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Kids and Parents Rally for School Crowding Cure
Demonstrators from P.S. 234 and P.S. 89 marched to the rally, toting signs with hand-drawn slogans like “Be cool help our school!” and “ Give me some space to learn!” Even the littlest toddlers carried the message, wearing pins that warned the Department of Education to re-think population growth Downtown. “ Stop overcrowding, build more schools!” the children chanted, some of them still carrying books from their last day of school. State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver joined the rally outside of the City Hall gates to talk to concerned parents. “ We’re looking into the usability of the Manhattan Youth [community center] and are exploring other alternative options for space,” he told them. “However, we have to remember that these are only temporary solutions and with a community that is growing so fast we’re going to have to come up with some long term, stable solutions.” Sabina Barrett held her youngest toddler in her arms, straining to hear speakers who had no microphone. As a parent at P.S 234 over the past 9 years, she has seen the school lose art, science, and computer classrooms. “ It’s physically impossible to try and fit so many students into such a limited space,” she said. “ It’s unfair to the students, and at a certain point it almost becomes like a punishment.”
“ Sometimes it’s impossible to understand something without your teacher’s help” she said. “You just need that extra attention.” Kate Bonham Walsh, a rising 3rd grader at P.S. 89, worried that bigger classes would hurt the social atmosphere of the classroom. “ It wouldn’t be good, because you wouldn’t even get a chance to properly know everyone.” she said. Recently, parents voiced their opinions by the thousands in a postcard campaign to Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein. While principals say they have enough space to accommodate students for the fall, they project that they will be short of seats in the fall of 2009. Until then, principals of P.S. 234 and P.S. 89, as well as P.S. 116 (Murray Hill) and P.S 3 (Greenwich Village) have provided extra space at a price, with rooms for art, computers, music and science given over to classrooms. To make room for everyone to eat in the P.S 116 cafeteria, some students sit down to lunch as early as 10 a.m. The two new Downtown schools, scheduled to open in 2010 at the earliest, will provide relief, with nearly 1,000 new elementary school seats. But that falls short of the demand by almost half, according to projections by P.S. 234’s overcrowding committee. Nikki Bonham Walsh (mother of 3-year-old Kate) moved downtown so that she could send her kids to P.S 89. Now she has been told that her youngest daughter might not be able to enroll in kindergarten at the school, and Walsh may have to look elsewhere, to schools that are in District 2 but far from downtown. “ It’s ridiculous that a community whose members are so invested in it does not have more schools. With an exponentially growing number of kids, we need more space,” she said. “ It’s not rocket science.”
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