Friday, March 22, 2019

New York City Open Data and Transparency and Efficiency

New York City government should have economies of scale, but we seem to have the opposite.  The bigger our government gets the more it wastes.

For example, the department of education student population is actually shrinking, yet the department of education budget is growing.

If we exclude the Pre Kindergarten programs which do not allow us to compare the like values because the Pre-Kindergarten programs actually are new areas which would mask the fact that the base department of education enrollment is going down.  The population of New York City is rising while the school enrollment is decreasing.  This seems to indicate that parents are choosing other options for their children instead of the department of education schools.

The history shows that for school year 2016-17 enrollment was 1,068,679 and dropped to 1,063,806 the following year. While the budget increased from $24,385,000 to $26,114,000

This is troubling since the parents seem to be voting with their feet and yet budgets seem to disregard this fact.

See https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2017/02/28/new-york-citys-education-budget-has-jumped-over-40-percent-in-10-years-heres-why/ and https://ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/staff-costs-and-pass-through-payments-to-charter-and-nonpublic-schools-propel-education-department-spending-preliminary-budget-2017.pdf and https://ibo.nyc.ny.us/fiscalhistory.html for additional reading and the source of the spending values.



YearTotal Enrollmenttotal enrollment K-12
2013-141,104,4791,048,745
2014-151,122,7831,056,380
2015-161,133,9631,062,116
2016-171,141,2321,068,679
2017-181,135,3341,063,806


yearDepartment of Education / CUNY Expenditures (in millions)
1980$3,040
1981$3,201
1982$3,511
1983$3,394
1984$3,817
1985$4,222
1986$4,616
1987$5,045
1988$5,544
1989$6,052
1990$6,676
1991$7,007
1992$7,084
1993$7,786
1994$7,914
1995$8,211
1996$8,183
1997$8,439
1998$9,176
1999$9,855
2000$11,058
2001$11,938
2002$12,133
2003$13,117
2004$13,554
2005$14,343
2006$15,344
2007$16,325
2008$17,476
2009$18,432
2010$19,130
2011$19,598
2012$19,879
2013$19,931
2014$19,525
2015$21,362
2016$22,929
2017$24,385
2018$26,114