Mayor Zohran Mamdani ran his campaign on a promise: “Our Time is Now.” He made a pinky swear to working families that New York City would finally put children first. Now, that promise is facing a test: whether the city will protect seats at its best public schools: specialized high schools.
On June 1, 2026, Mamdani backed a deal to push full compliance with the 2022 class size law from the 2027-28 school year to the 2029-30 school year. But delaying the deadline does not solve the underlying problem. The Mayor’s promise to help working families will ring hollow if he allows this law to limit access to specialized high schools because protecting opportunity means expanding access to the city’s best public schools, not restricting it.
Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech, Stuyvesant, and the city’s other specialized high schools are the shining examples of public education in New York City. They show what public school can be at its best: rigorous, competitive, and ambitious. For families who cannot afford private school, these schools offer access to an elite education. For students, they offer a real chance at upward mobility.
Supporters of this bill turn a blind eye to what actually makes a NYC classroom crowded. Last year, Brooklyn Tech received more than 18,000 applications and had an acceptance rate of just 5%. It makes sense that so many families want a seat at Brooklyn Tech: 98% of its students attend college after high school. This is not exclusive to that particular school; it is also true of Bronx Science, Stuyvesant, and many other specialized high schools in New York City.
Because of the thousands of applications every year, these schools have extremely large class sizes in order to enroll as many students as possible. That is why Brooklyn Tech has the largest class sizes in the city. Stuyvesant and Bronx Science have the second and third-largest class sizes for that same reason.
The 2022 class size law destroys these schools by forcing them to lower class sizes over time. Originally, the law forced full compliance by the 2027-28 school year. Now, Mamdani has supported pushing full compliance back two years, to the 2029-30 school year. That delay may buy time, but it does not answer the central question: where are the students going to go?
For specialized high schools, this creates a direct seat problem. If a class at Brooklyn Tech has 34 students, and the law says the class must shrink to 25, those extra students need somewhere to go.
But these schools do not have unlimited classrooms or extra buildings waiting to absorb students, and they cannot convert extracurricular spaces such as labs, debate rooms, gyms, or art spaces into classrooms because those programs are what “make the schools so special.” So the choice becomes very clear: If the city cannot add enough space, these schools will have to reduce the number of students they admit. That is the hard truth that Mamdani’s delay does not fix. It only postpones the moment when the city is going to have to deal with it.
And turning away students is a luxury that most New York City public schools will not even have. Non-specialized high schools, which cannot turn away students as easily, will have to use their art spaces, their gyms, and other rooms that were not meant to be classrooms. This is exactly what happened when California passed a similar policy. However, this issue will be even worse in NYC, given the urban density, where schools have nowhere to expand but inward.
Mamdani did not write the class size law, nor does he have to pretend that every part of it makes sense. If a law meant to help students ends up limiting how many students can attend the schools that help them the most, then someone has to say that is a problem.
The mayor should understand that better than most people. He attended Bronx Science. He knows what these specialized schools can mean. He knows that a specialized high school is a place where students are pushed, where they are surrounded by other serious students, and where a public school can open the same doors that people usually associate with private school.
I have seen that too. As a committed debater from a well-regarded private school, I have seen firsthand how strong these schools are. Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech, and Stuyvesant consistently beat schools like mine. These are students who are prepared, competitive, and driven. A city serious about opportunity should be improving and expanding these schools.
Specialized high schools most certainly have room for reform. New York Times journalist Bret Stephens explains that diversity is lacking within these schools. I completely agree. That is why we need to expand them and strengthen access to them, not shrink them in the name of reform.
Isabelle Levin is an eleventh grader in New York City
Time to mess with the specialized schools again. Jesus, when will these politicians stop trying to screw up something that works! The fact that the class sizes at the 3 top elite schools are the highest, yet produce a student population that exceeds 95% college-going blows apart the whole fallacy of small class sizes equally better education. As for what to do if this rule goes into play, open a new specialized school. Do all your social justice tests on their admissions, but this will be filled with some of the brightest kids in the city. Not by wealth, not by color of skin, but flat out brains. Stuyvesant has one of the lowest socio-economic school bodies in the public school system. But 97% of them attend college, for many the first in their families. Make the system work. It’s possible.
How about expanding the other smaller shsat schools? For example, Brooklyn Latin could expand if it had its own building!