Imagine a windowless room. Fluorescent lighting and sparse furnishings decorate the small space. This is not a jail cell. It is not an army barracks or even the most depressing sublet in New York City. This is the supply closet at P.S. 116, on East 33rd Street. It's a closet that used to be storage for musical instruments and chess sets: a closet that is now a classroom.
P.S. 116 is one of many district 2 schools forced to resort to unappealing solutions to address overcrowding. The issue of too many students and not enough seats has long been debated on the East Side, but this past week tensions came to a head. First came a report from Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, blasting education officials for not adding enough elementary and middle school seats to keep up with building boom. Soon after, local elected officials demanded a meeting with School Chancellor Joel Klein to talk about overcrowding. Then discussions about a charter school moving into an East 25th Street building turned nasty, taking on racial overtones. It all added up to one of the East Side's most heated discussions about school space in recent memory.
Stringer's report, released April 14, showed a current deficit of 3,900 seats for students citywide. On the Upper East Side along, the city approved enough new buildings between 2000 and 2007 to add roughly 350 to 500 new students, yet no new seats in local schools were added. Parents warily eye projects like Sheldon Solow's 9.8 acre development south of the United Nations and two new family-friendly condominiums on East 86th Street, envisioning all the new students who will accompany this construction.
Although the Department of Education has planned to add 4,300 seats throughout the borough over the next five years-a number that was recently bumped up by more than 1,000-many elected officials say this is not sufficient to keep pace with future growth.
"We need to start planning for new development as it happens," Stringer said, "rather than waiting for it to overtake us."
The overcrowding report appears to have pressed the department to add new seats, as outlined in statement released last week: " We are aware of the need of seats in District 2 and have reviewed demographics. As a result, we have increased the number of new seats for the district in our current Capital Plan form 1, 890 to 3, 150 seats.
The department also said that it will revisit the increased need for seats, including in District 2, in the next Capital Plan, which is slated for release in November.
Debra Wexler, press secretary for the department, added that although citywide enrollment has been declining in recent years, "There are 'pockets' in the city where enrollment trends are headed in the opposite direction."
Using Stringer's report as a springboard, a large group of elected officials, including Rep. Carolyn Maloney, Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr. and Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, made a public overture to Schools Chancellor Joel Klein asking him to meet about the "severe" overcrowding in District 2.
Although District 2 has the second-highest enrollment projections in the city, the officials pointed out in the letter, the entire borough of Manhattan was allocated only 5 percent of the total school capital funding budget dedicated to new capacity.
Other officials who signed on to the April 16 letter included State Sens. Liz Krueger and Tom Duane; Assembly Members Jonathan Bing, Micah Kellner, Brian Kavanagh and Richard Gottfried; and Council Members Dan Garodnick, Jessica Lappin and Rosie Mendez.
At press time, the department had not yet responded to the request for a meeting with Klein.
Parents also became deeply embroiled in the crowding controversy, as evidenced by a hearing convened last week by the District 2 Community Education Council. At issue was the Ross Global Academy Charter School, a mostly African-American and Hispanic school that is looking to move into the School for the Physical City, on East 25th Street. The school is being phased out and the building's lease is up.
Parents from nearby P.S. 116, however—which is 44 percent white and also needs space—argued that their school should take precedence because of its proximity. While the focus of the meeting was overcrowding in general, the racial overtones and hostility between parents were difficult to ignore, according to attendees.
"It was literally all the white parents on one side of the room and all the black parents on the other," said Laurie Posimato, a mother of a 5th grader at P.S. 116. "And they were yelling and pointing at each other."
"I'm sorry," she added. "[The building] is just too close to us and we need it."
Posimato tears up when she talks about the possibility of P.S. 116 turning their science labs, dance studio, art room, and gymnasium into classrooms.
But Ross students need space, too. The school is currently housed in the basement of the department's headquarters at Tweed Courthouse—space that was granted after failed efforts to squeeze Ross into Nest+M, in Lower Manhattan, following parents protests.
Ross has only two rooms that are divided into classrooms using partitions. Students use the lunch room as an art room—they do not have a gymnasium.
"We are a District 2 school," said Ross principal Stephanie Clagnaz, in response to parents' claims that Ross should look elsewhere for space.
Ross uses a lottery system to determine acceptance, and although students come from all over the city, the school must give preference to District 2 children. Ross parents wonder why other local parents don't want the school, which also serves the district, to have the space.
"It's easy to say it's not about race when you're among your own," said Ross parent Ian Pearce, who is African-American and lives in Brooklyn. "Minorities are being phased out all over the city. It's easy not to be racist when the economy can do it for you."
Citing a long list of reason why they opposed the charter's move, the district's community education council ultimately voted against Ross taking the space and urged the department to give the building to a district elementary or middle school.
Maloney and Stringer both expressed disappointment that the Ross debate has turned parents against each other. But Ross parents questioned who these elected officials are really fighting for. Granville Leo Stevens, who attended the meeting as a supporter of the charter school, wondered why politicians fighting so adamantly for District 2 schools were mysteriously absent when it came to finding space for children in District 1.
"They are," parent Pearce said of elected officials, "pandering to their voters"