Brian Ler on WNYC.

Now we'll dive into some shifting demographics in New York City's public schools ahead of the new school year.

Chalkbeat New York, the news organization that covers education,

took a look at the data and found that for the first time in eight years, student enrollment in

New York City public schools did not go down year over year. In fact, it went up slightly.

This shift is not just in numbers, but also in the composition of the student body. There are more

migrant students from Latin America and West Africa, not surprisingly, and more students who are

English language learners. More on these demographic shifts and their implications with Michael

Elson Rooney, a reporter for Chalk Beat, New York now. The headline for his story, as it's found

on Chalk Beat's website, has another demographic shift contained in it. Shifting New York City

School demographics, there are nearly as many Asian-American as black students. Hey, Michael,

welcome back to WNYC. Hey, Brian, great to be here. So for the first time in eight years,

eight years school enrollment did not go down. How many students are enrolled for 20, 24, 25,

if you know that number, and how big an increase are we talking about? Yeah, so we have the

data from this past school year.

So the final enrollment count for, you know, pre-K through 12 schools, not including charters,

was about 912,000 students, which is up about 6,000 from the previous school year.

And as you said, it is, you know, the first time in a long time that enrollment hasn't gone down.

You know, before the pandemic, there were kind of these long-term trends that had been driving enrollment down at a declining birth rate.

You know, more out migration from the city than in migration.

And then during the pandemic, you saw some really steep enrollment losses. And so for the first

time, that's, that's reversed. And, you know, thanks really in large part to this kind of historic

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