Lessons are being learned over new school

It was to no one’s surprise that the School Construction Authority wanted to build a school across the street from Van Cortlandt Park, the former site of the Church of the Visitation, but the Community Board 8 was a bit shocked by the details of the new school when they received them Tuesday.

However, the board and residents wanted to know more about the education department’s plans for P.S. X515, such as busing, class size, faculty and set-ups.

Information for those areas of concern isn’t available from the construction authority, which merely creates buildings for city schools. After construction, it’s the education department’s business how to utilize it.

After its first proposal in 2021, city council gave it the green light. This is the rundown.

• There will be roughly 700 students.

• About 100 will be from D75, the specialized city program for special education.

• The design will have a basement — electrical and water tank storage — plus five floors and a rooftop play yard.

• It includes, a cafeteria, kitchen, medical suite, gymnasium, music room, physical therapy room, art room and science room.

The authority announced it hopes to conclude the design phase by the end of the summer and start construction by the end of the year with a completion goal of 2027.

Board Member Rosemary Ginty, pressed Andrea Bender, vice president of external affairs at SCA, about the use of space. “We typically like to locate little children at the lowest level possible because, in the event of an emergency, we’d prefer not to evacuate little feet from a roof of a building,” Bender said. “We negotiated the early childhood center play yard to be at grade for the safety of the small feet that we anticipate utilizing.”

The 21,810-square-foot land parcel comprises the western portion of the Visitation property facing John. M Collins Place, which coincides with the church parking lot. It is unclear what will happen with the parking lot, but it is an easement for an early childhood playground. Adjacent to the school will rise an eight-floor affordable housing development.

The property was sold and was divided into two tax lots by the archdiocese — afterwards Tishman Speyer purchased the property.

“I’m concerned children are going to play in a rooftop cage as opposed to ground level play area, said Christina Carlson, a neighbor to the proposed school site.

“I think CSA missed an opportunity to incorporate green space.”

However, it is becoming a trend where schools are building up, rather than widening out. Including constructing roof top playgrounds. SCA transformed Manhattan schools this way, such as P.S. 40 for elementary school students more than two decades ago.

Students get the opportunity to overlook union square while playing on the monkey bars.

North Riverdale’s SAR Academy incorporated a rooftop playground. Its student population is greater than what is being proposed in Kingsbridge.

“It’s disappointing at the end of the day there are 696 students on such a small plot of land,” said Laura Spalter, CB8’s outgoing chair. “I know you are trying to squeeze every inch in, but it is a lot of students.”

P.S. 24 Spuyten Duyvil holds 720 students and, according to city data, the average class size for kindergarten is 24 and first through fifth is between 21 and 25 students.

“P.S. 7 (Milton Fein School) has 450 desks, so what you’re proposing is twice as large as the next largest school in our area,” Carlson said.

According to recent data, Milton Fein had 340 students its last academic year. It is still relatively small as each grade has one to three rooms. Meanwhile, the proposed school will have more.

The SCA did not give exact per student per classroom numbers. But as an average maximum, there will be 24 students in one classroom. Meanwhile, D 75 will have half of that.

The cafeteria and gymnasium will not hold the entire school capacity and that did not sit well with Carlson.

“Real estate opportunities across the city are scarce — real estate is expensive, and we have a finite budget that we spend on behalf of the taxpayers of the city of New York,” Bender said.

“Unfortunately, we are not finding anywhere in the city appropriate real estate that enables us to build the full-sized auditoriums that you see in the buildings of the 1920s and the 1960s.”

The school cannot hold a gathering of all students in the auditorium as it only holds 224 occupants, said Nicole Holloway, the external affairs manager for SCA who delivered the proposal to the committee.

There will be a need for rotating lunch periods — at least three for 237 occupants.

“It’s very difficult for us to find appropriately sized real estate in so it is more cost effective for us to accommodate those seats on one real estate transaction than multiple real estate transactions,” Bender said.

We feel like we are building an appropriate facility for the children who will attend that school as we do for children in communities all across the city.”

Bender said there is a seat need in Kingsbridge based on their demographic analysis. And with the five-year capital plan, it aims to add at least 696 public school seats in Kingsbridge, Norwood and Bedford Park by 2024.

Another 451 seats are to be added in Riverdale, North Riverdale, Spuyten Duyvil and Fieldston as well.

The SCA’s 2020-24 capital plan calls for 7,000 new seats districted across 15 new schools in the Bronx with a price tag of $980 million. That is about 15 percent of its budget to increase school capacity across all five boroughs. It will cost an estimated $106 million to construct X515.

This project was an effort to reduce overcrowding by 2027. The city must cap classes to 20 students from kindergarten to third grade and 23 students from fourth to eighth.

Meanwhile, last year an average class size in the Bronx was 20 students for kindergarten and about 21 for general education first to fifth.