New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks brushed off the notion that a national teachers shortage has badly hurt the Big Apple — even as the number of city educators has notably dropped while more migrant students keep enrolling in public schools.

Banks insisted the shortage was not a local problem in city schools though he conceded the number of migrant students in the school increased to 26,000, while the number of teachers fell by 2,000 last fall.

“It’s interesting. The national teacher shortage story is a story that is more acute in many other places around the nation,” Banks said.

“We do pretty well here in New York City. We don’t have major shortages of teachers. We have had long-standing shortages in some critical areas like math and special education, bilingual education.”

Banks waved off concerns in response to a question during an event with Mayor Eric Adams Wednesday at the Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn. He said officials would need to monitor the situation because of the number of migrant students keep beefing up enrollment.

He also acknowledged the DOE has had “long-standing” struggles staffing in critical areas like bilingual and special education.

He noted recent initiatives would allow some of the DOE’s teachers who have primary licenses in one subject to shift to their secondary license in bilingual teaching that could help instruct young migrants.

Banks said there were about 21,000 migrants in classrooms a few days ago before that figure ballooned to more than 26,000.

The DOE ended last year with about 18,000 migrant students in the system, which has about 1 million students.

“So the numbers are growing significantly,” Banks said. “So we are going to have to continue to assess where we are and our ability to meet this moment.”

City schools last year saw a higher rate of attrition among staffing levels than any other time in a decade, according to DOE stats reported on by Chalkbeat earlier this month.

The number of educators decreased by more than 2,000 from the 2019-20 school to the 2022-23 school year, according to data released earlier this summer.  

Before the COVID-19 pandemic and at its worst, the pool of teachers was more than 78,000, but that number then fell to less than 76,000 last fall.

While the teacher workforce has dropped about 3% over five years leading up to last fall, over the same period student enrollment decreased by 10%, according to the DOE.