Jun 4, 2009 12:38 PM
“Nothing has changed in the [schools’ five-year capital] plan since March,” when it was revised from the one introduced in November, Deputy Schools Chancellor Kathleen Grimm told a joint hearing of the City Council education and finance committees on May 21.
So unchanged, in fact, that arguments made earlier showing it wouldn’t end overcrowding or shrink class sizes were repeated at the hearing not just by UFT Vice President Richard Farkas and by researchers from the Campaign for Fiscal Equity showing 48 percent of all city schools overcrowded [see story below], but by successive community education leaders and by every committee member, too.
Each affirmed that the $11.3 billion appropriation for projects providing just 25,000 additional seats — many rolled over from the last plan’s unmet targets — would not stop overcrowding or shrink class sizes, especially in neighborhoods whose youth populations are expected to balloon in the near term.
The capital funding, which can be spent on school construction, reconstruction and land acquisition — covering everything from new or refurbished schools to science labs, renovated auditoriums, waterproofing and boiler replacements — is some 18 percent less than the $13.1 billion appropriated for Fiscal Years 2005-2009.
Critics charge the cut is more a signal that the city is walking away from its commitment to schools than a recognition of necessity in hard fiscal times.
It’s “a very serious problem in that it underestimates capacity needs,” Education Committee Chairman Robert Jackson said, noting that the Council can reject but not amend the plan.
Farkas, the UFT middle schools vice president, told the hearing, “We can’t use the current economic situation to stop building.”
Testifying immediately after Grimm, Farkas said that the appropriation would not “meet current or projected future class space needs, given increasing enrollment,” and that the Department of Education based its capital-needs projections on the mistaken idea that total enrollment will fall when “indicators show that enrollment is projected to drop in just a few select districts, while enrollment in almost all other districts in the city will rise.”
Farkas said the plan would not “alleviate conflicts among schools all fighting for space” or serve the interests of high-needs populations.
He blamed the DOE for creating these conflicts and for not “restoring those ‘lost rooms’ once used for specialized instruction, cultural enrichment and physical education” in its construction planning.
Also, opining in the May 24 Daily News on mayoral control (May 24), Francis Lewis HS English-as-a-second-language teacher Arthur Goldstein offered a ground-floor view of what teachers contend with.
“My high school was built to hold 1,800, but enrolls 4,450 students [on extended sessions]. My kids sit in a crumbling trailer, with no technology and often no heat in the winter,” Goldstein wrote.