News

With their continued attacks on quality charter schools, Bill de Blasio and Bill Thompson are telling the tens of thousands of parents looking for a better option for their children that the doors of public school buildings are closed to them.

Several months ago parents rallied outside P.S. 48 to demand an end to the bullying that has persisted for some months. Many parents came forth with heart wrenching stories of their children being bullied, especially during their lunch breaks.

Today, staff and parents from StudentsFirstNY delivered more than 1,200 voter registration forms, collected in all five boroughs, to the Board of Elections. Our parents, chapter-members and volunteers share a vision of a world where all students, no matter where they are born, have the opportunity to learn in an exceptional school. Everybody is responsible for making this happen, but nobody is more responsible than our elected policy-makers, from the President to the Mayor to our local councilmembers.

StudentsFirstNY and hundreds of parents from 16 of the lowest-performing school districts in northern Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx, and Brooklyn hosted a parent convention Saturday at Brooklyn Law School. The event - StudentsFirstNY Parent Convention: Educate. Empower. Reform., was a chance for StudentsFirstNY to celebrate and empower parents’ efforts to reform education in their communities.

"While end-of-year testing isn't new, the knowledge that was tested last spring is. For the first time, students across the state were assessed based on the new, more rigorous Common Core standards."

The following op-ed appeared in the New York Post on August 7, 2013.

We must put children’s interests first. The issue here is not about low results, but setting a higher bar.

Nathalie Elivert, StudentsFirstNY Director of Educator Outreach and former New York City public school teacher reacts to the results of the Common Core Standards.

The United Federation of Teachers recently filed a lawsuit aimed at blocking school choice. This action is unjust and completely disregards the needs of the most important stakeholders in our school system: students and parents.

"We will do everything in our power to ensure that the judicial process is informed by the view of parents who do not want to see the clock rolled back on their kids."

The following statement is from StudentsFirstNY Acting Executive Director Glen Weiner

Calling for an end to the unfair distribution of teacher quality across New York City public schools, StudentsFirstNY organizers and hundreds of New York City public school parents came together today to demand action to address the disproportionate number of unsatisfactory-rated teachers in schools with the highest needs. Several parents addressed the crowd and shared their personal commitment to this effort.

Make no mistake, the reforms that so many New Yorkers fought for - from mayoral control to the expansion of parent choice to the more rigorous standards - all now hang in the balance, said new StudentsFirstNY Executive Director Jenny Sedlis.

StudentsFirstNY has tapped Success Academy Charter Schools Co-Founder Jenny Sedlis as its Executive Director, the StudentsFirstNY Board announced today. Sedlis, who has earned national recognition for helping to create and oversee a network of high-performing charter schools that serve economically disadvantaged and middle-class New York City families, will spearhead efforts to maintain and augment the education reforms undertaken in New York City over the last decade.