An Annex grows in Brooklyn -- with alot of hoopla

There's no relief in sight from the residential building boom that is overtaking so many neighborhoods – and the capacity of the local schools to deal with all the extra students. According to the Daily News, last month saw an astonishing 17,128 new building permits.

“The June [building] permits were more than four times as many as in May, and as in June 2007 as well. They amount to more than half the 31,918 permits issued in all of 2007, and bring this year's total to 26,851. “

To make things worse, only 11,000 new school seats have been created in NYC over the last four years, with the DOE and the School Construction Authority asleep at the wheel.

Schools such as PS 116 in District 2 are so overcrowded that Kindergarten class sizes have swelled to 28. (See this letter to Chancellor Klein from Congresswoman Maloney, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, City Comptroller Bill Thompson and a large contingent of other state and city electeds. See also this report of a recent meeting with Tweed officials about the crisis of school overcrowding in District 2 in Manhattan, and this rally, where despite the claims the claims of Deputy Mayor Walcott that 3100 seats have been created, only 143 seats have actually been built.)

Meanwhile, what seems the entire city government shows up at press event to announce an annex to PS 8 in Brooklyn Heights. From the DOE press release:

At the announcement, Chancellor Klein was joined by Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott, Deputy Chancellor Kathleen Grimm, Chief Family Engagement Officer Martine Guerrier, SCA President Sharon Greenberger, Department of City Planning Director Purnima Kapur, PS 8 Principal Seth Phillips, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, Councilman David Yassky, State Assemblywoman Joan Millman, State Senator Martin Connor, PTA co-President Tim Eldridge, Superintendent James Machen, PS 8 Assistant Principal Robert Mikos, Downtown Brooklyn Partnership President Joe Chan, Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy Deputy Director Nancy Webster, and Community Education Council representatives for School District 13.

Wow! Never have so many high level city officials come together to announce what? An annex for an elementary school? You would think that we were all living in a town of 20,000 somewhere in Kansas.

One wonders why they didn’t fly in President Bush, Al Sharpton, Bill Gates, the Rockettes, and the entire 32^nd armored division of the Marine Corps for the occasion.

Conveniently missing from the press release is the information that the annex will hold only 150 students and won’t be ready, at the absolute soonest, until 2011.

This really represents small potatoes in a school system of over one million students, with such extreme levels of overcrowding and such huge class sizes – and a state mandate to reduce them sharply over the next four years.

Congresswoman Maloney Battles Bloomberg Administration Over School Crowding

While the mayor and chancellor were off in Washington seeking to burnish their images as school reformers, their poor management of the school capacity crisis was drawing sharp criticism here from a Manhattan Congressional representative.

Last Monday, at a meeting called by Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, a broad array of Manhattan elected representatives pressed Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott for action on the growing school capacity crisis in Manhattan. The meeting had taken three months to arrange due to the refusal of the administration to meet. But Maloney has been determined to hold the Bloomberg administration accountable. As Maloney told the The Villager newspaper who covered last week's meeting:

“When you’re constantly called to task, you can’t be telling people that you won’t meet with them,” she said of D.O.E.

Maloney explained that the flurry of action is what happens “when it gets to the point where you can’t walk down the street or go to church without your constituents coming up to you and saying it’s overcrowded,” noting that two-thirds of schools in the district were above capacity.

At a press conference held today at PS 116 with parents and lcoal electeds, Maloney cited how rampant residential development in the area has outstripped school capacity. While the mayor and chancellor travel the nation trumpeting their "successes", Manhattan parents have been left to contemplate 10:20 am lunches, kindergartens of 28, lost cluster rooms and shuttered G&T programs.

See story here on NY1 and press release here. Also the Daily News article: Protest vs. school crowding.

Overcrowding Rally Rocks City Hall

Bravo to the parents of P. S. 234, 89, and 116 for organizing a tremendous rally at City Hall last week (6/26) to protest school overcrowding.

These three schools face truly crisis situations next fall, when booming enrollments will overflow their kindergartens. A recent "blueprint" from the DOE to address overcrowding in D2 offered only cosmetic solutions. P. S. 234 and 89 at least have the prospect of two new schools on the distant horizon (Beekman and the so-called Green School), but 234 parent Eric Greenleaf estimates that by the time these two schools open the downtown population will see enough new children to open a third. P. S. 116 has no relief in sight. Next year they will have kindergartens of 28 and may be busing kids ten blocks south to the American Sign Language school. Cluster rooms are disappearing, and kindergartens swelling into the high twenties.

Parents from these schools mobilized families from throughout the city to march on City Hall after school let out on Thursday to demand a capital plan that realistically addresses the city's needs for seats and real short-term solutions to current overcrowding. The day began at Teardrop Park in Battery Park City, where small dissidents made signs and celebrated the end of school on a very long slide. The rally moved to City Hall at 3:30, and at 4:00 protesters were addressed by a number of elected officials and parent leaders: Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer; Councilmember Alan Gerson; Chair of Community Board 1 Julie Menin; Matthew Borden, Community Liaison and education advisor for Assemblymember Deborah Glick; representatives for Representative Carolyn Maloney and Representative Jerrold Nadler; John Scott, Vice President of the Community Education Council for District 2; and Cynthia Wachtell and Paula Seefeldt of the Kids Protest Project, which has been delivering kids’ pleas to preserve school budgets to City Hall for weeks. P. S. 3 parent Robert Ely spoke of efforts to convert state property at 75 Morton Street to school space. State Senator Martin Connor said the crisis in overcrowding originates with mayoral control, and that Senate hearings on school governance will begin this summer. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver walked through the crowd and spoke with many parents and children to give them his support.

Organizers estimate that in the neighborhood of three hundred protesters showed up for the rally. City parents mourn that kids should face such conditions when they return to school this fall, but at least this latest DOE fiasco has brought to parent activism a new bunch of motivated and imaginative parents who in a short time have done much good. Now to the big job of pressing for an increased five-year capital plan for school construction this fall, in a city faced with shrinking budgets.

Update: See the Downtown Express about this rally, and about how DOE forced the PTA of PS 89 to take down a banner reading “STOP Overcrowding Our Schools” that was hanging from the school beforehand.

Funny, when they made all schools hang banners publicizing the highly controversial Broad prize when they won it. There seems to be a double standard here.