NYC schoolkids granted full week before Christmas off after 7th grader’s petition drew thousands of signatures: ‘Their voice matters’
New York City schoolkids will get a full week off before Christmas break — following a petition started by a sharp Brooklyn seventh-grader that garnered tens of thousands of signatures.
Isaac Regnier, 12, had urged the Department of Education to cancel class on Monday Dec. 23, to avoid forcing public school students and teachers to show up for a one-day school week before the break, The Post previously reported.
On Wednesday, he got his wish – and joined Mayor Eric Adams and newly-minted Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos at the headquarters of the United Federation of Teachers to announce the schedule change.
“Isaac, he was able to get this victory, and I think it’s going to cascade throughout the entire school system that young people are going to know that their voice matters, and his parents should be extremely proud of him. This is what leadership is about,” Adams said.
Previously, the calendar peculiarity meant that students would have had to stay in town over the weekend to attend one day of school before the start of the holiday vacation.
Regnier, a student at IS 96 in Bensonhurst, started the petition called “Fix the NYC Schools Calendar” in May, asking administrators to cancel class on Dec. 23 and make up for it by extending the academic year by one day, to Friday, June 27.
The online petition garnered media attention and more than 22,000 signatures.
“I feel so proud of myself for all that hard work I did, even with the advocating and those emails, even though I didn’t get written back by (former Chancellor) David Banks, I still made it a success,” Regnier told reporters Wednesday.
Adams explained that he wanted to make sure with the teachers’ union that the request was possible.
“We wanted to make sure we can do it if possible. We wanted to communicate with the UFT, was possible to get done? I did not want to give any false promises,” the mayor said.
In his petition, Regnier argued that attendance would be low that day because kids whose families were going away for the break would either have to take an absence or be forced to change their plans.
He also made the shrewd point that “kids and teachers will feel annoyed”.
The same calendar anomaly happened in 2019 when Dec. 23 also fell on a Monday, according to Chalkbeat.
That year, teachers started a petition to get the school calendar changed and administrators agreed.
State law says schools must be in session 180 days per year or New York City schools could lose state funding.
