On a chilly Tuesday morning, P.S. 29 in Cobble Hill appears to be just another elementary school in New York. Children wearing puffer jackets, a few anxious parents juggling tote bags and coffee cups, and a custodian pulling a recycling bin to the curb. However, the school’s parent-teacher association brought in over a million dollars last year. One million. brought up by parents. for a single public school.
The combined revenue from the PTAs in District 23, which includes Ocean Hill and Brownsville, across the East River, was approximately $29,000. Not according to the school. In total. Spread over thousands of students, that is about the price of a used Honda Civic.
The Education Department first released the figures for the 2024–2025 school year, and they are the kind of numbers that make you read the line twice. The top 30 schools, or roughly 2.5% of the 1,240 schools in the data, raised almost half of the city’s PTA funds. The fact that about 390 schools reported raising nothing at all and another 330 did not report at all may indicate that their parent associations are primarily paper-based.
It’s easy to describe this as a tale of wealth, and it certainly is. However, it’s also possibly more uncomfortable and quieter. Core classroom teachers shouldn’t be paid with PTA funds, and they aren’t. The little, glamorous extras that eventually cease to feel like extras are what it pays for: a cherished art teacher who is kept on staff, a teaching assistant who is familiar with every child’s name, a functional air conditioner in June, and a coffee and bagel breakfast that makes the staff feel valued enough to return the following year.
In an email, Noah Strote, a father at P.S. 199 on the Upper West Side, succinctly stated that while it’s not the only factor influencing a child’s performance, it’s “definitely not an insignificant one.” The phrase sticks around because it’s what parents tell themselves when they’re attempting to be fair about something that, in their hearts, doesn’t feel fair at all.
A snowball is starting to form, according to Baruch College political scientist Carolyn Abott, who has been examining PTA data. Families with resources and time prefer schools that can provide more, and once they get there, they bring more resources and more time. In those areas, housing costs tend to rise. Parents who are politically active congregate. Additionally, the schools they abandon—those that are already attempting to accomplish more with less—discreetly lose an additional level of support.
The data itself is disorganized, which seems almost appropriate. The well-known fundraising powerhouse P.S. 199 made no reports. For a brief moment, P.S. 133 in Boerum Hill seemed to have raised $76 million, but a co-president explained that it was actually closer to $760,000, which is still a huge amount. Before someone discovered the same kind of mistake, P.S. 60 in Queens appeared to be a $2 million juggernaut. Since the numbers are self-reported and not audited, the actual disparity may be even greater than it appears.
The school funding formula allocates more public funds to students with greater needs, as city officials correctly point out. For instance, last year, P.S. 150 in District 23 spent roughly $46,000 per student, while P.S. 29 spent about $17,000. It’s a true counterweight. However, because the PTA funds are purchasing something different—a culture, continuity, and a feeling that the building’s adult residents are also being taken care of—it doesn’t entirely allay the anxiety.
This data is a starting point, according to Councilman Mark Treyger, who advocated for its public release. That seems appropriate. Nothing is fixed by the numbers alone. Finally, they simply make it more difficult to act as though the gap doesn’t exist.
