The $75,000 Escape Hatch Rich Parents Will Use

Destroy personalized education and merit in schools and watch the public schools bleed out. That’s exactly what’s happening in New York City—and the playbook should look painfully familiar to anyone who’s watched San Francisco’s school system collapse.

NYC kindergarten enrollment has plummeted 15% since 2019. In exit surveys, parents cited “lack of rigor” as the top reason they left. And now Zohran Mamdani, th mayor of New York, wants to eliminate the gifted and talented program entirely at the kindergarten level, with plans to phase it out through second grade.

This hurts low-income and middle-class kids the most. Luxury beliefs in action.

The $75,000 Escape Hatch

While progressive politicians destroy public school quality, wealthy families simply write checks. Bloomberg reports that top NYC private schools—Spence, Dalton, Nightingale-Bamford—now charge over $70,000 annually. Avenues, a popular option for Manhattan elites, will top $75,000 in tuition.

That’s more than most elite colleges. And tuition rose a median of 4.7% across 15 schools, outpacing inflation. The exit door is getting more expensive every year—but for families who can afford it, it’s always open. For everyone else? You’re stuck in whatever the ideologues leave behind.

Parents Already Voting With Their Feet

This isn’t speculation. Yiatin Chu documented the enrollment collapse already underway. Fifteen percent fewer kindergarteners since 2019. That’s before Mamdani’s policies take effect. Imagine the exodus after.

We’ve seen this movie in San Francisco. SFUSD’s “equity” lottery made schools more segregated and helped drive a 4,000-student enrollment collapse—a social experiment on kids that backfired, bankrupted the district, and still hasn’t been repealed.

NYC is walking directly into the same trap. Why do progressives keep running the same failed experiment?

Luxury Beliefs, Real Victims

As the NY Post detailed, Manhattan Institute fellow Danyela Souza warned that Mamdani’s plan “could spark an exodus from the city public school system.” She didn’t mince words: “Mamdani is eliminating opportunities for low and middle income students to access an advanced education.”

Here’s the bitter irony: Mamdani himself attended Bank Street School, where tuition runs up to $66,000 a year. He benefited from elite education, then went to Bronx High School of Science—which requires strong test scores to enter. Now he wants to deny that same pathway to kids whose parents can’t write six-figure checks.

This is the definition of luxury beliefs: policies that make the believer feel virtuous while harming those without options. Rich families have the $75K escape hatch. Working families don’t. The same progressives who claim to champion equity are destroying the one meritocratic pathway poor kids have.

Every time progressives destroy merit-based education, they claim it’s for “equity.” The result is always the same: rich kids go private, poor kids lose their ladder. Mamdani’s plan isn’t education reform—it’s class warfare dressed up as compassion. Public schools destroyed, no pathway up anymore. Social mobility goes to zero for middle and working class kids.

NYC parents: fight this before your kids pay the price.