New York City’s public schools lost 187,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade in over a decade, according to a new report by the city comptroller — while enrollment is projected to keep falling.
Thursday’s report analyzed K-12 enrollment declines between the 2013-14 to 2025-26 school years, finding a 19% decrease when more recent universal preschool programs are removed from the equation, which can mask the extent of the declines with the addition of new grade levels. Some of the sharpest drops were on the cusp of middle school, among Black families, and in parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx, the comptroller found.
The School Construction Authority has projected the public schools could lose another 128,000 students by the 2034-35 school year.
“Declining school enrollment is not only a challenge for our education system — it raises fundamental questions about affordability, the ability of young families to build a future in New York, and the kind of city we want to be,” City Comptroller Mark Levine said in a statement.
“The needs of our students are changing at the same time as a growing number of students face economic hardship and require specialized support,” the comptroller added. “We need to understand these trends to make our schools stronger, direct resources where they are needed most, and give all kids the education they deserve.”
Barry Williams / New York Daily News
City Comptroller Mark Levine speaks at Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s ceremonial swearing after he too was sworn as city comptroller at City Hall Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026, in Manhattan, New York. (Barry Williams / New York Daily News)
Levine’s report comes as more local officials and budget watchdogs have raised concerns about the long-term sustainability of a policy known as “hold harmless,” in which schools that have lost or are projected to lose enrollment are spared budget cuts. The cost of the policy, which started as an emergency measure during the COVID-19 pandemic, reached nearly $290 million this year, more than double what the city funded last year, according to a Chalkbeat New York analysis.
The enrollment decline mostly reflects a broader decrease in the number of school-aged children living in New York, suggesting affordability concerns and declining birth rates could be more to blame than families leaving the public schools for other school types.
“This report makes it clear that New York City is not immune to national declines in birth rate, as the comptroller states,” Nicole Brownstein, the press secretary for the public schools, said in a statement. “Adjusting to this reality will require honestly confronting the problem and engaging deeply with communities, which we’ve already begun.”
Brownstein added their efforts to ensure all students receive a high-quality education are happening at the same time as “the work this administration is doing to tackle the affordability crisis, which is forcing families out of New York City, and make every borough a place families can afford to continue calling home.”
Since the pandemic, there are roughly 81,500 fewer school-aged children attending public, private, religious and charter schools across the five boroughs, according to the comptroller. Over the last decade, there’s been about a fourfold increase in homeschool students — nearly 13,100 last school year — but the figure represents just 1% of the city’s total student population.
Mayor Mamdani so far has looked to keep young families in New York through an expansion of free childcare, but the comptroller’s findings suggest that parents are continuing to leave the city as their children grow older.
Across K-12, the steepest decline in enrollment is at the beginning of middle school, between the 5th and 6th grades. On average, 6th grade classes are 15% smaller than kindergarten classes, according to the report.
The enrollment decline is particularly pronounced among Black students, who went from 26% to 19% of the public school population over the audit period, which is in line with a broader trend of Black families leaving the city amid the rising cost of living.
Even as the number of students decline, the need of the kids who remain — and may require more resources to educate — is growing. There’s been an increase in the share of students who have disabilities, from 19% to 24%, and students living in a homeless shelter or other temporary housing, 8% to 14%. The portion of English language learners rose then fell again after immigration patterns shifted under President Trump.
While all local school districts lost students, the scale of that loss varied. The comptroller found the sharpest drops in enrollment were on the Lower East Side and in Harlem, Washington Heights and Inwood, Central Brooklyn, and parts of the Bronx.
The comptroller’s office told the Daily News the report highlights the need to allocate school budgets equitably, and urged decision-makers to use the trends to guide discussions in the months to come. Most recently, Levine has called for merging small schools of 200 students or fewer, some of which have lost so much enrollment that they can no longer form sports teams.
“This is not sustainable,” Levine wrote on X last month. “As painful as it is, there is going to have to be some consolidation of schools with sharply declining enrollment.”