BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | Village school advocates and parents are putting on a push to change a zoning quirk for the new 75 Morton St. middle school that would make Simon Baruch Middle School — all the way over on the East Side — and not 75 Morton the zoned middle school for students living in a “gerrymandered” slice of the Village.
The controversial zoning carve-out begins at Eighth and Greenwich Aves. on its west side and stretches down to 12th St. on the south, Fourth Ave. on the east and up to 14th St. on the north. It follows the same zoning for elementary schools that was put in place in 2014 to ensure that P.S. 340 — the new elementary school at the former Foundling Hospital site, at W. 17th St. and Sixth Ave. — would have enough students from the surrounding area. Village parents on W. 12th and 13th Sts. didn’t like the zoning back then — since it involves having their little kids cross 14th St. — but people accept that it’s now too late to do anything about it. A chance to change that zoning won’t come up again for years.
But parents and advocates are now hoping to head off the new middle school zone, so that their kids attend the 75 Morton school, when it opens, which is nearer, and which has a real connection to the community. The proposal was first shown on April 20.
Jeannine Kiely, chairperson of the Schools and Education Committee of Community Board 2, said the Department of Education is just taking the “easy” approach by having the middle school zoning mirror the elementary school zoning on this little notch of the Village.
“People understand the elementary school zone was created to fill the new elementary school,” Kiely said of P.S. 340. “These blocks were gerrymandered out of the Greenwich Village school zone. We’re not trying to change that.”
Kiely said adding these excluded blocks into the 75 Morton zone would not significantly change the size of the district — which stretches from 59th St. down to Lower Manhattan — or its racial demographics.
Meanwhile, the Village students would have a longer trip to M.S. 104, Baruch, at E. 21st St. and Second Ave. — about 1.5 to 2 miles — by bus or on foot.
“And the L train will be knocked out soon,” Kiely added.
More important, though, the fight to create 75 Morton has been a great team effort by Village parents and advocates for years, plus it will simply be a great school, she assured. In short, Villagers want to be a part of it — not shunted into another school in another neighborhood.
“The community has been fighting for this school since 2007,” Kiely said, adding it would be a positive “symbolic gesture” to keep the W. 12th and 13th St. families in the Morton zone. “We’ve been working on this school for 10 years. There’s no reason to take the easy way out.”
Only about 20 percent of district students typically attend their zoned schools, Kiely noted, and 75 Morton St.’s admissions will be based partly on zoning and partly on some sort of screening method, still to be determined. But, she added, it’s thought that up to 50 percent of 75 Morton’s seats might be allocated to zoned students.
A decision will likely come next Tues., May 3, when the Community Education Council for District 2, meets at its office, at 330 Seventh Ave., at 6:30 p.m. The middle school zone is on the agenda, and the C.E.C. has announced it attends to vote on the issue at the meeting.
Community Board 2 last month passed a resolution in support of putting the carved-out area into the 75 Morton zone.
In the meantime, advocates and parents are furiously e-mailing local school officials to lobby them to make the change. C.B. 2 also plans to send another letter in support of the change.
