Radical cuts in funding and elimination of transparency in new Five-Year capital plan

November 8, 2023

The DoE/SCA released the new proposed Five-Year Capital Plan for FY 2025 – 2029 last week, the first to even mention the new class size law, which will require more schools to be built in overcrowded areas to create sufficient space for the smaller classes.

Yet the number of new schools to be built in the new Five-Year plan has been radically cut, compared to the current Capital Plan.  There are only 37 total projects in all and 23,035 seats in the “New Capacity” portion of the plan,  funded at $4.1 billion, or two billion dollars LESS than new capacity is funded in the current five-year plan.  This is also far less than the inflated estimate that DOE itself had claimed it would cost to build enough schools at $30B-$35B.

Moreover, the vast majority of these projects, including 29 new schools with 17,706 seats are completely unidentified as to borough, district, subdistrict or even grade level — an unprecedented level of non-transparency compared to all previous Capital plans.  This is particularly disturbing, given the need for a clear estimate and analysis of how where new schools will be needed to eliminate overcrowding and lower class size.

Of the eight projects with 5,329 seats identified as to district and grade level, all were already included, funded, and identified as to district and grade level in the current five-year plan.  There are six elementary and middle schools located in only four districts: Districts 2, 27, 30 and 31, all already in progress, plus a long-delayed annex for Medgar Evers HS in Brooklyn, now not due to be completed until Sept 2028, and an already funded high school in Staten Island, reconfigured as a 6-12 school, due to be completed in Sept. 2029.  Many of the funded yet unsited seats funded in the current plan seem to have simply vanished.

The fact that 78% of the new projects with 77% of the seats are not identified as to proposed location or grade level is unprecedented.  The SCA explains that instead of listing new schools by location and grade levels as in all previous capital plans, from now on, “projects will be officially listed in the Plan following the identification of a suitable site and the commencement of the school facility’s design process. “

This not only leaves the public out of the potential siting of schools and their input as to where new schools are actually needed, but also appears to violate the law that established the SCA over twenty years ago, which calls for an “educational facilities master plan…including a list of prioritized projects to the extent ascertainable and [to] list each proposed new educational facility and set forth a justification, including demographic data, documenting the long term need therefor.”

We urge parents to attend upcoming CEC meetings where the SCA will present the new Five-Year capital plan, and ask why such a radical change has been made to eliminate the identification of any specific projects as to location or grade level, and what the SCA intends to do to ensure there is sufficient school space in your district to lower class size.

​DOE’s Office of District planning is already holding CEC briefings, and you should also attend these meetings and ask the same questions.  Soon we will have a resolution for your CEC Community Board and/or Presidents Council to consider, to demand more transparency and a real class size reduction plan from the DOE, as the law requires.

If you would like Class Size Matters to provide a briefing for your CEC or Presidents Council with the latest school overcrowding and class size data for your district, let us know. The new Blue Book with last year’s utilization data was also released last week, and school and district class size data is required to be reported on Nov. 15.  Meanwhile, a very brief summary of the new Five-year plan compared to previous ones is here and below.