New York City public schools are planning to launch a division Monday aimed at better serving the city’s growing population of English learners, including migrants and students with disabilities.
The Division of Inclusive and Accessible Learning, to be announced this afternoon in the Bronx, will have a $750 million budget, including 1,300 staffers. The division will be headed by a new deputy chancellor, Christina Foti, who has overseen special education since the start of the Adams administration. The move comes amid a broader reorganization of the system.
“By creating this new division spearheaded by a proven leader at the deputy chancellor level, we are ensuring that the needs of our most historically underserved students are baked into everything we do and that these students and their families are prioritized,” Adams said in a Daily News op-ed.
AP Photo/Andres Kudacki
Migrant kids board a school bus in front of a Manhattan migrant shelter in December. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
As part of that work, the city will launch a new multilingual learners advisory council to guide the division on issues related to immigrant students and their families. An existing special education advisory council will continue to meet.
Chancellor Banks hinted in March that more changes were underway as he dissolved the 2,000-person teaching and learning division, which previously oversaw both the multilingual and special education offices.
The predecessor division, under former deputy chancellor Carolyne Quintana, also led Banks’ signature literacy initiative in preschool and elementary schools. By this fall, each of the city’s 32 community school districts has to offer one of three curricula focused on letter sounds and combinations. The program was moved under the school leadership division.
It was not immediately clear how former teaching and learning employees would be divided between the division announced Monday and the school leadership team, or how those changes would trickle down to kids.
“I’m not in love with any division,” Banks told reporters this spring. “I came here to make sure that we can exact real change in our schools to have maximum impact for kids and families.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.