Thursday, October 30, 2008

Another major surprise - schools are overcrowded

More then a third of the city's students - and more than half of all high school kids - are in overcrowded classrooms, a report to be released Wednesday shows.

The city would have to create more than 167,000 new seats, far more than its current 63,000 target, to reach its own goals, according to the study.

The report, by the Manhattan borough president's task force, Class Size Matters; the teachers union, and the Center for Arts Education also finds that more seats were added under the last six years of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani's tenure than during the first six years of Mayor Bloomberg's.


City classrooms packed, expansion slows in Bloomberg era, says study

Four more years!

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well its obvious that schools need to erect sports stadiums to make them more economically viable. IMO, there cant be enough 50k sports venues. WE can hold concerts there too.

Anonymous said...

But bloomie has done a great PR job of convincing people especially in Manhattan that hes improved and expanded the public schools.100 million might buy his way in again unless he goes on vacation to one of his empty undercrowded vacation homes and never comes back.

Anonymous said...

This overcrowding simply cannot be so!

This Management Titan, who is responsible for education in NYC, would NEVER let the student population to get so out-of-control.

And, don't anyone post any rude comments that illegal aliens and "anchor" children who not only cannot read or write, but will never be able to read, write or do arithmetic are the reasons for failing schools.

For Commissar Death and Taxes, "Illiteracy is the Goal". With an illiterate population, politicians are free to rule as they please.

So, you see, the management titan has been quire successful.

Anonymous said...

Does this mean that Mayor Mike the "champion" of education really wants to keep our kids dumb enough to swallow the political clubhouse's drivel when they come of age to vote?

You betcha!

The under-educated
are always more easily "tweeded"!

You've got to be just smart enough to know how to pull the lever on the voting machine but dumb enough to think you have a real choice from among the machine's hand picked candidates!

Anonymous said...

and that's why the teachers union is in the pocket of the dems.
And even text books are getting tweeded. Pat Schroeder, the former Demo congresswoman from CO, who was on the left fringe of the democrat party now is now CEO of the Association of American Publishers.
Face it, that's why dems send their kids to private schools.

Anonymous said...

Well yeah, 1/3 off all children under age 8 have at least 1 parent that’s an illegal who
1-dont give a shit
2-refuses speak English
3-refuses to use birth control.

It’s getting to be Los Angeles here now; a good portion of these kids have geneticly defective demeanor, cant speak English.
How far down can Bloomberg drop the passing requirment ?
Have no doubt most this "new batch" will be dropped out of school and be in gangs by age 16.

TV and Sony Play station baby sitting services like Grand Theft Auto dont cut it !
These kids no longer know what real and whats not. Ask any corrections officer from Rikers !!

This "Sanctuary city" policy It will soon make it a 3rd world war zone here.
The Mayor is out of touch and has gone mad

-Joe

Anonymous said...

What none of you realize is that billions of dollars are being spent on the city schools on programs that are not well-suited for ELL (English Language Learner) or slow learners. The Reading/Writing Workshop is rooted in Columbia University's Teacher's College - program founded by Lucy Calkins who never herself taught her own classroom. But she's been an "expert" at writing books and selling her bullshit program to various schools. And since Bloomie and Klein are two knuckleheads and don't know a thing about education, they bought into it despite the opposition of educators. The Everyday Mathematics program is another disaster. Teachers are using other teaching (old-fashioned) materials to teach their students, on the sly. The new stuff doesn't cut it. Can you imagine a reading program that does not allow phonics or grammar lessons?

That's why the kids are being test-prepped to death. The programs that are costing the city SO much are completely inadequate and sometimes I do wonder if they are purposely trying to keep these kids dumb. The few savvy parents that do complain, do so to the principals or teachers who can't do a thing about it. The city is loaded with, I hate to say it, with really worthless parents who either don't care or don't understand.

Anonymous said...

I think it's a lot of ignorance on the parents' part. That and the fact that public school has pretty much become free daycare for the the majority of working parents. And if the kids learn something while they're there, BONUS!

Anonymous said...

You know, if it was acturally seen as a day care, it would be sad but whatever. But each and every kid is seen as a test score with 4 being the highest and 1 the lowest. The principals are under pressure to bring the scores up. If you're a teacher, your principal will ask you on any given day, how many 4's, 3's etc. The kids are not seen as a whole child but a pile of data - that needs to make the school look good.

Anonymous said...

On the subject of school construction, it's unfair to blame Bloomberg, because the situation would be the same no matter who was mayor.

Where would YOU build a new school-- on some toxic industrial site?

Maybe some city-owned property, like in an old bus garage or over a railyard?

Or maybe, since the little darlings have to be kept from traffic or pollution (every old shopping center had a dry cleaners at one time, so they're polluted, too) we should just seize a block of residences through Eminent Domain, and put a school there.

Pick any site at all, and see if you can actually open a new public school there within eight years.

Anonymous said...

Oh come on, next thing you will be telling us is that our infrastructure can't handle all this overdevelopment!

Anonymous said...

Every Board of Education failure today will mean more overtime for cops tomorrow!

Anonymous said...

"Where would YOU build a new school-- on some toxic industrial site?"

Hey there would have been no need for that if the City hadn't sold off its inventory to developers for $1 so they could build apartment houses on it and get tax breaks to do so.

And since a lot of houses are going into foreclosure, and in the areas that need more school seats, the problem of land availability may just work itself out.