'New' School Seats a 'Flimflam'

An article in the Daily News today revealed that 300 'new' seats in the northwest Bronx were actually reclaimed seats, meaning the city is still not adding additional seats to ease the borough's chronic overcrowding problem.

City Council education chairman Robert Jackson said, "It seems to me that they're trying to do a flimflam on us." (For those unfamiliar with the term, the word "flimflam" means "a swindle." Thanks Webster's. Yes, we looked it up.)

Others, including Councilman Oliver Koppell, were equally unimpressed. The city is "trying to placate everybody, trying to make it seem like they're doing more than they're really doing."

In September the Norwood News wrote a story with similar miscalculations from the Education Department about a new building being constructed on the PS 94 campus in Norwood.

If you don't want to read through the whole article, here's the important part:

"Feinberg wrote in an email that the SCA scoured the district to find places to build on existing DOE property and, as a result, chose PS 94, PS 95 and PS 79 to receive permanent annex buildings. It's all part of the DOE's plan, she wrote, to alleviate overcrowding by adding 2,500 K-8 seats to District 10 in the city's revised Five-year Capital Plan. The new Early Childhood Center at PS 94 will 'provide 420 additional seats' in District 10, according to DOE calculations.

But after a closer look at the numbers, those calculations appear optimistic at best. The new building, which the DOE says will be part of PS 94 when it opens (but even that is subject to change once it's built), will contain 515 seats. Currently, PS 94 houses 1,050 students; 600 in the main building, 325 in the portables on campus and an additional 125 at a satellite building on Gun Hill Road four blocks away. As it stands, the DOE says all 450 students housed outside of the main building will move into the new Early Childhood Center. That leaves just 65 additional seats, not counting the new Pre-K students who will arrive as part of the DOE's citywide push for more Pre-K classes."