Play Nice: NYC Panel Recommends Space-Sharing Tactics for Schools

A mayor-appointed panel of educators, parents and elected officials released on Friday four key recommendations for rebuilding trust and improving the educational climate for schools that share the same building.

But the report stopped short of dealing with overcrowding and the removal of classroom trailers, citing time constraints. The 12-page report also did not touch on rules regarding which schools should and should not share a building. Chancellor Carmen Fariña was expected to announce her policy on co-located schools later this fall. 

A new state law required the city to give charter schools space in public school buildings, or pay them rent to go elsewhere. Both Fariña and Mayor Bill de Blasio have indicated they intend to be choosy, giving priority to charters that take a proportionate share of children with special needs and English Language Learners

In the meantime, the School Space Working Group's recommendations encourage schools to give more consideration to special education pupils. It notes that they often need smaller class sizes and rooms for physical and occupational therapy. The group said buildings should allocate space for mental health services that allow for confidential meetings.

The group also called for more transparency around future plans for co-located schools, stating that the city should give a clear rationale for putting multiple schools in the same building. It also called for providing more programs and services that can help schools get along in the same building, including a published guide to effective co-locations.

And it encouraged school leaders to be more creative about their use of space, for example by reducing the total number of lunch periods so that students don't have to eat late in the day or early in the morning.

“We believe the recommendations in this paper can have a positive impact on students across New York City, and we are grateful to the working group for the time and energy they invested in this work," Fariña said.

But Ellen McHugh, a member of the Citywide Council on Special Education, said she worried about recommendations for the office of enrollment to make sure middle and high schools aren't overcrowded, and to prevent schools from receiving inappropriately high concentrations of high need students.

"Capping means that kids with special needs will be frozen out of the schools," she said. "While I believe that high concentrations of high-needs students is not a solution, who defines high needs?" 

Leonie Haimson, of the group Class Size Matters, also called on the city to fairly and aggressively to deal with overcrowding.

"The overall tone is reassuring," she said of the recommendations. "But the report ignores how D.O.E. has been pushing more and more kids into smaller classrooms, risking their safety, undermining their learning conditions, and in many cases, violating the building code."

Another panel is looking at the so-called "instructional footprint" for schools, or how much classroom and office space should be considered for different ages and types of pupils. and has not yet released its report.