Members of the Democratic Socialists of America held a strategy session on overhauling New York City's public school curricula along socialist lines, and they say Mayor Zohran Mamdani is an ally who can help them do it.
Teachers and a taxpayer-funded college professor gathered for a meeting titled "Planning for Socialist School Governance," where they laid out a multi-front campaign to rewrite what children learn, retrain how teachers think, and embed their demands into the city's next teachers' union contract. The session, first reported by the New York Post, featured DSA members who hold jobs in city classrooms spelling out, in their own words, what they want and how they plan to get it.
Nina Bruckenthal, co-chair of the NYC DSA Labor Working Group and a math teacher at NEST+m, a public science-oriented K-12 school on Manhattan's Lower East Side, co-led the meeting alongside Amanda Vender, an ESL teacher at the International High School of Sciences in Elmhurst, Queens. A third participant, Maureen Fadem, a professor at CUNY's Kingsborough Community College, delivered the sharpest ideological pitch of the session.
Fadem did not couch her goals in soft language. She called for teaching Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to students and reframing the entire public school curriculum around what she described as "class consciousness." She told attendees:
"We need to overhaul the curriculum in a class consciousness frame.... The curriculum as a whole needs to be relooked at, revisioned and reframed."
She went further, demanding that teacher training itself be rebuilt around ideology. Fadem stated that educators need instruction in "institutional racism" as part of their pedagogical formation:
"We need to be teaching teachers about institutional racism in the training of pedagogy."
Her rationale was blunt. She argued that existing school curricula were never designed with socialist principles in mind and need to be replaced accordingly:
"The curriculum was built not under a democratic socialist frame, it was built under a neoliberal and conservative frame."
Fadem also argued for slavery reparations during the session. She is employed at a publicly funded community college within the CUNY system, meaning New York taxpayers fund her salary while she advocates remaking their children's education along explicitly socialist lines.
Bruckenthal made no secret of the political strategy behind the effort. She told the meeting that DSA maintains a direct relationship with Mayor Mamdani and intends to use it:
"DSA does have a relationship with the mayor and we can leverage that."
Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist who rose to power alongside a wave of DSA-backed candidates in New York, has not publicly responded to the DSA members' stated plans to use his office as a vehicle for their school agenda. The Post's report includes no comment from the mayor or his staff.
Bruckenthal also identified the upcoming United Federation of Teachers contract negotiations as a second pressure point. The UFT's current contract with New York City expires on November 28, 2027, and Bruckenthal pledged to embed DSA priorities into the bargaining process:
"We can make real wins through our contract bargaining process. I would argue for this group, something that is strategic and winnable could be won through our bargaining."
The DSA's foothold inside the UFT is not new. A 2019 internal DSA memo, published by Politico, laid out a plan to gain control of the teachers' union and use its political muscle to shape city governance. That memo noted many DSA members were already active in the Movement of Rank-and-File Educators, known as the MORE caucus, a progressive faction within the UFT. What the "Planning for Socialist School Governance" meeting reveals is that the effort has matured from memo to operational planning, with named teachers in city classrooms coordinating strategy.
One of the most revealing moments came from an unnamed teacher who acknowledged that the DSA's educational agenda lacks public support. The teacher told the meeting:
"All of our reforms are obviously not very popular. And so as long as school choice exists, parents are going to pull away and go to charter schools that are ununionized because they believe in that."
The admission is striking. Rather than treating parental opposition as a signal to reconsider, the speaker framed school choice itself as the obstacle, suggesting that parents who flee to charter schools are a problem to be managed, not families exercising their right to direct their children's education. Mamdani's administration has already drawn scrutiny for its handling of the city's education budget; the mayor quietly added $680 million to NYC schools spending after campaigning on a promise to cut Department of Education costs.
That combination, a mayor who breaks budget promises on schools and DSA operatives who view parental choice as a threat, should concern every family in the five boroughs.
Mika Hacker, research director at the North American Values Institute, said the meeting made the DSA's calculation plain:
"The webinar made clear that the DSA sees Mayor Mamdani [as a] window of opportunity to advance its agenda."
Maud Maron, a former president of Community Education Council 2, offered a sharper warning. She told the Post that the DSA's focus on children crosses a line:
"Childless apparatchiks seeking access to other people's children in order to convert them to their beliefs is the definition of grooming. Hands off the kids."
Maron's language is her own, but the underlying concern is straightforward. The people in this meeting are not running for office or publishing op-eds. They hold positions inside public schools and a public university. They have daily access to students. And they described, on the record, a coordinated plan to use that access to advance an ideology most parents never voted for.
Mamdani's broader record gives parents little reason for reassurance. The mayor has refused to enforce a Supreme Court ruling on deportation protections and drawn fire for deflecting on rising crime statistics. A mayor willing to defy federal court orders and dodge accountability on public safety is not likely to stand between ideological activists and the city's classrooms.
Several questions remain unanswered. The Post's report does not specify the exact date of the meeting or how the outlet obtained access to it. The UFT has not publicly responded to the DSA's stated plans to use contract negotiations as a vehicle for ideological demands. And no one from Mamdani's office addressed Bruckenthal's claim that the DSA can "leverage" its relationship with the mayor.
What is clear from the participants' own words is the scope of the ambition. This is not a debate club or a faculty lounge gripe session. DSA members who teach in New York City public schools described a plan with specific institutional targets: the curriculum, teacher training programs, the UFT contract, and the mayor's office. They named their tools, identified their timeline, and acknowledged that parents would resist.
The 2019 Politico memo showed DSA wanted to capture the teachers' union. The "Planning for Socialist School Governance" meeting shows the next phase: using that union foothold, plus a friendly mayor, to reach the children directly. Fadem wants Marx and Engels in the lesson plan. Bruckenthal wants DSA demands in the union contract. And the unnamed teacher who admitted the agenda is unpopular treated that fact not as a reason to stop, but as a reason to limit the exits.
New York City parents did not elect the DSA to run their schools. Nobody asked a CUNY professor to "revision" what their kids learn. But the people in that meeting are not waiting to be asked. They have access, they have a plan, and they believe they have a mayor who will let them execute it.
When activists tell you what they intend to do with other people's children, the only responsible move is to believe them, and to hold every official who enables it accountable.
