UPPER EAST SIDE — A group of parent advocates for Manhattan's largest school district wants Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration to make developers "shoulder its share of the burden on school overcrowding" by paying into a school construction fund when they build residential buildings in a school district.
The District 2 Community Education Council — a board of elected and appointed parents with children in schools from Battery Park City to 59th Street on the west side and 96th Street on the east side — unanimously passed a resolution on the issue Thursday night at a meeting at P.S. 290 on the Upper East Side.
The resolution calls on the de Blasio administration to create a commission or task force, made up of "parents, advocates and planning experts appointed by the NYC Council and the mayor" on "school siting and planning."
It follows up on a resolution they passed nearly five years ago, in March 2012, pushing for a requirement that would have developers who construct residential buildings to pay into a school construction fund to prevent overcrowding in existing schools that would be exacerbated by the influx of new residents.
In the resolution, CEC2 noted that the most recent amendments — added in November 2016 — to the Department of Education's 2015-2019 Five-Year Capital Plan estimates District 2 needs 3,232 elementary and middle school seats, but only has funding for 3,150 seats.
But CEC2 believes that the city's method of projecting enrollment numbers is flawed, as it doesn't consider the sizes of the units being built — studios versus three-bedrooms, for example — and therefore projects lower numbers than neighborhoods ultimately see when it comes to school-age population growth.
"Inadequate planning has caused undue hardships not only on families but also on schools by creating large fluctuations in enrollment from having to accommodate more students than the building can hold to a sudden drop in enrollment after new schools open" pending a construction "process that often stretches over five to six years," the resolution reads.
CEC2 Vice President Shino Tanikawa noted they witnessed that issue at P.S. 234 in TriBeCa and P.S. 89 in Lower Manhattan.
"Because we're behind in the development, we didn't build new schools in time," Tanikawa said.
There is particular concern about overcrowding as a result of residential development around the West Village, as projects enabled by the 2013 rezoning of Hudson Square are nearing completion.
The city also just approved the massive redevelopment of the St. John's Terminal across from Pier 40, which will add more than 1,000 new units to the area through a deal where the air rights to the pier were sold to the developers to finance much-needed repairs.
That project was in the works for years, and in early talks with elected officials in 2014, the developers pushed back against requests to include a school on the site.
On Thursday night, the CEC acknowledged that St. John's Terminal was a missed opportunity in terms of a chance at getting more school seats for the district.
"I think we were too busy trying to figure out how to make the air rights transfer work for the park," Tanikawa said. "It didn't come on our radar."
The developers had noted that three new schools are coming to the area, but the CEC members worried Thursday night that they would not be enough to accommodate the influx of new families.
The CEC's hope is that if the de Blasio administration creates the commission and "impact fund" outlined in their resolution, it could become de rigueur for developers to fund new schools, avoiding issues like this in the future.
The proposed commission or task force would:
► re-evaluate the method the city uses to project enrollment growth from new developments and potentially come up with a new formula;
► "consider if the threshold for building a new schools in the planning process be made lower when residential development is proposed in already overcrowded school districts;"
► and "analyze whether impact fees should be adopted that are not required in most school districts across the country, requiring developers to pay into a fund for schools and other infrastructure improvements."
Tanikawa said Brooklyn's CEC for District 15 — encompassing Carroll Gardens, Sunset Park, Park Slope, Windsor Terrace and parts of Boerum Hill, Fort Greene and Red Hook — passed a similar resolution in November 2016.
A City Hall spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
