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Teachers and parents at the city’s second-biggest school say they’re worried that teacher layoffs could undercut the city’s promise to shrink enrollment.

Now-famous for its 14 period days and classrooms that are right at — and sometimes right over — class size limits, Francis Lewis High School enrollment could fall below 4,000 next year. Following an agreement reached last year between the Department of Education’s Office of Student Enrollment and the school’s leadership, Francis Lewis’s enrollment fell by 200 students last year and is poised to drop by another 200 next year to roughly 3,980 students, according to a source at the school.

With fewer students, the high school will be able to move to a 10 period day next year, though it will still have to use trailers as classrooms for some of its students.

Last Friday, some parents and teachers at the school held a rally to tell city officials that even with the agreement in place, they’re worried Francis Lewis could backslide. (more…)

Early class size estimates from the city’s teachers union indicate that while a new high school campus in Queens may have alleviated crowding in some schools, others are now feeling the pain.

The new Metropolitan Avenue campus, which is home to two small high schools and about 400 students, appears to have given nearby Forest Hills High School some breathing room (though not enough, according to some Queens officials). Forest Hills had 209 oversized classes this time last year. This year it has 103.

The numbers come from the city’s teachers union, which surveys teachers about overcrowded classes. The Department of Education has not yet released its official class size numbers.

Benjamin Cardozo High School, another chronically overcrowded school, has 214 oversized classes this year, an improvement over the 274 it had last year. (more…)

Chancellor Joel Klein addressed concerns about school overcrowding in Queens yesterday. (Photo via Queens borough president)

Even with new school buildings and thousands of new seats, overcrowding has not abated in Queens schools, city council members complained last night.

At a cabinet meeting of the Queen borough president, where Chancellor Klein dropped by to give a back-to-school update, council members said that the city is only using a tiny fraction of the roughly 4,000 new seats. Meanwhile, some nearby schools are bursting at the seams, they said.

Klein’s questioners included Council members Karen Koslowitz, Danny Dromm, Mark Weprin, and Jimmy Van Bramer, some of whom ran for office as skeptics of the chancellor’s policies.

Koslowitz said that while the new Metropolitan Avenue campus has about 2,000 seats, only about 400 students are currently enrolled. Meanwhile, the nearby Forest Hills High School has nearly twice as many students as it was intended to serve, she said. (more…)

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer presents his report on overcrowding in Manhattan schools.

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer called today for an overhaul of the city’s process for matching student demand to building space, charging that the city’s current process is causing “chaos and uncertainty” for parents and students.

Standing outside of the Upper West Side’s P.S. 334, Stringer reported that more than four out of 10 Manhattan schools are either overcrowded or are losing classroom space as the city tries to cram more students into a finite number of school buildings.

The report details what are by now familiar complaints about overcrowding in Manhattan schools, which have seen their population of young students boom in recent years without a corresponding addition of seats.

But the bulk of remarks from Stringer and other elected officials this afternoon criticized the city for bumping schools from building to building, cramming students into classrooms and making decisions without giving confused parents adequate notice or opportunity to comment. (more…)

The number of crowded classrooms has increased nearly ten-fold this year, but they’re crammed into only 32 schools, according to a survey released by the teachers union today.

Every spring semester, the union surveys its members to find the number of oversize classrooms — those that exceed the numbers of students outlined in the teachers contract — to see how many remain after the fall hearings on crowded classrooms are over. This year, union officials said there are 1,236 oversize high school classes in the city, but rather than being spread out among the schools in each borough, they’re in 32 schools. At this time last year, there were 176 crowded high school classes in the city, the union’s report states. (more…)

A plan aimed at easing crowding in District 2 has parents up in arms because it would force a popular middle school to move from its long-time home.

The plan would move the Clinton School for Writers and Artists to P.S. 33, roughly five blocks from its home on the fifth floor of P.S. 11 in Chelsea. The move was finalized at the end of last week just as the school’s parent-teacher association sent a letter to the Department of Education rejecting the placement.

Though parents and the department agree that P.S. 11 is too overcrowded for the Clinton School to remain there, there’s disagreement over whether P.S. 33 is an appropriate relocation spot.

In a letter sent to the DOE last Friday, co-president of the PTA Darren Taffinder asked that the Clinton School be given one more year at P.S. 11. Taffinder wrote that he and other parents couldn’t agree to a move to P.S. 33 without knowing how much space their school would have and without a promise that the move is temporary. (more…)

Members of the Upper West Side’s district school board are meeting tonight to warn Department of Education officials that if they don’t build more classrooms, next year’s kindergarten crisis will be in their district.

In an interview this afternoon, Community Education Council president Noah Gotbaum said that though the DOE’s data shows a district-wide decrease in enrollment, many schools were hit with an influx of kindergartners this year. P.S. 87 had to create three more kindergarten classes than the department had projected, while P.S. 199 had to create two more to accommodate children who live in the zone.

Pointing to the rapid construction of housing developments in the district and the increase in parents who can no longer afford private school, Gotbaum said the numbers for next year look worse, but there’s no room for the schools to grow.

“These are pretty significant trends that need to be taken into consideration and addressed immediately, otherwise there will be real chaos in September and I think the DOE recognizes that,” he said. (more…)