NYC schools face closures as student numbers plummet 160K

NYC halts school closures after parent backlash over enrollment declines

Parents are cheering the decision to pause proposals to close several Upper West Side middle schools, but education experts said such controversies will keep cropping up as the nation's largest school system grapples with declining enrollment.

Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels had pushed for plans to close the Community Action School, and the middle grades at Manhattan School for Children and I.S. 191, because each had fewer than 200 kids. Officials planned to move another middle school, The Center School, to make room for P.S. 9, a popular elementary school that is overcrowded. Facing fierce opposition from parents, Samuels announced he was tabling the plans for now.

Experts said more such fights are likely as the nation's largest school system serves fewer students due to lower birth rates and families leaving the city.

"It's a huge challenge that [former] Mayor Adams kicked down the road and it is now Mayor Mamdani's to deal with for the next four to eight years," said David Bloomfield, an education and law professor at Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center. "It is a political challenge, but an operational necessity."

According to a new analysis from the nonprofit Citizens Budget Commission, public school enrollment is down by 160,000 students across the school system since 2020, and most city schools have less than 400 students. Schools with so few students are expensive to maintain, and face challenges offering robust arts and electives because funding is tied to the number of students schools serve.

"I would say all of the concerns that these proposals were trying to solve are still in place," Samuels said after announcing the pause.

But school closures are often politically explosive, given families' close connection to their children's schools. Issues of race and equity are often at the center of the controversies.

"We see enrollment declines and low performance in high poverty schools," Bloomfield said. "High poverty is also associated with race in this country, and so school closure debates become entangled with questions of race and resources."

The fight over the Upper West Side proposals erupted in February after a white parent was caught on a hot mic making racist comments on Zoom as a Black student advocated for the Community Action School to remain open.

Samuels had already said he would table the proposal to close Community Action School, citing the pain caused by the remarks.

Earlier this week, he extended the pause to all the proposed school closures and relocations on the Upper West Side. He also withdrew a proposal to launch a new artificial intelligence-focused high school.

Samuels, who had helped shape the middle school proposals as superintendent of the school district that includes the Upper West Side, said he was responding to families' concerns.

"The overwhelming pieces of feedback that we heard were that school communities felt like they needed more time to really discuss and process these proposals," he said.

Ana Champeny, vice president for research at the Citizens Budget Commission, said lower birth rates and outmigration from the city have driven the decline. She said the city will eventually have to consider closing or merging many small schools across the boroughs, or redrawing school district lines.

"Part of governance, part of leadership is being able to make the hard choices that will have the long range benefits for the city and ensure that we are using taxpayer resources effectively," Champeny said.