The city Department of Education may soon be required to collect more information about admissions and enrollment, and produce an annual report that could highlight the need for more school seats in specific neighborhoods.
Proposed legislation, spearheaded by Manhattan City Councilman Ben Kallos and discussed Tuesday at a City Council committee hearing, would provide school-level information about the number of applications received versus the number of students admitted. It would also include the number of seats expected to be available at each school the following year. The information would be broken down by grade level, and by applicants’ school districts and zip codes.
While some of that information is already publicly available, Kallos wants to gather more details and make it available in a single report.
He also hopes to expand the bill to include information about Pre-K for All applications to help reveal what he sees as unmet need. Kallos said that 54 percent of families who applied for pre-K on the Upper East Side, part of his district, were not offered seats in their zip code in 2015.
“The Mayor’s promise of ‘Pre-Kindergarten for All’ must include enough seats in every neighborhood,” Kallos said in a statement. “Parents in my district are giving up on our public schools and with it our government, and parents who can’t afford private school are being forced out.”
The proposal could also help efforts to create more diverse schools by tracking which students leave their neighborhoods to attend schools — and which students are being turned away.
“When we’re siting and developing new schools, that is a strong opportunity to right the wrongs of segregation in this city,” said Councilman Brad Lander. “That has happened some … but we have to do a little better.”
Maggie Moroff, special education policy coordinator at Advocates for Children, said the legislation should be expanded to track where students with accessibility needs apply and are accepted to schools. She cited a Department of Justice finding that 83 percent of city elementary schools are not fully accessible to students with mobility limitations. The city is already working to provide more information about accessibility at high schools, where only 13 percent of buildings are fully accessible.
“It is vital that you ensure there are accessible school options across the city for students, teachers and family members with mobility, hearing and vision needs,” she said in a prepared statement.
Students from the debate team at M.S. 442 in Brooklyn’s District 15 attended Tuesday’s hearing to share how jam-packed schools have impacted their education, citing noisy hallways and time taken away from teaching to rearrange classroom furniture.
District 15 is one of the most overcrowded in the district, according to a City Council report. Eighth-grader Ashley Salcedo recalled how her elementary school teacher would have to put lessons on hold to make space for everyone to sit together on a classroom rug.
“Overall, I wanted to get across that overcrowding takes away from a kid’s learning,” she said.