Downtown School Zoning Delayed
By Carl Glassman
The zoning of four Lower Manhattan elementary schools—P.S. 234, P.S. 89, the Spruce Street School and P.S. 276—will not be completed in time for the next school year, according to the panel charged with rezoning schools in Community School District 2.
For parents of children entering kindergarten next fall, that delay could mean months of uncertainty over where their students will attend school. The panel, made up of members of District 2's Community Education Council (CEC), said they can’t meet a required December deadline. The District 2 CEC has no previous experience with zoning and only formally began the process last month.
“We feel the process is going to take quite a bit of time because we need to go into the community and listen to you guys,” the committee co-chairwoman, Shino Tanikawa, said to the half dozen parents in attendance during the zoning committee’s first public meeting, held on Oct. 13. Tanikawa said she expects the process to end next June, too late for fall 2010 enrollment.
The 11-member CEC is largely an advisory group and zoning is its only real power. The Department of Education (DOE) is to present the panel with a map showing suggested boundaries and the CEC is empowered to accept or reject it, or do some redrawing based on community input. That meeting is still unscheduled.
Tanikawa said she might favor expanding the current outer boundaries of P.S. 89 and P.S. 234, (to be subdivided to include the Spruce Street School and P.S. 276), in order to relieve possible overcrowding in Chinatown schools.
“We can’t just take the 234 and 89 zones as discrete sections of the district," she said. "The edges of the 234 and 89 zones to me are flexible.”
The five-person committee of parent volunteers, none of whom live below Canal Street, laid out an ambitious process for themselves that includes public hearings, parent focus groups, meetings with preschool parents, data gathering and analysis, and questionnaires sent to School Leadership Teams. Those “teams,” committees of parents, teachers and the principal in each school, would be asked to provide such information as enrollment and class size numbers.
“I know the DOE has promised us data,” said Tanikawa, “but to be honest I don’t know if I can trust the numbers I get from them.”
P.S. 234 principal Lisa Ripperger said she is not surprised that zoning will not be completed for fall 2010. “It was already September and we didn’t have anything in place," she said. "That was a bad sign.”
Ripperger supports the CEC’s decision to go through the lengthy process of gathering enrollment information and input from parents. “This is an important decision,” she said. “They should take time to make sure they do it right because goodness knows there’s no benefit in rushing through this.”
Eric Greenleaf, a P.S. 234 parent and New York University professor who has conducted statistical research on overcrowding in Downtown schools, said he is willing to help with the CEC’s data analysis, which will attempt to predict the number of children entering the public schools over the next five years.
Like Ripperger, Greenleaf said he understands the extra time that “rigorous” analysis will take. But, he added, “All the data in the world will not tell us where to draw the line. That’s how frustrating it is.”
In the meantime, the CEC committee says it hopes to avoid the anger and confusion that surrounded the Department of Education’s handling of kindergarten admissions for the four schools this fall. A DOE-mandated lottery led to some children being assigned to the Spruce Street School and P.S. 276 (located in Tweed Courthouse until their buildings are completed) rather than P.S. 234 or P.S. 89 in their own neighborhoods.
“We’re not really sure if there are other alternatives aside from lotteries,” Tanikawa said, “but that’s something we’re going to be spending the next few months talking to community members [about] and doing research and finding out what would be the best process.”
“I get loud and clear that the Downtown community doesn’t want to go through another lottery again,” said CEC member Matthew Markowitz. “But are people from Downtown ready to put a line in some block certain? I’m not so sure about that.”
Asked how enrollment will play out for fall 2010, Will Havemann, a DOE spokesman, told the Trib in an e-mail that it will be a “transparent” process but, as yet, it is undetermined.
“No matter what timeline the CEC lays out,” Havemann wrote, “we'll make sure that parents have clarity by the time they need to start applying for kindergarten for 2010.”
P.S. 89 principal Ronnie Najjar said she is "disappointed" that a lottery may again be in store for next year's parents of kindergartners. "Lotteries are random and random makes families feel inseure because they don't know what it means for their kids," she said. Still, Najjar noted that families this time will be less afraid to choose the new schools, now that they are up and running. And P.S. 276 is expected to open in its new building next year.
"While I don't want to go through the whole lottery system again if we can avoid it, I feel there's some information out there now that is actually tangible," Najjar said. "Enrollment may not be as prickly as it was this year."
Courtney Bieger, mother of a 4-year-old entering kindergarten next year, said she is “definitely” applying to private school now that she is unsure that her daughter will get into P.S. 234, which is next door to her home at 200 Chambers Street. But, she said, many parents like her were already apprehensive about upcoming school assignments for their kindergartners-to-be.
“Everyone I know is applying to private school,” she said. “I don’t know one parent who isn’t because people saw what happened last year and no one wants to be the parent who waits until March and then has to go to an incubator school.”
Ilya Mazur, the father of a 2-year-old who attended the CEC meeting, doesn’t have to worry about kindergarten for next fall. But living at 89 Murray Street, across from P.S. 234, he is concerned that Tribeca will be divided by the eventual zoning. It is predicted that there will continue to be more school-age children in the neighborhood than P.S. 234 can accomodate.
Additional reporting by Faith Paris Aarons.