Jonathan Pelto reflects on the latest educational reform: Tearing down schools and replacing them with luxury apartment buildings.
He writes:
Closing in on Rahm Emanuel’s title as “Emperor” when it comes to closing public schools…
True, few, if any can compete with Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel when it comes to the unprecedented effort to destroy public education by closing public schools, New York’s Michael Bloomberg covets the title and is making a dash to catch up with Emanuel’s unholy track record.
Call it the New York City School Closing Scheme 2.0 – The Bloomberg Way
The notion is built on the concept that why should we simply close neighborhood public schools when private developers can makes tens of millions in the process.
Earlier today, the education blogger extraordinaire, EduShyster, ripped away the veil to reveal the harsh light of truth on the school closing scheme being led by Bloomberg and his corporate education reformers.
As EduShyster wrote, “When we last checked in with our rich friends, they were flush with cash and aflurry with many excellent ideas for saving our failed and failing public schools. Now, with the stock market ascendant and corporate profits at an all time high, these generous benefactors are themselves rising to new heights of generosity and excellence. Today’s outstanding idea is brought to us (and to our failing schools) by the rich of New York City who have come up with an idea so bold, so transformative, so disruptive that we have no choice but to raise our glasses to them.”
The details of the scheme can be found in the prospectus produced by the Bloomberg Administration’s “Global Leader in Real Estate” agent who begins by announcing, “On behalf of the New York City Educational Construction Fund CBRE is pleased to offer for your consideration three prime development sites, two of which are located on the upper West Side, and one on the Upper East Side. The three sites are truly special opportunities as the present sizable developments within submarkets having limited available land for any substantial development…They are among the few chances remaining to build large projects in their respective neighborhoods.”
Using the concept of a whole lot of pictures printed on high quality paper is worth a lot more than a thousand words; the “request for expressions of interest” is definitely worth a look.
Beyond their prime Manhattan locations, what makes these sites “special opportunities?”
Property number #1 is the site of PS 191, also known as the Museum Magnet School. Although traditionally a “low-performing school” educating mostly poor Black and Hispanic children, many of whom live in the Amsterdam Housing project across the street, a three-year, multi-million federal grant has been transform the school into an innovate educational institution that is working in tandem with Lincoln Center and more than 90 of New York’s museums and cultural institutions.
Property #2 is the mostly-white, traditionally high performing PS 199, which is located just a few blocks from PS 191. As one of the most highly regarded elementary schools in New York, the biggest problem facing PS 199 is the lack of sufficient space for all of the students who wish to attend.
And Property #3 now houses the School for Cooperative Technical Education, a first-rate institution that has been successfully providing a diverse population of 17-20 year olds with the career & technical education courses they need to pursue careers in 17 technical and trade fields.
While millions have been spent to renovate these three schools in recent years, the Bloomberg Administration quietly asked New York City’s finest developers whether they would be interested in tearing down these schools and building multi-million dollar, high-rise luxury towers. The only requirement is that the developers provide some space in the basement and/or lower floors for a school to move into space below the upscale residential buildings.
In the meantime, the public school students would be moved to temporary swing space and, depending on the type of schools developed at the old site, future students from the area might be able to attend the new, more upscale schools.
In response to the request, the Bloomberg Administration received at least 24 proposals and the word is that potential developers for a site or sites will be chosen by June.
The innovative luxury housing program is being run by the Educational Construction Fund, an entity that was created back in 1967, but hadn’t been used until Mayor Bloomberg showed up and began making public land available to private developers as a way to raise revenue for the City and create more luxury housing for the wealthy, all the while making developers rich.
One key provision of the Bloomberg program is that it appears to allow these private developers to build without having to go through the city’s cumbersome review process. Another interesting note is that while the City will be able to lease the space for the “new” schools for a period of no greater than 40 years, the developers will have control of the site and housing towers for a full 99 year lease.
Playing their role as one of the primary apologists for the Bloomberg Administration, the Daily News recently proclaimed the benefit of turning over public property to private developers writing, “Take a walk on 91st St. and First Ave. A 34-story tower catches your eye. Costing $165 million, the Azure towers over the neighborhood offering some of the best views on the Upper East Side. From either of the two $5.7 million penthouses, you can see Central Park, the East River, and midtown skyline.
It’s what you don’t see that’s most important here. Next door at Middle School 114, more than 530 students were accepted into the public school for strong academic performance. Every day, the students walk into the newly-constructed school. They learn from smart boards in a fully air-conditioned facility equipped with computer labs.”
Imagine the honor of being able to tell your parents that you attend a school below a building that has not one, but two, $5.7 million penthouse apartments.”
It is a corporate education reformer’s dream come true. Public land, hundreds of millions for private develops, even more luxury housing for Manhattan and some kids even get future access to smart boards.
We can just imagine what innovative ideas will blossom from this type of thinking.
Perhaps they can make Central Park the largest in-door park in the world providing acres and acres of high end housing with their own variety of amenities. Of perhaps a new set of private, multi-million dollar apartments suspended below the George Washington Bridge and New York’s other river crossings.
You can almost hear it now, a win-win situation thanks to an iPod for every child and river view apartments for those who support the corporate education reform movement.
Media coverage on the issue can be found in a paper called the West Side Rag here, http://www.westsiderag.com/2013/02/20/pta-tries-to-reassure-parents-about-possible-public-school-demolitions, and here http://www.westsiderag.com/2013/02/17/exclusive-the-city-is-planning-to-demolish-ps-199-and-ps-191 and here http://www.westsiderag.com/2013/03/04/opposition-builds-to-demolishing-local-public-schools-but-some-see-benefits
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I made the mistake of reading EduShyster’s post while I was on vacation – not exactly a pleasant way to relax. I’ve suspected for a while that school closings are directly connected to real estate development somehow, this just shows one way that that can work. Even though most of us have lost value in our real estate, if you’re a mega-developer, real estate is still one of the most profitable markets there is (or perhaps I should say *because* most of us have lost value…).
The city has made the argument that the new schools will help with severe overcrowding in the area. However, the city’s last attempt (with P.S. 59 on the East Side) was disastrous.
The students were displaced for four years and when the school was opened (2012) there was not even enough room for all of the students in the school zone – this was even before the 50+ story residential tower above it was built. There was wait listing in both kindergarten and first grade, and the pre-k program was scrapped.
http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20120522/midtown-east/ps-59-scraps-pre-k-program-amid-overcrowding
Sign the petition against this proposal.
https://www.change.org/petitions/chancellor-dennis-walcott-mayor-michael-bloomberg-nyc-doe-and-nyc-ecf-stop-the-development-of-the-ps199-site
Finally, a plausible explanation of why the mayor wanted control of the schools: control of the land beneath them.
Yes, land in NYC is the equivalent of oil in Texas, the premier source of wealth, especially in Manhattan, the most valuable island in the world. Mayor B has already handed over 2 pub parks in poor Bronx to Yankees to build new stadium, along with a public tax subsidy about $550Mil. If there was oil underground in any borough, Mayor B would be drilling or fracking under schools and playgrounds to enrich his cronies. For sure, the 10 yrs of constant disruption Mayor B brought to NYC pub schls could not have been about meeting needs of students, so incoherent and ineffective it has been…but this campaign against pub ed has already transferred pub schl properties and assets and budgets to prvt charter operators, and now the land itself under schls in choice neighborhoods will itself be marketized and monetized, capitalism run amok.
Since 2002-2003, the first year of mayoral control, the annual NYC DOE budget has grown from $12.7 billion to $24.4 billion, a whopping inflation-adjusted increase of 52%. During the same period, student enrollment has decreased by 100,000.
Much of this growth was fueled by a booming stream of tax receipts from jobs in the city’s financial sector. The collapse of that sector may end up being a good thing for the city in the long run, but in the short and medium run it has left the city’s and state’s government scrambling. Taxes from Wall Street comprise 15% of state tax receipts, down from 20%+ before the crash.
School facilities on the Upper West Side are cramped and outdated. There aren’t any wide-open spaces there, or really anywhere else in Manhattan, to build new school facilities. The schools that have opened up in similar projects are gorgeous and highly sought-after. If there is another way to add 3,200 seats in one of the country’s most densely populated and expensive neighborhoods at no cost to the taxpayers, I am all ears.
I’ve heard that the school on 91st street is already overcrowded and houses 2 schools instead of one. It doesn’t sound like that great a deal if that info is true. I also heard that it wasn’t built to code for handicapped children.
NYC people–it’s been my understanding that the public schools don’t have enough spaces for all the K-eligible kids in Manhattan. Is this true? Are the Manhattan public school kindergarten classes overcrowded? If so, on average, how big are those classes? If anyone knows/has time to answer, please do–thank you!
There have been wait lists for the public kindergartens across the 5 boroughs for the past 3 years. The wait lists tend to clear by the start of the school year but it’s a horrible process for everyone involved. My child had 26 kids in the K class even though the class should have been capped at 25.
I am reminded of Crassus, one of the wealthiest men in Rome, and member of the First Triumvirate (ancient Roman ALEC, sort of).
Crassus owned a private firefighting crew during a time when Rome had none. During fires, his firefighters would stand by as he bought threatened properties with extremely low ball offers before agreeing saving them.
Never let a crisis go to waste, as they say.
Wow. Don’t give the corporatizers any new ideas!!!1
Crassus was defeated and killed in battle by Parthian horsemen, who supposedly poured molten gold down his throat to mock his international reputation for greed.
They are greedy sociopaths what else can I say to this kind of action. Here we call it “Gentrification.” No matter the name it is the same game. All is for your friends to make a killing for themselves at the expense of everyone else. Just look at the mess in Chicago not having to do with schools directly but massively indirectly and that is the selling of the parking, parking lots and such to hedge funds for 99 years and all the money is gone and they are losing lawsuits by those they sold the rights to for the double win by the elite at the expense of the public as those politicians and bureaucrats do not pay out of their own pocket now do they? The MTA in L.A. is using transportation to the same effect and if anyone does not think they are all doing this in concert with each other in a symphony of free money for them think again. They all party and do business together in private. What do people think golf courses are for anyway? And let us not forget the private yachts, gated houses with armed guards, private jets and such for maximum security. And much of it being done through offshore companies and accounts so as to not pay taxes and for privacy. I could go on and on but the basic reality is there.
We at The Museum Magnet School/PS 191 are officially against the redevelopment plan. Check it out! http://noredevelopment.wordpress.com
Sign our petition! tinyurl.com/MMSpetition
We at 199demolition.com began and organized the opposition. We joined forces with the opposition at P.S. 191 and our elected officials, principally Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal and City Council Member Gale Brewer and yesterday the DOE backed down from their plan to monetize these two schools. However, the DOE plans on moving forward with the High School for Cooperative Technology on East 96th. We plan to continue the fight.