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For the first time in eight years, the number of students in New York City public schools has not decreased compared to the previous year.
Just over 912,000 students were enrolled in the city’s preschool through 12th grade programs last school year, compared with about 906,000 the year before, according to final enrollment data released last month by the city’s Department of Education.
Whether that trend will continue is an open question, and a critical one for the city because state funding is based on student enrollment. Enrollment trends in the coming years will play a central role in a number of important policy questions, including how the city will comply with a new class-size law and whether officials will be forced to merge or close more small schools.
It’s not just the overall numbers that matter. The makeup of the city’s student body is changing due to demographic shifts, including the arrival of tens of thousands of immigrant students and a years-long decline in the number of black students, creating new demands on schools.
Here are five things you should know about student enrollment in New York City based on the latest data:
The number of English learners is growing
Perhaps the biggest change in enrollment numbers over the past two years has been due to the influx of tens of thousands of migrant students fleeing Latin America, West Africa and other regions.
It’s difficult to get an exact number because city schools don’t ask about immigration status. Authorities have used the number of new students living in transitional housing as a proxy — since most new arrivals live in emergency shelters — and say about 40,000 such students enrolled in the last two school years.
Another measure of the new arrivals is the rising number of English language learners. That number rose from about 135,000 in the 2022-23 school year to more than 148,000 last year, according to new demographic data. English language learners now make up 16.3% of the school system, up from 13.3% in the 2019-20 school year.
This change is having a number of implications for the system: schools are scrambling to hire more bilingual staff and English as a foreign language teachers, and schools that never had many English learners in the past are suddenly opening their doors to newly immigrant students.
The number of black and Asian students enrolled is almost equal
The proportion of black and Asian-American students in urban schools is now less than one percentage point apart: Black students make up 19.5% of the system and Asian-American students make up 18.7%.
This represents a radical change from the 2011-12 school year, when 28% of the city’s students were Black and 16% were Asian American.
The change reflects larger demographic patterns in the city. The black population has declined by 9% over the past two decades, while the Asian American population grew by nearly 8% between 2010 and 2020.
The city has recently made new efforts to teach Asian American history and culture. But educators have not kept pace with changing student demographics. Only 7.8% of the city’s teachers identified as Asian American in 2022, meaning Asian American students are the least likely of all four largest racial groups to have a teacher who shares their racial or ethnic background.
Poverty among students is increasing
The city’s Department of Education uses two metrics to measure poverty among students — and both show a small but noticeable increase over the past year.
The student poverty rate, a measure of how many children receive free or reduced-price lunches or come from families eligible for public benefits, rose to 75 percent last year after being around 73 percent or lower for the previous four years.
Another indicator, the so-called “economic index,” which takes into account a wider range of factors, including whether a student was homeless or attended high school with a native language other than English, also rose this year, from 72.2 percent to 73.3 percent.
More and more students identify as non-binary
Two years ago, the city first began tracking the number of students who identify as neither male nor female. In the 2022-23 school year, 102 students were listed in that category. Last year, the number rose to 178, representing just 0.02% of the student body.
Students who identify as nonbinary have the lowest satisfaction with their school experience of any student group in the annual school survey, and there are new efforts to open schools that explicitly cater to LGBTQ+ and gender nonconforming students (one team’s proposal to open a new charter school did not get the green light, however).
Long-term enrollment forecasts are pessimistic
In the short term, Education Department officials are optimistic that enrollment numbers will remain stable, predicting a 0.2 percent increase for the next school year.
But long-term trends such as declining birth rates and increased out-migration could lead to major enrollment losses in the city’s school system in the coming years, according to annual enrollment forecasts commissioned by the city’s School Construction Authority, which is responsible for building new public schools.
The most recent demographic projections, released in December 2023 by consulting firm Statistical Forecasting LLC, project pre-K and high school enrollment to fall to just over 660,000 by 2032, a decline of nearly 230,000 students, or 26%, over a decade. (The enrollment numbers in the projections differ from the demographic snapshots because they do not include students in specialty programs in Districts 75 and 79.)
A spokesman for the School Construction Authority said the demographic projections would be combined with a separate analysis of new housing construction to produce a final enrollment forecast, but the total number of students was not immediately released.
The demographic projections are based on birth rates, which have been declining in New York City for more than a decade, as well as immigration rates into and out of the city.
The number of children under five in New York City fell by more than 18% between 2020 and 2023. This decline is partly due to the pandemic, but also due to the lack of affordable housing and child care.
The number of migrants arriving in the city has slowed in recent months, but ongoing unrest in Venezuela could prompt even more people to flee to the United States.
The forecasters found that the sharp enrollment losses caused by the pandemic and the historic influx of migrant students in recent years have led to unusual fluctuations. They adjusted their models without incorporating those fluctuations into their future projections, assuming they were likely one-off events, their reports said.
Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York covering New York public schools. Contact Michael at [email protected].
