About 100 Bronxites converged on the steps of City Hall earlier today to demand that the Related Companies negotiate a community benefits agreement for the Kingsbridge Armory. Members of KARA (the Kingsbridge Armory Redevelopment Alliance) and other northwest Bronx residents demanded schools to be included on Armory grounds, 2000 seats optimally, as well as union jobs during construction and living wage jobs after completion.
Desiree Pilgrim-Hunter, a KARA member who spoke at the rally, said afterward “the DOE [Department of Education] says there’s declining enrollment in the Bronx, but when my daughter comes home and says there are 46 kids in her French class, I have to ask where the declining enrollment is?”
According to Pilgrim-Hunter, the DOE has said they don’t want to make more schools in the Bronx. However, few at the rally seemed ready to wait for the decline in enrollment to abate the issue of over-filled classrooms. Angel Gonzalez, a high school student at the Leadership Institute, said that he has never borrowed a book from his school, because it does not have a library.
-Photo and reporting by Graham Kates
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Bronx News Network reserves the right to remove comments that include personal attacks, name calling, foul language, commercial advertisements, spam, or any language that might be considered threatening, libelous or inciting hate.
User comments are reviewed by BxNN staff and may be included or excluded at our discretion.
If what you have to say is unrelated to this particular post, please visit our readers' forum.