TO: Council Members Vanessa Gibson, Carlos Menchaca, Laurie Cumbo, Ben Kallos, Robert Holden, Brad Lander, Stephen Levin and Carlina Rivera; co-sponsors of Local Law 168

CC: Speaker Corey Johnson, Council Members Mark Treyger and Daniel Dromm

FROM: Leonie Haimson, Executive Director, Class Size Matters, Naila Rosario, President of NYC Kids PAC and Shino Tanikawa, member, School Siting Task Force

DATE: 2/7/2020

SUBJECT: Analysis of the Results of the School Siting Task Force and Recommendations Moving Forward

Background of the School Siting Task Force

In response to the often dilatory process of school planning and siting, the City Council passed Local Law 168 in September of 2018. 1 Local Law 168 created an “interagency task force to review relevant city real estate transactions to identify opportunities for potential school sites,” including “city-owned buildings, city-owned property and vacant land within the city to evaluate potential opportunities for new school construction or leasing for school use.” A report to the City Council of the Task Force’s findings was due no later than July 31, 2019.

The need for this Task Force is critical, as shown by the chronic overcrowding of city schools, and the slow pace of the SCA in acquiring sites to build new schools. Last year, over 524,000 NYC students were assigned to schools at 100% capacity or more.2 Some severely overcrowded districts have had school seats funded for more than a decade, without any being built because the SCA/DOE claim they cannot find appropriate sites. Of the 57,489 seats in the current five-year capital plan, 40,760 still require sites.3

The School Siting Task Force met only twice— once in February 2019 and again in July 2019. The first meeting was held privately. Yet according to an advisory opinion by the NY State Committee on Open Government, this Task Force was subject to the Open Meetings Law, since it was an official public body created by law.4 Following this advisory opinion, City Comptroller Scott Stringer sent a letter to Chancellor Carranza and Lorraine Grillo, President of the SCA, urging them to comply and open their meetings to the public. 5

After an article appeared in City Limits about this issue,6 the Chancellor and President Grillo responded by saying that the public could attend the second meeting of the Task Force, though they did not agree that the Task Force was legally obligated to do so.7

Five months later, on July 29, 2019, the second and final meeting of this Task Force was held. It consisted of a cursory, 15-minute presentation from SCA officials, who projected spreadsheets listing many thousands of city- owned and privately-owned empty lots, most of which the SCA ruled out as potential school sites for a variety of reasons. Only two city-owned sites were not immediately ruled out for schools by the SCA: one site on Avenue Y in Brooklyn, and another at the former Flushing Airport. The SCA said they had not yet analyzed the 22,070 privately-owned sites for suitability as schools. More on this below.

This presentation was followed by questions from the audience. The chair of the Task force, Elizabeth Hoffman of the First Deputy Mayor’s Office, was asked whether the city would make the spreadsheets available to the public, and she said no.

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Accounts of the meeting were reported in the Daily News, Wall Street Journal, and Queens Eagle.8 Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters also summarized the meeting on the NYC Public School Parents blog.9

A draft copy of the report was forwarded to the City Council on July 31, 2019 --the same day the final version was due according to law. Two appointed members of the Task Force, including Shino Tanikawa, a parent leader chosen by the DOE, and Kaitlyn O’Hagan, then a City Council Legislative Financial Analyst, said that they had not had any input on the report or the Task Force deliberations, and had not even seen a copy of the report before it was sent to them on that date.

In August, Leonie filed a Freedom of Information request with the DOE for a copy of the report and spreadsheets but was denied a copy as the DOE said they did not have it. On October 11, 2019 she finally obtained a copy of the report10 and spreadsheets11 via a Freedom of Information request to the City Council.

School Siting Task Force Report

The Task Force report is only one and a half pages long. It says the following:

The School Construction Authority (SCA) reviewed two lists of empty lots, compiled by the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) and Department of Finance (DOF), to determine if there were particular sites feasible for the development of new schools.

The spreadsheets include two tabs, one consisting of a list of 328 empty city-owned lots compiled by Department of Citywide Administrative Services and another, more inclusive list of 29,181 vacant lots, including many privately owned spaces, compiled by the Department of Finance (“DOF List”).

After a review, the SCA said they had determined that there were only two locations that they identified so far that are potentially acceptable and required further review. The two sites that were not ruled out by the SCA were both city-owned: an unspecified empty lot on Avenue Y in Brooklyn in District 21, with 26,000 square feet; and various empty lots at the former Flushing Airport in Queens in District 25, totaling over 1 million square feet.

According to the Queens Eagle, following the Task force meeting, SCA Senior Director and Council Gayle Mandaro said this about the Flushing Airport site:

“We’ve already looked at the site on multiple occasions. […] We’re just doing due diligence. It’s always worth looking again in an area of funded seat-need.” 12

At the time of the report’s release, the SCA had not yet analyzed 22,070 locations on the Division of Finance list that were privately owned but said that these sites would be looked at some unspecified time “in the near future.”

Below are some of the unanswered questions raised by the Task Force report and spreadsheets.

Analysis of Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) spreadsheet:

This list contains 328 vacant city-owned lots of 20,000 square feet or more which have no current use.

 The SCA said they ruled out 198 out of 328 potential school sites for various reasons, including irregular configuration, lack of access, etc.

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 More than 100 of these 198 sites were ruled out as being “100% land under water.” However, further investigation by two activists in District 28 revealed that the two sites removed in their district with the claim that “100% land under water” are actually composed of a mix of Tree/Forest, Grassland, and Impervious/Other, according to the OASIS community maps developed by the Center for Urban Research. 13

 Ten of the lots were rejected due to plans for affordable housing by the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), though it is unclear why schools cannot be included in these plans. In the recent past, SCA has sited schools on the bottom floors of apartment buildings in several sites in Manhattan.

 Of the remaining 130 lots, most were rejected because the SCA said the district already had “all seats sited”, or had “no funded seats”, or only a “small number of seats to site.”

 Yet there are at least five districts where a total of 10,432 seats are funded in the current capital plan and not yet sited, but had sites ruled out by the SCA for the above, apparently contradictory reasons. Here is a summary of those five districts:

- D7: 1,940 seats are funded in the latest capital plan but not sited, and yet the DCAS spreadsheet shows two D7 sites removed for “all seats sited.”

- D15: 1,396 seats are funded but not sited, and yet the DCAS spreadsheet shows one site in D15 removed for “small number of seats to site.”

- D27: 1,776 seats funded but not sited, and yet the DCAS spreadsheet shows five sites in D27 removed for “all seats sited” and 39 sites removed for “no funded seats.”

- D30: 1,476 seats are funded but not sited, and yet the DCAS spreadsheet shows five sites in D30 removed for “no funded seats.”

- D31: 3,844 seats are funded but not sited, and yet the DCAS spreadsheet shows five sites on Staten Island removed for “all seats sited” and 30 sites removed for “small number of seats to site.”

Only eight sites on this list of 328 vacant city-owned lots were not ruled out by the SCA, all of which are located at the former Flushing Airport in D25 in Queens.

Analysis of the Division of Finance (DOF) spreadsheet:

29,181 locations are included in the DOF spreadsheet, including all tax lots with a Vacant Building Class. The SCA did not review over 75% (22,000+) of these lots because they are not owned by the City but said that they will be looked at “in the near future.”

Of the 7,116 lots that were reviewed, 5,829 were rejected outright for not meeting the SCA’s square foot requirements of at least 20,000 square feet.

 Twelve sites were rejected with the claim that the “lot size [was] too small” yet they are actually described as 20,000 sq. ft., which meets the size requirements of the SCA.

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 Despite the SCA’s size requirements, schools have recently sited in less space where the community was active, and the need was great—as in Sunset Park14 where a school is in the process of being built on a 12,500 sq. ft. lot. Yet 324 sites rejected are between 12,500 and 20,000 sq. ft.

 More than two thousand of the sites not yet to be investigated are at least 12,500 sq. ft., and 1,352 are at least 20,000 sq. ft. or more.

 One site in D25, which is an extremely overcrowded school district, was removed for “Not Available” with no further explanation.

 Of the 1,287 lots over 20,000 sq., only one was deemed potentially acceptable as a site for a new school: on Avenue Y in D21.

Here is a summary of the 13 districts where sites were rejected, even though 20,181 seats are funded in the current capital plan but still unsited:

- D2: 1,300 seats are funded but not sited, and yet the DOF spreadsheet shows two sites removed for “all seats sited.”

- D7: 1,940 seats are funded but not sited, but the DOF spreadsheet shows seven sites removed for “all seats sited.”

- D9: 952 seats are funded but not sited, but the DOF spreadsheet shows four sites removed for “small number of seats to site.”

- D10: 2,060 seats are funded but not sited, but the DOF spreadsheet shows six sites removed for “all seats sited” and four sites removed for “small number of seats to site.”

- D11: 2,124 seats are funded but not sited, but the DOF spreadsheet shows 17 sites removed for “small number of seats to site.”

- D13: 476 seats are funded but not sited, but the DOF spreadsheet shows four sites removed for “all seats sited.”

- D14: 991 seats are funded but not sited, but the DOF spreadsheet shows eight sites removed for “all seats sited.”

- D15: 1,396 seats are funded but not sited, but the DOF spreadsheet shows four sites removed for “all seats sited.”

- D24: 640 seats are funded but not sited, but the DOF spreadsheet shows four sites removed for “small number of seats to site”

- D26: 1,206 seats are funded but not sited, but the DOF spreadsheet shows two sites removed for “all seats sited.”

- D27: 1,776 seats are funded but not sited, but the DOF spreadsheet shows 24 sites removed for “all seats sited.”

- D30: 1,476 seats are funded but not sited, but the DOF spreadsheet shows seven sites removed for “all seats sited.”

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- D31: 3,844 seats are funded but not sited, but the DOF spreadsheet shows 211 sites removed for “all seats sited” and 315 sites removed for “small number of seats to site”

Also, many sites were rejected for these ostensible reasons in Queens Districts 24 through 30 that could be appropriate for high schools, especially as there are more than 3,600 funded but unsited high school seats in Queens in the current capital plan.

Because the lots on these spreadsheets are not identified in terms of their sub-district, it is difficult to know whether some of them may have been rejected because they are located within a sub-district where there are no plans to build seats, even though the district as a whole has a large number of funded but unsited seats.

However, this cannot be true for D31, because all four sub-districts in the district have a considerable number of seats funded in the capital plan that lack sites.15

Important follow-up questions that should be asked of the SCA/DOE

We urge the Council, and especially the sponsors of Local Law 168 to follow up by asking the following questions of the SCA and/or DOE:

 When will they release their final analysis of the 22,070 other empty, privately-owned lots on the Division of Finance list?

 When will they have completed their decision-making regarding the two sites that they did find potentially usable for schools?

 Can they specify not only the districts but also sub-districts for the sites on these lists? If not, perhaps Council staff could map them.

 Can they explain their reasons for rejecting so many sites that otherwise might be appropriate for schools, including many in districts with funded school seats, with the apparently contradictory claim that there are no seats needed or funded in those districts?

 Can they explain why twelve sites that are at least 20,000 sq. ft. were rejected because they were ostensibly too small?

 Can they provide a clearer explanation for each removal reason cited, e.g. why a location was determined to be “100% Land Under Water” when the Oasis maps show otherwise?

Recommendations that the Task Force continue its work, with a more transparent and inclusive process

We strongly recommend that the Task Force should continue its work, which is implied by the Local Law 168 which says that the Task Force “report shall be updated thereafter as necessary, as determined by the task force.”

Yet we also urge you to amend the law, to make its intent more explicit and its composition more representative of the public at large. The Task Force membership should be widened to include more members appointed by the Council, including independent experts, advocates, parents and community members, rather than consisting almost entirely of City Agency appointees, or the results will likely be similarly disappointing. The amended law should require that the Task Force hold at least one public meeting to share its progress and to solicit input from

5 the wider stakeholder communities every year. Any such Task Force should also be chaired or at least co-chaired by a Council appointee.

Experts, advocates and parents often have important information and ideas to share and are also likely to ask the critical follow-up questions that should be asked. It is our experience that many of the schools that have been sited and built were identified first by parents, rather than by the SCA. The public needs to be included in the deliberations of the Task Force and their meetings kept open to the degree possible. A more inclusive composition and transparent process will not just better ensure that the work of the Task Force is done more effectively, but would also help ensure that there is an informed constituency for change that would increase the likelihood that the important goals of the Task Force are achieved – in this case, that schools will be more quickly sited and built where they are needed, rather than years afterward. 16

Endnotes and links

1 Local Law No. 168 of 2018, Council Int. No. 757-A of 2018. https://legistar.council.nyc.gov/View.ashx?M=F&ID=6715118&GUID=2EE4A502-7E3B-44BF-9A06-EB8BC691F61B 2 “Enrollment, Capacity, & Utilization Report 2018-2019 School Year.” New York City Department of Education. https://dnnhh5cc1.blob.core.windows.net/portals/0/Capital_Plan/Utilization_Reports/Blue%20Book%202018- 2019.pdf?sr=b&si=DNNFileManagerPolicy&sig=qljS5%2BZRM1H9ApMDhP8o933bmIyqFtGGcAt2yi8ClH4%3D 3 “FY 2020-2024 Five-Year Capital Plan Proposed Amendment.” SCA, NYC DOE, & Mayor Bill de Blasio. November 2019. https://dnnhh5cc1.blob.core.windows.net/portals/0/Capital_Plan/Capital_plans/11272019_20_24_CapitalPlan.pdf?sr=b&si =DNNFileManagerPolicy&sig=xuSt1yEFfih049Bcw2RkFaR96bQi9retE0wIQtn6JSQ%3D 4 R. J. Freeman, Committee on Open Government advisory opinion, March 18, 2019. https://docs.dos.ny.gov/coog/otext/o5609.html 5 S. M. Stringer, personal communication, March 26, 2019. https://drive.google.com/file/d/16IJ7cny1FOWEWl8- uoFPbhMBFuBAradK/view 6 J. Murphy. “On Jails and Schools, De Blasio Admin Faces Questions about Closed Meetings.” City Limits, April 4, 2019. https://citylimits.org/2019/04/04/on-jails-and-schools-de-blasio-admin-faces-questions-about-closed-meetings/ 7 R. A. Carranza & L. Grillo, personal communications, May 2, 2019. https://www.classsizematters.org/wp- content/uploads/2019/05/DOE-SCA-Response-re-School-Siting-Task-Force_2019-05-03-003.pdf 8 M. Elsen-Rooney. “NYC advocates say school construction plans fall short.” Daily News, July 29, 2019. https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/ny-school-construction-meeting-transparency-20190729- g2royswgdfbyxmwhp24gjhe3ki-story.html ; L. Brody. “New York City is Hunting for School Space.” Wall Street Journal, July 29, 2019. https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-city-is-hunting-for-school-space-11564441550 ; P. Reuckert. “A school at the Flushing Airport? It could fly, city says.” Queens Eagle, August 2, 2019. https://queenseagle.com/all/a-school-at-the- flushing-airport-it-could-fly-city-says 9 L. Haimson. “With little fanfare and some disappointment, yesterday’s second and final meeting of the School Siting Task Force was held.” July 30, 2019. https://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2019/07/with-little-fanfare-and-much.html 10 School Siting Task Force Report. October 2019. https://www.classsizematters.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/School- Siting-Task-Force-Report-Final-10.4.19-1.pdf 11 School Siting Task Force spreadsheets. https://www.classsizematters.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Copy-of-School- Siting-Task-Force-LL168-Final-October-2019-4.xlsx 12 P. Reuckert. “A school at the Flushing Airport? It could fly, city says.” Queens Eagle, August 2, 2019. https://queenseagle.com/all/a-school-at-the-flushing-airport-it-could-fly-city-says 13 School Siting Task Force, Focus on District 28 in Queens, NY. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Uz2envtD5nv1e0B_U7TVJ5srnpfUNTLYpejzXzmK1Dw/edit ; see also https://www.gc.cuny.edu/Page-Elements/Academics-Research-Centers-Initiatives/Centers-and-Institutes/Center-for- Urban-Research/CUNY-Mapping-Service/Projects/NYC-OASIS-the-Open-Accessible-Space-Information-System 14 P. A. Wong. “New 400-Student School Slated for Sunset Park.” Bklyner, July 5, 2017. https://bklyner.com/new-400- student-school-slated-for-sunset-park/

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15 “Sub-District Maps.” School Construction Authority. http://www.nycsca.org/Community/Capital-Plan-Reports-Data#Sub- District-Maps-335 16 For the example of another Task Force which had disappointing results, partly as a result of its non-transparent process and domination by City Agencies, see the Council’s Task Force on Automated Decision Systems, created by Local Law 49. Albert Cahn, “The first effort to regulate AI was a spectacular failure” Fast Company, Nov. 26, 2019; https://www.fastcompany.com/90436012/the-first-effort-to-regulate-ai-was-a-spectacular-failure and L. Haimson, “What lessons should the Council learn from two of their failed Task forces?” NYC Public School Parent Blog, Dec. 17, 2019; https://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2019/12/what-lessons-should-council-learn-from.html

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