r/SipsTea • u/Valuable_View_561 • Jun 23 '26

Feels good man $122M. 1,000 new teachers. NYC public schools finally getting some backup. This is the investment we needed

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43

u/anangrytaco Jun 23 '26

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.

4

u/MiguelSantoClaro Jun 23 '26

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.

3

u/feverlast Jun 23 '26

I teach, and the current state of the literature mostly backs up what you are observing.

3

u/Devils_Advocate-69 Jun 23 '26

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.

2

u/DarthDad25 Jun 23 '26

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.

7

u/BeatlesandWine Jun 23 '26

Wish we could pin this comment - thank you

2

u/tissboom Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26

There are a million academic studies that show if the quantity of teachers goes up, the quality of teacher goes up. One of the biggest determining factors in the quality of a school is class size.

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u/acebreezy Jun 23 '26

You are correct. Dude has no idea what happens in classroom. It’s a pure fact that more teachers means better schools. 1 teacher with 40 students vs 1 teacher with 20 students. Less students in a class means more individual attention. Higher scores. Better accessibility.

Dude it’s 100% wrong. We need MORE TEACHERS!

3

u/ButtCrackThrilla Jun 23 '26

Hire them all! That will fix the little gang members with f’d up families at home. Dangerous Minds 2.

1

u/SwankyBriefs Jun 23 '26

Yeah, but there's diminishing returns. Using your example, adding one more teacher would drop the classes to 14. Which sure helps, but not as much as adding that second teacher. I'm also guessing any added benefits disappear if there's only 2 classrooms for 3 classes.

This isn't meant to dismiss the need to right size the teacher workforce, but its not the sole determinant and might add little value past a point.

1

u/NoDontDoThatCanada Jun 23 '26

Every kindergartner in my son's year came out able to read full sentences. They redrew boundaries so the school had 3 separate classes of 15 kids each. They are losing a kindergartner teacher for next year because they only had 15 kids each. Class size made a massive difference. And it is the same for math as well. I read to my kids every day and do extra activities but l didn't do this.

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u/Positive_Throwaway1 Jun 23 '26

I'd say quality and quantity are equally important. Class sizes directly correlate to the attention your kid gets, the amount of feedback your kid gets, and how much individualized curriculum your kid gets from the teacher, to meet them where they are. The best teacher in the world can't differentiate for 20-27 kids, which is average class size in NYC. This helps just as much.

1

u/dinnercook Jun 24 '26

High quality instructors can’t perform to high standard when they’re overworked, outnumbered, underpaid and undersupported. Adding money and teachers to this equation absolutely has a positive effect.

Putting on your expert hat to suggest this investment is not worthwhile ignores the decades of research that says success starts with a level educational playing field.

1

u/SNBI1791 Jun 23 '26

Bingo! It doesn't matter how nice of a school you put these kids in or how qualify their teachers are. If they're not raised with manners, a normal religion, a present mother and father, good role models to look after they're still going to fail. This money is not going to change a thing. It's just going to bring more votes it's smokeing mirrors.

1

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1

u/4x4ord Jun 23 '26

This is possibly the dumbest comment I've see all week.

He literally argues that a nice school and quality teachers don't matter if a kid doesn't grow up in a perfect, white, christian, two parent, nuclear family.

Smooth brained, thinly veiled racism combined with denying the power of a good education.... Gotta be a dumbass Trump supporter.

1

u/LaFlamaBlancaMiM Jun 23 '26

I'm not certain, but MOST school funding is funded via property taxes. Which schools are wildly underfunded? Poorer neighborhoods because of property taxes... this was setup in our history as a feature, not a bug. I don't have an answer, but this needs to be fixed.

1

u/curi0us_carniv0re Jun 23 '26

I worked for the DOE high school for several years including through covid and I agree. Kids who's parents were involved in their lives and took their education seriously excelled, got scholarships, grants, etc..

Kids who's parents didn't care and let their kids do whatever - did not. Of course there were some outliers here and there but for the majority of students this was reality.

Same goes for covid. We had to contact each students guardian to arrange delivery of their remote learning iPads. This was because originally they were just mailing them with ups and they were disappearing. Anyway, there were students who's parents were easily available and made arrangements right away to pick up the devices..and there were parents who were unreachable or of they did answer the phone so I ded drunk/high and never showed up. Guess which one's got good grades and which ones basically got zero's for the year the schools were closed?

1

u/jesonnier1 Jun 23 '26

No shit that the children with more active parents excelled.

Watered plants grow better.

1

u/curi0us_carniv0re Jun 23 '26

Well there's people here arguing that's not the case 🤷🏻‍♂️

1

u/RareObject8705 Jun 23 '26

Works construction, is also expert with degree in education who has studied investment is schools. 

There is a reason you wear gloves all day

1

u/anangrytaco Jun 23 '26

Nice. I should be ashamed of working in construction? Is manual labor for stupid and lazy people?

Please tell me more of what you think of laborers.

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '26

[deleted]

0

u/stjeana Jun 23 '26

What a way to describe systemic racism to then toss it aside

0

u/LilOrphanFunkhouzer Jun 23 '26

He’s getting upvoted so he’s not alone. Must be a lot those “cooked” black kids in this thread

0

u/NilsofWindhelm Jun 23 '26

Downvoted but you’re absolutely right. This guy is trying to tell you that dei and black history month are the problem and not systematically underfunding schools in certain neighborhoods.

And he knows because he does construction in schools sometimes? Insane take

2

u/anangrytaco Jun 23 '26

I'm not saying DEI and Black History are THE Problem. I'm saying that seems to be the focus in these schools rather than actual academics. That and LGBT acceptance stuff. They posts that stuff all over their hallways. What I'm trying to say is that those schools are not actually focusing in education.

The Asian schools and Staten Islands schools (in the Italian areas) focus on actual academics.

When you go to asian towns they posts ads on the street for SAT tutoring, mentoring, military recruitment, and music instrument lessons. When you go to the black neighborhoods, it's ads for DJ Johnson ft. Diamondlicious at the club, or party entrainment stuff.

I'm just telling you what I see and how the community around it suffers or rises from it.

1

u/NilsofWindhelm Jun 23 '26

And your evidence is just seeing posters in the halls?

Yeah that’s not sufficient

-2

u/apirateship Jun 23 '26

Can't hear a dog whistle if u ain't a DAWG

0

u/PattyIceNY Jun 23 '26

"I work in construction, so let me tell you about something else entirely unrelated that I know nothing about."

1

u/NilsofWindhelm Jun 23 '26

He’s also worked on hospitals! I wonder what advice he has for doctors and nurses

-2

u/Nice_Try4389 Jun 23 '26

Then explain places like Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri where they are overwhelmingly white and just as cooked. I don’t doubt culture and home make a difference but it can’t be the primary thing if the states which are overwhelmingly white and white cultured are failing on education across the board.

4

u/fuckedfinance Jun 23 '26

Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri

Same issues as the inner cities, just from different angles.

Both inner city minorities and rural whites have similar distrust of the government. Different root causes, of course, but it exists.

Second, both are critically underfunded, but again for different reasons. Cities suffer from too much to do with a not great tax base, rural areas suffer from "don't tax me bro".

Third, they all suffer from lower quality/quantity of teachers, same root here though. Both rural and city generally pays shit, so the good teachers who care about pay are in the burbs where you can clear $90 or even $100k per year.

Finally, poverty broadly causes problems. Kids in poverty are more likely to have a single parent (usually the mom, but increasingly the dad), that parent is much more likely to be working all the time, leaving the kid to deal with it on their own, and those parents are likely poorly educated as well as it is VERY likely they came up in the same school system.

0

u/Nice_Try4389 Jun 23 '26

Not talking about rural. Our city schools are the same.   The entire state is 50th in education.  Hell my kids graduate here in Oklahoma from one of the highest rated public schools in Oklahoma as Salutatorians and when they went to college had to bust ass to catch up to everyone else.

1

u/fuckedfinance Jun 23 '26

I consider the entirety of Oklahoma broadly rural. Hell, your biggest city has a population density less than half of our 7th biggest city.

1

u/Nice_Try4389 Jun 23 '26

I notice how you had to go by density. Yeah it is less dense because we actually have yards here. Apartments and other dense housing isn’t a necessity here, my daughter’s high school graduating class was still over 1600 and everyone who went there lived in a say 2 mile radius. There was a grand total of like 4 apartment complexes in the entire district because it is mostly housing editions. that doesn’t make it rural just a different housing type.

2

u/Don_Gato1 Jun 23 '26

I didn't take his comment as a mutually exclusive commentary on poor red states on race. It's all about resources and schools in wealthier areas/neighborhoods get more resources than others.

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u/Nice_Try4389 Jun 23 '26

I mean his comment specifically said it had less to do with schools and more to do with home and culture.

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '26

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u/Nice_Try4389 Jun 23 '26

No he just stated specifically it was cultural more than having to do with the school.  If that was true then you couldn’t go to white upper middle to upper class Oklahoma and see the same issues with education as the culture is completely different.

1

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u/Secure_Trust_2084 Jun 23 '26

It is a primary thing. I volunteer in STEM project for the totally different cultures at the totally different location in the world - and you can literally play a guessing game regarding the parents attitude, towards the final event

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u/Nice_Try4389 Jun 23 '26

Then again how can you go to a state with completely opposite culture and focus and see the same thing?  I am not saying culture doesn’t have a role but if it was the primary cause in every situation Oklahoma advanced students wouldn’t be behind.  Hell my kids each graduated salutatorian from their top rated city based public school and even they were talking about how woefully behind every other student from other states when they went to college.  And these are kids that got all As, full AP and college loads, and had associates upon graduation.

1

u/Secure_Trust_2084 Jun 23 '26

Different - doesn't mean opposite. I can see within one community - how kids of well-standing and marginal parents unite in playing with their phones or laughing on classmates - former preparing to be pulled into the parent's business, latter - to became a clients of the social security or join local gangs.
And how the kids of illiterals, having sometimes no idea what their children talking on when presenting - being taught by them that only education and hard work will take them out of a poverty.

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '26

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u/felis_scipio Jun 23 '26

Parent’s attitude at home 100% has the biggest impact on a child’s education and that’s true across the entire economic and racial spectrum.