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Lisa Siegman, the principal of PS 3, worries that she doesn't have enough money to cover the basics, like a teacher in every classroom.

“We've been adding students for the past few years, and our budget has not been keeping pace with the number of students,” says Siegman.

She's far from alone. Overall, the Department of Education expects almost 12,000 additional students this fall and at least 2,500 fewer teachers.

School budgets are due on Friday and principals are struggling to make the numbers add up.

Matt Willoughby, principal of the Urban Assembly School for Design and Construction, where enrollment has also risen, faced a particularly tough hiring decision because of money.

“We wanted to hire two teachers this year, a science teacher and a special educator, and in the end, we had to make a decision between one of those two,” says Willoughby. So we hired a special educator, and we're trying to share with other schools just to even get one period of chemistry next year.”

He's also cut enrichment programs, raised class sizes and planned ahead.

“We used last year's money to buy as much paper as we could for this year because we knew supply money was going to be low,” says Willoughby. “If we had one less teacher, we'd have a lot more for supplies and per-session and things like that. We thought it was more important to have the teacher. We really would have liked to have two teachers — and paper.”

The principal at PS 3 says she just couldn't make it work.

“I've had budgets that were difficult to make, but if you were creative, you could always manage,” says Siegman.

She's filing an appeal, and she's not the only one.

At PS 11, the principal says he's also unable to staff his growing school with the money he was given. Principals have to either present a balanced budget or appeal for more money by Friday.

A DOE spokesperson says she doesn't yet know whether there will be an uptick in appeals. Last year, 166 schools appealed their budgets and 108 were approved.

“I've been here three years and there've been four cuts,” says Willloughby. “You are constantly adapting to doing more with less, and then you look and you are doing a lot more with a lot less.”