NYC public schools boss says mammoth $41.2B budget ask still isn’t enough — wants ‘hundreds of millions’ more

The Department of Education’s mammoth $41.2 billion budget plan for next year is a whopping third of the entire city’s — but it still won’t be enough, school officials claimed Thursday.

Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos told the City Council that the DOE still needs “hundreds of millions more” to enact a controversial new class size law, plus additional bucks for Gov. Kathy Hochul’s pending phone ban.

“We also have major expenses looming on the horizon, most significantly compliance with the class size mandate,” she pointedly told councilmembers during a budget hearing.

“This funding and headcount are not currently in the preliminary budget.”

The city will need to hire 4,000 more educators to deal with the new United Federation of Teachers-backed requirement that classroom sizes max out at 20 students for early childhood grades and up to 25 for high school, the chancellor said.

The gobsmacking, arguably vague cash plea comes as New York City schools — the largest district in the nation — faces years of declining enrollment, middling test scores and chronic absenteeism, despite raking in ever-increasing mountains of dough.

“People need to stop pretending that the NYC Department of Education is about serving the kids,” said Ken Girardin, research director of the Empire Center for Public Policy.

“It’s about job creation for adults. Accept that and everything else makes sense.”

The proposed education budget for the 2026 fiscal year is already an enormous slice — 36% — of Mayor Eric Adams’ $114.5 billion total spending plan, even without the additional cash.

If approved by the Council, the school budget would increase by nearly $820 million compared to this fiscal year’s adopted budget, education officials said.

Spending per-student is already at a whopping $32,284, even as enrollment has dipped 12% since the 2018-19 school year, according to an Empire Center report.

“Enrollment in the city public school system has declined dramatically, but there has not been an adjustment in the budget,” said Danyela Souza Egorov, senior policy fellow at the Manhattan Institute think tank who authored a recent report that found a whopping 35% of city students are chronically absent.

“The question that policy makers should ask is how do we improve learning outcomes for New York City school children, rather than asking for more money.”

The city is simply paying more and educating fewer kids, said Girardin, noting enrollment used to stand at 1.1 million kids.

Now, the school system has roughly 900,000 students, city schools data shows.

Girardin argued the class size law — signed by Hochul in 2022 and only affecting New York City — will only make things worse.

The UFT strongly pushed for the law, contending it would improve conditions in classrooms and help better educate kids.

The bill caps kindergarten through third grade classes at 20 students, with further limits for fourth through eighth grade at 23 students and high school classes at 25 students.

The city has to slash classroom sizes by the 2027-28 school year under the law.

Adams and his administration fiercely opposed the mandate, maintaining it’d saddle the city with roughly $500 million a year just for elementary schools — with no real help from the state.

DOE officials didn’t respond to The Post’s request for estimates of how much exactly they expect to pony up in the coming school year on the class size law.

They also didn’t respond to a request for the expected cost of Hochul’s proposed cell phone ban, which Aviles-Ramos said required increased funding to make it effective and sustainable.

The governor has also proposed a statewide cell phone ban, a much-need step, but one that requires increased funding to make it an effective and sustainable effort,” Aviles-Ramos said.

Beyond paying for the class size law, the proposed budget calls for $7.7 billion for pension and debt-related funds and $816.6 more in spending than last year’s adopted budget.

And that’s not all — the nearly billion-dollar jump doesn’t account for the fact that the DOE is set to go over budget by more than $500 million this fiscal year.

That’s mostly due to so-called Carter Cases, in which parents can be reimbursed by the city school system if they enroll their child in private schools in cases where public schools can’t meet their kid’s special needs.

Eric Nadelstern, a former deputy chancellor in the DOE under Mayor Mike Bloomberg, said educators must demonstrate that spending is tied to student performance, not just keep asking for more money.

He said schools whose enrollments plummet should not be rewarded with the same amount of funding.

“Schools that lose students and can’t recruit new students should see budget cuts. Otherwise, you’re rewarding failure,” Nadelstern said, alluding to the “hold harmless” provision.

Recent scores showed just 33% of fourth graders were deemed “proficient” in math, and 28% in reading. Just 23% of eight graders were proficient in math, and 29% in reading.

The Council’s Committee on Education Chair Rita Joseph acknowledged the lagging test scores and truancy rates, but argued it showed school programs should get more funding.

“Our levels of chronic absenteeism are still higher than before the pandemic. Students are still recovering from learning loss and mental health issues are still of high concern … Now is not the time to slow down our investment while we look to support our teachers, students and families,” she said.

Council Member Robert Holden (D-Queens), meanwhile, called for a full audit of the DOE as he lambasted the class size law.

“The DOE already takes up a whopping one-third of the city’s budget, yet they’re demanding even more while many schools—especially in my district—lack the space to meet the class size mandate,” he said.

“Instead of throwing more money at the problem, we need a full audit, reforms to wasteful policies like the ‘rubber room,’ and a real plan to make DOE live within its means.”

— Additional reporting by Craig McCarthy