As enrollment and test scores hit a new low for New York City schools, spending has skyrocketed 33% since 2016 according to new data released on Tuesday by the Citizens Budget Commission (CBC) and parents want to know where all the money is going.

New York City is expected to spend a record amount of nearly $38,000 per K-12 student as test scores plummet, according to a Tuesday Citizens Budget Commission report.

Citizens Budget Commission estimates the shifts to cost approximately $1 million per day. Despite this, violence still makes an appearance along the subway line.

The report, from Citizens Budget Commission, or CBC, a budget watchdog group, comes as the education department faces 3% in cuts for next year. Mayor Eric Adams and the City Council are in the middle of budget planning for the next fiscal year, which begins on July 1.

Ana Champeny, CBC's vice president for research, called the approach to hold schools harmless for enrollment declines an "unwise decision."

With Mayor Eric Adams ordering budget cuts and state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli warning of a possible monster $14 billion city-cash shortfall by 2027, a new Citizens Budget Commission school-spending report couldn’t be more timely.

The cost per K-12 city Department of Education student totaled more than $37,000 for the fiscal year 2022 — and that figure is only expected to rise, surpassing $41,000 by 2026 if enrollment continues to drop off, the policy briefing by the Citizens Budget Commission found.

The nonprofit, nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission has identified what it says are up to $2.9 billion in recurring annual savings that could cover much of the authority’s looming deficit.

“These are the key driving factors,” said Ana Champeny, vice president for research at the Citizens Budget Commission. “But there were both increases in state and city support for Department of Education spending, so those are a little part of the story, as well.”

“New Yorkers have to realize that this is a significant budget hit,” said Andrew Rein, president of the fiscally conservative Citizens Budget Commission.

Fiscal hawks had a much different take. Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission, said the measures outlined in Jiha’s letter are “overdue” and “probably not enough” to avert fiscal calamity in the years ahead.

“No New York governor has ever tackled this the way she’s proposing to,” said Sean Campion, Director of Housing and Economic Development Studies at Citizens Budget Commission (CBC), a nonprofit group that has examined New York’s slow pace of housing growth and the impediments to fixing it. CBC, like Open New York and New York Housing Conference, is supportive of the Housing Compact.