It's time for our neighborhood to have zoned middle school
To the Editor:
Recently, the moms and dads of our local public elementary school P.S. 89 voted unanimously for the local zoning of I.S. 89, Downtown's only public middle school. Again!
This occurred on Wednesday, Feb. 15, after parents listened to an inspirational speech by UFT president and fellow Battery Park City resident Randi Weingarten. Ms. Weingarten criticized Chancellor Joel Klein for allowing middle-class neighborhood schooling questions to go unanswered.
The three-year drive by the P.S. 89 PTA for local zoning has resulted in no forward movement by the Department of Education. Our neighborhood, after all the 9/11 spending, still does not have one local zoned public school with enough seats for our own 6th-graders. And that's simply bad planning. Where are our public representatives?
On that evening last month, P.S. 89 parents also backed efforts to keep on track planning efforts for the east-side Beekman School, with all indications that it will include a similar class structure to that of P.S./I.S. 89, with approximately 400 elementary school students and 300 middle school students.
With both I.S 89 and the Beekman middle school zoned, both schools' 6th grades together could include up to 200 incoming 6th-grade students, more than enough room to accommodate all local graduates of the area's zoned elementary schools and P.S. 150, as well as the number of such graduates reasonably projected into the future.
I.S. 89, not zoned for our children, was financed by Battery Park City bonds. During the past few years, it has unfortunately lost its P.S. 234/P.S. 89-style curriculum due to its low test scores. While I.S. 89 and P.S. 89 are equally diverse culturally and economically, I.S. 89, with a student body that is 80% from outside the area, lacks the community spirit of the elementary school.
Zoning this school would give I.S. 89 the community attention it needs to get back on track.
The Department of Education should move now to structure both I.S. 89 and the already approved east-side 6th through 8th grades as zoned middle schools. It should not turn its back on those who are here to rebuild the Downtown community.
Tom Goodkind
Member, PS 89 PTA and Community Board 1
IS 89 is not Downtown's only middle school
To the Editor:
A letter to the editor in your March issue contains a number of misperceptions about IS 89, the public middle school located in Battery Park City, and about middle school zoning in general. As a West Village resident and active parent of an eighth grader at the school, I know the school well. Contrary to the picture painted in the letter, the school is a vibrant community with a creative and challenging curriculum. Its students score well on standardized tests, especially considering the fact that each grade has a self-contained special-education class. And its graduates go on to prestigious high schools; this year a whopping 19 were accepted at La Guardia and 23 at the seven specialized schools. Clearly the school is not suffering because it accepts students from outside the immediate vicinity. On the contrary, it succeeds beautifully in its mission of drawing on the richness offered by a student body with a wide range of socioeconomic, ethnic and geographic backgrounds.
The writer also erroneously describes IS89 as "Downtown's only public middle school." There are two middle schools in Chinatown, including the highly regarded Manhattan Academy of Technology, which draws students from far afield in the district. There are also several good district schools a short subway or bike ride away in the Village and Chelsea.
I don't know what boundaries the writer has in mind when he talks about "downtown." But I do know that setting aside IS89 for the exclusive use of downtown residents would unfairly penalize Brooklyn and West Side-corridor families like mine for whom 89 is far more accessible than our zoned school. It would do nothing to ease overcrowding. And, finally, no one else in the system is granted the privilege of a guaranteed seat in the local school of our choice. We all shop around for schools, submit our application, and hope for the best.
Michele Herman
Member IS 89 Executive Board and PS 3 Executive Committee
Thank you, Judy
After 11 years, Judy Duffy last month left her job as Community Board 1's assistant district manager to take a position at the Transit Authority. CB1 passed a resolution in praise of her many contributions to the community, including her "wealth of knowledge of our community and of agency processes [that] has enabled her to resolve so many local problems for our constituents…"
We at the Trib would like to add our voices to that commendation. Judy's tenure at CB1 began soon after the launch of our paper, and over the years she has been an extraordinary resource for news, as well as for insights into the workings of government at the most local level. As much as we local journalists valued her as a source of information, it is all of us as a community who have benefited the most.
So thank you, Judy.
Carl Glassman
Editor, The Tribeca Trib
Send your zoning opinions to City Planning
To the Editor:
Thank you for your kind coverage of the developments surrounding the recent application to City Planning to rezone northern Tribeca for a 7.5 FAR. (See "Community Fears City's Zoning Plan," Feb. Trib.)
I would be appreciative if you could please publish the fact that readers of your fine newspaper can easily voice their opinions online directly to Ms. Amanda Burden, chairwoman of the City Planning Commission, at the following link: www.nyc.gov/html/mail/html/maildcp.html.
We really do need the opinions of the residents of this neighborhood to be heard by our elected officials. Thank you again for your time and cooperation. I truly enjoy reading your work
Rohin Hattiangadi
A possible explanation for those mysterious symbols
To the Editor:
The efforts of antique dealer Alan Solomon to preserve the unique symbols on the brickwork of the 1832 building at 211 Pearl St. designed by architect Ithiel Town (see "Pearl St. Symbol Is Center of Mystery," Feb. Trib) are commendable, and I hope he succeeds in winning landmark status.
New York, especially Lower Manhattan, has already lost too many of its landmarks from families and early settlers. The symbols on the Pearl Street wall may be the architect's family's marks from medieval Scotland.
I am an author and amateur genealogist who traced my African-American ancestors to Colonial America, using slave and genealogical records; to farmers in medieval Ghana, using our family's nicknames, folklore, history and DNA; and to merchants who were nobles in Medieval Scotland.
One Scottish ancestor was a land surveyor who did architectural drawings. He was Grand Master of the Freemasons from 1770 to 1788 in Jamaica in the Caribbean. In 2005, Scotland's Court of the Lord Lyon, which was formed in the 13th century to research and verify the ancestry of the kings and nobles of Scotland, granted me a coat of arms, based on my noble ancestors.
The Scottish ancestors have a chevron as one of their family's symbols. The architect Ithiel Town's name, Town, on the Scottish-English border, is also represented by a chevron. The Town family's medieval coat of arms is a chevron with three crosses.
The chevron symbolizes the roof of a house, and was the symbol of those freemasons who had built churches or fortresses. The chevron signifies protection. The chevronel, a small, narrow chevron, is stacked on top of each other, or sometimes stacked side by side. It is possible that this family crest would have been used in brickwork, especially since such a design in architecture is called interlaced, or braced.
The chevron symbol with a fesse—a band, or horizontal line—at its base, forms a triangle. A stack of three chevrons with fesses, straight horizontal bands between them on brickwork, will look like a stack of three triangles, one on top of the other. Since the chevron represents the roof of a house, it is an apt symbol to preserve in Lower Manhattan, given all the rebuilding that is going on.
Pearl Duncan
40 Harrison St.
The Tribeca Trib welcomes signed letters to the editor. Send them to tribeditor@tribecatrib.com Letters may be edited for length and clarity.
