P.S. 234 Parents Favor Delaying Return

At an emotional P.S. 234 P.T.A. meeting held Dec. 5, most parents said they and their children were not yet ready to return to the school’s building at the corner of Chambers and Greenwich streets, four blocks north of Ground Zero. The meeting was attended by over 300 parents, some teachers, and officials from the city’s Board of Education and Schools District 2.

In a vote conducted by mail and at the meeting, 45 parents said they would feel comfortable returning on Jan. 2 and 119 voted to return after they get results of environmental tests now being conducted and after the Board of Education fulfills the PTA’s requests for the school building, like upgrading the ventilation system and hiring a full-time custodian. But 229 parents voted to stay away until the fires at Ground Zero are out—a time frame that remains unclear and could stretch well into 2002.

"The sense I got was that most parents need a little more time and most teachers need more time," Julie Nadel, vice president of the PTA, said of the meeting, which the Board of Education closed to the press who did not have children in the school. "The issue for many parents is, when will the area, not just the school, be normalized?" Nadel said support is growing for a return in mid-February.

Some parents and teachers said they were worried about the emotional and psychological impact that returning soon would have on children. Others said they were still concerned about air quality and potentially hazardous dust, according to parents who attended the meeting.

"The fires have to be out, buildings have to come down and the digging has to stop before we have them as guinea pigs in this environment," said Jacqueline Leak, the mother of a third grader. She said she was worried about toxins in the air, despite reassurance from environmental experts that the air is very unlikely to pose long-term health risks for healthy children and adults. "I would stay until the very last person wants to go back." She said the school was just now getting back to normal at its temporary home in St. Bernard’s, a former Catholic school in the West Village.

At a meeting that evening of Community Board 1's Executive Committee, David Feiner, chair of the Youth and Education Committee, expressed concern that parents may want to stay at the school beyond February.
"At some point the teachers and principal will say let's forget [about returning to the school] until September," Feiner told the committee. "I think that hurts tha community in general. It hurts the stores around the school, it hurts people who would come back to Battery Park City. I think we need to really try to make that [February return] happen."

The decision on when to reopen the school will be made by the Board of Education, led by Schools Chancellor Harold Levy, and probably by Dec. 14, when Board officials are scheduled to meet parent leaders, according to Kevin Ortiz, a Board of Education spokesman.

"The vote is something we will take into consideration," Ortiz said. Results of environmental tests that the Board is conducting at P.S. 234 are expected by the Dec. 14, and Board representatives will meet with teachers next week to get their views on what they and their students need, Ortiz said.

The Board’s temporary lease at St. Bernard’s expires on Dec. 31. The Board has indicated it would like P.S. 234 to be out by then, but has never definitely said that the school cannot stay longer.

"I certainly would be open to any request that the Board of Education would make, but they have not made any such request " to extend the lease, Father Kenneth Smith, the pastor of St. Bernard’s parish, said the day after the parents’ meeting. PTA president George Olsen did contact Father Smith to express the parents desires. Smith said that the Archdiocese of New York will make the final decision about the use of the school, but that he would need to give his consent.