Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters has released a report on the unintended consequences of Mayor De Blasio’s rapid expansion of Pre-K, his proudest achievement in education. The plan was rushed ahead with little forethought.
Her report begins:
School overcrowding in NYC has been worsened by the expansion of pre-K and 3-K classes, as detailed in a new report, “The Impact of PreK on School Overcrowding: Lack of Planning, Lack of Space.”
About 575,000 students, more than half of all students, attended schools that were at or above 100 percent capacity in 2016-2017, according to data from the NYC Department of Education. In recent years, overcrowding has worsened significantly, especially at the elementary school level. Nearly 60 percent of elementary schools are at 100 percent or more and 67 percent of elementary grade students attend these schools. This is due in part to the fact that enrollment in these grades has increased faster than new school construction.
The report’s analysis finds that 14,220, or more than half of the pre-K students enrolled in public elementary schools in 2016-2017, were placed in 352 schools that were at 100% utilization or more, thus contributing to worse overcrowding at these schools for about 236,000 students.
In about one quarter (22 percent) of these schools, the expansion of pre-K actually pushed the school to 100 percent or more. As of 2016-2017, 76 elementary schools, with a total of 45,124 students, became overutilized, according to the DOE’s data, because of the additional number of pre-K students at their schools.
In addition, thirty schools with pre-K classes had waitlists for Kindergarten, necessitating that these children to be sent to schools outside their zone and sometimes far from home.
District 20 in southwestern Brooklyn is the most overcrowded district in New York City with a critical shortage of elementary school seats.
The average utilization of elementary schools is 130 percent. Yet the DOE continued to place pre-K classes in already overcrowded District 20 schools, despite the presence of an under-enrolled pre-K center nearby.
Laurie Windsor, the former President of the Community Education Council in District 20 said: “It is appalling how the DOE insists on keeping pre-K classes in elementary schools when there is such severe overcrowding and families are forced to travel for Kindergarten, sometimes quite far away, without available public transportation. Especially egregious is that there are pre-K centers nearby which could absorb these classes easily. This practice has put unnecessary hardships on families and is insensitive to the needs of the community.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Clearly the central office has not been accurately predicting enrollments. They stalled too long about building new schools, and they will not be able to offer relief until 2024! This is poor planning. Maybe they are trying to encourage frustrated parents to pursue private options be creating a space shortage.
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You are absolutely correct that for the past decade or so, the school construction and planning offices have issued wildly inaccurate projections—projections that saw a huge boom in the number of public school students.
None of that came to pass. Families are having fewer children, many of the people moving to the city don’t have and won’t ever have kids, and a significant amount of the new housing being built will never be permanently occupied: it is purchased as an investment/vacation property.
Finally it looks like they have figured it out and are projecting a reduction in population with the exception of a small increase on Staten Island.
https://dnnhh5cc1.blob.core.windows.net/portals/0/Capital_Plan/Demographic_projection_Reports/Enrollment%20Projection%202018%20to%202027%20New%20York%20City%20Public%20Schools%20by%20the%20S….pdf?sr=b&si=DNNFileManagerPolicy&sig=UxfyO9aL%2FjIRClZ5R9zddHpbwuqvBsuLSChs6Wcie6w%3D
The prudent thing to do, if you are concerned about class sizes and maximum resources going to students, would be a moratorium on new building. Completely rezone the city to leverage underutilized buildings, repair/replace the many 100+’year-old facilities, and improve accessibility. That’s it.
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I think this was predictable with prek. It’s fine, maybe it’s great, but if it’s part of a system (and it is) the effects on the rest of the system should have been considered.
I genuinely don’t understand why this doesn’t get through to policymakers- that in a universal system one piece impacts the whole and the impact can be (net) negative.
Public prek is offered here as part of the public school and it is VERY popular. But we had the advantage of putting it in while building a new school so they added capacity – they still may need to add on- there’s a lot of demand for it, more, perhaps, than they realized.
I worry that it won’t be adequately funded so they’ll end up pulling funding from K-12 schools, weakening those grades in order to add 2 years. That would be tragic.
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“It’s fine, maybe it’s great,”
No, it’s not fine. Children do not need to be in school before the age of 5.
The only reason it is “fine” is that it ends up being free babysitting for the parents. And that’s not a good enough reason to force little ones into schooling way too early.
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No, daycare is “babysitting”. My kid’s experience in universal pre-k in public schools was very different than babysitting. And I’m not talking about learning to read (my kid did not) nor learning to write letters (my kid did not). Aside from learning to count a bit and some letters (and not very well), what I remember from pre-k is socializing with other kids and the same kind of experience that kids had in the 1960s and 1970s IF they came from households that could afford to pay for it.
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Yep. It was always clear that this would be the effect of an immediate implementation of UPK. UPK proponents did not care — just ram ’em in.
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all while telling the city and state and nation how wonderful you are in your “caring about the kids”
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FLERP!,
Did your kids attend any pre-school or pre-k? Because if you held them out of school until they entered Kindergarten, then I can see your point. If you sent your own children to pre-k (whether public or private), I’d think you would appreciate that the programs were more than “ramming them in” and there have already been over 100,000 4 year olds who benefited by that “ramming them in”. If the majority of those 100,000 — or maybe 150,000 — kids were poor, isn’t it good that they weren’t told they had to wait for some future date the way we waited for universal healthcare for decades?
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Another consequence of the public sector being looted by the private sector—privatization drained funds for public schools and imposed “overcrowding.” I put “overcrowding” in quotes b/c it hides the fact of “overfunding private charters while underfunding public schools.” Govt at all levels serves the private interest, so whatever is “public” is by definition underfunded, derelict, dismissed, like public parks, public playgrounds, public hospitals, public mental health services, public transit, public housing, etc. The “public” is where the 99% make their lives, and we don’t count unless we raise hell, like the yellow vests in France, whose weeks of protest got immediate results in forcing the banker’s Pres. Macron to withdraw gas taxes. Everyone knew preK and 3K would be imposed with too few resources, everyone including the fake teacher union leaders, who still refuse to call their many aggrieved members out on strike no matter how many abuses and indignities forced on teachers, kids, families, and communities. Public education cannot be rescued and rebuilt from the destructive private looters until teachers use the power already in their hands, ignore their crony leaders, and go out on massive strike. The same is true of all the other degenerate public sectors–no rescue until the majority en masse confronts the elite lavishing themselves with our wealth.
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YEP!
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How the Reddest of Red States Built a Preschool Program Second to None: Alabama Miracle, by Kiera Butler, in the Jan/Feb Mother Jones is a terrific article on the benefits of good pre-K progtams. You can Google the article.
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I don’t see the point of academic focused pre-K or pre-school or even kindergarten. My daughter wasn’t in day care and we live in the country so we had her in a half day pre school a few days a week so that she could have supervised play with other children. Back when I was in school even kindergarten was only half day with mostly play, stories, music, and art. We did learn a little about letters and numbers, but it wasn’t taken very seriously. The only things I found stressful in kindergarten were memorizing my address and phone number, having to learn to tell left from right and trying to fit my whole name on top of a coloring sheet. I think we were also supposed to learn to tell time on an analog clock–but for me clocks were an unfathomal mystery which didn’t clear until around fourth grade. (I still find determining left from right stressful and under pressure have trouble with phone numbers.)
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The point was never about kids. The point was that between the slow but unavoidable reduction in the school-aged population of NYC and the slow but significant shift of kids to charters, the UFT needed to do something to shore up its ranks. Hence PreK and “3-K,” and you can bet the house that “2K” and “1K” are in the pipeline.
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This is one of the most cynical posts I have ever heard. Tell a poor mom that her kid shouldn’t be in pre-k because it’s just a UFT ploy.
The point was always about kids. Reformers are insisting that if 100% of 8 year olds don’t meet ever higher standards, it is the fault of the Mayor (unless the Mayor is a right wing Republican, in which case it is the fault of the union).
One of the obvious ways to help the more than 70% of the NYC public school population who are severely economically disadvantaged do better academically is to give them the same early start that middle class and affluent kids have — pre-k.
Now you insist that low-income parents should be told, sorry, your kid’s first experience of entering school will be Kindergarten and we’ll be expecting him to be perfectly school-ready then.
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Given that the vast majority of NYC public schools parents are GLAD there is universal pre-k, it seems rather privileged to attack it for issues that should rightly be addressed and pretend that it would be much better if it never existed at all. Talk about throwing out the baby with the bathwater. There must be close to 60,000 four year olds in full day pre-k. I suspect 70% or more are economically disadvantaged. Sure we can say it is a luxury, but not many middle class and affluent parents are insisting their child stay at home with absolutely no type of exposure to any preschool until they enroll in Kindergarten.
Anyone who believes NYC pre-k is NOT mostly play, stories, music and art has not even bothered to look at the classes. Some kids are ready for more and some kids aren’t. I have no doubt there there are some supposedly “terrible union teachers” in pre-k who are trying to force reading but the vast majority of pre-k teachers are trained in early education and know that having children socializing at an early age is different than trying to make them excel academically.
What is Leonie talking about here? Waiting until lots of new buildings are built to provide any universal pre-k? Easy to say when you are an affluent parent who can pay the thousands of dollars (and sometimes tens of thousands) for full-day pre-k and you aren’t forcing your child to stay home – presumably because you are lucky enough to not be working or have a full time nanny.
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^^By the way, there seems to be a disconnect here with some people insisting universal pre-k is bad because it is just “free daycare” for working parents and others insisting that it is bad because it is forcing young children into academics at an early age.
Universal pre-k is not required, so any parent who doesn’t want to send their kid doesn’t have to send them. The parents who do send their kids — especially those from the 70% of families in NYC who are economically disadvantaged — are getting something out of it.
I feel like the attacks on this remind me of the Republicans’ attacks on Obamacare. Frankly, I would have far preferred a “Medicare for all” system and certainly there is plenty to criticize about Obamacare. But there is a difference between making valid changes to program flaws and attacking the bill itself the way Republicans do. I hope that Leonie and other critics have CONSTRUCTIVE criticism instead of using it — or allowing it to be used by haters of public schools — for political mileage.
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^^^In other words, the REASON that there are issues is because the program is so popular because it is such a good thing! Why not make it clear that is the case and then try to make adjustments instead of acting as if this is just another way of the de Blasio administration intentionally trying to hurt kids instead of trying to do something good that turned out to be so good that more parents signed up and that caused problems?
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Chiara said in a post above: “it’s part of a system… the effects on the rest of the system should have been considered.” This comment has been sticking with me as I read other ed articles.
A move like this one [instant implementation of PreK in NYC] just wouldn’t happen in my town, a small city whose district is run by elected school board. Prop taxes are high; all citizens have a stake in maintaining a quality self-sustaining schsys. It pays off when they’re ready to move or downsize: they’re assured of high demand from young families. When we moved here 25 yrs ago, large pockets of post-war buyers were retiring/ selling, & demographics have continued to trend younger as the nearby NYC job market grows. Yet expansions have been slow & carefully planned so as to maintain a balance of full bldg utilization while keeping class sizes reasonable. [Decades ago, a couple of large old schools excessed after baby boom were repurposed, not sold. One still houses admin, & the other– long rented to a private “special school”– became the PreK/K center for the whole town, allowing increased kid-pop to be accommodated w/o [more] additions to the elemschs.]
So how is it that large cities jump willy-nilly into schsys reorg, devil take the hindmost? The main difference: screwups [& their perpetrators] in a small city are highly visible, & swiftly hit every res owner in the pocketbook. That engenders caution. It’s easier to hide & cast blame elsewhere in a big bureaucracy. That factor alone provides massive wiggle-room for fraud & pay-for-play– & institutional racism provides cultural blinders on the obvious– that such faux-progressive actions lower the school QOL for all [predominantly low-income/ black/ hispanic] kids in large-cities’ pubsch pop.
Do taxpayers in a big-city schsys really know who’s doing the planning– whether they even did it– or that the slowmo treacle of admin change means estimators were working w/outdated demographic projections? Probably not until s*** hits fan & postmortem is underway, meanwhile all kids suffering from influx of 40k preschoolers into already-crowdedschools.
We see the exact same phenomenon at work in the charterization of city schools. In my state it already happened in Newark, thanks to Zuckerberg/ Christie et al. Instant, crazy expansion of charters; families suddenly losing nbhd publics– presented w/dizzying array of privatized alternatives– then finding their choices are chosen for them via district enrollment forms that end them up w/3 sibs in 3 far-flung schools w/few practical means to transport them. NO SYSTEMATIC PLANNING…Newark has since grabbed back local control from the state & may be able to tweak this mess… but meanwhile, Camden & Paterson are already on the same reckless trajectory.
Makes me wonder whether centrally run big-city districts can do the job at all. Too much $/ power at stake, combined w/too-big bureaucracy = too many opptys for fraud/ pay-for-play/ bureaucratic wt/ incompetency, shifting $ around per institutional racism.. Could big cities do better by breaking back down into nbhds, each running their sch districts via locally-elected BofEds? Might work if each nbhd was granted a weighted ave per-pupil spending rate– weighted acc to % low-income, SpEd, ESL pop.
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Eliza Shapiro reporting that the Pre K project is the bright spot in NY Schools suggests that her research is very shallow.
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