New York City schools kept 113 students out of class for 21 to 91 days each, blowing past the city's own 20-day suspension limit without meeting the exceptions meant to justify it, according to a new state audit. The review also found that students disciplined more than once made up 30% of the roughly 54,600 students suspended or briefly removed from class, with 41% of those repeat cases showing no recorded support or intervention at all.
The findings come from Audit Report 2023-N-3, released by the Office of the New York State Comptroller on Thursday, which examined whether NYC Public Schools complied with Local Law 93 of 2015 and Chancellor's Regulation A-443 covering suspensions and mandatory instruction during disciplinary removals. As reported by the New York Daily News, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said stronger monitoring and improvements are needed to better support at-risk students, and he urged school officials to act on the audit's recommendations. The 118 suspension incidents identified by auditors involved 113 students total, all exceeding the 20-day cap the city adopted in 2019 to keep suspended students connected to instruction.
A Cap With Exceptions, and a Dispute Over the Count
Under Chancellor's Regulation A-443, principal suspensions run one to five days and require parent notification plus a conference within five days, while superintendent suspensions cover more serious infractions and can involve transfer to alternative educational sites. The 20-day limit does carry an exception for the most dangerous or violent offenses, and students committing the most serious offenses were still required to continue learning at alternative locations rather than losing instruction entirely.
Local education officials disputed the audit's finding that suspensions exceeded 20 days, with Mark Rampersant saying the audit is fundamentally limited in its interpretation because of the period it covers, according to the same report. Officials identified six examples of lengthy suspensions they say occurred under extenuating circumstances. School officials broadly disagreed with the comptroller's methodology, the Daily News notes, and the Daily News said it had requested comment from the city's school system.
Repeat Discipline and Missing Interventions
More than 16,600 students were disciplined multiple times during the audit period, though 92% of those students were disciplined fewer than five times. Auditors found that suspension or removal incidents peaked between the 7th and 9th grades, and the comptroller's office reported that lengthy and repeat suspensions with little to no corresponding support could exacerbate student misconduct going forward.
Students placed in alternative instructional programs after serious discipline were absent an average of 54% of school days, undercutting the very purpose of keeping them enrolled in coursework. Teacher-initiated removals, by contrast, could last as short as one class period, according to the audit's account of the discipline system's structure.
Racial Gaps Persist in Bullying Discipline
The audit also found racial disparities in suspension lengths, particularly for Black students. Black students were disciplined for bullying an average of six days, compared with five days for Hispanic students and four days for white and Asian students. New York City students faced repeat disciplinary action while schools failed to properly intervene, per the audit's findings, a pattern auditors linked to the uneven support behind those numbers.
State law adds another layer of process to these cases: under New York State Education Law Section 3214, districts statewide must hold a formal superintendent's hearing before imposing any suspension longer than five school days, according to Fair Futures. Separately, Local Law 93 of 2015 requires the Department of Education to submit biannual reports every March 31 and October 31 to the New York City Council detailing removals and suspensions broken down by race, gender, disability status and English proficiency.
Pandemic-Era Disruption and Broader Numbers
The audit covered the 2019-20 through 2022-23 school years, a stretch during which New York City schools were closed or shifted between remote and in-person classes because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Auditors said covid-era disruptions had a lasting impact on school climates, even as overall suspensions declined nearly 27% from pre-pandemic levels, dropping to 9,193 in the first half of the prior school year. Disciplinary incidents represented 4% of enrollment during the 2022-23 school year, within a district the audit confirmed operates more than 1,800 schools and serves over 900,000 students across five boroughs, the largest public school system in the country.
The tension between reform intent and enforcement gaps is not new. Long-term superintendent suspensions in the city could once stretch up to 180 school days before the 2019 cap, and Black students received 46% of all suspensions while comprising just 26% of enrollment, Chalkbeat reported in 2019, a disparity that helped drive advocacy for the 20-day limit in the first place. A separate statewide climate report from the comptroller's office found bullying accounted for 61.8% of all non-cyber incidents in New York schools during the 2023-24 school year, totaling 29,718 reported cases.
The audit also lands amid other scrutiny of NYC Public Schools' internal record-keeping. A May 2026 audit from the same comptroller's office found the district failed to properly track and secure sensitive data for its 900,000 students, delaying required notifications in 48% of reported data breach incidents between 2023 and 2025, Chalkbeat reported at the time. That pattern of administrative gaps echoes what auditors say they found in this review: a sample of 20 NYC schools across all five boroughs where staff who interact with students daily had not completed mandatory training on behavioral supports and bias.
