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Good morning, Mike here with Chalkbeat New York with our first newsletter of the summer!

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has promised to take a scalpel to the Education Department’s nearly $13 billion contract budget to eliminate waste and save taxpayers money. But the only spending item his administration has publicly identified is a data portal created and managed by the nonprofit New Visions — and educators and lawmakers are pushing back.

Education Department officials said they identified the $9 million portal because similar data exists in other systems. But defenders of the portal said the ability to pull all that information into a single place in a usable format is critical — and argued the city is getting a bargain. Today’s top story has all the details.

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Mamdani promised to cut wasteful education contracts. Critics say he picked the wrong one.

Educators and City Council members are urging NYC to preserve the New Visions data portal, saying it helps schools track attendance, progress to graduation, and support homeless students.