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City controller’s report blasts Bronx school overcrowding, lack of relief

Bronx schools are bursting at the seams and “flawed” planning is to blame, a new report by the city controller’s office charges.

“There are too many neighborhoods with overcrowded schools, elementary schools in particular, and no relief for years to come,” Controller William Thompson said in releasing the report.

The report compares the new seats provided in the city Department of Education’s 2005-09 Capital Plan with expected neighborhood population growth.

The study highlights several Bronx neighborhoods, including Soundview-Castle Hill, Throgs Neck and Highbridge, where activists have been advocating for a new middle school.

In District 10 in the northwest Bronx, Thompson’s report charges that “schools were over capacity in virtually every CSD 10 neighborhood.”

That finding mirrors the calls of local activists who have been pushing to include two new schools in the Kingsbridge Armory redevelopment project.

The DOE, however, has said it sees no need for new schools in the area.

Its 2005-09 capital plan provides for 36,500 new elementary and middle school seats in new school buildings or additions to relieve overcrowding.

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Efrain Velazquez at the wheel of the X32 express bus, making a morning run from Queens to the Bronx High School of Science. The fare is $5 a ride.

The X32 express bus takes students like Jeffery Gerage, in the front row, a 16-year-old junior, from Queens to the Bronx High School of Science.

02/12/2008

Getting To School For Some Students Is A Science 

Three bridges connect Queens to the Bronx. But if you are a high school student dependent on public transportation, the 10- to 15-mile trip can easily translate into hours on the subway.

So Rasheda Browne, a freshman at the Bronx High School of Science, takes the city’s X32 bus at 6:33 every morning from her home in Jamaica, Queens. The trip takes an hour and a half each way, and costs $5. For Rasheda, it is worth it.

“Our teachers would tell us the school was really good, but it’s hard to get to,” said Rasheda, 14, between bites of a flatbread breakfast sandwich from Dunkin’ Donuts one recent morning. “I had to decide whether I really wanted to go there to get a better education.”

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Lehman High School Principal Retiring

The veteran principal of Herbert H. Lehman High School has agreed to step down at the end of the school year, Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein said on Thursday, after investigators found that two of his assistant football coaches had for years been paid overtime wages for time spent at home.

The principal, Robert Leder, said he had agreed to retire after 29 years in his post only after Education Department officials said he would otherwise be removed from the school midyear, pending a further inquiry into the payments.

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