Kids Rap Overcrowded Schools at Public Hearing

By FARAH PRINCE

Yuxuan Liu, a freshman at Brooklyn’s Ft. Hamilton H.S. who immigrated to the U.S. two years ago, spoke clearly in front of the New York City Council Committee on Education as a youth leader from the Asian American Student Advocacy Project on Tuesday.

He looked into their eyes and described his school, the most populous high school in New York State, which has close to 4,400 students packed into one building.

“Our seats are very close to each other’s.” Liu said about classrooms, which typically have a class size of close to 40 students.

In addition to broken heating and air-conditioning systems and dangerously packed hallways, Liu criticized the lack of enough of teachers and counselors.

“Every time I go to my guidance counselor for help,” Liu explained. “There are always students waiting on line.”

Another student, Tianhao Zhang, from Francis Lewis H.S. described a similar situation at his school.

“People usually meet with their guidance [counselors] once or twice a year,” he said. “Some of my friends even told me that they did not meet with their guidance [counselors] for the entire year.”

The inability of educators and counselors to adequately serve overpopulated schools was just one of the issues touched on at the hearing led by Councilman Daniel Dromm.

The hearing focused on the extent of overcrowding in City public schools and the Department of Education’s efforts to rectify the situation.

A July 2014 report by the Independent Budget Office, stated that overcrowding in City schools have steadily increased from 2007-2008 through 2012-2013. And an audit last July by the City Comptroller found that more than one-third of the 1,500 public school buildings were overcrowded in 2012. These figures, compiled in the DOE’s Enrollment, Capacity and Utilization Report, also known as the “Blue Book” may be “misleading”, said Dromm, because they failed to add in a number of factors, like the students who are moved into trailers.

Also at the meeting was Lorraine Grillo, President of the New York City School Construction Authority, who told the Committee that there were now 490,000 students in overcrowded schools.

Some schools, she testified, have converted utility closets and other administrative rooms into classrooms.

Dromm, a former social studies teacher at P.S. 99 in Sunnyside described a day when he saw the supply closet turned into a classroom.

“They brought out the rakes, shovels, and threw up some paint,” Dromm explained. “And turned it into the speech room.”

In addition to converting rooms that aren’t meant to be classroom, many “specialty rooms such as science labs, art rooms, and computer labs, are used.

Deputy Chancellor Elizabeth Rose said schools are required to have a certain number of specialty rooms based on the number of students enrolled. For a school that has 251 to 750 students, they should have three specialty rooms.

“So the Board of Education thinks that a population of 500 students can suffice with three specialty rooms?” asked Councilwoman Inez Barron.

The hearing also focused on a pending bill in Albany and iurged legislators to reject any attempt to raise the cap on the number of charter schools.

The cap on charter schools has already been risen twice. In April 2007, the cap on the number of charter schools was doubled from 100 to 200 and then in 2010, the Legislature allowed 260 additional charter schools.

Of the 260 additional charter schools, 156 remain unused.

Committee members also highlighted charges of financial mismanagement in charter schools. A November 2014 report by The Center for Popular Democracy and The Alliance for Quality Education estimated that New York could lose $54 million in charter school fraud in 2014.

Because charter schools are publicly funded, the city is required to provide free space for new or expanding schools by co-locating the charter in an existing, crowded city schools or paying rent for a private space.