Popular, successful elementary schools are overcrowded because too many families want to attend them. Not really news, is it? It is when kids start getting put on waiting lists at neighborhood schools because the city hasn’t planned for the influx of kids living in new apartment buildings in those neighborhoods.

That's the story in several school zones in District 2 and elsewhere, according toan article in today's Times, which focuses largely on downtown Manhattan, where construction and residential conversions have proceeded at a fierce pace in recent years. The discrepancy between school seats and planned construction has been the topic of several recent policy reports – including one issued today by Comptroller William Thompson’s office, titled “Growing Pains: Reform Department of Education Capital Planning to Keep Pace with New York City’s Residential Construction.”

It was also the subject of a hearing last night in Manhattan's Community Board 2, held at PS 41 in Greenwich Village. I stopped by the meeting, which, in contrast to a meeting in January where parents aired their concerns about overcrowding, focused on concrete steps District 2 residents and elected officials can take to influence the DOE's capital plan. I’ll have more details about the meeting next week, but here’s the short version of what I learned: it takes serious organization and serious work to get the DOE to commit to building new schools, but investing time and energy can pay off. (Yesterday, the DOE announced that it has finalized plans to create new school just up the street from PS 41 -- I'm willing to bet the timing of that announcement had a little something to do with the public meeting on the calendar.)

Mayoral control of schools should allow the mayor to require major developers to fund school creation; since I moved to the city, I’ve been puzzled as to why this is not so. It seems like a total no-brainer, not something that should require policy reports and public hearings and families being locked out of their zoned schools to make happen.