View Letter to Chancellor Klein (pdf 815 kb)

New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer are urging the Department of Education (DOE) to implement further measures for accountability and transparency in the capital planning process as it relates to new capacity projects.

In a letter to schools Chancellor Joel Klein – which can be viewed at www.comptroller.nyc.gov – Thompson and Stringer noted that DOE has adopted several of their recommendations from earlier reports on the agency’s Proposed 2010 – 2014 Capital Plan, but insisted that the DOE take further measures to improve clarity.

“I believe there remains a pressing need for greater accountability and transparency in the capital planning process as it relates to new-capacity projects,” Thompson said. “Although DOE has made some progress, it is still difficult to understand how it develops plans to create new seats, or follow the progress of new-capacity plans from year to year.”

In April 2008, Borough President Stringer’s office released Crowded Out: School Construction Fails to Keep Up with Manhattan Building Boom.  In May 2008, Thompson’s office released a report entitled Growing Pains: Reforming Department of Education Capital Planning to Keep Pace with New York City’s Residential Construction.    Both reports offered detailed recommendations to reform the City’s school planning process.

Among Thompson and Stringer’s chief recommendations was that DOE detail its planning process at the neighborhood level, rather than solely at the level of overly large School Districts. Thompson also advised that DOE should implement a “crosswalk” in the five-year capital plans to allow individual projects to be tracked from one capital plan to the next , and should adopt a rolling five-year capital plan, to be updated annually, instead of the current fixed-term five-year plans.

“I am pleased that the Proposed 2010-2014 Plan has adopted our suggestion of the identification of neighborhoods, rather than just districts, where new capacity is to be provided,” Thompson said. “This is a significant first step.”

The letter also noted that the DOE for the first time is making clear that some of the seats in the new Plan are actually being carried forward from the prior Plan.  Specifically, 8,000 of 25,000 new-capacity seats to be financed in the new Proposed 2010-2014 Plan are actually carried forward and as such do not really represent new projects.  However, without a crosswalk it is virtually impossible to determine specifically which 8,000 seats are being carried forward.

“Clearly, there are still more improvements to be made,” Thompson said. “DOE’s capital plan should be transparent enough so that we can be certain that the agency is creating necessary new capacity in schools that will address current overcrowding and residential expansion across the five boroughs.”

“I commend Chancellor Klein and the DOE for reforming its processes to plan not just for School Districts but also for the actual neighborhoods in which New Yorkers live and work,” said Borough President Stringer.  “However, there are still more important reforms that must be made to ensure that the Capital Plan transparently and clearly plans ahead for our children’s futures.”

In his Crowded Out report, in previous letters to Chancellor Klein, and in his December testimony on the Capital Plan, Borough President Stringer called for additional reforms to the planning process, including transparently planning for new housing development and revising the capacity statistics that underestimate the City’s class size targets and the need for flexible “cluster room” space.

Thompson’s comments on the Proposed 2010 – 2014 Plan and the Growing Pains report also can be viewed at www.comptroller.nyc.gov.

###