BY Aline Reynolds
Downtown parents and elected officials won a hard-fought battle this week as it pertains to combating public school overcrowding.
The N.Y.C. Department of Education announced on Monday its plans to open a new District Two elementary school that will incubate at the Tweed Courthouse starting in the fall of 2012. The school will open six classrooms to 50 kindergarteners and will remain at Tweed until 2015, when it will then move into its hoped-for permanent location at One Peck Slip at 476-seat capacity.
The D.O.E. reiterated that it is in “exclusive negotiations” with the U.S. Postal Service for the Peck Slip site, which it plans to acquire this summer. Construction of the school will begin in 2014. In the interim, the D.O.E. will conduct environmental testing and other on-site evaluations “to see the scope of work that needs to be done to get the school ready,” according to D.O.E. Deputy Press Secretary Jack Zarin-Rosenfeld.
Innovate Manhattan Charter School, meanwhile, will be temporarily sited at Tweed for the 2011-2012 school year, and will relocate to private space elsewhere Downtown for the next school year. The D.O.E. noted that I.M.C.S. will add 250 to 300 new middle school seats to the district without requiring of the Department additional funds toward new capital construction.
“This plan will give Downtown Manhattan a much-needed new elementary school and a new middle school over the next two years,” said Zarin-Rosenfeld. “From our point of view, this has worked out well for the Downtown Manhattan community, and it certainly made our planning process smoother.”
In preparing to open the new school, the Department said it is working with the city’s Community Education Council to create a new zone for the elementary school.
“The announcement that another new school will open Downtown is a further milestone in our efforts to open more school space Downtown,” said N.Y. State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who leads the Lower Manhattan School Overcrowding Task Force.
N.Y. State Senator Daniel Squadron echoed that the D.O.E.’s decision is “a significant step forward” in the fight against school overcrowding.
While the Tweed classrooms alone will not fix the neighborhood’s space shortages, “the decision to move forward on the Tweed Courthouse space and the school at Peck Slip site is a direct response to the leadership of the community.”
The fact that parents won’t have to wait for four to five years to build the school is “outstanding news,” according to Julie Menin, chair of Community Board 1.
“Clearly, the battle was successful,” she said. “They retreated, and that’s very significant.”
Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer released a statement, saying, “I applaud the Department of Education’s announcement that Lower Manhattan will house a new elementary school in the Tweed Courthouse in the fall of 2012. As every Downtown parent knows, Lower Manhattan’s elementary schools are already overcrowded, and the need for new seats grows with every day.”
“I’m hopeful,” Stringer added “that this announcement signals a renewed focus by the Department of Education on the problem of Downtown overcrowding.”
It’s as if the wish of Community Board 1’s Youth and Education Committee were magically granted. In its monthly meeting last week, Committee Chair Paul Hovitz and others were drafting a resolution asking that the proposed elementary school for Peck Slip be incubated at Tweed Courthouse.
Putting a charter school in publicly owned space at Tweed was not an acceptable option to the committee. “Tweed is supposed to incubate our new elementary school, [rather than a charter school],” said Hovitz. “That’s what the space should be devoted to.”
“At this time in history, we cannot offer any public school space for [I.M.C.S.],” echoed P.S. 234 parent and education activist Tricia Joyce.
I.M.C.S., conversely, wasn’t thrilled about the news that the school will have to scout out private classroom space for next year. “It’s a hiccup, but these things happen all the time in charter worlds,” said Peg Hoey, president and founder of I.M.C.S.
Hoey said the school is grateful to have been granted the space for the coming year, and that board members will start looking at other private-space options in the district.
I.M.C.S. will open at Tweed next fall with 150 sixth and seventh graders, and will add eighth grade in the fall of 2012, once it has relocated to its permanent home.
As of Tuesday, the school had 181 applications, which will be sorted out by lottery with preference given to District Two applicants. The application deadline is April 1.
Much work lies ahead
Despite this week’s victory, Downtown education advocates stressed that solving school overcrowding is still a long ways away.
“There is still an urgent need for a new classroom space now, and I have been pressing the Department of Education to open this new [elementary] school at the Tweed Courthouse this fall,” said Silver. It is imperative, he said, that Downtown secure more classroom seats “as soon as possible” for the Peck Slip school.
Zarin-Rosenfeld said the D.O.E. wouldn’t consider more seats for the school until the Department evaluates the new zoning and the elementary school’s enrollment upon opening.
“A lot of parents put in a lot of hard work, and it’s nice to see that pay off,” said Eric Greenleaf, a professor at the New York University Stern School.
And though the new school will give the community some breathing room, it will not be sufficient to satisfy the immediate need for even more classroom space.
According to Greenleaf’s research, the Peck Slip school will be completely full once it opens, and, by then, there will be a shortage of hundreds of Downtown seats.
Downtown will need 63 additional seats by the fall of 2013, and 379 seats – or approximately 15 classrooms – by 2014. There will be no extra space at the Spruce Street School in 2014, and all Downtown schools will be at capacity by the fall of 2015, when the new elementary school moves into the Peck Slip building.
“Since it takes 3 to 4 years to site, design and build a new school,” said Greenleaf, “the D.O.E. needs to act quickly to get another school, and it is pretty clear that Tweed will probably be needed [as an incubator site] even after the new school opens.”
Squadron introduced a bill last week intended to help prevent school overcrowding and ameliorate long-term planning for New York City public schools.
The bill, which is based on recommendations from a report published by Stringer’s office, proposes strategies for more accurate student-population projections and added transparency and feedback in the planning process, according to Squadron’s office.
Menin asserted that the D.O.E. has an attendant duty to accommodate the influx of new area residents. “I think it’s really important when they’re shown the new data, that they’re very aware that our residential population is growing at the fastest rate in the city,” she said.
“We have to acknowledge the failure of these past eight years Downtown, hopefully learn some things from it, and change the way we plan our residential developments going forward across the city,” echoed Joyce.
The goal, Joyce said, is to get public schools back to normal capacity levels. Ideally, schools would be sited in advance of space demands, and the six classrooms at Tweed wouldn’t be needed as an incubator space.
“It would be nice to actually plan ahead,” she said. “The D.O.E. needs to provide accurate data so we don’t get into this position again. This is in my view an emergency solution, and we’re very fortunate to have it, but I hope we don’t have to rely on it going forward.”
Zarin-Rosenfeld said it’s too early to talk about the prospect of opening another Downtown school. “Our focus right now,” he said, “is making sure we acquire the Peck Slip site and making sure it’s ready for this new school.”
Kindergarten pre-registration numbers
The fact that there are fewer waitlisted kindergarten students this year than last suggests that overcrowding has subsided somewhat, according to the D.O.E.
Current numbers indicate that that, with the exception of P.S. 234, Lower Manhattan elementary schools will not have wait lists this year, according to Zarin-Rosenfeld, who attributed the good news to the opening of P.S./I.S. 276 and the Spruce Street School.
As of last Friday, March 11, P.S. 234 had received 159 applicants for 125 seats. The lottery began last week, and parents will be receiving acceptance and rejection notices through April 15.
Magda Lenski, the school’s parent coordinator, noted that P.S. 234 has a much smaller wait list this year than at this time last year, but that it will have one less section of kindergarten – some 25 fewer seats — than last year.
“I think the new zoning helped quite a bit, and more people are choosing private school options,” said Lenski. “Hopefully, with attrition, gifted-and-talented programs and private school wait lists, we can make room for everyone.”
Zarin-Rosenfeld said the D.O.E. will make every effort to accommodate all of P.S. 234’s waitlisted students in nearby local schools.
