When the new public school year kicks off Thursday, the city will officially open 24 brand new schools featuring more seats and modern classrooms, officials announced Wednesday.
NYC Schools Chancellor David Banks and NYC Mayor Eric Adams held a press conference in the Bronx to tout the addition of 24 new schools, including more than 11,000 new seats in Brooklyn, Bronx, Manhattan, and Queens, for the 2024-25 school year that gets underway on Sept. 5.
The milestone marks the most new K through 12 seats opened by the School Construction Authority since 2003, the mayor said. It also comes in addition to more than 20,000 seats added since 2022, and with “state-of-the-art” facilities for students.
“We want them to have science labs, music rooms, special education classrooms, gyms, auditoriums and libraries that are modern and state of the art,” Adams said. “We want them to have play spaces and spacious lunchrooms as well as space for the staff.”
NYS mandate for smaller classes, more space
The expansion comes after New York State mandated this year reduced class sizes under the state-approved deal to let Adams keep mayoral control of city schools.
The city has five years to reduce class sizes. Banks said the city is on track to fulfill the mandate with 40% more class space added this year and last year, but admits going forward will likely bring more challenges.
“The first two years we didn’t feel it would be a real struggle for us,” he said. “Certainly, the new additions that we are getting help us with respect to the class size law. But by the time we hit next year and beyond, there are going to be some more difficult choices that are going to have to be made.”
Some of those choices center around the challenge of hiring more teachers.
“The class size law at its full-on implementation will require us to hire an additional 10,000 to 12,000 more teachers, first of all,” Banks said. “Even if you didn’t build anything else, you will need 10,000 to 12,000 more teachers where there’s a national teacher shortage. So the question becomes, do you lower your standards to get more teachers or how much more innovative can you get?”
Medical, guidance counselor, admin suites
Meanwhile, the new school buildings, which include nine in Brooklyn, eight in the Bronx, one in Manhattan, and six in Queens, feature modern classrooms, advanced technology, and versatile learning spaces.
Learning spaces include reading and speech resource rooms, art and music classrooms, science lab and prep rooms, special education classrooms, libraries, gyms and auditoriums.
The buildings were also designed with multi-purpose spaces to serve students, staff, and the surrounding community. These features include medical, guidance counselor, and admin suites, parent and community rooms, indoor and outdoor play spaces, and staff lunch and conference rooms.
“School buildings are the physical representation of the investment we make in our children and our city as we cultivate the next generation of leaders,” Banks said. “These new buildings will provide 11,000 new classroom seats, creating more space for bright starts and bold futures. We are truly grateful to our partners at SCA and City Hall for standing alongside us in this vital effort to expand opportunities for our students.”