It’s Back to Back to School Downtown

By Carl Glassman

Amid the hubbub of camera crews and the humming of air monitors, local elementary and middle schoolers returned to the buildings they fled almost six months ago. I.S. 89 students went back to their Battery Park City school on Jan. 22, eager to end their difficult months in Chelsea, where they shared a building with several other schools at the O. Henry Learning Center. "Going back to school has never been so exciting," said seventh-grader Nana Yamazaki. "I’m so happy to see my friends and teachers here. Even though I’ve been seeing them every day, it’s different seeing my friends in this building." I.S. 89 teachers, too, seemed glad to be back. Several students had reported being mugged near the uptown school and teachers had noted more misbehavior. "It feels very empowering to be in our own space," said Audra Kirshbaum, a sixth-grade

reading teacher. "And it’s nice to be able to put up students’ work and not feel that I’m putting it on top of someone else’s, or that it’s temporary."

But Nina Rapoport, a seventh-grade math teacher, had reservations.

"I certainly feel excitement about being back in the building," she said at a party in the cafeteria a few days before classes resumed. "But I have concerns about the air quality, and I’m not convinced that it’s safe. Parents and teachers didn’t have enough say in the decision to return. I would have preferred to stay away a little longer."

After a week back, Rapoport said she had good days and bad. "I remember what it was like the last time we were here," she said solemnly.

Concerns about air quality and the emotions attending a return to the scene of evacuation have preoccupied parents, and sometimes polarized them.

"I could stay away until September," announced a P.S. 234 father. He was standing in front of the school with other parents last month, waiting for their children to arrive by bus for a tour of the building. The father said he worried about soil contamination across the street from the school. But beside him was another father eager for the school to reopen.

"Are you going to move your home?" the second father asked pointedly, knowing that the worried parent lives two blocks away.

"I’m thinking about it," the first father shot back.

Unlike P.S. 89, where parents battled the Board of Education and each other over the date of their return (see story), P.S. 234 parent leaders, principal and teachers seemed to move in step back to their school on Chambers Street from temporary housing at the St. Bernard’s School on 13th Street—their third move this year. But as the date approached, some worried parents became vocal and even threatened to join the P.S. 89 PTA in suing the Board of Education to halt the return.

At a hearing in State Supreme Court on Jan. 25, the P.S. 89 PTA hoped to bring an injunction against the Board of Education’s mandated return. P.S. 234 PTA President George Olsen and a PTA lawyer were there to ensure that renegade parents did not join the suit. None appeared.

But many had voiced concerns at an emotional PTA meeting the week before. Environmental consultants for the Board of Education and the PTA lined up before parents in the school cafeteria, fielding questions about such matters as particulate size, air filter efficiency, and tap water safety.

The experts were reassuring. "Would you send your child back?" someone asked Tom Fusillo of Environ, the PTA’s environmental consultant.

"I would send her to the school," replied Fusillo, who has a six-year-old.

"I can only rely on the known," Principal Anna Switzer told the parents. "In the known, we haven’t had any positive results inside the building. In the known, we’re not going outside the building if there are any positive results."

Out of caution, Switzer said, she would keep children inside during recess until after the midwinter break.
As time for the move drew near, Bruce Arnold, the school psychologist, met more frequently with groups of parents and students. Despite recent "regressions in a number of children," Arnold declared at the parent meeting, "we’re in pretty good shape. And the students and staff as a whole are ready to go back."
In an interview, Arnold called the return a "tempered experience."

"There’s a lot to be celebrated and there’s a lot to be remembered," he said, adding that for many, the trauma could last until the middle of the next—uneventful—school year. Meanwhile, he said, all the children will be reassessed soon after their return to Chambers Street.

"Going back is going to be very telling as to which kids have recovered the most," he said.

Elizabeth Keim’s first graders evinced little to worry about. Touring the school late last month, they excitedly looked for their names on the classroom door and peeked into other parts of the school.

"This is the library . . . This is the cafeteria," Keim announced, sounding carefully upbeat.

The group stopped at a buzzing air monitor in the hallway.

"This is one of those machines that Bruce [Arnold] was telling us about," she said. "I don’t think they’re very scary, are they?"

"Yes!" a boy in the back shouted with delight.