.鈥� 

Solomon is among a group of over 200 math researchers, educators, and parents who signed a petition describing the briefs as full of factual inaccuracies and 

In an October response, the state agency doubled down on the guidance, and Loewenberg Ball argued that Solomon cited only a narrow segment of research that was not broad enough 鈥渢o address the complexity of mathematics teaching and learning.鈥� The guidance is still in place.

Solomon said he worries the agency鈥檚 response to his criticisms reflects a reluctance to draw on the expertise of a broad range of math researchers when deciding on what counts as evidence-based math instruction. 

鈥淲e鈥檙e trying to turn around a huge ship that鈥檚 been cruising for a long time,鈥� Solomon said. 鈥淭hat takes deep structural change that will be very challenging in New York.鈥� 

Jeff Smink, deputy director at the advocacy group EdTrust-NY, shares that concern, though he noted that the math debate is more nuanced than literacy, and effective instruction likely falls somewhere between the petitioners鈥� and the state鈥檚 positions. 

In a statement provided to New York Focus, NYSED spokesperson Karen Male said the briefs are 鈥済rounded in research,鈥� and underwent external review to support high-quality P-12 math instruction. She added that while NYSED shares Solomon鈥檚 dedication to improving math outcomes for students, the department 鈥渨ill not be swayed by misinformation or efforts to undermine our work to advance equity and excellence in education.鈥�

Some advocates worry the math law鈥檚 structural similarities to the reading initiative portend difficulties down the line. 

As part of the new law, school districts will have to report the curricula and instructional materials they鈥檙e using in K-5 classrooms and verify that they align with state-developed standards, but it鈥檚 largely up to individual districts to make the transition and self-certify.

The reading initiative also tasked school districts with completing an alignment survey:  of their responses found that more than 130 school districts reported using curricula that researchers criticized as inconsistent with the science of reading 鈥� including dozens that claimed that their materials aligned with all recommended best practices. 

In New York, most decisions about public schools, from curricula to school spending, are determined at the district level, posing obstacles to successful education reform, Solomon said. 

鈥淚f you create objectives and goals and then let it work its way through the system, it鈥檚 going to mutate based on everyone鈥檚 individual philosophies,鈥� he said. 

In order for the math initiative to be more successful than the reading effort, Smink said the state must increase transparency regarding the curricula and instructional materials in use, and hold districts accountable if they are out of alignment with best practices. (The Education Department said it would follow up with school districts that had failed to comply with the literacy law, but did not specify when districts must achieve full compliance.)

As with the reading initiative, the state budget sets aside money 鈥� $2 million 鈥� for the teachers鈥� union to administer a training course. A  found that the $10 million union-developed training course for the Back to Basics in reading effort featured some of the instructional methods Hochul set out to replace. 

The union has defended the program and refuted the idea that it promoted discredited strategies. Elizabeth Bird, Hochul鈥檚 assistant secretary for K-12 education, told New York Focus the criticism was 鈥渋nstructive,鈥� and that the governor鈥檚 office is asking the union to review training materials 鈥渢o make sure they are guided in evidence-based practices.鈥澛�

Finding the right curricula could also be a challenge. There are few evidence-based math curricula readily available for districts to use, said Lynn Gaffney, an assistant superintendent at Watertown City School District. That鈥檚 in part because publishers tend to design materials aimed at satisfying school districts鈥� broad range of instructional approaches, rather than adhering to national standards.

When Gaffney transitioned into a new role overseeing curriculum and instruction at the Jefferson County district, she faced a troubling reality: Fewer than one in three students in grades 3 through 8 were meeting math proficiency standards. The district was relying on outdated instructional programs that failed to reflect research on how students best learn math, she said.

For the past three years, Gaffney has been leading an effort to implement evidence-based math. But when it came time to implement a new curriculum, Gaffney said the district was unable to find one that aligned with both the science of learning and New York state standards, prompting district leaders to develop their own. 

Gaffney is excited by the state鈥檚 attention to math instruction, but like Solomon, she said she needs to see the state鈥檚 guidance before determining its potential impact on student outcomes.

鈥淲e鈥檙e not an evidence-based profession traditionally, we鈥檙e more of an ideology-based, philosophy-based profession, and that works to some degree, but it鈥檚 not working for most of our kids,鈥� Gaffney said. 鈥淪o we need to move away from that towards the evidence.鈥� 

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I taught math in a New York City public high school before I read a single study about how children learn. I was equipped with some basics, like making sure I checked if my students had understood the day’s lesson. At the end of every class, they would answer a few questions on paper while I moved around the room, reading over their shoulders to see what had landed and what had not.

Back then, blended learning was the hot thing: putting kids on screens for personalized instruction while I was supposed to circulate and answer questions. It did not work for my students, so I abandoned it and built my own lessons instead.

Fast forward to now, and the fight playing out in city councils and statehouses over . But that is the wrong battle. Screens are not the enemy of learning. The real enemy is older than any device: a classroom where students sit isolated and a teacher is too swamped with grading and paperwork to notice who is falling behind until it is too late to help. Technology can deepen that problem or solve it. It depends entirely on who you build it for.

There is a better way. I watched it this past school year in the Bronx.

At P.S. 83,听a middle school in District 11, technology barely appears until the final minutes of math class. A lesson is projected at the front of the room, and students work through problems together on paper, talking and arguing as they go. Then, with a few minutes left, they open their school laptops and answer a short set of questions about the day’s work.

As they type, the teacher watches the answers appear, one student at a time, on a dashboard on his or her own screen. Rather than collecting stacks of papers to grade that night, the teacher can see, in real time, who understood the lesson and who did not, and offer help in the moment. By the time class ends, the teacher knows exactly where each student is stuck, and what needs to happen the next day: a quick conversation with one child, a small group lesson for a few others or a separate session for the handful who missed the same step.

That dashboard is part of a tool called , created by the company I co-founded, Kiddom. This past year, in a pilot program, District 11 added Atlas to the curriculum its teachers already used through the math initiative. The partnership became a co-design: District 11’s teachers shaped the tool, and Kiddom is now bringing it to schools nationwide. But the tool is not the point. The point is what it handed back to teachers: time and information early enough to act on. Those are the two things every teacher is short of, and they are essential for catching children before they fall behind.

That is harder than it sounds. American schools are notoriously bad at catching kids up. A student who starts behind usually stays behind, year after year 鈥� not because teachers are not good enough, but because no human can grade, diagnose and personalize for 20 or more children every single day. The math defeats them.

The early results from District 11 are worth a look. Across nearly 5,700 students and 179 teachers, Kiddom’s analysis found that children in classrooms using these quick daily checks most consistently outscored other District 11 students whose teachers used them rarely. In seventh grade, for example, District 11 classes scored an average of 68% on these checks, versus 52%. That’s a 16-percentage-point difference, which works out to roughly five additional months of learning in a single year.

District 11’s results were also measured against a demographically comparable district using the same curriculum without the real-time tool. District 11 still came out ahead, by 11 to 13 points in sixth and seventh grades. The effect was smaller in eighth grade, but the pattern still held, and it tracked with how teachers worked. The biggest gains came in classes where teachers returned graded work in under three days. When the tool handled the grading, teachers could respond to students faster than their colleagues elsewhere. 

Word has traveled. Since District 11’s superintendent, Cristine Vaughan, adopted this time-saving tool, senior city schools officials and parent advocates have come to the Bronx to see it for themselves.

Notice what is missing from this story. The children are not on screens all day. District 11 students spend class time talking, reasoning and writing by hand. The technology serves the teaching and finishes the paperwork.

This is what the screen-time debate keeps missing. The is not whether technology belongs in classrooms. It is who the technology is built for. Point it at the child, and you get a generation doing its thinking on a black mirror. Point it at the teacher, and you get educators who know, in real time, what each student will need the next day.

This is not a preview of some distant future. It is a public school district closing gaps right now for students who are behind, with the same children and the same curriculum it already had, because its teachers got their time back.

So keep pencils in children’s hands, but take the paperwork off teachers. It would make a catch-up crisis so often called intractable look a great deal more solvable.

Disclosure: The Gates Foundation provides financial support to Kiddom Atlas and 社区黑料.

Katie Arnold-Ratliff wrote a that lands on a headline claim I think is staggeringly wrong: either there is no such thing as a 鈥済ifted鈥� child or else no way of reliably identifying one.

In making her case, she characterizes a as supporting her skepticism of giftedness.

Arnold-Ratliff notes that 鈥溾�� 鈥� her word 鈥� 12.3% of youth identified as gifted had achieved the standard of eminence used by the researchers. The standard they set for eminence, however, is very high: 鈥渇ull professors at research-intensive universities, Fortune 500 executives, distinguished judges and lawyers, leaders in biomedicine, award-winning journalists and writers.鈥�

Twelve percent is obviously a pretty small minority, but that鈥檚 still wildly above the baseline level of achievement!

You also have to assume that for every award-winning journalist and writer, there are two or three schlubs like me enjoying decent career success without ever winning an award. Similarly, if you鈥檙e the C.F.O. of the 512th largest corporation in the United States or just a normal everyday medical doctor, that鈥檚 clearly an above-average level of achievement relative to the whole population.

So I think this critique of gifted and talented is wrong, and, as I鈥檝e written before, the push to is extremely misguided, especially since there are the most valid critiques of how kids are identified for advanced math classes.

At the same time, I do think the NYC gifted and talented programming deserves criticism, though my complaint is roughly the opposite of the one that Arnold-Ratliff offered.

Precisely because you really can identify which kids are the most promising ones in a pretty reliable way, the mere fact that the graduates of a gifted program do well in life does not convey any information at all about whether the program is actually any good.

If you read accounts of what鈥檚 happening in G&T, you鈥檒l see that it鈥檚 a lot of special activities that have nothing to do with basic principles like 鈥済ive the smartest kids harder math problems so they learn more.鈥� And the research on the causal impact shows not much is going on.

The level of fighting over who gets into this program and whether it鈥檚 unfair is wildly out of proportion to the scrutiny of its actual educational efficacy.

And unfortunately, this is the case almost everywhere in American education, whether it鈥檚 the link between 鈥済ood schools鈥� and property values, the practical operation of charter and public school choice programs, the tuition that people pay for private school, or the battles over who gets into exam schools or gifted programs.

Parents are just massively, massively under-rating the power of selection effects and wasting a lot of time, money and political capital.

Many selective programs have minimal impact

There happens to be a good recent scholarly treatment of the New York City G&T program in Jimmy Chin and Geoffrey Kocks鈥� paper, 鈥�.鈥� They use two different methods (a regression discontinuity design centered on the qualifying exam cutoff and a lottery design) to look at causal impacts of being admitted to the kindergarten G&T program.

What they find is that G&T admits are more likely to end up going to selective middle school programs, so parents who perceive G&T as the first step on a ladder of selective educational experiences in the NYC public school system are onto something.

But do the kids actually learn anything extra? Well, no.

They find that 鈥渨hile G&T markedly changes the classroom environment, there is no impact on achievement using both empirical strategies, with precise and insignificant effects smaller than 0.04蟽 when pooling the designs.鈥�

How about getting into those good middle schools, though 鈥� is that valuable?

Unfortunately, I couldn鈥檛 find a study on that. But back in 2011, Will Dobbie and Roland Fryer looked at the pinnacle of selective public education in New York City, the specialized high schools where admission is based on standardized test results.

The way this works is that there are sharp cut-off points because admission is based purely on the tests. So kids with better test scores end up doing better in life, but we can use discontinuity designs to test whether this is a result of getting into the more selective schools or just a selection effect. 鈥渁ttending an exam school has little impact on Scholastic Aptitude Test scores, college enrollment, or college graduation 鈥� casting doubt on their ultimate long-term impact.鈥�

That paper is 15 years old, and at this point I would say it鈥檚 made zero impact on the political wrangling over these schools or anything else that鈥檚 happening in the city.

What鈥檚 interesting is that I don鈥檛 think this lack of attention to the question of whether NYC鈥檚 selective programs are any good at teaching reflects media bias or short-sightedness. The city鈥檚 parents appear to sincerely not care about this and are just desperate to send their kids to schools where the other kids are above average. Atila Abdulkadiro臒lu, Parag Pathak, Jonathan Schellenberg and Christopher Walters studied this in 鈥溾�� where they looked at how parents ranked high schools in their applications to New York鈥檚 public school choice system. The authors find that 鈥減references are unrelated to school effectiveness and academic match quality after controlling for peer quality.鈥�

Education鈥檚 Lake Wobegon problem

Unlike in the G&T study or the specialized high schools study, the school choice paper did find that going to school with higher-achieving peers has modest but real benefits for learning.

Similarly, in 鈥溾�� by David Card, Eric Chyn, and Laura Giuliano, they look at an anonymous, large, urban school district that apparently everyone in the know believes to be Broward County in Florida. What they find is that being admitted to this county鈥檚 G&T program leads to better middle and high school grades and better odds of going to college 鈥� but no increase in standardized test scores. They also find that this effect exists only for boys from disadvantaged backgrounds. So parents are obsessed with peer effects over teaching effectiveness, and the peer effects are real 鈥� they鈥檙e just small.

What鈥檚 perverse about this is that exactly as you would expect, peer effects are most valuable for precisely the kinds of kids whose parents are least likely to be reading New York Magazine or obsessing over school rankings.

I find it puzzling the extent to which quite wealthy people will sometimes try to buy their kids鈥� way into Ivy League colleges. There is a to attending an elite private school versus a state flagship university that鈥檚 probably driven by the networking opportunities. But while I鈥檓 happy to believe that going to Harvard helped Ruben Gallego get to the United States Senate 鈥� a poor kid from Chicago was able to raise money for his first Arizona State House race in part because he met rich and well-connected people there 鈥� it鈥檚 obviously not the case that Jared Kushner became a top American diplomatic envoy thanks to his elite educational credentials.

More broadly, though, the promise of education is that it鈥檚 positive sum.

At the low end of the achievement spectrum, it would be better for everyone to live in a country where basic literacy and numeracy skills were universal. Obviously the largest benefits of obtaining those skills would accrue to the individuals who acquired them. But it鈥檚 broadly better for society to have skilled workers and swift communications. At the high end, if a promising kid is able to learn math and science and become an inventor, then everyone wins.

But we can鈥檛 give everyone above-average peers.

And families chasing those above-average peers has a lot of negative impacts. In the traditional public school system, access to specific schools is literally auctioned off via the real estate market. If 鈥済ood school鈥� in that context meant school that is good at teaching, that could become something that broadly inspired homeowners to care about the quality of their local school, driving big systemic improvement.

But since it just means school with above-average peers, we鈥檙e getting a zero-sum shuffle in which the families who would most benefit from higher-achieving peers can鈥檛 afford them. The charter school world features some very promising schools, but it also features systematic efforts by many of those schools to game the system and do de facto selection of their students. These violations of the spirit of lottery-based admissions happen because, at the end of the day, parents reward them. And for colleges and private K-12 schools where selection is the norm, that鈥檚 basically all that happens.

In the D.C. area, there鈥檚 a definite hierarchy of private schools, where Sidwell and Georgetown Day are 鈥渢he best.鈥� But this literally just means they鈥檙e the hardest to get into. The reason they鈥檙e hard to get into is they get the most applications and have the highest yield on their acceptance. They鈥檙e hard to get into because everyone wants to go there, and everyone wants to go there because they are hard to get into. There is zero evidence that they provide better education on a value-add basis than their 鈥渓esser鈥� competitors or than schools you can attend for free.

And I mean literally zero! The parents who pay over $50,000 in tuition for the privilege of sending their kids there are sincerely not interested in this question. If they were, some evidence would exist. Maybe it wouldn鈥檛 be persuasive and maybe the studies wouldn鈥檛 be well-designed, but genuinely nobody cares!

We should try to teach kids appropriate material

I don鈥檛 really know how to get people to care more about the actual quality of education, but this really is something that we ought to care about.

Innate ability is very important, as literally everyone agrees in a non-school context.

My son is a very good swimmer, in large part because he鈥檚 very tall and strong for his age and has an impressive wingspan. But instruction and practice are also very important. Learning how to swim a legal butterfly, execute a flip turn or time a relay dive is not genetic. My son inherited many of these physical attributes from his mother, who I think clearly could have been a good swimmer. But she was never interested and never learned how to do any of that stuff.

Outside of formal K-12 schools, nobody thinks the right way to teach is to lump a bunch of people together based on their age and then have one teacher try to deliver a lesson to everyone regardless of what they already know. That鈥檚 dumb.

The practice of labeling some kids officially 鈥済ifted鈥� invites toxic politics. But I think it鈥檚 perverse that progressive ideology has saddled so much of public education with an approach to teaching that nobody uses anywhere else. It鈥檚 kind of wild that the teaching profession is so suffused with this ideology that few stakeholders in the system seem to understand how impossible it makes their jobs.

It鈥檚 really important for kids to master basic reading skills. When they do that, they ought to be passed on to a new language arts class that focuses more on understanding texts and learning to write. If they haven鈥檛 mastered basic reading yet, they should keep being taught it until they know how to do it. At some point in your mathematical education, you鈥檙e supposed to learn fractions. You should keep doing fractions until you鈥檝e learned them, but when you鈥檙e done, you should move forward. You鈥檇 expect to see different kids ready to learn basic algebra at different ages, which is fine 鈥� you should teach the material to the kids who are ready to learn it when they鈥檙e ready, regardless of their age.

Over the course of a normal education, different people will end up learning different amounts because that鈥檚 how life works.

When you鈥檙e lifting weights, you try to lift a bit more each week than you did previously. You don鈥檛 lift an age-determined average amount of weight regardless of how strong you personally are. And you won鈥檛 necessarily progress at the same speed as the person lifting next to you. And you definitely won鈥檛 get stronger just by working out in the gym whose clients are strongest on average.

Again, outside the K-12 school context everyone gets all this. Peers aren鈥檛 magic. In fact, if you鈥檙e a beginner, you probably need a bunch of explicit instruction that the real gym rats would find annoying and pointless 鈥� it鈥檚 better for everyone to be doing the workouts that are actually appropriate for them.

New York City education officials are hitting pause on releasing comprehensive artificial intelligence guidelines after their draft policy from March sparked .

Officials initially said their final guidance would be released in June, but backed away from that timeline during a Wednesday City Council hearing focused on AI in schools. Instead, the policy guidance will be released sometime this summer, First Deputy Chancellor Danielle Giunta said.

Giunta said the 鈥渟hifting national conversation, which has really escalated over just the last couple of weeks alone鈥� was one reason for the delay, along with nearly 6,500 comments responding to the March draft. Officials have not released those responses but told City Council members they would do so.

Worries about AI 鈥� and education technology in schools more broadly 鈥� have increased in recent months. More than half of City Council members urging Mayor Zohran Mamdani and schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels to pause AI use in schools citing concerns about learning and mental health. A broader petition seeking a moratorium on generative AI use in city schools has received .

The Education Department鈥檚 draft policy used a that spelled out various uses of AI and their risk levels. Assessments and grading are not allowed, for instance, but brainstorming lesson plans gets a green light. Student AI use was largely left out, even though it鈥檚 one of the most pressing issues schools face. In response to the draft policy, parents and largely criticized the approach.

Samuels, who did not attend Wednesday鈥檚 hearing, that the Education Department鈥檚 draft policy 鈥渕issed the mark鈥� that AI 鈥渋s the most invasive technology that we鈥檝e seen.鈥� He suggested the final guidance would have stricter limits for the city鈥檚 youngest students.

Giunta said Wednesday that the city is considering different expectations based on age and grade level and thinking about how to prepare older students 鈥渇or a world in which AI is already present without allowing AI to replace their own thinking.鈥�

City Council members repeatedly pressed Education Department officials about the extent to which AI tools are already used in classrooms and indicated families should have a greater say over how their children are exposed to it.

鈥淭here are huge gaps in our understanding of how the technology is being deployed and when,鈥� said Manhattan council member Carmen De La Rosa, who chairs the technology committee. 鈥淲e do need the time to be able to wrap our arms around what is happening in our classrooms.鈥�

Education officials said they are working with superintendents and principals to develop a more comprehensive sense of what tools schools are already using.

The Education Department鈥檚 stance on AI has whipsawed in recent years. When ChatGPT gained widespread use, city officials . Three months later, they rescinded the ban.

Former schools Chancellor David Banks , saying 鈥淎I can revolutionize how we function as a school system鈥� and could be used for everything from college advising to assessing student work. But he never released a clear policy, leaving that task to Mamdani and Samuels to complete. Meanwhile, schools have been left to .

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .

At a Board of Regents meeting Monday, state education officials announced that high school graduates in New York could soon start receiving a new type of diploma 鈥� one that reflects their skills and knowledge, rather than the number of credits they鈥檝e earned.

The new diploma is a central component of , the State Education Department鈥檚 multiyear effort to overhaul graduation requirements to ensure students leave high school ready for modern careers and higher education. If approved by the board, it would replace the current graduation framework, which allows students to earn one of three diplomas depending on how they perform on statewide standardized tests known as Regents exams.

At the meeting, Education Department officials called it the most significant transformation of the state鈥檚 graduation system in generations. The plan would direct school districts to shift away from awarding credits based on the time a student spends in a course and instead adopt a 鈥渃ompetency-based鈥� model with flexibility in how they develop mastery of specific skills.

鈥淭he big idea is that New York is moving away from an outdated factory-style education model toward a model system built for how students actually learn,鈥� said Jeffrey Matteson, the department鈥檚 senior deputy commissioner for education policy.

The Education Department has only shared preliminary plans so far, so many implementation details remain unclear. During and after the meeting, some Board of Regents members and education advocates raised concerns about how schools will maintain academic rigor and support teachers as they adopt flexible models, and whether students across the state will have equal access to opportunities.

Jeff Smink, deputy director at the advocacy group EdTrust-New York, said New York must strengthen K-8 instruction in order for the initiative to succeed, noting that students can only access opportunities like internships and college courses if they are proficient in reading and math.

The department plans to present the final plan to the board for approval once it鈥檚 complete and start a phased rollout in certain grade levels by the end of next school year. Here鈥檚 what we know so far.

What is competency-based education?

The Education Department defines competency-based education as a system in which students get closer to graduating after proving they鈥檝e actually learned material instead of just completing required class time.

Students would still enroll in traditional courses, but would also be able to participate in activities outside of the classroom, such as internships, capstone projects, community service and career and technical education programs, to move toward their degrees. Instead of a single exam, students would have different ways to show what they know in each subject, such as assessments, projects, presentations, or portfolios.

In 2024, the Board of Regents announced plans to eliminate the requirement that students pass the Regents exams to receive a diploma. Currently, they can earn one of three diploma designations: a Regents diploma, an advanced Regents diploma for students who pass additional tests, and a local diploma for students who meet testing requirements a different way. On Monday, state officials explained that the exams would be one of many options students can use to qualify for a diploma.

鈥淲hat will matter moving forward is the quality and substance of the evidence that a student produces, not the particular route that produced it or how long it took,鈥� said Shannon Logan, director of strategic priorities and coordination in the department鈥檚 Office of Cultural Education.

What will the new transcript look like?

Current transcripts include a list of classes and assessments with corresponding grades, which do not 鈥渁dequately reflect what a student knows and what they are able to do,鈥� Angelique Johnson-Dingle, one of the department鈥檚 deputy commissioners, said at the meeting. Under the new framework, graduating students would receive a 鈥渦niversal transcript or learner profile.鈥� 

The transcript would document alignment with state learning standards and the six attributes the state outlined in its graduation blueprint, called the . It鈥檚 unclear exactly what the transcript would look like.

Will it affect college applications?

There is little evidence that competency-based education disadvantages students in the college admissions process. Many colleges have embraced more holistic admissions practices that consider portfolios and other demonstrations of skills that extend beyond GPA and standardized test scores.

Education Department officials said they are working with colleges and universities to ensure every institution that serves the state鈥檚 high school graduates 鈥渦nderstands and trusts鈥� the new diploma.

What does this mean for current students?

Students who started ninth grade in 2023 would be the final cohort to graduate under the state鈥檚 current requirements.

Students starting high school in 2024, 2025, or 2026 would still have to fulfill current credit requirements and take the Regents exams, but they would not have to pass the exams to graduate. For the 2027 and 2028 cohorts only, the state would impose a yet-to-be-determined credit requirement.

The new flexible system introduced Monday, which would eliminate time-based credits, would be fully implemented for students who enter high school in 2029.

What are the next steps?

The state is currently reworking learning standards, competency rubrics, and the universal transcript and will release them within the next year. The department said it will continue to schedule working groups and advisory panels to gather feedback on the changes, and is updating the state鈥檚 data system to track student progress.

The Education Department encouraged school districts to start designing pilot programs for next school year that include hands-on learning outside of traditional classrooms, a wider range of ways to assess student learning beyond standard exams, and expanded career-related opportunities. Schools could hire work-based learning coordinators, for instance, or partner with local employers.

The New York Knicks鈥� victory this weekend over the San Antonio Spurs, cementing their , brought joy to fans across the five boroughs.

Shortly after their win, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the city will host to honor the team. It will start at 10 a.m. at Battery Park and travel north along Broadway through the Canyon of Heroes before concluding at City Hall for a ceremony where the mayor will give the team the keys to the city.

The only problem: Some parents are mad that the parade is being held on the same day as . The biology and living environment exams are being administered in the morning. The 鈥淓arth and Space Sciences鈥� and 鈥淧hysical Setting/ Earth Science鈥� exams are being administered in the afternoon.

One mom has already started asking city and state officials, as well as the team鈥檚 owner, to move the day of the parade. (High school students who aren鈥檛 taking Regents exams that day don鈥檛 attend school.) And one student started to cancel school altogether on Thursday.

鈥淭his scheduling conflict creates a profound issue of equity and fairness,鈥� Michelle Weintraub, a mom of an eighth grader scheduled to take a Regents exam that day, wrote in her petition. 鈥淭he students most affected are those who have worked tirelessly all year to pass these exams. Depriving them of the chance to celebrate their city鈥檚 historic milestone 鈥� while adults and non-testing students freely attend 鈥� is inherently inequitable.鈥�

, the student who started a petition, played up the feelings of unity the Knicks have brought to the city 鈥� and suggested the parade could be a teachable moment.

鈥淭he parade is an educational experience in itself, rich with lessons about sportsmanship, history, and the power of dreams coming true,鈥� Cosa wrote in his petition. 鈥淏y supporting this request, we will allow the next generation of Knicks fans to experience this extraordinary moment, creating lifelong memories and sparking inspiration for future accomplishments in their own lives.鈥�

As mayor, Mamdani has embraced a sense of fun for the city鈥檚 school kids, so they could watch the Knicks in the championship games. And of course, many kids were grateful to him for bringing back traditional snow days. But to do that, he had to get a for the day off since students already were at .

Getting a waiver again would likely be a tall order.

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Their bill, titled the , is being framed as a defense of public education. It is actually something else: a revealing glimpse into the mindset that is holding Democrats back.

A decade ago, Democrats were more willing to challenge the status quo. On education, they pushed for higher standards, greater accountability and new models like charter schools. They believed public education wasn鈥檛 just something to defend, but something to improve. They were willing to take on districts that weren鈥檛 delivering for students, even when it meant challenging teachers unions.

That spirit is hard to find today. 

The federal scholarship tax credit program, enacted last year, lets states direct federal dollars 鈥� potentially billions 鈥� to a wide range of student needs, including tutoring, afterschool programs, transportation and services for kids with disabilities. In states that opt in, families have the choice to use these scholarships to fill the gaps in their children’s education.听

That is something denied to states that opt out. And yet, the majority of Democrats in the Senate are trying to repeal the program 鈥� not because those uses fall outside their priorities, but because the funding flows outside traditional public school systems. 

Even though the tax credit program would provide significant new resources to advance priorities Democrats themselves have championed, its support for private school scholarships crosses a line in the sand for them. To most families, turning down new funding for students doesn鈥檛 make sense. But for Democrats, it follows a clear chain of logic, one that prioritizes the preservation of existing school systems over students鈥� needs, defers to the interests of teachers unions and applies ideological purity tests that treat any nontraditional learning environment as a threat.听

That way of thinking carries real consequences, especially at a moment when students need more support, not less.

The country is in the midst of a decade-long education depression, one marked by historic learning loss, widening achievement gaps and growing disengagement. Families see it, educators feel it and districts, facing acute financial strain, struggle to meet students鈥� needs.

For years, many on the left have that the United States always finds money for other priorities but refuses to invest meaningfully in education. President Donald Trump’s proposed record-breaking $1.5 trillion defense budget underscores the point. But for the first time in a long while, there is also, finally, new money for education. And Democrats want to turn these dollars away.听

That choice is even harder to justify when you consider the broader fiscal reality. The federal government has run deficits for more than two decades; if lawmakers are going to keep borrowing against the future, the least they can do is invest in the generation who will inherit their debt.

Democrats鈥� reflexive opposition to the tax credit program reveals how much their policy imagination has narrowed, leaving them unable to see how it helps their constituents and advances their priorities. Some of their critiques are substantive: Questions about accountability, oversight and whether private school scholarships are subject to the same civil rights protections as traditional public schools deserve serious answers. But those are arguments for getting in the room and shaping the program, not walking away. Repealing the program would only ensure that the students who need those dollars most 鈥� low- and middle-income families, children with disabilities, communities of color 鈥� would end up with nothing. Democrats should be fighting to make this program work for those families, not fighting to take it off the table. 

Democrats long held a clear advantage over Republicans on education. That advantage has in recent years as voters have grown more skeptical that the party is delivering results. Trying to repeal the tax credit program will only make matters worse.

Polling across multiple states shows strong support for participation in the scholarship tax credit program, including among Democratic voters. In many cases, support approaches or exceeds , particularly among working-class families and families of color.

What some Democratic politicians see as an unacceptable departure from orthodoxy, many families see as a practical way to get their children the help they need. At some point, the gap between how policymakers view the issue and how families experience it demands a reckoning. Democrats should focus less on defending what exists and more on exploring what could be. 

When Colorado鈥檚 Jared Polis became the first Democratic governor to announce that his state would opt into the scholarship tax credit program, he framed it perfectly: 鈥淸I]t鈥檚 only our own creativity that can hold us back. Anything we can envision, this is a very powerful funding mechanism.鈥� He called the decision a 鈥渘o-brainer鈥� and said he 鈥渨ould be crazy not to鈥� participate.

That is the mindset Democrats need right now. Not a defensive posture, but an expansive one 鈥� grounded not in scarcity, but in abundance. 

An starts from the premise that the goal is an educated public, not the preservation of any particular school model or the adults employed within it. It recognizes that public funding can support a wide range of tools, strategies and approaches, so long as they serve students well. And it invites educators, families and policymakers to imagine different ways of organizing learning, rather than assuming the century-old model designed for an industrial economy is the only one capable of serving today’s students.

The tax credit program is not a cure-all, but it is a meaningful new investment. At a moment of real need, real disruption and real opportunity, Democrats should not be narrowing the conversation. They should be expanding it.

鈥淲e wouldn’t be able to function as an organization without him,鈥� said Superintendent Jennifer Gaffney. 鈥淎 lot of what students, teachers and our office staff do is centered around the use of technology and data systems. He is the backbone of all that.鈥�

But now Gaffney doesn鈥檛 know how much longer she can rely on the federal dollars that pay his salary. The Rural Education Achievement Program is among the 17 funding sources that the Trump administration wants to roll into a . Congress approved $220 million for REAP this year, but under the president鈥檚 plan, governors and state education chiefs would decide whether rural districts would get extra money.

Monty Mayer, superintendent of the Velva Public Schools in North Dakota, about 20 miles southeast of Minot, used the $14,000 he received from the program this year to pay teaching assistants to work with students who were behind academically.

鈥淢oney rolled into a block grant would be swallowed up by the bigger schools as their needs are much greater than ours,鈥� he said. That would leave 鈥渟mall rural schools looking to find answers in different places without a clear picture as to where those resources would come from.鈥�

During with the Senate appropriations committee in late April, Education Secretary Linda McMahon faced several questions from both Democrats and Republicans about the future of the program. She suggested that REAP was underutilized.

鈥淎 lot of rural schools do not have grant writers, cannot bring in the resources other states might have or other cities might have,鈥� she said. 鈥淎 lot of states never participated in any of the grant funding.鈥�

Under a consolidated program, she said, all states would receive a portion of the block grant and officials would decide 鈥渉ow this money should be spent in their state, where the greatest needs are, whether that’s in rural communities.鈥�

Officials with years of experience in rural education say that isn鈥檛 how REAP works. States or districts don鈥檛 write grant proposals for the funding, said Steven Johnson, superintendent of the Fort Ransom Public School District, which operates one elementary school in southeast North Dakota. Districts , based on size and location, receive an invitation to apply. And most do, Johnson said.

鈥淚t鈥檚 rarely about capacity or lack of grant-writing ability. If anything, what we鈥檙e seeing is the opposite,鈥� he said. 鈥淩ural districts rely on REAP because it is simple, direct and does not require extensive administrative capacity.鈥�

Abigail Swisher, who previously worked on the REAP program at the department, said where rural districts struggle is applying for large, competitive grant programs.

“Applying for competitive federal grants is time-consuming and complex. Larger districts are hiring grant writers who have the specialized expertise and who have time,” she said. “That’s exactly why we have the REAP program. It was designed by Congress to help fill that gap.”

There were efforts to help rural districts access those other programs, she said, but those ended with the new administration.

鈥楾esting and reporting standards鈥� 

Districts that for Small, Rural School Achievement funding, one of the two REAP programs, have fewer than 600 students and are located in an area their state defines as rural. Others, with 20% of students who live below the poverty line, qualify for the Rural and Low-Income School program, and some are eligible for both. This year, 17,873 were eligible for one or both programs.

Last week, Kirstin Baesler, the assistant secretary of Elementary and Secondary Education, that they have considerable leeway to use federal funds for programs like tutoring or after-school programs.听

But Johnson said that flexibility was 鈥渙ne of the original core concepts behind REAP.鈥� His district, for example, didn鈥檛 have enough poor students to qualify for Title I funding, but under existing law, he was able to use federal funds to provide students with reading and math tutoring.

Congress created REAP as part of No Child Left Behind, the 2001 federal accountability law that set strict expectations for school improvement, and reauthorized the program as part of the Every Student Succeeds Act. Despite their small size, rural districts were not exempt from NCLB鈥檚 mandates, Johnson said. 

鈥淪mall, rural schools were expected to meet the same testing and reporting standards as larger systems but often lacked the staffing and resources to do so,鈥� he said.

A from AASA, the School Superintendents Association, showed that districts most commonly used the funds for technology, followed by staff training, compensation and expanding programs like STEM and arts for students. When Johnson asked other administrators across the country, they listed bullying prevention, special education assistants and support to help students graduate among the ways they use the funds.

鈥淩ural districts piece together budgets with many smaller sources,鈥� said Margaret Buckton, a school finance consultant in Iowa. Although REAP 鈥渋sn’t a huge sum, when combined with other small grants, it likely makes a difference.鈥�

Questions of 鈥榚fficacy鈥�

In her exchanges with Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican who has made rural schools a priority, McMahon questioned whether the program has a positive impact.

“Many of these programs have lost their efficacy and they really are not returning, giving the returns that we hope to see for rural schools,” McMahon said.

The Department of Education did not respond to questions about what data McMahon was referring to when she said the program wasn鈥檛 effective. But Melissa Sadorf, executive director of the National Rural Education Association, said because districts can use the funds in a variety of ways, the department looks primarily at compliance issues rather than impact on students.

鈥淭here is no single, consistent student outcome measure applied across grantees,鈥� she said. 鈥淭he program has not been the subject of a comprehensive federal evaluation in close to a decade, which makes any sweeping claim about effectiveness difficult to substantiate from the data.鈥�

That was mostly a summary of the challenges facing rural schools, like transportation and teacher recruitment, and what the department was doing to support them.

The department also tracks whether districts comply with the rules for using the funds.

A in the Custer County, Colorado, district, for example, discovered an accounting error because a staff member entered data using hand-written notes. The same issue came up in Indiana鈥檚 in 2022. The department鈥檚 website doesn鈥檛 list any reports conducted since McMahon took office.

The administration pitched the same block grant idea last year, and Congress ultimately rejected it. With the appropriations process likely to drag out for months, it鈥檚 unclear whether lawmakers will be more receptive this year. 

But for rural districts like Sackets Harbor, the site of an important naval base during the war of 1812, the continued uncertainty over federal funding is 鈥渦nnerving,鈥� said Gaffney, the superintendent. 

The district鈥檚 annual , in which students fanned out across the historic town for service projects, like gardening and polishing headstones, is popular with local residents. The school board asked voters to approve a nearly 8% tax increase, which they did. But with increases in English learners and students with disabilities, Gaffney said the district is still under 鈥渁 great deal of financial pressure.鈥�

鈥淭hat is precisely why every dollar matters to us, including REAP funding,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hese resources are vital in helping us maintain programs, services and opportunities for our students.鈥�

By the end of 2027, New York state is planning to completely phase out Regents exams and, instead, implement a new framework. This approach emphasizes not only content knowledge, but the development of skills such as critical thinking, creativity, communication and the ability to navigate an increasingly complex world.听

The shift away from Regents exams and toward a more holistic framework like one that Portrait of a Graduate represents presents a genuine opportunity. Not just to change how students are assessed, but to rethink what New York’s public education system prioritizes 鈥� real-world skills and holistic development over test scores.

For decades, education policy focused heavily on measurement. From No Child Left Behind to the Every Student Succeeds Act, the dominant theory of education reform has been to define measurable standards, test consistently and hold schools accountable for results. The intention was serious: raise achievement and close persistent gaps. But after nearly 25 years, outcomes remain uneven. In many places, proficiency has barely moved, even as educators and parents confront rising levels of student anxiety, disengagement and mental health challenges.

Now, as the state moves away from the Regents and begins building toward the Portrait of a Graduate, the question is no longer only what is measured, but whether educators can build a curriculum that actually helps students develop the skills the framework demands.

These are not developed in typical classroom settings alone. They are built through experience: sustained practice, collaboration, feedback and the opportunity to perform and communicate in real time. Some of the most powerful environments available for developing these capacities already exist, though they are too often pushed to the margins of the school day.

They exist in music and the arts.

In a music classroom, students learn to listen deeply, adjust in real time and collaborate toward a shared goal. They develop discipline through practice and resilience through repetition, and they learn to manage pressure while communicating something meaningful in front of others. These are not simply artistic experiences; they are cognitive and human ones.

Music doesn’t just engage the brain, it changes it. In just a few years, children who study music show in the regions responsible for processing complexity and in the pathways that connect the entire brain. This is not enrichment, this is development. And the evidence goes further: Research has consistently shown that structured music training strengthens 鈥� the very capacities that support the skills included in the Portrait of a Graduate framework.听

But beyond the research, children’s experiences are just as compelling. Students who have music classes daily develop not only skill, but , focus and a sense of agency. They begin to see themselves differently 鈥� not just as learners, but as contributors and creators.

For more than a century, the Regents exams signaled what New York鈥檚 education system valued. Now, the Portrait of a Graduate is redefining what student success looks like, shifting the focus toward the capacities young people need to thrive in the world beyond school. It’s up to educators to build a curriculum that genuinely develops them.

The Portrait of a Graduate asks schools to develop students who can think critically, communicate clearly, collaborate under pressure and navigate ambiguity with confidence. Music education has been doing exactly that in classrooms across the state for generations. The research confirms it. The students who have lived it demonstrate it.

As New York moves away from the Regents exams and redefines what it means to graduate, music education may be the most important curriculum for achieving the student success New York state is after.

Despite having room to serve more children, Middletown day care owner Peggy Fuentes often has to turn away families in desperate need of care. Each of her toddler classrooms has 10 students 鈥� the state caps class sizes for that age group at 12 鈥� but to fill the remaining seats, she鈥檇 have to hire another employee. That鈥檚 because a decades-old state regulation says day care classrooms have to have one adult for every five children between 18 and 36 months old.

With operating costs climbing across the board, , Fuentes said it simply isn鈥檛 feasible to pay another salary to accommodate just two more children.

鈥淚 have an inventory of childcare spots that I鈥檓 reluctant to use because it is cost prohibitive,鈥� said Fuentes, owner of On My Way Early Learning and Childcare Center, which serves around 240 children under 13.

New York state has some of the strictest staffing requirements in the country 鈥� stricter, in fact, than New York City鈥檚. As state leaders allocate billions of dollars to address the childcare shortage in this year鈥檚 budget, a new state law could ease those requirements and unlock new day care seats at no additional cost to providers 鈥� but only if the state agency that oversees childcare decides to act on it.  

In December, Governor Kathy Hochul signed legislation eliminating a provision that has prohibited the state Office of Children and Family Services from relaxing childcare staffing ratios. The new law leaves it to the agency to actually change the ratios; if it did so, the same number of workers could care for more children.  

State Senator James Skoufis, who introduced the bill in 2024, told New York Focus that adjusting the ratios is 鈥渕ore critical than ever鈥� amid the state鈥檚 ongoing efforts to scale up its childcare sector and provide more affordable care to working parents.

Childcare advocates who oppose the change are concerned having the same number of staff supervising more children would increase the risk of accidents and injuries and fail to address a root cause of the state鈥檚 childcare crisis: low wages for workers.

Supporters counter that looser ratios are consistent with set by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, a professional membership organization that promotes high-quality early childhood education, and that alignment with the group鈥檚 guidance would offer flexibility to providers who already operate with razor-thin profit margins.

So far, OCFS has not indicated whether it plans to update the regulations. In a statement provided to New York Focus, OCFS spokesperson Daniel Marans said the agency is 鈥渃urrently assessing the viability of the requested ratio change, with the goal of supporting childcare providers without compromising our commitment to child safety.鈥� The law does not impose a deadline for OCFS to make the switch.

More than 60 percent of New York鈥檚 census tracts are classified as a 鈥渃hildcare desert,鈥� meaning that there are three or more children under 5 waiting for every available slot, according to the . Meanwhile, more than 16,000 children are specifically as a result of staffing shortages that have led programs to operate under capacity. While that鈥檚 not necessarily related to staffing ratios, some think easing them could help address the shortage.

鈥淲e can provide more resources to counties and to providers all we want, but if we don鈥檛 provide the very common sense flexibility that these providers require in order to effectuate creating more seats, then the money is only going to go so far,鈥� said Skoufis.

Skoufis introduced the bill after providers, including Fuentes, expressed their frustrations to lawmakers over being held to tougher ratios than their counterparts in New York City, where staffing requirements are set by the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Day care providers in the five boroughs must have one staff member for every five children between 12 and 18 months and one for every six children who are 2 years old. In the rest of the state, it鈥檚 1鈥�4 and 1鈥�5, respectively. The discrepancies are even wider for older children.

Assemblymember Andrew Hevesi, who sponsored the bill, believes aligning ratios with New York City could help thousands of those families access a seat without burdening providers or taxpayers with additional costs.

鈥淐hildcare providers are operating on such slim margins that they frequently worry about going out of business,鈥� Hevesi said. 鈥淲e were looking for a way to give them some breathing room in an incredibly difficult climate without costing anybody any money.鈥�

Dede Hill, vice president of policy at the Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy, a social policy and advocacy organization, has a different perspective. 鈥淥ne thing that makes childcare in New York state so high quality is because we have low ratios 鈥� and that鈥檚 certainly not something we want to step away from,鈥� she said. Hill is a member of the Empire State Campaign for Child Care, which advocates for universal childcare.

鈥淚 don鈥檛 think staffing ratios are the solution to the tremendous issues we have related to supply,鈥� said Hill. The key is more investment in the workforce, including higher pay for childcare workers, she said.

One reason providers are facing significant financial strain is that the state鈥檚 reimbursement level for its , which covers nearly all of the cost of childcare for low- and middle-income families, isn鈥檛 enough to provide high quality care, Hill said. With providers forced to absorb the shortfall, many are unable to offer adequate wages: In 2025, the annual average salary for childcare workers in New York , lower than 96 percent of other jobs.

Fuentes, who has owned her day care center in Orange County for 17 years, said she currently has to choose between raising tuition for all children in order to pay another employee and waitlisting families even though there is ample space to serve them. If OCFS chose to align statewide staffing ratios with New York City, she said, she could enroll around 15 more children without hiring additional staff.

鈥淭here鈥檚 a childcare crisis in New York,鈥� she said. 鈥淚f we can鈥檛 use our full supply of seats, then that crisis is just going to continue.鈥�

For Heidi-Jo Brandt, president of a union representing more than 8,800 providers outside New York City, the flexibility doesn鈥檛 seem worth it. Some revisions to standards may be appropriate, such as the current 1鈥�2 ratio for children under 2 in home-based care, she said, but a broader relaxing of staffing ratios could put children at risk. Research shows inadequate supervision is the main cause of injuries in childcare settings, including , , and from bottle warmers.

鈥淲hile it could have a tremendous impact statewide, our concern is always for the safety of children,鈥� said Brandt.

Some research indicates that high staff-to-child ratios and smaller group sizes are critical for children鈥檚 health, safety, and development, but data on the safety outcome of ratios like New York City鈥檚 is limited.

In recent years, as the childcare industry has reeled from a pandemic-driven dip in enrollment and rise in operating costs, have proposed loosening their childcare staffing ratios, increasing maximum group sizes, and relaxing other regulations to meet demand. Many states set ratios based on guidance from the National Association for the Education of Young Children; New York City鈥檚 ratios are roughly in line with the group鈥檚 recommendations.

Meanwhile, New York state has some of the most stringent ratios nationwide. It is that uses the restrictive ratios recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Public Health Association for 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds. Even New York City鈥檚 staffing ratios remain stricter than those in many other states.

Skoufis first introduced the bill after then-OCFS Commissioner Suzanne Miles-Gustave informed him that aligning statewide ratios with New York City would require legislation. At the time, he said, OCFS officials 鈥渕ade it crystal clear鈥� they wanted to pursue the changes, though he鈥檚 less clear on their position today.

In a January letter to current OCFS Commissioner DaMia Harris-Madden, Skoufis argued that it is 鈥渇inancially unreasonable鈥� to require a 1鈥�5 staff-to-child ratio for 18- to 36-month-olds with a maximum group size of 12.

Hevesi said that he believes the agency should 鈥渁ct sooner rather than later鈥� given the potential benefits.

鈥淢y instinct is that there鈥檚 going to be support to look at this and see what鈥檚 appropriate 鈥� but my role was just to take the handcuffs off and now they are free to do whatever they feel is appropriate,鈥� he said.

Buffalo day care owner Emily Thrasher pointed out that New York City and state regulations differ on other aspects of childcare: The city also has more lenient classroom space requirements than the rest of the state, as well as different age group definitions that determine other regulations. For example, New York City defines a toddler as a child between 12 and 24 months old, while New York state鈥檚 definition is 18 to 36 months.

Thrasher said full alignment with New York City鈥檚 standards would allow her small business to generate hundreds of thousands of additional dollars annually. That, in turn, would enable her to serve more families.

鈥淚 can鈥檛 even imagine how much that would compound for larger day care centers,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e could help more families, open more slots, pay our staff more. 鈥� The changes seem small, but it would make the biggest difference.鈥�

This story originally appeared in , a nonprofit news publication investigating power in New York. .