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.
