UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Nearly 200 additional K-8 public school seats are being allocated to the Upper East Side as a result of a 2018 law that changed the way the city determined the need for seats, local City Councilman Ben Kallos announced Thursday.

The School Construction Authority is now planning to build 824 new K-8 seats on the Upper East Side by 2024, a spokesman for Kallos said. In last year's SCA proposed five-year master plan, the city agency allocated just 640 seats to the neighborhood. The amendment represents a gain of 184 seats for the neighborhood.

Kallos attributes the additional Upper East Side seats to a law he authored and passed in 2018 that requires the SCA to disclose the methods and formulas it uses to decide where and when to build new schools.