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P.S. 234 looks to add trailers for more space

By Elizabeth O’Brien

P.S. 234’s principal and parents are considering placing trailers near the school to ease the expected overcrowding next fall.

Mobile classrooms would be a temporary fix that might represent the best of several unattractive choices, said Sandy Bridges, the principal. With 703 students, the popular elementary school was at 112 percent capacity last week, and enrollment is expected to rise in the coming years along with the booming Downtown residential construction market.

“We’re out of space, we have to do something,” said Tim Johnson, president of the P.S. 234 parent teacher association and father of a fourth-grade girl at the school.

Johnson and Bridges stressed that no decision has been reached yet. School officials are researching options and have discussed the matter informally with the city Department of Education, which would have to approve any plans to relieve P.S. 234.

Bridges acknowledged that public schools are packed all over the city, some worse than P.S. 234. But the prevalence of overcrowding doesn’t make it right, Bridges said, adding that her job was to guide her school through some difficult choices.

“We’re trying to come up with the least unpalatable solution, because none are great,” Bridges said.

Bridges has said that she opposes any permanent addition to the school, since a larger student body would diminish her ability to support both students and teachers. Trailers would help alleviate overcrowding only until a new school is built Downtown, she said.

Last month, the Department of Education released its $13.1 billion, five-year capital plan that includes the creation of 76 new school buildings in the five boroughs. Under the plan, local community School District 2 is slated to get three new schools for grades pre-K through 8. While education officials say that the placement of the schools within the district, which stretches from Downtown to the Upper East Side, is undetermined, it is widely believed that one of the schools will be in Lower Manhattan.

The new capital plan will create enough seats citywide to phase out temporary classrooms within a decade, said Michele McManus, a spokesperson for the Department of Education. Trailers cost $150,000 to buy and $150,000 to install, she said. McManus declined to comment specifically on whether the department would consider using trailers for P.S. 234.

Johnson said that P.S. 234 officials began to warm to the idea of trailers when they took a closer look at those used by Borough of Manhattan Community College. Stationed along West St., the eight double units can accommodate 30 to 40 students in each of their two classrooms, said Lou Anne Bulik, a B.M.C.C. spokesperson. The college went through the Department of Education to get the trailers after Sept. 11, 2001, Bulik said. B.M.C.C.’s Fiterman Hall is still badly damaged from the 9/11 attack.

“The appeal of trailers, if any, is that they could grow or shrink as needed,” Johnson said, adding that the B.M.C.C. trailers are much more attractive than the stereotypical image of cramped mobile classrooms.

It hasn’t been decided whether the trailers would house regular classes or special rooms. One alternative to the trailers would be to convert the school’s computer, science and art rooms into regular class space. Bridges said the computer room would be easiest to eliminate because P.S. 234 is a wireless school, but she said it was important to keep an art room.

It remains unclear how many trailers would be needed. The school cannot turn away any student who lives within its zoned region, and parents can register their children as late as the first day of school next fall.

P.S. 234 added a new kindergarten class this year, for a total of five, and Bridges said she expected to have five kindergartens again next year.

“Kindergarten is the lynchpin,” Bridges said.

Johnson said he would like to see the trailers placed on the city-owned lot known as 5B, located between Greenwich and West Sts., south of Warren St. across from P.S. 234. Janel Patterson, a spokesperson for the Economic Development Corporation, said the community has not approached the city with the plan, and she could not comment on the idea before seeing a formal proposal.

Another proposal P.S. 234 officials have considered involves creating an annex in a nearby building that would house pre-K and kindergarten students. The community identified the St. John’s University building on the same block as Site 5B as a potential site for an annex. A spokesperson for the university did not return a call for comment.

The problem with an annex, Bridges said, is that its size could be hard to control. The Department of Education tends to fill each available seat, she explained, and it may be hard to find the exact space needed.

Bridges said no solution should be perfect. Temporary measures to ease overcrowding should be just that, so that parents and educators can get back to working on a smaller schoool with smaller classes.

“I don’t want people to panic,” Bridges said, “but I want them to be ready to be active and mobilized.”

Elizabeth@DowntownExpress.com