A Policy Proposal · NYC Department of Education

FlowForAll

In 2016, New York City promised free period products in school bathrooms. The original law covered grades 6–12, and it has since been expanded to grade 4. Ten years later, students still find empty dispensers. This is a proposal to finally fund the promise.

85% of NYC high school students in a survey cited by Period Law said they lacked access to period products at school

75.3% of NYC public school students are economically disadvantaged

$2M proposed annual DOE budget line — this proposal

Read the proposal ↓

Background

Period poverty is the struggle to afford or access menstrual products, safe hygiene facilities, and basic education about menstruation. It sounds like a small logistical problem. It isn't — it's an attendance problem, a dignity problem, and ultimately an equity problem.

When a student doesn't have a pad or tampon, the options are bad ones: use toilet paper or a sock, ask a stranger, sit through class in fear of leaking, or go home. Nationally, research on menstrual health has repeatedly linked lack of access to missed class time, lower classroom concentration, and increased anxiety around attendance during a student's period. For a population already navigating puberty, that's an unnecessary barrier stacked on top of everything else school asks of them.

New York City was first. In 2016, NYC became the first locality in the United States to pass a law requiring public schools to stock free menstrual products in bathrooms — years ahead of most of the country.

Local Law 84 of 2016 (NYC Administrative Code § 21-968), sponsored by Council Member Julissa Ferreras-Copeland and Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, requires NYC public schools to provide free menstrual products in student bathrooms, without students having to ask a nurse or teacher. The original law covered grades 6–12; Local Law 9 of 2024 expanded it to start at grade 4. New York State followed in 2018 (Public Health Law § 267), extending the requirement statewide, and expanded it in 2023 to cover non-public schools. The law was a genuine milestone in menstrual equity policy — the question this proposal asks is whether it's actually working on the ground.

The Current Problem

Ten years after Local Law 84 passed, students and lawmakers keep finding empty dispensers.

In March 2025, the advocacy group Period Law sued the NYC Department of Education, alleging it has "consistently failed to deliver" on its legal obligation under Local Law 84. The lawsuit followed years of complaints: at a 2023 City Council hearing, multiple lawmakers said they had personally visited schools and found empty dispensers or no products at all. The suit also documented eighteen separate cases from 2024–2025 of teachers running crowdfunding campaigns out of pocket to buy pads and tampons for their students.

A survey of city high school students cited by Period Law found that 85% said they still lacked access to menstrual products at school. The survey's sample size and date haven't been published.

In June 2026, Council Member Gale Brewer's office released its own survey: of 25 schools (99 student responses), 56% had products "rarely or never" in student bathrooms, and students at 80% didn't know how to report an empty dispenser. The DOE's own 2024–25 Menstrual Equity Report says most schools reported an adequate supply and compliance with Local Law 84 — the student surveys say otherwise.

Is every school complying?

Not according to students. In 2018, a Brooklyn Girl Scout troop audited local schools and found gaps, including dispensers that charged money despite the law. In 2026, Council Member Brewer's survey found products rarely or never available at 56% of the 25 schools it covered.

Why do schools run out?

Because there's no dedicated funding stream — see the Policy Gap below. Products get purchased ad hoc, out of general school budgets that are already stretched, which means restocking depends heavily on which staff member remembers and how much is left after everything else.

Are Title I schools hit harder?

This is a genuinely open research question worth tracking district by district — but the mechanism is intuitive: schools with fewer discretionary dollars and higher per-student need have less room to absorb an unfunded mandate.

Do boroughs differ?

Also under-documented citywide. Compliance data isn't published at the school or district level in a way that lets the public compare boroughs — which is itself part of the accountability gap this proposal addresses.

The Numbers

The scale of who's affected, and how thin the money already is.

906,248 students across 1,597 NYC public schools (2024–25) — the largest school district in the U.S.

75.3% of NYCPS students are classified as economically disadvantaged

642,772 students attend a Title I school-wide program (FY2025)

84.2% of students at those Title I schools are counted as low-income by the City (its cutoff is 185% of the federal poverty line)

$847M total Title I funding DOE allocated across NYC schools in FY2025

None found We could not find a dedicated line item for menstrual products in the published DOE budget documents

None of these figures answer the exact question of "how many sick days per year does period poverty cause in NYC" — that number doesn't appear to be tracked at the city level yet, which is itself a data gap worth flagging to the Council. What the numbers do show clearly: most NYC public school students come from low-income households, which is exactly who a free-products law is meant to protect.

What Already Exists

Real progress has been made. It's just been left unfunded.

2016
Local Law 84 of 2016 passes unanimously and is signed by Mayor de Blasio — NYC becomes the first U.S. city to require free menstrual products in public school bathrooms, grades 6–12.
2018
New York State extends the requirement to all public schools statewide, grades 6–12 (Public Health Law § 267).
2023
The City Council passes a broader menstrual equity package, with bills from Council Members Tiffany Cabán, Carmen De La Rosa, and Amanda Farías.
2023
State law is expanded to cover non-public schools.
2024
Cabán's bill becomes Local Law 8 of 2024, requiring "menstrual products" language and an annual DOE report on which schools provide products — and which don't. De La Rosa's bill becomes Local Law 9 of 2024, lowering the starting grade from 6 to 4.
2024
The DOE distributes a Know Your Period student guide to schools, explaining students' rights to period products.
2025
Period Law sues the DOE, alleging nine years of inconsistent enforcement.
2026
Council Member Gale Brewer's office publishes a student survey finding products rarely or never available at more than half of the schools it covered.

Council Members Tiffany Cabán and Carmen De La Rosa sponsored the school bills in the 2023 package, and Amanda Farías sponsored three more. The legal and legislative groundwork is there. What's missing is money and a mechanism to make sure it reaches every bathroom, every semester.

The Policy Gap

Local Law 84 says schools must provide products. It never set aside money to pay for them in any trackable way — and that's the hole this proposal fills.

No dedicated budget line we could find

We could not find a dedicated line item for menstrual products in the published DOE budget documents for its $44.6 billion budget. Products are expected to appear, funded from wherever an individual school finds room.

Purchased from different budgets, school to school

One school might buy pads out of its general supply budget, another out of PTA fundraising, another not at all. There's no consistency in how it's paid for, let alone how much.

Compliance isn't consistently monitored

Local Law 8 of 2024 requires DOE to report every year on product provision — but the 2025 lawsuit alleges that enforcement still isn't happening in any systematic way.

No accountability when schools fail to stock products

In Council Member Brewer's 2026 survey, students at 80% of schools didn't know how to report an empty dispenser. There's no penalty or school-by-school public dashboard that would tell the Council which schools are actually failing.

Higher-need schools need more, not the same

A flat, unfunded mandate treats a well-resourced school in a high-income district the same as a Title I school serving hundreds more students with a fraction of the discretionary budget.

The Proposal

Fund Local Law 84 like the law it already is.

Allocate $2 million annually within the NYC DOE budget as a dedicated, trackable line item for menstrual products — not folded into general supply funds.
Prioritize Title I schools in the distribution formula, so schools with the least discretionary budget and highest need are funded first and most fully.
Supply products students will actually use — more than one type, in every covered bathroom, not just the nurse's office.
Require annual compliance reports from every school district, published in a format the Council and the public can actually review, closing the accountability gap that's persisted since 2016.

Budget Analysis

"How much will this cost, and how do we pay for it?" — the question every policymaker asks first.

We built the $2 million figure from the bottom up: how many students need products at school, how many they use, and what each one costs. Every input is listed so a budget office can swap in its own numbers. Pink tags mark our assumptions.

Input	Value	Basis
K–12 students in DOE-run schools	798,658	946,747 NYC public K–12 students (NYSED, 2024–25) minus 148,089 in charter schools
Share who are female	48.5%	NYSED 2024–25 NYC enrollment
Share in grades 4–12	71%	Statewide grade mix used as a proxy assumption
Share who have started their periods	70%	Few in grade 4, nearly all by high school assumption
Students covered	≈190,000	798,658 × 48.5% × 71% × 70%, rounded
Period days that fall on school days	32 a year	About 8 cycles in a 180-day year × 4 school days each assumption
Share who rely on the school's supply	50%	Others bring their own assumption
Products used per school day	1.5	One change in a ~7-hour day, some days two assumption
Cost per pad or tampon	$0.30	Bulk case prices: about $0.29 per pad and $0.33 per tampon
Products	$1.37M	190,000 × 50% × 32 × 1.5 = 4.56 million units × $0.30
Dispenser repair & replacement	$0.32M	$200 per school × 1,597 schools assumption
Central estimate	$1.69M	The $2M ask adds an 18% buffer for higher use and price changes

The range

With fewer students relying on school supply, one product a day and cheaper units, the total is about $0.78M. With more students relying on it, two a day and pricier units, it's about $3.21M. A product vendor's guideline of $10–20 per menstruating student a year gives $1.9M–$3.8M. $2 million sits inside every one of these ranges.

Cost per student

$2 million across about 190,000 students works out to roughly $10.50 per student per year. It's about 0.0045% of the $44.6 billion NYC Public Schools budget for FY2026 (a total that includes pensions and debt service).

Where the money comes from

City funds in the DOE budget, as a dedicated line item. Year one doubles as the data year: the annual report required by Local Law 8, plus real purchase and restocking records, should replace our assumptions in year two.

Why not Title I money?

Title I status is a good way to decide which schools get restocked first. It isn't a safe way to pay: federal "supplement, not supplant" rules limit using Title I dollars for services that state or local law already requires, and these products are required by both. We'd want the DOE's Title I office to confirm before anyone proposes it.

Expected Impact

Increased attendance

Removing a preventable reason to miss class or leave early during a period.

Improved student dignity

No more relying on a teacher's personal crowdfunding campaign, or going without.

Real compliance with Local Law 84

A law ten years old finally backed by a budget line and a reporting requirement with teeth.

More equitable access citywide

Consistent supply regardless of borough, district, or how well-resourced an individual school happens to be.

Sources

Note: some figures cited throughout this site (borough-by-borough compliance, sick-day counts attributable specifically to period poverty) are flagged as open research questions because they don't yet appear to be published anywhere at the city level. That gap is itself worth raising with DOE and the Council.

Partnerships

This doesn't have to wait on a budget cycle to start making a dent.

Alliance for Period Supplies

The Alliance for Period Supplies coordinates a national network of allied programs that distribute donated menstrual products to people who need them, working alongside PERIOD. to push for menstrual equity legislation across the country.

Joining their allied program network is a concrete first step for this project: it opens a pipeline for donated product to reach NYC schools directly, independent of whether or when the $2 million budget line gets approved — proof of concept while the policy case is being made.

Explore the Allied Programs Network ↗

A Policy Proposal · NYC Department of Education

FlowForAll

Ten years after New York City promised free period products in every 6th–12th grade bathroom, thousands of students still go without. This is a proposal to finally fund the promise.

85% of NYC high schoolers surveyed said they still lack reliable access to period products at school

75.3% of NYC public school students are economically disadvantaged

$2M proposed annual DOE budget line — this proposal

Read the proposal ↓

Background

Local Law 84 of 2016 (NYC Administrative Code § 21-968), sponsored by Council Member Julissa Ferreras-Copeland and Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, requires that all NYC public schools serving grades 6–12 provide free menstrual products in student bathrooms, at no cost, without students having to ask a nurse or teacher. New York State followed in 2018 (Public Health Law § 267), extending the requirement statewide, and expanded it in 2023 to cover non-public schools. The law was a genuine milestone in menstrual equity policy — the question this proposal asks is whether it's actually working on the ground.

The Current Problem

Ten years after Local Law 84 passed, compliance is still the exception, not the rule.

A student survey cited in the lawsuit found that 85% of NYC high schoolers said they still lacked reliable access to menstrual products at school — not because the law doesn't exist, but because it isn't being enforced.

Is every school complying?

No. An earlier 2018 audit by a Brooklyn Girl Scout troop found only 18% of the middle schools they surveyed across two districts actually met the law's standard of stocked bathrooms with disposal bins. Anecdotal reports since suggest the pattern hasn't meaningfully changed.

Why do schools run out?

Are Title I schools hit harder?

Do boroughs differ?

The Numbers

The scale of who's affected, and how thin the money already is.

906,248 students across 1,597 NYC public schools (2024–25) — the largest school district in the U.S.

75.3% of NYCPS students are classified as economically disadvantaged

642,772 students (70.5% of the system) attend a Title I school-wide program

84.2% of students at those Title I schools are considered to be living in poverty, by the City's own calculation

$847M total Title I funding DOE allocated across NYC schools in FY2025

$0 of that Title I funding is a dedicated, trackable line for menstrual products — none exists

None of these figures answer the exact question of "how many sick days per year does period poverty cause in NYC" — that number doesn't appear to be tracked at the city level yet, which is itself a data gap worth flagging to the Council. What the numbers do show clearly: the students most likely to attend a school without a supply cushion are also the students Local Law 84 was written to protect.

What Already Exists

Real progress has been made. It's just been left unfunded.

2016
Local Law 84 of 2016 passes unanimously and is signed by Mayor de Blasio — NYC becomes the first U.S. city to require free menstrual products in public school bathrooms, grades 6–12.
2018
New York State extends the requirement to all public schools statewide, grades 6–12 (Public Health Law § 267).
2023
The City Council passes a broader menstrual equity package — including a bill from Council Member Tiffany Cabán requiring inclusive "menstrual product" language across city documents and an annual DOE report on how schools provide products, and a bill from Council Member Carmen De La Rosa expanding the age range DOE must serve.
2023
State law is expanded to cover non-public schools.
2024
Cabán's bill becomes Local Law 8 of 2024, amending Local Law 84's section of the code (§ 21-968) to use "menstrual products" and require DOE's annual public report on which schools provide products — and which don't.
2024
NYC Public Schools and the Commission on Gender Equity publish Know Your Period: The NYC Student Guide, translated into every NYCPS language, laying out students' rights to period products and how to report a school that isn't complying.
2025
Period Law sues the DOE, alleging nine years of inconsistent enforcement.

Council Member Julie Won, District 26

Representing Sunnyside, Long Island City, Woodside, and Astoria, Council Member Won chairs the Committee on Workforce Development and sits on the Committees on Contracts, Public Housing, Technology, and Transportation. Her legislative record is centered on equity in city systems — procurement transparency, contracting fairness, and access-oriented reforms that affect underserved communities. Menstrual equity sits squarely in that lane: it's a resourcing and accountability problem inside a public system, which is exactly the kind of gap her committee work is built to close.

Other council members have led directly on this issue: Tiffany Cabán and Carmen De La Rosa sponsored bills in the 2023 package, and Amanda Farías sponsored three more and convened the December 2023 press conference announcing it. The legal and legislative groundwork is there. What's missing is money and a mechanism to make sure it reaches every bathroom, every semester.

The Policy Gap

Local Law 84 says schools must provide products. It never said DOE would pay for them in any trackable way — and that's the hole this proposal fills.

No dedicated budget line

DOE's $44.6 billion budget has no line item for menstrual products. They're expected to appear, funded from wherever an individual school finds room.

Purchased from different budgets, school to school

One school might buy pads out of its general supply budget, another out of PTA fundraising, another not at all. There's no consistency in how it's paid for, let alone how much.

Compliance isn't consistently monitored

Local Law 8 of 2024 requires DOE to report every year on product provision — but the 2025 lawsuit alleges that enforcement still isn't happening in any systematic way.

No accountability when schools fail to stock products

There's a feedback form for students to flag empty dispensers, but no penalty, audit cycle, or public dashboard that would tell the Council which schools are actually failing.

Higher-need schools need more, not the same

A flat, unfunded mandate treats a well-resourced school in a high-income district the same as a Title I school serving hundreds more students with a fraction of the discretionary budget.

The Proposal

Fund Local Law 84 like the law it already is.

Allocate $2 million annually within the NYC DOE budget as a dedicated, trackable line item for menstrual products — not folded into general supply funds.
Prioritize Title I schools in the distribution formula, so schools with the least discretionary budget and highest need are funded first and most fully.
Supply high-quality menstrual products — not the thinnest, cheapest option available, which students have specifically cited as a reason they avoid using what's provided.
Require annual compliance reports from every school district, published in a format the Council and the public can actually review, closing the accountability gap that's persisted since 2016.

Budget Analysis

"How much will this cost, and how do we pay for it?" — the question every policymaker asks first.

Why $2 million?

It's a number sized to be real, not symbolic. Spread across DOE's roughly 1,600 schools, with Title I schools funded first, it's enough to fund consistent restocking without requiring a fight over billions in a $44.6B budget — the kind of ask that's realistic to win in a single budget cycle.

Cost per student

Divided across the 642,772 students in Title I school-wide programs, $2 million works out to roughly $3.11 per student per year — less than the cost of a single box of tampons at retail.

Compared to the DOE budget

$2 million is about 0.0045% of DOE's $44.6 billion FY2026 budget, and about 0.24% of the $847 million already spent on Title I funding in FY2025 — a rounding error next to what the City already allocates for equity-focused programming.

Possible funding sources

Reallocation within DOE's existing Title I set-aside; the City Council's discretionary equity funding streams; or a public–private match with partners like the Alliance for Period Supplies to stretch City dollars further.

For comparison: the City's Fiscal 2025 adopted budget included over $112.4 billion citywide, with more than a billion dollars in restored Council priorities alone. A $2 million line item for menstrual equity is proportionally small — and directly closes a gap the City has already legislated against twice.

Expected Impact

Increased attendance

Removing a preventable reason to miss class or leave early during a period.

Improved student dignity

No more relying on a teacher's personal crowdfunding campaign, or going without.

Real compliance with Local Law 84

A law ten years old finally backed by a budget line and a reporting requirement with teeth.

More equitable access citywide

Consistent supply regardless of borough, district, or how well-resourced an individual school happens to be.

Sources

A running bibliography — update this as the research develops.

Partnerships

This doesn't have to wait on a budget cycle to start making a dent.

Alliance for Period Supplies

Explore the Allied Programs Network ↗