Schools Chancellor Says NYC Not Affected by Teacher Shortage — as More Migrants Continue to Enroll; Vaccines Among Migrant Children Spark Controversy in NY Public Schools

Schools chancellor says NYC not affected by teacher shortage — as more migrants continue to enroll

New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks brushed off the notion that a national teachers shortage has badly hurt the Big Apple — even as the number of city educators has notably dropped while more migrant students keep enrolling in public schools.

Banks insisted the shortage was not a local problem in city schools though he conceded the number of migrant students in the school increased to 26,000, while the number of teachers fell by 2,000 last fall.

“It’s interesting. The national teacher shortage story is a story that is more acute in many other places around the nation,” Banks said.

“We do pretty well here in New York City. We don’t have major shortages of teachers. We have had long-standing shortages in some critical areas like math and special education, bilingual education.”

Banks waved off concerns in response to a question during an event with Mayor Eric Adams Wednesday at the Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn. He said officials would need to monitor the situation because of the number of migrant students keep beefing up enrollment.

He also acknowledged the DOE has had “long-standing” struggles staffing in critical areas like bilingual and special education. --->READ MORE HERE

Vaccines among migrant children spark controversy in NY public schools:

Staten Island's borough president is taking aim the New York Department of Education.

Vito Fossella says the city's public schools will start the year with thousands newly arrived migrant children, who may be unvaccinated.

All children must be immunized to attend school in New York Public Schools. But this school year, there's a lot of new students. Over 100,000 migrants from Central and South America, Hati and oversees arrived in the city last spring, bringing with them more than 20,000 children.

"If you're going to impose a standard on ordinary citizens, then that same standard should be imposed on individuals from 120 different countries and want to show up on day one for school," said Fossella at a news conference Saturday, where a handful of Staten Island leaders and residents stood in front of P.S. 038, arguing that migrant children who can't prove they've been inoculated against diseases like Diphtheria, Tetanus, Polio, Hepatitis B, Measles and Chickenpox, shouldn't be allowed to start school next week.

"Every single day is New York City telling us the elected officials and the community that they're stuck in a difficult situation, they tell the federal government do not bring more migrants," said Michael Tannousis, an NY State Assemblyman. "But what do they do? They make it as easy as possible for migrants to come here and make it as easy as possible for migrants to come into the schools." --->READ MORE HERE

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