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Mayor Seeks to Ease Local School Crunch

By HEATHER HADDON

When Mayor Bloomberg unveiled his five-year capital plan for schools this month, many close watchers of education issues were astonished. Bloomberg is looking to infuse $13.1 billion into new school construction and rehab for existing buildings.

For the schools in the former District 10 (now part of the larger Region 1), the plan, which at this point is little more than a wish list, allocates 10 building projects totaling roughly 9,000 seats. (In comparison, 10,000 seats were added through 14 new buildings in the district during the entire last decade.) The seven new and three leased buildings would include two early childhood schools (kindergarten through third grade), five elementary/middle schools, and three middle school/high schools. 

While the plan does not pinpoint where the projects might rise, a Department of Education addendum did note which uncompleted plans would be recycled from the previous capital plan. The one remaining local project -- to add high school grades to the Jonas Bronck Academy -- was on that list, according to Council Member Oliver Koppell.

The total allotment for the district is the biggest for any single district in the city. Half of the Bronx' total building projects would fall in District 10. 

"I'm really surprised ... that seems high to me," said PS 280 Principal Gary LaMotta. "But whether we get the money is another question."

With the city expecting Albany to pick up more than half of the tab, LaMotta is right to harbor doubts. Bloomberg is banking on a recent state court ruling that requires the state legislature to devise a fairer funding formula for city education spending by next June. But if other states are any guide, today's school kids will be college graduates by the time the politicians figure it all out.

"He's really going out on a limb here," Koppell said. But the former School Board 10 president didn't consider the plan completely pie-in-the sky. "It depends on how the city and state are doing financially," he said.

Regardless, the plan is unprecedented. Since the early 1990s, many reports documenting the city's ill-repaired and overcrowded schools called for fantastic funding amounts -- none of which materialized. The city comptroller estimated that the schools needed almost $29 billion in a 1998 study. Before becoming chancellor, Harold Levy authored an influential report calling for $7 billion in repairs alone.

While proposing $11 billion, former Chancellor Rudy Crew saw his total capital plan whittled down to roughly $7 billion by former mayor Rudy Giuliani. Six construction projects for District 10 were pushed out in the process. Much of what was left never translated into new schools, as mismanagement and cost overruns ate up billions. 

If the mayor's plan does come to fruition to any significant degree, it could end a long dry spell for new school construction and rehabilitation in the area (see chart). No new schools were built in the area under the last capital plan, though District 10 has long held the title of one of the most overcrowded in the city. The district is currently short roughly 2,000 seats, according to recent community school board estimates. 

"A lot of schools are beyond capacity locally," LaMotta said. While the situation improved immensely when PS 280 stopped sharing space with neighboring MS 80, LaMotta still feels the pinch. He rattled off a number of pressing space concerns: no storage space or basement, speech therapy classes in the hallway, and other special ed programs in the assistant principal's office. 

"These are creative kinds of measures we're not really happy about doing," he said, "and we're not nearly as crowded MS 80."

There are 166 too many students currently enrolled at MS 80 (or 10 percent over capacity), according to data in a recently released City Council report. Other area schools are even worse off. PS 56 in Norwood houses 400 kids, which puts it at 167 percent capacity. Several schools are at roughly 130 percent capacity, including PS 8, 33 and 246. Other crowded schools include MS 45, PS 94 and PS/MS 95. 

Koppell thinks the district's greatest need falls in the center of former District 10, including Kingsbridge and North Fordham. "PS/MS 95 is heavily overcrowded, along with many of the schools on the [Grand] Concourse," he said. "PS 246 just ought to be replaced."

PS 246 Principal Jackquelyn Young agrees. "We have to bus kindergartners to PS 209 and 257 ... and our fifth grade is bursting at the seams," Young said. The North Fordham school, originally a home for the deaf, lacks a gym or adequate storage space. Its classrooms are unusually small. "We want to have classroom libraries that are more extensive, but there's not enough room," she said.

Nearly all area schools utilize transportable classrooms and satellite buildings to help with their crunch, and many of these "temporary" spaces are over capacity. One annex at PS/MS 95 has double the intended number of students. Other schools with overcrowded transportables include PS 33, 46 and 94.

But nowhere are seats in such demand as in high schools. Walton is the borough's overcrowding champion, falling short by a massive 1,300 seats. The school is currently at 167 percent capacity. DeWitt Clinton is also seriously strapped with 600 too many students. 

Most Bronx high schools are feeling burned by a nearly 5,000 seat shortage. "All of our high schools are running at 125 to 175 percent overcapacity," said Don Bluestone, chair of Community Board 7's Education Committee. Several factors have created that gap, including the new smaller high schools occupying larger schools, the scaling-down of failing schools, and a growing school-age population. 

Educators say the space shortage affects students' ability to learn. "If you want to give kids a well-rounded education, you need the computer and science labs that many schools don't have because of space issues," LaMotta said. And even when those facilities exist, they are stretched thin. Teacher Ester Wendoff is hard pressed to show PS 246's journalism club how to lay out their newsletter because of constant computer lab demand.

In addition to the educational sacrifices, safety is often strained. Dismissal in PS 246's narrow hallways can feel like a stampede when nearly 1,000 kids stream out. And those concerns are even more palpable at the high school level. "The kids have to wait an hour outside of school in the morning just to get scanned by metal detectors," Bluestone said.

From her window, Young can see where she thinks some of the new seats should go: the Kingsbridge Armory. "Putting school space in the Armory would definitely alleviate overcrowding in many of our schools," she said.

Building schools on the site of the abandoned landmark is becoming a more hopeful prospect. Local politicians and city officials held a closed-door meeting last month to discuss the project, and many of them leaned toward including public schools in the redevelopment.

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