Dive Brief:

• New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is turning his attention to overcrowded classrooms, suggesting the city spend $4.4 billion over the next four years to rectify the problem.   
• The money would be used to invest in new spaces to get students out of trailer classrooms and into traditional school buildings.  
• The mayor also suggested the city budget $20 million toward bringing arts education to schools.  

Dive Insight:

School space and its use has been a contentious issue in the Big Apple. Many schools do not have their own individual locations, instead co-locating in the same buildings, with some students even attending classes in trailers. While de Blasio's announcement suggests money be spent on creating more spaces for the city's students, it doesn't address how charter schools will fit into the equation. New York has been grappling recently with whether or not the state should pay for spaces for charters, which are often privately operated.

That de Blasio's executive budget includes money for the arts in schools is also notable, given a recent report by New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer that highlighted a lack of arts education in New York City's public schools. Stringer estimated that supplying a full-time, certified arts teacher to every school that doesn’t have one would cost about $26 million.