Most of Downtown’s grandiose development plans would fall like a house of cards if there weren’t enough quality schools in the neighborhood. This week’s commitment by Gov. Eliot Spitzer and Mayor Mike Bloomberg to build a pre-K – 8 green school with 950 seats in the south end of Battery Park City should ensure that Lower Manhattan’s remarkable residential growth will continue and that Wall Street — the world’s most famous business district — will not shrivel and die because of 9/11. In order to attract and keep the best and the brightest workers, high-paying firms need to be in areas close to where people want to live.
Many of our readers know full well the pressing need for school space and that Downtown continues to be the fastest growing part of the city. Some perhaps might think that this decision was a no-brainer for Spitzer and Bloomberg. If so, think again.
There is a demand for schools all across the state and city. Lower Manhattan is slated to get a 600-seat K-8 in 2009 and got a desperately needed school annex for P.S. 234 this year. We still have a smaller population than many other parts of the city. Community Board 1 invited the city’s population guru to speak recently and he politely told the board that even though the growth is larger than anywhere else, it still is primarily single men moving Downtown. In addition, the new school site was supposed to get a women’s history museum. Politicians don’t often cut a project intended to honor a majority of voters.
All that is true, but it is only part of the story. First the city’s Census numbers only go through 2005. The Downtown Alliance, which runs the area’s business improvement district, estimates 5,000 new apartments will open between now and the end of next year. New B.P.C. buildings have many more large apartments than the ones first built and Tribeca condo sales of large units are still off the charts Even with the annex, P.S. 234 is not out of the woods and P.S. 89 in Battery Park City has more acute space needs every year.
This school would not have been possible without the work of many people. As best as we can tell, Barry Skolnick, a C.B. 1 member, was the first to push for the women’s museum Site 2B spot. When it became clear last year that museum fundraising plans weren’t real, Julie Menin, the board’s chairperson, and the rest of C.B. 1 spearheaded the effort.
Without a powerful ally in Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, it’s hard to imagine that this fight would have been successful. He was joined by all of Downtown’s elected leaders, many parents and others who had the facts on their side.
The fight does not end with one announcement. Almost three years ago, we celebrated the Beekman school announcement, and that project is only beginning to get underway. In that editorial, we called on the Dept. of Education to begin discussions with the community over new school zoning. The city has stonewalled while some Lower Manhattan children continue to take round trips of almost two hours to get to their zoned middle school. There are plenty of ways to solve this problem with the new schools, but decisions should be made early. Parents should not have to make strategic kindergarten choices to avoid long commutes six years later. But today we applaud more choices on the way.
