Affordability crisis, Trump immigration crackdown drive NYC public school enrollment declines

Buried in the news cycle the night before Election Day, New York City released shocking new data: Nearly 22,000 fewer students had enrolled in public schools this fall.

This is the first significant decline in enrollment since the school system stabilized after the COVID-19 pandemic, down 2.4% citywide. The last time student numbers fell this much, it was an even bigger drop in the 2021-22 school year: 3.8%.

School officials did not explain the preliminary data at the time, but Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos inferred in a recent interview that it was related to concerns about affordability and immigration. While young families regularly leave New York due to the high costs of raising children, new students have moved in during the latest wave of immigration.

Now, amid the Trump administration’s crackdown, that push is losing steam.

“When families are prosperous and can afford to live in New York, then they choose public schools in their neighborhood,” Aviles-Ramos told the Daily News.

“We have done a lot to strengthen programs in our schools. [Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s] Affordability Program, we should definitely see an increase in student enrollment, and we hope that supporting our immigrant families and our undocumented families will allow them to feel comfortable and safe in New York.

Although other factors, such as declining birth rates and demand for more rigorous academics, are also likely factors, the stakes are high to stop the hemorrhaging in a system where school budgets are funded on a per-pupil basis. School principals who enroll fewer students and therefore receive less funding may struggle to offer a variety of classes and extracurricular activities.

Since the pandemic, Mayor Adams and Bill de Blasio have experimented with funding schools at the same levels if they enroll fewer students, but this policy has only been implemented on an ad hoc basis. Ultimately, schools could face mergers with other programs – or outright closures – if finances become unsustainable. Some have already done it.

Affordability

It’s no secret: New York is an expensive place to raise a child. But the rate at which families are leaving has become one of the most talked-about topics in New York politics, fueled in large part by Mamdani’s successful campaign focused on affordability issues.

Research suggests the exodus is driven by parents of young children, although some families with school-age children also appear to be moving. The number of students sent back to schools outside the city peaked in 2021-22, the same school year as the last major citywide enrollment decline.

Poor students were more likely to move to more affordable states and regions — Pennsylvania and the South — than to New York state, data at the time showed. The chancellor’s spokesperson did not provide the latest data in time for publication.

That said, a large portion of former public school parents reported leaving the city. In a new survey of families who pulled their children out of school, 40 percent said they left the city altogether, citing their housing needs as often as their education concerns.

Immigration

But as some families left, a new group of students enrolled in local schools, keeping system-wide enrollment afloat.

At the height of the migrant crisis, as Mayor Adams warned that financial strains could “destroy” New York City, the chancellor’s predecessor, David Banks, struck a different tone: He called their arrival a “godsend” at a critical time when enrollment losses threatened to close a number of beloved schools.

Since then, national and local contexts have changed.

The pace of migration has slowed as entry at the southern border has been strengthened during President Trump’s second term.

Meanwhile, as part of the president’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, federal authorities arrested at least 140 children in the New York area through mid-October, according to federal data obtained by the Deportation Data Project at the University of California, Berkeley.

Anecdotally, other immigrant families have self-deported or left New York, according to Aviles-Ramos, who before being chancellor was the point person at public schools on the migrant crisis. Local shelters limited their stays and then closed altogether, sometimes driving families out of city limits.

“The surge we saw a few years after COVID was due to an influx of families seeking asylum, and we know that many of those families are leaving New York,” Aviles-Ramos said. “So it’s not surprising that we’re seeing a decline in enrollment. »

Public schools don’t ask or track immigration status, but the limited data supports his reasoning: Enrollment plunged 11% this year at dozens of schools that were more likely to serve migrant students, compared with 2% citywide, according to a recent Chalkbeat analysis.

Even though schools can’t change federal policy, Aviles-Ramos said teachers and school staff go the extra mile to keep immigrant families in school: checking for ICE, accompanying students or allaying their anxieties.

A spokeswoman for the chancellor highlighted several initiatives – a buddy system between immigrant students and their classmates, staff teams known as “Dream Squads” and state school alumni known as “immigrant ambassadors” – all of which are focused on supporting migrants.

“They go out of the building and into the surrounding blocks and see if ICE is outside,” Aviles-Ramos said. “Some schools have pedestrian “school buses”, which is incredible.

“If there was an opportunity to expand this type of thing,” she added, “we would probably see an increase in attendance.”