Summer vacation is over: First day of school kicks off in NYC

NEW YORK (PIX11) – Summer vacation is officially over for more than 1 million New York City public school students on Thursday.

The nation's largest school system is beginning the fall semester with 24 new school buildings, adding more than 11,000 classroom seats in the city.

The city's class sizes are required to match those of upstate schools this year, meaning classes are to be capped at 20 students for grades kindergarten-3, 23 students for grades 4-8 and 25 students for grades 9-12. Those numbers must be reached in 40% of all city schools.

The executive director of the nonprofit Class Size Matters, Leonie Haimson, and Schools Chancellor David Banks agreed that those 11,000 new classroom seats are a breakthrough -- but meeting state standards over time will be a tall order.

Officials are also weighing how to handle cellphones in schools. Hundreds of city schools have policies restricting cellphone use, but Mayor Eric Adams has not yet said when a decision will come on a systemwide policy.