Here’s a riddle: When school enrollment is flat and you’re adding seats, how do you end up with overcrowding?
Answer: Have the city’s Department of Education run the joint.
This is no joke. A report released last week by the city’s Independent Budget Office shows a spike in the number of students stuck in “overcrowded” buildings — from 403,403 in 2007-2008 to 446,751 last year. That’s a jump of almost 11 percent.
In other words, New York is fast approaching the point where half our students will be stuck in overcrowded buildings. How can this be?
Some blame charters co-located with traditional schools. Fact is, school buildings with co-located charters are less crowded than buildings with only one school.
Plainly the city is not managing space efficiently. While some schools are overcrowded, others have seats to spare.
To put this in perspective, New York spends more per pupil than any other state.
On top of this, over the next five years the city is planning to spend nearly $13 billion to build new schools and renovate existing ones. With all these resources, there’s no excuse for overcrowding.
It strikes us as another argument for charters. Like parochial schools, New York’s charter public schools do a better job with the conditions in their schools despite having many fewer dollars.
Indeed, the establishment complaint about charters co-located with other public schools is that the charters are too nice and well kept.
We say give parents more choices, get their kids out of overcrowded schools — and save taxpayers a bundle in the process.