Where are all the "non-public" kids going?

[Anonymous]

So I was doing some research on an unrelated matter and I found the school district data summary page on https://www.schools.nyc.gov/school-life/space-and-facilities/district-planning/2025-2026-data-summaries. They have data not only on kids attending public school but also on other kids who are resident in their districts, and something that stuck out for me is that there are a *ton* of kids attending "non-public" school. For middle school, in D2 there are 5,416 kids attending public schools in the district and 5,320 attending non-public schools; for D3, those numbers are 2,270 and 2,547. I had Claude add up the citywide totals - D14 and D20 in Brooklyn also have enormous numbers - and citywide there are a total of *49,000* kids attending "non-public" middle school, or 16,000 per grade. (public is about 210,000, of which 40,000 or so are charter schools)

SS and K-8 schools tend to have around 50-60 kids per middle school grade, co-ed K-12 around 100-120, so even ignoring Westchester/LI, in NYC alone there are enough kids attending "non-public" school to fill up like 200 schools. So even if you add up every TT/2T/3T school routinely discussed in these forums, it seems like we're only covering a small fraction of the total.

So my question is: where are all the other kids going? Are there just a gigantic number of neighborhood parochial schools or whatever that nobody talks about, are there a bunch of lower-tier private schools that never come up because they're not in the Upper East Side, are they counting kids in boarding school (do that many kids attend boarding school in middle school)? It feels like maybe there's some myopia about the NYC private school experience here, and perhaps people might even be missing out on good options for their kids because of this obsession with a tiny subset of schools.

[Anonymous]

Parochial schools are much more common than independent private schools. Nationally, only 1/4 of private school students go to non-religiously independent schools. I would also not trust Claude for 100% accurate data.

[Anonymous]

I had Claude fetch and scrape the data from the PDFs, not generate it on its own. Here's the data if anyone wants to spot check it themselves:

NYC Middle School District Retention, 2024-25
Source: NYCPS Office of District Planning, 2025-26 Data Summaries

District 1 (Manhattan): 1,443 public / 213 non-public / 56 other / 1,712 total residents (84.3% public, 12.4% non-public)
District 2 (Manhattan): 7,300 public / 5,320 non-public / 101 other / 12,721 total residents (57.4% public, 41.8% non-public)
District 3 (Manhattan): 3,061 public / 2,547 non-public / 69 other / 5,677 total residents (53.9% public, 44.9% non-public)
District 4 (Manhattan): 2,418 public / 298 non-public / 116 other / 2,832 total residents (85.4% public, 10.5% non-public)
District 5 (Manhattan): 3,376 public / 486 non-public / 134 other / 3,996 total residents (84.5% public, 12.2% non-public)
District 6 (Manhattan): 5,015 public / 515 non-public / 93 other / 5,623 total residents (89.2% public, 9.2% non-public)
District 7 (Bronx): 4,668 public / 233 non-public / 164 other / 5,065 total residents (92.2% public, 4.6% non-public)
District 8 (Bronx): 7,269 public / 749 non-public / 237 other / 8,255 total residents (88.1% public, 9.1% non-public)
District 9 (Bronx): 8,787 public / 368 non-public / 261 other / 9,416 total residents (93.3% public, 3.9% non-public)
District 10 (Bronx): 11,612 public / 1,052 non-public / 286 other / 12,950 total residents (89.7% public, 8.1% non-public)
District 11 (Bronx): 10,279 public / 1,002 non-public / 331 other / 11,612 total residents (88.5% public, 8.6% non-public)
District 12 (Bronx): 5,810 public / 268 non-public / 193 other / 6,271 total residents (92.7% public, 4.3% non-public)
District 13 (Brooklyn): 2,904 public / 1,461 non-public / 69 other / 4,434 total residents (65.5% public, 33.0% non-public)
District 14 (Brooklyn): 2,821 public / 5,461 non-public / 62 other / 8,344 total residents (33.8% public, 65.5% non-public)
District 15 (Brooklyn): 6,302 public / 2,465 non-public / 101 other / 8,868 total residents (71.1% public, 27.8% non-public)
District 16 (Brooklyn): 2,145 public / 139 non-public / 56 other / 2,340 total residents (91.7% public, 5.9% non-public)
District 17 (Brooklyn): 4,737 public / 1,594 non-public / 107 other / 6,438 total residents (73.6% public, 24.8% non-public)
District 18 (Brooklyn): 4,223 public / 442 non-public / 108 other / 4,773 total residents (88.5% public, 9.3% non-public)
District 19 (Brooklyn): 6,803 public / 346 non-public / 174 other / 7,323 total residents (92.9% public, 4.7% non-public)
District 20 (Brooklyn): 11,420 public / 6,362 non-public / 194 other / 17,976 total residents (63.5% public, 35.4% non-public)
District 21 (Brooklyn): 7,544 public / 3,672 non-public / 143 other / 11,359 total residents (66.4% public, 32.3% non-public)
District 22 (Brooklyn): 8,747 public / 3,483 non-public / 144 other / 12,374 total residents (70.7% public, 28.1% non-public)
District 23 (Brooklyn): 3,236 public / 96 non-public / 148 other / 3,480 total residents (93.0% public, 2.8% non-public)
District 24 (Queens): 13,645 public / 946 non-public / 279 other / 14,870 total residents (91.8% public, 6.4% non-public)
District 25 (Queens): 7,835 public / 1,222 non-public / 121 other / 9,178 total residents (85.4% public, 13.3% non-public)
District 26 (Queens): 5,426 public / 717 non-public / 72 other / 6,215 total residents (87.3% public, 11.5% non-public)
District 27 (Queens): 11,103 public / 1,792 non-public / 322 other / 13,217 total residents (84.0% public, 13.6% non-public)
District 28 (Queens): 7,855 public / 1,249 non-public / 235 other / 9,339 total residents (84.1% public, 13.4% non-public)
District 29 (Queens): 7,796 public / 830 non-public / 225 other / 8,851 total residents (88.1% public, 9.4% non-public)
District 30 (Queens): 8,792 public / 775 non-public / 169 other / 9,736 total residents (90.3% public, 8.0% non-public)
District 31 (Staten Island): 14,155 public / 2,835 non-public / 425 other / 17,415 total residents (81.3% public, 16.3% non-public)
District 32 (Brooklyn): 5,118 public / 142 non-public / 158 other / 5,418 total residents (94.5% public, 2.6% non-public)

Citywide (D1–D32): 211,489 public / 49,291 non-public / 6,164 other / 266,944 total residents (79.2% public, 18.5% non-public)

"Public" = district schools + out-of-district public schools + charter schools. "Other" = District 75/79 (special ed/alternative programs).

[Anonymous]

Homeschooling has become much more popular.

[Anonymous]

Yeshiva’s account for a large portion of what you’re discovering but also local Catholic and Christian schools are prevalent in a demographic that doesn’t frequent this site. It’s also unclear if charter schools are counted as public in your data but if not that’s the largest bucket, I’d guess.

[Anonymous]

D2 is not losing to Catholic parochial schools...there are so few left. Multiple have closed in the last 5 years alone. There are only a few left south of 96th Street. St. Joe's on UES, St. Stephen's on UES, Blessed Sacrament (UWS), Transfiguration (Chinatown) and Epiphany (Gramercy). That's it, I think? And there aren't a lot of high schools either, in the grand scheme of things. Anecdotally, those numbers seem right for public vs private in my neighborhood in D2 at least. We've sent our child to public school, and then pulled them and put them in private school. We know a ton of people who did the same thing over the course of elementary school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:D2 is not losing to Catholic parochial schools...there are so few left. Multiple have closed in the last 5 years alone. There are only a few left south of 96th Street. St. Joe's on UES, St. Stephen's on UES, Blessed Sacrament (UWS), Transfiguration (Chinatown) and Epiphany (Gramercy). That's it, I think? And there aren't a lot of high schools either, in the grand scheme of things. Anecdotally, those numbers seem right for public vs private in my neighborhood in D2 at least. We've sent our child to public school, and then pulled them and put them in private school. We know a ton of people who did the same thing over the course of elementary school.

Thanks.

But if you just count D2 and D3 that's still 8000 kids attending private middle school, or 2600 per grade, which is still like 30-35 schools' worth; admittedly, those are the richest parts of NYC and the most likely to send their kids to private school, but nevertheless it's not like *every* kid at HM or Trinity lives in the UES/UWS, so it suggests that an awful lot of kids are attending private schools outside of the small set people talk about here.

[Anonymous]

There are also bunch of kids attending various special needs schools - Windward, Gaynor, Gateway, etc. Not a huge number but non-trivial.

[Anonymous]

There are also a ton more private schools than the ones talked about on this board. I know, shocking, but there are schools other than "TT" schools that people will pay for.

[Anonymous]

This page shows 32 schools in UES not even including schools like St Ignatius Loyola which is pretty popular (so the real number of UES schools is probably much higher)

[Anonymous]

https://abacusguide.com/nyc-private-schools-directory/