School gym classrooms
May create space for new mandates
As many as 500 schools could choose to repurpose gyms and faculty lounges as classrooms as the city scrambles to meet the state’s class-size mandates amid soaring enrollment.
The option is one of 12 suggestions for schools that are listed in a draft plan released by the Department of Education Tuesday.
“Principals could closely review the space available in their school, including spaces currently not used for instruction but capable of supporting classes, and identify new space available to create new sections to reduce class sizes,” the plan read.
Deborah Kross, a representative for The Bronx on the Citywide Council on High Schools, told The Post that she thinks “it’s a disaster in the making.”
‘Losing libraries’
“We’re going to potentially lose our libraries, our labs, our art rooms to make room for core subjects.”
Yiatin Chu — who has a child attending school in Brooklyn — said she and other parents she’s spoken to are terrified at the uncertainty.
“Everything beyond the four core subjects are also really important for our children’s experience in the school,” she said.
Gov. Hochul and the state lawmakers — under intense lobbying from the United Federation of Teachers — approved a law in 2022 requiring New York City schools to slash classroom sizes across the board by 2027-28.
Under the law, K-3 by the deadline class sizes max out at 20 students, grades 4-8 are limited to 23 students and grade 9-12 must be 25 students or fewer.
Some 537 schools “may not be able to meet the new class-size mandates in their existing space and enrollment configurations” the plan revealed.
School districts have been urged to increase their share of compliance by 3%, and the draft reduction plan provides “clear, actionable steps” to make it happen.
Boosting the number of classes taught by assistant principals, staggering start times and virtual learning are also among the DOE’s other suggestions.
“The law is so inflexible that if, let’s say, you’re in a high school, and you have 26 students in one class, as opposed to 25, and you’re the principal, you’ll be forced to create a second classroom,” Queens parent Jean Hahn told The Post, adding “it’s an immense waste of resources.”
Class Size Matters executive director Leonie Haimson — who advocated for the law and was a member of a working group that provided advice to the DOE on how to implement the law — said the plan is “completely inadequate.”
“There were many effective proposals made by the class-size working group, almost none of which the DOE has adopted in their draft plan,” Haimson said, noting that online learning and repurposing elective rooms were not part of the working group’s suggestions.
Haimson said that despite her disappointment, “support for the law is strong, despite a small group of vocal opponents.”