Tribeca Parents Rail Against City's Proposed School Zoning
North Tribeca parents spoke out Tuesday evening against a zoning proposal that excludes their children from their neighborhood school, P.S. 234, and sends them to a school in Greenwich Village.
At a hearing held in P.S. 234's auditorium, members of School District 2’s Community Education Council (CEC), the elected volunteers who will vote on the zoning plan for Downtown schools, listened as one parent after another protested the plan that would split Tribeca in two and zone them for P.S. 3 on Grove Street. They said the plan would separate families from their own community and force them to face the dangers of crossing Canal Street.
The DOE proposes to send children living on and above the north side of North Moore Street to the Greenwich Village school. Currently, all of Tribeca west of Church Street is zoned for P.S. 234.
Click here for zoning map and previous article.
“We moved here because our building on Laight, between Washington and West, is zoned for 234,” said Cecilia Artaucho, the mother of children ages 4 and 2. “We pay real estate taxes, we’ve been supporting the community. Why should we not get to go to the school that is in our neighborhood and in our zone?”
“You hold in your hands in some ways the spirit of our community,” said Tim Cameron, the father of a 3-year-old daughter. “We live in Tribeca—the Triangle Below Canal.”
Atoosa Kremenstein, a north Tribeca resident who said she and her husband are planning to have children soon, spoke of her fears of crossing Canal Street. "It scares the living daylights out of me,” she said.
Property values were also on the parents' minds. "Who would want to move to northern Tribeca knowing that their kids would be kicked out of their community?" noted Wendy Driscoll, mother of an 11-month-old son and 2-year-old daughter.
Based on comments from the public, the plan could change before the CEC’s expected vote in December. Along with the rezoning of P.S. 234 and P.S. 3, the plan recommends the zones for P.S. 89 and P.S. 276 and, on the east side, P.S. 397 and the Peck Slip School, which is expected to open in 2015. (The Peck Slip school gets its start next year in Tweed Courthouse.)
While the overwhelming number of speakers were from Tribeca, two parents whose children would be zoned for the Peck Slip school complained that that they belonged at the Spruce Street School, P.S. 397, which is near their homes.
“We feel like we deserve the convenience of a school that’s a block away,” said Fulton Street resident Albert Price, the father of an 11-month-old daughter, “as opposed to trekking to Peck Slip and back in the winter.”
This rezoning, the second in two years, only affects children who do not already have siblings in one of the Downtown schools. The redrawing of the map is triggered by a need to zone the new Peck Slip school and to cope with population growth in Lower Manhattan that is outpacing the number of available seats.
Thirty-eight kindergartners landed on this year’s wait list for P.S. 234, although all were eventually offered seats there, according to Elizabeth Rose, the Department of Education official in charge of planning for the district.
But Rose said the goal of the zoning was to avoid the uncertainty faced by families who could find themselves on a wait list for their zoned school.
“We’re doing the best that we can in proposing rezoning to try to minimize the number of families that may be wait listed or given an alternate offer that’s different than their zoned school,” she said.
“This is a solution that serves the broader goal of how do we address the overcrowding across the district,” she added.
Rose said that 44 children from north Tribeca applied to P.S. 234 for this school year, though she did not know how many of them were grandfathered into the school and could have attended regardless of the zoning.
Some say that number, if it remains about the same for the coming year, is too small for the hardship it would place on north Tribeca parents. Bob Townley, executive director of Manhattan Youth, told the gathering he believes that seats could be found at other Downtown schools for the children who do not get into P.S. 234.
“There isn’t that much to be gained,” he said. “There aren’t that many kids.”
The next hearing on Downtown zoning will be held at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 11 at P.S. 11, 320 W. 21 St. The rezoning will also be discussed at the next CEC meeting, to be held on Wednesday, Oct. 26 at 6:30 p.m. at P.S. 116, 210 E. 33 St.
COMMENTS? Send them to tribeditor@tribecatrib.com
The problem we have is overcrowding and the lack of seats for incoming students. This has been the problem and will continue to be the problem for years to come. I think outrage should be focused toward this issue. If these parents feel entitled to the status that 234 would bring them maybe they should start applying to private schools.
NANCY USIATYNSKY
Although I appreciate the quote in today’s Trib, I think your reporter missed the point I was trying to make.
The introductions from city officials all focused on community building and a school’s role in that. Anyone who knows the dynamics of the Fulton Street community knows that it is basically an area bounded by Beekman to the north, Broadway to the west, Liberty to the south and Gold to the east. This pocket of tight streets and mixed-use buldings provides the residential base for grocery stores, the Downtown Hospital (my daughter was born there) shops and restaurants that constitute this neighborhood. The new redistricting literally splits our neighborhood in half. The Fulton Street line should be moved south to Liberty and should include both sides of the street. What kind of community is it when children from different sides of the same street don’t even go to the same school??
This was my main point. The point about convenience was more related to all the inconvenience our neighborhood has endured with the constant street and subway construction. Adding insult to injury, now that the dust is finally settling, we are being told that to take our children to school it will be a 40 minute trek, as opposed to a 1-block walk.
It doesn’t seem like the parties responsible for drawing the lines really understand the dynamics of our community and they need to. That is what I was trying to get at.
ALBERT PRICE
102 Fulton Street Condominium
The downtown school rezoning proposal is categorically unfair to those of us in Northern Tribeca. Each of us purchased our apartments with the explicit understanding that our children would attend PS 234. We have paid local taxes for years in preparation for our kids to attend this school. This rezoning is a fundamental breach of trust that we placed in our city government; and further, is a manifestation of poor city planning and no fault of the parents in Tribeca. Thus, Northern Tribeca families should not be made to suffer the duel impact of having to take our kids across the dangerous Canal street, and see our property values diminished by the effect of the rezoning, as who in their right mind would want to buy in Northern Tribeca now.
The failure of local government to adequately plan for local school expansion should be handled in a more democratic way with a two stage plan. First, in the short term the Tribeca school zone should remain intact and the lottery system expanded. Second, construction to expand the current schools should commence immediately. In this proposal, each resident of Tribeca is afforded the same benefits, and a long term plan would be in place to correct the situation. Sending Northern Tribeca kids across Canal street is totally unsafe and undemocratic.
DAVID DRISCOLL
Right on! It's the first proposal that actually makes sense.
I live on Reade St., Just two blocks from PS234 and my neighbor's child, just two floors down did not make the cut on the wait list.
In past years, children that lived across the street from the school, were placed on the waitlist. While kids living all the way down on Debrosses, got in-They have closer alternatives.
Many people make significant sacrifices to live close to the school to avoid having to go to Private School. And then to learn that the your child can't
attend the school 2 blocks away and needs to be bus'd elsewhere...? Really?
That does not make any sense. As the neighborhood evolves. Zoning must accommodate that change. I advocate the proposal.
Name withheld by request
By Carl Glassman
UPDATED Oct. 26