DNAinfo.com Why New School Seats Aren’t Keeping Pace With City's Housing Boom by Amy Zimmer
Why New School Seats Aren’t Keeping Pace With City's Housing Boom
The expectation that Manhattan will have fewer students going to public schools might result in a “self-fulfilling prophecy,” worried City Councilman Ben Kallos, whose Upper East Side neighborhood is short 2,000 pre-K seats, forcing many parents to commute with their 4-year-olds in the morning rush to free programs in Lower Manhattan or pay a high price for private programs nearby.
4. A school has to be significantly overcrowded before the years-long process of building a new one can begin.
The city won’t consider building a new school until there’s a 5 percent increase in an existing school’s population, School Construction Authority president Lorraine Grillo told City Council members at budget hearings this week.