Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels told the City Council Monday that the city will likely fall short of a state-mandated deadline requiring 80% of classrooms to comply with class-size limits by September, injecting fresh uncertainty into one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s most consequential education commitments.
“I think it’s going to be very difficult to get to 80% by September,” Samuels said during a preliminary budget hearing, where council members pressed education officials on how they plan to shrink class sizes while also finding budget savings across the system.
The city currently sits at 64% compliance for the current school year, above this year’s threshold of 60% but well short of where it needs to be. The state’s class-size law requires that 80% of classrooms hit the mark for the 2026-27 school year, with the September deadline fast approaching before the school year even begins. Meeting that target would require a significant jump in a compressed timeframe, and Samuels offered few assurances that it is achievable.
The city’s plan to get there is not cheap. The City Council’s budget analysis shows the Department of Education’s preliminary fiscal 2027 plan adds $600 million specifically for class-size compliance. That figure includes $542.9 million in city funds and $57.1 million in state funds, money intended to support roughly 6,000 teachers, assistant principals and room conversions. DOE’s proposed fiscal 2027 budget would increase by $2.61 billion from the November plan overall.
Despite the funding commitment, council members repeatedly questioned whether the money alone can solve what are fundamentally physical and staffing constraints. Lawmakers pushed hard on how the city intends to reach the 80% benchmark without gutting art rooms, theaters and other specialized spaces that schools rely on. DOE officials said they are working through principal surveys and school-by-school planning to identify room conversions, annexes and capital needs, but provided limited specifics on timelines or how many schools currently lack any viable path to compliance.
Staffing presents the other major obstacle. DOE officials said the department hired approximately 3,700 teachers last year and is working to expand that pipeline, but shortages persist. High school subjects including science and world languages are proving especially difficult to staff, and the Council analysis flags compliance as particularly challenging at the high school level.
The hearing also surfaced tension around Mamdani’s broader savings drive. Finance Chair Linda Lee, a Democrat from Queens, asked what the Department of Education had submitted under the administration’s chief savings officer process, a mechanism Mamdani announced in February that tasks each agency with identifying savings equal to 1.5% of their budgets this fiscal year and 2.5% next year. Samuels said the department had gone through “significant deliberations” and submitted a plan while trying to protect schools, but did not share details publicly.
Reports from those chief savings officers were due March 20, but City Hall has not yet indicated when the findings will be made public.
That combination of financial pressure and a looming compliance deadline puts Mamdani in an uncomfortable position. Class-size reduction was a centerpiece promise during his campaign, and New York City’s public school parents, particularly in the borough’s most crowded districts, have been waiting years for the state law to deliver real results. The law, passed in 2022, gave the city a multi-year runway precisely because the compliance challenge was never going to be easy. Still, landing at 64% compliance with the steepest jump still ahead is not a trajectory that signals the city is on track.
What happens next depends heavily on how much flexibility the state grants and whether the DOE can accelerate hiring in the license areas where shortages are most acute. DOE officials said enrollment projections are being planned flat, which could simplify some capacity calculations but does not resolve the underlying shortage of classrooms and qualified teachers in specific subjects.
Mamdani took office 82 days ago. The 100-day mark arrives later this week, and the class-size picture offers a preview of how his administration will handle a situation where the political commitment and the operational reality are not yet aligned.
