Youth Rise Up
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Youth Rise Up 〰️
We must listen to young people
Placing the megaphone directly to the grassroots organizations who have been organizing and building power towards re-envisioning schools for decades.
The demands of these organizations + coalitions, while not a complete list, offer a powerful pathway forward.
Youth Demands Tracker
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Ban the practice of screening students using in-person interviews and specialty exams (screens that were removed in 1986 but came back) by the fall admissions cycle.
#FtheTest Standardized testing creates stressful and overly competitive learning environments that harm students’ growth as learners and people. High stakes testing is racist.
End gender-based violence & build a cultures of consent in schools
Police free schools *Fund RJ approaches
Consult students in any all decisions about school safety mandates, regarding remote learning options
We need $3 billion dollars for child care in the state budget to support ALL children and families, regardless of immigration status.
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Provide our suggested additional resources (internship coordinators, counselors, laptops, etc.) to schools that struggle to attract high-scoring students, starting next school year.
Create consortiums or nearby or co-located high schools and allow students to participate in sports, clubs, and advanced courses at any school in their radius if their school does not offer that class or activity. A school’s size should not limit a student’s ability to pursue their academic and extracurricular passions.
The city release money for schools to design curriculum for an ethnic studies electives in all high schools and pay teachers to do that work.
Pass the Solutions not Suspensions Act (Senate Bill S767B) which would
Limit the use of suspensions for students in kindergarten through 3rd grade to only the most serious behavior
Shorten the max length of suspension from 180 to 20 school days
Prohibit suspensions for minor infractions like tardiness, dress code violations or insubordination
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Create a healing, well-being & reproductive justice taskforce
Expand counselors city-wide. Guidance counselors in NYC schools are often overworked. Some have a caseload of 400 students or more and must juggle students’ emotional needs with helping seniors apply to and understand the intricacies of the college system. Every high school should have a full-time college-and-career counselor, and the ratio for counselors to students should be 1:80 or lower.
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Guarantee all high school students quality, paid internship opportunities in the summer and during the school year. Hire a full-time work-based learning coordinator at every school whose duty will be to 1) match students with positions that align to their interests in school and 2) to support them in developing soft and hard skills that will set them up for success in those roles and beyond.
Publish college readiness rates in the MySchools portal by the fall admissions cycle.
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Ensure that the second year of the promised increase in Foundation Aid contained in the 2021 budget agreement is provided in full. There is still $3 billion to be delivered to our students. Also, we will need to start thinking about how to improve the foundation aid formula and the way we finance our school system.