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For 10 years, Janet Elias shelled out $100 a month to an Alley Pond, Queens homeowner for a coveted amenity: a guaranteed parking spot in their driveway every day from 7:30 am to 3 pm.
A New York City public school teacher since 2005, Elias was a technology instructor at nearby PS 46, where she routinely struggled to find spaces, even within a 30-minute walk of her job.
“God forbid it snowed—forget about it. Then you were really screwed,” Elias told The Post.
Now retired, Elias continues to advocate for current teachers online and at city council meetings. She calls the parking debacle one of her top issues — and current educators say the problem has only gotten worse.
Teachers in Queens, Manhattan and the Bronx told The Post their mornings are dictated by a mad, and maddening, scramble to find parking.
They wake up over an hour earlier than their commute requires, knowing they will spend 40 to 50 minutes circling neighboring blocks like a crow searching for a wayward salami slice.
Some said school-zone residents deliberately park in ways that box out teachers, frustrated by their own lack of spots — or hoping to encourage teachers to use their meager salaries to rent a “space” in their private driveway.
One city official, who declined to comment publicly, said teachers should consider taking public transit, or even biking straight to their classrooms, arguing that this issue is moot because many educators hop the subway.
But that approach isn’t always practical, Elias said, especially for teachers who commute from Long Island or work in hard-to-reach school zones requiring multiple transfers.
According to 2024 New York City census data, nearly 50% of DOE workers take public transportation, compared with 21% who drive, while only 2% commute by bike — even as the city continues to add miles of bike and bus lanes.
The issue has gotten worse as new charter and private schools continue to multiply like Mamdani-ignored potholes, all without designated faculty parking. And because no official data exists on how many faculty-reserved spaces exist citywide, it is impossible to say how many teachers go without a key resource each day.
Neither the Department of Education nor the Department of Transportation would tell The Post how many teacher-assigned spaces actually exist.
But blackboard veterans say hunting for curb space feels like a second job — one they have to do on top of their stressful, demanding duties as Gotham’s hard-working educators.
One 38-year-old South Bronx teacher, who asked that his name be withheld, said his workday doesn’t begin until 7:35 a.m., but he wakes up at 5:15 a.m. to ensure he has enough time to park safely.
The veteran teacher, who has worked for the Department of Education (DOE) for 14 years and commutes 40 minutes each way from Yonkers, said parking has always been difficult.
Still, it worsened last year when police officers told school staff that school-side parking — once the last “safe” bastion for teachers — was reserved strictly for school buses.
“A landlord complained about all the cars in the surrounding area due to the school,” he told The Post. “The officers let us know that the parking signs in front of our school were for school buses only.”
Since then, he said, teachers have been slapped with tickets topping $150 — an especially cruel move because buses do not actually park in their designated lanes, leaving them empty all day.
Out of desperation, the teacher lamented his parking woes on TikTok, drawing the attention of a local assemblywoman. Still, no solution has appeared.
“I’m just hopeful that we can get our street signs changed so teachers can park in front of the school and continue to serve the amazingly brilliant children of the South Bronx,” he said, exhausted.
For teachers working in newer buildings, obtaining additional spaces may not even be an option.
The United Federation of Teachers says DOE parking spaces and locations are capped citywide. Plus, even if a school relocates to another building, it can’t “transfer” its designated spaces to the new location, leaving even more educators in a lurch.
At the brand-new Queens Innovation Center on Northern Boulevard, one high-school teacher, who declined to be named, told The Post that teachers have been scrambling.
The campus, which opened in September 2025, has no practical parking option for staffers, she said, forcing some teachers to hunt for spaces at nearby businesses, including McDonald’s, Staples and a local shopping center.
How are these teachers rewarded for their commitment to New York kids? By being towed.
“Folks have been booted,” she told The Post, noting that even though the $178.8 million school complex has state-of-the-art science labs, an Olympic-sized gym and a partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies, it still couldn’t add a parking lot for its teachers and staff, many of whom are paid the bare minimum salary for NYC teachers.
The dispute over New York City teacher parking goes back nearly 20 years.
In 2007, the Department of Education issued more than 63,000 parking permits for roughly 25,000 DOE parking spaces, according to court records.
But the Bloomberg administration slashed that number to combat alleged abuse by city employees, accused of hogging street parking and contributing to congestion and pollution.
And now, thanks to outdoor dining sheds and Citi Bike repositories, even those lucky enough to have a permit don’t always find curb space.
“It’s terrible. I would leave at 5:50 a.m. to get there by 6:30 a.m. to look for a spot for four years before I finally decided to pay $100 a month to rent a spot,” one former PS 62 teacher, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Post.
The Long Island native commuted daily to Chester Park, Queens, where she taught second grade. She said the issue worsened over her five years at the school.
“All the teachers felt the same way,” she told The Post. “We weren’t able to get teacher [parking passes] because it was in a residential area, and the people that live there would park in such a way that you couldn’t fit.”
Some teachers believe the problem reflects a larger systemic issue with city officials.
Elias said she believes the mayor and other city officials should do more for educators. She referenced the proliferation of bike lanes taking over curb space while teachers fight over what remains.
“If he’s going to start providing childcare for municipal workers, he should provide parking for teachers,” Elias said.
The Mayor’s Office did not respond to The Post’s request for comment. Neither did the SCA or the DOE.
“This has been going on for 23 years; nobody cares,” said Elias, the retired educator who’s still fighting for her colleagues’ curb space.
“In all my years as a teacher, I never felt the city made us a priority.”
