To Get Students Involved, Concentrate on What Interests Them

March 3, 2022 NYC Schools Chancellor David Banks

Hillary Clinton, left, stands on stage with students and the Eagle Academy then-President and CEO David C. Banks, during the Foundation's annual fundraising breakfast in New York. Banks now leads the city’s public school system. AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File

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Just over two months after becoming chancellor, I thought it would be a good time to share with all of you more detail about my vision for New York City public schools and how we are going to go about achieving that vision together. I also want to share my gratitude for what we have already accomplished in a very short period of time.

First, Mayor Adams and I can’t tell you how proud we are of our students, families, teachers, and staff for stepping up in the face of the Omicron virus surge. Together with the New York City Department of Health, the Test and Trace Corps, the New York City Police Department, Governor Kathy Hochul, UFT President Michael Mulgrew, CSA President Mark Cannizzaro, District Council 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido, Local 237 President Greg Floyd, 891 President Robert Troller, and many other partners, our Stay Safe, Stay Open plan succeeded in reducing rates from 16% at the beginning of January to below 1% since the start of February

It was so important to this city that we kept our doors open, because returning to school was a big step toward returning to normalcy. Our public schools are essential to the fabric and economy of New York City. Our families depend on our schools so that they can do their own jobs while knowing their children are in a supportive environment where they will be academically challenged and held to high expectations every single day.

And Stay Safe, Stay Open has worked! On January 3, the day I took office, our attendance rate was 65%. Yesterday it was 89%.

During the long months when the pandemic forced our school buildings to close, our children suffered. Taking away the routine of going to school, missing the pat on the back from a teacher, having lunch with their friends — all of those normal things that we used to take for granted — there’s no doubt that negatively affected the mental and physical well-being of our students. So many of our youth, particularly our LGBTQ+ students, may have been in homes where they weren’t free to be their true selves, perhaps even to feel truly safe. Our team will be working closely with the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and its new commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan to implement innovative, comprehensive strategies to support students’ mental and emotional well-being.

And as we help our students and staff heal, we are pushing forward with our return to a new normal. Now, our students and staff are back, more students are able to compete in PSAL, the energy in our classrooms and hallways has returned, and masks are off at recess — and hopefully in classrooms as well within the next week! Let’s give a round of applause to everyone who made that happen!

Let’s be clear: Covid is far from the only challenge facing our schools. Our schools have lost over 120,000 students over the past five years — a trend that began prior to the pandemic and has since accelerated. Our families have been voting with their feet, and we need to aggressively respond right now. Part of rebuilding trust is being honest about the challenges we face:

Not enough of our students graduate ready for college or a career;
A large number of our schools continue to have safety issues;
Too many of our schools don’t provide enough academic rigor and opportunities for accelerated learning;
And an unacceptable number of our students don’t learn how to read by the third grade; among others

We have to face up to the hard truth that a system that spends $38 billion a year leaves on average two-thirds of Black and Latinx students failing to achieve proficiency in Math and English Language Arts.

For our schools to deliver on their original promise of serving as the engine of the American dream for all of our students and their families, we will need to do things very differently in ways that build trust one big step at a time.

Our schools need to connect our students to the real world and what matters to them. We need to provide meaningful academic experiences that are safe, fun and engaging. Our schools need to prepare our students to excel in our economy when they get out of school. And I mean all students, whatever language their families speak at home and whatever special needs or other difficult circumstances they might have.

Every parent wants the best for their children.

But that’s not happening for far too many of our students, especially those of color who look to school to be the pathway to economic prosperity. So today, Mayor Adams and I are absolutely committed to transforming our system so that each and every one of our students graduates with a pathway to a rewarding career, long-term economic security, and equipped to be a positive force for change.

The Tweed Courthouse in Lower Manhattan near City Hall, built in 1881. It’s now the headquarters of the Department of Education.
AP Photo/Mary Altafffer

How We Will Realize That Vision

More than three decades of conversations with families, fellow educators, and students have shaped what I call my four pillars for improving and building trust with our families:

I recently visited Rikers Island and engaged with young men and women who were getting OSHA training and learning carpentry skills, and they were very focused, on-task, and clearly excited about what they were doing. When I asked them about their past school experience, they all said negative things. But they were engaged now, not because they were in jail but because what they were doing was meaningful and relevant to them. They saw a future for themselves. One young man put his hand up and said, “If I was doing this when I was in school, I would have went to school every day.”

When I talk about reimagining the school experience so that it’s relevant to our students and excites them, this is what I mean. Why don’t we provide the kind of experiences where kids can’t wait to get up in the morning to get to school?

Central to our reimagination of learning is a new set of commitments to students and families that we are calling our Career Pathways Initiative. This initiative is creating career-connected learning and pathways for all our students to help activate their passion and sense of purpose.

In partnership with educators, unions, state government leaders, community and business leaders, we want to ensure that all students graduate with a strong plan and head start on a pathway to the middle class.

Starting this fall, we will be laying the groundwork to get there. This includes piloting models that establish new career pathways – including early college credit, creating system-wide infrastructure to support this work — including new STEAM Centers and expanding career-focused classrooms — and developing our teachers and school leaders to support students in developing their passions and plans. We will help young people see themselves in good jobs and careers they might never have heard of, because “you can’t be what you can’t see.”

Reimagining learning also connects with our goal of graduating students who are equipped to be positive forces for change in our communities and our city. Some of our schools already do a fantastic job of nurturing a highly active student government and other efforts to engage students civically in ways that benefit their schools and surrounding communities.

For example, the Brooklyn Occupational Training Center, a District 75 School, has continually innovated to engage students with wide ranging learning needs in a quality civic education. Teacher Matt Gorin has adapted Participatory Budgeting resources to engage students through big circle mapping in the cafeteria, which allows verbal and non-verbal students to graphically represent their ideas and engage in discussion, debate, and to show support for each other.