Fortress Greets Kids As Scaffolding Covers UWS School For Years

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — "It feels like I'm dropping my child off at a construction site," Gui Stampur, a parent of a kindergartner at P.S. 333 Manhattan School For Children, said after saying goodbye to his kid underneath the scaffolding and sidewalk shed that completely envelops the Upper West Side school.

A recent petition titled "End Construction and Give Us Back P.S. 333," shows that his frustration is shared by at least 220 other parents at the school on West 93rd Street between Amsterdam and Columbus.

They say the scaffolding has swathed the school for close to seven years, stopping natural light from getting into the building, blanketing its elegant frontside facade and creating a potentially dangerous obstacle course of construction materials for five to 14-year-olds.

Moms and dads at the school told Patch that scaffolding and construction also makes it almost impossible to properly socially distance while doing pick up and drop off, and create flooding conditions when it rains.

"Our kids, having just dealt with this for a couple of months, see it as just normal, which is even sadder than if they were complaining about it — this is just their everyday normal school life," Lynn Feng, another parent of a kindergartner at Manhattan School for Children, told Patch.

The longevity of the construction project means that most students at P.S. 333 have never seen the front or back of their school building.

“We don’t want our kids to have a similar experience, we don’t want it to have an effect on morale, or school spirit," Stampur added. "The kindergartners are excited to be in school, they’re excited to be in what’s supposed to be a safe place, and it doesn’t feel that way. It’s only a matter of time before they’re aware of it.”

And then there is the matter of where the construction equipment is stored.

Materials are kept in the school's main yard, rendering half the space unusable and shutting down the playground area.

"Navigating through a throng of people under the scaffolding every morning is overwhelming and dangerous — from the risks of tripping and falling to the outright impossibility of socially distancing," Olivia Greer, the mom of a second-grader, told Patch.

"And the lack of full access to the play yard makes for cramped recesses with all of the same safety concerns. It’s simply unfair to our kids and the adults who are charged with educating them and keeping them safe every day to go to school at a construction site."

The School Construction Authority, which oversees projects at New York City public schools, told Patch that the work has taken so long both because of a problem with the original contractor and also a work stoppage caused by the pandemic.

"The extensive and complex work of repairing exterior masonry, parapets and the roof of an 80-year old, landmarked building was compounded by issues with the original contractor," Kevin Ortiz, the authority's spokesperson, said.

"A new contractor has been brought in. Unfortunately, the added work of remediating and completing the project along with the temporary pause of all work due to COVID has added to the overall duration."

"We understand the urgency and impact on the school and are committed to completing this vital work by the latter end of next year," Ortiz added.

The Department of Buildings also told Patch that it tentatively expects the work to be done at P.S. 333 by December 2022.

"My main priority is the overall well-being of the students," Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer told Patch about the situation. "The city should work to move or minimize easily controllable disruptions. The community has already had to endure scaffolding on the exterior for years that makes the building look like a fortress."

Brewer penned a letter to Department of Transportation Commissioner Henry Gutman earlier in November saying that ending the construction should be a priority.

A Timeline Of Construction and Violations

Due to the size of P.S. 333, the building has multiple addresses, including 129-169 West 92nd St. and 140-174 West 93rd St.

In total, the school building has 44 open violations from the Department of Buildings and the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH).

Those violations include one from the Department of Buildings in 2019 for "failure to maintain the building in a safe condition," which was never resolved. Many of the DOB violations revolve around failures to conduct proper elevator inspections.

The 19 open OATH violations are more centered around the construction, two of which were as recent as March 2021.

"Failure to maintain the building in a code-compliant manner," reads the violation issued earlier this year. "At 92nd Street retaining wall metal fence loose, basement level missing broken section of brick/concrete exposing loose metal."

Roughly 755 students attend Manhattan School for Children every day.

The timeline of when the sidewalk shed and scaffolding first went up is difficult to pinpoint. Neither the Department of Buildings nor the School Construction Authority could give that information.

If you go to the Department of Buildings map of active sidewalk sheds, it reports a shed first going up on March 10, 2016, at 140 West 93rd Street.

However, the DOB's active sidewalk shed map is not always accurate, due to the system occasionally removing a sidewalk shed from its map if a new permit for the same address is created and the old permit is closed.

A rewind of Google Map imagery shows the scaffolding and sidewalk shed covering the school in Sept. 2015 — meaning that it is at least 6 years and a few months old. Going back another year, though, there is no scaffolding outside the school in May 2014.