Schools chancellor says NYC not affected by teacher shortage — as more migrants continue to enroll

New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks brushed off the notion that a national teachers shortage has badly hurt the Big Apple — even as the number of city educators has notably dropped while more migrant students keep enrolling in public schools.

Banks insist🔯ed the shortage was not a local problem in city schools though he conceded the number of migrant s🎀tudents in the school increased to 26,000, while the number of teachers fell by 2,000 last fall.

“It’s interesting. The national teac🤡her shortage story is a ဣstory that is more acute in many other places around the nation,” Banks said.

“We do pretty well here in New York City. We don’t have ma♑jor sho🌟rtages of teachers. We have had long-standing shortages in some critical areas like math and special education, bilingual education.”

💦Banks waved off concerns in response to a question during an event with Mayor Eric Adams Wednesday at the Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn. He said officials would need to monitor the situation because of the number of migrant students 🍃keep beefing up enrollment.

He also acknowledged the DOE has had “long-standing” s꧅tru♎ggles staffing in critical areas like bilingual and special education.

He noted recent initiatives would allow some of the DOE’s teachers who have primary licenses in one subject to shift to their secondary lice💟nse in bilingual teaching that could help instruct young migrants.

Banks said there were about 21,000 migrants in classrooms a few da😼ys ago before that figure ballooned to more than 26,000.

The DOE ended last year with about 18,000 migrant students in the system,𝔉 which has about 1 million students.

“So the numbers are growing significantly,” Banks said. “So we are going to have to continue to assess where we are and our ability to mee🌺t this moment.”

City schools last year saw a higher rate of attrition among staffing levels t🏅han any other time in a decade, according to DOE 🏅reported on by

T꧃he number of educators decreased by more than 2,000 from the 2019-20 school to the 2022-23 school year, according to data released earlier th🥀is summer.  

Before the COVID-19 pandemic and at its worst, the pool of teachers was more than 78,000, but that number then fell to less𒆙 than 76,000 last fall.

While the teacher workforce has dropped about 3% over five years leading up to last fall, over the same period student enrollment decreased by 10%, acco🔯rding to the DOE.