'Desperate' School Overcrowding in Sunset Park Tackled by NYC College Students

Note: The time of Tuesday's presentation has changed. It has been updated below.

SUNSET PARK, BROOKLYN — A group of students from The New School who made Sunset Park's classroom overcrowding crisis the focus of an academic research project will present their preliminary findings at a public meeting Nov. 22.

The presentation will run from 1:45 p.m. to 4:45 p.m. in Room 515 of The New School's University Center, located at 63 5th Ave. in Manhattan.

A second public presentation, at which the students will present their final work, will take place on Dec. 14.

The students conducted their research as part of an Urban Ecology class led by professor Gabriela Rendon. They also coordinated with Make Space for Quality Schools in Sunset Park, a local activist group that has been advocating for more school seats in the neighborhood.

Sunset Park parent Javier Salmanca, a leader with the organization, said the Make Space group went on a walking tour of Sunset Park with the students, taking note of possible locations for new schools and facilities that could be used for education-related activities.

During their presentation, the students will offer immediate, short-term, medium-term, and long-term policy proposals. As an example, Salamanca said short-term actions could involve using available spaces to conduct art or athletic activities that Sunset Park's schools don't have room for. Long-term proposals could involve finding ways to build enough schools to stay ahead of community needs, he said.

Sunset Park needs thousands of new seats to meet the demand of its families, according to leading estimates. At a June meeting before Community Board 7, officials from the city's School Construction Authority (SCA) discussed a plan to replace the empty former police station at the corner of 4th Avenue and 43rd Street with a new school house that would hold 300 seats.

Anita Skop, the superintendent of School District 15, which includes Sunset Park, backed the proposal, calling the neighborhood's situation "desperate."

But the plan was met with a mix of reactions. Some of those at the meeting called for the unique building to be preserved, while others thought building a new school at the site was more important.

A related conversation was recently had during discussions over the future of the Sunset Park Library. Some residents against the Brooklyn Public Library and Fifth Avenue Committee's plan (turning the library site into a new, three-story library with six stories of affordable housing on top) said the property should instead become a library and education center, so that it would have room to host an increasing number of kids in the future.

At the June meeting, the SCA officials said that despite the neighborhoods' needs, there are limited locations in Sunset Park that could be converted into school facilities.

That, however, isn't the position of the Make Space group. In a report (embedded below), the organization put forward a list of nine sites, including the former police station, that it says are suitable for school facilities, and identified eight others it said were "missed opportunities" for a school site.

Top image courtesy of Historic Bremen on Flickr