Flight from NYC’s regular public schools makes charters the best hope to save public education

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Fresh data show that half of all 32 New York City school districts have lost at least 10 percent of their enrollment these past five years, even as charter-school enrollment is up 31 percent, from 105,065 in 2017 to 138,648 last year. Families are clearly voting with their feet — as far as state law, which badly restricts charters’ growth, will allow.

State lawmakers need to do right by parents and lift the cap that prevents new city charters from opening.

Department of Education apologists blame random factors for the flight, including the pandemic. But the fact is that the DOE badly bungled the COVID challenge, driving families that could afford it to Catholic and private schools as well as to charters. (DOE rules meant charters couldn’t offer much in-person instruction, either, but they did far better at making remote classes work.)

For the last school year alone, public charter schools saw enrollment boom by nearly 10,000 even as DOE enrollment fell 4 percent — roughly 43,000 kids.

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s misrule has played a role, too: His administration’s heavy-handed reworking of admission rules for middle schools in Brooklyn’s District 15, previously one of the city’s academically strongest districts, has led to mass flight: Total enrollment is down 5.4 percent since 2017, while the kindergarten rolls plummeted 18 percent.

As Eric Adams and Kathy Hochul look to take over as mayor and governor, muscling the Legislature to lift the cap to let charters handle the full outflow from DOE schools may be the only way to save public education in the city.

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