Despite overwhelming evidence that District 10 schools are still bursting at the seams, the Department of Education’s (DOE) November amendment to the 2005-09 capital plan brings no relief.

Sadly, it’s not a surprise. The DOE cut 1,700 seats from the capital plan last year and is on record saying, with a straight face, that there is no need for additional schools at the Kingsbridge Armory.

Judging the state of overcrowding takes some work but it’s not exactly astrophysics. The DOE could learn from Council Member Oliver Koppell, who simply sent a survey to every school principal in his district.

Here’s a look at just some of the conditions Koppell’s survey revealed:

• PS 8 has eliminated its science lab and turned two full-sized classrooms into four smaller ones. Five under-sized rooms there are used as classrooms.

• At PS 56, all its art, music and science rooms have been converted into classrooms. Its overages have been absorbed by PS 94, which may not be able to accommodate them as a new building is constructed its schoolyard. With its own schoolyard already occupied by a mini-school, the PS 56 principal writes, “We must get an extension to accommodate our growing population.”

• DeWitt Clinton High School runs three staggered sessions to accommodate 4,521 students in a building designed for 3,600.

• PS/MS 95 has created several classrooms in its indoor play yard. Despite the squeeze, it will lose a small playground to a new structure that will mainly be used for AMPARK, a new school of choice.

• The High School for Teaching and the Professions, a relatively new small high school on the Walton campus, is already showing signs of strain. It has converted its art and science labs into classrooms and has no music room or confidential space for its guidance counselors to talk to students.

• PS 86 also has converted music and art rooms into classrooms.

And these are only the schools in Koppell’s district. PS 246, just a couple of blocks from the armory, still has kids crammed into rooms that were designed as dormitory rooms. And we aren’t even including schools that need capital repairs to existing facilities, like the deteriorating portables at PS 280. (These are supposed to be temporary anyway!)

Determining school capacity can be something of a shell game. Do you count seats in temporary portable classrooms that suck up vital schoolyard space, or science labs that were converted for regular classes, as part of a school’s capacity? Maybe. Maybe not.

Either way, the point is that a modern school without a science lab or music room space, or private space for students to talk to guidance counselors, or space for kids to run around outside should be reason enough to create new classroom space.

There is also the troubling demographic methodology used by the Department of Education, which factors in the high school dropout rate in determining space needs.

(The Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition calls it “Planning for Failure.”)

There are two more opportunities in the coming year to change the capital plan — first in February when new amendments are considered and then in November when the next five-year plan is drafted

Koppell has written to Deputy Chancellor Kathleen Grimm about the urgent needs. We’ll see what she has to say in reply.

In the meantime, parents, educators, community leaders and politicians should all get on the same page and make sure the capital plan reflects the dire capital needs in District 10 and that the armory redevelopment ultimately includes school space.

With all the current needs we have, and as new multi-family housing continues to go up all around us and the city plans for the city’s population to increase to nine million by 2030, failing to increase local school capacity just doesn’t make any sense.