The Push for Smaller Class Sizes Remains a Major Disservice to City Schoolchildren

The term “Stockholm Syndrome,” which describes the strange phenomenon where hostages begin aligning with their captors, popped into my head recently when Mayor Eric Adams partnered with teachers-union leader Mike Mulgrew to celebrate the recruitment of 3,700 new teachers aimed at “allowing schools to establish smaller class sizes.”

This announcement comes after years during which Adams correctly opposed the ludicrous United Federation of Teachers-supported state class-size legislation, primarily because it imposes significant financial burdens on the city without any real chance of enhancing education outcomes.

Nevertheless, there he was, the mayor, with Mulgrew at his side, boasting about allocating hundreds of millions more dollars to an already overstaffed city Department of Education, with yet more (wasted funds) expected in the future.

Enrollment numbers in city schools are declining, and this legislation (which is exclusive to the city) serves as the UFT’s strategy to ensure the ranks of city teachers (whose dues support the union) do not diminish.

And that’s all it is: The city’s worst-performing schools already have smaller class sizes; it’s the high-performing ones, like Stuyvesant HS and Brooklyn Tech, that are packed with students taught by competent teachers.

Simply adding more staff to satisfy the law’s arbitrary requirements only guarantees that more students are “taught” by “educators” who lack the necessary skills.

The Legislature enacted this law solely to appease the UFT: If lawmakers genuinely believed in its rationale, why is it only mandatory for NYC?

The city already allocates an astounding $41.2 billion — a full third of its budget — to a school system where absenteeism is rising and test scores have hit their lowest in three decades; now, due to this new law, it will have to spend even more, benefiting only the UFT.

Truly enhancing public education hinges on eliminating (or retraining) ineffective teachers and closing (or restructuring) failing schools — in addition to opening more excellent ones.

However, the UFT vigorously opposes the establishment of new charter schools, which demonstrate success and academic excellence that undermine the union by proving there are more effective alternatives.

It’s understandable why Mayor Adams chose to showcase his compliance with the class-size law: he must adhere to it and may as well seek some political advantage from the situation.

Unfortunately, none of his key Democratic opponents appear to promise any resistance to the UFT, either.

Ultimately, the focus on “smaller classes” primarily serves the union’s interests, not those of the children — and pretending otherwise amounts to colluding with the political enforcers.

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