BY SAM SPOKONY | As the debate continues over whether to split the zone shared by P.S. 3 and P.S. 41 — Greenwich Village’s two public elementary schools — representatives of P.S. 3 are making it clear that they believe that discussion has overshadowed the “real issues” that must be addressed for both schools in order for each to solve their overcrowding problems.
In a Jan. 7 open letter sent to Department of Education officials, the P.S. 3 School Leadership Team wrote that, regardless of the District 2 Community Education Council’s forthcoming decision on the zone split, D.O.E. should be more focused on working alongside the schools to find an immediate solution involving their enrollment process and enrollment caps.
The letter urgently calls for a meeting between D.O.E’s Office of Student Enrollment and Office of Portfolio Management, the principals of P.S. 3, P.S. 41 and P.S. 11 (which is located in Chelsea) and a parent representative from each of those schools to generate a “binding, mutually agreed upon solution” to the issues of enrollment process and caps.
That solution, according to the letter, would ideally go into effect immediately — rather than next September — so the schools would be forced to stick to the capped number of students and therefore see a decrease in overcrowding.
“The enrollment process is broken, and fixing it has nothing to do with splitting the zone,” said Nick Gottlieb, P.S. 3 P.T.A. co-president and S.L.T. member, who, like many others in his school’s community, is against the proposed zone split, which would take effect in 2014.
When asked for a response to the P.S. 3 letter, D.O.E. answered in brief and vague fashion, declining to specifically address any of the actual issues raised within the letter.
“The Department of Education has and will continue to work with the principals of these schools to conduct admissions as effectively as possible,” a department spokesperson said.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of the P.S. 41 community remains strongly in favor of splitting the zone, coming from the perspective that a split would “finish the job” that was started when the C.E.C. approved D.O.E.’s District 2 rezoning plans that will make way for the Foundling School, a public elementary school set to open at W. 17th St. and Sixth Ave. in 2014.
“Years ago, a shared zone made sense because the schools weren’t above capacity, but we just have to evolve and adjust with the times,” said Kelly Shannon, who has been P.S. 41’s principal for eight years, and was the school’s assistant principal for five years before that. “Right now it’s so hard to plan for the needs of incoming students, because we have no way of predicting them,” she said, “but a split zone would help us to better understand the unique needs of each school.”
She said she believes that splitting the zone will be an important step in tackling the overcrowding problem, which currently affects P.S. 41 much more heavily than it does P.S. 3.
P.S. 41 is currently at more than 130 percent capacity, and Shannon said that, if those figures continue to grow unabated, the school will soon lose classroom space that is currently used for art, science, drama and music. She explained that those space-related problems have already been an issue in recent years, as average class sizes have ballooned, and additional — and likely unsustainable — sections have had to be added within each grade level.
Many members of the P.S. 41 community also believe it’s inaccurate to say that any real “choice” exists now within the shared zone between the two Greenwich Village schools, given that applications far exceed the number of available seats each year.
“Choice is an illusion today,” said Gillian Sowell, a P.S. 41 P.T.A. co-president. “All it does is pit two excellent schools against one another and force families to compare the schools. Each school deserves its own zone.”
But Gottlieb countered by saying that, while he and many within the P.S. 3 community believe that the aforementioned “real issues” of enrollment process and caps must be discussed first, D.O.E. shouldn’t do away with a system of choice that “has benefited the community and allowed both schools to flourish.”
P.S. 3, also known as the John Melser Charrette School, was in fact founded in 1971 as an experimental school — an alternative option — and promotes itself as a more arts-based institution.
A C.E.C. hearing for community feedback on D.O.E.’s proposal to split the shared zone was held on Wednesday night, as this newspaper went to press. The C.E.C. is currently scheduled to vote on the proposal during its Jan. 23 meeting.
The vote has already been postponed twice — it was first scheduled for Dec. 6, and then Dec. 19, before being pushed back again.
