First Day of School Report

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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning everyone. Coming up on Today's show, Donald Trump, a Florida voter, remember, says he will vote to uphold the six-week abortion ban in the state one day after he said he's against the ban. Here's Trump last Thursday when asked by NBC News about a Florida abortion rights referendum.

President Donald Trump: I am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks.

Brian Lehrer: But anti-abortion rights groups freaked out and the very next day, asked if he would vote for the abortion rights measure, Trump said.

President Donald Trump: I'll be voting no.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. We'll get more into that later and we'll ask what was previously an unthinkable political question this year. Could Florida, after many years of solidly red, some of you may remember the year 2000, Bush versus Gore in Florida, ultimate swing state, but it's been solidly red ever since. Could Florida be back in play as a swing state in this presidential election largely because of the abortion issue that Trump forced on the country or grew as an issue on the country by appointing those justices who overturned Roe? That's coming up.

Also today, a call-in for anyone who works in the hotel industry. There was a multi-city hotel strike during Labor Day weekend, including in Greenwich, Connecticut, locally, and they say it could spread to more cities. We will invite you, hotel workers, or managers to call in on this Labor Day week and talk about life in that industry. Later on, to end the show, we'll have a call-in for introverts. Do introverts call talk radio shows? I think the answer is yes because introversion is very misunderstood, and aversion to calling in in the privacy of your own home or your car, wherever you are, is not the kind of thing introversion is actually about.

Why a call-in for introverts? Because a new article on slate suggests introversion is currently on the rise in American society. We'll hear why the psychiatrist who wrote that article thinks so, and we'll invite you to say if that sounds like you. That's all coming up, but let's start here. Happy new school year, wherever you are. If you're a student, a parent, or an educator, the new school year is now getting underway.

In the New York City public schools, today is the actual first day of school. Happy first day of school. We did several segments over the summer, as some of you know, that invited teachers and other educators to call in. We assume they are not available to listen at two minutes after ten o'clock today. If you are listening, happy first day of school. If you're a parent who might be just a little bit relieved, maybe, that you have coverage from 9:00 to 3:00 or whatever hours once again, or if you're experiencing more anxiety as a parent about your child's school year than experiencing childcare relief, well, happy first day of school to you, too.

One big issue in the city schools as the term begins, the previously announced citywide smartphone ban for public schools is not happening, at least not right away. Here's Mayor Adams the other day saying they're just not ready yet to do it right.

Mayor Adams: The overwhelming number of people would like to get the distractions out of school. How to do it is another question. Do you take the phones? Do you lock them up. Do you put them in pouches? What happens if the phone is missing? What happens if a child refuses to cooperate? All of this stuff, you have to really work it out. .

Brian Lehrer: Mayor Adams there. Our WNYC and Gothamist education reporter Jessica Gould is here now to talk about that and other new school year news. Hi, Jess. Happy first day of school.

Jessica Gould: Happy back to school to you.

Brian Lehrer: Parents or anyone else will invite you in on this right away. What do you want to see done about smartphones in schools? Or if you're in a school and some of the ones in the city already do this individually, or if you're in a district that already has a ban of any sort, call in and tell everyone else how it's working, in your opinion and if you think the kids actually benefit in any way. 212-433-WNYC.

Or is this just something that makes the parents and the educators feel good? Is it actually helping the kids in any way that you've noticed? 212-433-9692, call or text with anything else for Jessica Gould on any back-to-school issue. We'll get into a few other things, too. Jess, what changed for Mayor Adams since the last time we talked about this?

Jessica Gould: Yes, they said early on this summer that they were going to be presenting a plan, and Chancellor Banks indicated that it would be moving towards a citywide ban on cell phones. There was a lot of momentum. Governor Hochul was talking about it. A lot of people are reading this book, The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, about how phone culture and social media have changed childhood. I think what happened was they felt like they didn't have the details worked out. The things that he mentioned in that sound bite you played.

Where are they going to store the phones? Is it going to be phone lockers or pouches? Do individual schools have to pay for that? The administrators don't want that to have to come out of their budget. Who enforces it? Is it something that happens at the early part of the day? Who's the personnel? Who's even collecting it? What's the liability for if a phone breaks in your care while you've collected it? Then there are the other issues about kids with disabilities, like who monitor sugar on their phones.

I talked to a mom who has a kid with ADHD who gets alerts about stuff in the day on his calendar so that he doesn't forget. Then there's the concern that a lot of parents talked about, which is they just want to be able to reach their kids. They want to reach them in an emergency. They want to reach them generally. At this point in our culture, not having your phone with you is scary in certain ways.

Brian Lehrer: Definitely a security blanket right in your pocket. You report that even without a city-wide ban in place, around 350 of the city's 1,600 public schools currently restrict cell phones during the day, according to the education department. Do you have a sense of whether they're doing it in a variety of ways, addressing some of the issues that you just listed, or if there is some kind of standard set of practices around this?

Jessica Gould: Yes. It's not standard at all. It wasn't standard with the hundreds that were doing it before. Then Chancellor Banks said that some 500 more, bringing us to half the city schools have indicated they'll have some sort of ban. It can be teachers asking kids to put their phones in their bags during classes. It can be kids handing them in and putting them in these secure magnetic pouches, or I heard of one that has the paper lunch bags that they put them in, and they store them with names on them. I was talking to a teacher who mentioned that they're going to invite kids to lock them up but not force them to. Some of this is about what's the relationship between the teacher and the student.

They don't want to be policing them. They don't want them on Netflix or watching videos during class, either, which I hear happens, very different from when I was in school. They also don't want to be having that sort of confrontational relationship. The consequences vary. A lot more schools did implement bans this year in some way, but it's not standardized. I did get a tweet this morning that I'm going to follow up on. A dad said his kid was having like a sit-down strike outside of a school about the cell phone ban. I'm curious what's going on there?

Brian Lehrer: One dad is having a sit-down strike.

Jessica Gould: No, the kid. The kid is.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, the kid. I presume they're having a sit-down strike to protest a ban, not to encourage one.

Jessica Gould: That's true. I also talked to some of the kids who were profiled in the New York Times a little while ago who were self-describing luddites who have been evangelizing on how important it is not to be on your phone all the time and to put your phone away. They have dumb phones, a lot of them. There are kids who are in favor of these bans, and then there are kids who are against them.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a text message. Lesnar writes, "Collecting middle school students cell phones in the morning is a wonderful practice for my kid and her peers. When the phones are not collected, kids are on their phones during lunch. They aren't socializing with their peers in the same way. The kids with no phones are in an awkward position. It's very democratizing to do this."

Those are two interesting arguments. One is that it's democratizing, so some kids don't have privilege over others if they've got the smartphones. The lunch part of that is very interesting. If we think and usually discuss how the smartphones can be distracting during class, this parent doesn't even want them to have them during lunch to encourage face-to-face interaction.

Jessica Gould: Right. I think that makes a lot of sense because we want kids to be interacting with each other. There are concerns also about how bullying spreads, cyberbullying. Kids having beefs erupt during lunch or after school because of something that circulated. I think a lot of schools are trying to go phone-free for the entire day, and then some are still allowing them in hallways and in cafeterias. I think some of the studies have shown that even having the phone with you, if it's in your backpack, is still distracting compared to having it far away from you.

Brian Lehrer: Wait, why would that be if it's in your backpack?

Jessica Gould: I don't know. I feel that way, too. When it's in my pocket or in my purse, you know it's there. You can check it.

Brian Lehrer: Your brain may be going to, "Should I check it now?" Even if you're not checking it at that moment.

Jessica Gould: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Jack in Queens has an interesting question, I think. Jack, you're on WNYC. Hi there.

Jack: Hello, Brian. I know there's a technology where there's certain apps where you can turn off the Internet during a certain time while still allowing text and calls. Why don't phone companies give parents that option, number one, or number two, why don't technologies such as geo-fencing in certain areas where Internets are not allowed, like within the school borders, but you can still receive texts and calls?

Brian Lehrer: Very interesting question, Jack. Thank you. It's kind of a tech fix to block the Internet in the geographical, immediate area of the school. Do you think that that would solve the problem as far as the advocates of the bands are concerned? Jess, or even the ability to receive calls and to send and receive texts would keep the conversation going.

Jessica Gould: I think a lot of people think there should be a full ban, and I believe that the schools already have some sort of protection about what you can access on the Internet, but I hear that kids get around that. They're very crafty.

Brian Lehrer: A listener texts. "I teach high school in Brooklyn. Since last year, I've collected phones during my 45-minute class." Students put their phone into a calculator holder that hangs on the wall. Students are also allowed to charge them in my charging station. Students do focus a lot more as phones are incredibly distracting. In an emergency, parents can contact the school and reach their child within minutes. That sounds like a very functional classroom that that teacher is running, but imagine the work for all the teachers if that was the system. If each teacher in each period in high school had to collect them, put them somewhere in the classroom, and then redistribute them at the end of the period.

Jessica Gould: Right. I've also heard about burner phones that people submit sometimes when there are these magnetic pouches or hanging apparatus. There are a lot of--

Brian Lehrer: Which means like decoy phones. You're giving up your fake phone [crosstalk].

Jessica Gould: Your old phone that doesn't really work. That's what you hand in, and then you keep your phone on you.

Brian Lehrer: Very interesting. I noticed that your Gothamist article quotes Jonathan Haidt, author of the recent book, the Anxious Generation, and a New York City public school parent himself. I'm not sure if I pronounce his last name right. H-A-I-D-T. He's a leading voice in the campaign to remove smartphones from schools nationwide, you say. The quote from Jonathan Haidt or Haidt is, "This can't be rushed." Some small private schools have been able to make the change in just a few months, but of course, it will take longer for the whole of New York City to make this change. Do you know what his concerns are even though he's an advocate for the policy?

Jessica Gould: Yes, I was actually surprised when-- I contacted him, Jonathan Haidt, it is at the beginning of the summer when it seemed imminent that this was going to be happening. He was very enthusiastic and I believe he and Chancellor Banks have spoken. Then when there was the delay, I contacted him again, assuming that he would be disappointed but he also was of the mind that there's a lot to be worked out about how this happens. Same ideas, what the consequences are, what the technology or infrastructure is to store the phones. He wanted it done right rather than fast.

Brian Lehrer: Here's Johnny in West Orange, a parent who with some peers is taking this into their own hands, it looks like. Johnny, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Johnny: Hey guys. I guess waiting on any sort of legislation or whatever gets a little frustrating. A Facebook group was started where everybody's just kind of agreeing within the community that they won't allow their kids to have phones until a certain age. I think the details are being hashed out, but in my experience, in terms of what I see in my own children, they're responding to their immediate peer group in terms of their feeling of needing to have that. I don't know how effective that'll be once it's in the greater population, but I'm just curious thoughts on that.

Brian Lehrer: You're talking about an age cutoff. Johnny, what's the age cutoff that you and your parent peers are trying to enforce here?

Johnny: The initial was ambitious and it was 8th grade. I don't know how realistic that is, but what I've seen floated so far is absolutely not before the age of 13. I have my own misgivings about it. I want to be able to communicate with my kids in emergencies and stuff. I've thought about flip phones and things like that. You saw the tragedy that just happened in Georgia and it's like, "Oh, they got a text message from their child, I'm safe." There is anxiety that goes with it. I just see the behavioral changes when my kids are on devices, it's night and day. If they see other kids near them on devices and they don't have one, that's the trigger. It doesn't seem to come naturally. I don't know. It's a peer group thing. Those are my thoughts.

Brian Lehrer: I'm curious. One other thing, Johnny. If you and your peers have talked about this, your age standard would allow it for your kids after 8th grade. I think some people would say the problem is less severe in terms of the effects on the kids at those younger ages. The real detrimental effects start in high school.

Johnny: Social media. All of that type of stuff. It's absolutely true. I guess we're talking about maybe two different types of things. One is the social kinetics of the entire thing. My oldest is only seven, but I'm already having anxiety about it. We have friends that have older kids, so we're watching how that happens. What I'm really curious about, and I'd love to hear your guest speak about is this idea of a recursive, like a backlash from this generation. Every generation, maybe a backlash, saying, "You know what? I don't need to be constantly online or constantly checking Facebook." I'm just hopeful. I don't know if that answers the question you asked.

Brian Lehrer: It really does. Johnny, thank you so much for your call. I really appreciate it. There is somewhat of a backlash that's been reported on among Gen Z folks, but I don't know how widespread it actually is. Jessica, what were you thinking as you listen to any of those parts of Johnny's call from West Orange?

Jessica Gould: I think a few things. I've heard of these networks of parents pledging to go phone-free until freshman year of high school or I forget when the most common cutoff is that they're advocating for. I also think that it's true that there is some backlash. With these Luddites that I was talking to, they meet in front of the Brooklyn Public Library, and often, they're not quite on time because they don't know exactly what time they're meeting or whatever.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, they don't believe in watches either.

Jessica Gould: Well, they have watches. They have watches and they have dumb phones, but there is that movement, and they've made friends that way. They're an interesting group. There's also the students I talk to who are mixed about it. They feel like they want some limits on it. They would like school to be, somebody said, like a retreat from their phone, or even like a forced detox. Then there are a lot of kids who feel like they use their phones for the Google Docs and to do their actual work, or they have to pick up their kid brother at a certain time and they need to know where. There really are a lot of considerations.

Brian Lehrer: We're going to continue in a minute with Jessica Gould. We're going to talk about a few other first day of school, first week of school issues as well. We have some other interesting callers waiting. Sarah in Manhattan, I see you. I think you're raising a really important question about that. Oh, I said, sarah, I see you, and Sarah hung up. I will ask Sarah's question after the break. Jay in Manhattan on line 10. We see you. I definitely want your question on the air, so we'll take you right after this as we continue with our education reporter Jessica Gould on this first week of school.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC with our WNYC and Gothamist education reporter Jessica Gould on his first day of New York City public School for the new term. First week, more or less, just about wherever you are. We're talking about Mayor Adams announcement of a delay in his plan to ban smartphones in all the schools. We'll get to some other issues. Jay in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jay.

Jay: Hi. How are you guys?

Jessica Gould: Good.

Jay: Good. My question is I live in Manhattan. I have kids that went through the public school. Now, they're in home school but why can't there be consequences? I mean, when I was a kid, it was Walkman. Technology for me is never the problem. It's how it's abused and how it's used and without consequences, which seems to be this generation, people don't want to implement consequences. There can be suspension. There can be the phones taken away just like when I was a kid. That's my question. Why can't we just allow the phones but the teacher has to say, "You're not allowed to take your phones out during class?"

Brian Lehrer: Jay, thank you very much. Jess, you addressed this question in your article. I was going to ask you about this anyway. You hear the way Jay posed it? Where would you start?

Jessica Gould: Well, one thing I would say is that the schools that I'm hearing from have some consequences set up. If a teacher has to collect it three times, it goes to the office and they keep it there all day, and then you get a call to your parents. I think what's complicated is, first of all, maintaining the relationship between the teachers and the staff and the kids. Also there's this question that came up the last time phones were banned, which they were under Bloomberg before Bill de Blasio became mayor, that the New York Civil Liberties union raised concerns, found that the phones were more heavily policed in school buildings that had metal detectors.

Metal detectors tend to be in more Black and brown majority, disproportionately less white schools. As a result, there was a concern about over-policing and just more police contact or more school safety agent contact with kids. They don't want to set up more of those interactions. They want school to be a friendlier place than that.

Brian Lehrer: You quote, I was going to raise this anyway because I think it's important. You quote Johanna Miller in your article from the New York Civil Liberties Union. She worried to you that the school safety officers might become the default enforcers of the cell phone ban. Your quote of her says, "I think we have to be very wary as a city of adding new ways for kids to get in trouble."

I don't know if there's experience with that from other districts. I understand her referencing the past on other issues, but maybe like with marijuana possession before legalization. Or lots of other small infractions, it's the kids of color who actually get in trouble in ways that harm their futures rather than just being corrected in some more benign way.

Jessica Gould: Right. I think that's a really good idea to look at how other districts have handled it and if there's any data on the infractions and how those infractions have been handled.

Brian Lehrer: Carolyn in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Public school parent. Hi, Carolyn.

Carolyn: Hi. Yes, I am a public school parent, but I visit schools for my work, mostly middle schools. It's really astounding the difference in schools where there's an effective cell phone ban and schools that there isn't in terms just of engagement and even misbehavior, but the kind you want to see in a classroom where kids are whispering to each other or chatting to each other, even poking each other because they're not distracted by their phone or their neighbor's phone. I'm a parent and I don't want my kids to have cell phones in school, but it's really because of what I've seen. It's just profound the difference when schools do it well, and some do.

Jessica Gould: I've heard that, too. I've also, I think, either heard or read a teacher say that they were amused to see the passing of physical notes again when the phones went away.

Carolyn: Yes, exactly. Exactly. Not that, that's great, but that's great. When the school does it well, it's off the teacher. It's not the teacher chastising a child or taking away the child's position. If it's just done school-wide in a good way, that's just part of school, like a uniform or not a uniform. I think, whenever parents give me all the other reasons, I say you can't imagine the difference if there aren't cell phones on the kids persons. It's just too much. It just supports so much social interaction stuff, plus engagement for learning.

Brian Lehrer: Carolyn, thank you. Thank you very much. Listener texts. "Brian, this is Marilyn in New Mexico, my small district banned electronic devices this year. We are in the fourth week of school, and this has been successful. Phones in backpacks during class and passing periods. Phones. Okay. At lunch. This has worked. In the high school classroom, I have had to adjust my teaching. I didn't realize how much quiet time at the end of the lesson depended on phone use. Now I had a couple of three-minute group activities or games at the end of the hour to keep students engaged."

That's fascinating. A teacher who was so used to the kids having their phones and I guess starting to get back on them as they knew the period was coming to a close, that she's actually had to add more content to fill the time.

Jessica Gould: Right. Well, that does sound like a recommendation for it, but I think all parents probably know that when you really need your kids to quiet down, the screens do the job.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. The question that I said I was going to take from the caller, Sarah, who hung up, had to do with the teachers. She was going to say, oh, I think the real reason that they delayed it for a citywide policy, citywide ban is because of the teachers. I see in your article that the City Teachers Union is for the delay. What are their concerns from the teacher's standpoint?

Jessica Gould: I believe the union is for the ban and also supported the delay. I think it's some of the things we've already talked about, which is, what are the consequences? It should be either standardized or clear. Do they have to enforce it? I have heard this liability concern about what happens if you break a phone. Is it on you? Right now, teachers are the default enforcers. The absence of a ban is putting it on them to figure out what to do in a lot of cases.

Some schools have set their own rules, but even then it's the teachers who have to say hand in your phone or put it in this hanging contraption. I think it's complicated, it's not all one thing or the other. I thought, too, that maybe it was the teachers union that stood in the way of this, but that's not what I'm hearing.

Brian Lehrer: Here's an interesting take on the role of teachers and on teacher's experience. This listener writes, this whole issue is overblown. When we disempower teachers, we need laws and rules and parent headaches. Let the teachers tell the kids to put it away. My syllabus for high school juniors in CUNY, early college, says extracurricular phone use in class results in being marked absent. I guess that means if you're not using it for school content.

This teacher writes, "We teach the problem through reading." Guess they teach their content through reading and discussion. "And every period there is designated cell phone use because that's where my students access their readings." Stephen Brooklyn signed that. I guess that's another wrinkle is that sometimes kids are using their devices. We played a clip during the democratic convention when we were playing historic convention clips of Bill Clinton from the days when he was president or running for president, saying, "We're entering a new era. I'm going to make sure as president that we have a computer in every classroom."

I laugh. Boy, we've come full circle since then. We're trying to get screens out of classrooms. Of course, they do have productive uses. Here's a teacher writing in who says, that's where my students access the reading, so they're actually using the phones in the educational context. Is that common? Do you know?

Jessica Gould: I think it's very common. I think that kids are taking pictures of things for assignments and sending them in through email and text messages. I think they're collaborating through text messages as well as just chatting. I think also that screens are more pervasive, not just your cell phone and smartphone screen, but I think screens in general are more pervasive in the public schools than a lot of parents know. In some cases, that's been really helpful for kids with certain needs. There are kids who need assistive technology for writing or reading.

There are also kids who with the migrants students that have come in, I've heard of a lot of situations where the teachers are using Google translate on their phones to communicate with the kids and back and forth that way. It's also interesting the other person you cited who all electronics have been banned. That's, I think, happening in Indiana, too. I'm very curious what that means. Is it all tablets? Then do you not have laptops? Some kids were saying to me, "I need this, and what's next? Am I not allowed to use a laptop to write my paper?"

Brian Lehrer: A number of people have written in to say, "Well, what about cell phones that aren't smartphones so they can still hear from their parents or call their parents if they need to?" Is that a policy anywhere?

Jessica Gould: Well, I think that that's what the governor has been talking about. She's very pro "dumb phones".

Brian Lehrer: Then you kind of got to buy two phones. A lot of families would find that an economic burden. If you want your kid to have a smartphone some of the time, then you have to buy the so-called dumb phone, too.

Jessica Gould: There is a movement among parents. I know a lot of them who are only doing dumb phones or restricted phones, and they're even making phones now that are just more like old phones.

Brian Lehrer: In kid colors.

Jessica Gould: Something else I wanted to mention is this is all happening when a lot of testing is migrating to computers. Something else I've reported on is the other side of this, which is kids who don't know how to type as well as they need to in the younger grades, having to take state tests on computers for the first time. That's not the phone thing, but there really is a push-pull going on with technology right now.

Brian Lehrer: Speaking of the younger kids, I think Faye in Rockland is calling in to give a different point of view on something that I cited earlier in the segment. Faye, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Faye: Brian, can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, we got you, Faye. Hi.

Faye: I just wanted to comment on something you had said earlier to a caller. You had mentioned that you thought that the younger kids, it's less of a problem, as the kids get older, it becomes more of a problem.

Brian Lehrer: Just to clarify a little bit, I wasn't saying that was my opinion. I'm saying I've heard that but go ahead.

Faye: Right. You had also mentioned Jonathan Haidt's book, and he actually, what he repeats over and over, it's vital to push off cell phone use and obviously social media specifically as much as possible. That as the child brains develops, every single year, it becomes a little bit easier for them to deal with it and process it. His rule is that he basically advocates for it. He says that 14, youngest age to get a smartphone and then 16 in terms of social media. He says before 14, kids should not be having cell phones at all. In school, out of school, at all. That's specifically because of their brain development and that kids suffer from that.

Brian Lehrer: Great. Thanks for clarifying that, Faye. That's important. I know that's a lot of Jonathan Haidt's angle in that book is about actual physiological brain development being different if you're on phones and maybe a lot of screens in general. I'm not sure exactly how he puts it at young ages. All right, we have a few minutes left in the segment. Jess, my guest is WNYC and Gothamist education reporter Jessica Gould. While you're here as our education reporter, let's touch on a few other New York City public school issues. Is the state's smaller class size law beginning to take effect and be implemented?

Jessica Gould: It is. This year, 40% of classrooms are supposed to be at the target for the new class size law. Let me just pull up exactly what that is. It's 20 for kindergarten to 3rd grade, 23 for 4th to 8th grade, and 25 for high school. It's phased in. Even though the city says that 40% of the classrooms citywide should be meeting those targets this year, a lot of advocates who've been calling for this for years and some critics of the administration say, and I think the administration actually admits this themselves, they didn't have to do much to get to that point.

It's going to be harder as the years go on. Next year, it's supposed to be 60% of classrooms meeting those targets. The administration has said that they're going to do several things, shifting space around in schools, reassigning teachers, maybe virtual classes, although after that came out, they said, well, they wouldn't put people in virtual classes unless they agreed to it.

There's concerns, and Chancellor Banks was saying in a town hall last night he doesn't know how he's going to find the estimated 10,000 teachers or more to staff these additional classrooms. There's also concerns about whether the city has the space. It opened 24 buildings for this year, new buildings, but that doesn't come close to meeting the need that would be required with this class size law.

Brian Lehrer: Another issue. There's been concern in recent years about a decline in enrollment in the city schools, partly in reaction to COVID policies one way or the other, partly because more families with children are reportedly leaving the city for places with more affordable housing. At the same time, the many asylum seeker families arriving in the last couple of years have added to the roles. Are there different pros and cons of each of those things? Enrollment going down and enrollment going up?

Jessica Gould: Well, I think writ large, enrollment going down makes it very hard. It makes funding go down, and it's harder for individual schools to staff and to serve the kids, to offer all the options if their population is getting smaller in the arts and various specials. It was interesting to see that Chancellor Banks was quoted in the New York Times today saying that the migrants have been a huge boost to the public schools because they have reversed a little bit the downward trend that we've been seeing in enrollment. He was really touting the benefits.

I was thinking, though, as I was reading that, about how I've also heard from school communities, teachers, parents, that these kids get dropped in at different times during the school year, and they don't speak often the language that their teacher speaks and how schools have to shift to meet their needs and the enormous tasks they've taken on. In many ways, parent communities and teachers have done really heroic work meeting those needs but it's a lot to ask.

Brian Lehrer: I guess it ties back to the issue you were talking about a minute ago, which is a mismatch in some places between the number of seats available in a certain community where there may be a lot of kids and those in other places where there may be depletion of kids.

Jessica Gould: Right. I think one of the most controversial elements of the class size law is whether the city will limit enrollment in some of the most popular schools. That's where people want to go, and that's where some of the classrooms are most overcrowded.

Brian Lehrer: What happens to the families there if they do that?

Jessica Gould: I think they would have to rezone them for another school, and that's highly controversial.

Brian Lehrer: They'd have to get transportation somehow.

Jessica Gould: Well, or a nearby school. Yes, but the city has not said that it plans to do that yet.

Brian Lehrer: Last thing, I have two more things on my list, but we only have time for one. I'm going to skip pre-Kand 3K because we talked about it earlier in the week with Liz Kim, and that's getting a lot of coverage. Here's my last question. Anything on after-school program availability? Mayor de Blasio's original schools policy a decade ago, the way he ran, if you remember, was to aim for universal pre-K plus universal afterschool for middle school kids, and I think he couldn't achieve that second one. Is that right?

Jessica Gould: Well, I think it's interesting that you mentioned that. I think that that's going to be something that comes up in the next mayoral race. I've heard some of the contenders are going to be calling for universal afterschool again, and I did just hear about a school that lost its afterschool programming because of some funding issues. Afterschool is a real patchwork provided by a bunch of different nonprofits or programs that people have to pay for. Some are free. It's kind of ridiculous that the school day for working parents, it's very hard that the school day ends as early as it does.

Brian Lehrer: WNYC education reporter Jessica Gould, or read her print versions on our local news website, Gothamist. Jessica, thanks a lot.

Jessica Gould: Thank you.

 

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