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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.

Two weeks after the DOE first presented the Community Education Council for District 3 with two proposals for rezoning the Upper West Side, CEC 3 has concluded that both are too flawed to vote on.

Maps of the DOE's two rezoning proposals

In its official response, which CEC 3 released Friday along with responses from individual schools, CEC 3 asks for a new plan based on official school capacity data, a revised conception of school zones, and an expectation of class size reduction. The densely packed response also asks the DOE to consider leasing as a short-term solution to the district’s space needs and emphasizes the unique identities of the district’s special programs, the advantages of grandfathering in any new zones so that siblings are kept together, and the need for a new school building.

An important question, the CEC argues, is whether the time is even right for rezoning, given the DOE’s own self-proclaimed constraints in planning for future space needs. From the response:

You have said that DOE does not plan for children until they register for seats. If the DOE is unable to anticipate how many children will be yielded by new construction, then perhaps this period of massive new construction in our district is NOT the best time to be redrawing zone lines.

The council will address the issue further at its public meeting Wednesday. CEC 3′s entire response is worth a read — it’s a useful summary of many of the issues districts and neighborhoods face when trying to negotiate an overcrowding plan with the DOE. The response is posted in full after the jump. (more…)

On Wednesday, the Community Education Council for District 3 held a special meeting to hear comments from community members about the rezoning proposal the DOE unveiled last week. CEC 3 space committee chair Jennifer Freeman had this to say:

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the DOE presentation last week was the suggestion that the citywide Anderson Program could relocate to empty space in the building currently occupied by MS44 and the Computer School. [On Wednesday] I learned that Anderson’s leadership — both the principal and the PTA board — think that a relocation could work. This was probably the most productive part of the meeting. While there are still many concerns, not least parent worries about safety in the MS 44 building, the proposal does allow Anderson and PS 9 crucial room to grow. PS 9 parents also say they would welcome the Center School as a good fit, in terms of both size and philosophy. Most Center School parents remain adamantly opposed to any move.

Regarding the rezoning proposal itself, perhaps the best I can say is that it’s at too early a stage for comment.

According to Freeman, representatives from nearly every elementary school on the Upper West Side attended Wednesday’s meeting, although no one from PS 84, 145, or 191 spoke. In addition, she said, no one attended from MS 44, the West 70th Street middle school where the DOE has proposed moving the ultra-selective Anderson School.

Proposed new zones for the Upper West Side, with (left) and without school relocations

District 3 parent leaders so worried that the DOE’s Upper West Side rezoning plan would anger parents that they prefaced the plan’s first public airing last week with a stern call for civility.

The atmosphere remained civil, but the packed auditorium at the Joan of Arc complex on 93rd Street was filled with strong reactions from applause to boos as department officials visiting the Community Education Council for District 3 laid out a proposal that could rezone as many as 30 percent of families living between 59th and Morningside Park — or augur an end to the district’s broad array of “choice” programs, including gifted and talented and dual language programs.

Inspired by parents and elected officials in neighboring District 2, CEC 3 this spring launched a committee to lobby for new schools to relieve the district’s pervasive overcrowding and accommodate families moving into the area’s many residential buildings under construction.

But DOE officials said last week that a “more comprehensive, more immediate set of solutions” — in the form of rezoning to take effect in the fall of 2009 — could bring the district’s schools well below capacity without a new school. (more…)