As the city struggles to meet state class size restrictions amid a surge in enrollment, up to 500 schools may choose to repurpose gyms or teacher lounges as classrooms.
The option is one of 12 suggestions for the school outlined in a draft plan released Tuesday by city education department officials.
“Principals may closely review available space within their schools, including spaces not currently being used for instruction but that could support instruction, and identify new spaces that could be used to create new sections to reduce class sizes,” the plan states.
“This is the beginning of a disaster,” Deborah Cross, president of the Bronx High Schools Association, told The Washington Post.
“We may lose libraries, labs and art rooms to make room for core subjects.”
Yia-Ting Chew, whose child attends school in Brooklyn, said the uncertainty has scared her and other parents she’s spoken to.
“Everything outside of the four core subjects is also really important to a child’s experience at school,” she said.
Following strong lobbying from the American Teachers Union, Gov. Kathy Hockle and state lawmakers approved legislation in 2022 that would require New York City schools to reduce classroom sizes across the board by 2027-28.
By the deadline, class sizes for grades K-3 will be limited to a maximum of 20 students, grades 4-8 to 23, and grades 9-12 to 25, according to the law.
The plan revealed that about 537 schools “may not be able to meet the new class size requirements with their existing space and enrollment configurations.”
Whether there will be a need to repurpose space used for electives will depend on how the law is implemented in the coming years, the Ministry of Education said.
The proposed reduction plan lays out “clear, actionable steps” to achieve this, and calls for school districts to increase their compliance by 3 percentage points.
The Ministry of Education has also proposed increasing the number of lessons taught by vice principals, staggered start times and online learning.
“The law is so rigid that, for example, in a high school, if you have 26 students in a class instead of 25 and you’re a principal, you’re going to have to create a second classroom,” Jeanne Hahn, a parent from Queens, told The Washington Post.
“This is a huge waste of resources,” she added.
Leonie Heimson, executive director of Class Size Matters, who supported the law and sat on a working group that advised the Department of Education on how to implement it, said the plan was “wholly inadequate.”
“The class size working group had many effective suggestions, most of which were not adopted in the Department of Education’s draft plan,” Haimson said, noting that online learning and selective classroom reuse were not included in the working group’s proposals.
Despite his disappointment, Haimson said he had high hopes for the plan, arguing that “support for this legislation is strong, despite a small number of vocal opponents.”
Officials don’t expect any major changes by September. About 20% of New York City schools will have to comply with the mandate for the 2023-24 school year, but officials say about 40% are already in compliance, well above that threshold.
They say the proposed plan would allow schools to remain in compliance for the 2024-25 school year, but it still needs to be approved by teachers and principals unions.
“Further away, [the plan] “We will provide targeted support to schools with the highest needs and leverage $182 million in new school funding to support strong teacher recruitment,” Chancellor David Banks said.
