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Q&A
Council Member Rita Joseph questions SCA on school siting and early childhood education leases
6:11:22
ยท
3 min
Council Member Rita Joseph engages in a Q&A session with representatives from the School Construction Authority (SCA) regarding school siting processes and early childhood education (ECE) leases. The discussion covers community involvement in identifying potential school locations, the review of sites under Local Law 168, and the handling of terminated ECE leases.
- SCA continues to review sites identified through Local Law 168, with about 200 promising locations under further examination.
- Four ECE leases were terminated in the last five years, primarily due to poor facility conditions.
- SCA works with the Early Childhood division to find solutions for programs affected by lease terminations, including consolidation with nearby sites when necessary.
Rita Joseph
6:11:22
In the past, the active participation of parent leaders, community advocates, and elected leaders have proven critical in citing projects.
6:11:29
Does SCA have any plans to involve those groups or reconvene the school's citing task force created by law Local Law 168 of 2018 to help identifying potential locations?
6:11:42
So
Nina Kubota
6:11:45
Local Law 168, we actually continue with that.
6:11:49
We we We continue to look at those sites that we got.
6:11:54
If you remember, I think for the publicly owned sites there were one John Dewey annex that came out of that.
6:12:03
And then the next one was what about the privately owned sites.
6:12:07
So I think there were just trying to check my notes here.
6:12:11
There were 2,500 sites or lots, and we have reviewed all of them.
6:12:19
Oh, where's the next page?
6:12:21
And we I think a lot of them were air rites only.
6:12:26
There were a couple of churches, irregular shapes, and like, you know, like 20 by 300 or something like that.
6:12:34
And so we've narrowed it down to about 200 and we're actually reviewing a bunch of them right now.
Cora Liu
6:12:41
So with and that's kind of the first layer of more desk type of review.
6:12:46
For the 200 that are more promising, we're looking at each one of them.
6:12:51
And there are about a dozen that are being sent to the next level of review.
6:12:55
So we want to confirm they are available.
6:12:58
And then we want to make sure we do the thorough feasibility study in that school.
6:13:02
It is a proper site for the school.
6:13:05
So that's something we will continue.
6:13:07
I just want to also add, when we meet with when we have public meetings, whether it's CEC meetings or we went to any of the New York City build, any of the opportunity we're out there, we're always asking people to submit sites to us through SitesNYC.
6:13:22
And we look at every single site because we know it is very difficult to identify any property here.
Rita Joseph
6:13:33
How many ECE leases have been terminated in the last five years due to unfavorable lease conditions such as landlord non compliance or rent hikes?
Nina Kubota
6:13:47
I think there were four sites that were terminated and happy to give you those sites offline.
6:13:55
Okay.
6:13:56
But they were mostly due to poor condition of the facility.
6:14:02
There was only one that we didn't arrive at favorable terms for the lease, but there were four.
6:14:09
I'm happy to give you those addresses.
Rita Joseph
6:14:11
Thank you.
6:14:13
And when you have to move schools like that, what is the process for that?
6:14:18
How long does that take?
Cora Liu
6:14:23
Normally before we terminate, we would notify the early childhood division.
6:14:28
In some cases, my understanding is one program actually decided not to run the program, so it worked out.
6:14:36
It is really an ongoing process.
6:14:38
Some cases, we will consolidate it with another site in the neighborhood.
6:14:43
So we don't always find a replacement site, but we work with Earned Childhood to make sure we have a solution for the program before we terminate the lease.
Rita Joseph
6:14:52
Thank you.
6:14:53
At the February 20 hearing, New York City Public Schools testified that six sites had leases that would expire in the next two years.