{"id":187622,"date":"2026-04-06T21:22:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T21:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/187622\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T21:22:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T21:22:07","slug":"how-to-cut-nycs-insane-38b-school-budget-down-to-size","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/187622\/","title":{"rendered":"How to cut NYC’s insane $38B school budget down to size"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Mayor Zohran Mamdani seeks to fill his $5.4 billion to $7.1 billion\u00a0budget hole,<\/a>\u00a0he\u00a0has so far shown little willingness to cut Department of Education spending.<\/p>\n

But he\u2019ll never balance the books if he keeps throwing good money after bad in the city\u2019s public schools.<\/p>\n

Mamdani\u2019s budget sets aside\u00a0$38 billion\u00a0for DOE\u2019s operations \u2014 $3 billion, or 8%, more than the current fiscal year.<\/p>\n

Education already accounts for about\u00a0a third\u00a0of the city\u2019s budget<\/a>, and the Citizens Budget Commission estimates that per-pupil spending\u00a0now exceeds\u00a0$42,000<\/a>, the\u00a0most expensive\u00a0among large urban districts.<\/p>\n

Yet while enrollment has fallen\u00a012%\u00a0since 2020<\/a> \u2014 even with the addition of some 50,000 migrant students \u2014 and city births have dropped\u00a020%\u00a0since 2000, the DOE\u2019s budget keeps on growing.<\/p>\n

Families across the income spectrum, from\u00a0working-class<\/a>\u00a0households to the\u00a0wealthy<\/a>,\u00a0want out of a poorly performing system.<\/p>\n

Only 28% of NYC\u2019s fourth graders are proficient in reading and 33% in math,\u00a0according\u00a0to the latest national assessment scores.<\/p>\n

New Yorkers simply don\u2019t get good education value for their tax dollars, mostly because the public schools too often put the interests of teachers first, families second.<\/p>\n

Look no further than the city\u2019s plan to spend\u00a0$1.6 billion\u00a0next year to hire more teachers under Albany\u2019s mandate for smaller class sizes \u2014 a jobs program for the United Federation of Teachers.<\/p>\n

At the same time, a\u00a0growing\u00a0number of city public schools enroll fewer than 150 students: 112\u00a0such schools are expected this year, up from 80 in 2024-25.<\/p>\n

These schools are not financially viable, but under DOE\u2019s nonsensical \u201chold harmless\u201d policy, every school in the system receives at least as much funding as it did the year before, regardless of enrollment \u2014\u00a0costing at least $250 million\u00a0per year.<\/p>\n

Mayor Eric Adams\u00a0tried\u00a0to cut funding<\/a> for schools whose enrollment had declined, but parents and teachers immediately protested and even\u00a0sued<\/a>;\u00a0he gave up<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To close the budget gap, Mamdani should start reforming DOE.<\/p>\n

The first and easiest step would be to take up state Sen. John Liu\u2019s\u00a0offer\u00a0to pause<\/a> the remaining implementation of the class-size mandate.<\/p>\n

About\u00a064% of classes are already compliant; most schools that are not on board lack the space to implement the law.<\/p>\n

City Council Speaker Julie Menin\u2019s budget plan<\/a> rightly\u00a0demands\u00a0that Albany cover the costs of the mandate state lawmakers chose to pass.<\/p>\n

Mamdani should next revamp procedures related to \u201cCarter cases,\u201d city reimbursements covering private-school tuition for students with disabilities.<\/p>\n

Spending on Carter cases zoomed from $47 million in 2005 to $1.3 billion in 2025, to\u00a0$1.55 billion\u00a0in Mamdani\u2019s budget, Manhattan Institute fellow Jennifer Weber recently found.<\/p>\n

Families that sue to receive these reimbursements \u2014 at an average of\u00a0$101,757\u00a0each \u2014 are disproportionately well-off, able to afford attorneys and to front six-figure tuition outlays before they\u2019re reimbursed.<\/p>\n

Currently, under a policy of Mayor Bill de Blasio, these families sue once and then get automatic annual renewals.<\/p>\n

If they had to reapply and make a case for reimbursement each year, the city would likely save.<\/p>\n

Third, the mayor should adopt Menin\u2019s sensible call to\u00a0audit\u00a0and competitively rebid the DOE\u2019s contracts with outside vendors, which she expects could save $175 million over two years.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s basic good government, and in NYC it doesn\u2019t happen nearly often enough.<\/p>\n

Finally, DOE should consolidate schools and districts that are too small to be financially sustainable.<\/p>\n

Fixed overhead costs can\u2019t scale down with enrollment, so these schools spend thousands more per pupil than better-enrolled counterparts.<\/p>\n

Yet the School Construction Authority is still building new schools, while simultaneously\u00a0squandering\u00a0$1.4 billion through 2029 to electrify school buildings under Local Law 97<\/a>, the city\u2019s decarbonization law.<\/p>\n

In a time of belt-tightening, school spending that does nothing to address student outcomes is irresponsible.<\/p>\n

City schools\u2019 organization plan, too, is out of whack.<\/p>\n

Mayor Mike Bloomberg divided the schools into 10 geographic regions to streamline leadership and administration, but de Blasio reverted to a system of 32 separate school districts, a structure that remains.<\/p>\n

District\u00a0sizes\u00a0vary wildly, from fewer than 4,000 students in Brooklyn\u2019s District 16 to over 38,000 in Staten Island\u2019s District 31.<\/p>\n

Larger, more evenly sized districts would allow for layoffs of redundant non-teaching roles \u2014 including unnecessary administrative positions.<\/p>\n

Even as enrollment has fallen, these positions have grown from\u00a012,717\u00a0in fiscal 2022 to\u00a013,636\u00a0today.<\/p>\n

With per-pupil spending rivaling tuition costs at elite private schools, New York\u2019s public-school system should be strong enough to make Americans\u00a0want\u00a0to move here.<\/p>\n

Instead, it\u2019s a money pit that chases families away.<\/p>\n

No affordability agenda can succeed when a city\u2019s school system delivers so little for so much.<\/p>\n

Danyela Souza Egorov and John Ketcham are fellows at the Manhattan Institute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Mayor Zohran Mamdani seeks to fill his $5.4 billion to $7.1 billion\u00a0budget hole,\u00a0he\u00a0has so far shown little…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[19216,14927,4337,67,19077,9,24,56,63,65,64,299,209,5271,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-187622","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-budgets","9":"tag-city-budget","10":"tag-department-of-education","11":"tag-education","12":"tag-julie-menin","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-ny","16":"tag-nyc","17":"tag-nyc-headlines","18":"tag-nyc-news","19":"tag-opinion","20":"tag-public-schools","21":"tag-schools","22":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}