To the editor:
Last week, the Department of Education announced their latest attempt to handle the growing disconnect between the population explosion in Downtown Manhattan and the lack of available elementary school space. Their solution? Send 29 children waitlisted at Tribeca’s P.S. 234 to Chinatown’s high performing P.S. 130. Sounds like an easy fix — P.S. 130 has great test scores and a great principal — so Tribeca parents should be perfectly happy. Unfortunately, in doing so, the D.O.E. creates other problems while doing nothing to address the simple fact that the massive post-9/11 planned development in Downtown Manhattan has not been accompanied by schools to match the population growth.
There is not enough space in our Downtown schools, and the problem is going to get significantly worse. This year’s incoming kindergarten class will be larger than Downtown schools are designed to hold, even adding in the capacity of the new Peck Slip school which won’t open until 2012. The D.O.E. plans no new additional capacity Downtown and says that none is needed. However, to keep up with the births that have already occurred, Downtown needs to increase its elementary school capacity by more than 50%, or over 1400 seats, in the next few years. Demographic experts have warned the DOE of this problem for years. Unfortunately, the D.O.E. has consistently refuted the expert analysis, belatedly building two new schools that, already, are insufficient to accommodate Downtown elementary school needs. Both have exceeded capacity limits far sooner than D.O.E. expected. Next year, Spruce, built to hold two sections per grade will have four sections of kindergarten and P.S. 276, built to accommodate three sections will have four. In addition, against the wishes of residents and elected officials, the D.O.E. chose to give the only other available kindergarten/first grade classroom space at the Tweed Courthouse to a charter middle school that does not specifically serve the downtown community.
Now the D.O.E. has assigned the 29 children on the bad-luck side of the P.S. 234 lottery to a school in Chinatown with a waitlist of its own. On that waitlist are over 15 *siblings* of current P.S. 130 students that are being pushed aside for Tribeca children. With its own significant capacity issues, P.S. 130 is hardly an appropriate release valve for overcrowding pressure. This move: 1) sets a precedent for the D.O.E. to send more and more kids anywhere in the district instead of addressing the needs of the downtown community and the Ground Zero surroundings that the mayor’s office is so focused on developing, 2) sets up an inevitably divisive situation for the kids being sent to P.S. 130 who are displacing younger siblings of current P.S. 130 students with their very presence, and 3) doesn’t even give a permanent solution to the P.S. 234 waitlisted families, as younger siblings would not be zoned for wherever these children end up and thus not be guaranteed a seat at the same school. (While the D.O.E. could eventually promise them a seat, the current ambiguity can not make it easy for families to make a decision with such limited time and information.) This situation is untenable and will grow worse with each passing year, yet the DOE continues to assert that overcrowding is not an issue Downtown.
Downtown parents have circulated a petition (www.ipetitions.com/petition/ps234petition) attempting to get the D.O.E. to adapt this plan, announced too late for any of the families to come up with alternate arrangements. It presents two other viable options that would not have a negative impact on our other Downtown schools, but this petition still doesn’t address the broader issue. Each year the overcrowding situation gets worse, and the compromises our families are forced to make grow more extreme. If this inaction persists, schools will go from being a draw to a deterrent; families will turn on each other in pursuit of increasingly scarce public school seats, or worse, be forced to leave the neighborhood all together. The economic impact would be significant. Everybody invested in the sustained development of the downtown community, and in nurturing our most precious resource — our children — needs to join together. Please help us to send a resounding message to the D.O.E. that their choices are hurting our children and our community; it is time for them to act responsibly.
Thank you,
Christine Brogan, Megan Brothers, Sharon Moody, Jenn Wood and Jim Wood
P.S. 234 waitlisted parents
