A shocking one-third of the city’s nearly 1,500 public school buildings were overcrowded during 2012, yet school officials produced no clear plan to deal with the problem, a new audit by city Controller Scott Stringer has found.
Enrollment at a third of the city’s elementary schools registered at least a startling 138% of capacity that year, Stringer concludes in a report to be released Wednesday, a copy of which the Daily News obtained.
But even that figure underestimates the problem, the audit said, because the Department of Education’s official census, known as the Blue Book, was “misleading.” Until this year, the Blue Book did not count thousands of students housed in temporary trailers as part of each elementary and middle school’s enrollment.
Similar reports issued recently by the Independent Budget Office and the advocacy group Class Size Matters have chronicled a steady rise in school overcrowding the past few years, but Stringer’s audit provides key details on the most afflicted schools.
At Public School 319 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for example, 186 students were jammed into a building meant to house 78 — 238% of original capacity. At least four other schools are listed at more than 200% of capacity.
At Francis Lewis High School in Queens, 4,161 students attended classes in a main building and eight trailers that were meant to house just 2,360 — 176% of capacity.
And at PS 234 in Tribeca, 687 students were enrolled in a building with only 485 seats — 142% of capacity.
The 59 most overcrowded schools Stringer identified averaged 167% of capacity.
Arthur Goldstein is a veteran of this horrendous space crisis. He’s taught English as a second language at Francis Lewis High for 20 years, most of the time in trailers.
“I’ve taught in hallways,” Goldstein said. “I’ve taught next to dumpsters. I taught next to a music room where they played ‘Flight of the Valkyries’ every day and refused to close the door.
“You could almost not blame the kids for cheating,” Goldstein said. “What are you going to do when they’re sitting in each other’s laps?”
“It was like standing in line to move in the halls,” said Elijah Roberts, 18, who will be a senior at Brooklyn’s Midwood High School in September. His school had 3,842 pupils in 2012 — 1,400 above capacity.
“There were between 30-something and 40 kids in all my classes,” Roberts said. “Sometimes they had to pull desks and chairs from other classrooms for us.”
At PS 107 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, 555 children attended classes in a building meant to house 352.
With no gym or auditorium, the school’s pupils had to use the armory across the street for physical education and the library for performances.
“We used to have pre-K but they got rid of it in 2011 to make room for the other grades,” said Julie Rosenberg, a social worker whose son is entering second grade.
In many cases, even the trailers meant to relieve overcrowding were themselves jammed beyond capacity. At PS 163 in the Bronx, for example, 453 students occupied a building with only 283 seats, while trailers in the school yard with 180 seats housed 214 pupils.
Meanwhile, the Department of Education’s Division of Space Planning and its Office of Portfolio Management, the two departments that were supposed to ease overcrowding, failed during the Bloomberg years to do their job, Stringer concluded.
“We were not provided with any evidence or documentation to substantiate (those departments) had recommended measures to alleviate this overcrowding, including through the conversion of classrooms and/or reassignment of grades,” the audit said.
For many parents and teachers, Portfolio Management’s educrats became known instead as the people fixated with closing public schools and opening new charter schools.
Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña agreed with most of Stringer’s findings. The chancellor quietly eliminated the Office of Portfolio Management in recent weeks and transferred its work to a new Division of District Planning.
“After spending nearly 50 years in the school system, I know that overcrowding is a serious and long-standing historical issue,” Fariña said in a statement. “Our 2015 – 2019 capital plan will add tens of thousands of new seats to directly address the issue, and we will work closely with communities to mitigate overcrowding.”
The bulk of 32,000 new seats slated to be built over the next five years will be in the most overcrowded school districts, DOE officials said.
But Class Size Matters director Leonie Haimson, who for years has spearheaded the fight by parents against overcrowded schools, is skeptical that much has changed with a new administration.
“The DOE continues to put out misleading data to minimize the ongoing crisis of overcrowding in our schools,” Haimson said. “Chancellor Fariña should use this opportunity to start providing real numbers and focusing on real solutions — including a more aggressive and ambitious capital plan.”
With Ben Chapman, Stephen Rex Brown and Kerry Burke
