School Space Setback

Mayor's Capital Plan Erases Gains

By HANNAN ADELY

With five new schools under construction in District 10, some parents and school officials thought they might actually see the end of the overcrowding crisis in the not-so-distant future. No such luck. On May 12, a divided Board of Education approved a capital plan which eliminates several new schools and long overdue building repairs slated for the Bronx.

The revised five-year capital plan, championed by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, will provide $7 billion instead of the $11.2 billion proposed under Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew's original plan. Under the chancellor's budget, District 10 would have built six new schools, but the new plan provides for just one new school. Five new 600-seat schools are scheduled to open in the district this fall, but with the classroom seat shortage currently at 5,000, that still leaves local schools 2,000 seats short, according to Bruce Irushalmi, director of special projects for superintendent Irma Zardoya.

Even that 3000-seat dent in the crisis isn't what it's cracked up to be, officials contend, because it treats temporary, non-traditional classroom space -- portable classrooms in schoolyards, converted gymnasiums and libraries, and leased space in non-school buildings -- as part of the district's permanent capacity. (In District 10, 6,500 kids occupy seats outside traditional classrooms, Irushalmi said.) That calculation insures that local schoolyard space will not be returned to its intended use any time soon. The 480-seat addition to MS 80/PS 280, now in the final stages of construction, had school officials hoping that four of the eight portable classrooms in the yard the two schools share, would be removed. But, with the leaner, meaner capital plan in place, Irushalmi says the district can't take the chance. Though the district's student population is expected to remain stable during the next five years, Irushalmi said, immigration trends are difficult to predict (particularly in the case of Kosovar refugees, who may well flock to the area to settle with relatives) and state-mandated class size reduction in early childhood classrooms make gaining ground in the space wars even more unlikely.

Sandra Lerner, the Bronx's representative on the Board of Education, and a former District 10 deputy superintendent and school board president, understands the severity of the crisis all too well. "We've utilized every nook and cranny," Lerner said in a telephone interview. "High schools already have 10-period days because of overcrowding." Lerner, who voted against the Giuliani-backed plan, added, that in Crew's capital plan, the Bronx may have been able to address eliminating temporary classrooms, but that is not even a consideration under the new plan.

As the mayor and his supporters on the Board of Education shuffled and reduced the borough's resources, parents braced for the continuation of a struggle that appears destined to last at least as long as their children are in school.

"If one child sneezes, all the children in a class catch a cold because there are too many children," said Hilda Burgos, parent of a third grader at PS 33, a deteriorating school on Jerome Avenue just south of Fordham Road. She also noted that overcrowding makes it more difficult for principals to do their job, since they must also keep tabs on far-flung annexes and portable classrooms.

PS 246 Principal Frank Gonzalez said overcrowding makes his job difficult in yet another way. Teachers, he said, "are running to Westchester" to escape overcrowded classrooms which in his school are so full that there is no wall space for the children to hang their jackets.

With the poor results of statewide reading tests fresh in the minds of administrators, Zardoya, the superintendent, said she believes that the classroom squeeze is at least partly to blame. "How can overcrowding not affect reading scores?" she said, after last week's school board meeting.

In addition to overcrowding, parents and administrators hoped to finally make a dent in the tremendous backlog in repairs to crumbling buildings, but the $541 million originally allocated by Crew for this purpose was cut in half. Also, appropriations for science and computer labs were completely eliminated.

For Principal Gonzalez, the budget cuts are like deja vu. Repairs should have begun this spring to waterproof PS 246, but the funding was cut. "I got to the point where I don't even think about it anymore," he lamented. Burgos said the leaks at her child's school regularly ruin kids' artwork that hangs on the walls.

The approval of the capital plan intensified divisions between Crew's administration and Mayor Giuliani. The mayor passed his plan with a majority vote on the Board of Education, consisting of the Queens and Staten Island representatives and his own two appointees. Despite the elimination of $4 billion from Crew's plan (Giuliani said Crew's revenue projections were unrealistic), Queens' budget was not reduced from the original plan and Staten Island's budget was increased. But funds for the Bronx, Manhattan and Brooklyn were significantly reduced. "This is a political plan, not an educational plan," Lerner said.

At last Thursday's meeting of Community School Board 10, boardmembers called for the city's $2.1 billion budget surplus to be directed toward education. "You can't slash funds and expect children to learn in a healthy and safe environment," Board President Charles Williams said.

Meanwhile, parents like Burgos worry their children will be left behind as the country hurtles towards the new millennium. "We're going to be in the year 2000 outside the school, but inside the school we'll be years behind," she said.

Jordan Moss contributed to this story.

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