Dive Brief:

• New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña is skeptical of data backing small schools and plans to merge some of those within the city.
• The move, backed by Mayor Bill de Blasio, runs counter to a strategy of former mayor Michael Bloomberg that divided large, poor-performing schools into smaller schools with new staffs.
• Fariña plans to re-merge Middle School 354, the School of Integrated Learning with M.S. 334, the Middle School for Academic and Social Excellence, which share a building in Crown Heights. While the school performed poorly before its split, only one of the small schools has benefited since.

Dive Insight:

Fariña views the decision to consolidate small, struggling schools as a way to spread resources, believing that small schools sometimes lack the necessary support services that specific students need. She is also unsure about the research that says small schools are more successful. For example, 35 of the 94 NYC schools facing closure if they don't improve have 300 students or less.  

“There’s such a thing as schools that are too small, you don’t have support services,” Fariña told a town hall meeting in Manhattan last fall, according to the New York Post.