By Jessica Easthope
Fourth-grader Soyela Morisseau walks taller through the halls of St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Academy. She recently participated in a school-wide speech competition, where her piece on Rosa Parks earned her first place in her grade. It’s quite the accomplishment, considering a year ago Soyela spoke not a word of English.
“I didn’t know I was going to win,” Morisseau said. “I said, oh my God, I won and my teacher said, ‘you are acting so crazy right now.'”
Morisseau arrived from Haiti with her family in November 2024. A new country and a new school wasn’t exactly easy.
“I didn’t talk in class because I didn’t know the language,” she said. “And I was so confused what people are saying.”
But in a class of 12, Soyela caught up.
“My teacher doesn’t have a lot of people to deal with in the class,” Morisseau said. “So I can talk with her to learn English.”\\
Diocese of Brooklyn schools class sizes average just under 17 students, with most ranging from 12 to 24. While New York City public school averages continue to drop after a 2022 law mandates annual reductions, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration is looking to keep classes small in all corners of the country’s largest school system. To pull it off he needs ten thousand additional teachers, 700 million dollars in additional funding according to the city’s Independent Budget Office and years.
“I provided the teachers with materials, dictionaries that had Creole and English,” said Principal Lorraine Pierre. “And the teachers paired up with other kids who could speak Creole. So that’s more or less what we tried to do as much as possible to make sure that she understood what was going on.”
After 28 years as a public school teacher, Pierre says New York City can take a page out of the Diocese of Brooklyn’s book.
“A class more than 25,” Pierre said. “Then you’re losing kids by the buckets because it’s hard to identify those who need the additional help, or even those who are excelling and need to be pushed.”
And Morisseau is proof of what a small class can do for a student.
“Nobody didn’t leave me out of everything that they did,” she said.
“We need to not let any child slip through the cracks,” Pierre said. “We can’t afford to do that.”
New York City’s future goal of reducing class sizes is already a reality here—and it’s helping students like Morisseau dream big.