Quinn met today with about 30 parents who lambaste the plan as too conservative and an ineffective remedy to overcrowding. The parents are urging council members to vote against the plan when it comes up for a vote, probably on Friday.

But Quinn said the city’s chief lawyer has advised her that the state law governing the city public schools does not contain provisions for what to do if the council votes the plan down.

“We have been informed by the Corporation Counsel of the City that if we were to vote no, the [Department of Education] would effectively be left with no long-term capital budget,” Quinn wrote in a letter to the parents yesterday. In that situation, school construction could grind to a standstill, she said.

The law she was referring to, Section 4 of Education Law Section 2590-p, says, “Following approval by the city board of a five-year educational facilities capital plan, the chancellor shall submit such plan to the mayor and the council of the city of New York for their approval.”

Patrick Sullivan, a parent leader who sits on a task force to tackle overcrowding in Manhattan and who is also a member of the city school board, the Panel for Educational Policy, said he thought the city could revise the plan and resubmit it to the council quickly, before the council’s June 30 deadline to set the city’s budget. “This could take place in a matter of days without much downside,” he said.

But Quinn said the revision process could drag on indefinitely in that situation. Maintenance projects that are slated to take place during the summer might not happen, and other construction projects that are in development could be shelved entirely, she said. “It’s the unknown and that to me is very, very worrisome,” she said.

Instead of voting down the plan, Quinn said the council would push for a state law to require the city to measure classroom space using the state’s class size targets. Right now, the city sometimes says schools are under capacity even when class sizes are above official state targets. The law would be on top of the one the council already said it would seek so that it can negotiate annual amendments to the school construction plan.

Quinn also said she and other council members are negotiating behind the scenes with the city for improvements to the proposed plan before it comes before the council for a vote. One improvement that she said she is pushing for would force the city to reallocate funds pegged for jails to school construction.

Leonie Haimson, an advocate for school construction who is part of the schools-not-jails push, said she thought Quinn’s reluctance to see council members vote against the plan would work against her in the back-room negotiations that are currently ongoing.

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. A revised draft of the capital plan proposal is due to be released next month.

The city cannot afford to continue spending on school construction as it has in the past, according to the proposed capital plan. But speaker after speaker today said the city should be planning to invest in infrastructure projects during the recession, rather than cutting back on them.

“It’s a win-win-win situation,” Comptroller William Thompson said about building new schools. Thompson, who is running for mayor, said using federal funds to ramp up school construction would create jobs, help communities, and set individual children up for long-term success.

One worry is that the state and city might try to use federal stimulus funds to fill in gaps in their education budgets, rather than adding new efforts on top of existing ones. “It’s to build schools, reduce overcrowding, reduce class size — that’s what this money should be used for,” said Robert Jackson, head of the City Council’s education committee. Jackson said he’s planning to vote against the city’s capital plan unless it is changed substantially.

“We have to be vigilant” to protect against supplantation, said council member Bill deBlasio. “We’ve been sold a bill of goods one time to many on education. … If it gets by us this time, shame on all of us.”

At the State Senate hearing today, Chancellor Joel Klein said the city could build new schools if the federal plan includes money for construction.

President-elect Obama’s top aide confirmed yesterday that school construction projects will be part of the new administration’s stimulus package to create jobs and encourage spending by states, according to Alyson Klein of Education Week. Governors, who are staring at massive budget shortfalls, this week asked Obama for $130 billion to support infrastructure projects, including schools.

What’s so special about school construction? In contrast with some other infrastructure projects, states are always planning to build or enhance schools, so they can get to work on those projects in a relatively short amount of time. Plus, many believe that capital investments in schools can pay off in improved educational quality.

But the city doesn’t have a robust school building agenda right now. This is “absolutely the wrong way to go in this situation” because it could result in the city’s schools being shut out of a federal stimulus package, Weingarten said yesterday.

“If this [federal] money is out there, and we don’t have a plan, we won’t be in the queue,” she said.

The proposed capital plan is based on the School Construction Authority’s assertion that the city needs just 25,000 new school seats. That’s just 15 percent of the 167,000 seats that the Campaign for A Better Capital Plan says are needed if the city wants to eliminate overcrowding and bring class sizes down to the level required by the state.

Plus, citing the weakening economy, the SCA is asking for only $11.3 billion over the next five years, nearly $2 billion less called for in the current plan.

The proposed capital plan reflects the mayor’s more general myopia toward creating jobs and maintaining city services during the recession, council members said yesterday. Mayor Bloomberg earlier this year mandated that all city agencies, including the School Construction Authority, revise down their capital budgets by 20 percent.

“I don’t understand why President-elect Obama and others are talking about increasing capital spending and our mayor is talking about cutting it,” council member Lew Fidler said, his voice rising. “It’s so counter-productive to our economy that it sickens me!”

In June 2004, the city launched a $13.1 billion school building program. In the five years beginning in 2010, the city plans to spend only $11.3 billion — and that figure will have significantly less purchasing power due to rising construction costs and inflation rates. “We cannot afford to continue spending at the same levels as in recent years,” the plan reads.

I’ll have more details about the plan tomorrow, including answers to the questions I posed earlier today, but in the meantime I’m interested in what GothamSchools readers think stands out about the plan.

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.