P.S. 8 seeks to cap enrollment, shrink class sizes

January 23, 2025 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

The Tweed Courthouse in Lower Manhattan, headquarters of the city’s Department of Education. Photo by Upsteateherd/Wikimedia

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BROOKLYN HEIGHTS – LONGTIME IN-DEMAND SCHOOL P.S. 8 wants to reduce kindergarten enrollment next year by limiting admission to in-zone children, Chalkbeat reports. The school says it’s a necessary move to meet a new state law’s requirements, which will cap elementary class sizes at 23 students by 2028; currently, only two out of the school’s 25 classrooms are below this number. The school is also asking for extra funding to keep the same number of teachers, as funding is based on total enrollment. The change would bring enrollment down from around 125 students per grade to around 90.

Parents at the school say they want the decreased class sizes to help kids learn. The city’s class size working group agreed, issuing a report in 2023 concluding that enrollment caps would be necessary, and should be implemented as soon as possible to hit that 2028 deadline: the city stands to lose $800 million per year in state funding if it doesn’t comply with the state law.

The city Department of Education is opposed, however, and says it is not considering caps right now. Officials want to focus on parent choice so that families don’t leave the public school system, and believe they can meet the caps by finding more classrooms and hiring more teachers. It’s unclear whether these options are workable for P.S. 8, which despite building an annex in its parking lot several years ago still lacks for space.

“The longer they wait, the worse it’s going to become […] The main problem is they have absolutely no plan to provide space either by building more schools or adjusting enrollment between schools,” Leonie Haimson of advocacy group Class Size Matters told Chalkbeat.

Several other overcrowded schools also requested caps from the city; southern Brooklyn schools in particular are struggling. “This is the only thing we can do,” said one principal.

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