Bay Ridge Regional Science Lab Proposal

Tonight I attended a community meeting where the main topic of new business was a presentation by Thomas Greene, formerly a teacher at Fort Hamilton High School here in Bay Ridge and now an adjunct professor at Kingsborough Community College, part of the CUNY system.

The sad part of the proposal is that is is not new and has been languishing since Bloomberg and Klein came to power.  I generally try to avoid anything political or even very personal in these posts because I want the focus to be on science.  In this case it is impossible to separate the science advocacy from the political actions of the current administration.  According to Greene, in 2001 the proposal was nearly a done deal with only an environmental impact statement left to complete.  Alas, it wasn’t completed before the then new Mayor Bloomberg took office and, although the proposal had the support of local politicians, the Department of Education (DOE), and the local community, nothing was done.  Enter Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein and the ensuing sea change at the DOE.

Greene reports that the Mayor and the Chancellor has largely ignored correspondence on the matter.  Speaking from my own first-hand experience in trying to get a response from the Mayor’s office where it took over six months and numerous duplicate letters and FAXes, this treatment seems all too familiar.

So what is the proposal? There is a small parcel of land on the Brooklyn side of the Verazzano Narrows which is known as Denyse Wharf.  The concrete pier is designated as a historical landmark and thus has to be preserved, but next to it is a small sandy beach (which is submerged at high tide) and rocky area that acts as a tidal pool.  The proposal would build two laboratory spaces with capacity for up to 30 students each and include, for lack of a better term, a visitors gallery around the periphery.  While the official response that this space is inaccessible sounds reasonable, anyone who has visited the area during the summer (a favorite bicycling spot for our family) knows it is quite accessible with a small parking area both before and after the bridge as well as being within typical walking distance of the 95th Street R-train stop.

The other half of the official objection is that is is not cost-effective.  Ahem.  Most of our schools do not have any lab space in violation of state education standards.  The standards of "cost effective" is, unfortunately, totally undefined by the DOE and so impossible to rebutt.  However, it is wholly ineffective to stuff our schools to the point that some have admissions capped due to crowding up to the legally safe limits.  And even those which do not suffer that fate have class sizes above the state recommended levels.  And they get there by giving up lab space for science education.

Reading, writing, and arithmetic are the core of our education.  But science is the overarching arena which unites these core items and it is also the arena in which our future lies.  That is, the future of our nation, our state, our city, and most importantly, our children.  If it is too expensive to build lab space in every school (a goal I whole-heartedly support), then it makes sense to at the very least set up shared lab space for schools which cannot support dedicated labs.

You can read more about the proposal from this article in the Brooklyn Paper.