Misplaced Goals
To The Editor:
I am writing regarding Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC 2030, the majority of the attention on television and in the newspapers has centered around the congestion pricing issue, a very regressive tax which I believe will negatively affect Queens residents.
The Mayor’s task force was formed to come up with proposals on how to serve a population that is expected to grow by a million residents by 2030. They had to deal with the impact that the increased pressures on housing, energy, sewage, transportation, parks, playgrounds, and infrastructure.
The question I would like to ask Mayor Bloomberg is: Why does education always comes last to this administration?
I believe that nothing reveals the flawed priorities of this administration more than the fact that more than twice as many new seats in sports stadiums will be created over the next five years than new seats in schools.
It’s hard to comprehend why there are 117,000 new seats projected for the new Yankees, Mets and Nets stadiums, with only 63,000 new seats in our schools.
One has to question the administration’s priorities when the PlaNYC2030 task force was explicitly instructed to leave schools out of the plan.
The only mention of schools in the voluminous report, aside from opening up school playgrounds for more hours, is to use school buildings for more housing.
This is just the latest example of how the concerns of New York City public school parents are disregarded by this administration with their own skewed priorities.
This does not seem to the type of foresight or planning one would expect from a billionaire Mayor who has publicly stated that he wants education to define his legacy as Mayor.
Let’s remember that these privately owned – but publicly subsidized in the form of corporate welfare – sports teams will receive sizable amounts from the City’s coffers in the form of substantial tax-subsidies and tax-exemptions.
The reported $360 million the City will give the Yankees in tax subsidies and exemptions for their new stadium – this amount alone could fund 8-10 new elementary schools or 8 new high schools with 5,000 new seats.
This doesn’t even take into consideration the ample City provided tax-incentives that the Mets and Nets will receive.
What do you think is more important, to have enough seats in our schools for our children to learn or more sky boxes for millionaire team owners to profit from?
I can assure you that the vast amount of the seats in the stadiums will not be in a price range that the average middle class working person will be able to reasonably afford.
The recently settled, Campaign for Fiscal Equity case determined that we needed at least 120,000 new seats to eliminate overcrowding and reduce class size in all grades – not even taking into account any population growth.
The $9.2 billion in capital funding provided in the recently approved New York State budget was to provide smaller class sizes (Nolan/Lancman bill) and build new school libraries, science labs, and other much needed improvements to our children’s schools.
Yet the Bloomberg Administration plans to create only 63,000 seats. Incredible as it might sound, since they received all this new funding from the state, they have actually cut back the capital plan by 3,000 seats.
Meanwhile, new housing developments are springing up all over Queens – particularly in Rockaway, here in District 27 – and will likely cause even more overcrowding in our schools.
Every effort must be made by Chancellor Klein and the Mayor to face the urgent needs for more seats and smaller class sizes in our public schools.
I respectfully urge the Mayor to have the PlaNYC 2030 include the education capital funding needed to allow our public schools to have enough seats to be able to provide students with the sound education they are entitled to under the New York State Constitution.
I feel the above steps are necessary for our children to have the ability to compete in the new global economy and to keep America strong and competitive.
David M. Quintana,
Ozone Park
