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NYC Council meetings, chaptered and linked by time.

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Q&A

Joseph asks about professional development plan, budget, and number of schools trained

New York City Council · Sep 22, 2026 · starts 0:41:09 · 1 min 41 sec

Joseph asks for the specific professional development plan, budget, and number of schools that have received Portrait-aligned training. Giunta says the summer institute reached 1,600 educators and that DOE is leveraging existing resources rather than creating a standalone Portrait budget.

Rita C. Joseph

What specific professional development plan and budget and how many schools have received portrait aligned training so far?

Rita C. Joseph

What are your numbers?

Danielle Giunta

I wouldn't say outside of the personal finance work, all of the work that lives under, actually, let me, there's a lot because of the work that Jane leads.

Danielle Giunta

And to the point she shared before, reaching over 1,600 educators over the summer institute, which was very strongly aligned to Portrait of a Graduate.

Danielle Giunta

You know, I just want to reiterate that we believe that at the foundation of Portrait of a Graduate is our New York City Reads and Solves approach to having high quality instructional materials in our classrooms.

Danielle Giunta

Making sure we have strong assessments that catch students that might be in need of additional supports and having very clear interventions that align with their needs.

Danielle Giunta

And so with that also comes a tremendous amount of professional learning.

Danielle Giunta

And then we also have, I shared on the steps earlier, you know, as a superintendent who led one of the city's first civics for all district partnerships, I think we are at almost

Danielle Giunta

30 something partner districts at this point.

Danielle Giunta

And so much of that work comes with professional learning.

Danielle Giunta

So what we're doing now is not necessarily like this dedicated portrait of a graduate.

Danielle Giunta

budget and standalone professional learning.

Danielle Giunta

We're taking all the things that we do as it aligns into this framework and helping our schools, leveraging existing resources and initiatives.

Danielle Giunta

So we're not layering more.

Danielle Giunta

We're having people step back and say, here's where the action is.

Danielle Giunta

So I'm running out of time.

Danielle Giunta

Do you want another question?