CB1 Committee Supports School Zoning 'Option 2'
By Carl Glassman
Following yet another hearing on the zoning of four Lower Manhattan elementary schools, a Community Board 1 committee affirmed its support for the Department of Education’s so-called Option 2. The Youth and Education Committee’s vote Tuesday night lends weight behind those on the District 2 Community Education Council who support that plan.
The "straw" vote for Option 2 was 6-2, with two members abstaining. Two public members of the committee also supported Option 2.
Option 2 was preferred, 5-4, by the Council in a vote taken Jan. 13, but six votes are needed to win approval. The Council, which has final say over zoning, will vote again at its Jan. 27 meeting when all 10 of its members are expected to attend. One member, who could have been the deciding vote, was absent from the last meeting.
Option 2 is preferred by residents living in the “Whole Foods” complex of 101 Warren St. and 89 Murray Street and several other southwestern Tribeca buildings that would be zoned for P.S. 89 in Option 3. Many residents of eastern Tribeca, the Financial District and Gateway Plaza in Battery Park City support Option 3.
In December, CB1 endorsed Option 2. But that was before the DOE presented a plan known as Option 3 Revised. The hearing on Tuesday allowed supporters of that option to speak, and nearly 50 residents from both sides took their turns at the microphone. Option 2 proponents, dressed in red, sat on one side of the aisle, Option 3 advocates, in black, on the other.
Backed by volumes of statistics, supporters of both options again cited the danger of crossing busy streets as their major argument.
“You’re literally setting up a situation where you’re going to have small children crossing an eight-lane highway,” said Grace Flood, denouncing Option 3 for sending some Tribeca children across West Street to P.S. 89. “There is going to be a tragedy. There’s going to be fingerpointing like you’ve never seen before.”
Dru Gearhart, a leading Option 3 proponent, said the multiple streets that children would cross in Option 2 presents the greater danger.
“West Street looms visually large in people minds and…there are a lot of intersections in Lower Manhattan that are dangerous. The longer a child’s commute the more dangers they face.”
Gearhart and others also argued that that Option 3 serves larger swaths of Lower Manhattan neighborhoods. “We think it represents the wishes of the most people from the most communities,” said Gearhart, who noted that her group had gathered more than 1,500 signatures of support.
Gateway Plaza resident Tammy Meltzer spoke for Gateway Plaza residents in support of Option 3, saying that her complex, located to the south of the North Cove, is physically cut off from the north end of Battery Park City and P.S. 89. They want Option 3 because it allows them to go to their preferred school to the south, P.S. 276.
"We are physically located there by a two-square-block barrier from the north," she said. "We would like to stay with the same people we eat pizza with and we go to the supermarket with."
Despite the many public comments about safety and community cohesiveness, overcrowding of the schools, especially P.S. 234, dominated the committee’s discussion that followed. Elizabeth Rose, the DOE’s liaison to the zoning process, insisted that there would be no way to predict the impact of either plan, which is expected to be reconsidered and revised within the next two years.
But several committee members said they believe that the younger siblings pose the greater overcrowding threat with Option 3.
“My concern [about Option 3] is that we end up with P.S. 234 busting at the seams and continuing to bust at the seams and overcrowding [P.S.] 397,” said Paul Hovitz, co-chair of the Youth Committee.
“Without sibling rights [to attend the same school] I think 3R could work,” said Liat Silverman, a former P.S. 234 PTA president. "But with sibling rights I don’t think it works. West Street, the crossing, didn’t factor in at all, not for a nanosecond either way.”
Peter Braus, a newly appointed member of the Youth Committee, is the only committee member directly affected by the zoning decision. "I was hoping I would hear something from the Option 2 people that was more substantial than crossing the West Side Highway because everyone has crossed the West Side Highway,” he said.
Braus lives on Leonard Street in Tribeca, zoned for P.S. 397 under Option 2. He said he objected to being asked to go to a school outside his neighborhood, in the Financial District. "I don’t know that community and I don’t go to that community very often.”
CB1 chairwoman Julie Menin sat in with the committee but could not vote. Nor did she declare a clear preference. But she called both proposals "fatally flawed" because both force families to cross unsafe streets.
"They should never have presented these options to us without solving that problem," she said.