Mayor Adams' Statement on New York City Public Schools Chancellor David Banks' Retirement

September 24, 2024

NEW YORK – New York City Mayor Eric Adams today released the following statement on the announcement of the retirement of New York City Public Schools Chancellor David C. Banks, effective December 31, 2024:

“I am immensely grateful and proud of the work accomplished in New York City Public Schools under Chancellor David Banks. In less than three years, our city’s public schools have transformed — from ensuring schools were safe and open coming out of the pandemic to a space that has increased our students’ reading scores, math scores, and graduation rates. We’ve implemented critical initiatives like ‘NYC Reads,’ ‘NYC Solves,’ and universal dyslexia screenings, while also ensuring a seamless and timely coordination with partners to welcome, enroll, and support thousands of newly-arriving students and their families on a citywide scale. We’ve done all this and more on behalf of nearly 1 million public school students, and Chancellor Banks was crucial to getting that done every day. On behalf of all New Yorkers, we thank Chancellor Banks for his service, and wish him well in his retirement at the end of the calendar year.”

Public Schools Chancellor Banks added:

"After nearly 40 years of dedicated service to New York City's public schools, I have made the decision to retire at the end of this year. I want to thank Mayor Adams for giving me the opportunity to serve as chancellor, and I am immensely proud of the progress we’ve made together — ensuring every child can read, expanding special education and gifted & talented programs, and creating innovative pathways for our students to secure rewarding careers and long-term success. Additionally, I want to thank the hundreds of thousands of families who entrust us with their children and the 140,000 employees who show up every day for our students — you make our public schools possible. I grew up in our public schools and spent most of my adult life serving the students and families of our city, and I have every confidence that the work we’ve started will continue to thrive and benefit generations to come.”

Public Schools Chancellor Banks led New York City Public Schools through major transformations, implementing signature education initiatives, including “NYC Reads” universal dyslexia screening, mayoral accountability, and more. Key successes include:

• Implemented major literacy initiative through "NYC Reads," which has adopted curriculum based in the science of reading to half of the city’s elementary schools and 90 percent of early childhood programs.
• Implemented “NYC Solves,” a major citywide initiative to raise math achievement so all students graduate with strong math skills.
• Instituted nation-leading dyslexia support through mandating dyslexia screening for all students and opened first-ever public school dedicated to supporting students with dyslexia and other print-based learning disabilities. 
• Expanded accelerated learning opportunities for more students by adding 57 Gifted and Talented programs and increasing the number of students participating by 2,400 for a total of 16,500 students in Kindergarten through 5th  
• Opened nine new schools and 24 new school buildings, including the most new K-12 seats opened in two decades, ahead of the 2024-2025 school year.
• Helped 8,662 students secure a total of 23,000 job placements, resulting in students earning a cumulative $8.2 million from paid work experiences at top companies through FutureReadyNYC.  
• Cemented new labor contracts that keep the city’s public schools competitive for talent nationwide, helping to increase the teacher retention rate to 95 percent. 
• Invested over $600 million in new funding to protect critical programs that were funded with temporary stimulus dollars.  
• Dramatically increased early childhood enrollment with over 114,000 children enrolled this year, stabilized the system by reducing the payment timeline to vendors from approximately 60 to 90 days to an average of 12 days, and strengthened quality with over 90 percent of programs and schools implementing a singular curriculum. 
• Won mayoral accountability of schools twice in three years and achieved an increase in enrollment for the first time in eight years, while investing $180 million to implement a comprehensive class size reduction plan.