As New York City’s public schools prepare to welcome students on Thursday, a new snapshot of student enrollment may give a better picture of the children going back to the classroom.
More than 884,644 students enrolled in the city’s schools during the 2025-26 academic year, according to demographic data finalized last month. That’s nearly 22,000 fewer kids across the five boroughs.
But enrollment changes have not been evenly felt across the student body. Here’s what you need to know about the shifting demographics of the public schools:
English learners are leaving
After the number of students learning English as a new language peaked during an influx of migrant families to New York City, that tally has started trending down again.
Some 16,630 fewer English learners enrolled in the public schools, a nearly 11% decrease in just one year. The number of students acquiring the language topped out during the 2024-25 school year with 153,190 students.
Not all English learners are migrant students. But the data appears to support a claim by former chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos that last school year’s enrollment decline — the first of the post-COVID-19 pandemic era — may be due in part to immigrant families leaving the city or country amid President Trump’s deportation crackdown.
The new schools chancellor, Kamar Samuels, an immigrant from Jamaica, is trying to help immigrant parents feel safe sending their children to school, most recently by publishing a “Know Your Rights” comic book to prepare families for potential run-ins with federal immigration agents.
English learners still make up 15.4% of total enrollment, or close to 136,560 students, according to the data. That’s around the same levels as the 2022-23 school year.
Enrollment falls in the younger grades
The new demographic data shows enrollment is falling in elementary school — which may spell trouble for the school system in future years.
Kindergarten through fifth grade saw the “sharpest” decrease in enrollment numbers and share of students since before the pandemic, according to an official summary of the data.
Enrollment in the lower grades fell from 420,412 to 335,285 students, a 20.2% decrease. In future years, those shrinking elementary schools may become under-enrolled middle and high schools.
Schools are largely funded on a per-pupil basis. So when a school’s enrollment declines, so does the funding a principal receives for budget line items such as teachers or extracurricular programs.
Samuels, and other chancellors before him, has looked to soften the blow by providing school leaders with at least the same levels of funding that they received the prior year — a temporary policy known as “hold harmless” that fiscal watchdogs say is unsustainable in the long-term.
Education officials have attributed the enrollment declines to drops in birth rates and families with young children being pushed out of the city because of the high cost of living. Fewer students in the younger grades suggest the school system has yet to stop the bleeding.
Racial demographics are changing
The city’s public school system used to be largely Black and Hispanic.
That’s changing.
The school system was 19% Asian, 19.3% Black, 41.6% Hispanic and 16.4% white last school year, according to the new demographic data. That’s the smallest gap in recent history between the shares of Black and Asian students. For context, those figures hovered around 15.5% Asian and 27.1% Black just a decade ago.
The demographic changes seen in the public schools echo similar shifts in census data across the five boroughs. The number of Black children and teens living in the city fell more than 19% from 2010 to 2020, the numbers show.
Samuels, who is Black, has expressed his concerns about “the large numbers of Black families who’ve moved out of our city, oftentimes priced out of our city, and the impact that has on our schools,” he said during a school integration event in June. He referenced Harlem and South Jamaica as two of the hardest hit neighborhoods.
The chancellor has tasked working groups in 5 school districts with proposing local plans to address the loss of Black families or other educational issues of their choosing.
Disability classifications on the rise
Nearly 1 in 4 New York City students was diagnosed with a disability last school year.
In fact, the percentage of students with disabilities has increased by 3 percentage points citywide since the 2018-19 school year, according to the data summary. There were 858 schools where at least a quarter were classified as having a disability.
Over the last five years, there has also been an 18.3% increase in enrollment across District 75, the highly specialized school district for students with significant challenges such as autism.
Nonbinary students remain small share of NYC enrollment
According to the data summary, there were 199 students last school year who identified as neither female nor male — a new gender category introduced in the 2022-23 school year. Education officials say that’s likely an undercount of nonbinary students, who must request the change if they registered four or more years ago.
That represents 0.02% of all students who identify as nonbinary, a small share of total enrollment. President Trump’s Education Department has gone after local magnet school grants to press the school system to change its gender policy; while a federal court has largely sided with the city so far, the case is still ongoing.