NYC Education Dept. school enrollment declines by 17,000

New York Daily News |

Oct 29, 2021 at 2:06 PM

Enrollment at New York City public schools has dropped by 17,000 this year, Department of Education data released Friday shows.

The student register across the DOE’s 1,600 schools fell from roughly 955,000 last year to 938,000 this year, according to preliminary data shared Friday by the agency. Another 142,000 kids are enrolled in publicly-funded but privately-run charter schools, bringing the total combined enrollment of public and charter schools to roughly 1.08 million.

Citing the continued effects of the pandemic on enrollment, officials also announced Friday that they won’t cut schools budget based on the number of students.

Schools are allocated money in the spring based on projected enrollment for the upcoming school year, and usually have to give some of that cash back if their rolls are lower than expected. That policy was suspended last year, and will do so again now by using federal stimulus funds to cover any losses.

Enrollment in large urban districts across the country cratered last year and have continued to fall, with Los Angeles public schools losing nearly 6 % of their students this year and Chicago’s public school enrollment dropped by 3%.

New York City’s enrollment losses would have been steeper without a big expansion of the city’s free preschool program for three-year-olds, which led to an additional 20,000 students.

 https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/ny-enrollment-2021-decline-pandemic-20211029-i6ojeuwcsfblzpjuicejiluyj4-story.html