Buried in the news cycle on the night before Election Day, New York City released shocking new data: Close to 22,000 fewer students had enrolled in public schools this fall.

It was the first significant enrollment decline since the school system stabilized after the COVID-19 pandemic era, down by 2.4% citywide. The last time the number of students fell as much was an even greater drop during the 2021-22 school year: 3.8%.

School officials did not explain the preliminary data at the time, but Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos deduced in a recent interview that it was tied to concerns about affordability and immigration. While young families have been steadily leaving New York due to the high costs of raising children, new students were moving in during the most recent immigration surge.

Now, amid the Trump administration’s crackdown, that surge is ebbing.

“When families are thriving and they can afford to live in New York City, then they select the public schools in their neighborhoods,” Aviles-Ramos told the Daily News.

“We’ve done a lot to strengthen programming in our schools. But with (Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s) affordability agenda, we should definitely see an increase in student enrollment, and hopefully support around our immigrant families and our undocumented families will make them feel comfortable and safe in New York City.”

While other considerations, such as declining birth rates and demand for more rigorous academics, are likely factors as well, the stakes are high to stop the bleeding in a system where school budgets are funded per pupil. Principals who serve fewer students, and therefore receive less funding, can struggle to offer a variety of classes and extracurriculars.

Since the pandemic, both Mayor Eric Adams and Bill de Blasio have experimented with funding schools at the same levels if they enroll fewer students, but the policy has only been implemented on an ad hoc basis. Eventually, schools may face mergers with other programs — or outright closures — if the finances become untenable. Some already have.

Affordability

It’s no secret that New York City is an expensive place to raise a child. But the pace at which families are leaving has become one of the most talked-about issues in New York politics, fueled in no small part by Mamdani’s successful campaign focus on affordability concerns.

Research suggests the exodus is driven by the parents of young children, though some families with school-aged kids appear to be moving out as well. The number of students discharged to schools outside the city spiked in 2021-22, the same school year as the last major citywide enrollment decline.

Students in poverty were more likely to move to more affordable states and regions — Pennsylvania and the South — than within New York state, the data showed at the time. The chancellor’s spokesperson did not provide the latest data in time for publication.

That said, large shares of former public school parents have self-reported leaving the city. In a new survey of families who pulled their kids out of school, 40% said they moved out of the city altogether — citing housing needs as often as educational concerns.

Immigration

But as some families were leaving, a new group of students were enrolling in local schools, keeping systemwide enrollment afloat.

At the height of the migrant crisis, while Mayor Eric Adams warned the financial strain could “destroy” New York City, the chancellor’s predecessor David Banks struck a different tone: He called their arrival a “godsend” at a critical moment when enrollment losses threatened to shutter a number of beloved schools.

Since then, the national and local contexts have changed.

The pace of migration has slowed as entry at the southern border was tightened up during President Trump’s second term.

Meanwhile, as part of the president’s broader crackdown on undocumented immigrants, federal officials have arrested at least 140 children in the New York City area through mid-October, according to federal data obtained by the Deportation Data Project at the University of California, Berkeley.

Anecdotally, other immigrant families have self-deported or moved out of New York, according to Aviles-Ramos, who before serving as chancellor was the point-person at the public schools on the migrant crisis. Local shelters limited their stays, then closed altogether, sometimes driving families beyond the city limits.

“The increase that we had a couple years after COVID was due to an influx of families seeking asylum, and we know that many of those families are leaving New York City,” Aviles-Ramos said. “So, there’s no surprise that we’re seeing a decline in enrollment.”

Public schools don’t ask or track immigration status, but the limited data supports her reasoning: Enrollment plunged by 11% this year at dozens of schools that were more likely to receive migrant students, compared to 2% citywide, according to a recent Chalkbeat analysis.

While schools can’t change federal policy, Aviles-Ramos said teachers and school staff are going the extra mile to keep immigrant families in school: Checking for ICE, escorting students, or otherwise easing their anxieties.

A spokeswoman for the chancellor pointed to several initiatives — a buddy system between immigrant students and their classmates, staff teams known as “Dream Squads,” and public school alumni known as “Immigrant Ambassadors” — that are all focused on supporting migrants.

“They are going outside the building and in the surrounding blocks and seeing if ICE is outside,” Aviles-Ramos said. “Some schools have walking ‘school buses,’ which is amazing.

“If there were an opportunity to expand things like that,” she added, “we would probably see an increase in attendance.”

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