By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
LOWER MANHATTAN — Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, bestowed a dubious honor on lower Manhattan at a meeting with neighborhood parents Wednesday night.
"Congratulations," Mulgrew told the crowd gathered in a Battery Park City auditorium. "You’re the epicenter of overcrowding."
Downtown’s rapidly swelling population — parents predict a shortage of 1,000 elementary seats by 2015 — has inspired rallies, petitions and, most recently, Schools Chancellor Cathie Black’s joke that downtown parents should use birth control.
At Wednesday night’s town hall meeting, Mulgrew told local activists that he shared their frustration with the Department of Education.
"They have been woefully inadequate in their planning," Mulgrew said. "We have to have some emergency plan…right now."
Mulgrew suggested a new city law that would require residential developers to build school seats along with their new high-rise towers. The city currently allows as-of-right developments to go forward without any contributions to the city’s infrastructure, which, Mulgrew said, "makes no sense."
Community Board 1 Chairwoman Julie Menin, who moderated the meeting, has been saying for years that New York should follow the example of San Francisco and other cities that mandate community givebacks for all new developments, but so far the city has not shown an interest in changing the rules.
As Mulgrew painted a dire picture of the future of education in the city, especially with the expected budget cuts from the state, several parents said they felt discouraged by the enormity of the challenges.
Mulgrew replied that the solution lay in parents and teachers working together to advocate for the city's children, and he promised to help fight for more school seats and smaller class sizes.
"Don’t give up," Mulgrew said. "We’re not going to stop."
