When the day’s final school bell tolled and students began to leave Bayside High School on Thursday, October 7, they may have noticed Councilmember Dan Halloran across the street tearing into the Department of Education (DOE) for the overcrowded conditions at the school. Halloran and the PTA claim the DOE promised over the summer that the enrollment would be exactly 3,487 students. The DOE says the active roster at Bayside High is 3,676 students.
“Unfortunately, schools like this, which are skilled above the norm, are being forced even further to strain their resources,” said Halloran. “Our schools are doing their best, but it’s not going to be enough if the central organization of DOE doesn’t clean its act up.”
Halloran was flanked by Bayside High PTA president David Solano, Francis Lewis High PTA president Leslie O’Grady and Jerry Iannece, the chair of Community Board 11.
“A lot of us in the community are sick and tired of constantly being short changed,” said Iannece. “Instead of giving us more dollars they give us more kids. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was our kid but they are bringing kids from other areas into this school and depriving our kids of a good and decent education . . . these are our schools and we want them back now.”
Currently, Bayside High School has six trailers outside the school to accommodate the added students. According to Solano, the school is way over its capacity of 2,100, making the ability to create make-up or credit recovery classes periods during a normal school day impossible. The school now stays open passed 3:30 p.m. to cater to those students.
What Halloran hopes to accomplish is to create more transparency from the city’s DOE and a long-term plan to end overcrowding at city schools. According to Halloran, it starts with a two-pronged process involving building more schools to create more seats for students and finding smarter ways for the DOE to spend their budget.
“The budget for the DOE in New York City is $22 billion . . . we have to ensure every dollar is spent wisely,” said Halloran. “Each generation becomes more and more accepting of what the DOE has done to us. We become more complacent . . . local kids who are a five minute trip away are now being turned away from their schools and being sent elsewhere because of capacity problems. That’s not right.”
DOE spokesperson Jack Zarin-Rosenfeld said that real progress has been made in reducing enrollment at Bayside over the past few years and it’s not unusual for schools to see a temporary inflated enrollment at the beginning of the school year.
“We anticipate Bayside will end up with the enrollment expected by the community when all is said and done,” said Zarin-Rosenfeld.
