As hundreds of thousands of families struggled to get public school students online for remote learning on Tuesday, many parents and kids found themselves longing for the good old days when snow meant no school at all. But the end of snow days may be the result of a basic math problem involving the school calendar.
According to state law, all New York public schools are required to provide a minimum of 180 days of instruction. But new cultural holidays in New York City and union requirements on teachers’ schedules have put a squeeze on the school year.
Instructional days
Mayor Eric Adams and Schools Chancellor David Banks were adamant this week that virtual learning was necessary to keep students’ academics on track. But Banks also said that state law required Tuesday to be an instructional day instead of an old-school snow day where students got the day off.
“We are by state law mandated to have at least 180 days of school in order for us to be in compliance and not be subjected to major fines,” he said at a press conference. “And that's what we have to be extremely careful with. That's one of the benefits of having the remote day. This is not a day off.”
The city’s public schools are already squeaking by. Students are only in school for 179 days this year. Additional teacher training days allow the city to meet the 180-day requirement, according to the education department.
Any change to the requirement of 180 instructional days would have to come through legislation.
State Sen. John Liu, who chairs the city's education committee, said he’d reject any moves to decrease the required number of school days.
“There should not be any reduction in the minimum days,” he said. “We are certainly not at that point. There are 365 days in the year.”
City leaders seem similarly inclined in light of learning loss among students during the pandemic. According to the National Assessment of Education Progress test scores, students scored 5 to 8 points lower in math and 3 points lower in reading upon returning to in-person learning after the pandemic, though there are indications that students have since been gaining ground.
“COVID took months, if not years, away from the education and socialization of our children,” Adams said at a press conference on Monday held to announce the plans for a remote day. “Our children must learn. They fell behind. We need to catch up.”
School holidays
New York City has added a spate of religious and cultural holidays to the school calendar in recent years, including Diwali, Lunar New Year, Juneteenth, and both Muslim Eid holidays. The city also added days off for Easter Monday and two days during Passover to this year's school calendar.
Banks said the additional holidays “are great because we are celebrating the diversity of our city.” But he acknowledged they also make meeting the 180-day minimum trickier.
“What has also happened is we have subsequently reduced the amount of available flexible days,” he said.
Schools Chancellor David Banks apologized for the botched start of remote learning on Tuesday due to technical problems.
David Bloomfield, an education law professor at Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center, said the new holidays not only put pressure on the calendar – they can also be stressful for parents who must scramble for childcare.
“Hundreds of thousands of parents and children who are not observers of a particular religion are put out on a given day of school when it’s closed,” he said.
One potential solution would be to eliminate a current holiday. But Bloomfield said lawmakers don’t want to offend various religious and cultural constituencies. “When you establish a holiday on a religious basis it’s very hard to withdraw that,” he said.
Last year, the Adams administration proposed eliminating an obscure holiday called Anniversary Day (also known as Brooklyn-Queens Day) to accommodate the newer additions to the school calendar. But two assemblymembers with strong attachments to Anniversary Day, which commemorates the founding of Long Island's first Sunday school in 1829, led a successful behind-the-scenes push to preserve it.
“Anniversary Day was a celebration of what Sunday schools meant to the Christian community. Sunday schools, especially for African-American people, are very important,” said Assemblymember Stefani Zinerman, who teamed up with Assemblymember Latrice Walker, a fellow Brooklynite.
Liu said he doesn’t favor cutting holidays from the school calendar, either.
“There are more holidays that must be observed because New Yorkers are much more diverse and our public school system should acknowledge that,” he said.
Both Liu and Bloomfield suggested the city might consider doing away with some of the February break to create more instructional days.
Union contract
The contract with the United Federation of Teachers currently requires that teachers return on the Tuesday after Labor Day. It also requires that they have the last two weekdays of June off. In a statement, the union said parents have lobbied for similar limits.
“Traditionally parents have raised the loudest concerns when the school year threatened to end in July or start before Labor Day,” said spokesperson Alison Gendar. “We need to meet the state requirements for a minimum of 180 days of instruction.”
The union sent members a message on Tuesday afternoon that criticized education department leadership for not running a “stress test” on the authentication technology students and staff use to sign on to remote learning platforms. Banks blamed IBM, which manages the technology, for not being ready for “prime time.”
Bloomfield said teachers may be more amenable to shifting start and end dates if it means not having to repeat yesterday’s remote learning fiasco.
“The only practical solution I see is to get together with the union and start school before Labor Day as many school districts do,” Bloomfield said. “It may be because of yesterday’s debacle the union politics and city politics may have changed. … Maybe the union will give because they see how impacted the calendar is, and drives their members crazy as well.”
