“NYC public schools offer a key opportunity for comprehensive climate action,” says New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
In fact, the Mamdani administration is so concerned about the “present and future impacts of the climate crisis” that it wants to spend $3.3 billion “revitalizing our public schools with healthy, green infrastructure.”
Officially called “Green Schools for a Healthier New York City,” Mamdani’s pet project seeks to “renovate 500 public schools with renewable energy infrastructure,” “build 500 green schoolyards,” “transform 50 schools into resilience hubs,” and “combat environmental racism in NYC.”
Make no mistake, this is nothing more than virtue signaling and another attempt to shovel a few billion bucks into the climate change industrial complex’s coffers. It certainly is not about improving NYC public schools.
Across nearly all metrics, NYC public schools are failing.
According to the New York City Public Schools (NYCPS) website, NYCPS is “the largest school district in the United States” with more than 900,000 students and 1,597 public schools.
Unsurprisingly, NYCPS has an enormous budget. This year, NYCPS will spend $42.8 billion in total. Out of that substantial sum, less than 40 percent is allocated for “K-12 Schools and Instruction.”
Astonishingly, NYCPS will spend more money this year on its “Employee Pension and Benefits” ($8.5 billion), “School Operations” ($5.4 billion), and “Debt Payments” ($3.8 billion) than it does on all its student instructional services.
The only way these budget allocations could make any modicum of sense would be if NYC public schools were doing a fantastic job educating the nearly one million students under their stewardship and therefore could spend profligately on non-classroom items.
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However, that is not the case. Sadly, NYC public schools are completely failing to properly educate the overwhelming majority of students.
According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also called the Nation’s Report Card, NYC students are well below the national and state averages. Since 2015, NYC student scores have declined in nearly every subject. In 2024, only 23 percent of NYC eighth graders were proficient in math, and less than 30 percent were proficient in reading.
What’s more, based on a 2024 survey, more than half of NYC students “said harassment, bullying and intimidation by classmates was common,” and two-in-10 said they do not feel safe most days in school.
It should be noted that NYC spends more per student than any other city or district in the entire nation. Last year, the NYC Department of Education spent $42,168 per student, a nearly 40 percent increase from five years ago.
By no means do I derive pleasure citing the statistics above. Actually, it pains me to do so as a former public high school teacher.
But it must be done because these figures amply demonstrate that NYCPS is utterly incapable of providing a safe and sound learning environment for more than 900,000 students who have no choice but to attend these abysmal government-run schools.
The fact that Mayor Mamdani is not apoplectic with the substandard performance and reckless spending by NYCPS and demanding sweeping changes is frankly mind-boggling.
The fact that Mamdani is ignoring the elephant in the classroom and prioritizing “green schools” is a slap in the face to the parents of these students, who desperately want to send their children to safe, high-performing schools.
Although school choice options for New York City residents are limited, the concept is very popular. Nearly 80 percent of New York parents support education savings accounts (ESAs), which “establishes for parents a government-authorized savings account with restricted, but multiple uses for educational purposes.” Two-thirds of New Yorkers believe ESAs “should be available to all families, regardless of incomes and special needs.” And 60 percent of New Yorkers think their local school district “is going in the wrong direction.”
In New York, the average private school tuition cost is $22,380, about half of what NYCPS spends per student.
“Our public school system urgently needs investment as the climate crisis exposes its weakest points,” Mamdani says to justify his Green Schools program.
“Streets and schools are flooding as ever more powerful storms thrash the city,” he claims, wrongfully. “It’s time we invest in a healthy future for our children” and “bring green community infrastructure to every NYC neighborhood.”
If Mamdani really cared about saving NYC schools from the brink and actually wanted to deliver good and safe education to all, he would forgo the Green Schools gimmick and go all-in on school choice.
Chris Talgo (ctalgo@heartland.org) is editorial director at The Heartland Institute.
Editor’s Note: New York City is now facing the consequences of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s socialist takeover.
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