Albany’s newest unfunded mandate foisted upon New York City requires lower City class sizes and it must be fully implemented by 2028. It orders that classes from kindergarten to third grade will have a maximum of 20 students, grades 4 to 8 will max out at 23 students and high school classes will have a maximum of 25 students.
As New York City Public Schools Chancellor David Banks pointed out last week, it puts new strains on the city’s nearly $40 billion educational system and budget, especially on its infrastructure, and in those parts of the city where a spot in a public school is a precious commodity.
The Upper West Side of Manhattan is one of those places. We have lots of kids. For example, at Public School 9 on West 84th Street – the Sarah Anderson School – class size ranges from 25 in kindergarten to 30 in 5th grade, according to Inside Schools.org. The situation is comparable at our other local schools. (To be clear: they are wonderful places.)
Where will we put all those kids?
There is a partial solution – right in the heart of the Upper West Side. There’s a former school, now abandoned, that’s crying out to once again be a place of learning and growth, with the joyous shouts of our children in the hallways and in the yard during recess.
It’s the former Calhoun School on West 74th Street. But a devious landgrab by the city – working in cahoots with a distant developer – threatens the historical integrity of the building and the neighborhood.
We know the city’s future depends on effective education — and a steady supply of affordable housing. The city needs to simultaneously improve educational options and to build more affordable housing to address this decades-long problem threatening New York as an affordable city in which to live, learn, and play. We get that. We applaud that.
The former Calhoun building at 160 West 74th St. was a school for over 145 years — and it could easily be converted for this purpose at minimal taxpayer expense. Turning it into an overcrowded shelter in a neighborhood that already has more than its fair share of transitional housing is not the best use of the space. It will cost much more, and in more ways than one.
For example, it costs the city a great deal in trust. How can we believe anything officials say when they mislead us so flagrantly? We only learned of the plan when we happened to attend a Community Board 7 meeting late last year and learned that a private equity firm would be enriched by tens of million dollars for the next decade by turning the building into a shelter and then charging the city through the nose to house folks there. Until then, we’d been told it would be a luxury condominium. Not ideal – we still think it should be a school — but this was certainly different than the reality for which we are now preparing. Bait and switch?
This is a gross misuse of taxpayer funds and a poor choice for this building and for the city’s future. Many of our questions, as well as those of our local Council Member, Gale Brewer, were ignored at the meeting.
Bait and switch and also no transparency from an administration that has been preaching it since day one.
Furthermore, 40 percent of public schools are required to be in compliance with the new state law by the start of this upcoming school year in September. The year after that is when the lack of classroom capacity becomes a significant challenge at a time when our neighborhood schools are educating many homeless and migrant children.
We demand that the city re-think this misguided plan and reverse the Department of Social Services’ decision, one that caught the community off guard, with no community input process and fails to address the needs of our neighborhood.
Terry Rosenberg is a resident of the Upper West Side and Board Member of Friends of the Upper West Side (UWS)
