Let’s make a great school even better

The Spuyten Duyvil School (P.S. 24) is an outstanding school. The children generally seem happy and motivated. The school is filled with vivid, colorful artwork. The school holds Halloween and Spring Carnival events, which foster a close sense of community. 

Test scores are high. While many parents and students are concerned and sometimes daunted by the prospect of the state-mandated tests, the school prepares the kids for the tests as much as is possible. The school received a 9 out of 10 quality rating from www.greatschools.org because of the school’s high test scores. Inside Schools, a project of the Center for New York City Affairs, states that P.S. 24 serves its community well. 

Still, there is a problem. P.S. 24 seems overcrowded. 

We need to find a way to somehow expand P.S. 24, to put more classrooms and more teachers in the building.

P.S. 24 has a student body of more than 900 kids. All the school’s fifth graders take classes at the P.S. 24 annex on the first floor of the Whitehall Building. Many classes have as many as 30 students, even in the lower grades. The rooms are stuffed with children. I know the school was built in 1953. I have tried to find out what its original student population was supposed to be, but have had no luck searching on the Internet. It’s reasonable to think that the original student population was smaller.  

By comparison, the Springhurst Elementary School in Dobbs Ferry has an average class size of about 20 to 21 students (source: Wikipedia).  Clearly, this is unrealistic for our area because of the size of the community, but capping class sizes at 25 students sounds reasonable. 

One way to cut down the number of students per teacher is to build more permanent classrooms (not trailers!) onto the back of P.S. 24, on part of the asphalt playground behind the school. A close friend of mine proposed building another floor on the structure.