Queens High Schools Still Crowded by Beth Fertig - WNYC

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Queens is always growing and it seems its schools are, too. The United Federation of Teachers says several high schools in the city's second most populous borough seem more crowded than usual this fall.

James Vasquez, the UFT's representative for Queens high schools, says principals are working hard to keep classes from getting too large by reprogramming schedules and adding more teachers. But he says Bayside, Benjamin Cardozo and the new Metropolitan High School are all still crammed with students.

"You have situations in which not only the hallways are crowded but the days are extended," he says. "Because kids are staying later or coming in earlier than they may have before."

The Department of Education confirms that Metropolitan High School, which opened in September, currently has 411 students -- 61 more than the target. Benjamin Cardozo in Flushing has about 40 more kids than expected.

Vasquez attributes the problem to poor planning and says the city should send more students to under-utilized schools. But a Department of Education spokesman says it's too early to make any determinations on class size or enrollment because they're still fluctuating daily. The state gathers final enrollment data on October 31.

Crowded schools don't always correspond with overcrowded classrooms, and vice-versa. Many schools in Queens and throughout the city still have class sizes that are above the contractual limit of 34 in high school subjects and 50 for gym. Vasquez says the Queens High School of Teaching was especially hard hit with dozens of classes above the limit. In early September, the union estimated that 1900 high school classes in Queens were above contractual limits. But that number has since been cut down by more than half. As in previous years, the city resolves many of the disputes just before or during arbitration hearings.

Meanwhile, the union says the situation at Francis Lewis High School - which has more than 4000 students - seems under control. The city and the union went to arbitration hearings over the past few years because of overcrowding. Though it's still packed, the union says no classes are beyond their contractual limits.

Comment by Arthur Goldsten

If the union says Francis Lewis is "under control" that's only because they haven't bothered to consult with anyone who actually works there. Lewis is open 14 periods a day, six sessions, and has classes in trailers with chronically failing heat and AC and half-classrooms that are absolutely unfit for teaching and learning. Our students run around outside in the cold and the dark, and eat lunch at 9 AM.

During peak times, you can barely make it down the hall. 61 more than the target? At Lewis we've been thousands above the target, and for years.

Hardly a "Mission Accomplished" moment by me.

Arthur Goldstein, UFT Chapter Leader
Francis Lewis High School

Do We All Really Serve the Chancellor, and Do the Buildings Belong to Him? by Cathy Albisa, Public School Parent - NYC Public School Parents

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On June 23, 2010, the Office of Portfolio Planning (OPP) from the NYC Department of Education attended a Community Education Council meeting in District 1 on the Lower East Side. This was in response to an invitation from our CEC to hold an initial needs assessment, before deciding how space should be used in our neighborhood’s schools.

When a CEC member asked, “What happens if there is a conflict between what the community wants and what the Chancellor wants for our district?” Elizabeth Rose, the OPP representative, responded, “We all serve the Chancellor, the buildings belong to him.” You could see the entire room full of parents bristle.

As a parent from a local elementary school who went to the hearing in a furious panic because word had gotten around that new charter schools were opening up and they might be shoved (given space constraints this is the only verb that is appropriate) into some of our public schools, I had a deeply mixed reaction to this statement.

Not surprisingly, I think most of us, including myself, took deep offense at what could only be described as a despotic message that utterly disregarded any value that a genuine democratic process would afford. Yet, there was something so deeply honest and clear about that answer, and so different from all the other vague and evasive answers given when hard questions were posed, that I almost wanted the thank her for at least stating things as they are.

So there it is, if the Chancellor’s buddy wants to start a pet project in the form of a charter school, parents beware and children be damned. Your art classroom, your class sizes, and your principal’s office are all up for grabs.

I was told by CEC members that OPP had agreed to come because parents and the community as a whole had strongly opposed inserting a charter school at the expense of the high need schools in our district, without even a needs assessment being undertaken. Given this context, the community input required as a trade-off for mayoral control was practically a farce.

The underlying bone of contention at this meeting was the formula for how space in measured in our schools. In my son’s school, our principal isn't even quite sure whether the space where he sits is considered “underutilized” (which also demonstrates how confusing the formula is). Right now, he shares an open space with eight administrators, the PTA was relegated to a what feels like a dungeon in the basement because as enrollment increased from 250 to 320 we have had to give away the parents room to create a new art room (a good trade, as the kids come first).

When our principal needs to meet with anyone, he has to wander the halls looking for any empty room because he has no office, and some classes (physical education for example) are held in the back of the large lobby due to space constraints. I have no idea whether the DOE thinks our library even counts.

In light of all this, when I look at the DOE latest "blue book" (or annual utilization report) that claims to show how much capacity each school has in terms of space, it appears that our school has room for a hundred more children! I have images of classes being held in the bathroom and our principal, wandering the hallways with a push-cart carrying all the school files.

One parent who also attended the meeting described this as the “fire code” approach to defining how much space a school has. So long as it doesn’t violate the fire code, they will keep shoving children into increasingly crowded spaces. But clearly we need a learning approach to counting space, and until we have one, none of the conversations with the Office of Portfolio Planning or any other DOE official will be in any way constructive.

The foundation is rotten, and so conflict, disaffection, and deprived children are the result. Until we have a formula that is based on what kind of space a child needs to actually learn, a “learning-based formula,” we won’t be able to say that “we all serve the children, and the buildings belong to them.”

Helen Marshall Says There's No More School Overcrowding in Queens! - NYC Public School Parents

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Check out what Queens Borough President Helen Marshall said on WNYC radio on Tuesday about school overcrowding by clicking here.

Meanwhile, according to official DOE data (which most experts think underestimates the problem), 67 percent of elementary school children in Queens attended overcrowded schools; and 77 percent of high school students. And this does not count thousands of students in trailers.

Class sizes are still increasing rapidly throughout the borough, and as of this March, nearly 800 Queens children were on waiting lists for their zoned Kindergartens.

If you are a Queens parent or teacher, and you think school overcrowding is still a serious problem, send her an email at info@queensbp.org, with a copy to her education adviser, RoseAnne Darche, at rdarche@queensbp.org and her PEP appointee, Dmytro Fedkowskyj at pepofqueens@yahoo.com

My School is Bursting with Students, and Tweed is to Blame - Op/Ed by Arthur Goldstein - NY Daily News

This op/ed by a friend appeared in the NY Daily News...

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As an ESL teacher, I face challenges very different from those of my colleagues. For example, while some teachers are at their wits' end trying to get kids to quiet down, I might be begging newcomers to speak audibly - or making them repeat things 20 times until they can be heard.

But that's not always the case. For example, a few years back, I had half a dozen kids from the Dominican Republic who loved to speak. But they wanted to speak Spanish, and in my English classes, we speak only English.

It was hard to blame them. On the other side of our sheetrock wall was a Spanish teacher partial to choral repetition. Every time I reminded my kids of our English-only rule, we'd hear 34 voices chant in unison, "Como esta usted, Senor Mendez?" They thought it was the funniest thing in the world.

The half-rooms were designed to alleviate overcrowding. After we created them, the Education Department sent us hundreds of extra kids.

I've since been exiled to the trailers. Technically they're "transportables," but ours haven't gone anywhere since they arrived years ago. Our first trailers gave us four additional classrooms, designed to alleviate overcrowding.

After we got the trailers, the department sent us hundreds of extra kids. Our second bunch gave us four more classrooms, and the department sent us hundreds more extra kids. Our last principal declined further trailers. In fact, he had an athletic field built around them, precluding further construction in the trailer park. The department sent us hundreds of extra kids anyway.

We improvised new rooms. Some resembled bowling alleys. A colleague, the day before his retirement, brought a bowling ball and rolled it from one end of the room to the other. The department sent us hundreds of extra kids.

Space became truly scarce. I was assigned to a room the size of a small studio apartment. A dance class practiced outside, forcing us to close the door. Having no windows, the 17 students and I made the daily choice between air and quiet.

This year, to alleviate the overcrowding, we extended our class day to 13 periods. The department still sent us hundreds of extra kids. Our building, initially designed for 1,800 students, broke 4,700 this year.

Returning teachers struggle to handle up to 45 students at a time, leading to momentous battles over precious chairs. Students and teachers tear furiously down the hallways, shoving each other out of the way to make classes on time by any means necessary. A colleague of mine found herself teaching a gym class of 156 kids. By the time the period was over, she hadn't finished taking attendance. They've since added another teacher, and six kids, so she's now down to 81.

In the trailers, the floors are polished for the first time. But with swine flu looming large, the sinks barely work and there's not a bottle of Purell to be found anywhere.

To us, the experts at Tweed are like doctors who diagnose a disease, then inject the patient with more toxins just to make certain they're right. No one can criticize their diagnostic skills. But if anyone's due a malpractice suit, it's the Department of Education.

Goldstein is a teacher and union chapter leader at Francis Lewis High School in Fresh Meadows, Queens.