NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) — Leaders of New York City Public Schools are working on plans to address declining student enrollment, which could include merging schools, Chancellor Kamar Samuels said in an interview.
The county’s largest public school system is expected to lose 153,000 students over the next decade, according to projections released in March for the New York City School Construction Authority. The figures exclude students enrolled in the city’s special education district and offsite facilities.
“When we see enrollment declines, it means that some of our schools are going to be too small to be sustainable, and so we have to make sure that we’re working with our communities to think about how can we make a sustainable school,” Samuels said in an interview.
“We have several districts that are working on plans,” whether “that be more mergers or co-locations,” he said.
Enrollment declines are an issue for public schools across the country primarily due to the drop in birth rate. Other factors include restrictive immigration policies and increasing competition from alternative or private schools as school choice programs expand.
In New York City, public school enrollment is slated to drop almost 29% in a two-decade period, from more than 1 million students in the 2015-2016 school year to roughly 721,000 students in the 2034-2035 year, per the projections.
NYC Public Schools enrollment over two decades, based on projections prepared for NYC School Construction Authority in March 2026.Bloomberg
Enrollment is a key financial metric for schools as most revenue is calculated on a per pupil basis.
“When students are in schools that are under-enrolled, they oftentimes don’t have access to advanced programming, advanced coursework. They don’t have access to really strong extracurricular activities,” said Samuels. “So we have to look, with our districts across the city, how do we look at the structural adjustments that need to be made in order to create more robust schools.”
He noted that plans are being made at the district level. The city’s public school system is organized into 32 districts, each led by a superintendent.
“We’re building their capacities to really have that conversation,” Samuels said.
Earlier this week, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced an expansion of the new program for two-year-olds as part of an effort to keep families with young children in the city.
