Enrollment in New York City’s regular public schools fell 2% this year, and is sure to keep on dropping — but our political leaders’ most likely response will be deep denial.
Baseline enrollment in the Department of Education system is well into a long-term decline, dictated by a dropping city birthrate and by an ongoing exodus of younger families; the now-ending migrant crisis only concealed the trend.
The obvious, correct response is to right-size city schools: Close down some whole buildings and reduce total staff sizes (teachers and administrators); it’s a chance to leave decrepit buildings and improve the overall quality of the instructional force.
Of course the United Federation of Teachers fears the change: Fewer teachers means less income from their dues — and a balance-of-power shift as retirees’ role in electing UFT leaders increases.
Getting the state to impose ever-smaller class sizes (and therefore force the city to pay more teachers to educate fewer students) was one UFT response; since pre-K staffers are also in the union, the UFT’s salivating at the mayor-elect’s universal day care plans, too.
But it won’t be enough: The number of new students registering for school this summer was down 7% from the year before.
Parents are giving up on the city, and on the DOE: Only charter public schools, which operate outside the bureaucracy and mostly without UFT members — and so reliably actually educate their students — are resisting the decline.
At some point, every other interest that depends on city spending is going to notice how the DOE consumes an ever-larger share of the pie — it’s already more than a third of the city budget! — to serve an ever-smaller population.
Even a proud Democratic Socialist may start asking some tough questions.
Mayor-elect Zohran Mandani would be wise to use this reckoning to upgrade the public schools: If they can’t deliver value, families need to pay out of pocket for their kids to learn — the reverse of making the city more affordable.
If he lets the vested interests continue to milk the system dry, he’s going to run out of taxpayers.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
