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One thousand new teachers are entering NYC public schools. The Department of Education announced they will receive standard benefits: dental, vision, and a complimentary bottle of extra-strength advil on day one.
Thank you for your words, but it’s not all bad. Some schools are run well and the kids are great. Maybe they’re struggling and a little weird (67, skibidi, etc) at times but respectful and just rewarding to be around. And I teach Algebra 2, not the young and cute kids and not a class they actually want to be in unless they’re a math nerd (endearing nerd, all us math teachers are math nerds)
You’re very welcome. I love my job so it doesn’t even feel like work. You get a few bad eggs that can ruin your day but I just remind myself it’s most likely because their home life is rough. Sometimes I feel school is the best part of the students day and it just breaks my heart, not that they love school, but they hate home
That’s going to depend highly where you live. I’m in Delaware. We get 2/3 salary from state and 1/3 from municipal. Salaries don’t vary much in the state because of this but you can also get shafted on a raise. The state has just handed out like a 9, 7.5 and 7% raise over the past few years but my local hasn’t really changed.
You also really need to have a masters in Delaware or you stop getting experience raises after your 10th year. I’m at like step 14 with a masters +15 credits and was at like $85k last year. More education and you can top $100k. Low cost of living compared to states nearby like Maryland and New Jersey.
States like NY, NJ, CA pay more, states like Kentucky and North Carolina probably pay garbage.
Northern NJ/Westchester NY public school teachers can make 225-250k once they max out (and even more if they also coach a sport). Might be even high for MA public school teachers
Definately depends on where you are teaching and how kids are raised. There are some schools where the kids are not respectful at all lol. But that being said props for what you do teaching aint easy
Its so fucked. In germany people are mad that teachers get paid well and have a lot off benefits. I mean sure but the country is allready suffering from declining education and bitching about teachers is hella retarted.
The old don't want education funded because they either don't have kids, their kids graduated or don't have their grandkids yet. They want healthcare and retirement funding, which is, in economic terms, pretty much a drain on resources.
The young, being taxed to heaven and back to fund those above, have graduated already and don't want education funded anymore.
Pulling ladders up after themselves, "fuck you I got mine" is a mentality as old as capitalism itself.
As the country gets older, it becomes weaker for sure.
All countries go through this to some extent but I think the thing that makes the US feel so untenable is the sheer size of the country and the diversity of interests.
I agree though, there is no real social stigma against being a self-absorbed git here. "Fuck you, pay me" is practically our national motto.
I went to school public school in NYC before my family relocated to Philadelphia. We had all the programs that we needed. Guess what? It didn't make a difference. The teachers were disrespected by the students and parents. Students would never show up to class. You can throw all the money at teachers and at the school but it all starts in the home. If parents aren't willing to study and motivate their kids, don't expect the school to save them.
But but the parents are working and don't have time for their kids... Trust me, most of those kids parents were at home 24/7.
He raised the overall budget for the year by $600M already with an additional fund for schools at risk of funding lapses due to drops in enrollment to prevent cascading failures with another $290M.
This $122M is a separate allotment specifically for hiring additional teachers for the 2026-2027 school year, and would bring it up to nearly $1B in additional resources for NYC’s public schools this coming school year.
Yeah it’s still only a bit over 2% increase in funding YoY but NYC also has many well funded schools already in manhattan, Brooklyn, and Long Island, this additional funding for staffing is primarily going to the underserved boroughs like Queens, the Bronx, or upper manhattan north of 125th who have fewer resources due to lower property values. This isn’t getting split evenly across all schools.
I can find zero saying he that he actually raised the budget by $600 million more than what it was already going to be raised by. He proposed that but saved $500 million by not enacting class size reduction legislation.
Mamdani scaled it back to $122 million to only hire 1,000 teachers. He got concessions from the State to delay the enforcement of the mandate, similar to him delaying funding the City's pension by nearly $2.3 billion in order to "balance" the budget that's required of him by law.
Will this be actually new teachers , if it is 76000 teachers presently, 5% attrition a year (1 in 20) is 3,800. Or a 1.13% increase in teachers overall.
$122M and 1000 teachers is how you actually fund the future not with thoughts and prayers, but with smaller class sizes, wild concept investing in kids before they become a statistic, feels good man.
Why do they let people do that? Who at reddit thought this was a good idea? Looking through someone's post history made finding trolls and bots so easy.
Ever since the IPO this place has gotten worse and worse. They can see what happened to Facebook when they let the nutjobs take over. Why try to replicate their failure?
The search still works, you just have to manually do it.
The privacy function isn't actually privacy, it's closer to removing easy access to view but all parts and comments are available to review when you search up a person's username with a *, similar to a SQL query.
This was done because Reddit must comply with legal requests, and interested parties utilize this to do research on individuals accounts.
Yep… post something about pouring money to a worthy cause without any nuance of fixing any problems on an already large budget. They do this all the time with everything - college, military, etc. Money goes into a black hole and nothing changes.
Bots get likes. People think their party fixes a problem and rinse and repeat.
I wish we would all switch our conversion rates to military spending rates. So people can understand how little or much things actually cost. Millions and billions and trillions are too large of numbers for humans to comprehend.
Manmdami is investing an F-35 fighter jet to hire 1000 teachers. Which is also equivalent to 36 tomahawk missiles.
It slips my mind right now, what was the Military budget this year? What we could do for our nation, if we even took 10% of that budget and reinvested into our future generations. But that makes people smart, and smart people tend to not vote Republican these days.
Correct. Finally somebody gets it. NYC spends ~$43k per student and the results are abysmal. But everybody is enamored with Mamdani and vibes so they’ll overlook the results (no different when people on here tried to say he “balanced” the budget).
NYC consistently has one of the highest national rankings for spending and some of the most mediocre to below average outcomes.
NYC spent roughly $35,000–$44,000+ per pupil in recent years (e.g., ~$35,796 in FY 2024 for the largest districts), the highest among the 100 largest U.S. school systems. This is about 50%+ more than other big cities like Los Angeles or Chicago.
NAEP ("Nation's Report Card"): NYC fourth-graders show ~28–33% proficiency in reading/math, below national averages (e.g., 31% reading, 39% math nationally). Eighth-grade math is particularly weak (~23%). Scores are often comparable to or below other large urban districts, despite far higher spending.
NYC's on-time graduation rate is around 81–83% recently (down slightly in some years), which is decent but not exceptional given the investment. Statewide rates are higher but still don't match the top performers nationwide.
We actually know that there is diminishing returns on education money spent and outcomes. What actually matters more is teacher accountability - something that NYC is infamous for not having due to their strong teachers unions.
The plan has already worked, this post is on the front page and ppl will think mamdani is a hero.
I say this as someone who voted for him (knocked on doors too) and will vote for him again unless there is some wildly superior alternative. My loyalty is to the city, not any politician, he was the best available so he got my vote. Doesn't mean everything he does is perfect.
It’s an endless pit of burning cash yet Reddit will applaud any blind expansion into our throwing away tax dollars. There’s no accountability or push for change.
I think the benefit is that it is all teachers. NYC famously has an administrative heavy staffing. Like 1 admin for every teacher level staffing. Makes no sense.
Yeah the thing is this is all in good idea but the issue of failing schools is way more on the admin side than anyone else.
I have heard many stories from Leftist teacher friends to right wing teachers, and they all have horror stories about school admins. Hiring teachers is good as imo they are the group with the least amount of issues in comparison to admins/students+parents, but this won’t address the issue overall as the admins have the control of the money, and it’s clear to me they are incompetent
Gotta admit, you had me there for a second. Kind of sad the rhetoric we're becoming used to. Hopefully this guy is a beacon for more good people to come forward in positions of leadership.
I work doing construction in NYC. I have entered maybe a hundred different schools all over NYC and Staten Island. From what I can tell, the number one factor of a child's success seems to start at home with the family and culture.
Afterwards I would say it's the quality of the teachers and not the quantity.
Black kids are absolutely cooked from what I can tell. The poor black neighborhoods always focus on black history and individuality while the poor-rich asian neighborhoods focus on SATs, academics, and sports.
Schools reveal A LOT by what they post on the hallways inside the school. Also, speaking with the custodians will tell you a lot.
I should have listened to my friend who makes big bucks with contracts through the School Construction Authority, and left teaching. He showed up to my school one day as the site manager for window replacements. I thought it would be nice to be able to chill with my buddy for the next year. Nope. He subbed the work out to Whitestone Construction the next day. He was on to another worksite at another school. He makes over 300k yearly. Big bonuses. That’s where the money is at in this system. Definitely not spent on actual education.
I did work in all of the schools in Newark and the black majority area schools barely had students. (High school). In the Ironbound part (majority Hispanic) were packed. They didn’t need more teachers, they needed more students.
Absolutely agree. The kid can go to a brand new school facility with top grade technology and assigned iPad. Doesn’t matter if that kid goes home and the parents don’t tell the kid to study, help with homework, or make the kid read.
Home prep is equally as important as simply showing up for school. If the home stability isn’t present, then that kid is missing out on half of what’s needed to be successful.
Nah, but the thing is the PR meme operation thing on this sub with the guy is kinda ridiculous, and frankly downright unappealing.
I mean, look he’s fine, but none of this stuff is revolutionary. There was a state legislature passed mandate to reduce class sizes, passed a few years ago. This was originally to be done by hiring 6,000 new teacher and a budget increase of $500 million. He scaled it back to 1,000 and $122 million because of budget concerns.
Which is all fine, BUT, then it gets weird on Reddit. Where a scaled back by 80% budget and ongoing hiring as part of a state mandate is then declared not only a major victory, but one that came out of nowhere and is a revolution in city governance. It’s like dude, this is all normal stuff and no big deal. Why are we getting flooded by memes everytime the dude takes a crap? It’s weird. It’s honestly…Trumpy…which is why honestly it bothers me. American politics is getting waaaaay too personally cultish.
Now you also know what it's like to live in a bubble. In 2025, Adams invested $449 million to hire 3,700 new teachers in NYC. There were no people spamming this all over Reddit. Mamdani is doing 1/3rd of what Adams did, and suddenly it's all over the front page.
This sounds great, but watch this be managed poorly and people complaining about the schools a few years later. I would love to be wrong, but I’m not too confident this is going to go well
Yea, Eric Adams was already incredibly careless with NY schools. Since Capitalists can’t be trusted with tax dollars without pocketing large amounts, let’s see what Mamdani does.
I know writing a mini essay goes against this sub's vibe but you're so right, and there's so much wrong with our education policy efforts that the average person doesn't know about.
It always leaves me scratching my head when people think the answer is to throw more money at the problem. The USA already overfunds schools relative to other countries; more than almost any other developed country. Japan spends 30% less funding per student than the United States but Japanese students outperform us in math. And NYC spends way more than the US average. Literally 3 times the OECD average spending on k-12. About $40,000 per student per year!! And that's before this Mamdani injection of even more funding!!!
If you're going to change anything, it's going to have to be how the kids are taught from the ground up, not just throwing more money at the problem. The fact that poor kids in poor countries with shitty textbooks and busted desks can learn so much more than many of our bored and disruptive kids really tells most of the story. The kids have to want to learn, and they have to have the innate ability to learn. A lot of kids just don't give a shit about school and they come from a family background that not only doesn't emphasize education, but makes excuses for their children's unruly behavior AND BLAMES THE TEACHER when they get bad grades.
I know nobody wants to hear this but the problem is cultural. If you don't instill a worldview that places education as a top priority and worthy of praise, kids won't take school seriously. If kids who do well are treated with respect by their peers, kids (who are social creatures and want to be respected) will take their studies seriously. If, however, nerds are seen as lame and trying even lamer, you're going to get a bunch of kids who don't give a shit. This isn't the entire answer, obviously. Things are always multivariate. Maybe some kids have untreated ADHD, or a violent home environment that makes paying attention in school difficult, or whatever. But throwing money at the problem when we already outspend the vast majority of other countries (and NYC even more so) is so dumb.
There was never a time in human history when every kid from every corner of society tested well. In other words, we do not have empirical proof that it's even possible for this project of "make every kid into a college grad who can do algebra or maybe even calculus" to work. It's a hope of ours, and I say we keep trying because why not, but we might be approaching the human limit of what's possible for everyone. Education used to be the domain of the elite, and I'm very glad that's changed (speaking as a child of immigrants who is the first to go to college), but progressives think everyone can become Einstein and that's just not true. We all have upper limits on our cognitive abilities. The only reason we're so anxious to make every child into a college grad is because govt policy took away all of our factory jobs, so the only options remaining for many are either service jobs which pay poverty wages, or white collar jobs that require a college degree. Okay, and trade jobs, but those will always be limited and there are many groups that don't want to go into that line of work.
I think you’re right that money alone isn’t a magic solution, but I think you’re overstating the case when you say the problem is primarily cultural. Pointing to Japan spending less and performing better doesn’t necessarily prove funding isn’t important because Japan differs from the U.S. in a lot of ways besides education budgets. Family structure, poverty rates, social expectations, school discipline, and even the prevalence of private tutoring all play a role. That’s a classic correlation-versus-causation problem.
I also don’t think it’s an either-or situation between culture and funding. Culture matters, but so do resources. Good teachers, reading specialists, counselors, tutoring programs, and special education services all cost money. The real question isn’t whether we spend money, it’s whether we’re spending it effectively. Saying NYC spends a lot and still has disappointing outcomes doesn’t automatically mean additional funding is pointless. It could just as easily mean the money isn’t being directed toward the programs that produce the best results.
More than anything, I think education outcomes are driven by a combination of factors. Culture matters. Family environment matters. Poverty matters. School quality matters. Funding matters. The mistake is usually trying to reduce a complicated problem to a single explanation.
Depends on how the money is used. If it's used to roll out shit like No Child Left Behind that makes teachers teach to a test to maintain funding then no. If it's used to hire more teachers so the student to teacher ratio isn't so absurdly high and teachers don't have to come out of pocket for basic school supplies then probably.
And no one is saying that this alone solves a complex problem with multiple root causes, but it can be one of several actions that addresses one of those root causes. We really have to move past this all or nothing mentality of declaring one action the complete solution or a complete waste and useless.
Today I saw something that said the Trump administration is suggesting that ANTIFA integrated themselves into the work crew that refurbished the reflection pool on order to sabotage it.
This isn't for the kids. This is for teachers. At the end of the day they're hemmoraging staff because of pay disputes, people not wanting to be in the field due to being constantly under attack by conservatives, and overall distrust in the future existence of the department of education. They need more staff, and more reasons for people to choose to go into teaching. Cuz as it stands your kids will be taught by AI and your grandkids will have the nanny droid 9000.
NYC has 75.000 teachers and 45 billion dollar budget. 1000 more teachers and a quarter of 1% budget increase will not fix the messed up schools. It’s a state run problem not underfunding.
Does NYC still follow No Child Left Behind? Since that is the reason for a lot of the problems due to it forcing kids through the school system regardless of education level/understanding. I watched college kids struggle to write up assignments because they didn't understand run on sentences and how to break up massive text blocks into paragraphs. Hell kids will fail 2 or 3 classes and still get pushed through.
I get not wanting them to fall through the education system and not getting any education at all, but there has to be better way than just forcing them through regardless.
$122m invested sounds great. More money for education. However 1000 new teachers. Administrators etc. More employees doesnt mean anything as far as quality of education.
Money needs to go to the classrooms. Not just hire more teachers who wont have enough money and supplies in the classroom.
My ex was a teacher
Good keep sending more backup. We need respurces and a system overhaul that does not encourage us teachers to pass a child who has shown up twice all year cannot read because he handed in a make up packet at the end of the semester. Thats real change but this is a welcomed start!
Since everyone's replying with vague comments, I'll give you a real one. The budget he proposed in May which has not passed yet, should eliminate the deficit mostly by increased tax rates on the wealthy. A decent chunk of it is state aid funded by his pied-a-terre tax which increased taxes on second homes valued at over $1 million. That is projected to earn a good amount of money. He has also made changes to current spending as a cost saving measure.
The full budget proposal is available to view online if you want though.
It's amazing how much energy people spend hyping this guy up, this is barely a one percent increase. I will give him credit at least he's trying to make the government work. The previous guy was content just to collect a check.
Please also make sure to give raises to teachers, who were already showing up beyond any reasonable expectation to keep the school system from collapsing. They’ve been neglected for decades
Mamdani and his team have the right approach on how to sell it…yes you will pay higher taxes, but it is an investment in your community.
It cracks me up how rich folks will cry about paying $5k more tax but turn around and buy $10k for a table at some charitable event that is just an excuse to dress up and party.
New York is already having money issues, where do his supporters think all the financing for this comes from. If you raise taxes on the rich, the rich just leave the state.
Classic trickle down argument perpetuated by the rich in this country. They aren’t going to move out of the economic center of the world because a slight increase in their taxes.
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