Enrollment drops hit schools both small and large, but the effects were often felt most acutely at the smallest schools, where the absence of a handful of staffers can send shockwaves and upend school planning — and some administrators fear that losing too many students could make them targets for a closure or merger.
Several claims from different school owners in New York City have confirmed a shrink in rate of enrollment.
Harlem High School Principal, Roony Vizcaino said he is trying everything he can this year to attract new students — even driving to middle schools in Washington Heights and the Bronx to drum up interest in his small public school.
For Vizcaino, who has seen enrollment at his school, the Urban Assembly School for Global Commerce, shrink from more than 250 before the pandemic to just 184 this school year, finding new students feels like a matter of survival.
“I’m concerned a school the size of my school … will continue to lose resources and people, and they will close it,” he said.
The pandemic battered public school enrollment nationwide, including in New York City, where the number of K-12 public school students cratered by 73,000 since the 2019-20 school year, a drop of 8%, according to Education Department figures.
Preschool enrollment, however, is up, thanks to the federally funded expansion of a program for 3-year-olds.
“It’s in the forefront of my mind,” said the principal of a small Manhattan elementary school that’s lost roughly one-third of its enrollment during the pandemic. “I know I need to get my numbers up.”
Before the pandemic, during the 2018-19 school year, the city Education Department had 108 schools with fewer than 200 students.
By this school year, that number had ballooned to 174, according to a Daily News review of preliminary state enrollment data.
“A school can work at a size as small as 120 students if it’s designed for that,” said Shael Polakow-Suransky, president of Bank Street College and a former Education Department deputy chancellor under Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
But he added that if a school arrives at ultrasmall enrollment levels by accident, it could “call for either closing it or replacing it with something that works better.”
If enrollment continues to fall dramatically in the coming years, the Education Department could also face pressure to cut facilities’ costs by closing or combining schools, said Polakow-Suransky, adding that the city’s not at that point yet and he expects enrollment to rebound next year.
At the Manhattan elementary school that’s lost about a third of its students since the start of the pandemic, the principal was forced to lay off, or “excess,” teachers and can now only offer one class for most grades instead of two.
“Sometimes when you’re excessing a teacher, you’re excessing a really strong teacher,” said the principal, who wished to remain anonymous.
