New York City public schools are expected to lose nearly 30,000 students by this coming academic year, says the city’s Department of Education Office of Student Enrollment, according to the New York Post.
Data from the department show 28,100 fewer students are expected to enroll in city public schools this fall, with another 2,300 fewer students by the end of the academic year, the Post noted, adding, “By the end of next school year, the largest school district in the nation expects to serve a student population of just 760,439 children, the data show.”
According to the report, the data pointing out the massive decline in student enrollment is for all geographic district schools – though it excludes students enrolled in charter schools, specialized schools for disabled children, and other nontraditional programs that are funded by public dollars.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) told angry protesters from Manhattan’s Upper West Side last week that substantial budget cuts to public schools are due to plummeting student enrollment.
“We have a massive hemorrhaging of students – massive hemorrhaging,” the mayor said, according to the Post. “We’re in a very dangerous place in the number of students that we are dropping.”
Close to 1,200 New York City schools are seeing cuts to the primary source of their individual budgets through the Fair Student Funding (FSF) formula, according to New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who testified June 24.
“[T]he basic fact … is this: 1,166 schools are receiving cuts to their core FY23 budgets, for an average of $402,456, adding up to a total of $469 million,” Lander said, continuing:
[W]ith broader enrollment decline, FSF has primarily become a formula for cutting resources to schools. Many more schools, 1,166 schools across the city (approximately 77%), are receiving cuts from their FY22 to FY23 budgets, for total cuts to individual school budgets, based on the FSF calculations, of $469 million.
That’s an average FSF cut of $402,456, which on average is 8% of individual school budgets. Roughly 450 schools have cuts exceeding 10% of their budgets. Dozens of schools are seeing cuts of over $1 million. This type of dramatic decrease is not something individual schools can absorb in one year without drastically impacting the essential services and supports students receive.
In March, New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks noted about 120,000 students have abandoned the city’s public schools over the past five years.
“For our schools to deliver on their original promise of serving as the engine of the American dream, we will need to do things very differently in ways that build trust one big step at a time,” said Banks, urging the public school system to connect students with the “real world” and “what matters to them,” and to welcome parents’ participation.
“It is the biggest complaint that I’ve heard since I started as chancellor – parents have felt unheard and disrespected,” he said, the Post reported.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), asserted her assessment of the concerns of families of school-age children at AFT’s convention.
“Our delegates and committees put in the work on the issues keeping families up at night, from climate change, to accessible health care, to the crushing crisis of student debt, to the terrifying safety issues plaguing too many workplaces,” Weingarten said. “This year was an important reminder of the AFT’s foundations in democracy and our commitment to union work: to stand up and be counted, to live our convictions, and to engage and not withdraw.”
Our delegates and committees put in the work on the issues keeping families up at night, from climate change, to accessible healthcare, to the crushing crisis of student debt, to the terrifying safety issues plaguing too many workplaces. https://t.co/PTrGHKl7XM
— Randi Weingarten ☮️🇺🇦 (@rweingarten) July 18, 2022
According to the Post‘s report, Rita Joseph of District 40 in Brooklyn, head of the city council’s education committee, attributed the plunge in enrollment to schools’ environments.
“You want to bring them back, but the environment has to also be inviting,” she said. “Most of them look like jails. They said the colors are terrible, the settings are horrible.”
But, a Gallup poll released Thursday found only 28 percent of Americans have either “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of trust in U.S. public schools, down 4 percentage points from last year’s 32 percent, and a drop from 2020’s 41 percent.
Republican confidence in public schools has plummeted from 34 percent in 2020, to 20 percent in 2021, and now to 14 percent in the most recent survey.
Democrats’ trust in public schools has dropped to 43 percent since 2020, when it was 48 percent.
Independent voters’ confidence in public schools has also declined from 38 percent in 2020 to 29 percent in 2022.
A survey released in June 2021 by Competitive Edge Research for Parents Defending Education found the majority of American voters oppose teaching the concepts of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in schools.
Results revealed Americans overwhelmingly hold favorable views of the Founding Fathers (81.7 percent), Abraham Lincoln (89.4 percent), and Martin Luther King, Jr. (92.1 percent).
Of those surveyed, 69.7 percent said they do not think schools should teach children that their race is their most important quality, as opposed to 24.7 percent, who said they should.
When asked if they believe schools should teach white people are “inherently privileged” while black people are “inherently oppressed and victimized,” 73.7 percent of respondents said they should not. Only 9.3 percent “strongly believed” this primary concept of CRT should be taught in schools.
An overwhelming majority of respondents (84.3 percent) also rejected students being assigned “privileged” or “oppressed” status according to their race. Only 5.7 percent said schools should teach that concept.
Of those surveyed, 68.7 percent said schools should not teach students “America was founded on racism and remains structurally racist today,” and that “racism is the cause of all differences in outcome and achievements between racial groups.”
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Susan Berry, PhD, is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Eric Adams” by Mayor Eric Adams. Background Photo “Classroom” by Wokandapix.
Randi Weingarten and the unions are the biggest part of this problem. Ban the unions.
Randi Weingarten basically affirmed that the teachers union has no respect for parents concerns when she stated:
“Our delegates and committees put in the work on the issues keeping families up at night, from climate change, to accessible health care, to the crushing crisis of student debt, to the terrifying safety issues plaguing too many workplaces”
Notice that while some 80+% of parents don’t want any form of CRT taught in schools, Randi Weingarten doesn’t even mention that as an issue, because she doesn’t care that parents don’t want it.
And they wonder why parents have no confidence in the schools.
Want to solve the problem? Get rid of the US Department of Education.
They have become a subversive group focused more on political objectives/narratives and brain washing than educating our young.
Unless they bring law and order back to this lawless city nothing will change and people that can will leave the city and its schools and neighborhoods. NYC and NYS you getting what you voted for. Wake up NYC and NYS
One small correction……he means from public indoctrination centers.
“Of those surveyed, 68.7 percent said schools should not teach students ‘ “America was founded on racism and remains structurally racist today,” and that “racism is the cause of all differences in outcome and achievements between racial groups.” ‘ So there you go. Kendi tried to sell it, but normal folks didn’t buy it. Such a shame that that 32% still pays him $500 A MINUTE to speak. What a racket!
What did you losers THINK would happen???? – between Covid-19 Mandatory Vaccinations and the “Curriculum LGBTQ….whatever the hell else you call it” for freakin’ Kindergarten you’ve set —-guess what? Parents and students are taking a Hike– as far away as possible.
Even with this crisis, the President of the AFT makes a broad and very vague statement about the world in general, as opposed to getting BACK to the concept of the ‘three R’s’ of education.
She doesn’t get it, Parents are tired of indoctrination replacing basic education.
And they STILL want to rewrite history, which is ok for SOME of it, but not for the majority of it.
Parents want their children educated for the REAL WORLD, not for the Left Wing version of it.
We have a massive hemorrhaging of incompetent, uncouth buffoons, fools called democrats smearing our government, states and cities.
The reason he states is B.S. The schools have been getting more money each year. There are not cuts, just lesser increases the the liberals want. People are pulling their children out of public schools because of the crap they teach. Why can’t he figure that out. The rank and file can figure it out, but these woke liberals can’t?
For what ever reason there is a great disparity between races on an individual basis not necessarily solely because of brain function but maybe due to complex factors. Including but not limited to education at an early age. And family stimulation. I’m a physician and growing up in a mixed racial environment I believe I have experienced that. Sometimes the willingness to assimilate knowledge and education. Including that sometimes environmental reasons exist. I personally was raised in a home where my mother was a master teacher and my father was a skilled factory worker. My brother and I were constantly challenged to learn to succeed and read books at an early age. My brother won a freedom foundation award for an essay called “The right to read”
Dr. Jon Schriner