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Speakers at a press conference to support school construction. From left to right: James Ahern of the Central Labor Committee, Leonie Haimson of the Campaign for A Better Capital Plan, Robert Jackson of the City Council, and Michael Mulgrew of the United Federation of Teachers.

Advocates who have been calling for the city to bulk up its school construction plan say the federal stimulus package could help the city do just that.

A string of City Council members, public officials, and parents urged the city to use the new federal funds to build more schools at a press conference at City Hall today. The Senate is likely to approve a stimulus package today that includes $14 billion of dollars in funding for school modernization and renovation projects, as well as tax provisions to help school districts foot the bill for new schools.

Where the federal funds will break down is not yet clear. But many are worried that whatever money the city does receive, it won’t be prepared to use. They say the city’s proposed five-year capital plan for school construction, first released in November, undersells the city’s need for additional classrooms and suggests that the city isn’t ready to make the most of new federal funds.

Expanding the capital plan would allow the city to take advantage of the stimulus money, Leonie Haimson, a parent advocate who is one of the chairs of the Campaign for A Better Capital Plan, said at the press conference. (more…)

Sandwiched between exciting election news and distressing budget news, the mayor and chancellor today will release their proposal for the city schools’ next five-year capital plan, covering construction and renovation projects for the years 2010 to 2014.

DOE spokeswoman Marge Feinberg tells me the plan will go online shortly after the mayor’s noon budget announcement. Here are some things to look for in the proposal:

• How ambitious is the plan? Chancellor Klein recently touted the current capital plan as “the most robust” in the city’s history. But the capital plan being unveiled today was formulated during a period of intense anxiety about the economy. To what extent has the city scaled back its aspirations?
• Where will new school seats go? Parents in Manhattan’s District 2 and District 3 have been outspoken in the last year about overcrowding in their neighborhoods. But other areas of the city, such as Highbridge in the Bronx, where residents rallied last week for a new middle school, are also dealing with serious overcrowding. Will the new capital plan provide relief for them?
• How serious is the the city’s commitment to addressing neighborhoods with crowded schools that sit inside districts that overall are under capacity? City officials have said that the new capital plan will be the first to tackle “pocket overcrowding.” What will that change look like?
• Did city officials take new residential construction into account when figuring out how many classroom seats are needed? That was the suggestion of several elected officials and the Campaign for a Better Capital Plan in a report released last month with recommendations for how the city should plan for school construction. In the past, the city has based its projections primarily on past enrollment.
• Did city officials write class-size reductions into the plan? To have small classes, as some advocates urge is necessary and as is required by law in grades K-3, the city would have to add dramatically more seats than it has in the past.

The capital plan we will see today isn’t set in stone. In the coming months, School Construction Authority officials will meet with the Community Education Councils in each of the city’s 32 school districts to discuss the plan. The CECs, as well as the Panel for Educational Policy and the City Council, must vote to adopt the plan before it can go into effect.

In the opening salvo of what’s sure to be a pitched battle over the next capital plan, activists today released a report (pdf) concluding that the city added fewer school seats during the first six years of the Bloomberg administration than it did during the six years immediately before. They estimate that the system needs  167,000 extra seats and dramatically accelerated school construction in order to ease crowding and reduce class sizes.

The capital plan is a budget outlining all public school construction plans for the next five years. The current plan covered five years and will end in 2009. The School Construction Authority is due to present a first draft of the next capital plan, covering the years 2010 to 2014, in just a few weeks.

In the report, released by the Campaign for a Better Capital Plan and written primarily by Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters, backers of the campaign call for “a transparent, thorough, and open system of planning” that reflects the system’s real space needs. (more…)

Relieving overcrowding in New York City’s schools “is going to require a change of mindset — it’s not just about building new schools, it’s also about reconfiguring existing schools,” said Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott at today’s City Council hearing on school capacity and utilization.

Deputy Chancellor Kathleen Grimm, testifying with Walcott on behalf of the Department of Education, said that the DOE has made significant progress towards creating 63,000 new school seats, as outlined in the current capital plan; so far, 55,000 seats have been created or are in progress. Grimm and Walcott stressed that while capital investment is one strategy the DOE uses to reduce overcrowding, equally important are using available space more strategically and changing enrollment policies to ease pressure on the most in-demand programs and schools.

“We have room in the system… The challenge is making sure we have room in the right places,” Walcott said, stating that the overall school utilization rate in the city is 84.5%. The new capital plan, he said, will look not just at city or district level enrollment statistics, but also at individual neighborhoods where “pockets of overcrowding” exist — or pockets of underutilized space. He and Grimm warned that resolving overcrowding on a neighborhood basis might require communities to make tough choices, such as moving one program or school from a crowded building into an underutilized one, or changing zone boundaries, as has been proposed for District 3. The grade configuration of some schools may also have to change, by combining elementary and middle schools or middle and high schools to create mixed-level buildings.

Some schools are “victims of their own success,” said Grimm, noting that parents understandably want to send their children to the best programs. Part of the solution must be to expand the number of excellent schools, she said, adding that the city will also look at adjusting enrollment policies.

While the DOE’s testimony emphasized solving localized overcrowding problems, others at the hearing questioned the methodology underlying their school capacity and utilization estimates. (more…)

At the kickoff rally of A Better Capital Plan campaign this morning, elected officials offered up two giant sacks stuffed with thousands of signed postcards calling for alleviation of overcrowding that currently affects hundreds of schools and improvements to the DOE’s planning process.

The officials were joined by dozens of parents, mostly from Manhattan’s District 2 and District 3, and children from PS 3 in Greenwich Village, who held aloft colorful posters asking “Are we students or are we packing peanuts?” and calling for “No more cramped schools!”

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, whose “Crowded Out” reports and overcrowding task force have have given momentum to the recent surge in anti-overcrowding activity, led off the rally by demanding “the strongest, biggest capital plan we can possibly create.” The School Construction Authority is due to present a new five-year capital plan next month. (more…)