UFT, DOE At Odds on School Overcrowding

UFT, DOE At Odds on School Overcrowding

By HOWARD MEGDAL

More than 6,000 city classrooms are overcrowded, according to statistics released by the United Federation of Teachers last week, and the union plans to take the Department of Education to arbitration to resolve what it says is a violation of its contract with the city.

The DOE disputes the figures, saying that the UFT is "playing with the numbers."

'6,000 Over the Limit'

"We know that some administrators tried extremely hard to get their schools into compliance - and some have done so since we collected these numbers after the 11th day of school - but we still have some 6,000 classes over the limit," UFT President Randi Weingarten said in a Sept. 27 statement. "Going through this annual game of musical classrooms is very hard on students and Teachers alike. It's hard for Teachers to reach students when classes have as many as 4 or 5 kids over the already too-high class-size limits, and it's hard for kids, who should have continuous classroom instruction from the first day of school."

But DOE spokesman David Cantor responded that "two weeks ago [the UFT] reported that 3,000 fewer classrooms were overcrowded this year. Now it reports, using the same numbers, that overcrowding is up. Principals have already resolved most overcrowding issues, and we believe the arbitration process will make clear, as in past years, that the UFT's numbers are entirely unreliable. Class size is a critical issue and we're gratified to have reduced it at every grade level."

The UFT says overcrowding is up substantially over last year, with the number of classrooms that qualify increasing from 5,761 to 6,339. While the union said that the number of stuffed high school classes dropped from 5,093 to 4,620, overcrowded elementary and secondary schools nearly tripled, from 668 to 1,719.

Queens Tops List

High schools are considered above capacity if they have more than 34 students; the number is slightly lower for middle schools (30-33 students) and elementary schools (32 students in Grades 1-6, 25 for Kindergarten).

According to the union, Queens led the way with 2,465 teeming classrooms, followed by Brooklyn (1,748), Manhattan (1,138), The Bronx (801) and Staten Island (187). A source at DOE warned against an overreaction to the numbers, saying that not only were most of the classes reduced by the time the report was released, but that similar claims in years past seldom made it to arbitration.