Schools
Graduate Students to Offer Final Recommendations on Sunset Park School Overcrowding
The "urban ecology" students, who attend The New School, have been studying the problem for four months.
SUNSET PARK, BROOKLYN — A group of graduate students from The New School will offer a list of recommendations Wednesday for how Sunset Park can address its chronic shortage of school seats in the near, medium, and long-term.
The presentation will run from 1 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. in Room 515 at The New School's University Center, located at 63 5th Ave. in Manhattan. It is free and open to the public.
The participating students are part of an "urban ecology" workshop being taught by professor Gabrielle Rendon, an assistant professor of urban planning at The New School.
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Rendon said the project has come together over the past four months, and involved community meetings and a walking tour of Sunset Park to help review possible sites for schools and educational activities.
In conducting their analysis, Rendon continued, the students also worked closely with Sunset Park Councilman Carlos Menchaca and community group Make Space For Quality Schools in Sunset Park, which has put together its own report of potential school sites in the neighborhood (embedded below).
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(A previous presentation given by the students and reported by Patch was preliminary, Rendon said, whereas Wednesday's presentation will be a more final review of the students' work.)
In addition to the presentation, Rendon said that next year, the students plan to publish a single-issue newspaper written in English, Chinese and Spanish summarizing the students' findings and recommendations. The newspaper will be distributed throughout Sunset Park, she said.
"The idea is to disseminate this information, to create awareness for organizing [and] for activating [residents]," Rendon said.
Make Space for Quality Schools in Sunset Park - Report by JVS Patch on Scribd
In an October letter to Menchaca and Community Board 7, the city said it is examining at least eight properties in School District 15, which covers Sunset Park and Park Slope, to see if any could host new schools.
And last week, the School Construction Authority announced that it is moving ahead with a public review process to assess wither a 300 seat elementary school could be constructed at 4525 8th Ave., a former C-Town supermarket.
The city's October letter also said that $325 million will be spent over the next five years to add 3,840 classroom seats to District 15, including 1,096 seats in Sunset Park.
Top image courtesy of Historic Bremen on Flickr
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