Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Overcrowding rally on May 6: please come!

There will be a rally/press conference next week to protest school overcrowding and the hundreds of Kindergarten students who have been placed on waiting lists for next fall.


This administration has been criminally negligent in failing to provide seats for these kids. Please come!


Where: Steps of City Hall (Take the 1,2,3 to Chambers Street or 4,5,6 or J,M,Z to City Hall)


When: Wed. May 6 at 4 PM. Bring your kids!


A flyer to post in your school or building is here.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Will surgical masks be provided???

Beth said...

letter to Bloomberg/Klein,
My child is one of 100 children on the UES who lives in a neighborhood without a public elementary school. Unaware of the growing overcrowding problem, I trusted in your administration to allow my child entry into one of the neighboring schools, as has been customary for 9 years. I researched and toured all, pondered which would best suit my child and applied on time, assured that I would get my top pick. I am one building away from PS 290, so I was certain this is where my child would attend school in the fall. After all, how much could change in a year?

We are four months away from the first day of school and there are no available seats for over 400 kindergartners in Manhattan! D2 zone 151 has no school at all and our children have been turned away by our neighboring schools because they have no space for their own children! UES, Greenwich Village, SOHO, Tribeca all have zoned children on wait lists for their neighborhood school. This has been a burgeoning and neglected problem that needs resolution now. You were satisfied to scatter the 151 zone children to neighboring UES schools until they burst, having to eliminate both art and science rooms for the upcoming 2009 school year. The lack of a school in the 151 zone should have been seen as an opportunity to create a model NYC public school in terms of strong educational leadership and socioeconomic diversity, equality in education. Instead there was no vision and no action by your administration. This negligence of your office, the DOE and our city has led us to this dire situation of extreme overcrowding and no schools for the upcoming school year and we are continually asked to wait for answers. We are done waiting.

The DOE is scrambling for a 151 temporary fix. Maybe a three year stint here or one year elsewhere then move again. No continuity. What is the lesson to our children? I think it screams “We don’t care about your education, so why should you.”! Where was the forethought when countless luxury buildings offering family sized apartments were built on every corner of the UES? These children were not considered. How did the administration compensate for the explosive population growth of pre-school and kindergarten aged children in our city? More children without a school. The answer is, our children have been shunned. The severe overcrowding leads to diminished educational effectiveness which will tarnish a child for a lifetime. The lack of a 151 zone school divides community and lowers property values. We pay taxes. We have rights. This neglect is inexcusable. Our children deserve more. What is your recourse?

Regards,
Beth Orchulli

Anonymous said...

Mayoral control means the mayor is supposed to be held "accountable." How do we hold the mayor accountable for this outrage. Does the mayor get fired, demoted? Does the Chancellor get fired? Where's the accountability?

Patrick J. Sullivan said...

Anonymous,

We can hold the mayor accountable by asking our representatives in the state legislature to reform the current system of mayoral control that allows these abuses to occur.

Patrick

Anonymous said...

We are zoned for PS 41/3 and don't have a seat for our hoping-to-be-a-kindergartner. We're not even on the waiting list because due to a miscommunication, we didn't get our application in on time, and the district office said they couldn't do anything for us until after the "official" waiting list went out. So while the official waiting list for our zone is now 91, we are number 92 (or 93, or 94...who knows how many people are in our situation?). We are really anxious and frustrated.

Patrick J. Sullivan said...

Anonymous #92

Please contact me so I can get your details and speak with the DOE people managing the process. It is absurd for a family to be told they're too late to even be on a waiting list.

Patrick Sullivan
(my email address is on the right under "contributors")

Anonymous said...

Anonymous 92:

Have you been in touch with "Kids Shut Out," the 3/41 wait list parent group? They have a web site at www.kidsshutout.net. I'd suggest you get on their email list for news about their advocacy and also some camaraderie.