April 19, 2008: Vol. 31, No. 16

The city has wheeled out a solution to make space at Brooklyn Heights’ overcrowded PS 8 — trailers.

The Department of Education unveiled a plan to install four portable classroom units (what a Midwesterner would call “double-wides”) in the parking lot, giving the jammed elementary school room to continue its popular pre-kindergarten program, which faced termination because of lack of space.

“There was significant interest in the community for a pre-K, and when there is demand, we don’t want to walk away from it,” John White, the Education Department’s deputy chief operating officer, told a crowd of parents at the Hicks Street school on Tuesday night.

“In order to maintain two sections of pre-K, we need to use temporary classroom units. … It’s not an optimal investment — and I’m not claiming it is — but it’s a way to sustain the services that this neighborhood needs.”

The four new trailers will also free up space to reduce class sizes and create more art and music facilities, according to Seth Phillips, the school’s much-respected principal.

But some parents who watched the elementary school go from underachieving to over-performing, can’t stand the idea of putting their kids in a classroom on wheels.

“The thought of my child attending school in a trailer is horrifying,” one PS 8 mother said at the meeting. “I don’t want my kids in trailers.”

The Department of Education says that the trailers are just like regular classrooms — only portable and temporary. Each trailer will have windows, desks, chalkboards and Internet access.

And they’ll each have a bathroom.

One PS 8 teacher said the temporary facilities are “just great.”

Many parents agree, saying they prefer trailers to new schools and long commutes.

“I’d rather have my child in trailers at PS 8 … than have to schlep across town to bring them somewhere else,” said Howard Kluger, father of a kindergartener and a future pre-K student.

The city estimates that trailers will stay in the Poplar Street parking lot for five years — five years too long for parents who want the city to build the neighborhood’s first, and badly needed, middle school in that very parking lot.

DUMBO mega-developer David Walentas has included a middle school in his proposed Dock Street tower, but he faces a tough fight to get a zoning change amid controversy over the project’s scale and proximity to the Brooklyn Bridge.

In addition, the Department of Education has not yet signed off on the idea that the neighborhood even needs a middle school, White said.

That decision will come this summer.

©2008 The Brooklyn Paper