The Education Department objects to a proposal to lower class sizes by requiring more space per student — testifying at a hearing Wednesday that the plan would lead to a shortage of school seats across the city.

“The proposed legislation would create a seat deficit at every grade level, require the building of hundreds of thousands of new seats across the city, and be incredibly disruptive to the school system as a whole,” DOE Chief Academic Officer Linda Chen said. 

Under mayoral control, the Council has little ability to set school policy. The bill uses a workaround: it would amend the city’s administrative code to require 35 square feet of space per child in all grade levels, compared to the 20 square feet required now. That would mean many fewer students per classroom. 


What You Need To Know

  • The City Council is considering legislation that would increase the amount of square footage required per student in classrooms, as a way to reduce class sizes

  • But the Education Department says the proposal is impractical and require more new classrooms than it can build

  • Council members also pressed officials for enrollment and attendance data, which the department says is coming soon

Chen said the city would need to create the space for 200,000 more seats to meet the requirement.

“Our typical new elementary school has approximately 500 seats and typically takes about five years or longer to site, design and construct. It can take even longer if the site is complicated or the school is not a simple design,” she said.

The School Construction Authority estimates that, under the current capital plan, it would take about 15 years to build 75,000 seats.

“It would take several decades for SCA to construct enough seats to meet the mandate,” Chen said.

But Brooklyn Councilman Mark Treyger, chair of the education committee, says the DOE is capable of doing big things — like creating pre-K and 3-K grades — when it wants to.

“Why are we not applying the same big thinking, bold ideas, ambitious energy, towards the issue of class size reduction?” Treyger asked.

Council members also questioned how city officials were able to crunch the numbers on how many additional seats they’d need to serve the student population when they have refused to say how many students are currently attending school.

“It's an insult, I believe, and I wonder why you're not willing to share with us the data that you have about the number of students who come to school. We're not even talking enrollment — who came to school yesterday? How many children came to school yesterday?” Councilwoman Inez Barron asked.

Education department officials, speaking on October 27, told the Council they’d provide the figures on enrollment by the end of the month.