To the Editor:
After reading the "Letters to the Editor" in Vol. 16, No. 5, I have to conclude that the biggest objection these parents have is that their kids have to cross a busy highway. These people live in one of the most expensive areas in New York City, if not the country. Why can’t they walk their own kids to school or use a nanny?

I am sure that crossing guards can be hired to help with this situation. Not wanting to cross a street is not a good enough reason to object to rezoning. I have not read a single item on the other schools being inferior. Isn’t education “the thing?” My goodness, there are children that walk through gunfire to get to school in this country. Get a grip.

Laura Bong
375 South End Avenue


To the Editor,

The Tribeca Trib's lop-sided coverage of the school rezoning debate does a disservice to greater Lower Manhattan. By painting the debate as one of warring factions of Tribecans, you ignore the three other communities affected--FiDi, BPC, and the Seaport, who overwhelmingly support option 3R as we emerge to create our own community identities around our respective schools.

The Trib's sympathy towards the concerns of southwest Tribecan's is equally clear from your special coverage of the meeting conducted by Grace Flood at Greenwich Court, your sudden concern for the Chambers Street bridge elevator, and numerous quotes about the dangers of the West Side Highway crossing at Chambers. There is not a mention in your paper that equal number of children under Prop 2 from south Battery Park City will have to cross the West Side Highway to get to PS 276. Are FiDi parental safet concerns somehow less important?

If the paper wants to endorse Prop 2, then why not come out and simply state it in the open, rather than attempting to maitain your thin veil of journalistic objectivity. As many following the zoning debate have heard, one of your journalists covering the zoning debate is herself a resident of Greewich Court in southwest Tribeca, so you're endorsement of Prop 2 would hardly come as a shock.

Thanks,

Ryan O'Connor

FiDi

To the Editor:

Your paper's disregard for areas outside Tribeca in reporting on the re-zoning debate is stunning. Many of us here work. We don't have banker's hours or have time to attend early evening zoning meetings. If we are not vocalizing our views, its not because we don't have them. Its because we expect our community leadership to make obviously good decisions and avoid making obviously bad ones. Option 2 is obviously bad for people like me with children living at Gateway Plaza. Come down here and ask around. Don't ignore us. Option 3R is favored by me and my neighbors, but your paper hardly recognizes any views outside southwest Tribeca.

Deb Cohen

Gateway Plaza

To the Editor:

I am the Co-President of the Spruce Street School PTA, Core SLT member, South Financial District homeowner and one of the speakers at last night's CEC hearing.

The coverage in the Downtown Express and The Tribeca Tribune continues to misrepresent this zoning debate as primarily concerning Tribeca residents and PS 234.

The reality is, however, that this debate concerns ALL LOWER MANHATTAN ZONING, as depicted in the maps you have published. Proposal 2 threatens to rip apart 2 cohesive neighborhoods: the Financial District and South Battery Park City.

By continuing to frame this as "North East" vs. "South West" Tribeca, you completely minimize that 3 neighborhoods - the Majority of Tribeca, Battery Park City, and the Financial District have joined in their support of Proposal 3.

I strongly urge you to take the opportunity to remedy this misrepresentation in your publications.

Sincerely,

Kimberly Busi, M.D.

To the Editor:
In a late edit to your article "Panel Vote Fails to Settle Zoning
Question for Downtown Schools," you added two paragraphs containing an
endorsement, of Option 3, by the PS 397/Spruce Street School PTA.

Did you then contact the PTAs from 89, 234, and 276? Even to report
that they had no comment would have balanced your reportage of the 397
PTA's endorsement. A failure to omit this endorsement until other PTAs
can be reached (or not) could communicate a bias that the Tribune has
thus far skillfully avoided.

We live in Barclay Tower, located 1000 feet from PS 397. Yet Option 3
zones us for PS 89. To hear from the PS 89 PTA on our potential
enrollment there, and especially on their loss of Gateway Plaza
students, would be helpful to us, if not also to help the Tribune
continue to appear impartial.

If the other PTAs have no comment, so be it - in fact, it is prudent
for them to remain silent. The PS 397 PTA may include members whose
children could go to PS 234 again under Option 3, given that current
PS 397 students are enrolled there as the result of last year's 234
lottery.

Sincerely,
Andy Fenwick
Barclay Tower Parents' Association

To the Editor:
I am a parent and a resident of 89 Murray Street. I learned from the last Community Education Council (C.E.C.) meeting that children from the Whole Foods building complex (89 Murray Street and 101 Warren Street) and blocks nearby will be sent to P.S. 89 instead of P.S. 234 if the new Option 3 proposal is adopted. (See story here.)

Parents of our complex are strongly against Option 3 for an obvious reason: Safety.

By sending our children to P.S. 89, you force them to cross an eight-lane, high-speed highway at two very dangerous intersections during rush hour.
Our children will be crossing this highway twice a day, five times a week—an average of 400 crossings per child per year. If you multiply this number by the number of children from our complex and blocks nearby, you certainly understand that Option 3 presents an enormous safety risk for children. This is unacceptable.

According to the NYC Dept. of Transportation, there were at least two pedestrian injuries a year on West Street, and in Feb. 2009 a 26-year-old woman was killed crossing West Street at Albany just a couple of blocks south.

God forbid something happens to a parent or a child because a school zoning does not respect obvious boundaries and good common sense.
We understand that the C.E.C. is trying to fill P.S. 89 because of the void left by Gateway Plaza being zoned for P.S. 276. But we refuse to sacrifice our children’s safety for this reason and believe that P.S. 89 will be at full capacity with the new developments at its door.

We claim the right to be zoned at P.S. 234, the closest school by far, one street away from our building.

For the sake of safety, location, neighborhood cohesiveness and obvious common sense, we urge the C.E.C.  to consider Option 2 as a priority or to include south Tribeca in the P.S. 234 zone.

Estelle Artus

To the Editor:
I am sending this letter in response to the Option 3 zoning proposal and the Trib’s online article, “At Hearing, New School Zoning Option Wins Parents’ Praise.”

I think this option is unfair for people like myself who live above Laight Street.

The first two zoning options never jeopardized this location of Tribeca and now we are the ones penalized because no one can come up with a decision. My husband bought our apartment in this area with the assurance that we could send our kids to P.S. 234!

We are so disappointed and we hope that parents will react to this absurd third option.

I also sense that the Trib is leaning towards this decision for some reasons.

Victoria de Rouvre

To the Editor:
I am writing as a longtime resident of Greenwich Court Condominium (which includes 275 and 295 Greenwich Street) and as a member of the Southwest Tribeca Coalition.

I want to express my dismay and total opposition to the most recent proposal presented at the last CEC/DOE meeting earlier in December, where 275 Greenwich Street (and other buildings in Southwest Tribeca) would be removed from the P.S. 234 school zone. I am opposed to what is proposed for the following reasons:

• I do not think that it is logical to remove buildings that are close to P.S. 234 from its school zone and in the case of Greenwich Court Condominium, P.S. 234 is literally directly across the street.

• The current proposal would split Greenwich Court Condominium (which covers both 275 Greenwich Street (between Murray and Warren Streets) and 295 Greenwich Street (between Warren and Chambers Streets), into two separate school zones, which does not make sense, given that Greenwich Court Condominium (though on two separate blocks) is one building, with one management board, staff, etc.

• In addition, I believe that P.S. 234 was initially built to provide education for children in the buildings surrounding P.S. 234, including Independence Plaza and Greenwich Court Condominium (which was built in 1987) and I do not believe it makes sense to remove P.S. 234 from its community.

• Probably most important of all, were this proposal to go through, I strongly believe that it would be putting the safety of our children at unnecessary risk, by proposing that they go from traveling to a school that is in many cases one or two blocks from where they live, to P.S. 89, which would require small children to cross and be close to the very dangerous and busy eight-lane West Street.

Finally, P.S. 234 has been at the center of the southwest Tribeca community for many years, both as an education and social hub, through good times and bad, including the days and months following 9/11.

I believe that the CEC/DOE should revert to the original proposal (which is supported by Community Board 1), which retains P.S. 234 as a central hub in our community and, most importantly, ensures that we do everything we can to continue to protect the safety of our children.

Liam Lacey
275 Greenwich Street