Gary The Creator
Just my thoughts!
New York's First Phone-Ban Enforcement Reports Are Out, and Nobody Is Required to Collect Them
Every New York district owed the public a report on who got disciplined under the phone ban by September 1. The ones we found range from a detailed disparity analysis to a bare count, and the state keeps no list of who complied.
Read More
The Regents Asked for $20 Million in Pre-K Aid and Got $450.9 Million: The 2027-28 Request Starts From a November 15 File
Last cycle Albany gave schools $544.6 million more than the Regents asked for, most of it pre-K, and zeroed a career education line. The 2027-28 request is being built now from data that locks November 15.
Read More
New York Is Rewriting Who Counts as a High School Graduate for Tap
A revised Regents amendment names accredited online, homeschool and Part 130 nonpublic graduates as eligible for state tuition aid without a test. One clause leaves out graduates of schools that qualify only through a testing phase-in running through 2032-33.
Read More
What Families Should Know: Your Child Can Leave a New York High School With 216 Hours and a Signed Profile. It Is Not a Diploma, and It Does Not End Their Right to One.
New York's CDOS Commencement Credential takes 216 hours, 54 of them supervised work-based learning, a career plan started in ninth grade and a signed employability profile. Here is how it works, how it turns into a diploma, and the question September's Regents vote left unanswered.
Read More
Your School's Report Card Still Shows Chronic Absenteeism But Albany Stopped Grading Schools On It
New York swapped its Chronic Absenteeism Indicator for an Attendance Indicator that scores every student on the days they showed up. The familiar eighteen-day number is still published, and it no longer decides anything.
Read More
New Yorkers Asked for a Personal Finance Class: The State Said No to Funding One
Commenters asked the Board of Regents to require a semester of personal finance before graduation. The department declined, citing local control, and wrote that it cannot attach funding to a rule. Only 3.8 percent of New York high schoolers get the class anyway.
Read More
New York Cut School Pension Rates Twice This Year
DiNapoli set the 2027-28 NYSLRS rates at 17.3 percent for ERS and 37.4 percent for police and fire. For school districts, the relief lands on one payroll column only.
Read More
Incidental Teaching Ceiling Rises Again in New York
The Board of Regents is expected to adopt an emergency rule extending the ten-hour incidental teaching allowance through 2026-27. Here is what the regulation requires, what your district owes you on renewal, and the deadlines that follow.
Read More
New York Electric Buses: The Cost Beyond the Deadline
Albany pushed the electric school bus mandate from 2027 to 2032 inside the state budget. The fleet size, the price of a bus and the $700 million behind the transition did not move with it.
Read More
New York Set Aside $191 Million for the Teacher Shortage: It Spent $118.9 Million
A new State Comptroller audit found $72.4 million in teacher-shortage grant money never spent, and 190 districts that had never heard the programs existed.
Read More
New York Decides Whether a Diploma Still Runs Through a Regents Exam
The Board of Regents takes up item BR (A) 4 on Monday at nine, asking whether to sunset diploma assessment requirements and move every New York student to a single diploma beginning in 2027-28.
Read More
New York Working Papers Go Digital in 2027: What Changes
Every New York student picking up working papers this fall is the last cohort to do it on paper, with a physical exam and a parent's trip to the district office. Here is how the system works while it lasts.
Read More