Revised School Rezoning Plan Creates New Opponents
A revised proposal to zone five Lower Manhattan elementary schools would, like the previous plan, send some Tribeca children outside their neighborhood and will likely meet another round of resistance.
The proposal, presented Nov. 8 at a meeting of the District 2 Community Education Council (CEC), adds P.S. 1, a Chinatown school at 8 Henry St., near Catherine Street, into the rezoning picture. Tribeca children living east of West Broadway (including the east side of West Broadway) and north of Chambers Street would go to that school under the plan. The southern-most portion of Tribeca would be zoned for P.S. 397, the Spruce Street School.
In the meantime, many of the north Tribeca parents who had spoken out against an earlier proposal that would zone their children for P.S. 3 in Greenwich Village got their wish. That school is off the table in the latest plan and those families are back in the P.S. 234 zone. The proposal was opposed by Community Board 1 and appeared to be headed for defeat by the CEC, which is expected to vote on a final plan in December.
The Lower Manhattan schools are being rezoned in order to create a catchment area for the new Peck Slip school, which begins incubating next year in Tweed Courthouse and is expected to open in its own building in 2015. It is also meant to avoid another wait list for P.S. 234.
Elizabeth Rose, the Department of Education’s director of planning for Lower Manhattan who presented the proposal, said the choice is between more wait lists for P.S. 234 or the certainty of a zoned school and community building that she said would come with sending some Tribeca children to P.S. 1.
“Are we going to plan ahead and help create a community [of families] that live near each other, that can develop a support system for each other? That’s really the choice that we’re talking about here,” she said.
But critics at the meeting saw the plan as divisive.
“Our overall message is very clear. Do not split up the community,” said Community Board 1 chair Julie Menin. “What we’ve heard tonight continues to split up the community. It continues to split up parts of Tribeca and it continues to split up parts of the east side of the district.”
Menin insisted that Tribeca children in the southern end of the neighborhood should remain zoned for P.S. 234 rather than the more distant school, P.S. 397. Available space at P.S. 397, she said, should go to children living at nearby Southbridge Towers.
Paul Hovitz, a Southbridge Towers resident and co-chair of CB1’s Youth and Education Committee, agreed.
“Southbridge should be in the Spruce Street zone and leave 234 the way it is,” he said.
“And we heard from the parents that they would prefer to go through the wait list process,” he added.
Several parents from Southbridge Towers, whose children would be zoned for the Peck Slip school rather than P.S. 397, argued that three years was too long for their children to be “incubating” the new school at the Tweed Courthouse. They especially complained about the lack of a playground other than the grass yard outside the building.
“To go to an incubator for three years with a horrible patch you consider a play area, it’s just not the right thing to do,” said Jeremy Fox.
Danielle Bello, another Southbridge Towers resident, proposed creating more space at P.S. 397 by ending the pre-kindergarten classes and doing away with the plan to make the school a kindergarten through 8th grade. The Peck Slip school could have the middle school, she suggested.
“At the end of the day I feel there have to be other options out there, not just drawing lines and saying i'm sorry. That’s it. Too bad.”
Several hearings will be held before the CEC votes in December on whether to approve the plan. (The panel has 45 days from Nov. 8 to make that decision.) Tribeca parents who would be zoned for P.S. 1 are likely to be especially vocal. Last year, several waitlisted Tribeca parents, who initially did not get into P.S. 234, fought against their assignment to another Chinatown school, P.S 130. (Their children later got into P.S. 234.)
Like them, Zoya Loeb, a Lispenard Street resident and mother of a 4-year-old who had heard about the most recent zoning plan, but did not attend the meeting, expressed her anger in an email to the Trib.
“I have never heard of that school [P.S. 1]. It is not part of my local community,” she wrote. “…The children come from families who do not speak English. I will not be able to become a part of its community. Most of all, I don't understand why they keep shifting the school zones only in our area when they still had waiting lists last year at P.S. 234 (after we had all been rezoned into Spruce).”
In the days since the news was released, other parents have voiced their objections to the plan. (See comments below.)
But among north Tribeca parents who had been assigned to P.S. 3 in the initial proposal, there is a sense of relief.
“I can’t thank you enough for keeping our community whole, for keeping us from having to walk across Canal Street,” Wendy Lawson told Rose at the meeting.
“I can tell you,” she added, “my family is going to have a lot more restful nights knowing this proposal is out there.”
A "town hall" meeting on school rezoning will be held Monday, Nov. 28 at 6:30 p.m. at P.S. 130, 143 Baxter Street. For a schedule of other upcoming CEC meetings, go to cecd2.net.
COMMENTS? Write to tribeditor@tribecatrib.com
The education department continues to try and find a part of Tribeca to take advantage of and ship their students to an inappropriate school. The commute for children of east Tribeca to PS 1 is not safe due to traffic on major streets and the security around the Civic Center and the Court Houses. This plan in no way address the problem that an additional school is needed downtown or that one of the existing schools should be expanded. This plan only divides our community. It is important for all of Tribeca to stand up to theses bad plans, not be willing to sacrifice one section as long as it is someone else and demand a responsible plan from the department of education.
Peter Hyde
P.S. 001 is a long and hectic commute from our neighborhood. And everyone knows that the public transportation in this city was not designed for east-west commuting. It is not right to expect young children to make this commute everyday when there are other schools so nearby.
My twins attended P.S. 001 for Pre-K two years ago. From our starting point, (Thomas and West Broadway) the only sensible route to take was Worth Street. Any routes south of that were and are blocked off due to security issues at Civic Center after the September 11 terrorist attacks. In order for us to get there during rush hour each morning, our commute included crossing Church Street, Broadway with huge commuter buses turning right from Worth, walking past the highly-guarded FBI building, crossing Lafayette and Center streets with cars rushing on and off the Brooklyn Bridge, and the extremely chaotic Chatham Square/Five Points intersection with nine lanes of traffic coming from five directions. Sometimes there were traffic police at this crossing and sometimes there were not.
Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a security plan was implemented to protect the Civic Center, which continues to be considered a potential terrorist target. Walking past it on Worth St each day, we'd pass one of the Court House entrances where we'd see police guards, sometimes carrying M-16s. Mid-year, there was the likelihood that the trial of one of the 9/11 terrorist would be held at this courthouse in which case the street would have been closed off to pedestrian traffic for the length of the trial. We were trying to come up with a reasonable not-too-out-of-the-way alternate route. Fortunately the trial location was moved, but this possibility should continue to be a concern about the need to take this route everyday.
Lisa Klausing
I am a Tribeca parent who lives and works a few blocks from PS 234 and am proud to have been a member of this community for just over ten years. We shop, eat and play at the stores, restaurants and parks surrounding PS 234. Our friends and network are spread across Tribeca and Battery Park City. In our routine, we rarely ever cross east of Church Street. If the DOE's current zoning proposal is passed, my four year old daughter will attend a school in Chinatown that we have never seen. It will be far away from her friends and she will be separated from the five children in our building who attend PS 234 currently as well as their siblings who will grandfather into the school as well. Our commute will be 20-25 minutes and take us past the courts and jails instead of a five minute, four cross-walk stroll to PS 234.
The DOE's current zoning proposal does not address the fundamental problem that there are not enough schools downtown to serve its distinct communities. Downtown taxpayers and property owners deserve good, uncrowded schools in their respective communities. The city has collected substantial amounts of sales, income and property taxes from all the downtown residents and has earned millions more from the taxes and fees related to downtown building developments over the past five years. It is now time for the city to reinvest a portion of these revenues in schools for our children.
I urge the Tribeca Trib to oppose the current zoning proposal and encourage the Community Education Counsel and DOE to focus their efforts on solutions that allow existing communities to stay together. Similar to residents in northern Tribeca, residents of eastern and southern Tribeca (who are actually closer to PS 234) do not want to be separated from their community either. Additionally, I can't imagine that the residents of Chinatown are supportive of having their small community school over-run by an influx of students. We need workable and fair solutions, not unproductive gerrymandering that is just pitting different parts of our community against each other.
Derek Van Zandt (father of Hayden, 4)
This is the worst rezoning plan yet. The way I see it “North Tribeca” did not like the re-zoning map because they would have to cross Canal St. and the school is not within their community and they were right. Now the new map has the people living in "East Tribeca" going to a school in Chinatown...wow now that is soooo different than the former plan and much more acceptable....PS 001 is farther than PS3, the school is underperforming, the trip would cross 3 major avenues and have us negotiating one "traffic circle", PS 001 is a school that is fixture in the Chinatown community that does not have room for us... now that is what I call a plan for building a community within Tribeca. The Tribeca community should stop letting itself be divided with this issue. We should unite for a much needed new school and stop putting our heads in the sand hoping rezoning happens to someone else. We as a community should not let this happen to any of us. Come out to the meetings and support a Unified Tribeca.
Martin Vahtra
Is anyone at all consulting current census data and has anyone intelligently put together a projection of the population for this area? Why are we tearing neighborhoods apart? These plans are doing exactly the opposite of what Elizabeth Rose says the board should be doing which is "to create a community [of families] that live near each other, that can develop a support system for each other." Keep the neighborhood lines drawn the way they have always been drawn and build new schools to fit the need. No more stop gap measure please! Try to do this intelligently and with consideration for the families. Keep PS 397 and the Peck Slip School for the exponentially growing Financial District area and build a new school in Tribeca. Why are public buildings such as the one formerly occupied by the NYC Department of Health located on Centre St. vacated to create condominiums when it could easily become a new school for Tribeca? Where will the kids who will live in this condo go to school??? The zoning should follow neighborhood boundaries. And we really need more schools, period.
Name withheld by request
Once again, the DOE has failed spectacularly to come up with a solution for the overcrowding problem downtown. How does sending many Tribeca children to an underperforming school in another community solve the fact that we need more seats? I take issue with those who feel that this proposal has "kept the community whole." Simply carving out another section of the neighborhood to send elsewhere does not keep a community intact. Our collective efforts would be better spent lobbying the DOE for more schools, rather than debating who deserves to stay.
David Glovin
The DOE continues to play a strange game whereby they seem to think that by rezoning they will somehow create more school seats. Instead they are simply shifting the overcrowding elsewhere and fostering division within neighborhoods. The real issue is that we need more new schools in Lower Manhattan, in addition to Peck Slip, and we need them yesterday. The DOE has had this information for a long time, and has failed to act proactively to address the needs of our growing community despite pleas from both parents and from elected officials. This community has withstood a lot and worked so hard to rebuild itself only to have lack of proper planning on the part of the DOE threaten to divide it both physically and emotionally.
Anna Grossman
This has got to be the most ludicrous proposal I've seen. I am extremely upset. My family of 4, one of which is entering K next year, live on Worth st and Churct st. We initially moved to Tribeca so that we could attend PS234. They [rezoned] us out of that zone last yr but we were receptive to being zoned to the new Spruce Street School, despite the long walk and having to cross the multi lane high traffic nightmare known as Broadway. Now they are rezoning us again to a school that's not even in the same neighborhood???? How does this make sense? They speak of fostering a community that live near each other and a support system, but instead divide eastern Tribeca. I do not want to bash PS 1 but this is totally not what i expected when I moved my family to Tribeca. I didnt realize moving to Tribeca would mean sending my kids to a school in Chinatown. What a terrible job by the DOE!
Sunny W.
I have raised this issue to many parents in the Tribeca community - how about 'building up' PS234? PS234 occupies prime real estate in the most convenient location of Tribeca and it is the shortest building in the neighborhood. Every time I have asked the question, most if not all parents agree that would be a very simple solution. Ofcourse there is a issue of 'funds' and area zoning and perhaps as a community, we need to come together and propose this to the DOE instead of fighting over which block should be the PS234 zone. The northern Tribeca residents fought hard to now be included in the PS234 zone, and now, east of West Broadway needs to fight? It is ridiculous that kids on West Broadway and Chambers/Reade/Duane street be zoned to PS1, when PS234 is one block away from their apartments. What is the thought process behind this?
By Carl Glassman
UPDATED Nov. 15