When will taxpayers revolt over the obscene – Latest News
Jeff Bezos’ pointed remarks this week about the metropolis Department of Education’s horrific dysfunction solely start to explain the epic waste.
“If we ran Amazon the way New York City runs their school system, packages would take six weeks to arrive, we would charge you a $100 delivery fee and when the package did finally arrive, it would have the wrong item in it,” Bezos thundered Thursday.
Indeed. A current Citizens Budget Commission report particulars the grotesquery: New York City now spends $43 billion a 12 months on the common public faculties, amid plummeting enrollment, stagnating take a look at scores and continual absenteeism.
That’s more than most states spend on public faculties, and quantities to a nation-leading $44,000 per youngster, for a mediocre-at-best displaying on standardized math and studying assessments.
The DOE has 157,900 fewer college students than a decade in the past but it operates 39 more faculties, and 249 of the its 1,600 faculties (15%) operate under 50% capability.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani ought to be merging some faculties and shutting others, however the particular pursuits that feed off the system received’t have it, and certainly have written “hold harmless” into state law, preserving outlays for faculties which have misplaced more than half their enrollment.
More From Post Editorial Board
To his credit, faculties Chancellor Kamar Samuels has blasted the expensive “hold harmless” funding coverage in addition to the state’s even-more-insane class-size mandates, and Gov. Kathy Hochul obtained some aid on these fronts into the new state funds.
But spending on faculties will nonetheless devour more than a third of the metropolis’s $126 billion funds — paradoxically leaving little room for Mamdani to spend on any of his socialist concepts.
Get opinions and commentary from our columnists
Subscribe to our every day Post Opinion e-newsletter!
Thanks for signing up!
Fact is, public-school dysfunction is a prime purpose for younger households to flee New York: It’s a huge purpose why enrollment plunged 88,300 between the 2014-15 and 2020-21 college years earlier than dipping one other 69,600 children between 2020-21 and 2024-25.
And now the CBC estimates the scholar population may plunge one other 153,000 college students by 2034-35.
The system nonetheless has its gems — respectable neighborhoods faculties and elite ones like Stuyvesant HS, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech — however these successes survive regardless of the total system.
With spending rising at the same time as enrollment drops, you need to surprise how a lot the DOE would shell out to “educate” no children in any respect.
