Interactive graphic by Lisa Waananen and Sarah Butrymowicz

Ask Ruben Lopez about his neighborhood’s crime rate in recent years and he answers with confidence. “It went down,” he says, standing behind the counter of his hardware store on Broadway, marking a lock with a piece of masking tape. He explains with assurance that crime is falling across the board, from robberies to drug deals. And what makes him so sure? “I see it,” he says simply, gesturing out the window.

Lopez is right, but the average American seems to have a hard time figuring it out. While others might rely on the news or stories about what happened to a friend of a friend, Lopez and other uptowners gauge crime by what they see on the street every day, leading them to much more realistic perceptions of its prevalence.

Crime in Harlem, and all of uptown, has been declining for years. Murders, rapes, burglaries, felonious assaults, robberies, grand larcenies and auto thefts are all on track to be lower in 2009 than in 2008, according to year-to-date statistics from uptown precincts.

In the 30th Precinct, in Central Harlem, robberies and grand larcenies have both dropped by over 27 percent from 2008 to 209. And in East Harlem’s 23rd Precinct, auto thefts have dropped by nearly half.

Across the country, too, crime is dropping – and has been since the early 90s – according to both official statistics and reported victimization rates, said David Green, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. And while nationwide crime statistics for 2009 can’t be compiled yet, indications point to a stable crime rate, if not to further decreases.

Yet Gallup’s annual crime poll showed that 74 percent of Americans believe there’s more crime in the country than this time a year ago and 51 percent say crime has risen in their area. Last year, though crime dropped, 67 percent still thought crime had worsened since the previous year.

Perhaps that’s because most individuals take their cues about crime rates from media reports and politicians. “It’s not newsworthy to talk about nothing happened,” Green said, noting that media often focus on the most negative aspects of crime rates and have a tendency to refer to a “worsening problem” even when one doesn’t exist.

“How can we blame people for not knowing crime is falling?” he said. “People don’t really have a baseline to work with.”

But uptowners don’t necessarily turn to the news first. They seem to have a different baseline for assessments of crime rates: their own observations and experiences.

Felipe Xochimitl, who lives in Harlem and works at a deli in Washington Heights, says crime is much lower than it was four years ago. “It’s good. It’s safe,” he said. “I don’t see anything wrong on the trains, the roads.”

For Lidia Aybar, evidence of declining crime comes from what happens every day inside the El Mundo department store she manages at 158th and Broadway. Her place used to get robbed often. A couple of men stole merchandise in September, but it’s been quiet since then and overall, robberies in the neighborhood have been less frequent this year, she said.

Anthony Meloni, director of the New York City Anti-Crime Agency, thinks that such perceptiveness occurs less often elsewhere in the city. For instance, those who attend a women’s crime prevention class his agency teaches consistently cite a rising crime rate as their reason for enrolling. “That happens a lot,” he said. “People are not crime experts.”

Part of the national perception of increasing crime may come from speculation that a poor economy leads to more law breaking – an idea that has sparked considerable debate among criminologists, Green said. Although some experts think the two are unrelated (crime fell during the Great Depression), others are bracing for an increase.

“We don’t really know what’s going on and why crime has declined so much,” Green said. “We don’t know why crime isn’t rising.”

Related Story: Robberies Decline in Washington Heights, Despite Recent Bank Heist

Greater Harlem Nursing Home, home to 200 residents, worries Medicaid and Medicare cuts will force it to lay off employees and scale back programming. (Photo by Sarah Butrymowicz)

“I said reach up,” Marshall Swiney sings out over a steady drumbeat. Ten of the 12 seated seniors facing him gamely raise their hands. As the group switches to reaching forward and pulling back, another wave of people – some in wheelchairs, some with walkers – enter assisted by staff members.

Morning Rhythms has gotten off to a slow start today, but by the time the 45-minute session draws to a close, more than 20 residents of the Greater Harlem Nursing Home and Rehabilitation Center are lifting their knees and leaning over to touch their toes, following Swiney’s stream of sung instructions. He walks around, all smiles, gently encouraging his charges to push themselves just a little further.

Swiney leads this workout every morning, Monday through Friday, as part of a state grant; it’s the only regular exercise program the facility offers. A strong proponent of exercising daily to keep healthy, he says he’s seen calisthenics be particularly helpful for dementia patients and stroke victims. “It’s good for your soul,” he tells everyone, repeatedly.

But with looming cuts in both state and federal funding, Swiney’s holistic medicine might have to be scaled back to just two or three days a week, said Zakelma Batson, the home’s recreation director. That would be just one of the tough calls Greater Harlem fears having to make.

The House of Representatives health care bill would reduce Medicare spending by over $400 billion. And, even though the Senate bill exempts nursing homes, it contains other causes for concern, like annual productivity cuts that would almost certainly cause nursing homes to lose money, experts say.

The problem is only heightened in New York where, in an effort to control ballooning health care costs, the state is poised to reduce its Medicaid budget by $471 million. The state currently contributes about $15 billion to a total annual Medicaid budget of around $45 billion.

The proposed legislation weighs heavily on Greater Harlem CEO Tim Foristall as he walks the halls of his facility. It looks institutional, as he freely admits, like a hospital, with its long tiled hallways and fluorescent lighting. Changing that is one of his many plans for the place – and with the help of a $25 million state grant, he may achieve at least that goal.

But being able to keep his current staff and programming? That’s looking much less likely.

The picture for nursing homes in New York is already grim. In the last 32 months, they’ve lost over $1 billion through a series of six state budget cuts, said Scott Amrhein, president of the Continuing Care Leadership Coalition (CCLC). Nursing homes historically operate on thin margins, reporting total losses of about 2 or 3 percent annually. But this year, CCLC is projecting average losses of 11 percent. “We’re seeing a real weakening in the bottom lines,” Amrhein said.

If the proposed federal and state legislation were enacted, about 25 percent of the nursing homes in New York State would declare bankruptcy, estimated Foristall. He’s been working late nights, crunching the numbers and looking for ways to keep his own establishment open. State Medicaid cuts alone would cost the facility $1.5 to $2 million.

The Greater Harlem Nursing home was built in the 1970s. The city was bankrupt and the community had to raise all the money. It was the city’s first black-owned nursing facility, Foristall said, and the majority of its residents still come from the community. “To allow a facility like this to close would be devastating,” he said. “Where are these people going to go?”

Greater Harlem is the only nursing home in Central Harlem. There are a couple semi-nearby to the south and a handful a subway’s ride away in the Bronx, but visiting relatives at other facilities would be more difficult for local residents.

Like most non-profit nursing homes, Greater Harlem receives most of its money from Medicaid, which pays the tab for almost all its 200 residents. But Medicare reimbursements, which are higher, are even more critical – the only way it stands a chance of turning a profit, or at least breaking even.

Medicaid is mainly used by the Greater Harlem’s permanent residents– about 175 people, Foristall said. Medicare, however, mostly covers short-term rehab patients.

Each program uses a complicated formula, based on the medical problems and needs of each resident, to determine how much reimbursement the nursing home gets. The sicker the patients or the more help they need doing daily activities, the more money the facility receives. So competition runs high to get the patient with the most acute problems, said Carlotta Brown, admissions director at Greater Harlem.

She receives stacks of patient reviews from hospitals every day and scans them to find the patients that need the most care. But she knows every other nursing home in Manhattan is doing the same.

“It’s a rat race,” Brown said. Looking for the worst patients is a “terrible” way to operate a health care system, she says – but if cuts go through, such patients will only become more desirable.

New York’s Medicaid program has underpaid nursing homes to a greater extent than any other state for years running, with reimbursements ranging from $16 to $26 a day less than it costs to provide care, Amrhein said.

So, while Greater Harlem receives $225 a day per resident, it spends $240 to $250, Foristall said.

With the facility losing money on Medicaid patients each day, admitting Medicare patients, although they make up a small portion of the population, becomes absolutely critical. Their reimbursements provide the cushion to cover what Medicaid misses. If the state cuts Medicaid further, Greater Harlem simply can’t afford to let its Medicare reimbursements dwindle as well.

And while the exact fate of the relationship between Medicare and nursing homes is unknown, experts in the industry see disturbing signs.

Although the Senate bill would exempt nursing homes from reductions to the total Medicare program, it may introduce new annual decreases. The bill operates on an assumption that nursing homes become more productive each year and thus will provide 1.3 percent less money annually.

The figure is based on “general industry” in the United States. Applying the standard to nursing homes unfair, Amrhein said. “It’s over-cutting nursing homes. Productivity just doesn’t occur at that rate.”

Medicare rates have also, in the past, increased each year by about 3 percent based on a market basket index, which essentially keeps the rates in line with inflation. At the federal level, “they want to freeze the market basket for the next couple years,” said Patrick Cucinelli, senior financial policy analyst at the New York Association of Homes and Services for the Aging. “It would have a significant impact.”

Some provisions in the bill are more ambiguous in their effects, but worrisome nonetheless. “One thing that they have looming out there is an independent Medicare advisory panel that will be charged with finding savings from the nursing home sector,” Amrhein said, calling it a “cause for concern.”

Some legislators, as well as the Obama Administration, argue that any cuts will be offset by changes in the Medicare program to make it more efficient, ultimately improving the performance of health care providers. But Michael Sparer, professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health contended that the reductions are simply one way to offset the cost of covering currently uninsured Americans.

“They don’t want that additional coverage to add a dime to the federal deficit,” he said. Whether hospitals and other care providers become more efficient as a result is secondary.

At Greater Harlem, getting slammed by state Medicaid cuts and fearing the federal government will pay less for Medicare patients, some things will have to change. They’re going to have to change at most nursing homes.

Since 75 percent of the facility’s expenses are labor related, trimming the staff is the easiest way to reduce the budget, Foristall said, estimating he might have to get rid of 20 to 25 people.

The home has 225 full-time employees, over 100 of them in the nursing department. The bulk of layoffs would come from there. Food service, the second largest department, would also be hit and a few clerical positions would be eliminated, he said.

But take away employees and the quality of care will suffer, he predicts. “Part of healing and getting better and staying better is human interaction,” he said. Layoffs wouldn’t mean that residents wouldn’t get their medicine on time. But it would mean that they would get less one-on-one interaction with staff and fewer recreational programs.

Greater Harlem offers a steady stream of activities throughout the day, from Morning Rhythms to movie matinees, manicures to violin performances. Many in-house programs would be able to survive, but outside entertainment would be the first to go, said Batson, the recreation director. “If the cuts do go through, my department is going to get hit the worst,” she said.

The actual effect of staff cuts will never be easy to quantify, but Foristall is certain it will have a distinct negative influence. With fewer programs and less interaction, “will people decline quicker?” he asked. “You bet they will.”

Just south of where the Cross Bronx Expressway enters Manhattan, large rocks sprawl over Highbridge Park – similar to the rocks jutting from the ground in many parts of Central Park. While the Central Park boulders frequently draw climbing children and resting couples, though, the Highbridge outcroppings stay empty.

Broken glass lies scattered across them; their crevices are wedged with food wrappers and empty cans. Weeds sprout between rocks. A thin mattress covered with couch cushions has been abandoned on the adjacent cracked concrete, along with half a green and white umbrella.

Trash is strewn widely in Highbridge Park, said Geoffrey Croft, president of NYC Park Advocates. Though Highbridge has lots of green spaces, “a lot of that green is being severely neglected,” he said.

Some northern Manhattan parks are in good condition but others, like Highbridge, endure rundown playground equipment, uncontrolled weeds and bushes, crumbling staircases, broken and bent fences or uncollected trash. Overall, parks and playgrounds uptown are less likely to be in good condition than their downtown counterparts, city surveys show. Improvements, like new fields and greenery, have come to some, but with public resources spread thin and private resources concentrated downtown, the long-uneven playing field can be hard to level.

Inspections by the Department of Parks and Recreation indicate the discrepancy between parks in lower and upper Manhattan. Only 76 percent of small parks and playgrounds in Community District 12, where Highbridge Park is located, are in acceptable condition, according to the 2009 Mayor’s Management Report. That’s the second lowest percentage in Manhattan. The lowest? Adjacent District 10 in central Harlem with 74.4 percent. West Harlem – District 9 – fares only slightly better with 77.4 percent of its parks in acceptable condition and District 11, East Harlem, tops the list with 84.2 percent.

By contrast, six districts downtown have over 90 percent of their parks in acceptable condition; two received perfect scores.

“Parks has the same goals for all parks in its charge and applies the same standards and management strategies to every park regardless of location or condition,” Department of Parks and Recreation spokesperson Cristina Deluca said in an email statement. The department declined multiple requests for an interview for this article.

But Jose Arboleba, a guardian of Marcus Garvey Park who has had success revitalizing the space, said that resources frequently find their way south. “The good stuff goes downtown,” he said.

Croft called the discrepancy “racist” because the parks kept in the best condition are in mostly white neighborhoods, despite the legal requirement that the city provide equal services to all citizens. “It’s illegal,” he said. “It’s been going on for a long, long time.”

The Mayor’s Management Report didn’t surprise Brad Taylor, chair of the Parks and Recreation Committee for Community Board 9. “District 9 parks have, in the past anyway, not gotten the attention they deserve,” he said. Though the parks department listens to the neighborhood’s concerns, he said, “the dollars and the resources just aren’t there.”

Frances Mastrota, a self-described “environmental community activist,” has seen improvements, like a new track, come to Thomas Jefferson Park in East Harlem, where she walks every morning. Still, she said, the upkeep for such a heavily trafficked area is a costly task. Though the department does the best it can, “I sincerely wish that parks were better funded,” she said.

Croft believes that parks are a low city priority, he said. The Department of Parks and Recreation is allotted 0.42 percent of the city’s overall budget but controls 14 percent of its land, according to city budget reports and the parks department website. “You see the absurdity in that,” he said. “The parks department is a victim.”

The department’s budget has actually grown over the last four years but will face a large loss next year. The city is cutting over $20 million from the department for fiscal year 2010 and the total decline, including state money, will be over $35 million. To offset the loss, the budget plans call for carving out money from virtually every area, including forestry and horticulture, recreation, and maintenance and operations, according to city budget reports.

The department already trims costs wherever it can. When Lisa Yoffie, a Washington Heights resident, repeatedly complained about an empty sandbox in J. Hood Wright Park’s tot lot, now little more than a concrete pit, she says the parks department told her it wasn’t responsible for putting sand in the sandbox.

The department maintained that citywide, parents and the communities had to refill the box each year, Yoffie said.

A group of parents has banded together to raise the money, said Jo Flattery, a member of Friends of J. Hood Wright Park. Confident that they will succeed, it doesn’t bother her that the responsibility falls to them. “Having the community participate in raising a couple hundred dollars for sand is not such a hardship,” she said.

But when it comes to outside money – from community donations, private funds and conservancies – affluent communities tend to reap more benefits than poorer ones. And it’s where outside money flows in that “you see parks doing the best,” Taylor said

Private funds and conservancies aren’t equally distributed; they’re more likely to exist in wealthy neighborhoods. Not only are those residents better able to reach into their own pockets to support neighborhood parks, but they also have more connections to corporate and other funding sources, Croft said.

“It’s very hard to get someone to partner with a community that is impoverished,” Mastrota added.

For instance, District 9 doesn’t benefit from private conservancies. But Central Park, neighbor to some of the “wealthiest people in the world,” is maintained through the Central Park Conservancy, Croft said. “Poor neighborhoods are never going to be able to compete with that,” he argued. “And they shouldn’t have to.”

But Scott Johnson, communications director for the Central Park Conservancy, argued that private donations benefit all parks. The conservancy raises 85 percent of its own annual budget, which “frees up money for other parks,” Johnson said. If the city had to pick up the tab, smaller parks would suffer, he added.

Parks department spokesperson Deluca echoed that idea. “Park improvements have been buoyed by significant public-private partnerships,” she said, noting that only a few receive significant private charity.

Deluca also emphasized that the revitalization of Central Park and Bryant Park, also heavily reliant on a private fund, “creates a blueprint for turning problem parks into community assets.”

Central Park was neglected for 20 years, Johnson pointed out, until several small advocacy groups united in 1980 to form the conservancy and transform the park.

But should revitalized parks depend on private money? Croft believes the city should turn parks around. He noted that his group sees this as a civil rights issue because the government is not providing equally for all citizens, instead ceding the job to a private entity. “You have an amazing discrepancy between these services that are supposed to be done by the city,” he said.

With more money comes better maintenance. Central Park has a gardener for every 10 acres – a luxury no District 9 park can afford, Taylor said.

Each year, Community Board 9 asks the city for more park workers, Taylor said. In August, his committee developed a needs statement that included four requests for additional maintenance workers and patrol officers.

“There’s one district-wide crew that handles all of the medium-sized parks,” Taylor said. “So they get stretched thin. If there is a problem up in Broadway Malls, Morningside might not get cleaned that day.”

It’s not only maintenance that suffers. The parks department has only seven full-time workers inspectors for the city’s hundreds of parks, Croft charged, calling the inspections a “sham.”

“You can see how little they inspect,” he said, arguing that some areas of Highbridge Park aren’t looked at twice a year as the department says.

With its budget being scaled back, the parks department will be unable to add more staffers, though. Full-time positions in the department have been declining since 2007 from 7,914 slots to a budgeted 6,763 in 2010, according to the city’s budget function analysis.

Some uptown residents don’t see problems with their neighborhood parks. “I think on a whole, they’re good,” said Charles Campbell, sitting on a bench in St. Nicholas Park with a newspaper. “They’ve improved a lot of parks”

Arboleba, for one, has made notable progress in Marcus Garvey since he began working there a year ago, planting flowers and reclaiming an area once covered with trash, now home to two cherry trees. So far, his manager has granted all his requests for new greenery. “Maybe I’m lucky,” he said.

And in some cases, uptown parks are starting to benefit from private interest. In the newly opened West Harlem Piers Park, Columbia University has pledged $500,000 a year for patrol officers and maintenance workers, Tayor said.

“There’s some good stuff happening,” Taylor said. “I just think we’re a little behind. We just need to keep up the effort.”

Parents at P.S. 123, the Mahalia Jackson Academy, have protested sharing space with the Harlem Success Academy since the charter moved into the building last year. (Photo by Sarah Butrymowicz)

When Harlem Success Academy 2 returned for its second year at 301 W 140th St., it added grades – a typical practice for charter schools, Jenny Sadlis, director of Success Charter Network’s external communications, said via email. With a growing student body, though, the school needed more classrooms and moved into some previously used by P.S. 123, with which it shares the building. The action further strained the relationship between the schools and in the surrounding community.

Parents and advocates for P.S. 123, the Mahalia Jackson Academy, have complained that the charter is taking away space without concern for the public school students. William Hargraves, whose niece attends P.S. 123, charged that the Department of Education favors charters over regular public schools.

Harlem Success Academy, whose current enrollment is 361, serves kindergarten through second grade; it eventually plans to expand to eighth grade. P.S. 123 has an enrollment of 630 students this year in pre-kindergarten through seventh grade.

The tensions began when the charter school first moved into the building, but increased this year when P.S. 123 lost its computer room to the charter school, as well as part of its teachers’ lounge and half its library, now devoted to Harlem Success Academy office space, said Hargraves.

P.S. 123 was offered basement rooms to replace some of the space Harlem Success Academy has commandeered, but “there’s no way a kid can learn in that environment,” Hargraves said, describing the basement as “no more than a storage area.” The school squeezed in classes elsewhere in the building.

Space is allocated in all schools across the city based on “a footprint” the Department of Education determines, said spokesperson William Havemann. While the footprint allocates the number of each type of classroom a school should have, based on its enrollment, “it does not determine which particular rooms in a building go to each school,” he said. The school officials decide that themselves.

“A lot of work went into the agreement between P.S. 123 and Harlem Success, and both schools participated in discussions,” said Havemann in a follow-up email.

But Hargraves still feels that the Harlem Success Academy “has the choice of the best rooms.”

The charter school, however, maintains that it has divided space fairly. “We treat all of our roommates with the utmost respect,” Sadlis said.

But Dianne Johnson, president of Community Education Council 5, said the Academy sometimes demonstrates a “disrespectful” attitude toward its public school neighbors. “If we have to be in the same building, then we all need to learn how to get along,” she said.

Parents, teachers and students have held rallies opposing the charter school since last year. At the most recent, held last month before the Academy’s annual parent appreciation event at the Roseland Ballroom, the chants ranged from “The people united will never be defeated” to “Eva Moskowitz must go” – a reference to Harlem Success’s founder. They plan to continue the rallies, Hargraves said at the time, but have not held once since then.

For Hargraves, the issue goes beyond the competition with the Harlem Success Academy. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his administration have abandoned public schools and favor charter schools, charged Hargraves, who at the rally led chants of “Bloomberg lies while public schools die.”

Mabel Moody Washington, however, has two grandchildren in the Harlem Success Academy, primarily because it provided a better education than regular public schools, she said; she is unapologetic about that choice.

She sees the Harlem Success Academy as helping disadvantaged communities catch up to the more privileged. “For centuries, our children have lagged behind. Now they’re not,” she said. “You leave there with the academic skills you need to succeed.”

The charter was ranked number 32 out of 3,500 schools in the city, according to its website. One hundred percent of its third graders passed last year’s math exam. At all four Harlem Success schools, 95 percent of third graders passed the English Language Arts exam.

P.S. 123 is rated a successful school too. It received an A from the Department of Education last year, and a B each of the prior two years. But although 77 percent of its third graders passed the math exam, just 39 percent passed the English Language Arts exam.

While Johnson said she doesn’t oppose charter schools and thinks that parents deserve educational choices, she feels that regular public schools deserve more respect. “It’s like you’re picking, your children are better than my children,” she said. “It’s starting to cause a whole lot of controversy from neighbor to neighbor.”

Johnson said she has contacted Moscowitz about forming a committee, with representatives from both schools, to work together, but Moscowitz has not yet replied.

“We are not aware of any such request,” Sedlis said.

But Johnson said she planned to try again. “The only thing I can do is keep reaching out,” she said. “It’s up to her to respond.”

Nancy Easton, co-founder of Wellness in the Schools, works with the Department of Education to get healthier food into school cafeterias. (Photo by Sarah Butrymowicz)

On a Wednesday afternoon, the yellow and green cafeteria at P.S. 161 was full of students talking and shouting. One sat down and pulled out a Lunchables, a prepackaged meal combination, but everyone else headed straight for the school kitchen. Most eagerly ate their sweet and sour roasted chicken, but didn’t touch the rice or collards with sweet tomato on their white Styrofoam trays.

Sometimes the school lunch is tasty, but “sometimes it’s disgusting,” said one fifth-grader, poking at her collards with a plastic utensil called a spork. “The vegetables are nasty.”

Her classmate agreed. “I like vegetables at home,” he said, but at school they just don’t taste good.

For some children, whatever they think of school food, there aren’t many alternatives. In low-income neighborhoods, many students get free or reduced-price lunches at school, which become a primary source of nutrition for the day. At this school, 93 percent of the student body lives at or below the poverty level and can be eligible for free or reduced-priced meals.

But critics charge that the meals aren’t always that nutritious or tasty and contribute to larger health problems. Financial and logistical problems make it difficult for the Office of SchoolFood to improve the cuisine, and despites its efforts, change can be slow in coming, the advocates say.

Some students eat little of what the school gives them, said Nayvi Merino, whose son is a first grader at P.S. 161. Merino works as a restaurant hostess in midtown, and although she gets home as early as she can in the afternoon, she said, often her son is ravenous.

“It worries me,” Merino said. “He’s not eating well at school.”

For students who do eat their fill, school food advocates have cited unhealthy lunches as a contributing factor to New York’s childhood obesity rate. Forty-three percent of the city’s children are overweight and about half of those are obese, according to a 2004 study conducted by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Many of these children come from low-income communities.

School lunch programs are “horribly underfunded,” said James Subudhi of WE ACT for Environmental Justice, so schools are often forced to take short cuts to meet federal nutrition requirements, which limit fat content and mandate that school meals provide at least a third of the recommended daily allowances of protein, iron, calcium and Vitamins A and C.

The Office of SchoolFood’s budget allows about 90 cents per meal, limiting the amount of fresh ingredients it can buy, said Nancy Easton, co-founder of Wellness in the Schools, a grassroots organization that works to improve nutrition, health and fitness in public schools. A typical menu item is a “golden fish and cheese sandwich,” which Easton described as “mystery meat fish with mystery cheese on top wrapped in a breaded substance that has been frozen for a long time.”

By contrast, Harlem Children’s Zone schools, part of a nonprofit organization aimed at helping disadvantage families break the poverty cycle, spend about $6 on each meal, which normally contains organic vegetables and meat, Subudhi said.

But school food issues aren’t only budgetary; they’re also logistical. The Office of SchoolFood is charged with feeding about 860,000 students a day, Marge Feinberg, a Department of Education representative, said in an email.

At overcrowded schools where cafeteria time is precious, some students eat lunch at 10:30 a.m., Subudhi said. Many kitchens don’t have the necessary appliances to cook from scratch, forcing them to serve only reheated food, Merino added.

And almost all the kitchen staff lack formal culinary training, Easton said. When it comes to schools preparing nutritious, high-quality food, “all the odds are against them,” she said.

The Department of Education declined to comment on these obstacles.

Some problems are simply beyond the Office of SchoolFood’s control. Several students at P.S. 161 said they just didn’t like eating vegetables anywhere. But pizza, served every Friday, got rave reviews from nearly everyone.

And some students, like P.S. 161 fifth-grader Aaron Valdidia, don’t have problems with school meals. “I think they’re pretty good,” he said.

In the past five years, the Department of Education has taken steps like eliminating trans fats, replacing white bread with whole wheat and including more locally grown vegetables in its food, Feinberg said.

It has also put a salad bar in every high school, something Daniel James, an 18-year-old at Alfred E. Smith High School praised as “going the right way,” even though he usually skips the cafeteria lunch and grabs Subway after school.

But Merino would like to see a salad bar in every school, not just high schools. “Some of the stuff we want,” she said, “it’s not really that hard.”

P.S. 186 has been abandoned since the city shut the school down in the 1970s. (Photo by Sarah Butrymowicz)

The empty, neglected building of P.S. 186 has long been a fixture on 145^th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. But if one organization has its way, that will change by next year.

The M.L. Lewis Boys and Girls Club of Harlem recently secured a $100,000 loan from the Harlem Community Development Corp. for preliminary development costs to renovate the space, which the club’s leaders say they hope will bring a 23-year effort to fruition.

The project aims to turn the former school into a new home for the Boys and Girls Club and a large community center. There will also be an affordable housing component, in which housing prices will be tailored to the median income in the area, said Sherry Lewis, chairwoman of the board of directors for the Boys and Girls Club, which works as part of the Boys and Girls Club of America to help to provide disadvantaged youth with educational and recreational programs.

Harlem Community Development Corp. provides predevelopment loans to residential proposals or mixed-use projects that incorporate at least 10 units of housing, said Wayne Benjamin of Harlem Community Development Corp.

The group’s board approved the loan, which has a maximum term of 18 months at 5 percent interest, because it was familiar and supportive of the project. “It’s an interesting and ambitious program that a lot of people have been waiting for” for a long time, Benjamin said.

The project also stood out because of its feasibility. “It actually made sense,” Curtis Archer of Harlem Community Development Corp. said, describing the idea as having “some legs behind it.”

The loan will help the Boys and Girls Club take some steps forward by allowing it to hire design and financial consultants. It still needs to find financing for the actual construction, but “a lot of that is dependent on having final drawings,” Lewis said.

She said she was confident that the project would be able to secure financing in time to break ground by next summer.

P.S. 186 has sat vacant and neglected for more than 30 years. The concrete wall surrounding the building is covered in graffiti and several outdated work permits hang on a padlocked gate guarding the entrance. The building itself hasn’t had a roof in decades and trees grow inside, sometimes sticking out of the windows.

“It’s wasted space,” said Russ Kramer, who has lived in the neighborhood for more than 30 years.

P.S. 186 was one of several schools in the area that got shut down during the 1970s, Kramer said. Some have since been turned into senior centers, some into condos and some still sit empty, waiting on stalled plans.

The city sold the P.S. 186 property to the Boys and Girls Club of Harlem in 1986 for about $300,000, Lewis said. The club was supposed to develop the property within three years, devoting 85 percent of the space to non-profit use, but plans fell through and nothing happened.

A restructuring of the board of directors in 2005, breathed new life into the project though. The new board selected ARTAC Development Partners to take on the project, and it presented plans to Community Board 9 in 2007. Again, the project faltered, but the board persisted, putting out another request for proposals this year, this time selecting the Alembic Development Co.

Although in some senses the development has been years in the making, for this particular phase, many decisions have yet to be made. It is too early to tell what the final structure will look like and whether the building will be torn down or simply renovated – partly because the whole area is being rezoned. “Until you have closure on the zoning, you can’t really be definitive about what you’re going to build,” Lewis said.

Kramer expressed frustration about how slow the process has been. “You can’t let a building go and go and go,” he said. “They could have made a senior center out of it” by now.

But the Boys and Girls Club isn’t concerned about past delays. “I wouldn’t be able to speak to what’s happened in the last 20 years,” Lewis said. “But I think what’s important is that we’re moving forward now.”

The plans for the former school will be discussed at Community Board 9’s Housing, Land Use, and Zoning Committee meeting on Oct. 20.

Residents of Esplanade Gardens are working with the MTA to make sure their new neighbor is less harmful to the community than its predecessor. (Map by Lisa Waananen)

Under the watchful eye of a community task force, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is preparing to build the city’s greenest bus depot in Harlem. The old Mother Clara Hale Bus Depot, on Lenox Avenue between 147th and 146th streets, was demolished this spring to make room for the environmentally friendly new building, which will retain its original name.

The building will make use of “state of the art” technologies, MTA official George Menduina told task force members touring the 100th Street Depot recently.

The new depot will be constructed from recycled materials and outfitted with a green roof of plants. A rooftop collection system will gather rainwater to wash buses, said Phil Cross, design manager of the depot.

The facility will also use highly efficient T5 lights, many to be connected to motion sensors, and natural gas, instead of oil, will heat the building, Menduina said.

The MTA is applying for, and expects to get, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, making this the first city depot to do so, Cross said.

The depot’s design will also significantly reduce pollution compared to its predecessor, important to nearby residents, especially those across the street in Esplanade Gardens, a six-building public housing apartment complex, who had complained about the old depot.

“The air around it wasn’t healthy,” said Deborah Gillard, task force member and Esplanade Garden resident. “A lot of people in the neighborhood had asthma and respiratory ailments.”

Although the MTA tried to bring cleaner buses to the old depot, the filter system was inadequate, said Gillard, who is also a member of Community Board 10.

Now, the MTA is considering different filtration systems, seeking the most efficient one, Menduina said. All buses will be kept inside the depot, and the building’s doors will close automatically once each bus has entered, to prevent exhaust from wafting outside.

The task force dates to a community meeting three years ago, convened by Assemblyman Denny Farrell, at which residents expressed apprehension about a new building and instead “just wanted the depot gone,” said Earnestine Bell-Temple, Farrell’s representative on the task force. Farrell asked for volunteers, and the Mother Clara Hale Bus Depot Task Force formed shortly thereafter.

Made up of community residents, organizations and elected officials’ representatives, the task force draws about 15 core members and maintains regular contact with about 200 people, said Charles Callaway of WE ACT for Environmental Justice.

It operates as a “watchdog” over the MTA and a “voice of the community in the project,” added Anthonine Pierre, community liaison at the Manhattan Borough President’s office.

The task force has stayed in regular contact with the MTA. “It’s beneficial to both sides for all of us to understand the issues and the challenges that are involved in having a bus depot in a neighborhood,” Cross said, adding that the task force has provided the MTA with “valuable information.”

So far, task force members say the MTA has been cooperative and responsive. Callaway said his group worries that budget constraints or other problems might become obstacles. But money has been allocated for the project and Cross anticipates no problems with the budget, he said.

Even so, the task force plans to continue its monitoring. “We have to make sure we press them and they do not like being pressed,” Callaway said of the MTA.

Task force members have already clashed with officials about art outside the depot. They want to put voting members on the panel that selects the artist, whom they hope will be Harlem-based. But the MTA insists it must follow established government guidelines, which would only allow task force members to suggest art professionals for the panel, said Sandra Bloodworth, director of MTA Arts in Transit.

Callaway described the procedure as “unjust.”

“They don’t have to see it,” he said. “We live here. We have to look at it.”

Constructed as a barn in 1860, the previous building stood in the neighborhood for over a century. “Once this is built, we can expect it to be here for the next 100 years,” Callaway said.