Dear Commons Community,

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada is stepping down as Liberal Party leader, according to an official familiar with his plans who was not authorized to discuss them publicly. Mr. Trudeau is expected to speak soon in Ottawa.  As reported by several news media.

His resignation would set off a succession battle to replace him after roughly a decade at the helm of both the party and the country. A resignation as party leader would not mean that Mr. Trudeau immediately steps down as prime minister; he would remain in the role until he is replaced as the head of the Liberal Party, and his successor would then assume the position.

The party could pick a new leader with a grass-roots process that could take several weeks or come via a vote of parliamentary deputies.

Trudea’s resignation comes as the country is grappling with how best to deal with President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pledge to impose crippling tariffs on all imports from Canada on his first day in office. Canada and the United States are each other’s biggest trading partners.

Mr. Trudeau visited Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago in late November and his government has been in talks to address the president-elect’s concerns about border security, in hopes that he will reconsider his tariff threat.

Mr. Trudeau has faced weeks of mounting pressure from inside his party’s ranks. In December, Mr. Trudeau’s deputy prime minister and finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, abruptly stepped down in a stinging rebuke of his leadership and stewardship of the country, inciting a growing chorus of voices from Liberal parliamentarians asking him to step aside for the sake of the party, and let someone else lead the Liberal Party against the Conservatives in general elections.

Trudeau has become an institution in Canada after ten years of leading the country!

Tony

Chip Somodevilla/Getty; Courtesy of Focus Features

Dear Commons Community,

Megyn Kelly went ballistic over the weekend and took to X to criticize Edward Berger’s “Conclave” as a “disgusting anti-Catholic film.” The acclaimed drama stars Ralph Fiennes as a cardinal who uncovers secrets and scandals at the Vatican while organizing a papal conclave to elect the next pope. The film premiered at last year’s Telluride Film Festival and has emerged as a surefire Oscar contender this awards season.  As reported by Variety.

“Just made the huge mistake of watching the much-celebrated “Conclave” and it is the most disgusting anti-Catholic film I have seen in a long time,” Kelly wrote to her 3.4 million X followers. “Shame on Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci & John Lithgow for starring in it & shame on director Edward Berger (among others).”

Kelly took particular offense to the film’s twist ending, in which the newly elected pope, Vincent Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz), reveals he is intersex. Fiennes’ character agrees to keep the news a secret as his election is made public.

“They make THE POPE INTERSEX! This is the big exciting twist at the end. I wish I had known so I wouldn’t have watched it,” Kelly wrote in her post. “There are almost no redeeming characters in the movie – every cardinal is morally bankrupt/repulsive. The only exception of course is the intersex pope (who – surprise! – has female reproductive parts) & the cardinal who keeps her secret – bc of course that kind of Catholic secret-keeping must be lionized. I’m disgusted. What a thing to release to streaming just in time for Christmas. They would never do this to Muslims, but Christians/Catholics are always fair game to mock/belittle/smear.”

Fiennes is joined in “Conclave” by Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Sergio Castellitto and Isabella Rossellini. Kelly shared her criticism on X several hours before the 2025 Golden Globes, where “Conclave” is nominated for six awards, including best motion picture drama, best director and best actor for Fiennes. The film also tied “Wicked” to lead the 2025 Critic’s Choice Awards with 11 nominations.

While Kelly disliked the film, Variety film critic Peter Debruge praised “Conclave” in his review for having “one of the most satisfying twists in years, a Hail Mary that both surprises and restores one’s faith (maybe not everyone’s, but certainly that of the disillusioned).” He also lauded Fiennes’ “quietly conflicted performance” as his character undergoes an internal struggle between devotion and doubt.

“Conclave” is now playing in theaters and available to stream on Peacock.

I viewed Conclave in November and found it a thoroughly enjoyable film (see my brief review on this blog.)

I am also a Catholic and feel I understand the Church’s  virtues and faults. I also understand that fiction is fiction.  As I commented in my blog posting – “I highly recommend it.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Michael S. Roth, the president of Wesleyan University, had a guest essay in yesterday’s New York Times entitled, “How Elite Universities Can Win Back the Country’s Trust.”  It is a good analysis of the conflict between the deep anti-elitism values in America and the promise of higher education.  His viewpoint is clearly that of someone from an elite university.  His introduction says it all>

“Anti-elitism runs so deep in American culture that even our founding fathers thought it was old news. In 1813 Thomas Jefferson warned that the “artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents,” represented “a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendancy.” Like James Madison and Ben Franklin, he worried that this elite was interested in protecting its own privileges rather than the good of the Republic.

Madison, Franklin and Jefferson agreed on one major antidote to the evils of hereditary privilege: education. Jefferson started a university, in part, to pull “from the rubbish,” as he once put it, students who lacked economic resources but who made up for it with drive and intelligence. From their ranks, he envisioned a new class of leaders based on talent rather than fortune.

Through much of the 1800s up to the middle of the 1900s, education was widely regarded as stimulating social mobility and innovation. In the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that the relative lack of hereditary institutions in the United States made education a crucial means through which citizens could rise in the world. “All that serves to fortify, to expand and to embellish intelligence,” he wrote, “immediately acquires a great value.”

This became the dream of countless immigrants throughout the 20th century. They saw higher education as a primary vehicle for changing their economic and social fortunes.

Today, that system has attracted a great deal of criticism for accomplishing the opposite outcome. It’s still true that when poor people attend a highly selective university, they are likely to greatly improve their economic prospects, but a majority of those attending such schools are from wealthy families. It’s those families that can enroll their children in the best public or private schools and afford tutors, coaches and fancy résumé-boosting summer programs.”

His conclusion:

“Like the founders, we can be anti-elitists without falling into the trap of being anti-education. We’ll have to create pathways that change the opportunity structures for our fellow citizens, wherever they live and wherever, or whether, their parents went to school.”

Roth’s views are well-presented and his comments and references are on target. I appreciate that he also cited Raj Chetty’s work on social mobility.   Chetty provides valuable insights into the social and economic value of a higher education especially as provided by the “non-elite” public higher education sector.

Roth’s entire essay is below!

Tony

——————————————————————–

The New York Times

Guest Essay

How Higher Education Can Win Back America

Dec. 27, 2024

By Michael S. Roth

Mr. Roth is the president of Wesleyan University.

Anti-elitism runs so deep in American culture that even our founding fathers thought it was old news. In 1813 Thomas Jefferson warned that the “artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents,” represented “a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendancy.” Like James Madison and Ben Franklin, he worried that this elite was interested in protecting its own privileges rather than the good of the Republic.

Madison, Franklin and Jefferson agreed on one major antidote to the evils of hereditary privilege: education. Jefferson started a university, in part, to pull “from the rubbish,” as he once put it, students who lacked economic resources but who made up for it with drive and intelligence. From their ranks, he envisioned a new class of leaders based on talent rather than fortune.

Through much of the 1800s up to the middle of the 1900s, education was widely regarded as stimulating social mobility and innovation. In the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that the relative lack of hereditary institutions in the United States made education a crucial means through which citizens could rise in the world. “All that serves to fortify, to expand and to embellish intelligence,” he wrote, “immediately acquires a great value.”

This became the dream of countless immigrants throughout the 20th century. They saw higher education as a primary vehicle for changing their economic and social fortunes.

Today, that system has attracted a great deal of criticism for accomplishing the opposite outcome. It’s still true that when poor people attend a highly selective university, they are likely to greatly improve their economic prospects, but a majority of those attending such schools are from wealthy families. It’s those families that can enroll their children in the best public or private schools and afford tutors, coaches and fancy résumé-boosting summer programs.

So while some universities have eliminated tuition for those with few resources, students from the bottom 20 percent of the nation’s income distribution still make up only about 5 percent of the student bodies at selective institutions. This hasn’t changed much in 100 years.

Elite education has lost the trust of many Americans, in no small part because of how it solidifies the advantages of wealth. The fact that many schools still give preferential treatment to children of their alumni just adds insult to injury.

It doesn’t have to be this way. College should not be a prerequisite for advancing one’s prospects in life, but everyone should have an opportunity to continue education as a young adult in a good apprenticeship, trade school, two-year college or university. The best universities would be even better if they invested more in finding talented students in places they have historically overlooked — if they went beyond the usual metrics of meritocracy that elite families know how to use to their advantage.

Today we sort students early, setting the children of wealthier families on a path that has been smoothed for them. But with quality instruction and even limited exposure to intensive learning, more heterogeneous groups of students would develop the appetite and aptitude for research and creative practice that selective colleges and universities seek.

The Teagle Foundation, a group that works to strengthen and expand liberal arts education, has done just this in its Knowledge for Freedom initiative. The program invites underserved high school students to college campuses for seminars on the enduring questions thinkers have posed about leading lives of purpose and civic responsibility. These young men and women discover that the Great Books raise issues that are not mere accessories for the rich, but that can also inform the personal and professional lives of all students.

The power of elites can be disrupted by popular resentment, as we see every day in our public sphere, or it can be disrupted by opportunities for mobility. Education transforms lives; we just need to make it more widely available.

The National Education Equity Lab, a nonprofit, partners with universities to offer free college classes in so-called high-poverty (Title I) high schools. They instruct students across the United States with video lectures recorded by professors, classroom teachers and university-trained teaching assistants. Subjects range from the Great Books of the Western tradition to computer science, engineering and psychology.

The kids are highly motivated, they work hard, and about 80 percent of them pass. Beyond the particulars of any class’s curriculum, students learn that given a chance to work at a high level, they can become members of the educational elite. The students earn college credits — from Howard and Harvard, from Stanford and Wesleyan — to prove it.

I taught a humanities course focused on modern classics as my university started our partnership with the National Education Equity Lab. “The Modern and the Postmodern,” offered in rural districts and in urban centers, was filled with eager young people who were being told for the first time that there was no limit to what they might learn.

Recently, I met a student at Barnard who had taken the course in high school. She said it gave her the confidence to pursue her education at the highest level — and to encourage others to follow in her footsteps. The first priority of college admissions departments should be finding students like these and offering them the support they need to reach their full educational potential.

Good college classes, despite what one reads these days, don’t just teach closed-minded students to condemn privilege or to complain about systemic oppression by elites. A good college education opens pathways for transformative achievement. And by doing so, the school inspires still more people to change their life trajectories through learning.

We will always have elites — some deserving, some not — and we will always have anti-elitists — some civic-minded, some cynical. Constitutional democracy doesn’t work if people are stuck in the station they’re born into, and education can still be an effective lubricant, and a powerful corrective to entrenched inequality.

Like the founders, we can be anti-elitists without falling into the trap of being anti-education. We’ll have to create pathways that change the opportunity structures for our fellow citizens, wherever they live and wherever, or whether, their parents went to school.

Dear Commons Communuty,

New York’s new toll for drivers entering the center of Manhattan debuted yesterday, meaning many people will pay $9 to access the busiest part of the Big Apple during peak hours.

The toll, known as congestion pricing, is meant to reduce traffic gridlock in the densely packed city while also raising money to help fix its ailing public transit infrastructure.  As reproted by The Associated Press and other media.

“We’ve been studying this issue for five years. And it only takes about five minutes if you’re in midtown Manhattan to see that New York has a real traffic problem,” Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chair and CEO Janno Lieber told reporters late Friday after a court hearing that cleared the way for the tolls.

“We need to make it easier for people who choose to drive, or who have to drive, to get around the city.”

The cost to drivers depends on what time of the day it is and if drivers have an E-ZPass, an electronic toll collection system that’s used in many states.

Most drivers with E-ZPasses will get dinged the $9 fee to enter Manhattan south of Central Park on weekdays between 5 a.m. and 9 p.m. and on weekends between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. During off hours, the toll will be $2.25.

That’s on top of tolls drivers pay for crossing various bridges and tunnels to get to the city in the first place, although there will be a credit of up to $3 for those who have already paid to enter Manhattan via certain tunnels during peak hours.

On yesterday morning, hours after the toll went live, traffic moved briskly along the northern edge of the congestion zone at 60th Street and 2nd Avenue. Some motorists appeared unaware that the newly activated cameras, set along the arm of a steel gantry above the street, would be charging them a $9 fee.

“Are you kidding me?” said Chris Smith, a resident of Somerville, New Jersey, as he drove against traffic beneath the cameras, avoiding the charge. “Whose idea was this? Kathy Hochul? She should be arrested for being ignorant.”

Phil Bauer, a surgeon who lives just above 60th Street, said he was hopeful the program would lessen the bottlenecks and frequent honking that comes from the nearby bridge connecting Manhattan and Queens.

“I think the idea would be good to try to minimize the amount of traffic down and try to promote people to use public transportation,” he said. “The Queensboro Bridge is pretty brutal.”

President-elect Donald Trump, a Republican, has vowed to kill the program when he takes office, but it’s unclear if he will follow through. The plan had stalled during his first term while it waited on a federal environmental review.

In November, Trump, whose namesake Trump Tower is in the toll zone, said congestion pricing “will put New York City at a disadvantage over competing cities and states, and businesses will flee.”

“Not only is this a massive tax to people coming in, it is extremely inconvenient from both driving and personal booking keeping standards,” he said in a statement. “It will be virtually impossible for New York City to come back as long as the congestion tax is in effect.”

Other big cities around the world, including London and Stockholm, have similar congestion pricing schemes, but it is the first in the U.S. Proponents of the idea note the programs were largely unpopular when first implemented, gaining approval as the public felt the benefits.

In New York City, even some transit riders voiced skepticism of a plan intended to raise much-needed funds for the subway system.

“With my experience of the MTA and where they’ve allocated their funds in the past, they’ve done a pretty poor job with that,” said Christakis Charalambides, a supervisor in the fashion industry, as he waited for a subway in Lower Manhattan. “I don’t know if I necessarily believe it until I really see something.”

The toll was supposed to go into effect last year with a $15 charge, but Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul abruptly paused the program before the 2024 election, when congressional races in suburban areas around the city — the epicenter of opposition to the program — were considered to be vital to her party’s effort to retake control of Congress.

Not long after the election, Hochul rebooted the plan but at the lower $9 toll. She denies politics were at play and said she thought the original $15 charge was too much, though she had been a vocal supporter of the program before halting it.

Congestion pricing also survived several lawsuits seeking to block the program, including a last-ditch effort from the state of New Jersey to have a judge put up a temporary roadblock against it. A spokesperson for New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, Natalie Hamilton, said in an email Saturday, that they would” continue fighting against this unfair and unpopular scheme.”

I started taking the New York subway system when I was a child in the 1950s.  My family did not own a car.  I took and still take Metro-North and mass transit whenever I need to travel into the City.  However, I am dubious how much good this toll will do to help New York’s mass transit system.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Walgreens is planning to close 1,200 stores over the next three years. That’s no small cut. And they’re not the only ones feeling the squeeze. Business Insider (BI) reported that CVS and Rite Aid are scaling back too. So, how does a business in the middle of a $722 billion industry end up here?  As reported by (BI).

Big Numbers, Bigger Problems

Pharmacies should be killing it. Seven out of 10 Americans rely on prescription meds. That’s a steady stream of cash, right? Not quite. Walgreens says a quarter of their stores are losing money. CVS is slashing 3,000 jobs and closing hundreds of locations. Rite Aid? They’re stuck in bankruptcy mode, shutting stores to stay afloat.

The stores that survive aren’t faring much better. Shelves are half-empty. Everything is locked up. And finding someone to unlock that deodorant? Good luck with that scavenger hunt.

What’s Eating Pharmacies Alive?

It’s not just Walgreens and CVS. Convenience stores like 7-Eleven are shutting down, too. Blame it on what people are calling the “retail apocalypse.” COVID-19 may have kick-started it, but this isn’t just a pandemic problem.

Elizabeth Anderson, a health care analyst, told BI, “None of these things is a new factor. But you compound that for years and years and eventually, you get to a kind of a breaking point.”

That breaking point? It’s here.

Amazon and Friends Are Winning

Who needs a pharmacy run when Amazon can drop your ibuprofen, snacks and toilet paper on your doorstep? Often cheaper and easier.

Amazon isn’t the only threat; Walmart and Target are grabbing pharmacy customers. Last year, Walmart launched same-day pharmacy delivery. Even Dollar General is in the mix, snagging budget-conscious shoppers. The more annoying pharmacies make it to shop – locked shelves, anyone? – the faster people bail.

Pandemic Boost? That’s Over

The pandemic gave pharmacies a brief lifeline. Vaccines and COVID test kits drove foot traffic and revenue. But that wave has passed and the problems that were always there are now front and center.

Can Pharmacies Make A Comeback?

Walgreens and CVS are trying to adapt, but the game has changed. People want convenience. They want low prices. And they won’t stick around for stores that don’t deliver.

For now, the closures keep coming. If pharmacies don’t evolve fast, this could just be the start.

Sad but the reality of corporate competition!

Tony

Award-winning editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes left her position at the Washington Post after the paper rejected the editorial cartoon idea she submitted featuring several tech and media executives bowing down to Donald Trump.

Dear Commons Community,

Ann Telnaes, a  cartoonist at the Washington Post, has decided to quit her job  after an editor rejected her sketch (see above) of the newspaper’s owner and other media executives bowing before President-elect Donald Trump.  As reported by The Associated Press.

Telnaes posted a message Friday on the online platform Substack saying that she drew a cartoon showing a group of media executives bowing before Trump while offering him bags of money, including Post owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Telnaes wrote that the cartoon was intended to criticize “billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump.” Several executives, Bezos among them, have been spotted at Trump’s Florida club Mar-a-Lago. She accused them of having lucrative government contracts and working to eliminate regulations.

Telnaes said that she’s never before had a cartoon rejected because of its inherent messaging and that such a move is dangerous for a free press.

“As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable,” Telnaes wrote. “For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say ‘Democracy dies in darkness.’”

The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists issued a statement Saturday accusing the Post of “political cowardice” and asking other cartoonists to post Telnaes’ sketch with the hashtag #StandWithAnn in a show of solidarity.

“Tyranny ends at pen point,” the association said. “It thrives in the dark, and the Washington Post simply closed its eyes and gave in like a punch-drunk boxer.”

The Post’s communications director, Liza Pluto, provided The Associated Press on Saturday with a statement from David Shipley, the newspaper’s editorial page editor. Shipley said in the statement that he disagrees with Telnaes’ “interpretation of events.”

He said he decided to nix the cartoon because the paper had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and was set to publish another.

“Not every editorial judgement is a reflection of a malign force. … The only bias was against repetition,” Shipley said.

The truth hurts even the big billionaires!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Cheers rang out through the East Room of the White House yesterday as actor and activist Michael J. Fox walked up to the stage to accept the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Joe Biden (see video below).

Fox is one of 19 people, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Bono, to be given the award on Saturday, the nation’s highest civilian honor.  As reported by The Independent.

“You defend the values of America, even when they’re under attack,” Biden told the honorees. “Together, you leave an incredible mark on our country, with insight and influence that can be felt around the globe.”

Today’s ceremony marked the final time Biden presented the prestigious honor during his term in office.

In addition to Fox and Clinton, the group of awarded luminaries included chef and World Central Kitchen founder Jose Andres, late Obama administration defense secretary Ashton Carter, and Los Angeles Lakers basketball legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson.

The latter honoree elicited laughter from the crowd as he squatted down to let the president put the medal over his head.

Other arts and cultural leaders were also honored, including actor Denzel Washington, longtime Vogue editor Anna Wintour, American Film Institute founder George Stevens Jr, and former Kennedy Center chair David Rubinstein.

In addition, the president commended designer Ralph Lauren, soccer star Lionel Messi, LGBTQ+ activist and entrepreneur Tim Gill, conservationist Jane Goodall and Democratic Party megadonor and philanthropist George Soros.

Biden also posthumously honored voting rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, the late Michigan governor George Romney (father of former Utah senator Mitt Romney) and the late New York senator and U.S. attorney general Robert F Kennedy Sr., whose son, lawyer and anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is set to be nominated as Donald Trump’s next Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Speaking about Kennedy, Biden sounded a personal note.

“Bobby Kennedy is one of my true political heroes,” the president said. “I love and miss him dearly.”

The honor is awarded solely at the discretion of the President of the United States, but recipients are often selected with the help of an outside advisory panel.

Established under the late president John F Kennedy, the medal is “presented to individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors.”

“President Biden believes great leaders keep the faith, give everyone a fair shot, and put decency above all else. These 19 Americans are great leaders who have made America a better place. They are great leaders because they are good people who have made extraordinary contributions to their country and the world,” the White House said in a statement announcing the awards.

Touching ceremony!

Tony

Rendering of Homo Foresiensis. Courtesy of Popular Mechanics

Dear Commons Community,

Is an apelike humanoid still living among us?

The scientific community believes a small species of human known as homo floresiensis once lived on the island of Flores, Indonesia, around 50,000 years ago. But one professor thinks the apelike humanoids could still live there, evolution be damned.  As reported by Popular Mechanics and The Debrief.

Think of this as the hunt for Bigfoot, only with a much smaller target.

Gregory Forth has studied the homo floresiensis for roughly four decades—first when at the University of Oxford and then at the University of Alberta. He wrote a book in 2022, Between Ape and Human: An Anthropologist on the Trail of a Hidden Hominoid, and The Debrief recently ran an interview with Forth on the quest.

Forth still believes in the modern interpretation of what the locals call the lai ho’a.

“What really interested me in the lai ho’a is that it was small, like the figures in Nage country,” Forth told The Debrief, “but it was reckoned still to be alive. And indeed, there were a few people around, it seemed, who claimed to have seen one or more.”

These creatures have a human-like upright gait, come hairier than humans but not as hairy as an ape, and have a distinct ape-like face, according to the Lio people’s accounts to Forth.

The professor’s hopes of a living homo floresiensis were emboldened at the finding of fossils roughly 20 years ago.

“When the reports started coming out, I was quite amazed,” he told The Debrief, “because what people were describing—what paleoanthropologists were describing, and indeed reconstructing—sounded very much like what the Lio people had been describing to me the previous summer.”

Forth’s book purports that these ape-man creatures lived at least into modern times, and he believes credible sightings mean there’s a chance a small population still exists. The search for a modern-day lai ho’a presses on.

Interesting!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Trump and Republicans keep trying to connect the New Orleans bomber with illegal immigration. 

Bill Bramhall’s cartoon (above) in yesterday’s New York Daily News says it all.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

My colleague, David Bloomfield, was quoted extensively in a piece yesterday in ChalkBeat outlining the education agenda for New York in 2025.  School funding, cellphone ban, class size, and Trump’s financial policies top the list.  Below is the article.

David offers good insights.

Tony

——————————————————————–

Debate over how to update NY’s school funding formula continues

Lawmakers and observers expect discussions over how to revise the Foundation Aid formula to play a major role in the state budget process.

That formula, first implemented in 2007, relies on decades-old data to calculate district needs, such as using poverty figures from the 2000 census. Though most agree the formula is in dire need of updates, a recent report offering 20 recommendations spurred mixed reactions among advocates and lawmakers.

State Sen. John Liu, a Queens Democrat who chairs the Senate’s New York City education committee, said the report included helpful suggestions. Still, it didn’t address several key issues that impact New York City, like the growing population of students in temporary housing, he said.

“The report gives us good ideas and some of the logic behind possible changes,” Liu said. “But it doesn’t constrain us in any way in terms of determining what the new state budget is going to be and how much will be invested in education.”

Mayer said discussions over the formula will begin with the release of the governor’s budget proposal later this month. She added that lawmakers will want to see the district-level impacts of any proposed changes to the formula.

Trump’s return sparks fears about funding cuts

In New York City and in Albany, Trump’s return to the White House has set lawmakers and education advocates on edge — as his policies could potentially weaken federal support for schools and harm local immigrant communities.

The president-elect has vowed to get rid of the U.S. Department of Education, enact mass deportations, and slash federal funding.

Bloomfield believes the biggest threat to New York City schools lies in potential federal funding cuts — whether directly related to education or not.

“Education funding directly could be cut,” he said. “But if transportation funding is cut, or other areas of massive federal aid, the budget may have to adjust away from education to fill other gaps.”

NeQuan McLean, president of the city’s District 16 Community Education Council, has been working to raise alarm over potential cuts to Title I funding, which provide city schools with millions in federal dollars meant to support students from low-income backgrounds.

Part of the issue, McLean added, is a lack of accounting of what city schools use the federal funding for — meaning the full extent of potential cuts remains unclear.

“What does that mean for New York State?” he said. “What does that look like for districts that really rely on this money?”

Mayer is concerned about the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 — widely seen as a blueprint for the Trump administration — that calls for Title I funding to be turned into vouchers and then phased out over time, among other changes.

“We have Republicans from New York, and we have to impress upon them that to carry through with the Project 2025 agenda would be absolutely devastating for the kids of New York City,” she said.

Mayer added she’s concerned about the Trump administration’s plans to ramp up deportations. It’s a fear shared among local families and educators, as New York City’s schools are home to thousands of asylum-seeking and other migrant students.

“In the first Trump presidency, some of these parents just said, ‘I’m not willing to take the chance of ICE coming and pulling my kid at school,’” Mayer said. “We as a community need to assure parents that school is a safe place.”

NYC must construct more school buildings, lawmaker says

New York City is approaching its first major test in meeting a state law mandating smaller class sizes, with 60% of classrooms required to be in compliance by September 2025.

That law — which caps class sizes at 20 for kindergarten to third grade, 23 for fourth to eighth grade, and 25 for high school — will require a historic reduction in class sizes across the school system. Around 40% of the city’s classes were below the caps as of last year.

Liu said he’s open to conversations with the city about providing further resources. But he wants to see a more substantial effort by the city in 2025 toward meeting the mandate — including retrofitting additional school building spaces into classrooms, constructing additional classrooms where space exists on school campuses, and developing new school buildings.

Mayoral control, SHSAT, and other issues could resurface

Other issues that have previously taken center stage could also reemerge in 2025.

Though the current mayoral control deal will last until 2026, the city’s polarizing school governance structure could spark some conversations this year.

Liu said that legislative action about the issue was “always a possibility.”

To Bloomfield, recent federal charges against Adams and the departure of many top city officials may offer further fuel to critics of the current system.

Meanwhile, he anticipates debates over the Specialized High School Admissions Test — a standardized exam that acts as the sole metric of admission to the city’s prestigious specialized high schools, like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science — could resurface this year.

It’s a polarizing issue that has remained dormant in recent years. But as the city’s Panel for Educational Policy considered a new contract for a computer-based version of the exam last month, some members signaled they want to see reforms to the admissions system.

“It resurrects a previously dead issue,” Bloomfield said. “It’s unlikely to change things, but there’s an opening that didn’t exist a month ago.”