The city’s Department of Education is determined to attract families to the public school system — but is bracing for the reality if it can’t.

Schools Chancellor David Banks addressed the City Council’s education committee Monday on the proposed education budget, which accounts for student enrollment predictions and trends. Previously during the pandemic, schools did not lose funding if enrollment dropped.

According to the department, 120,000 students and families have left city schools over the last five years.

“How many more will come back? We don’t know. So we have to hope for the best but plan for the worst,” Banks told the committee.

Much of the loss can be attributed to a decline in new enrollees, the Independent Budget Office found this month. That includes families in some of the city’s traditionally most sought-after school districts, encompassing neighborhoods like Greenwich Village and Park Slope.

“For our schools to deliver on their original promise of serving as the engine of the American dream, we will need to do things very differently in ways that build trust one big step at a time,” said Banks.

To help get families back or new families enrolled, Banks said the system needs to connect students with the “real world” and “what matters to them,” and engage parents as partners.

“It is the biggest complaint that I’ve heard since I started as chancellor — parents have felt unheard and disrespected,” he said.

Banks added many schools experienced “big changes” in enrollment over the last few years that have not yet been reflected in their budgets. To soften the blow next school year and the following, the system will spend $160 million and $80 million in federal funding to partially make up those losses.

Council members pushed Banks on efforts to bolster enrollment, and how those tie into other problems the system faces, like run-down buildings and other crumbling infrastructure.

“You want to bring them back, but the environment has to also be inviting,” said Council Member Rita Joseph of District 40 in Brooklyn, a former teacher who heads the education committee. “Most of them look like jails. They said the colors are terrible, the settings are horrible.”

Banks, who had previously characterized shrinking enrollment as an “indictment” of the DOE he inherited, encouraged city leaders to foster a more positive, “new narrative” that could help reach families.

“We’re also trying to be fiscally prudent as well, as we look at what these trends are demonstrating. So it is disturbing, and so we’ve got tough choices that we have to make here,” Banks said.

“How do we get families to re-engage, and to trust, and want to come back into our schools? That will solve a lot of these other financial issues that we have.”