A giant budget with tiny results
New York City is pouring a record 43 billion dollars into its public schools, which works out to about 44,000 dollars per student. That is a jaw-dropping number, and it would be nice if the city could point to matching results. Instead, enrollment is falling, test scores are flat, and families are increasingly looking elsewhere. When a system spends like a millionaire but performs like a guy who just found a coupon, taxpayers have every right to ask what is going on.
Experts say the math no longer works
Andrew Rein of the Citizens Budget Commission says the city needs to tie spending to results, cut funding when enrollment drops, and merge schools that are too small to run efficiently. That sounds like common sense, which is exactly why Albany and City Hall seem so uncomfortable with it. Daniela Souza of the Manhattan Institute called the class size law unworkable, and she is right to point out that shrinking enrollment makes the mandate even harder to afford. The city keeps acting like a growing district when the student count is moving the other way.
Empty classrooms and bloated bureaucracy
The numbers are hard to ignore. New York City now educates nearly 158,000 fewer students than it did 10 years ago, yet it runs 39 more schools. One in seven schools is less than half full, and nearly half have fewer than 400 students. A new report says traditional public school enrollment could drop by another 153,000 students by 2035, leaving about 720,000 total. But instead of right-sizing the system, city leaders keep feeding the machine and hoping the waste magically turns into wisdom.
Parents have noticed the failure
Parents are not sitting around applauding this performance. Many are moving their children to charter schools or leaving the city entirely, and charters now educate about one in six students across the boroughs. That should tell lawmakers something important. Families are not anti-education, they are anti-failure. Federal data shows New York City spends about 50 percent more per student than the next largest districts like Los Angeles and Chicago, yet only about a third of fourth graders are proficient in math and fewer than 30 percent read at grade level. By eighth grade, math proficiency falls to 23 percent. The city also spends heavily on teacher compensation, transportation, maintenance, contracts, consultants, and special education legal costs, while officials still insist the system is fine. That is not a plan. That is a very expensive shrug.
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