Families at P.S. 309 describe the Bedford-Stuyvesant school as “small but mighty.”
“They have art, science, dance, cheerleading. So they have everything that your child would need,” said Lataljia Palmer. “They even have meditation. They do it all.”
Her daughter Egypt agrees. “They find ways to make learning fun.” She just completed second grade, which city data shows had 27 students in the whole grade last year, all in a single class.
With just 196 students in 3-K through fifth grade, P.S. 309 exemplifies one of the knottiest challenges facing the nation’s largest school system. Tiny schools are often beloved by their communities, but are costly and difficult to maintain.
New city data shows there are 219 schools with fewer than 200 students, and the number of these tiny schools has been rising. About a dozen are in District 16, which includes Bed-Stuy. Overall, Northeast Brooklyn, Upper Manhattan and the South Bronx have especially high concentrations of small schools, making them the next potential battlegrounds over school closures or mergers.
“We have many schools that are too small,” Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels said at an orientation for thousands of new teachers this month. “We have many schools that don’t have the resources that other programs have.”
Samuels has said repeatedly that tackling the rise in small schools will be a top priority this year. He took over as leader of the nation’s largest school system with a reputation for navigating the sensitive politics of school mergers.
He said last month there are 30,000 students at “small or under-enrolled” schools around the city.
There are no specific plans to close or merge P.S. 309 with other schools, and families there say they don’t see resources being stretched thin. But community-based discussions about how to handle enrollment declines in the neighborhood are underway. Over the summer, Samuels convened working groups to address the intertwined challenges of enrollment, class size and integration in five school districts, including Bed Stuy. He said he eventually plans to convene similar groups in all of the city’s 32 school districts.
Enrollment declines are upending public school budgets across the country. New York City Public Schools has around 885,000 students, compared to over 1 million a decade ago. Experts said the decline is driven by a combination of lower birth rates, families leaving the city and some parents opting for alternatives like charter schools.
Lataljia Palmer and her daughter Egypt Warner with her two sons, who all attend PS 309.
“This is not a trend that's likely to change,” said Ana Champeny, vice president for research at the Citizens Budget Commission. “This is a general trend in the country.”
But enrollment at city schools is declining unevenly, causing overcrowding at the most popular schools while smaller ones often face hurdles to pay for arts instruction, extracurriculars and after-school programs.
The Citizens Budget Commission argues that the city should prioritize repurposing underutilized space in school buildings with fewer students over new construction as the city seeks to comply with a new law capping class sizes.
The Citizens Budget Commission also called on the city to end the practice of funding schools at pre-pandemic enrollment levels, a policy called “hold harmless.” The policy has insulated school budgets from losing funds due to fewer students. But Champeny said that’s unsustainable.
“The city really needs to step back and think about how do we right-size school budgets, and how do we deal with declining enrollment going forward, so that we effectively use our dollars and our public school space,” Champeny said.
She said changes like closures, mergers or shifting students from overcrowded schools to less crowded ones will be necessary. Previous closures, mergers and enrollment caps have caused a firestorm, often touching on issues of race and equity.
Last spring, the education department backed off a plan to close a small Upper West Side middle school after a parent’s racist comments during a town hall grabbed headlines and prompted widespread condemnation.
Parents in Bed-Stuy mobilized against the education department’s plan to close P.S. 25, filing a legal challenge that staved off closure for years. When the elementary school shuttered in 2025, there were only 54 students left.
PS 309 in Bed-Stuy has just under 200 students.
NeQuan McLean, president of District 16’s Community Education Council, said maintaining such small schools can be a disservice to kids.
“We really understand that we're going to have to close schools, we're going to have to merge schools,” McLean said. “But if we do it with the community, people may not be happy. But if they want the best education experience for their kids, we're gonna do what's right for them.”
McLean is part of the chancellor’s working group in Bed-Stuy. ”We want to make sure that the DOE is not doing things to us, but we're doing things with them,” he said.
Some parents compare school closures and mergers to displacement through gentrification. While Bed-Stuy reflects national and citywide trends in terms of school enrollment, the issues are intensified by massive demographic shifts. According to a report from the Furman Center, the proportion of Black families in Bed-Stuy has declined from 74% in 2000 to 38% in 2024, often replaced by childless couples or families who choose to send their kids to a growing number of charter schools or schools outside the neighborhood.
Palmer recently moved her family to Brooklyn from Florida and switched her kids from a charter school. She said she loves their current school as it is, but believed mergers can succeed with community support.
“It depends,” she said. “Everything can possibly work if there's unison. … What I notice when they merge schools is there's a divide. So the adults who are making these decisions have [to] get along, first and foremost.”
