I NEED $17B TO FIX UP SCHOOLS
Chancellor lays out wish list to tackle overcrowding, accessibility for disabled
Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza unveiled a multibillion-dollar plan on Thursday intended to make city schools accessible to kids with disabilities, add seats in overcrowded classes, improve classroom conditions and expand services for homeless students.
The projects, with the exception of the homeless program, are part of a proposed $17 billion, five-year capital plan for the nation’s largest school system that Carranza explained to reporters at a press conference at Queens Public School 11.
The plan is biggest in the history of the city’s school system and represents more than $15,000 for each of the city’s 1.1 million school kids over the program’s span of 2020-2024.
Next, Carranza will solicit public comment on his proposal with a series of meetings.
Then, the City Council will weigh in and the Panel for Educational Policy will vote on the plan.
Mayor de Blasio is expected to sign off on the proposal in March.
The ambitious program reflects pressure from advocates, educators and families, as well as the de Blasio administration’s stated goal of advancing equity in the city’s infamously uneven public school system.
Carranza called it a down payment on the future.
“This capital plan represents another major step,” he said.
“From new seats to more accessible buildings and air conditioning in every classroom, we’re making sure that our students have the resources they need to succeed.”
Carranza’s plan sets a road map for upgrades to the city’s 1,800 public schools.
It includes $750 million to make one-third of the city’s schools in each district fully accessible to city students with disabilities by 2024, something that activists, including Advocates for Children, had pushed for.
The issue grabbed headlines in October when an Advocates for Children report showed just 1 in 6 city schools are fully accessible.
Manhattan mom Yuvania Espino, whose daughter Mia, 9, has cerebral palsy and attends a public school that lacks a door and elevators the girl can use, said the proposed funding is a step in the right direction.
“Children like Mia face unimaginable barriers on a daily basis,” said Espino, who’s daughter appeared on the cover of the Daily News with an investigation of the accessibility issue on Oct 10.
“School is the one place they should feel embraced and included.”
The plan also calls for $8.8 billion to be spent on increasing classrooms capacity with nearly 57,000 new seats for students, including the creation of an estimated 88 new school buildings.
Class Size Matters founder Leonie Haimson said the new seats are a good start but fail to account for anticipated housing growth across the city and particularly in Brooklyn.
“It’s good that they’ve at least funded their estimate, in terms of the need of seats,” Haimson said.
“But they need to keep up with the building boom.”
The capital plan also budgets $230 million to remove temporary trailer classrooms from public schools and $750 million to increase internet bandwidth in schools and upgrade schools’ cybersecurity measures.
It also funds an effort to put air conditioning in every city classroom by 2021.
Along with the capital plan, Carranza on Thursday outlined a $12 million plan to hire 100 additional schoolbased coordinators for homeless students.
Roughly 105,000 city students experienced homelessness during the 2017-18 school year, with the vast majority of them residing in doubled-up living arrangements with friends, neighbors or relatives.