Our kids have the right to a public school education. When developers make it unsafe to come to school -- and when city agencies give them the permits to do it -- their rights are being violated.
As the city's construction boom resumes, major construction projects are looming over schools across the city. Just a few blocks away from 95th Street, PS163 is also facing construction that would
"cause years of significant harm to the children, ranging from ages 3 to 11, at this high-performing, racially diverse, and majority socio-economically disadvantaged elementary school. The harms include acute and prolonged excessive noise that are totally inconsistent with a learning environment, lack of fresh air in the classrooms mandated by City code, air fouled by toxic dust released into the air during construction and dangerous traffic, all seriously hurting this prized primary public school that until this year attracted children from all over the Upper West Side, Manhattan Valley and Harlem." (http://www.ps163taskforce.org)These are the real impacts of construction -- when schools are next door, the impacts extend far beyond DOB's consideration of construction site safety.
Making kids choose between their health and their education is perverse. Destroying thriving, diverse, multiservice schools by making learning impossible there is not -- but should be -- prohibited in city policy.