Enrollment in New York City’s public schools could plunge by as many as 153,000 students during the next decade, according to a stark new forecast that highlights the continuing toll of falling birthrates, an aging population and an exodus of families.
The city’s public school system, the nation’s largest, has lost more than 123,000 students since the pandemic, reflecting a nationwide decline that has exhausted budgets, led to layoffs and shuttered schools.
If the outlook for New York schools pans out, the district will have shrunk by more than a quarter during a 15-year period ending in the 2034-35 school year, according to the latest annual projections released by the School Construction Authority, which oversees the design, construction and renovation of the city’s Department of Education buildings.
The estimates “are pretty dramatic,” said Ana Champeny, the vice president for research at the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit fiscal watchdog group. “We’re are very concerned about what it says in regard to families leaving the city.”
Enrollment in New York’s public schools climbed after World War II and stayed at around 1 million students for decades. But shortly before the pandemic and accelerating through it, schools started to lose students at a steady clip.
Today, New York City schools have about 781,000 students, excluding those with more advanced disabilities that attend a separate network of schools known as District 75. It has about 28,000 students.
In the 2034-35 school year, there could be just 628,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade, according to the projections, which also exclude District 75 students. The declines are expected in all grades and all areas of the city. The drop would be across all racial groups, with the sharpest decline expected among Black students.
The number of students in prekindergarten is projected to stay roughly the same during that period, with about 88,000 children annually. But only half are projected to continue on to kindergarten in subsequent years.
The Department of Education in a statement acknowledged the challenges presented by a decline in enrollment. “As we plan for the future, we will continue making responsible decisions that strengthen opportunities for students while also ensuring families have clear, timely information about their options,” the department said.
Predicting future enrollment in New York City schools is based on assumptions from birthrate trends, migration patterns, housing production and other factors that may change in unforeseen ways. No forecast before 2020, after all, predicted the pandemic.
Still, the estimates align with a broader drop-off in students expected in the United States, with the number of students nationwide expected to decline by about 750,000 during the next five years, according to federal government projections.
During the next decade, the number of students in Los Angeles County could plummet by 250,000. Boston Public Schools, which has about 46,500 students, has steadily lost students and is forecast to lose another 3,000 in the coming years. There, school leaders have announced a plan to close 20 schools by 2030, a politically unpopular decision that has spurred parent opposition elsewhere, including recently on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
“People have been worried about this for years,” said Tara Moon, a policy analyst at FutureEd, an education think tank at Georgetown University. “The different reasons touched on by the report are not necessarily unique to New York.”
They include recent declines in international immigrants who have historically helped offset the departure of residents to other cities. The only recent year in which the city’s schools gained students was in 2023-24, after an influx of migrants. The following year, the number of new residents in the city who were international immigrants dropped by 70 percent, the steepest decline among large urban areas in the United States.
Families also have more options. Charter schools now enroll about 150,000 students in the city, up from 84,000 a decade ago. During the pandemic, more families also chose to home-school their children and have kept them there. Enrollment in the city’s private schools has declined too, falling about 9 percent during the past decade, to roughly 218,000 students.
There is also another explanation: Parents are having fewer children. About 25,000 fewer children a year are born in New York City than a decade ago. The fertility rate in the United States recently fell to a record low.
Joshua Goodman, an associate professor of education and economics at Boston University, said that the pandemic was a “massive shock” for school systems at the same time that birthrates had been declining and parents were gaining more choice in where they could enroll their children.
“Public schools are seeing a storm of things, many of which were not in the control of schools,” Professor Goodman said.
Matthew Haag is a Times education reporter focusing on New York City schools.
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