Transcript: Mayor Adams Welcomes Students Back To School With Doe Chancellor Banks

September 7, 2023

Watch the video here at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE49hQuiQ1M

Principal Jared Kreiner, P.S. 121: Good morning, everyone. All right. My name is Jared Kreiner, and I'm honored to serve as the principal of P.S. 121.

I took on this role four years ago, and it's been a privilege to work in the Department of Education for the past 27 years serving the children of the Bronx. Today I'm thrilled to have all of you here, as well as celebrate the first day of the school year for ‘23-’24.

It's a special day for me, and not only do I get to share it with Mayor Adams, Chancellor Banks, UFT President Mulgrew and Council Member Rita Joseph, Council Member Marjorie Velàsquez, Assembly Member Michael Benedetto and Bronx President Vanessa Gibson and my incredible staff. I can't say enough about how amazing my staff is, but I also love the first day of school.

The first day of school represents fresh beginnings, a chance to set new goals and opportunity for a fresh start.

It's a time to meet new students and embark on a journey filled with new relationships, knowledge and experiences. Today, our atmosphere is brimming with positive energy, as you can see, from the arrival, and we anticipate another successful year here at P.S. 121.

To kick things off, I'd like to introduce an outstanding student at our school. Chloe President.

Come up here, Chloe.

Let me just tell you, Chloe is remarkable. She's an outgoing student who consistently lends a helping hand to her peers. She loves reading and writing and enjoying her role as a new big sister. She enjoys listening to music and making videos. With her passion for helping others, she wishes to attend Howard University College.

You talk about college and career ready. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce you to Ms. Chloe President.

Chloe President: Hi. My name is Chloe President, and I'm in the fifth grade. My favorite thing about school is learning and having fun with my friends. I am excited to learn about new math equations and ways to become a better student by doing better things.

I want to introduce you to our first speaker, Mayor Adams, who is a champion for all students all across New York City.

Mayor Eric Adams: We're going to share our hearts together. There you are. You're sharing our hearts. Proud mom and dad. Proud mom and dad that's here. You know, I remember P.S. 140 in Queens, the first year that mom moved us from Brooklyn to Queens, and I remember walking in the yard and mommy dropping us off. All my brothers and sisters were running and playing, and I was just holding on to her skirt, holding on to her skirt.

I was like mommy, don't leave me, I don't know these people. And I remember, like Angelia, who I just met, trying to separate, I remember just starting to cry, and one of the third grade young girls came over and held my hand and she said, "It's going to be all right."

I went from not wanting to go to school to running to school every day. It was just the energy. That's the energy we saw today. And you can't fake the authentic belief in young people in children like our president and councilwoman who is here, and just the chancellor. You see him on the professional lens, but just personally, the hours and hours of talking.

And I'm sure just about every elected in this city would talk about the relationship they have with this chancellor and his commitment and dedication to children. What he's doing this year with changing the game on reading, a bold, bold initiative, unafraid to say we need to target and forecast and move in a new direction, when he sat down and broke it down with me and hearing our partners, the UFT president, President Mulgrew, say, Eric, this is what we've been talking about over and over again.

And then pushing against the fear of the unknown. First city of this size to do breathing exercises for our children.

You know, people say what is this, what's the connection of breathing in a school. Just go through the research. Teaching young people self care early in life to deal with the stresses that they're going to face. It's more than just being academically smart. We want our children to be emotionally intelligent. We want them to interact with each other, to deal with the challenges they're facing, everything from school, potential school bus issues, to the insurge of new arrivals that want to educate the uneducated our asylum seekers and to deal with challenges of budget cuts, all these things we still have to produce a product that will allow our children to be ready for the future.

And that's what this school year is about and this is what this chancellor and his amazing team is going to do, push forward. Practice day one, when we came into office, the uncertainty of schools being open or closed, the chancellor said the safest place for our children is in a school building partnering with Michael and the UFT team on those phone calls, late at night, making sure we did the proper testing, making sure we did the safe environment. And then where we are now, the beginning of a new school year.

So much comes with it. I asked a group of students just a little while ago, chancellor, what are you looking forward to. New friends. Meeting new friends. They want to meet new friends. They want to experience reading. They want to experience math. They want to experience all these things that we've laid out for them.

A lot of preparation. This school day did not just happen on its own. The team has been preparing over and over again for the uncertainty of life that would come up but it will not get in the way of our mission of educating our children and allowing them to know the classroom experience is not only what happens in the school building but the full city is a classroom that's alive and well.

Our high school students’ learning internships, learning how to go into the work environment in a real way. Our younger students coming in, cycling out of pre K to come in through the full K-12 experience. Reshaping our cafeterias to allow more socializing in cafeterias. Just being unafraid to chart a new course, being unafraid to do what's best for our children.

So, I'm excited about the school year. As I mentioned earlier I'm going to be departing here to go over to Rikers Island because not only is this the first day of school here in the New York City public schools, it's also the first day of school for those children who went on the wrong path. And they need to know that their mayor is welcoming children here in this school and I'm going to welcome them in school also. These are all our children. These are all our children.

And we cannot ignore any one of our children, and that's what this chancellor believes.

I'll just tell you, brother, from the bottom of my heart, thank you. Thank you for being a chancellor, for being my brother, man. You are a solid, solid, solid leader for the New York City public schools. We're so blessed to have you do your thing. This is your year, man. You can't drop the ball. You drop the ball, I'll be hanging out in front of your house coming after you. Thank you. Chancellor David Banks.

Chancellor David Banks, Department of Education: Good morning, everyone, and welcome back to another wonderful amazing school year. I don't know about you, but I'm always super duper excited about the beginning of the school year.

And look at all these wonderful, brilliant, just phenomenal young people over here. Are you all excited to be back in school? Are you excited to be back in school? Are you excited to be back in school?

They are excited to be back in school. And I think my team, our senior leadership team, we're joined by so many who are here as well. I've got a phenomenal team. We spend a lot of time preparing for this, but the folks who were in this school, I just want to say thank you to principal Kreiner and your team here at P.S. 121. Thank you for all the work that you do.

You could see from the morning lineup, the tone that gets set around organization, high expectations. It's all set from the very earliest moments.

I know a good school from the moment that you walk in through the front doors. And here I didn't even have to walk in the front doors. I just walked into the school yard, and I knew you had great leadership. You've got a great team. You can feel the spirit of what this school is really all about. So kudos to you, sir, and your staff here. Thank you.

All your teachers. I did want to give a special shout out to a woman who I saw out there making it happen. She's been the long time parent coordinator at this school her name is Romana Brunson. Where is Ms. Brunson? Where are you Ms. Brunson, wave your hand, Ms. Brunson. Wave your hand, Ms. Brunson, so they know what a great parent coordinator looks like. I get asked questions all the time, and we are sure we'll have questions today about how we're dealing with the migrant students.

If you read the paper, you would think there's chaos happening in our schools. 20,000 migrant students have come in. First of all, over 18,000 already came in last year. They've already been assimilated into the schools. And the work that has been happening with them has been so phenomenal because of the great principals, the teachers, the parent coordinators, and everybody that's a part of the schools. Kids who came in not even speaking a word of English. By the end of the year already speaking English. It is the story of New York City.

We don't treat people as outsiders. We welcome them with open arms. And that's what we have been doing here. So, I just want to tell everybody here, don't believe the hype when you hear the messages as, though, there's somehow chaos and anarchy. What you see happening here today is happening across schools all across New York City. So, go tell that story. Absolutely.

And I also wanted to shout out to parent association president, Michael McCarthy. Where are you Mr. McCarthy, Mr. McCarthy, thank you so much. We don't get to be successful, Mr. McCarthy, in our schools, unless we have people like you and our parents who are fully engaged and are real partners. I can see that's what's happening at this school. I want to thank you on behalf of this administration for all that you do.

If there's anything that I think I'm really proud of as we are kicking off another year, I got asked the question at another press conference as I reflected on my first full year going into my second full year. I will tell you, one of the things I think I'm most proud of, I didn't say it yesterday, but I want to say it now, is that I'm really proud of the relationship that I have built with Michael Mulgrew and the United Federation of Teachers. I want to say that publicly.

I was a member of the UFT for years when I was a teacher right here in this city. And over the years, I watched this acrimony between the union and the administration, as though that was something that was a given.

And I want you to know it's not a given. It's built on relationships, and it's built on trust. And Michael and I have been in constant communication from the moment that I was announced that I was going to be the    the mayor announced I would be the chancellor. Michael was one of the first people who reached out. We talk regularly because we recognize that if we want to win and we want to help all our kids win, we can't be standing on opposite sides of this.

We've got to work together. We're not always going to agree on every issue, but we don't have to be disagreeable. And that's the message that the mayor sends all the time. Let's work together and do the things that we need to do. I want to thank the superintendent of this district, Christine Vaughn. Christine, where are you? Thank you for your leadership for the entire district. This is a district that has adopted expeditionary learning as their approach to the teaching of reading.

The number one issue, and you will hear me say it everywhere that I go, is what we are doing around reading. 51 percent of the kids in New York City are not on grade level. That's wholly unacceptable. Look at the faces here. Look at these kids. Look at them. 64 percent of Black kids in New York City are not on grade level. 63 percent of Latino students are not on grade level. That should be wholly unacceptable, and it's amazing to me that all the issues that get written about, it almost never even gets mentioned.

There are a lot of other issues that I consider noise that I guess people feel like that's what people want to read about. What I am going to be laser focused on is ensuring that every single child in the school system is on grade level no later than the third grade. That is the work that this organization, this administration will be completely focused on.

When we came into office, the mayor talked about the students with dyslexia, and we started that out right away, screening all of our students, determining which ones are at risk of dyslexia and doing further screenings and interventions for those kids. But the broader issue is that for even kids who don't have dyslexia, they can't read. And that is because we haven't taught them properly how to read. For many years we adopted a balanced literacy approach, and I'm thrilled that we've gotten away from that. I'm thrilled that Teachers College, just the other day, removed that program from their school at Columbia, will no longer be impacting schools all over the nation. We helped to make that happen by letting folks know right here in New York City we're going to get our kids on track. They're going to learn how to decode words.

They're going to learn the foundations of reading, phonics, to be able to develop into confident readers. You don't get to be a student who loves to read if you've never learned how to read. And it's going to start as early as pre K, the work of Dr. Kara Ahmed at our early childhood education, all of our early childhood programs focused on reading. All the teachers are being trained over the summer. We are ready to go.

This is going to be a wonderful and amazing year. We're going to do this together with all of our elected officials. I'm so thrilled that Assembly Member Benedetto is here and Borough President Vanessa Gibson is here and our Council Member Velásquez is here.

We're going to need all of your support here. We're going to need all of your support to make this happen. That is our big issue. But I am thrilled to make an announcement here this morning before we turn it over to Michael Mulgrew, because this is something that he's fought for for years. I've been asked this question many times as we've brought more of the migrant students, most of whom are Spanish speaking, not all, but most of whom are Spanish speaking, are you ready? Do you have enough teachers? How are you prepared to meet the demand?

So, we're thrilled to announce today that we're activating a special group of teachers who already work in our schools. There are currently over 500 tenured teachers who, beyond their primary teaching licenses, hold additional licenses in English as a new language and bilingual education. Over 500 who already have those licenses. These are very special teachers who can teach multiple subjects but often they do not for fear of having to restart their tenure.

So, if you're teaching one subject and you already have tenure in that subject yet your school really needs you now to teach ENL or teach bilingual education, they don't shift to do that because they don't want to give up their tenure and their primary license.

So, today we're announcing that effective immediately any tenured teacher who holds a secondary ENL or bilingual license and secures the position under that license will be granted automatic tenure in that ENL or bilingual license. That is a very, very big deal.

That is a huge deal, and it would not have happened without Dr. Betty Rosa, our New York State education leader. We thank her and we really wish she could have been here with us today. But I don't give anybody any more thanks than I give Michael Mulgrew. Many years before I became the chancellor, Michael Mulgrew was fighting for this very issue.

I think it's so appropriate to turn over the microphone to him. He's been a champion of this. It's going to help us out tremendously. And where is Senator Bailey. Senator Bailey, everybody. Give Senator Bailey a big shout out.

Senator, we're excited to be here, to be here in your district. This is a phenomenal school. We're excited for what this new year holds. We are welcoming all of these new migrant students into our schools with open arms. We know it's a larger political issue, and that the mayor and others have to deal with, but when they show up in our schools, they're going to get the best that we have.

If you want to see New York City public schools at its best, I invite you to visit the schools, see what's happening in these schools. See how these teachers are showing up. See how these parents like Ms. Brunson and Mr. McCarthy are showing up. Food drives. Clothing drives. They're doing everything. It is what the best of New York City is all about. But Michael, thank you for pushing on this issue because this is going to ensure that we get more teachers in the classrooms right away who can help to meet this gap, and I want to say thank you for making it happen.

President Michael Mulgrew, United Federation of Teachers: First day of school. It's first day of school. Happy first day. I thank you, all the parents, coming today to bring your children here for care and believe me they will get the care that you want them to have.

We are here in P.S. 121. Let's hear it for 121!

Let's hear it for the great District 11!

Let's hear it for our borough of the Bronx!

And let's hear it for the entire city, the greatest public school system in the United States of America!

I want to thank also our state elected officials, Michael Benedetto, who is absolutely a champion of education. Jamal Bailey, thank you for being here. And I have a personal thing to say, even though she's not my borough president, she's my favorite borough president, Vanessa Gibson. Thank you. You are blessed to have her up here in the Bronx. Councilwoman Velásquez thank you for all the work you've done on behalf of education. Let's get down to it. We have a lot of challenges this year. We'll speak about them. That's not new, folks. That's not new.

If you teach in a New York City public school, if you work in a New York City public school, every day there are challenges. We come to work every day with a plan knowing that the plan is never going to come to fruition and things are going to change and there will be crises and there will be beautiful moments, but it is up to us as adults to make sure that we're taking advantage of every opportunity to show children how adults should act and also take advantage to use these things as ways to educate them and to build them as human beings.

That is the beauty of the New York City public school system. And to our mayor. Yes, the chancellor and I have taken a leap on reading, but let me be clear. We don't get to take that leap unless you're supporting it and you have been a leader on this issue from before you were the mayor. You have always spoken about dyslexia and also the importance of a child learning how to read. We have had mayors for years who have spoken about reading. We have had mayors for years who have said if we get every child on grade level by third grade that we'll be in better shape. Yes, we all knew that, but they never had a real plan.

They only spoke about it. What has happened here is you have come together. You've put together an absolute plan that can succeed, and I'm letting you know today, we, my chancellor and myself and all the educators, we're going to make you look good because we're going to succeed, and that's our thanks to you for doing the right thing, man. Chancellor Banks, now we've got to make it work. So, it's a thing to really be always optimistic. First day of school, everyone is optimistic. The children are optimistic. Most of them. I saw probably the least amount of crying ever on the first day of school at this building. That's a testament to the staff here.

But optimism is there. The passion is there. The energy is there. Now it's all about the hard work. And people ask me sometimes, like, teachers are always saying, well, we should have had this or we should have had that. I say, yeah. I say why do they think they need something more. It's because they're always trying to do something more. It's never enough. And the day teachers stop saying I'm okay and I can deal with it is a sad day for us because we know we can always go further with each and every student. There's always another plateau to achieve, and we always strive and look for a place.

Yes, then we're going to agitate and we're going to say we need more, we need more from the system. We need more from the elected officials. We need better policy. We need more money. That's what we're going to say because to us it's really simple, we have dedicated our lives to taking a child and educating them and growing them as a human being because we want them each and every one of them to have a great future. That's in the heart and spirit of any teacher in education that's why the city is blessed. Yes the chancellor spoke about this. We have all these challenges. And you're all going to talk to us about it and it's fine, but again, last year, over 18,000 asylum seeking students came into our schools. Was it easy? No. Absolutely not. Phenomenal challenge for those schools and teachers dealing with it.

Did they have everything they needed? No because we didn't know everything they needed and we won't know until we actually form a relationship with that child. But did those children learn? Yes. Are they in a better place today because they were in our school system? Yes. Can we do more? As I started with, yes, we can, and we will always push for that. So, that's an issue we'll deal with. We know we have an impending bus strike, hopefully it doesn't happen. If it happens, guess what, we'll do things, we'll figure it out. Schools, there's a contingency plan for the city but let's be clear, schools are already putting their own contingency plans together.

So we're going to work through the rest of this weekend and hopefully we all will be able to make people understand that do not put our children at risk because we do not need that mess, but we will deal with whatever comes our way. But this is the beauty of the New York City public school system, and I was so happy last week. Last week we had close to 2,000 new teachers in Manhattan came in for a day.

And the diversity was beautiful. The passion of the young teachers was beautiful. But this is the first time in years I saw a group, it wasn't just one or two. We're talking 20 or 30 teachers who came to me. Not individually and said I'm transferring from different places, different states, and I said why are you transferring? They said I want to work in a school system that truly, truly supports and embraces diversity because that is the future of our city and the world.

And that's what we have here in New York City. And that is the blessing that we all have. It's not easy. We're going to have issues. But I know that I have a great,we all have a great chancellor in David Banks. He sees it straight. Common sense. Let's move towards it. Working with me, with Dr. Rosa, Dr. Rosa says you have these children coming in, we have to make this easy for you.

There's bureaucratic red tape that's been in effect for decades that does not really meet the needs of the schools. Right now, we need to stop the silliness. If we have teachers who are certified as bilingual ENL teachers, we need to be able to let them switch their certificates without any liability to themselves because they've already proven to be highly successful teachers.

To receive tenure is not an easy thing. It's our vetting process. Still close to 50 percent of the teachers who come into this profession do not receive tenure. That is the vetting process. It's not an easy job.

Yes, we appreciate the heart and the soul and the passion that they bring, but it also is a highly complex, difficult job. So, that is why I'm happy and I can't thank Dr. Rosa enough for saying all right we need to meet the needs of the students so we have to meet your needs. She has allowed us to move almost 600 teachers will now have the ability to move into those certificates.

Again, beginning of the school year. We're happy. It's a phenomenal day. Will there be challenges? Yes. Will any day in any school day go as planned? Absolutely not. But don't worry about it, you have the best teachers, the best school staffs in the United States of America. It is called the New York City public school system. Thank you very much.

Kreiner: I want to thank everybody for coming today. It's hot. You can all get to some air conditioning rooms, and have a great school year. Thank you, everybody.