Department of Education officials will address overcrowding in Upper West Side public schools on Tuesday night in a meeting that could pit current public school parents against prospective ones.
At PS 87 on West 78th street some parents are concerned about city plans to add another kindergarten classes to the schools this year to accommodate the massive wait-list. The parent association at PS 87 sent out an email to parents this week noting that officials plan to oppose adding another class.
“PS 87 community affairs committee members and parents will be in attendance because our school is currently overcrowded at 10% over building capacity and the DOE is still planning on adding a 7th K class in fall, 2015, to accommodate our waitlist, which will only contribute to the overcrowding.”
But parents on those wait-lists want the city to accommodate all of them — parents whose children are on the waiting list at PS 199 on West 70th street say that the city has an obligation to let all zoned students into the school: “our children have been left out of their zoned school and community,” they wrote in a petition.
For years, the city failed to expand local schools or build new ones even as they approved permits to add several new buildings to the area. That’s helped add to the overcrowding.
The meeting will start at 6:30 p.m. in the auditorium at the Joan of Arc Complex, 153 West 93rd street.
We covered this issue in more depth here.
Serious issue… the city needs to do something NOW. The fact that it even got to this point is so unbelievably unacceptable and totally rests on the allowance of greedy developers to plop one LUXURY building on top of any land available – capitalism gone completely wild. And who is suffering now? Our kids! So developers are rich and happy and our kids are unable to get into their local schools.
I also hope we don’t start hearing about how the alleged demolition of PS 199 should have happened so that the school could have been rebuilt BIGGER and BETTER. Everyone with a brain could tell that the “luxury apartments” were the real purpose of that deal – the school was a total afterthought (and FYI it was not planned to be built to be any larger than the one that stands there now). It was all about kickbacks and favors, not helping kids.
Anyway, the long and short is the city needs to invest in its kids and clean this situation up. How about this – the city mandates that for every x apartment units built, x many seats must be made available in local schools. If there is no more space available, developers must limit the amount of units until the city provides a REASONABLE alternative. In essence, if the developers are not allowed free reign to build and build and build, they WILL start to pressure city officials. THEN maybe someone will listen.
LEEZA….
Another way to look at is that all of the new luxury apartment buildings are paying a lot of real estate taxes (not to mention income tax) but are getting very little in return (no new schools, just garbage pickup).
Riverside Blvd. which is served by PS199 has over 10 new buildings (over the last 15 years). Each building has 300-400 apartments. Let’s say an average of 350. That implies 3,500 new apartments that are paying $12,000 a year in REAL ESTATE taxes (rough estimate) which translates into $42,000,00 in taxes a year yet the city can’t build out PS199? Why would someone want to send their children an under-performing school? It looks like the DOE and the elected officials just take the tax revenue and run.
Many of the new buildings built under Bloomberg had 15-25 year tax abatements meaning the city won’t see any real estate money for a long time.
Um no. There are actually plenty of seats for children at schools on the UWS. The issue is, if we want to be honest and and address the elephant in the room, is that white UWS parents don’t want to send their children to majority-minority schools, which, truth be told, are often under performing. So it’s not really about building new schools in overcrowded districts, but dealing with the unfortunate reality that many of our schools don’t perform as they should. Easier to demand inclusion in the overcrowded, zoned school, and complain then deal with the true situation at hand. Not that I’d send my children to an underperforming school either, but let’s at least be honest about what this is all about.
Everyone should give Bloomberg and his cronies a big round of applause. He controlled the DOE and Buildings Dept and his people knew about the influx before it happened. His friends all made a lot of money and got tax rebates – think about all of the money that could’ve been spent on new school seats instead of giving it away to millionaires who can already afford luxury housing without subsidies. Our kids lost out on things like art, music, and small classes. BdB & Cuomo are compounding the problem by refusing to build new seats for our kids now. Too bad kids don’t have lobbyists with lots of money to toss around like the developers and religious schools. If they did, maybe we’d be building schools instead of high priced housing projects for the uber rich on the backs of the poor and our kids!!!
Wait what?????
You’re worried about building more schools when we have plenty of capacity?!
Do you not see the irony in your argument? If you were really worried about the poor and “our kids” you’d demand that poor kids have the same kind of parental determination, resources, and voices that upper middle class white children have. See, for example, the outrage over not creating more seats for white kids in a white majority school, instead of demanding more resources and voices go toward the alternative… Minority-majority schools. Hilarious that the same outrage torward rich people looking out for their own, isn’t directed to white middle-class parents…looking out for their own. Gawd.
Why is it up to the parents to improve an underperforming school? Shouldn’t the DOE go into a school that is underperforming and do whatever they can to help the children learn. As soon as the DOE sees test scores of 12% for english and 20% for math, they should go in and make sure the kids get the proper attention and help they need. Isn’t that the responsibility of the DOE and the city. The DOE and the city neglected the schools. They are the ones that didn’t provide children at underperforming schools with the resources and attention they deserve. How is it going to help the children at these schools if an influx of kids from a different district come in. The DOE and the city should help the children at these schools and not wait for an influx of children from a different zone.
You nailed it with this post, WestSider3.
Apartheid has got to be stopped. Now everyone wants in to PS 87.
25+ years ago, my children went because parents and school administration thought they could muster a good education. It was not exclusive then. Now everyone wants exclusive. Let them live in the gated community they really want…
…somewhere else.
WestSider3….it isn’t always about “rich white parents”. I am definitely not a rich, white parent. (Not rich or white.) And, I have a pre-kindergardener that would be forced to go 18 blocks to a different school, vs. the zoned school 2 blocks away. At age 5, it doesn’t make sense to have to commute that distance –just because things weren’t planned well — or because 6 high rise buildings have opened in 2 years….and those families get equal chance.
Sorry, the newer bulidings should be contributing (at least the developers) to fund the schools. Just because there are seats in some areas, doesn’t mean there are enough seats in the local schools.
Why not home school your wunderkinds until First Grade. Might also be more beneficial for the kid(s). And what’s a ‘minority majority’ school anyway. With the Che Guaveras in the White House and City Hall how is it ‘they’ lack resources? Where’s all our taxpayer $ going. We better get 2016 elections right this time around. (And sure don’t mean Hillary hah.) Good luck.
This is not just about capacity in schools across the UWS but also about location of schools.
There is a reason K-5 is zoned as the local school it is so parents can walk kids to school. PS87 our zoned school is 6 blocks and 9 minutes away, when you have pre schooolers to drop off and work to get to that is also important as well as school performance. PS191, not so convenient.
Further, PS87 has dual language, again something not at 191. As owners / residents on the UWS for almost two decades to first get bumped from the PS199 zone by the Trump buildings put up with no consideration for school capacity into the PS87 zone and then get offered a spot in 191 I’m allowed to be pissed at this process. PS452 was created to cover PS87 overspill so why when PS87 is full is the bump to 191.
Additionally, address validation does need to be improved. A simple run of parents names and addresses against credit reporting agency information would validate many names and allow a focused review of the applications who don’t match the address on their credit file. How many 199 and 87 kids are zoned for 191 but took steps to circumvent that?
Hi Stephen
Part of the problem is that if a family moves out of the zone or the neighborhood, the kids are still entitled to attend the school they have been attending. We know families who take a bus or subway to attend PS 87. This rule should be changed.
Part of the overcrowding at PS 87 has to do with apathy. Six years ago when my daughter was going to start kindergarten, the story was that the principal who was leaving didn’t want to deal with how to choose which kids go to attend the school, so they decided that anyone who applied was going to attend. There were 7 K classes that year, rather than the usual 4 or 5. Classes were overcrowded, etc. That didn’t happen again for the next 5 years. And although our apartment got zoned out, we were grandfathered into the school so my son was able to attend the same school as his sister.
How is it that there’s suddenly room for mandatory pre-k, but no room for students in other grades?
Finally, are people who buy into the new luxury buildings really going to send their kids to a public (rather than a prestigious private) school? What would the neighbors think…
When I was in public school in the 70’s there was a lot of overcrowding of classes.
I agree that address validation needs to be improved. I know a few families at PS 87 who don’t live in the zone but somehow managed to get their kids into the school. I’m not talking about people who lived in-zone when their kids first started and then moved — that is allowed under the rules. I’m talking about people who either used someone else’s address or rented a studio in zone. I know one wealthy family that did that and even took a coveted pre-K spot! All the school had to do is pay a visit to the address on file and they would have discovered that it’s not the family’s residence. Did they do that? No. Have they ever done that? Not to my knowledge.
I remember out was of the zone for I.S.44 (William J. O’Shea) on 77th St. I lived on 95th. I was suppose to go to Joan of Arc. My parents really didn’t want to go there. So, since I had an interest and talent for art and I.S.44 had a major in art, I showed a portfolio and got in.
Wish I could delete my comment and have a do over because of missing words! 😀
What I meant to say is:
I remember when I out was of the zone for I.S.44 (William J. O’Shea) on 77th St. I lived on 95th Street. I was suppose to go to Joan of Arc. My parents really didn’t want me to go there. So, since I had an interest and talent for art and I.S.44 had a major in art, I showed a portfolio and got in.
…and that was in the 1970’s
It’s amazing that public schools have waiting lists! I know when I went to P.S. 84 and I.S. 44 in the 70’s. There was no such thing.
I attended P.S. 77 in The Bronx, in the 60s. Perhaps we should look to that as our benchmark in this discussion.
…and that was in the 1950s
Shouldn’t they build some new schools over by the waterfront where all of those mega buildings are? Aren’t there more apartments in the pipeline? The politicians have to keep the developers on the hook to build some schools since they are profiting immensely without having to build infrastructure.