NYCDOE Chancellor
David C. Banks' Four Pillars

The four pillars for improving and building trust with our families:

1. Reimagining the student experience

   • Career Pathways Initiative —creating career-connected learning and pathways for all our students to help activate their passion and sense of purpose.

   • Ensuring that all students graduate with a strong plan and head start on a pathway to the middle class, including financial literacy and civics skills.

   • Supporting our children to become strong readers.

   • Making sure every single one of our students is getting strong, phonics-based literacy instruction from the very start.

   • Building on the universal screening tools that identify risk for dyslexia to tailor more effective responses at the earliest possible ages; strengthening early childhood education.

   • Creating an Advisory Council on Literacy.

   • Virtual learning -expanding virtual options for students.

2. Scaling, sustaining, and restoring what works

   • Identifying the amazing practices throughout our system and sharing via state-of-the-art knowledge-sharing system so that they become models that other schools can try to emulate.

   • Expanding opportunities for accelerated learning in every school.

3. Prioritizing wellness and its link to student success

   • Working with the Mayor’s office to increase the number of School Safety Agents.

   • Collaborating with community-based partners to support school safety, mental health, attendance, and enrichment.

   • Extending learning beyond the four walls of the classroom to feed the souls of our children with visits to museums, parks, and activities in the great outdoors.

   • Increasing our schools’ capacity to provide quality mindfulness practices that are scientifically researched, evidence-based, and culturally responsive.

4. Engaging families to be our true partners