The city Department of Education will spend a staggering $42,168 per student this school year, budget experts project, even as enrollment declines and student achievement stalls.<\/p>\n
The record sum is nearly $2,000 per student more than the DOE spent last year, according to the nonprofit think tank Citizens Budget Commission. Students report to class Sept. 4.<\/p>\n
The stunning figure is 36% more than the $31,119 the city spent per pupil just five years ago.<\/p>\n
The city Department of Education will spend a record-breaking $42,168 per student this school year. Gorodenkoff \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n
In calculating spending per student, the CBC<\/a> factors in overall costs for food, transportation, school support services, central administration, pensions, benefits and debt service.<\/p>\n Per-pupil costs are rising as the number of students has gone down. Last year, the city counted about 815,000 students enrolled in K-12 in DOE schools \u2013 only 0.1% less than the previous year, but around 100,000 fewer students than in the 2019-2020 school year, according to DOE statistics.\u00a0<\/p>\n NYC spends more per pupil than any large city in the nation, with the next-most generous systems, Chicago and Philadelphia, trailing far behind.<\/p>\n Despite the vast sums poured into the nation\u2019s largest school system, student proficiency in English language arts and math continues to lag behind the rest of the state and country.\u00a0<\/p>\n The \u201cNation\u2019s Report Card\u201d released by the National Center for Education Statistics in January revealed that just 33% of Big Apple fourth graders scored proficiency in math and 28% in reading<\/a> on the National Assessment of Educational Progress last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n Older students\u2019 results were worse \u2013 23% of city eighth graders met the national standards in math and 29% in reading.<\/p>\n DOE Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos announced plans to hire more than 3,700 additional teachers across the city James Messerschmidt<\/p>\n In statewide exams given last school year, 52.6% of sixth graders scored proficiency in English Language Arts \u2014 up from 45.9% last year, and 47.8% during the 2022-2023 school year, but down from 56.3% in 2021-2022. But comparisons are unreliable because the tests and standards have shifted, and the state has lowered some passing benchmarks <\/a>so even small gains are inconclusive.<\/p>\n Ray Domanico, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow and education expert, blasted the DOE\u2019s spending as \u201cunsustainable.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tStart your day with all you need to know\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMorning Report delivers the latest news, videos, photos and more.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \u201cThe system should be consolidating schools and improving effectiveness and efficiency. The money being wasted could be better used to support families, improve health and other services and make streets safer. All of which would help make the city a viable place to raise children,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNo parent I know would associate that\u00a0 level of spending with the quality of education or even lunch food our kids are getting in NYC schools,\u201d said Yiatin Chu, co-president of PLACE NYC, a parent group that advocates for increased rigor in city classrooms.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The DOE\u2019s $41.2 billion budget is a third of the entire city\u2019s.<\/p>\n In April, Mayor Adams and Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos announced plans to hire more than 3,700 additional teachers<\/a> to reduce class sizes in compliance with a new state law.\u00a0<\/p>\n Adams also restored $167 million in cuts <\/a>to the DOE budget for 3-K and pre-K special-ed classes.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Starting in September, state law will require schools to cap class sizes at 20 students in grades K-3, 23 in grades 4-8 and 25 in high school, with at least 60% of classrooms meeting the limits. All classrooms must meet the caps by September 2028.\u00a0<\/p>\n Before Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the bill into law in September 2022, Adams reportedly protested that it would cost too much to implement<\/a> \u2014 about $500 million in K-5 alone.\u00a0Last year, $10 million of the DOE\u2019s overall budget went to teacher recruitment efforts to meet the demands this year,\u00a0officials said.<\/a><\/p>\n At $23,028, the Philadelphia School District spent the second-most per student in the country in 2022-23.. AP<\/p>\n As student enrollment plateaus, the hiring boom will become one of the main drivers of higher per-pupil spending, the CBC\u2019s Research Vice President Ana Champney told The Post.<\/p>\n \u201cHiring teachers in itself isn\u2019t controversial, but there\u2019s no accountability to ensure that the money is being spent on high quality teachers, and that it\u2019s not at the expense of losing a music room, art room, gym, etc. because of the class size law,\u201d said Jean Hahn, a parent in Queens schools. <\/p>\n The City of Chicago School District spent $22,606 per student in the 2022-23 school year \u2014 the third-most in the country. Getty Images<\/p>\n A DOE spokesperson defended the rising costs: \u201cNew York City Public Schools is the largest school district in the nation, and we will always invest heavily in our students, schools, and staff to ensure every child has access to a world-class education.<\/p>\n \u201cWe remain grateful for support from our partners at the city and state level, as we invest more dollars than ever in our schools and students through class size funding, new funding (distribution) for students in temporary housing and schools with higher concentrations of students with needs, collective bargaining that supports our school staff, and funding that replaced expiring stimulus dollars, just to name a few. <\/p>\n \u201cWe all know our students are our future \u2014 and any assertion that we should invest less in them would be illogical.\u201d<\/p>\n Additional reporting by Susan Edelman. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The city Department of Education will spend a staggering $42,168 per student this school year, budget experts project,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":188295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,17452,1258,5248,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,10545,3060,6214,22598,67,586,132,5230,68,1154,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-188294","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-department-of-education","10":"tag-funding","11":"tag-metro","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-newyork","15":"tag-newyorkcity","16":"tag-ny","17":"tag-nyc","18":"tag-reports","19":"tag-schools","20":"tag-students","21":"tag-teachers","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-united-states-of-america","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","26":"tag-us","27":"tag-us-news","28":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115120680798675083","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}