New York City is backing off a controversial plan to retrofit public school gymnasiums as emergency migrant shelters — without ruling out their future use.
Mayor Eric Adams had been eyeing 20 school gyms to house asylum seekers for short intervals, as the city struggles to find space and braces for a potential surge after a pandemic-era border policy expired last week.
But as parent-led protests continued for a second day, the Adams administration pumped the brakes Wednesday on the approach.
Still, city officials declined to disavow the plan entirely, leaving the door open to use school gyms if it proves necessary.
“They are moving away from the school sites for now, but reserve the right to use them again if they can’t handle the influx,” said a city government source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Two city government sources familiar with the matter said that the migrants who were being sheltered in the gym at P.S. 188 in Coney Island will be sent to Touro College in Manhattan, which is opening as a new emergency housing site.
The Touro College site will have capacity for 450 people, according to these sources, who were briefed on the matter by administration officials on a call this morning.
The schools that already have been used to house migrants are P.S. 188, the former Richard H. Hungerford School on Staten Island, and two Williamsburg schools in a shared building, P.S. 17 and M.S. 577.
The Us.Mistertruth. first reported that other schools preparing for arrivals were P.S. 18 and P.S. 132 also in Williamsburg, as well as P.S. 189 in Crown Heights and P.S. 172 in Sunset Park.
Winding down the use of school gyms for now is not a policy reversal, said Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom.
“The truth of the matter is if 1,000 people come in, I’m going to have to use an emergency site,” Williams-Isom told the Us.Mistertruth after the press conference.
It was not immediately clear how quickly cots would be removed from school gyms and current students may have access to indoor sports and programming again.
Parents at the shared Williamsburg building on North 5th Street rallied for the second day in a row on Wednesday, citing concerns about losing resources and school safety with adults on premises. The school is also a Summer Rising site, where students expect to take classes and participate in camp activities after the regular school year ends next month.
Schools Chancellor David Banks in a media appearance Wednesday morning said he understood families who are emotional and want to ensure that their kids are safe, as the situation unfolded quickly and without enough time to meet with parents — but described their reaction as “a little disappointing.”
“There’ll be no graduations that are gonna be canceled; there’ll be no proms that have to be canceled,” Banks told NY1. “There’s a lot of rumors that are flying.”
The emergency housing directive came after officials issued a memo earlier this month asking all city agencies to identify sites that could be repurposed temporary shelters to prepare for the expiration of federal policy Title 42, which let authorities expel migrants from the U.S.-Mexico border during the pandemic.
“We’re certainly hopeful that it doesn’t turn out that those of the schools in fact have to be used,” Banks said.