In 1988, I visited the Soviet Union on a high school trip during the heady days of perestroika. Trying to buy matryoshka dolls in a Moscow department store, I reached for my rubles, only to be redirected by the saleswoman to a second line to pay, and then a third line to collect them. It was a frustrating, inefficient system, but it kept many people employed and busy-seeming.
As a New York City public school parent, I too often see our school system run on that same make-work logic: employ as many adults as possible—at ever-increasing salaries—regardless of whether their services are redundant, unnecessary, or failing students.
Case in point: on October 28, the Panel for Educational Policy voted to retroactively pay $8.7 million to the United Federation of Teachers for supposedly creating “positive, nurturing environments” during the 2020–22 school closures and remote learning.
Set aside the grift of paying people again for work done years ago—they did no such thing. “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command,” Orwell wrote in his novel 1984. The UFT clearly took notes.
Every parent who had children in NYC schools during COVID knows there was no “nurturing environment.” Raising four kids in city schools throughout the pandemic, I saw student disengagement fueled by absentee teachers, canceled extracurriculars, rank hypocrisy from union leaders, and the complete abandonment of educational standards: tests and grades canceled, homework and attendance optional.
Even after teachers moved to the front of the vaccine line, the union fought to keep classrooms closed or operating on a nonsensical “hybrid” schedule. My kids’ schools ran “A,” “B,” and “C” rotations, leaving students in classrooms as little as one day a week. It was not nurturing; it was devastating.
The ever-changing COVID rules created endless bureaucratic business, but they did not help children learn. Even the union seems to recognize the shamelessness of taking extra pay for calamitous decisions that caused generational harm: City Comptroller Mark Levine had no knowledge of the payout before the vote.
Levine’s recent report, Tracking the K-12 Student Population in NYCP, notes that K-12 public school enrollment fell 19%—nearly 187,000 students—between 2013–14 and 2025–26. Last school year alone, the system lost 21,793 students, its steepest one-year drop since the pandemic. The School Construction Authority projects a loss of another 128,000 students by 2034–35.
The sharpest decline occurs between fifth and sixth grade, right when parents navigate middle school admissions. Sixth-grade classes are, on average, 15% smaller than kindergarten classes. Levine treats this trend like a Gordian knot, but the answer is simple: listen to families.
Parents have made clear that equity-focused admissions schemes are untenable and academic standards are too low. Just last week, citywide Council on High Schools representative Adriana Aviles shared that her son received straight A’s in middle school math—only to arrive in high school unable to do basic algebra or fractions. The system hid his learning loss behind inflated grades to make itself look good.
If City Hall wants to retain families, it should make schools family-friendly:
- Reallocate the $8.7 million. Direct that money to high-dosage, small-group tutoring for children who fell behind on bad Wi-Fi. Funding belongs to the children who were cheated, not the adults who cheated them.
- Eliminate middle school admissions hurdles. They are as useless as Soviet lines to buy a single doll. NYC could eliminate the fifth-grade cliff by converting elementary schools to K–8 models, providing continuous placement through eighth-grade while scrapping an expensive, parent-repelling application system. No 10-year-old benefits from working hard and acing tests only to lose a school placement to a bad lottery number.
- Provide zoned high schools. NYC students shouldn’t have to navigate two separate, stressful application cycles before even reaching college admissions.
- Restore real gifted and talented programs. Reintroduce testing for gifted and talented (G&T) entry and create screened academic tracks. Every family should have a quality local default school, with advanced options available for students who need them.
Opposition to these common-sense ideas comes from two camps: union officials protecting the bureaucracy and equity activists opposed to neighborhood-based and merit-screened programs.
Meanwhile, families are choosing alternatives. Parochial and private schools remain in high demand, charter enrollment continues to rise, and homeschooling has quadrupled. Families without these options simply leave the city.
NYC operates the nation’s largest school system, spending around $50,000 per pupil. Over my 16 years as a public school parent, spending has risen steadily while academic outcomes have fallen. Our schools are full of brilliant kids who deserve better. As long as City Hall prioritizes union demands over student learning, families will leave, enrollment will shrink, and the bills will keep growing.