Parents to Talk Back at Meetings on Proposed School Zoning
By Faith Paris & Carl Glassman
UPDATED Dec. 01
Two options for temporarily zoning four Lower Manhattan elementary schools are up for public comment this month and emotions over whose children will be assigned where next fall are already running high.
Click here for related story on school overcrowding.
The Community Education Council of School District 2, a panel of elected parent volunteers vested with the authority to approve a final zoning plan, is meeting twice with Lower Manhattan parents to hear their reactions to the plans.
(Meetings are scheduled for Nov. 30 at 6:30 p.m. at P.S. 89, Warren and West Streets and Dec. 9 at 6:30 p.m., 19th floor, 250 Broadway.)
A final vote may come at the Council’s meeting on Dec. 16.
Both of those plans, released Nov. 18 by the Department of Education, leave large swaths of Tribeca out of the P.S. 234 zone, and both exclude some Tribeca children who live within one or two blocks from the school.
Though no one argues that the school can hold all the rising kindergartners who live in the neighborhood, it is hard to find anyone who believes they are the ones who should be left out.
At 270 Broadway/80 Chambers Street, a 28-story condominium building that falls within the Spruce Street School zone in both plans, parents have sent a petition to the Department of Education calling for their children to be zoned for P.S. 234, which is several blocks closer.
“We know rezoning has to happen but it’s frustrating to live in a neighborhood for 10 years and expect to have your child go to one school and then find out he can’t go to that school,” said Dru Gearhart, whose son enters kindergarten next fall. Noting that many of her child’s activities are in Tribeca, she added, “I feel like my child is being ripped out of his life that I’ve built for him.”
Lan Vukhac, the mother of a 4-year-old entering kindergarten in the fall, lives in one of the nearly 400 units of 50 Murray Street. She called the zoning proposals “unfair.”
“I know we’re on the cusp and I don’t know exactly where the line in southern Tribeca should be drawn but we’re a family-oriented building and we’re closer to P.S. 234 than we are to Spruce,” she said. “We’re only a block-and-a-half away so we shouldn’t have to go so far when 234 is so close.”
Elizabeth Rose, the DOE’s zoning liaison to the CEC, said it was impossible to devise a plan that would please everyone. “Inevitably somebody will be disappointed. We know that and understand it. It is an unfortunate truth,” she said.
The P.S. 234 zone differs significantly in the two plans. (See maps at right.) One leaves out about 15 blocks of what is commonly considered Tribeca, the other about 10 blocks. Rose said P.S. 234 is purposely zoned to be under capacity by 25 percent, in anticipation of future enrollment by siblings.
In both options, Battery Park City is divided at Albany Street, with children living north of that street going to P.S. 89. Those below it would go to P.S. 276 in a building that is expected to open in the fall.
As in Tribeca, there are parents in Battery Park City who are upset over where their homes fall within the proposed zones. Some parents who live above Albany Street, in the south end of Battery Park City, said they had hoped to send their children to the new and closer school, P.S. 276.
“To us, Liberty Street is the natural line and they are excluding Gateway Plaza, the only residential building in the south that was zoned north,” said Maiwenn Jaffres-Bell, the mother of 4-year-old Alexander.
Rachel Brainin, another mother from Gateway Plaza, assumed she would be zoned for P.S. 276. “The new school is very exciting,” she said, “and there is something to be said for being a parent at a new school.”
Rose said the zone was “defined” around Gateway Plaza. “It wouldn’t have fit in P.S. 276,” she said, “and P.S. 89 wouldn’t fill without it.”
“Any large building,” she added, “has the potential to make one school not fill and the other school overcrowded.”
The preference for the new school is a shift from last year, when it and the Spruc Street School had yet to open in temporary quarters in Tweed Courthouse. Many of the parents, who made P.S. 89 their first choice because it was closer to their homes or had a track record, wound up at P.S. 276 through an unpopular lottery.
But both P.S. 276 and the Spruce Street School have received laudatory reports from parents whose children attend kindergarten at the two schools. From interviews with parents and preschool directors, it is clear that misgivings over the “untested” schools have largely vanished.
Less discussed but nevertheless on the minds of apartment owners in Tribeca is the impact of zoning on property values. Nick de Seve, a real estate broker for Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate and a parent who lives at 275 Greenwich Street, said P.S. 234 has been a "major draw" for many families who have bought apartments in Tribeca. "If all of a sudden one building is no longer zoned for that school, it is not going to be nearly as desirable as another building right next door that is."
"This doesn’t just affect the parents of 4-year-olds," de Seve added. "This affects anyone who owns an apartment in the district."
Overall, however, it is the attachment to a “neighborhood” school, the desire for convenience, and uncertainty over the future that has parents feeling anxious.
“Without certainty and calm people obviously get afraid of the unknown,” said Ronnie Moskowitz, head of Washington Market School in Tribeca.
“There’s swirling rumor, so the best thing we say to parents is go see and meet those wonderful two principals [of the new schools]," he said. Then they get a sense of what’s concrete and what’s real.”
As one Tribeca mother who lives in northern Tribeca said, “I just want something I can grab onto.”
That certainty may come this month, but hardly to everyone’s satisfaction—especially in Tribeca. One mother, a resident of 50 Murray Street, said, “Any way you do it, people won’t be happy and this is still dividing up a neighborhood that moved here to go to P.S. 234.”
“But when you think about what’s going on,” she added, “the magic of P.S. 234 seems to be gone.”
Crowding Adds Uncertainty to School Landscape
By Carl Glassman
Suzanne Fine and Christian Salomone live on Warren Street where they seem assured that their daughter Veruka, 4, will be zoned for P.S. 234. Still, they are like some other parents who are considering private school because of the class sizes they hear about.
“It seems as if the two new schools will help a little bit but it still feels like there aren’t enough schools,” said Fine, a former middle and high school teacher. “When I visited P.S. 234 it just felt more crowded.”
Indeed, the principals at P.S. 234 and P.S. 89 both say that, despite the reduction in kindergartners in their classrooms as a result of the two new schools, crowding remains a concern.
First, there is the “bubble” of current 1st graders who will be moving through the grades. Then there are the anticipated new 1st graders moving into the zone next year. And finally there are current kindergartners who were on waiting lists for P.S. 234 and P.S. 89. Some of them may transfer to those schools if they become zoned for them.
“[P.S. 89 principal Ronnie Najjar] and I were sort of led on this journey last year that we would have these capped [kindergarten] classes to bring the bubble down,” said P.S. 234 principal Lisa Ripperger. “But the bubble shows up a year later so it requires a different planning.”
That planning means once again finding space for new classrooms in order to cap class sizes rather moving towards the maximum of 32, as the teachers’ union contract allows. Ripperger said 25 is her limit. Otherwise, she warned, “You’ll find me in Westchester in a heartbeat. I get offers daily. Forget about it. It’s not happening.”
The discussion of crowding came up at a recent meeting of Assemblyman Sheldon Silver’s schools task force.
At the meeting, Elizabeth Rose, the Department of Education’s liaison to School District 2, tried to reassure the principals that DOE officials would not insist on schools accepting up to 32 children to a class, but declined to say what limit would be set.
Najjar said that she already has classes of up to 29 students and would like relief from the large number of 1st graders that will require an additional classroom in the school.
“This class bubble in first grade is problematic. I’m not going to lie,” Najjar said. But it is the class sizes she worries about the most. “It’s not acceptable to me but I have no choice,” she said. “My hands are tied.”
Anne Albright, who has twins in one of those 1st grade classes, told Rose she would like to see P.S. 276 take some of P.S. 89’s current 1st graders. And she would be happy if her kids were among them.
Najjar supported the idea. “I can get my kids down to 25 in a class, which would be very nice,” she said.
At the meeting, several people were surprised when Rose said that P.S 276 would have three, not four kindergarten classes. Eric Greenleaf, a P.S. 234 parent and New York University professor who has provided demographic data to the zoning process, later told the Trib that the difference would be significant. “In 2011 [P.S. 276] is definitely above capacity,” he said. “And by 2012 you’re completely up the creek.”
Nearly two years before it is scheduled to open, the Spruce Street school’s two classes per grade already appear inadequate. Now there are questions about whether the school, planned as a K-8, will contain a middle school after all.
“I think we’re going to have to just watch and see what the registration is for next year,” Rose said.
Greenleaf, who notes that the number of births in Lower Manhattan increased by 46 percent between 2003 and 2007, said the die has already been cast. What that means, he said, is there will be at least nine fewer middle school classrooms than had been promised. And elementary schools will see crowding once again.
“This is not a prediction. The kids are already born,” Greenleaf said. “That’s what’s scary about it.”
—Faith Paris contributed reporting.