SCHOOLS FACING $215M BUDGET HIT

Cutbacks coming as pandemic relief dries up

City schools are bracing for cutbacks as federal stimulus money tied to the pandemic begins to dry up.

Budgets for city public schools are largely based on enrollment — and schools have shed roughly 70,000 K-12 students since the 2019-20 school year, with students opting for homeschooling in increasing numbers, enrolling in charter or private schools, or leaving the city altogether. The city Education Department has, up to now, shielded schools from the full budgetary impact of those enrollment losses using federal stimulus money.

But that support is now running out, and school budgets are set to shrink by roughly $215 million next year — forcing some principals to make difficult financial decisions.

“It’s looking bad,” said one Manhattan principal who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “I have to excess people because of declining enrollment.”

The Education Department is still providing some temporary budgetary relief, offsetting a total $375 million cut with $160 million in federal funds next year to help schools with big enrollment losses. That support shrinks to $80 million in 2024 before disappearing altogether in 2025, according to Education Department budget documents examined by the Daily News.

It’s still unclear how the budget cuts will affect the number of teachers citywide.

Education Department officials insist that the agency can avoid layoffs by eliminating positions that are currently vacant. Roughly 1,500 of those vacancies would be cut this year, and 3,200 will be eliminated by 2025, according to Sarita Subramanian, the Independent Budget Office’s assistant director for education.

“Based on what they’ve told us, it should not impact the head count, theoretically, at schools,”

Subramanian said. But she cautioned that the city will “have to wait and see what happens to actual head count.”

Some advocates and school leaders are deeply skeptical that shrinking school coffers won’t lead to fewer teachers — and larger class sizes.

“There is no doubt in my mind that class sizes will go up next year because of this,” said Leonie Haimson, the founder of the advocacy group Class Size Matters. The question of how the cuts will affect city class sizes is especially urgent after the state Legislature passed a bill last week requiring city schools to reduce class sizes to between 20 and 25 students by 2027.

However the cuts play out citywide, it’s clear that some individual schools with steep pandemic enrollment losses face daunting financial challenges.

Fort Hamilton High School in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, typically enrolled about 4,500 students a year before the pandemic. It received $34 million in “Fair Student Funding” this year from the Education Department based on that prepandemic enrollment. Next year, the school is projected to have an enrollment of only 3,500 — a drop of roughly 1,000 students.

As a result, the school’s budget will drop by roughly $6 million next year. The Education Department plans to soften the blow with $2 million in temporary relief.

Critics say the Education Department should spend more of its federal and state cash and not punish schools for enrollment losses.

“We fought for New York City to receive $7.6 billion in federal stimulus funding during the pandemic and we finally received a commitment from Albany to ... bring an additional $1.3 billion in school aid to New York City over the course of three years,” United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said at a City Council budget hearing in May. “With such an infusion of funding available to our city’s schools, I ask, why are we considering an executive budget that looks to make $375 million in cuts to school budgets?”

But Education Department brass predict that the enrollment losses aren’t going to reverse in the coming years and argue that they are simply rightsizing the budget.

The agency has also imposed hiring restrictions for some common teaching positions and preschool educators to encourage schools to bring in existing Education Department employees excessed from other schools.

An Education Department spokesman said such restrictions are common at this stage of the school year and that the agency will monitor hiring.

GETTY IMAGES City public schools have lost about 70,000 students since the pandemic hit, which normally would mean budget cuts, though federal stimulus aid had covered the gap.