NYC public schools enrollment grew for the first time since the 2015-2016 school year, according to data released on Monday from NYC’s Independent Budget Office (IBO).
Traditional public school enrollment grew since 2015 – 2016, with 912,096 students in city 3-K through grade 12 classrooms this year. Charter school enrollment also increased, according to the IBO, which provides nonpartisan information about the city’s budget to the public.
Charter school enrollment in the 2023-2024 school year grew by 6% in the Bronx, 1% in Manhattan, 9.5% in Queens and 9.8% in Staten Island.
According to the data, Brooklyn charter schools saw no change in enrollment.
“After eight years of enrollment declines, we are thrilled to see enrollment increase across the city,” DOE Schools Chancellor David Banks said when similar preliminary data was announced last year. “With a majority of schools gaining additional funding during this mid-year adjustment, we are well positioned to meet the challenges ahead.
However, despite the high enrollment, the data found that city students who live in temporary housing had much higher rates of chronic absenteeism in the 2022-2023 academic year. In fact, almost half of elementary school students in temporary housing were chronically absent, compared with 31% of students in permanent housing.
How increased enrollment affects class size
The increased enrollment comes at a time when embattled Mayor Eric Adams, who is under federal investigation for bribery and other charges, must make class sizes smaller per a New York State mandate enacted in 2022 as part of his win to keep control over city schools.
In compliance with the class-size mandate, the city must cap classes to 20 students in grades K through three, 23 students in grades four to eight, and 25 students in high school classes by September 2028.
The mandate has proven challenging for Banks, who recently announced his retirement from his position at the DOE as of Dec. 31 this year. His announcement last week came in the midst of continued chaos at City Hall involving FBI investigations into members of Adams’ inner circle and the mayor’s own indictment on Thursday.
“We have long said since this law was enacted, the first two years, we didn’t feel [it] would be a real struggle for us,” Banks said during a press conference this month. “But by the time we hit next year and beyond, there are going to be more difficult choices that will have to be made.”
Meanwhile, IBO data showed that in 2022-2023, public school buildings were only at 87% capacity on average, but 28% of the buildings were overcrowded. The agency defines a building as overcrowded if its utilization rate exceeds 102.5%.
A spokesperson for the IBO’s education team explained school overcrowding in more detail, dividing total enrollment by capacity.
“To determine a building’s utilization rate, the building’s enrollment is divided by its capacity,” The spokesperson said. “The capacity is the number of students a building is designed to serve based on the grades served –whether the space is being used by a high school, elementary school, or middle school– the square footage of rooms, and other considerations detailed in the Enrollment, Capacity, and Utilization Report.”
Despite more students this year, which could be due to the arrival of migrant children into NYC, public school enrollment is still lower than it was in 2014-2015, when it was just over 1 million students.
