Budget Woes Spell No Relief
For Overcrowded Queens Schools

By Stephen McGuire

School construction in Queens – the city’s most overcrowded borough — is taking some hard knocks.

The City’s current fiscal troubles mean that plans for building new schools throughout the City are being scaled back, despite the fact that last December city school officials made cuts to an original capital plan that was $2.4 billion short of delivering what it promised.

Late last year, the overcrowding situation called for high priority to be given to Queens’ school construction. When all was said and done, a scaled-back version of a plan called for either funding for construction or scope and design in a total of 19 projects in Queens.

But eleven of those projects were quietly postponed, earlier this month.

What it all means is 5,000 fewer classroom spaces in a borough that is already operating with 20,000 more students than it has seats for.

On Nov. 7th, the City’s Independent Budget Office (IBO) released its newsletter entitled “Inside The Budget.”

It spelled out the trouble on the horizon for new school construction projects in Queens.

According to the IBO, the most recent school construction delays mark the second time in under a year that the addition of new school seats has been pushed back.

Under amendments made to the school system’s capital plan in Dec. 2001, Queens was slated to get a large share of new school projects – close to 60 percent of all projects city-wide.

But the IBO said that roughly $595 million has been cut back from the $1.45 billion scheduled for capacity projects for the entire city in a revision made December 2001.

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein said during a public meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy held at Long Island City High School, on Nov. 18  “My understanding is that those [schools] that are in progress will be completed and there will be additional ones beyond that.  But it is, if you will, those additional ones that we will have to do some rethinking [on].”

Borough President Helen Marshall’s spokesperson Dan Andrews said the borough president has called the school construction postponements “devastating” 

Andrews said, “Queens is where the overcrowding is and should be where the money goes.”

Andrews also said that Marshall was interested in the “pecking order” of the postponements especially concerning delays for projects in Community School District 24 – the city’s most overcrowded school district.

In what has been called an effort to help streamline the school construction process, Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Klein announced the merger of the School Construction Authority (SCA) with the Dept. Of  Education’s (DOE) Division of School Facilities (DSF) in late October at Astoria’s PS 234 .

“For too long, the construction of public schools has been plagued by inefficiency, delay, and cost-overruns, hurting the quality of the City’s schools while driving up their cost,” Bloomberg said. “Thanks to the school governance reform achieved earlier this year, we have a great opportunity to exact fundamental change in designing, building, and repairing our public schools, and improving education in the City as a whole. These reforms will help us infuse accountability in the construction process, reduce costs while improving facilities, and relieve overcrowded conditions in the schools.”

Klein said the merger “will bring down school construction costs by creating accountability within the new structure and by increasing the number of competitive bidders engaged in the school construction process.”

During the recent Panel for Educational Policy meeting held in Queens, DOE Deputy Chancellor For Finance and Administration Kathleen Grimm said when asked about the merger, “We don’t have a projection on that…But we will have more information provided as we develop the plan,” she said.

Grimm said, “We hope to reduce the costs…and to stop what has really become a lot of finger-pointing which has hurt the capital plan.  We’re looking to eliminate that and moving forward in a much more rational way.”

According to the Mayor’s Office, the merger hopes to create a clear line of authority and accountability for the City’s school construction process with a single entity overseeing all capital planning, budgeting, and operations.

The merger also hopes to cut costs by eliminating “duplicative and redundant functions,” according to the Mayor’s Office.

In addition the merger also will attempt to bring down the cost of construction from its current $438 per square foot to $325 or less per square foot while constructing and renovating high quality schools.

Legislative changes may be necessary to formalize some of the reforms, but according to published reports the mayor has drummed up the necessary support to follow through with the plan.

The now defunct Board of Education’s (BOE) Division of School Facilities once conducted all public school construction projects until 1988, when the state legislature created the SCA.

However, the Moreland Commission, which was appointed by Governor George Pataki to investigate the practices of the BOE and the SCA, found that the agencies reported to separate boards and failed to establish an effective working relationship and created a lack of accountability in school construction.

As a result, these large bureaucracies produced drastic cost over-runs and failed to alleviate overcrowding, according to the Mayor’s office.

The office of New York City Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum recently released a report on school crowding in New York City.

The report “describes current school overcrowding and the progress the school system is making in building new seats.”

But the Gotbaum report found that “overcrowding . . . has been a chronic problem in New York City’s public school through most of the 1990s and continues today.”

The report cites high birth rates from the 1980s into the 1990s and increased immigration for an “explosive” growth of enrollment.

Gotbaum’s report also stated that Queens had the worst overcrowding in the City with four of its seven community school districts operating over capacity.

Queens is also where 50 percent of the city-wide need for additional seats is located.

On Nov. 13, Bloomberg announced the latest changes for Fiscal Year (FY) 2003 and presented an updated four-year financial plan for New York City.

“There is no silver bullet to address the $7.5 billion budget shortfall facing the City over the next twenty months,” Bloomberg said. “By any standard, the magnitude of the deficit precludes any single measure from curing the entire problem without causing serious harm to New Yorkers.  Taxes alone cannot bridge the shortfall, nor can the need be responsibly met solely through budget cuts.”

Included in financial plans for 2004 is $200 million in reductions to Dept. of Ed. administration, purchasing, district and high school administration, a teacher mentor program and summer camps.

According to the Borough President’s spokesperson, “The Borough President is doubtful that the mayor is on target, (with the proposed $200 million cut). As a former teacher, the Borough President feels the cut will affect the classroom.”

Department of Education spokesperson Kevin Ortiz said at the Nov. 18 meeting in Queens that it is “way too early to tell” where cuts would be implemented if the Mayor’s proposal for $200 million in cuts for education would be enacted.

According to Ortiz, each district’s superintendent submitted budget crunching plans last week, and the department is currently reviewing the submissions.  

Ortiz suggested that the impact of any type of cuts will be felt by school administration, not in the classroom.   

“Basically the idea is that the cuts the Mayor proposes—will be done administratively and not take away from classrooms,” Ortiz said. 

But Marshall was not entirely convinced.  “They got to show me,” she told the Tribune, “They have to show me that.  You can’t cut these numbers and not affect the classroom. That’s impossible.”

– Susan Lee contributed to this story

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