BY JACKSON CHEN | The Department of Education has presented its final Upper West Side rezoning proposal to the Community Education Council 3, which will vote on it on November 22.
This most recent plan, announced at a CEC3 meeting on November 9, is the fourth iteration of the effort to rezone the schools within District 3, which runs from West 59th to West 122nd Street. With the general aims of increasing diversity and reducing overcrowding, the DOE, CEC3, and many other involved parties have long debated about where and how to draw the lines that dictate which zoned school families send their kids to.
The DOE now proposes to re-site P.S. 191, currently located at 210 West 61st Street, to the new school building opening in Riverside Center that will be ready for the 2017-18 school year. P.S 452, currently at 100 West 77th Street, would move into the vacated P.S. 191 building. The Dual Language Middle School at 32 West 92nd Street, in turn, would be relocated to the 100 West 77th Street building. The Dual Language Middle School currently shares its school building with P.S 84, and its move would offer that school relief from overcrowding.
The map detailing those changes covered the portion of District 3 running north to West 116th Street and redraws lines for nearly a dozen schools.
The DOE also presented a separate plan to rezone the northern section of District 3 that runs from Central Park North to West 122nd Street. In this portion of the rezoning, P.S. 241, at 240 West 113th Street, and its zone would be dissolved and absorbed by the neighboring P.S. 180, P.S. 76, and P.S. 185/ 208 zones.
Most of the evening’s attention focused on the long debated rezoning of the district’s southern portion, where demographic disparities between P.S. 191 and P.S. 199 at 270 West 70th Street fueled the discussion. While P.S. 191’s student body is largely black and Latino, with many kids coming from families who qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, P.S. 199 has a mostly white population as well as severe overcrowding and long waitlists. Overcrowding, however, is an issue that also faces other schools in the district.
“Unfortunately, sharing the building with the Dual Middle School was becoming unsustainable as our classes are expanding,” P.S 84’s principal Evelyn Lolis said at the meeting. “We lose our technology lab, art room, and so here we are trying to give the best to our students, trying to prepare them best for tomorrow’s world, and we can’t do that unless we’re flexible.”
Several of District 3’s principals voiced support for the DOE’s plan because they see it as a way to address overcrowding in their own schools.
“I’m really happy to see that these changes are taking place, the main reason is because overcrowding sucks, it really does,” Henry Zymeck, principal of the Computer School at the 100 West 77th campus, said. “When you drop your kids off at school, sometimes you don’t realize how much it sucks, you don’t realize your kids don’t get the amount of time in theater they might need, or the amount of time in gym, or the cafeteria, or the yard.”
While several District 3 principals were ready to embrace change, some parents and a member of CEC3 are not ready to agree on any plans they continue to see as misguided and flawed.
CEC3 member Noah Gotbaum charged the whole process is a “sham.”
“We’ve already seen this plan, it’s a plan we submitted three weeks ago by the CEC, sent back to us by the DOE,” Gotbaum said, noting the CEC3 letter recommending its rezoning ideas sent to Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña last month.
He added that both the DOE’s final presentation and CEC3’s proposal letter should have been more transparent and discussed with the public for their input.
As in past meetings on the rezoning, frustrated parents spoke up as well, even interrupting speakers at some point, asking, “Has it been decided? I can go home if it’s been decided.”
“This process is rooted in bad data, it’s baked with sanctimony,” Gary Ramsey, a P.S. 191 parent, said, adding that parents should write to elected officials to have the CEC3 group disbanded for its lack of transparency.
CEC3 will hold another public hearing on November 21 before its vote on the DOE’s final option the following day.
