Every school day morning Patti and Ron Reagan did this:

[meaculpa2011]

4. Right. My elementary school had...

2,000 students and that was back in the fifties. They put temporary buildings in the schoolyard to accommodate us.

I drove past there last week and the temporaries are gone because they replaced them with a five-story permanent extension.

Bye bye school yard. And they just built another 2,000-student K-6 school 5 blocks away.

There are apartment complexes in NYC that have 2,000 plus elementary school kids.

BTW: New York City DOE spends $18,000 per student and about half goes toward instruction.