“Are they going to start wishing kids into the ether?” That’s what one frustrated father asked us about the city’s lack of urgency dealing with the Downtown school overcrowding problem. We share the frustration, as do many others in Lower Manhattan.
As we report this week, city Dept. of Education officials are hoping they have enough school space Downtown this September, but in 2009, when they admit there will be a problem, they are considering a number of options including moving I.S. 89 to the Financial District to make more room for P.S. 89 or busing P.S. 89 and P.S. 234 fifth graders to other neighborhoods.
Both ideas are going to float like lead balloons. Elementary school children are too young to be forced into other neighborhoods. Giving I.S. 89 the boot looks like a bad short-term solution with long and short-term problems, and will undoubtedly be demoralizing to students and teachers, not to speak of parents who have qualms about sending their kids to and from lower Broadway every day.
The crowding problems at P.S. 89 should be solved when the new K- 8 schools on Beekman St. and in southern Battery Park City open, perhaps in 2010 or 2011. The Dept. of Education may still have enough time to solve the problems in 2009 and 2010, but it needs to be more open about what it’s planning. Moving I.S. 89 to lower Broadway was an idea that was only hinted at in a report the city prepared a few weeks ago and it came as a surprise to many at a recent private meeting convened by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.
D.O.E. deserves credit for attending these meetings with principals, parents and community leaders, but it also needs to talk to the broader public and all interested parents about all of its plans.
Perhaps even more importantly, the Education Dept. has to speak more frankly about this September. Officials don’t want to acknowledge the possibility of a problem in three months. The reason is obvious. Residential construction activity makes it easy to predict short-term population growth. Admitting there is a problem is an admission of poor planning. It is not acceptable to tell Downtown parents in effect “we’ll wait to see the final enrollment in September before saying what we’ll do.”
The D.O.E. does not want to acknowledge that the enrollment numbers are higher at this point than they were at the same point last year, and is hoping P.S. 89 and P.S. 234 will be alright if they “only” close another art or science room or some other “extras.” It’s possible those less painful choices will be enough, but the numbers may be bigger than current predictions because the residential population continues to increase Downtown as we speak.
If the numbers are higher than expected this September, there will be a limited number of bad options, but the D.O.E. will be in a much better position to pick the best one if it lays its cards on the table now and listens to what the entire community has to say.
