Back to School Voices From New York City Educators

The school year is beginning for millions of students, educators, families and school workers across New York City’s public school system — and there is no shortage of issues shaping the year ahead.

From debates over mandated curriculum and the controversy surrounding NYC Reads and reading scores, to the RESPECT Check and paraprofessional pay, the recently-unveiled AI policy, the end of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for specific communities, and the threat of ICE enforcement and the question of how schools can protect students and their families;  students and educators are entering the school year with plenty on their minds.

These issues are connected to larger fights over funding, working conditions, immigrant rights, and what it means to create safe and supportive public schools.

We asked educators from across New York City, many of whom are in the MORE Caucus of the UFT, to share some of their thoughts, concerns, and hopes as they head back into the classroom.

If you are an educator, student, public school parent or family member, and want to contribute to future articles, email us at [email protected]. 

One of my students was abducted by ICE last year. Losing a child that I cared for deeply to the inhumane violence against immigrants in this country was the worst experience of my entire life. 

In the midst of this horror, I had no idea what I could do to save my student. I felt like I couldn’t even acknowledge that this was happening without the looming threat of violating student privacy guidelines, an offense that can end the career of any tenured teacher, let alone an untenured one like myself. Was I allowed to answer the phone calls from his family’s lawyers? Was I allowed to speak to the congressmen that were reaching out to me? I had considered going in person to the detention facility myself. When I spoke out in defense of him and his father at a rally in Queens, I had resigned myself to the fact that I could lose my job and even my teaching license by doing so.

In the wake of this incident and dozens more since the Trump administration began its reign of terror against immigrant children in New York City, the DOE must deliver airtight protocols to administrators and teachers for defending students and their families against ICE. The UFT must also demand protections for tenured and untenured teachers alike, and empower us to speak up for our students and our communities.

The curriculum mandates have taken the joy out of teaching and learning. Previously, I would do yearlong, cross-content thematic studies that made room for emergent and project-based learning. My students were excited and motivated to learn. Since the transition to Wit & Wisdom, the majority of my students have expressed they hate ELA, despite my repeated attempts to make it more relevant and developmentally appropriate for them. Essentially, this curriculum has removed student choice and voice from their education. 

— Sara, Second Grade Special Education Teacher

I’ve been thinking a lot about the amount of turnover lots of our schools are experiencing and how to make teaching more sustainable and responsive to the humanity of educators. Every year I experience the loss associated with teachers leaving schools because they are burned out, mistreated, unhappy, or just unappreciated. I changed schools three times in four years in NYC, and even though I have carved out some stability for myself at my current school, every year I lose colleagues and friends who can’t put up with burdens placed on teachers anymore. 

This takes a massive toll on the whole school community. Most teachers I know hate to leave their students and the relationships they have built, but we also support each other in leaving in hopes of finding a place where they can be treated fairly and have a chance to be happy, or perhaps just content, or, at the bare minimum, not exploited. Many principals see us as interchangeable parts, valuable while we do what we’re told, but easily replaced when we wear down. Rather than treat us with the respect and care we deserve, it is easier to bring in a new teacher when we speak up or express a desire for change. 

Sadly a lot of this is normalized, and many of my colleagues just think that unhappiness, burnout, and turnover are just part of the job. I would love to see the union organize and message around working conditions, teacher autonomy, and building schools that are places for long-term stability and growth. There isn’t one cause to this problem (though standardized testing and top down bureaucracy come to mind), so there isn’t one easy solution either, but I do think that a starting point is teachers having more voice and power in the governance and direction of schools and respect for their professional knowledge, expertise, and dedication.  

Something that has been front of mind recently is the equitable rollout of the class-size reduction initiative. 

As we enter the 2026–27 school year and NYC Public Schools continues implementing the state-mandated class-size reduction initiative, I am concerned about the equity implications of how these new resources will translate into programming and scheduling decisions at the school level.

Smaller class sizes are an important investment in our students, but we should be asking not only whether class sizes are being reduced, but also which students and programs are benefiting from those reductions. As schools receive additional resources and make decisions about staffing, scheduling, and course offerings, we need to ensure that existing inequities are not unintentionally reinforced.

For example, will additional staffing primarily be used to reduce class sizes in honors, Advanced Placement, gifted and talented, or other accelerated programs? Or will these resources also be used to address overcrowding in programs serving some of our highest-need students?

That includes examining special education classes that may already be over-enrolled or out of compliance, as well as ENL and integrated ENL classes serving English Language Learners. We should also consider whether students who have historically had less access to selective or accelerated programming will experience the same benefits from smaller classes as students already enrolled in those programs.

This is especially important because the stated purpose of these investments is not simply to reduce a systemwide average. The implementation of class-size reduction should be viewed through an equity lens. As programming and schedules change, we should examine class size by student population, program type, course level, and service model, rather than relying solely on schoolwide compliance numbers.

The central question should be: Will class-size reduction narrow existing opportunity gaps, or could the way we implement it inadvertently reproduce them?

As we move forward, I believe schools and the DOE should be transparent about who is benefiting from these investments and intentionally prioritize students and programs where overcrowding has historically been most persistent, particularly students with disabilities, English Language Learners, students experiencing poverty, and other historically underserved populations. 

I’ve been thinking about my school’s neighborhood extensively. There is a K-8 charter school going up across the street while there are TWO middle schools in the building where I work. To make matters worse, it is going where the former gas station was which has now been determined to be a brown site by the city, creating lots of health issues for those who live in the neighborhood. I’m thinking about how schools can organize against instances like this and how we can continue to fight against charter school expansion while also acknowledging the environmental injustices of it all. From a larger perspective, I am aspiring to find the time, resources, and connection with other neighborhood schools / the district / community to understand the issue as a whole, put a stop to the opening of this specific charter school, and also the issues that surround it generally that may impact students and their families in other neighborhoods going through something similar.