Overcrowded and Overwhelmed: Inside P.S. 176

Beth Fertig

SchoolBook | Oct 21, 2014

More than half of the city’s public school students attend classes in buildings that are overcrowded. Despite plans to build close to 40,000 new seats over the next five years, the city acknowledges it still won't meet the demand.

Chancellor Carmen Fariña has appointed two different task forces to look into how schools should share space, and the formula for determining how many classrooms a building really needs. But there's no easy fix. Crowding occurs in growing neighborhoods, and finding affordable real estate in New York City is a perennial challenge for building anything, let alone more schools.

The crisis is especially severe at P.S. 176 in Brooklyn. The century-old building has about 1,400 students, even though the city says it's supposed to hold 808. The school had to give up every office to create extra classrooms. This means many of the younger grades are in rooms the size of a Manhattan studio apartment.

A third grade classroom at P.S. 176, which used to be a guidance office. There is no space for a rug where kids can gather.

(Beth Fertig/WNYC)

Teacher Amy Chow has one of these rooms, which is about a third the size of a normal classroom. She can fit her 22 students around four small tables. But elementary classrooms are supposed to have a rug where kids can gather in between sitting at desks. Chow doesn't have any space for a rug.

Nor is there any room for personal belongings. The school often has to hang backpacks and coats out in the halls.

Bookbags and coats are sometimes hung in the hall at P.S. 176 because there's no room in the classes. The Fire Department doesn't approve.

(Beth Fertig/WNYC)

Principal Elizabeth Culkin said the fire department complained about this during a visit. "I'm like, where are we supposed to put their stuff? There’s no place to put stuff."

Culkin, who has been at the school for 19 years, said the school had to give up more and more space over time to deal with the steady influx of students. There are no more full-sized art or music rooms, even though a school this large is supposed to have at least five of these so-called cluster rooms.

The art room at P.S. 176 had to go to make room for classrooms. The school now holds art classes in a room that used to be for small groups of struggling readers.

(Beth Fertig/WNYC)

Guidance counselors now work in a former closet. And occupational therapists, who also lost their offices, have to pull their students into a corner during class or else go to a desk that's been set up in a gym.

A gym class at P.S. 176 uses the same play room as an occupational therapist, who works in a corner with her student.

(Beth Fertig/WNYC)

Occupational therapist Maria LeKakis tries to work with a student in a corner in a gym room, but said it's tough to concentrate while other kids are playing

(Beth Fertig/WNYC)

The enrollment at P.S. 176 ballooned over the last decade. The school is located in Dyker Heights, an area that's been growing largely because of immigration from Eastern Europe and China. It's one of 23 overcrowded elementary schools in District 20, according to the group Class Size Matters. But it's much more crowded than most and some parents believe that's because officials think their principal is experienced enough to handle it.

The local community education council for District 20 rezoned P.S. 176 recently for the second time in three years, to bring down enrollment. But planners predict the school will only go from 175 percent of capacity to 150 percent next year.

Meanwhile, the school construction authority is planning to build about 4000 seats throughout District 20 over the next five years. But that estimate still leaves the neighborhood right around P.S. 176 short by at least 2700 seats. Culkin said this is why the city needs to take a closer look at crowding on a school by school basis.

"It's not just our school, it's citywide and it really needs to be addressed."