Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll find out what a new mayor and a new schools chancellor will mean for the city system. We’ll also get details on a lawsuit that says teenagers are being held in solitary confinement in state detention facilities for extended periods.
Last week, Kamar Samuels took over as New York City’s schools chancellor. He was Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s choice for the high-visibility job leading the country’s largest public school system. I asked Troy Closson, who covers education in the city, to explain how Samuels can shape the educational agenda. We have a new mayor and a new schools chancellor. What’s on parents’ minds? For many families, some of the biggest questions might be whether their kids are going to be able to learn to read and write, whether education for children with disabilities will improve and whether high-achieving students will be challenged. Those issues affect families across the school system, and they’re why many education leaders are watching to see how the administration talks about school improvement more broadly. Samuels has spoken about the need to continue improving literacy and math instruction, and giving students access to rigorous material. How he approaches the huge range of needs for children, from kids who need more support to top students, could play a role in shaping whether families stay in the system or look for other options. Who is Samuels and how was he chosen? He was a superintendent on the West Side of Manhattan, responsible for more than two dozen schools for the last several years. One of the issues he was known for in that job, and earlier as a superintendent in Brooklyn, was merging schools with low enrollments, with an eye toward integration. His experience dealing with those issues, which can be some of the most complicated and fraught in the school system, was one of the things that stood out to Mamdani’s team in selecting him. And while Mamdani, during the campaign, mentioned a handful of issues that he wanted to prioritize for schools, like better serving homeless students, he didn’t release a full education plan. That means that Samuels may take a larger role in shaping the administration’s vision for education. But school integration is no longer the hot topic it was a few years ago. What steps is Samuels likely to take? School integration wasn’t a priority for Eric Adams when he was the mayor. It had been one of the most controversial issues during Bill de Blasio’s second term before that, when de Blasio’s chancellor started talking about overhauling admissions at a small group of elite high schools. Mamdani has said he will not change admissions at those schools. But Mamdani also said, both during the campaign and since taking office, that he believes that the school system remains in urgent need of integration — which, for Samuels, could mean continuing to merge schools, especially since many schools are now significantly under-enrolled. What about gifted-and-talented programs? They were a flashpoint when de Blasio was mayor. About 5 percent of students in New York are enrolled in these programs. Mamdani said, when asked during the campaign, said that he didn’t believe that students should be admitted to gifted-and-talented programs in kindergarten. The mayor has also said that for the upcoming school year admissions in those programs won’t change. Samuels, in the districts where he was superintendent, often expressed an interest in moving from traditional and potentially more restrictive gifted-and-talented programs to international baccalaureate programs, which are popular among middle-class families as an option known for rigor. So we could potentially see more schools adopting international baccalaureate programs. What can he do to increase rigorousness to see that students learn? The biggest challenge is that the New York school system is still by far the biggest in the country, even though enrollment has declined by more than 100,000 students in recent years. Many more kids in elementary school alone could likely benefit from more accelerated learning, and many more need much more support to get to basic proficiency. Few administrations have done well in ensuring that both get what they need — and that access isn’t limited to only some children. Can Samuels, and Mamdani, really pull it off? There are a lot of examples of cities even since 2020 that have taken some of these issues on with varying success. Many families are well aware of the drama in San Francisco around math education, where the school district eliminated its middle school algebra courses because of concerns about equity in enrollment. That effort prompted a backlash while doing little to improve equity. I think we’re at a time now when district leaders here or anywhere have decades of research at their fingertips to avoid what hasn’t worked and to double down on the things research shows benefit students. WEATHER Today will be mostly cloudy with a slight chance of rain and a high near 49. Cloudy and rainy conditions are expected to continue tonight with a low around 31. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until Monday (Martin Luther King Jr. Day). QUOTE OF THE DAY “We have not canceled even one patient’s access to care. Patients are being cared for in a calm, compassionate and collegial atmosphere.” — Dr. Philip Ozuah, the president of Montefiore Einstein, one of three hospital systems affected by a nurses’ strike that is now in its third day. The latest Metro news
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Isaac was on the honor roll at the school he attended and excelled as a high school football player. A lawsuit says that he and others in his unit in a detention facility went into solitary confinement in February and March of last year. Since then, a lawsuit says, he has been “routinely locked in his cell” for at least 20 hours a day. Isaac is 17. The lawsuit, which seeks class-action status, was filed in federal court in Manhattan last week by the Legal Aid Society and Jenner & Block LLP on behalf of Isaac and three other detainees. All three are Black and range in age from 16 to 20. They are being held in detention at facilities run by the New York State Office of Children and Family Services. The lawsuit says that young people are often held in solitary confinement as a form of punishment for “alleged rule infractions and, at times, minor misbehavior, including manifestations of youth’s disabilities.” My colleague Hurubie Meko writes that state regulations prohibit minors from being held in solitary confinement — regulations the lawsuit says are “inconsistent and vague,” and often ignored. A spokeswoman for the Office of Children and Family Services said that it was aware of the lawsuit and that it does not endorse or condone the use of isolation for punishment. METROPOLITAN DIARY Feeling it
Dear Diary: It was a Tuesday night, and I was headed home after teaching my adult literacy class. I got on the subway at Wall Street. The man sitting across from me was noticeably dancing in his seat. When he got up to get off at his stop, he bumped fists with the man sitting next to him. A few stops later, the second man asked if I wanted a bag of high-end hair products. He had just come from an event and didn’t need them because he was bald. I accepted and asked if he knew the man who had fist-bumped him. “No,” he said. “But he was grooving out.” — Malory Hom Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
