Comptroller’s report, Growing Pains, identifies hot spots where school population will outpace available seats

Thompson unveils plan to remedy future overcrowding, provide incentives for developers to erect mixed-use buildings that include public schools

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New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. today charged that a flawed capital planning process is a major reason the New York City public school system is failing to build enough new schools to accommodate children in many neighborhoods experiencing residential construction booms.

The report identifies communities – including several in the Bronx – that are rapidly expanding without sufficient school planning. In the Soundview-Castle Hill and Throgs Neck sections of the Bronx, for instance, most elementary schools already exceed capacity, but few seats are proposed.

Thompson proposed new mechanisms to finance and accelerate school construction, including measures to facilitate development of buildings combining schools and residential and/or commercial uses.  This measure could create new school capacity without adding to the already strained Department of Education (DOE) capital budget and, in some cases, solve one of the School Construction Authority’s (SCA) biggest problems -- finding land to build new schools.  

In a comprehensive report, Growing Pains: The Need to Reform Department of Education Capital Planning to Keep Pace with New York City’s Residential Construction, Thompson unveiled a five-borough, neighborhood-by-neighborhood analysis contrasting the new seats provided in the 2005-09 Capital Plan with expected population growth.

“The capital planning process for public schools in New York City is broken,” Comptroller Thompson said. “There are too many neighborhoods with overcrowded schools -- elementary schools in particular -- and no relief for years to come.  With the DOE, it’s too little, too late.”

Thompson’s study -- which you can read at www.comptroller.nyc.gov -- analyzed how well New York City public elementary and middle schools are accommodating population growth. The DOE 2005-09 Capital Plan provides for 36,500 new elementary and middle school seats in new school buildings or additions -- seats intended to alleviate overcrowding in hundreds of schools already stretched beyond capacity.

The Thompson study found that the persistent elementary and middle school overcrowding in some neighborhoods can be attributed in part to flaws in the new-capacity capital planning process. The study found that planning for new capacity has been hampered because enrollment projections are conducted only by Community School District (CSD) and not for individual neighborhoods.

It is SCA policy not to locate new seats in CSDs that are significantly underutilized or expected to lose substantial enrollment.  However, because the 32 CSDs are wide-ranging geographically and cover many different neighborhoods, there are individual neighborhoods where the population is soaring yet no new schools are planned. 

The process for determining where to site new school seats begins with the periodic five- and ten-year enrollment projections for each CSD prepared by the Grier Partnership, a DOE/SCA consultant.  Unfortunately, the Grier projections do not take into account building permits for new housing construction -- and the number of housing units authorized by permit nearly doubled between 2003 and 2005, reaching a record in 2007. 

“It is extremely troubling that the process for siting new school capacity is not sufficiently forward-thinking or responsive to changing neighborhoods,” the Comptroller added.

In his study, Thompson reviewed Department of City Planning neighborhood population projections for 2000 to 2010, DOE elementary and primary school enrollment projections by CSD, and official DOE capacity utilization data by school and CSD in October 2006 (the most recent DOE “Blue Book,” which gives enrollment and capacity data by school; notably, this document includes seats in portables when judging capacity).  The data was compared with where the DOE 2005-09 Capital Plan provides new elementary and middle school classroom capacity.  The review also examined the Grier CSD enrollment projections.

Although citywide school enrollment is projected to decline by 2015, Thompson’s analysis found a number of neighborhoods where new housing will prompt a population surge, the demand for elementary and middle school seats is growing, and many schools are operating near or above their capacity. Several examples in the Bronx include:

• Soundview-Castle Hill, Throgs Neck.All elementary schools in Throgs Neck and most elementary schools in Soundview-Castle Hill exceeded capacity in October 2006. Yet, City Planning projects that housing construction will lead to substantial population growth between 2000 and 2010, an expected increase of approximately 4,000 persons in Soundview-Castle Hill, and 2,300 persons in Throgs Neck.

• Highbridge. In CSD 9, City Planning projects that from 2000 to 2010 the population of Highbridge will increase by 14.1 percent. Highbridge schools were virtually at capacity in October 2006 and, the report notes, the United Parents of Highbridge has organized community meetings and held a demonstration on the steps of City Hall, demanding a Highbridge middle school.

• Bedford Park, Fordham, Kingsbridge, Norwood, Riverdale, University Heights. In October 2006, elementary schools were overcapacity in virtually every CSD 10 neighborhood. In 2004, it was estimated that 2,960 seats – or 73.4 percent of planned seats – would be completed by the end of the Plan period, but by February 2008 this was slashed to only 300 seats – or just 13.3 percent of planned seats.

The report further contains a detailed breakdown by neighborhood analyzing population growth, enrollment growth and school capacity planning.

“In these and other neighborhoods, additional school seats -- elementary school seats in particular -- are urgently needed,” Thompson said. “Yet, in many cases, they do not appear in the Capital Plan, or are severely delayed.  This means that thousands of children will be taught in overcrowded conditions for years to come.”

Said Thompson: “A viable school system is essential to maintaining economic diversity and a strong, vibrant middle class.  In addition, in a city where immigration is an important part of our economy, our ability to accelerate the process for English Language Learners is hampered by overcrowding.”

The report further identifies communities where population growth may be slower, but the 2005-09 Capital Plan provides too few seats or none at all, though additional seats may be required.  Among those are Sunset Park and Bay Ridge-Bensonhurst.

The Comptroller noted that in a number of neighborhoods, desperately needed new elementary and middle school capacity provided for in the 2005-09 Capital Plan might not be completed for another five or six years. According to the 2005-09 Capital Plan Proposed Amendment (February 2008), 63.4 percent of the 36,551 new elementary and middle school seats now provided for in the Plan will not be completed until after the Plan period, compared to 41.1 percent of 39,204 seats in the 2005-09 Capital Plan as it was initially adopted in June 2004.

To address these problems, Comptroller Thompson recommended the following:

• DOE should make enrollment projections that are much more relevant and valid for determining where to site new capacity.  To address “pocket” overcrowding of discrete neighborhoods within a CSD, each CSD should be divided into a number of communities, with separate enrollment projections and schools capacity planning.

• A single entity should prepare enrollment projections that combine demographic trends and cohort survival analysis -- currently the responsibility of the Grier Partnership -- with new housing construction and any additional factors that are now reviewed by SCA.   The methodology for doing this should be made public. The SCA states that it adjusts the Grier projections to take new housing construction into account, but when asked how this is done, a senior SCA official told Comptroller staff that s/he was “not at liberty” to say.

• DOE and SCA should implement a process similar to that required of City agencies under the City Environmental Quality Review (CEQR) in order to assess in a more timely fashion the impact of new housing development on school enrollment.

• DOE should adopt a rolling five-year capital plan, rather than the currently used fixed term five-year plan.

The Comptroller further proposed several measures that could provide financial incentives for developers to participate in mixed-use projects containing elementary and middle schools:

• Allow the New York City Educational Construction Fund (ECF) to finance mixed-use projects on private property.

• Allow the New York City Industrial Development Agency (IDA) to finance industrial and commercial projects that include a public school.

• Provide a new property tax exemption for private residential developments that incorporate a school.

• Charge District Improvement Fund Bonus Payments (known as “DIBs”) to developers in return for increases in floor area ratios (FAR), and use these funds to finance the construction of public schools.

• Amend the Zoning Resolution to apply certain provisions of the South Richmond Special District Plan to other parts of the City.

The new financial incentives could be combined with the community facilities FAR bonus now available in many parts of the city. The proposed new financial incentives might make a mixed-use project with a public school feasible when just the FAR bonus or the financial incentive alone would not be enough.  

“Ensuring a reliable, consistent, transparent, and effective capital planning and construction process for New York City’s public schools is extremely important,” Thompson said. “The costs of school overcrowding are high: larger class sizes and less individual attention for students; no space to provide art, music and science education to ensure that students receive a well-rounded education; lack of space for physical education, making it impossible for many schools to comply with State law governing the amount of time students must receive physical education per week; and disengagement by parents who may decide to send their children to non-public schools or to relocate from the city altogether.”

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