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District 28 leaders review FY25 allocations and explain Fair Student Funding
Summary
Superintendent Dr. Eric Blake walked Community Education Council District 28 through New York City Public Schools' $40.8 billion FY25 budget, the city's funding sources and how fair student funding (FSF) allocates the bulk of school dollars; district 28 was shown a $640 million allocation with 75% delivered via FSF.
District 28 Superintendent Dr. Eric Blake told the council that the New York City public school system's FY25 budget is $40.8 billion and that most day-to-day spending for schools is allocated through a program called Fair Student Funding.
"The purpose of tonight is to look at your budget, to do the budget presentation, to understand the review of the New York City, the public school's budget, review fair student funding, and to review the school budget web pages," Dr. Eric Blake said, opening his presentation.
The nut graf: The presentation aimed to give parents and CEC members a plain-language explanation of where city, state and federal money flows, what FSF pays for and how principals and School Leadership Teams (SLTs) decide individual school spending. That context matters to parents because FSF is the single largest stream of school-level money and determines staffing and program priorities at each school.
Dr. Blake and budget staff broke the citywide numbers down to the district level. The DOE's FY25 budget was presented as $40,800,000,000 total, about $32,284 per student. The city supplies roughly 58% of that total, the state about 36% and the federal government about 6%, according to slides shown to the council.
District 28's allocation for 2024'25 was shown as $640,000,000. Fair Student Funding accounts for about $477,000,000 of that total, or roughly 75 percent of the district allocation. Blake emphasized FSF's purpose: to route dollars to schools based on student enrollment and weighted student needs.
"FSF makes up about two-thirds of most K'12 New York City public school budgets," the presentation said. FSF is composed of a foundation allowance for all schools, per-pupil allocations that reflect the citywide per-capita labor cost, and weights that increase funding for students with greater needs: special education levels, English language learners, students in temporary housing and other categories.
Budget staff Annie Peralta and Brenda (budget team members) answered technical questions and pointed meeting participants to the DOE's public "school budget" web pages and the FSF lookup on the DOE website where parents can search by school to see a school's allocation and budget categories.
Discussion and context: Blake stressed principals have flexibility to spend FSF dollars to match school needs but that superintendents must approve school budgets to ensure alignment with the school's Comprehensive Education Plan (CEP). He also described central categories of DOE spending that are not part of FSF, such as pension and benefit costs, charter school payments, debt service and nonpublic placement for special education.
What happened next: Blake and the budget staff invited council members and parents to follow-up with district budget staff and to use the online tools; no formal council vote or policy change was proposed at the meeting.
Ending: The presentation concluded with an offer from the district budget team to return for detailed, school-level Q&A and with a reminder that FSF allocations, weights and per-pupil rates are updated annually and posted on DOE public pages.
