Metro

Overcrowding grows at city schools despite mayor’s vows

Some public-school classrooms are turning into lecture halls despite the mayor’s promises.

The city is cramming more students into its largest classes at all grade levels, according to Department of Education figures.

There were 336,449 kids stuffed into 10,492 classrooms with 30 or more students this school year — an increase of 8,273 students over last year.

Mayor de Blasio promised at a campaign forum in February 2013 that he would want to be “held accountable” for limiting class sizes.

“If in four years we don’t decrease class size, we’re making a huge mistake,” he said back then.

Kids in the lowest grades have felt the biggest crunch. In grades K through 3, 40,268 youngsters were jammed into 1,295 classrooms that had 30 or more seats — a jump of 14 percent over the previous year.

The city’s target for that age group is no more than 20 students per class.

“It’s disturbing to see numbers going up and up and up for younger grades,” said Jacqueline Shannon, early childhood education professor at Brooklyn College.

“Teachers do things such as small-group instruction, but how does one teacher do that with 30 or more kids with such diverse needs and abilities?”

There are about 1.1 million students in the entire system.

“We are tackling the serious issue of overcrowding head on, which is why we have proposed $4.4 billion dollars to open nearly 40,000 new seats, many in historically overcrowded districts, in addition to creating a school space working group that is engaging across city agencies and with community leaders to recommend long-term solutions and alleviate the problem,” said DOE spokesman Harry Hartfield.

But Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters says 100,000 new seats are needed to meet future demand.

“Not only do students fall behind academically but they become disengaged, so disciplinary problems increase,” Haimson said.

“The amount of persistence, ability and commitment a student has is undermined by large classes and they don’t develop the personal relationships they need with their teachers.”