Yasko Yoshida has no complaints about Mayor Bill de Blasio’s sweeping early education initiative that converted all half-day pre-K programs to full-day programs and promised free and universal access to all three- and four-year-olds in New York City this past school year. That is, now that her daughter is off the 400-child-long wait list at Brooklyn’s P.S. 516 Sunset Park Avenues Elementary School.
“Just in case that she didn’t get into any public schools, I pre-registered her for a private school,” Yoshida said as she waited for her daughter and the rest of the school’s 18 full-day preschoolers to be released at the end of the day the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.
Had Jill Smith, the principal of P.S. 516, not called Yoshida to notify her of an open spot in her school’s brand new 54-seat pre-K program after nearly a month of waiting, she would have been forced to pay anywhere from $10,000 to $14,000 a year out of pocket for a private pre-K program.
“[The private school] could have been pretty expensive for us, so I was very happy,” Yoshida says.
In Districts 15 and 20, which make up the Sunset Park region of Brooklyn, overcrowding within elementary schools have forced most public schools to shut down, rather than open, pre-K programs. In fact, the overcrowding crisis in her area is so bad that class sizes of grades K-3 have increased at a significantly faster rate than the rest of the city -- a growing phenomenon that serves as a makeshift solution to contain the city’s constant surplus of students within the same amount of space.
Last year, Smith’s school and the public middle school and private prep school which it temporarily shared a building with collectively reported a glaring overutilization rate of 231 percent according to the New York City School Construction Authority’s annual Enrollment, Capacity, and Utilization Report. As the most extreme example of a public elementary school which somehow made room to launch a new universal pre-K program, P.S. 516’s building housed more than double the amount of students that it was designed to hold. Despite managing to find room for preschool by moving her pre-K through first grade school down the street, Smith says she cannot guarantee that her program will last in the face of such an expansive overcrowding crisis.
“The reason so many schools have had to shut down their pre-K programs, especially in Sunset Park, is because of the fact that there are not enough seats for children who you’re required to accept,” Smith said referring to the state’s priority for primary school students over preschoolers. “If you have the luxury of the space in your building, you can offer pre-K programs, but unfortunately many principals have been forced to shutter those programs over the past years because they need to accommodate their K through five students.”
The report also indicates that of the 37 pre-Ks that were added to existing public schools in time for the current school year, 48 percent of those pre-Ks were inserted into public schools that were already at or above total capacity.
Of the twenty public schools that decided to add a pre-K program despite already meeting or exceeding their designated capacity, Districts 2, 11 and 27 in Queens experienced the most frequent introductions of pre-K programs. Infamous for its history of overcrowding and limited choice enrollment options among its elementary and middle schools, District 27 is one of seven districts that make up Queens, which is historically the most overcrowded of any of New York City’s boroughs. So notorious is overcrowding among Queens public schools that officials have nicknamed it the “epicenter for overcrowding.” Yet, despite their enrollment exceeding capacity by 109 percent, 117 percent and 119 percent respectively, P.S. 56, P.S. 106 and P.S. 63 in District 27 chose to add pre-K programs this past September.
“In certain communities like Jackson Heights, we probably don’t have enough community based organizations to cover all the pre-K seats that we need,” says Isaac Carmignani, vice president of the NYC Department of Education’s community committee for District 30 in Queens. He also pointed out that student enrollment has only increased in District 30 and that administrators don’t have the authority to turn kids away once they are considered overcapacity. “Rather than opening up another section within the grade to accommodate those students, we don’t have the room because our space is being used by a pre-K classes.”
Carmignani, who is also a member of the Blue Book committee, the community offshoot of the New York City Construction Authority, is in support of universal pre-K as an institution, but plans on raising such concerns to New York City Schools Chancellor, Carmen Farina.
P.S. 11 in Woodside, Queens is one of the most overcrowded schools in District 9 with an overcapacity rate of 103 percent according to the 2013-2014 Enrollment, Capacity and Utilization Report. Deborah McGowan’s daughter is a student there and her first grade class shares their classroom with another class in the same section, totaling to 44 children in one classroom.
“Right now, they don’t even have room to play outside”, said McGowan in reference to the children in her daughter’s class. “They don’t get to eat in the cafeteria and pick where they want to sit and socialize with who they want and those things are very good to learn at this age.” Instead, McGowan’s daughter has to eat lunch at her desk in the classroom, since there is no space in the cafeteria during lunchtime.
Despite the limited space it already has, there are plans in the works to possibly add a Pre-K program to P.S. 11 in a few years through rezoning, according to a District 30 Community Education Council proposal. “It’s nice that the mayor wants every child to be able to have Pre-K, but they can’t even take care of the kids they already have.”
P.S. 11 will be under construction until 2017. “At that time if there is funding and need there, they will add Pre-K classes,” said Dr. Philip Composto, the Superintendent for District 30.
While P.S. 516 is smaller than most as it currently holds only pre-K through first grade, their 400-person waitlist for pre-K is massive and hardly shrinking. As a common occurrence among public school preschools, waitlists such as P.S. 516’s reaffirms the high-demand for classroom seats within de Blasio’s Universal Pre-K program and the increasingly tough decisions that primary school principals are forced to make.
“No public school was required to open new sections of pre-K unless a principal of that school specifically applied to offer new pre-K sections and felt their school had the capacity to handle new seats,” said Harry Hartfield, the Deputy Press Secretary at the New York City Department of Education.
At the start of the school year, de Blasio’s greatly anticipated expansion of the city’s existing universal pre-K program publicly boasted an enrollment number of more than 51,500 preschoolers across the city’s 32 districts -- a number just shy of his administration’s original enrollment goal of 53,000. However, according to data obtained by the New York State Department of Education from a Freedom of Information Law request and publicly available data, the city is actually servicing less preschoolers than last year.
Even though ultimately, 70,000 children will get a jumpstart into their education if de Blasio fulfills his goal, parents, lobbyists and advocates among public schools who work closely with the city’s Department of Education argue the program is directly undermining the already tenuous citywide overcrowding crisis among public schools.
“The Mayor and Chancellor have said repeatedly that overcrowding is a serious issue to them and have already taken steps to combat it,” says Hartfield. While he argues that the alarming trade off between classroom functionality and space is being addressed by city officials, in reality, New York City Schools Chancellor Farina turned a blind eye this past fall when Lower Manhattan’s P.S. 323, The Peck Slip School, pleaded with her for more space during their incubation period while waiting for their new school to be built.
Joy Martini, President of the school’s PTO, said that seven kindergarten, first- and second-grade classes were crammed into five classrooms temporarily sectioned off by flimsy dividers. Ironically, these temporary rooms share the same building with Chancellor Farina’s office -- and are across the hall from her two large, unused meeting rooms. Parents said the environment was so distracting to their children that they complained about being able to hear lectures through the dividers. “There are two rooms that the Chancellor keeps for her own conference use (not often used) that could easily be turned into classrooms,” said Martini as she noted that their effort was “squarely focused on getting the Chancellor to share these rooms.”
While both universal pre-K and class size reduction is part of a six-pronged citywide budget administered by the state, pre-K has received significantly more attention and tangible results. On the other hand, class size reduction has received $160.3 million, but has seen only hindrances and setbacks as ratios between students and teachers consistently increase annually, according to Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advocating for smaller classes in New York City schools.
Over the course of nine months, under the Contract for Excellence plan which designates citywide funding for pre-K and class size reduction, de Blasio allotted $9.5 million to fund his initiative -- a fraction of the amount that the class size reduction effort has received. According to leases signed by the New York City School Construction Authority, for every new preschooler enrolled in universal pre-K, at least $494 is needed to fund 20 more square feet of classroom space -- a minimum spatial requirement designated by the New York City Department of Building’s building code. While universal pre-K might seem like a win-win situation, it’s much needed space, money and attention has put New York City’s historic class size reduction initiative on the backburner, according to multiple community education council leaders, public school lower-elementary school teachers, lobbyists and parents.
“The city made a commitment in 2007 to reduce class sizes in all grades as part of the Contract 4 Excellence law and instead class sizes have gone up significantly every year since then and now they’re the largest in 15 years in grades K-3,” said Haimson. “Many of the gains that would be expected from preschool will be undermined once kids get to kindergarten,” Haimson pointed out in reference to the shortage of classrooms caused by the introduction of new preschool programs.
When de Blasio mandated that all of the city’s existing 747 universal pre-K programs be extended from 2.5 hours to 6.5 hours beginning this past September, 38 new pre-K programs were added to public schools and 18 new community-based organizations were created according to various reports, yielding a total of 1,693 programs available to all three- and four-year-olds in New York City.
However, the most challenging stipulation that de Blasio impressed upon the New York State and New York City Departments of Education was the conversion from half-day programs to full-day programs. Prior to the implementation of full-day pre-K, 36,121 preschoolers were enrolled in half-day programs which could accommodate 18 children in the morning and 18 children in the afternoon, according to the New York State Department of Education’s projected and past enrollment data acquired from a Freedom of Information Law request.
With the termination of publicly funded half-day programs in favor of full-day programs, only 18 children can now be taught in one day if more space is not created within existing programs, when previously 36 kids could be accommodated in one day. Although those 3- and 4-year-olds can now receive more instruction time and their parents have more flexibility to work longer hours, the conversion to full-day programs effectively displaced 18,060 children who previously were enrolled in half-day pre-K programs if more space was not created.
In fact, 8,378 less preschoolers are being served this school year as compared to last year’s enrollment, a year before expansion occurred according to New York State Department of Education data obtained through a Freedom of Information Law Request. Even though the New York State Department of Education had set a goal of 31,072 seats made available for this school year, and 41,000 by the end of the next school year, there are only 27,743 seats available to preschoolers at present – and the school year is nearly halfway over. According to a report released by Class Size Matters, the city plans to add 4,268 new full-day pre-K seats to public schools by next fall, despite the overcrowding epidemic that New York City schools are trying to tame.
“These proposals, though laudable, will put even more pressure on existing school capacity,” Haimson writes in her report. “Without a specific plan to lease or build more facilities, [they are] likely to cause even more overcrowding and lead to yet larger class sizes.”
With the expansion of full-day pre-K, preschools that could previously hold double the kids by breaking their children’s sections into morning half-days and afternoon half-days, would now be faced with the challenge of turning even more applicants away, contradicting the mayor’s primary goal of pre-K expansion if not enough extra space is created to accommodate these displaced preschoolers.
For example, P.S. 234 in Astoria, Queens recently added a pre-K program with three sections of pre-K -- one of which is a full-day, 18-student class. Out of the 80 applicants that the school had this past September for its newly added program, only a little over half were accepted according to Assistant Principal Michelle Feurstein.
“I know with our community-based organization, the DOE mandated that we go from half-day to full-day which didn’t actually add any new seats,” said Deborah Alexander, a parent who recently enrolled her three-year-old in Kid Krazy, a community-based organization also located in Astoria that receives funding for universal pre-K.
Even more shocking than the more-than-8,000-seat shortage of pre-K seats, is the scarcity of new leases for pre-K programs that the New York City School Construction Authority has successfully contracted since de Blasio entered office in January. According to information released from a Freedom of Information Law request, the New York City School Construction Authority has only acquired space from five organizations within New York City to be converted into pre-K programs, public and community-based, by the start of the 2015 school year.
Only one lease is slated to open a public school which includes a pre-K program in Queens, the most historically overcrowded borough, both within schools and in terms of general population, out of the entire city. In fact, according to Haimson, 75 percent of elementary school students in Queens were taught in buildings at or above capacity during the 2012-2013 school year.
The other four leases contracted by the New York City School Construction Authority would add a total of nearly 89,000 square feet of academic space for new elementary schools that would include pre-K programs in Brooklyn. The borough, however, is the least crowded of all the boroughs: Although the percentage is still more than double national averages, only 47 percent of elementary school children are taught in buildings that meet or exceed its capacity.
According to the New York City Construction Authority’s Capital Plan, the Administration acknowledges that de Blasio’s pre-K initiative will contribute to capacity concerns by “[adding] significantly to new capacity to be constructed.” However, this belief is contingent upon the success of class size reduction -- an effort which has seen no success over the past seven years, as class sizes have consistently increased according to DOE class size reports. As for the Administration’s plan of action, they report that “analyses are currently underway for these new categories.”
Hartfield, acknowledged the overcrowding crisis pointing out the creation of a new Capital Plan which will build 33,000 new seats.“School overcrowding is a longstanding historical issue in the city, and we are using all the tools available to us, such as rezoning, new construction and leasing space, to address it,” he said.
I just want to explain a disclaimer about the numbers which I used to calculate the 8,000+ seat shortage. They are based on NYSED projected enrollment numbers (obtained via a FOIL) for 2014-2015 universal pre-Ks and therefore do not represent current enrollment numbers. Those numbers were broken down into enrollment of newly created full day programs and half-day programs that converted to full day programs. Those numbers conflict with a separate database that lists all of the government-funded universal pre-K programs in NYC along with their current capacity -- that database, obtained via scraping data from a map, suggests that there are currently 87,000+ seats, which would mean that de Blasio not only surpassed his first year goal, but that he surpassed his ultimate goal of serving 70,000+ preschoolers in the city. The number seemed too high so I went with the NYSED FOIL numbers instead. In order to validate that there is an actual shortage, I would need to call up every single preschool that previously served only half-day programs to find out if they actually complied and converted to full-day programs. Realistically, not every program converted to full-day -- or they only converted one section to a full-day program-- which would imply that my numbers are a slight overestimate at best. Therefore, I do not find this publishable (or at least that part of this piece publishable) unless there is a sound way to validate CURRENT and RELIABLE enrollment numbers. I suspect that this will not be feasible until the beginning of the 2015-2016 school year when the database of actual child counts for the 2014-2015 school year is filed.