GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Sharon Greenberger

When several families arrived at a Park Slope middle school for an evening basketball practice recently, they were surprised to find themselves locked out. The gym, they learned, had been closed without warning so that construction workers could make repairs. The basketball team couldn’t practice, kids were disappointed, and parents were frustrated.

Most parents would chalk the experience up as just one of the many small injustices of family life in the city. But for Sharon Greenberger, a Park Slope resident and mother of two, it was a professional learning experience.

Greenberger leads the city’s School Construction Authority, the agency that oversees the building of new buildings and the repairs work for the old ones. In recent years, that has become a daunting job. More and more children are being brought up in the city, leaving parents distraught that public school buildings might not have enough room to fit them. At the same time, the city’s aging stock of school buildings — most are at least 90 years old — has required extensive repairs. Greenberger is the woman charged with balancing demand for new schools against the need to maintain old ones, an acrobatic challenge that has only gotten harder as grim fiscal realities set in. (more…)

High school seniors manned the bake sale at the Brooklyn School for International Studies.

Long lines at the polls this morning were a nuisance to voters, but they were a boon to students and parents who set up Election Day bake sales to benefit their schools:

• At my polling location, a shared school building on Baltic Street in Brooklyn, proud School for International Studies seniors struggled to keep their bake sale stocked.
• A friend who waited an hour to vote this morning at PS 107 in Park Slope said of that school’s Parent-Teacher Association, “They were doing some seemingly brisk business in pumpkin muffins and bottled water.”
• A parent selling baked goods at PS 29 in Cobble Hill told the New York Times, “I’ve been here ten years, this is the first time I’ve ever seen a line at all. Sales are going amazing.”
• A Carroll Gardens resident wrote to New York Magazine to report problems getting her vote cast at PS 58, but she added: “On the upside: kick-ass bakesale.”
• And Elizabeth voted at PS 154 in Windsor Terrace, where all of the chocolate chip cookies being peddled by fifth-graders were sold out by 11 a.m.

Of course, most of these schools have parents who can choose to spend the day working a bake sale and a PTA savvy enough to organize them. Not all schools do.

In our comments this morning, Ms. M said the PTA at the school where she teaches “doesn’t think of things like” Election Day bake sales.

Where did you vote, and did you see a bake sale?