New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani faces a $10 billion budget gap next year. In addition to seeking a tax hike from Albany, Mamdani has committed to identifying savings in the current budget to help fill the gap. If he wants to find inefficiencies, he should begin with the New York City Department of Education, which accounts for 40 percent of the city’s budget and presents significant opportunities for improved efficiency.
The number of students enrolled in city schools has shrunk by 10 percent since its peak in 2010. Despite this, the DOE’s budget has grown by more than $1 billion yearly since 2019, reaching $40 billion this year. As a result, projected per-pupil spending will exceed $42,000 per child this year—the highest in the country and about $10,000 more than in the 2021–22 school year.
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Mamdani can take three steps to address this out-of-control spending and help close the budget gap at the same time.
First, the mayor should consider the suggestion of Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission, that he ask Albany to pause the class-size law, which could save the city $1 billion. This law—capping classroom sizes at 20 for grades K–3, 23 for grades 4–8, and 25 for high school—primarily benefits wealthier, higher-performing schools at the expense of instability and increased costs.
The law has proved crippling for many schools. Those that have not reduced class sizes—about a third of city schools—face challenges hiring additional qualified teachers or finding adequate space. This month, the Center School, a middle school in the Upper West Side, learned that it might be relocated due to building overutilization related to the class-size law. Other schools facing similar problems include the Salk School of Science, which could relocate to the West Village, and Brooklyn Technical High School, which might need to construct a separate annex for ninth-graders.
Nor can schools escape the law’s constraints by limiting enrollment. Last November, New York City Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos told public school principals that reducing enrollment was “not an approved strategy for individual schools to increase compliance with smaller class sizes in the 2025-26 or 2026-27 school years.” It is still unclear whether Kamar Samuels, Mamdani’s schools chancellor, will permit the practice of reducing enrollment. If he does, the highest-performing schools will accept fewer students, making competition even fiercer in the most sought-after schools.
Second, Mamdani should review the growing number of underenrolled schools in New York. Two years ago, 80 public schools had fewer than 150 students. This year, 112 schools have shrunk to that size. These schools generally perform poorly on academic measures. As a result, they see declining enrollment, leading to higher per-pupil spending.
Mayor Eric Adams closed or merged 18 schools, but this was not enough. The Mamdani administration will likely need further to downsize a system that once served more than 1 million students and now enrolls fewer than 800,000 in grades K-12.
Third, Mamdani should merge and consolidate the city’s 32 school districts. Their enrollment numbers vary from fewer than 4,000 students in Brooklyn’s District 16 to more than 38,000 in Staten Island’s District 31. Merging the infrastructure needed to manage these districts could generate savings and make school administration more efficient.
Many of these fixes are politically difficult, but all are necessary. A city in fiscal crisis should not continue to finance a school system that each year spends more and more money to educate fewer and fewer students.
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