While talks continue about the future site of a new K-8 school for Lower Manhattan, some members of Community Board 1’s Youth and Education committee wondered at last week’s meeting whether or not the school should be one K-8, or two separate elementary and middle schools.
Committee chairperson Paul Hovitz said the committee had already supported the K-8 model and that he hadn’t heard anything from the Department of Education to indicate that they were considering anything other than the K-8 model.
“That is the direction that the pendulum is swinging to make up for the middle schools’ failure across the country,” Hovitz said. The details and logistics of the type of school it will eventually be will be decided after a site is chosen, he added.
The committee is hoping the school will be included in the tower to be designed by Frank Gehry at Beekman St. Although a meeting this week at Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s office and developer Forest City Ratner was postponed, elected officials are working to get the school included in the NYU Downtown Hospital site at Beekman St., Hovitz said. The hospital, which owns the land that Ratner wants to build the 75-story Gehry tower, plans to have a facility in the new building.
If that site falls through, the committee is open to the 250 Water St. site that has also been under consideration.
—- Ted Phillips
WWW Downtown Express
