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A New Urgency in Classroom Search
“This has to be a school!” announced Carolyn Happy, co-president of the P.S. 89 PTA, as she strolled down a hallway. Late last month, Ronnie Najjar, principal of P.S. 89, along with three parents and the parent coordinator from the school, toured what now are two floors of offices and storage for the Battery Park City Parks Conservancy at the southern tip of South End Avenue, due to be vacated next year. The space, known as the Cove Club (for the long-empty restaurant next door) is so far the school’s sole hope for accommodating the anticipated crush of additional students next fall. This year, 130 kindergartners enrolled at P.S. 89, compared to 91 the previous year—six kindergarten classes in a school intended for three. “This is the only space available on this side of the [West Side] highway,” said PTA co-president Sheila Schmidt. “They have to make it work.” Parents hold out hope for the space, despite assertions from the Department of Education (D.O.E.) that the suite of offices, which the Conservancy expects to vacate by the end of next March, cannot be readied by the start of the 2009 school year. Officials say the demolition and construction required to make the school ready, including bringing light into the converted classrooms, would take four months too long. “It’s not an option and there’s nothing we can do about it,” said Will Havemann, a D.O.E. spokesman. The desired school space is a block from the site where P.S./I.S. 276 is expected to open in the fall of 2010. It is thought that the Cove Club could serve as a feeder school for kindergartners entering that school the following year. With the Beekman Street school possibly opening a year later, P.S. 234 parents also are searching for classrooms to relieve crowding at their school. This, despite its newly opened school rooms at the Downtown Community Center. In order to free up space for P.S. 89, Havemann said, the D.O.E. is again considering transferring I.S. 89 students to an office building at 26 Broadway, between Beaver Street and Exchange Place. The idea was first suggested by the D.O.E. in the spring and rejected by I.S. 89 principal Ellen Foote. It resurfaced after the Department of Buildings determined this month, to no one’s chagrin, that the space would not be suitable for kindergartners. A high school will occupy a portion of the building. “There are an additional 250 seats for middle schoolers,” Havemann said. In the meantime, the D.O.E. expects this month to present a draft zoning plan for the two new K-8 schools as well as the rezoning of P.S. 89 and P.S. 234, according to Havemann. The plan will go to District 2’s Community Education Council for consideration and for public comment. “They say yes or no,” Havemann said. “We want to make sure it fits their concerns.” The D.O.E.’s sensitivity to local concerns was heatedly questioned last month at a meeting of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s School Overcrowding Task Force. It was there that the group, made up of parents, local principals and others, first got word from a D.O.E. representative that the Cove Club, for months the favored option of the task force, could not be converted to a school by fall 2009. “I adjourned the meeting immediately. I said let’s not prolong this,” recalled Silver who, like others in the room, was angered by the D.O.E.’s position. Silver said he has since received a commitment from the Authority’s president, Sharon Greenberger, to have an official of her agency at the next meeting. “I asked her to look at [the Cove Club] herself…since there are very limited alternatives,” Silver said. Parents at the meeting said they were galled by a suggestion from the D.O.E.’s representative that they look for space themselves. Still, some took the cue. “On my way back to the office I circled around and looked in windows with a fresh pair of eyes,” said P.S. 234 parent Tricia Joyce, who jotted down three vacancies to explore. “We’re just lay people,” she added, “looking at taped signs on windows saying ‘Space Available.’”
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