City must address overcrowding

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Overcrowding is a long-term, worsening condition in our local public schools. As members of the Northwest Bronx for Change Education Committee, together with Leonie Haimson, executive director of the advocacy group Class Size Matters, we met on Jan. 26 with Councilman Andrew Cohen to discuss solutions for this most serious problem. Recent Riverdale Press lead articles (“Schools Cited for ‘Extreme Crowding,’” July 17, 2014 and “Schools Feel Press of Growing Demand,” Jan. 22) repost that there is some funding for new seats in the Department of Education’s (DOE) five-year Capital Plan, but supposedly no place to put them! 

Many schools in our district and throughout the city are far over their official capacity (overutilized) and thousands of students continue to attend classes in “temporary” trailers. 

Ms. Haimson pointed out that the current proposed Capital Plan only includes about 2,000 elementary and middle school seats in District 10 — only one third of the seats necessary to address projected enrollment growth, not even counting the 2,000 seats required to alleviate current overcrowding and reduce the district average utilization rate from 112 percent to 100 percent. 

 

Growing enrollment

 

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ronx high school enrollment is projected to grow by over 5,000 students by 2021 and yet there is not a single new Bronx high school to be built in the plan. There are 21 school buildings in the district that are overutilized, according to the DOE’s own formula — while many experts believe that this formula actually underestimates the level of overcrowding in our schools. Class sizes have also increased sharply in recent years, with many students in the district crammed into classes of 30 or more, even in the early grades.

overcrowding, Gene Binder, Paul Hogan, Louise Warren
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