NYC Schools Now Dealing With Serious Overcrowding Problem

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Pack up and leave!

Dozens of New York City kids and their parents were scrambling to find a new school Wednesday night after they said an overcrowding issue shoved them out.

The problem is they said the overcrowding crisis came with little to no warning, CBS 2's Amy Dardashtian reported.

Students at P.S. 46 in the Bronx were playing tag on Wednesday dangerously close to busy streets, due to overcrowding.

"They all in jeopardy. I don't know why they have them in the street, but it's been like this for 20 years," parent Jay-Yidah Nelson said.

But a potential fix is making parents even more outraged. The District Education Council said 23 parents got a letter this week. Their kindergarten-aged children are being reassigned to another school and they said there is nothing they can do about it.

"If it was overcrowded why put the child in the class in the first place? Why let them get comfortable? And it's like they don't care. Honestly, they don't care," parent Alisa Gordon said.

"He has a lot of little friends already. He cried. He literally cried," Fred Rivera said of his son, Frederico, who when asked where he wants to go to school responded, "I wanna go to that school."

The reassignment is to P.S. 85, which is about a mile away and a move that's separating families.

"His sister is here. If his sister is coming here he should be here with his sister, not going off to another school not knowing where he is, where's his sister on a bus, new people, new teachers," Fred Rivera said.

P.S. 46 has a history of overcrowding. Kindergartners have been housed in temporary classrooms constructed like trailers for years. Last year, those classrooms were at nearly 186 percent capacity, according to a district source. In fact, according to the teachers' union, nearly half of city schools are overcrowded, and the union plans to take legal action, a threat that may be behind P.S. 46's reassignments.

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