Good News on Schools Front

As promised, two pieces of good news for the Bronx! It's about schools.

1) The city has identified a parking lot on Webster Avenue near 205th Street as a possible location for a brand new 612-seat, pre-K through 8th grade school, the Department of Education has confirmed.

This would be the first school structure not being built on a playground in District 10 (the third most crowded district in New York City) in years, a major victory for school advocates like the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, whose membership was outraged when the latest capital plan again short-changed the borough.

The DOE warned that this is far from a done deal. The site has not been purchased, but the DOE is internally reviewing whether to buy it, which is the first step toward the idea becoming a reality.

2) The U.S. Army Reserve is vacating a facility and giving it up for another use in Wakefield as part of an overarching plan by the U.S. military's Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission (otherwise known as BRAC).

This is great news for school advocates who want to see schools in the Kingsbridge Armory's northern annex buildings.

Currently, the annex buildings house somewhere around 125 to 140 state military soldiers and staffers. They are open to moving, but need to find a new home, one that won't cost them anything, before they go anywhere, according to Eric Durr, a spokesman for the State Division of Military and Naval Affairs.

They want to stay in the Bronx, Durr said. If they leave the Boogie Down, the Bronx would be the only borough without a state military presence.

Here's where it gets tricky. Durr, who admittedly did not know exactly how BRAC works, said what most likely will happen is that once the Army Reserve vacates the Wakefield facility (Durr estimated that probably wouldn't occur till 2011), it would be turned over to a local re-use authority which believed would consist of people in the community. That authority would then decided what to do with the facility.

A local school activist told us the Economic Development Corporation (EDC), which is also handling the Armory project, is looking into the possibility of relocating the units currently housed in the Armory into the Wakefield facility. The EDC hasn't returned a phone call or an email requesting confirmation of this. We'll continue to look into this and provide updates whenever possible.

So, while none of this is concrete, it is positive movement in the right direction and could lead to good things for the future of Bronx education.

See, told you, good news!

Update: Here's what the EDC said about the Wakefield facility, which is called the Sgt. Joseph A. Muller Army Reserve Center. The biggest thing is that the facility is in the hands of the mayor and the Bronx borough president. From EDC spokesperson, Janel Patterson in an e-mail:

"In 2007, the Department of Army identified the Sgt. Joseph A. Muller Army Reserve Center as surplus property and slated it for closure. In December 2008, the Department of Defense recognized the Muller Local Redevelopment Authority as the official local redevelopment authority for the Muller Army Reserve Center. The Muller LRA consists of the Bronx Borough President, Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services. Pursuant to the Base Closure Community Redevelopment and Homeless Assistance Act of 1994, the Muller LRA is currently seeking notices of interest for the Muller Army Reserve Center. The Muller LRA will continue to comply with all requirements of the base redevelopment planning process, and will ultimately determine the future use of the property."

'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."