(Bloomberg) -- New York City schools Chancellor David Banks is confident he can reverse citywide enrollment declines through a slate changes, including an expanded gifted and talented program and a fully virtual school alternative.

Banks has made it a priority to stem the outflow of students, which has impacted all boroughs, and put a dent in the department’s budget. Banks said greater engagement is central to his vision for running the school system, along with moving away from a one-size-fits-all approach to education policy.

City schools have lost some 120,000 students over the last five years, a decline that accelerated during the pandemic and tracks national trends in urban schools. Officials are still trying to understand where exactly students are going -- some have left the district for parochial or private schools, while others have left the city entirely. 

“When you lose numbers like that, you lose dollars as well,” Banks said in an interview Tuesday. “If that trend continues, then there’s no question it will ultimately hit the quality of what we’re doing in our schools,” adding he is confident the district can reverse the trend.

One retention strategy is bolstering the city’s gifted and talented program in an appeal to families that feel constrained by their schools’ academic rigor. On Thursday, Banks announced plans to grow the program by roughly 1,100 seats in kindergarten and third grade, reversing a proposal by former Mayor Bill de Blasio at the end of his term to scrap the program. 

Banks also pointed to the creation of a completely virtual school, which is currently in the works at the city’s Department of Education, and an embrace of more blended instruction. Some families thrived in remote setups during the pandemic, he said, and a number refused to send their children back for a period at the beginning of this school year because there wasn’t any alternative to in-person.

The department is assessing the scale of both academic and emotional disruption from the pandemic, partly through more direct enaggement with families. He would like to see a shift away from standardized testing and more performance-based assessments.

The New York City Department of Education received about $7 billion in stimulus funds between the American Rescue Plan and the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act. The district had planned to spend about $3 billion in fiscal year 2022, which ends June 30, but as of the first week of March, the nation’s largest district had spent less than half that amount, mostly on reopening expenses, according to a report from the city’s comptroller.

First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg said the report mis-characterized the pace of spending because the data doesn’t cover the entirety of the fiscal year. For instance, dollars used to improve the quality of air ventilation won’t be paid out until the end of the year, Weisberg said. 

In an attempt to streamline bureaucracy, the department has eliminated the position of executive superintendent and asked superintendents to reapply for their jobs, a move that will save the department roughly $2 million, Weisberg said. 

Banks said public schools are often associated with violence and learning problems, but there are a lot of success stories. A system to share the knowledge of how those schools thrive, including lessons from charter schools, will elevate the rest of the institutions, he said. 

“I have to make our traditional public schools more competitive and change the narrative,” he said. “There’s amazing work that’s actually happening in our public schools that nobody knows about.”

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