District 22 Shortchanged On School Construction, Report Finds

Our section of South Brooklyn is one of two New York City school districts especially shortchanged by the City’s school construction plans, according to a new report.

An analysis just released by the Independent Budget Office found that among eight New York City school districts with the greatest need, District 22 (which covers an area stretching from Ditmas Park to Mill Basin) is one of two districts with “far fewer seats planned than are needed to alleviate current overcrowding.”

District 22 needs almost 5,100 seats, the IBO said, making it one of the top eight most overcrowded school districts in New York City.

The IBO defines the number of seats needed to alleviate overcrowding as the “number of additional seats a building would require to accommodate all of its students and still maintain a utilization rate below 102.5 percent.”

District 22 “faces a considerable shortage that will remain largely unmet,” the IBO reported. According to the chart below, less than 1,000 new seats are currently planned for District 22.

The City expects to create a total of 44,348 new school seats across the five boroughs between fiscal years 2015 and 2019, the IBO said, spending $14.9 billion on school construction during this period.

The $14.9 billion total includes a January amendment to the School Construction Authority’s five-year capital plan, which added $1.4 billion in new spending, the IBO said.

By the 2021-2022 school year, over 91 percent of the planned new seats should be completed, the IBO said.

Among the communities gaining the most new seats under the revised plan are District 30 in Queens, and two districts in Brooklyn: 13 (Brooklyn Heights, Fort Greene and Bedford-Stuyvesant); and 15 (Carroll Gardens, Park Slope, Windsor Terrace and Sunset Park).

District 19 in Brooklyn, which includes East New York, will get an additional 1,000-seat school in conjunction with the proposed rezoning of the neighborhood, said the IBO.