After students and teachers were shut out of virtual classrooms the morning of Feb. 13, Mayor Adams and Schools Chancellor David Banks insisted the tech behemoth should have been prepared after the city warned them the day before.

“Knowing that we’ve done everything we can to make sure that this technology was working above and beyond what it was contracted to do, hearing it be summarized as an IBM technology problem was, of course, frustrating,” Vanessa Hunt, senior state executive for New York at IBM said at an oversight hearing Wednesday at City Hall.

As the city hunkered down for expected significant snowfall, public schools announced the day before that classes would shift online — the first systemwide test of remote learning since the pandemic. Despite the advance notice, the public schools’ user log-in authenticator, which it contracts through IBM, buckled when hundreds of thousands of users tried to log on at once.

The chancellor, summing up the fiasco, explained IBM was “not ready for prime time.” While the majority of students eventually got online, many families gave up and ventured outside to enjoy the snow but missed a day of learning.

Hunt explained that the city and IBM are working off a contract that predates the pandemic’s expansion of remote learning. She said IBM has repeatedly increased the capacity of the system, “far beyond” the contracted levels, at no added cost. On the snow day, the platform was handling capacity more than five times what the city is paying for.

“On Feb. 13, the Department of Education had a closet door when it needed a barn door,” Hunt said. “Everyone tried to rush through that door at once.”

Going into the remote day, education officials promised they were prepared. At a press conference and closed-door meeting with elected officials, Banks and his deputies touted “simulations” that schools participated in before the winter break to test run a pivot to online.

But the city’s public schools did not conduct a load test ahead of time, education officials confirmed Wednesday. Remote learning practices took place over two weeks from November to December, with the exact date determined by dozens of superintendents. They would not commit to stress-testing the system going forward.

“It is a heavy lift and a big ask to ask all of our families and teachers to take that on, so we’re thinking we’re thinking that through,” said public schools’ Chief Operating Officer Emma Vadehera, who described a stress-test as not “industry standard.”

Education officials are considering changes to the contract, including a provision that would automatically adjust system capacity to its scale of users. In the meantime, the city could stagger start times on remote days to avoid repeating last month’s technical failures. Students would take turns logging on by grade level, which could take over an hour to get everyone online, according to early estimates.

“I know how frustrating it was for many students and families who experienced delays when logging in for class,” said Scott Strickland, who until last week was the public schools’ acting Chief Information Officer. “We’re sorry we did not prevent this issue from arising.”

Teachers and safety staff at the Sheepshead Bay school went public over the weekend with claims that students paraded through the halls in October chanting “Kill the Jews!” In the months that followed, students made death threats to a Jewish teacher’s family and drew swastikas throughout the school, three staff members told CBS New York.

The staffers, joined by local elected officials and advocates, have accused the principal and broader school system of letting hate go unchecked.

But city officials pushed back Tuesday, saying the claims of what happened at Origins have been exaggerated.

“The cause of combating antisemitism is not served by people exaggerating or putting out false claims,” the public schools’ first deputy chancellor, Dan Weisberg, said in a briefing at City Hall on Tuesday. “The central claim that was in the initial article about the situation at Origins about students rampaging through the hallway, many of them chanting antisemitic slogans, we can find no evidence of that — none, zero — including from educators who were in the hallways on that day.”

“Not helpful to demonize and paint with a broad brush students at an incredibly diverse school, to demonize a principal who’s trying to do the right thing,” he told reporters.

Weisberg confirmed that students at Origins have said “inappropriate things to teachers,” but said the principal, Dara Kammerman, reacted “decisively.” Students who broke the code of conduct faced discipline, he said. Kammerman carved out time to talk about “difficult issues,” and enlisted the Museum of Jewish Heritage to teach the history of antisemitism and Jewish history.

“We have to make sure we’re educating our kids, but that’s exactly what is going on,” Weisberg said. “We continue to investigate; we’ll follow up on any incident.”

At the same time, Mayor Adams said he does not want “anyone to think that we are being dismissive of the real fear that people are feeling.”

“We’re not saying that people don’t have justification for being afraid. What they’re feeling is real, just like any other group that have gone through that, and we have to fix that problem, ” Adams said.

A lawyer for the Origins staffers said there is proof to back the allegations, including video of the hallway protest. He said that is just one of “dozens and dozens of instances of antisemitism.”

“Even in this time of heightened antisemitism, I am shocked at the level of depravity on display here,” said Mark Goldfeder, senior counsel at the Brandeis Center, “and at the administration’s callous, indefensible tolerance of it.”

“Antisemitism, like all forms of hate, is not intuitive, it must be learned. Apparently, it is being taught at Origins, and that is simply unacceptable,” said Goldfeder, who confirmed the Brandeis Center is “actively preparing” to bring potential litigation.

Since Hamas’ terror attacks on Israel in October, some Jewish families and teachers have reported feeling unsafe in the city’s public schools, including a Hillcrest High School teacher who was targeted by students because she attended a pro-Israel rally days after Oct. 7.

Others have accused local public schools of not doing enough to protect pro-Palestinian activists during Israel’s military counteroffensive, including a Palestinian-American math teacher whose face and social media posts were displayed on a digital billboard last month outside his school.

While Weisberg, the first deputy chancellor, defended the principal’s attempt to not just penalize her way out of problems at the high school, some are calling for discipline. The campus safety manager reportedly filed 15 complaints with his higherups but no action was taken to his knowledge, he told CBS New York.

“When it comes to antisemitism,” said Gerard Filitti, senior counsel at the Lawfare Project, who spoke at a protest at Origins over the weekend, “it seems that people are allowed to get away with it.”

In a major speech this winter, Schools Chancellor David Banks announced that all principals are undergoing a training on how to apply the discipline code. He said that it was critical for schools to find a balance between “tangible consequences” and chances for students to learn from their mistakes.

The dispute has pit two schools against each other: West Prep Academy, a middle school and its specialized autism program with a largely Black and Hispanic student body, against P.S. 145 The Bloomingdale School, an elementary school that caters to many of the city’s newly arrived immigrants. The two have shared a building on 105th St., between Columbus and Amsterdam Aves., for more than a decade.

But over the last two school years, the elementary school, which offers classes in Spanish and Russian as well as English, has grown, welcoming upwards of 150 young children from Russia, Ukraine and South America seeking asylum in New York, according to school officials.

It’s a point of pride for the P.S. 145 community, which already enrolled a large number of immigrants. Still, the growing number of students has exacerbated space constraints, costing the school its library, music room and other beloved facilities.

The city’s proposed solution: Move West Prep into a dilapidated, 127-year-old building a few blocks away that it acquired before voting on the plan.

Now, the proposal is facing blowback from middle school families who say the century-old building is a downgrade — and even dangerous for its students with disabilities. They are not looking for more space and questioned why they should be the ones to move.

“West Prep families felt like we were being pushed out,” said Tyi Ellis, PTA president at West Prep. “Why push out the Black and Brown youth to add a Russian dual-language program? … There’s no Russians in the community.”

More than 1,900 people have signed onto a petition since January to “Stop the Displacement of West Prep children.” If the proposal is approved, it will be the second time in just over a decade that the middle school is relocated.

“[The] plan calls to move West Prep Academy into an abandoned and archaic catholic [sic] school building to satisfy the space needs of an encroaching Russian program,” it read. “We do NOT need to move for ANY reason — especially to accommodate a growing Russian language program that does NOT serve our immediate community surrounding the school.”

At a joint public hearing on Monday night, families and teachers from P.S. 145 rebuffed that characterization.

“Families that show up at our doorstep at their most vulnerable state during horrific circumstances should not be described as ‘encroaching,'” said Tetyana Sirman, who coordinates P.S. 145’s Russian dual-language program.

With the addition of the programs, P.S. 145’s elementary school enrollment has grown by 25% over the last half decade. At the district’s request, it also added a 3-K program in 2021 that has contributed to the space it takes up.

School staffers that work with the newcomer population, including a teacher and social worker, said they have had to help immigrant students learn English and unpack their traumatic journeys to New York in the school’s cafeteria, hallway and staircase, and prepare for lessons in musty storage rooms and closets.

“I asked my staff in a direct message from me to not engage with West Prep when their anonymous race-baiting petition began to circulate around the district and social media,” said P.S. 145 Principal Natalia Garcia.

“If our school was small enough, I would pick up my students and staff and move,” said Garcia. “Make no mistake, the Russian children are not pushing out the middle school.”

West Prep, which at last count was 90% Black and Hispanic, houses what parents described as a thriving program for autistic students, and more than 4 in 10 kids there have at least one disability. They benefit from an inclusive playground at the current site that caters to their needs, and question whether there is a space issue at all that rearranging the building could not fix.

The new building has no outside space. To education officials’ own admission, it’s not yet accessible to students with physical disabilities. Some hallways are tight, photos reviewed by the Daily News show. Multiple windows open up to fire escapes that parents fear children can run away through. The auditorium and gym share a room, and the gloomy cafeteria shows the building’s age.

“The cafeteria looks like a prison cafeteria,” an autistic student in sixth grade at West Prep, who graduated from P.S. 145, said at the hearing. “And at the other building, there’s gonna be barely any sunlight.”

The city has earmarked $59,000 to re-site West Prep and is upgrading the space with a new science lab, fire escape alarms and cameras, and renovations that include raising the ceiling of the cafeteria and upgrading the floor and lights, according to public plans and letters sent to the schools. It’s also been suggested displaced students return to their playground a few blocks away.

“The NYCDOE is committed to making improvements to [the building] to ensure it meets and exceeds the needs and expectations of students and families,” read the documents. “This proposed re-siting will allow both schools to meet demand, continue to grow, and have access to the space they need to serve all of their students.”

But families at both schools agreed that the city should have done more to mitigate the tensions that have unfolded amid the debate.

“Kids have issues, they have circle time,” said Ellis, the West Prep PTA president. “I don’t know what it would equate to for adults, but whatever the equivalent is for that, they could’ve done some sort of community building.”

A final vote on the proposal, scheduled to go before the Panel for Educational Policy this month, was pushed back until May. Two members, one a teaching fellow, the other a parent at the school, have recused themselves.

“We greatly value parent voice as they partner with us to educate their children,” said Chyann Tull, a spokeswoman for the public schools. “This re-siting is still in the proposal phase, and we are continuing to engage the community and gather feedback before there is a final decision.”

“The district superintendent is working with leaders from both schools to promote a building culture that allows all students to thrive and to ensure a smooth transition for all students, staff, and families if the proposal is approved,” she said.

While the proposal is welcomed by some families, others wish it was pulled from the table.

“It feels more like this is being done to us, rather than this is being done with us,” said Cidalia Costa, a teacher at West Prep for over a decade, said at the hearing. “That’s very upsetting. And yes it does cause people to feel a certain way, and maybe even wonder if our population were different, that maybe we would not be treated in such a way.”

Top education officials, absent Schools Chancellor David Banks, responded Thursday to three hours of questions about their plans to meet new state caps on classrooms. The Council’s Education Committee chair also introduced legislation that would authorize the body to track the system’s compliance, which advocates have called into question as class sizes grow across the city.

“It is no secret that a smaller class leads to better academic outcomes for our students,” Chair Rita Joseph (D-Brooklyn), a former teacher, said at a rally before an oversight hearing at City Hall. “Firsthand experience — two decades in New York City public schools — I know what it means to have a small class.”

The bill introduced Thursday would require schools to report actual class sizes instead of averages and offer detailed data on students with disabilities or learning English. It has 22 co-sponsors.

While education officials have said they are in compliance with the law, which builds in time to phase in the caps, critics point to trends in the opposite direction as, for the first time in nearly a decade, systemwide enrollment increased this fall.

State law requires class sizes to stay below 20 to 25 students, depending on their grade level. By next school year, 40% of classrooms need to comply, which education officials conceded for the first time Thursday could require tweaks. All class sizes must be below the caps by 2028, when more sweeping changes will be required.

“We do expect some policy shifts will be required to maintain compliance with the law for next year,” said Chief Operating Officer Emma Vadehra.

Those shifts could include new restrictions on state education funding mandating schools prioritize hiring teachers over other positions, and directing superintendents to oversee principals’ compliance, she said.

Vadehra projected the city will need to spend up to $1.9 billion to hire thousands of teachers, not including the billions more it will need to build classrooms at an estimated 500 schools expected to need additional space.

“We fully recognize that our current capital plan is not funded at that level,” said Nina Kubota, president of the School Construction Authority, “but the current $4.1 billion in new capacity funding represents a downpayment toward this mandate.”

Despite supporting smaller class sizes, education officials have panned the law for coming with no new dollars attached, forcing difficult trade-offs that could weigh heavily on top performers and schools serving the largest shares of poor students that are already more likely to be under-enrolled.

Supporters point to record-high state funding and say the city’s school kids deserve class sizes as small as elsewhere in the state. They also suggested the reform could help pay for itself by keeping more teachers in the classroom, as the system loses 4,000 teachers each year to attrition.

The mobile digital billboard circled Gotham Tech High School in Long Island City, Queens, on Wednesday, referring to Palestinian-American math teacher Mohammad Jehad Ahmad as “New York City’s Leading Antisemite.” Ahmad was at the center of a conservative national media firestorm in the fall after he called Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel a “successful military campaign” on Fox News.

The group behind the trucks, Accuracy in Media, broadcasted his social media posts against Israel and directed onlookers to “take action” at a link with his name. The website covers a lengthy history of Ahmad’s comments on the current war and decades of conflict.

“Zionist’s [sic] ‘play’ is to disrupt education by flooding inboxes & making it difficult for people to do their jobs, disrupting education by harassing school communities, & disrupting education by literally spreading misinformation and lies,” he said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“Anyway, I stand by what I said: Zionism=bad.”

Close to 200 students attend Gotham Tech, a growing robotics-focused high school now in its second school year, city data show. The school temporarily shares a building with another program tailored to immigrant students.

“No member of our school community should be harassed or targeted — even if they are expressing opinions we disagree with,” said public schools spokesman Nathaniel Styer. “Hate has no place in our city and that includes outside of our schools.”

Ahmad, who did not return a request for comment, has been a vocal critic of Israel’s actions in Gaza and Schools Chancellor David Banks’ response. He was among the speakers at a student walkout demanding a ceasefire last fall.

In recent weeks, he’s taken to social media to accuse Banks of pushing administrators to punish pro-Palestinian staff and been the target of at least one other digital billboard saying he “support[s] Hamas’ genocide.”

“This can be really stressful because now families are contacting [the Gotham Tech principal],” Ahmad said in an interview with a socialist website. “They’re worried and they want to pick the kids up early. They are concerned that the school building is not safe, and crazies might want to come for me, then they might be coming to the building and that puts children in danger.”

Accuracy in Media confirmed to the Daily News that the truck was the first it’s sent to a New York City high school.

“Racist antisemites everywhere in education need to look out for the fact we’re going to expose their hatred to their community and to their school,” said Adam Guillette, the group’s president. “And I think it’s morally outrageous that a racist antisemite would be involved in the education of children.

“We met a lot of people who really were aware of the situation and outraged about it. Some of the staff we spoke with were not thrilled about having to work with an antisemite, either,” added Guillette, former veep of controversial rightwing media group Project Veritas.

In a video taken outside the school and shared on social media, Guillette, a Florida resident, said that “usually” people complain the city’s schools “because the students don’t learn anything.”

“Well, at one Queens public school, they’re learning antisemitism,” he alleged.

Since the war began in October, some parents and teachers have accused Banks and other top education officials of not doing enough to protect pro-Palestinian advocates. A local education council in Brooklyn of parents, who have publicly called for a ceasefire, said they received death threats and even a box of feces to their office in an elementary school.

Other families point to a series of high-profile incidents in which Jews felt unsafe, including a Queens teacher who was targeted by students because she attended a pro-Israel rally days after Oct. 7. The protest at Hillcrest High School and other episodes prompted the chancellor to deliver a speech last month about the school system’s response and intent to hold disruptors accountable.

Kenita Lloyd, the deputy DOE chancellor of family engagement, said Tuesday night that she has 85,000 emails in her inbox, including those related to tensions over the war.

“I know some people might shrug that off,” Lloyd told the Panel for Educational Policy in Brooklyn, “but those emails are of parents that we’ve supported, they’re emails from the Jewish and the Muslim community who have been crying out for support over the past several months.

“There is action being taken,” she continued, “and that action is taken every day.”

Cindy Tappe, the ex-director of finance and administration at NYU’s Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and Transformation of Schools, routed millions intended for minority- and women-owned businesses to shell companies, prosecutors said.

She used some funds to pay for legitimate expenses and employee reimbursements, but embezzled more than $660,000 to cover her own personal spending.

She used $80,000 on the swimming pool alone, the state comptroller’s office and the Manhattan district attorney found.

“Cindy Tappe shamelessly used her high-ranking position at NYU to steal more than $660,000 in state funds,” state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said in a statement. “Her actions cheated [minority and women-owned business enterprises] out of critical funding opportunities and deprived student programs of key resources meant to aid children with special needs and young English language learners.”

Deborah Colson, Tappe’s lawyer, said her client “strongly regrets her misconduct.”

“She accepted responsibility for her wrongdoing in open court,” Colson said, “and will pay the restitution in full prior to sentencing. After that, she looks forward to putting this case behind her.”

Tappe pleaded guilty in Manhattan Criminal Court to one count of second-degree grand larceny  and will be sentenced to five years of probation and pay $663,209 in restitution. She must also waive her right to appeal.

After NYU, Tappe was hired as the director of operations at Yale School of Medicine in 2019, according to student newspaper Yale Daily News. Following her indictment, she was put on leave and eventually terminated in early 2023.

NYU said it detected “suspicious activity” by Tappe while she was still an employee. The university’s internal audit office investigated and shared its findings with the state.

“We are deeply disappointed that Ms. Tappe abused the trust we placed in her in this way; she stole from everyone — the taxpayer, the university, the people the Metro Center is supposed to help,” NYU spokesman John Beckman said in a statement. “NYU is pleased to have been able to assist in stopping this misdirection of taxpayer money, and glad that the case has been brought to a close.”

Between 2011 and 2018, the state Education Department awarded $23 million for NYU’s Metro Center to administer two state education programs, the Regional Bilingual Education Resource Network and the Technical Assistance Center on Disproportionality. Both programs require that a percentage of subcontractor work be awarded to minority- and women-owned businesses.

While Tappe led the Metro Center’s finances during six of those years, she engineered things so that three subcontractors would receive the majority of the set-aside. Tappe drafted fraudulent invoices on the companies’ letterheads for work they did not perform, prosecutors said. Instead, they paid themselves between 3% and 6% of the invoices, and funneled the remainder into Tappe’s shell companies, High Galaxy Inc. and PCM Group Inc..

NYU reported the theft to the state Education Department, which referred the allegations to the comptroller’s office for an investigation, then the Manhattan DA’s office for prosecution.

“Her fraudulent actions not only threatened to affect the quality of education for students with disabilities and multilingual students,” said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, “but denied our city’s minority- and women-owned business enterprises a chance to fairly compete for funding.”

The gift by Ruth Gottesman, chairwoman of Einstein’s Board of Trustees, is considered the largest gift made to a medical school in the country, according to a press release.

“l feel blessed to be given the great privilege of making this gift to such a worthy cause,” Gottesman said in a statement.

Gottesman, a retired pediatrics professor who spent 55 years of her career affiliated with the Bronx medical school, developed a widely used screening test for children with learning disabilities and founded a trailblazing adult literacy program.

Her husband, David S. Gottesman, counted Warren Buffett among his mentors and left his wife a large portfolio of Berkshire Hathaway stock when he died in 2022, the New York Times reported. Gottesman thanked him for making the donation possible.

“I am very thankful to my late husband, Sandy, for leaving these funds in my care,” Gottesman said.

Einstein will be permanently tuition free starting next school year. Students in their last year of medical school who already paid for this semester will be reimbursed, school officials said.

More than 1,000 students attend Einstein’s medical, PhD, and postdoctoral research programs. They join a small but growing number of medical students, including those at New York University, who will graduate without the steep debt of tuition.

“This donation radically revolutionizes our ability to continue attracting students who are committed to our mission, not just those who can afford it,” said Dr. Yaron Tomer, the dean of Einstein, an affiliate of Montefiore Health System, the largest hospital in the Bronx.

“We will be reminded of the legacy this historic gift represents each spring as we send another diverse class of physicians out across the Bronx and around the world to provide compassionate care and transform their communities,” the statement continued.

The Bronx experiences some of the worst health disparities in the state. In annual county health rankings, the borough came in last out of 62 counties in New York based on a variety of health factors and outcomes, the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute found.

According to the study, 21% of Bronx residents reported that they consider themselves in fair or poor health, compared to 12% in the state overall. The average life expectancy in the borough was 78 years old, more than two years younger than throughout New York.

Gottesman said well over 100 students enter Einstein each year, who graduate with the skills necessary to serve patients in the Bronx and elsewhere.

“They leave as superbly trained scientists and compassionate and knowledgeable physicians,” Gottesman said, “with the expertise to find new ways to prevent diseases and provide the finest health care to communities here in the Bronx and all over the world.”

In 2020, there was just one primary care physician for every 1,540 people in the Bronx, compared to a ratio of one doctor to 1,170 New Yorkers throughout the state, according to the University of Wisconsin study.

Jasper Sim, 24, told the Daily News that the free tuition will be a “tremendous help and a weight off the shoulders of students,” especially for his classmates from low-income backgrounds. He plans to go into internal medicine and said he would consider staying in the Bronx after he graduates in the spring next year.

“I hope the free tuition attracts an ethnically and economically diverse student body,” he said, “that is … motivated to address the health disparities in the Bronx.”

Columbia, which has been roiled by campus unrest following the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks on Israel, has until the end of next week before the NYCLU moves ahead with legal action, according to a letter made public Friday.

“If the university is unwilling to reverse its suspension decision and reinstate the groups, the NYCLU is prepared to file a lawsuit to vindicate their rights,” the memo read.

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU, said the groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, were “peacefully” speaking out on current events, when Columbia broke with its longstanding policies to quash the organizations.

The university has a board tasked with holding “formal proceedings” if a student group is accused of violating university policies, according to the letter. But the NYCLU said Columbia “bypassed these governing procedures” and “unilaterally suspended” the organizations on Nov. 10.

The former process would have afforded the groups several protections, the NYCLU said, whereas the administration’s decision denied students the opportunity to appeal.

“That’s retaliatory, it’s targeted, and it flies in the face of the free speech principles that institutes of higher learning should be defending,” Lieberman said in a statement.

The letter goes on to say that the two groups were not alone in organizing the Nov. 9 protest that most closely prompted the suspension, after what Columbia said then were repeated violations of university policies by the groups.

At the time, administrators also said the demonstration “included threatening rhetoric and intimidation.”

NYCLU countered Friday the accusation had “no basis in fact.”

The suspension, which means the two groups cannot hold campus events or receive university funding, was slated to last through the fall term. But reinstatement came with contingencies, including that the organizations commit to complying with university policies and meeting with administrators.

“The university’s priorities are not with its student body,” said Safiya O’Brien, a junior studying political science and human rights at Barnard and a member of Students for Justice in Palestine. “Certainly not with its Palestinian students and the overwhelming number of those that advocate for them.”

Spokespeople for Columbia declined to comment, but directed the Daily News to the university’s interim policy on campus demonstrations.

“We are committed to free and open debate, and the principle that the right to speak applies equally to everyone, regardless of their viewpoint,” it reads. “Just as every member of our community has this right, they also have a corresponding responsibility not to interfere with the rights of others to speak, study, teach, and learn.”

Earlier this week, Columbia was slapped with a lawsuit over alleged campus antisemitism and continues to face a House probe. The NYPD is also investigating pro-Palestinian students’ reports that they were sprayed with a noxious chemical at an on-campus protest.

Students typically have until May 1 to make college decisions. But as problems with the new form delay financial aid information for millions of students, CUNY said all applicants will have until at least June 1 to accept admission offers for the fall semester. Students admitted following that date can still enroll after the deadline.

“For millions of young adults wrestling over where to attend college, access to financial aid is often the deciding factor,” said CUNY Chancellor Felix Matos Rodríguez in a statement. “This is particularly true for CUNY, an institution founded on the promise of providing a public first-rate education to all students, regardless of means.”

ADAMS

“By pushing back commitment day we’re able to provide students and families the flexibility to make an informed decision and enable more New Yorkers to seize the benefits of public higher education,” he said.

The announcement followed a similar call by the State University of New York last week to push back its deadline until at least May 15, with some local campuses delaying decisions even further.

The U.S. Department of Education this application cycle embarked on a laudable attempt to streamline the FAFSA, which is notoriously difficult to fill out.

But its soft launch in December, months later than in previous years, was riddled with technological glitches, and kinks that are still being worked out today. As a result, most financial aid offers are not expected to go out to families until April, leaving less than a month until the typical college decision date.

As of mid-February, just over 22% of high school seniors had completed the FAFSA, according to an analysis by the National College Attainment Network, compared with 41% of last year’s graduates by this point in the school year.

At CUNY, many students rely on financial aid to get a college diploma. More than three-quarters of undergraduate students last year received $780 million in need-based federal Pell Grants and state tuition assistance, according to university data.

CUNY offers its own online FAFSA guide and, through a partnership with the city’s public schools, estimated it’s helped more than 4,000 high school seniors complete FAFSA forms. It also delivered tens of thousands of community college acceptance letters that connect local students with virtual enrollment counselors.

To reduce some financial uncertainty around this year’s application cycle, CUNY is promoting its Net Price Calculator that lets students gauge their eligibility for grants, loans and scholarships, and compare it with aid at other colleges.

It’s the second lawsuit the firm Kasowitz Benson Torres has brought in Manhattan federal court against campus antisemitism since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Students sued New York University last semester over Jewish students’ civil rights. Kasowitz has also targeted the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University.

“Columbia continues to capitulate to pro-Hamas students and faculty, placing Columbia’s Jewish and Israeli community at risk,” said Marc Kasowitz, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. His statement continued to describe Columbia as a school “where hate and the promotion of violence is not just allowed but taught.”

“Our lawsuit seeks to protect Jewish students by exposing and expunging the antisemitic virus that permeates Columbia’s campus and classrooms,” he said.

The  action comes just weeks after a Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives committee announced its own antisemitism probe, citing “grave concerns” about Columbia’s response. The university was asked to submit documents by Monday, including all reports of antisemitic incidents since 2021, disciplinary records and internal communications.

Spokespeople for Columbia and Barnard declined to comment on pending litigation.

As the war has continued and killed tens of thousands of people in the Middle East, Columbia students have responded with a steady drumbeat of demonstrations.

Pro-Palestinian students have been targeted with “doxxing” trucks and reported that a sickening spray at a campus rally sent them seeking medical attention. Two former Columbia students are being investigated as suspects, while a protest just outside the university’s gates over its response to the incident led to multiple arrests.

During the protests, the 114-page lawsuit alleges that Jewish students were subjected to antisemitic chants including “Jews will not defeat us,” and spat at, physically assaulted and threatened on campus and social media with epithets.

The five named plaintiffs are all Jewish at Columbia’s undergraduate and graduate schools, and one holds Israeli dual citizenship. Others are unnamed members of pro-Israel nonprofits who attend Columbia and Barnard.

“What is most striking about all of this is Columbia’s abject failure and deliberate refusal to lift a finger to stop and deter this outrageous antisemitic conduct and discipline the students and faculty who perpetrate it,” read the lawsuit.

The group of students said the result is a “double standard invidious to Jews and Israelis,” as the university selectively enforces its policies and hires professors who teach that Jewish Israelis are oppressors, with little space for discussion of the religious people’s complicated history of persecution. Two pro-Palestinian student groups have been kicked off campus for not following university policies.

“Columbia has permitted endemic antisemitism to exclude Jewish and Israeli students from full and equal participation in, and to deprive them of the full and equal benefits of, their educational experience at Columbia,” they said in court documents.

The plaintiffs are asking for monetary damages and a federal judge to force Columbia to implement specific and institutional remedial measures.