Enrollment in New York Jewish community schools reached a new high of 162,894 students in Full Day Kindergarten through 12th in the September 2021 school year. This includes enrollment in Ungraded Schools. The Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council (OJPAC) gathered the numbers from data made available by the New York State Department of Education. This is the ninth consecutive year OJPAC released a Jewish school enrollment report.
Key numbers are as follows:
162,894 students enrolled statewide in Jewish schools, up from 157,801 students two years ago, 149,962 students five years ago, and 139,836 students ten years ago during the September 2011 school year. The current number is a 24.5% statewide enrollment increase over the last ten years and a 65% jump from 98,712 students twenty years ago in the September 2001 school year.
84,805 students enrolled in Jewish schools in Brooklyn, up from 83,617 students two years ago, 82,534 students five years ago, and 75,264 students ten years ago. Current enrollment is up 12.6% over the last ten years and 46.2% from 57,973 students twenty years ago.
32,435 students enrolled in Jewish schools in Rockland County, up from 29,642 students two years ago, 25,917 students five years ago, and 19,872 students ten years ago. Current enrollment is up 63.2% over the last ten years, and it is up 144% from 13,298 students twenty years ago.
14,862 students enrolled in Jewish schools in Orange County, up from 14,465 students two years ago, 12,191 students five years ago, and 9,678 students ten years. Current enrollment is up 53.5% over the last ten years and more than 200% from 4,938 students twenty years ago.
12,409 students enrolled in Jewish schools in Queens, up from 11,815 students two years ago, 11,299 students five years ago, and 9,229 students ten years ago. Current enrollment is up 34.4% over the last ten years and 74% from 7,135 students twenty years ago.
8,774 students enrolled in Jewish schools in Nassau country, up from 8,706 students two years ago, 7,501 students five years ago, and 6,941 students ten years ago. The current enrollment is up 26.4% over the last ten years and is up 37% from 6,391 students twenty years ago.
4,243 students enrolled in Jewish schools in Manhattan, down from 4,464 students five years ago and up 11.1% from 3,819 students twenty years ago. Meanwhile, 2,039 students enrolled in Jewish schools in Westchester, up from 1,710 students five years ago and up 29% from 1,583 students 20 years ago.
Twenty years ago, in the September 2001 school year, there were 470,872 students in non-public schools across NY. 98,712, or 21% of those students, were in Jewish schools. In the current year, non-public enrollment is at 381,652, of which 162,894 or 42.7% are in Jewish schools.
Recent Jewish school enrollment is most robust in Rockland County by multiple measures. For example, schools added more students in the last five years (6,518) than the two places with the most student growth after Rockland: 2,671 in Orange and 2,271 in Brooklyn. Rockland also had more than half of the statewide 12,932 student enrollment growth in those five years. In percentage, enrollment in Rockland Jewish schools is up 25.1% in the last five years, while enrollment rose 21.9% in Orange and only 2.7% in Brooklyn. Last year, Jewish school enrollment in Rockland was equivalent to 81.3% of the county's public schools, while the number is only 28.5% in Brooklyn, 25.9% in Orange, and 9.5% in Queens.
Yossi Gestetner, a co-founder of OJPAC, said, "taxpayers in New York spend on average in the range of $25,000 per public school student per year and only around $1,200 a year for private school students. This gap of $23,800 per student is $3.87 billion when multiplied by the 162,894 students in private Jewish schools. This savings is huge, especially since private school outcomes are generally more than substantially equivalent to public school outcomes."