Riverdale is once again on the Department of Education’s list of places that will get a new school in the coming years.

The Department of Education announced last week that a location in Riverdale, Fieldston or Spuyten Duyvil will get 416 more elementary school seats by 2016. 

The project, to turn a preexisting building in one of those areas into a new school or more than one school co-located in the same building, was removed from the DOE’s capital plan when Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed a cap on state aid. 

That money is used, in part, for new school construction in the city. However, the cap didn’t make it into the final budget, allowing the DOE to restore nearly 12,000 seats citywide. 

But when the DOE’s five-year capital plan was originally released in 2009 and adopted in February, the DOE gave District 10 funding for 1,248 new school seats. That number was ratcheted up in November’s amended plan, when the DOE identified additional need and added 1,649 seats, bringing the number for District 10 up to 2,897. 

In February, the number was reduced to 640 seats, all of which would be placed in Norwood at 3177 Webster Ave., between West 204th and West 205th streets. Now, the 416 additional seats for Riverdale brings the district number up to 1,056. 

Yvonne Mack-McCree, whose 3-year-old granddaughter is set to begin a pre-k program in the fall, welcomed the restoration of new seats as good news. 

“You have an abundance of these kids and these classrooms are too crowded,” Ms. Mack-McCree said, adding that overcrowding hinders learning.

However, Leonie Haimson, executive director of non-profit Class Size Matters, said the DOE must do more. She said in its November 2010 proposed amendment to the capital plan, the DOE said it would add about 50,000 seats citywide but has since scaled back to 28,866. 

She pointed to kindergarten waiting lists and overcrowding as reasons more action must be taken. 

“The whole thing is a fraud. Whatever [the DOE] feel[s] like spending is what the needs are,” Ms. Haimson said.

Earlier this month, The Press reported that PS 7 had 13 zoned students on its waiting list, although Principal Frank Patterson said he has asked the DOE to add more seats.