Carl Glassman / Tribeca Trib

Laight Street resident Andrew Isaacs speaks out against the so-called "Option 3" during Community Board 1's monthly meeting on Dec. 15.

Parents who live in the north end of Tribeca are coming out in force against a school zoning option, proposed to appease residents in another part of the neighborhood, which would exclude their children from P.S. 234.

On Dec. 15, angry residents of north Tribeca spoke out at a meeting of Community Board 1. They expressed their outrage at the so-called “Option 3,” which would send their children to P.S. 89 at the north end of Battery Park City.

“It divides our community and puts us in a place in Battery Park City where we just don’t have a connection to, either physically or emotionally,” said Wendy Lawson, a north Tribeca mother.

Satisfied with the original two options proposed by the Department of Education that included them in the P.S. 234 zone, north Tribeca residents were mostly absent from two hearings on the proposal held earlier this month. There was, however, a groundswell of opposition by parents not included in one or both of those options—largely people living south of Warren Street and east of Church Street who would be assigned to P.S. 397, the Spruce Street School. That led CEC zoning committee member Michael Markowitz to present the third plan, as yet not endorsed by the council. That plan would include all of Tribeca with the exception of several blocks at the northwest corner above Laight Street.

Option 3 also would allow children living in Gateway Plaza to go to their closer school, P.S. 276. Children from north Tribeca would fill the enrollment gap at P.S. 89.

From Murray Street in the south to Watts Street in the north, all argue that they live in Tribeca and so are part of the “community” belonging to P.S. 234, a school at Chambers and Greenwich Streets that can accommodate only a fraction of those children.

Michael Markowitz

This school zoning map, a third option presented Dec. 9, was in response to parents who said they wanted their children to attend school closer to home.

A third hearing, which could pit residents from one end of Tribeca against the other, will take place at the CEC’s monthly meeting, Wednesday Dec. 16, at 6:30 p.m. at P.S. 11, 320 W. 21.

“I can’t tell you how dismayed I was to find that Option 3 was being circulated,” said Mary Hoeveler, a mother a 4-year-old who has lived in north Tribeca since 2003. “I have never seen such a firestorm of e-mails or parental concern about any issue …since I moved here.”

Andrew Isaacs, the father of a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old, said he and his neighbors have collected more than 300 signatures from people opposing the plan. By accepting Option 3, he said, “You’re taking out the triangle [of the Triangle Below Canal] which is the whole thing that we’re proud of.”

Before the third option had been introduced, CB1's Youth Committee voted to endorse Option 2, which has its eastern boundary at Church Street and excludes many residents who also have clamored to be part of the P.S. 234 zone, including those at 50 Murray Street and 270 Broadway. No one from those areas attended that committee meeting, nor the full board meeting Tuesday when the board voted unanimously to support Option 2.

The Community Education Council, which has final say over zoning, must make its decision by the end of next month.

At the Dec. 9 CEC meeting, where Option 3 was introduced, the DOE’s liaison to the zoning process, Elizabeth Rose, said the plan would lead to overcrowding at P.S. 234. And Markowitz, who had devised the alternative to the DOE’s proposals, also acknowledged that the plan may need to be expanded and send more Tribeca children out of their neighborhood. In any case, he warned that it was critical to get the numbers right.

“If God forbid we goof—a zone with too many tushies assigned,” he said, “we’ll see a lottery.”