In Tribeca, P.S. 234 Kindergartners to Be Selected by Lottery—Again
The battle among Tribeca parents of kindergartners vying for seats at P.S. 234 next fall did not end with the recent selection of a zoning option.
A lottery is in store for those parents who do not already have children in the school.
Elizabeth Rose, the Department of Education official in charge of the zoning process for four Lower Manhattan elementary schools, said last week that already there are 70 more children preregistered at the school than there are slots for non-special education students. The preregistration period began last Monday and ended Friday. Of the 186 children registered so far, 60 have siblings in the school and are guaranteed acceptance, according to the principal, Lisa Ripperger.
Rose, who made the surprise announcement at a meeting of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s Overcrowding Task Force, said the lottery would take place between March 12, the end of the official preregistration period, and March 22, when offers are sent to parents. Children who are not selected for a seat at P.S. 234 in the lottery will be placed on a wait list. It is anticipated that additional spaces will become available after parents are informed of acceptances to "gifted-and-talented" programs. Last year that news arrived around the middle of June.
“We will develop a plan to provide other seat offers for any family who is on a wait list for 234,” Rose said, “and we will try to do so as close as possible, geographically, to 234.” However, geographic proximity would not be a consideration in the lottery, she said.
Rose said she would encourage parents who do not already have children in P.S. 234 to consider registering at P.S. 150, Tribaca’s non-zoned school, or at “gifted-and-talented” or other “choice” programs “so they create as many options as possible for themselves.”
Avoiding another lottery, such as the one that sent parents into a rage last spring, had been uppermost in the minds of many during the long and divisive debate over a temporary zoning plan for the four elementary schools: P.S. 234 and P.S. 89, and the new schools P.S. 276 and P.S. 397.
Members of the District 2 Community Education Council, the panel that endorsed the zoning plan in a close vote late last month, repeatedly complained that they were making their decision on insufficient data provided by the DOE. Only current kindergarten and first grade enrollment numbers were made available to them. Rose now says those numbers grossly underestimated the demand from families in that zone, which includes all of Tribeca west of Church Street.
“One hundred eighty six [students] represents over a 60 percent growth versus the current enrollment from the Option 2 area,” Rose said. “So that would be an enormous increase in students that I don’t think anybody could have predicted."
"I was hoping we wouldn't have to do a lottery but I'm not surprised," Ripperger told the Trib, noting that she had 175 kindergarten applicants from the P.S. 234 zone last year. What worries her now, she said, is what the numbers bode for the future.
"Because we're doing this again it makes me afraid I'm going to have to be doing it for the next few years."
Jonathan Larkin, father of a 4-year-old zoned for P.S. 234, said he knew there was the chance of a lottery, but thought the exercise in choosing a zone was "rigorous enough" that it could probably be avoided. "It seems a big failure of the zoning process," he said.
In the meantime, Larkin said he plans to consider his options. "We are going to meet with the other principals and tour the other schools," he said. "We're hoping for the best."
Faith Paris contributed reporting to this story.
By Carl Glassman