The Big Apple’s fiscal watchdog warned the Mamdani administration that it should start planning to merge woefully under-enrolled public schools — as an eye-opening map showed the depth of the city’s education crisis.
City Comptroller Mark Levine said Wednesday that enrollment across the five boroughs has plummeted as he shared a map using Department of Education data that showed 219 schools with fewer than 200 enrolled students.
“A decade ago, NYC had over a million students in the public schools,” Levin said in a statement on X . “This year we have 885,000. Projected to decline by another 150k over next decade.
A decade ago, NYC had over a million students in the public schools. This year we have 885,000. Projected to decline by another 150k over next decade.
That drop has left 219 schools with enrollment of less than 200 students each. Some are so small they can't even field a sport… pic.twitter.com/HMtOy0P0sS
— Mark D. Levine (@MarkLevineNYC) September 16, 2026 “Some are so small they can’t even field a sport team,” Levine said. “This is not sustainable. As painful as it is, there is going to have to be some consolidation of schools with sharply declining enrollment.”
It’s just ...