The new fight over the new school

BY YANNIC RACK | 

The city has finally named a site for a long-awaited elementary school for the Financial District after a years-long fight for space, but Downtowners aren’t declaring total victory yet. In fact, they’re preparing for a whole new battle over exactly what the new school will look like, aiming to maximize the rare opportunity to create Downtown classroom space, and make sure it will be enough.

“We really need to get the most out of this,” said Tricia Joyce, a parent and the co-chair of Community Board 1’s Youth and Education Committee. Days after a 476-seat school was announced for 77 Greenwich St., school advocates and local parents started drawing up their wish lists for more seats, larger facilities and even a middle-school expansion — all to satisfy Lower Manhattan’s staggering population growth, which they say the Dept. of Education is too slow to address.

Paul Hovitz, co-chair of CB1’s Youth and Education Committee, said that in the earlier struggle to get Spruce Street School into the Gehry Building, the community learned too late that simply securing a site is not the end of the battle for school seats.

“The mistake we made was being so happy we were getting the school there that we didn’t press for more floors and to have more than two classes in a grade — because two classes on a grade was so small,” he said. “By the time we realized, everything was set in stone.”

Joyce agreed that the challenge now is to secure greater community participation in designing the new Greenwich St. school. “We have learned a lot since Spruce Street School was approved and built, and we’ll be doing everything necessary to make sure we stay ahead of all the potential issues,” she said.

The Greenwich St. school, which will have an entrance on Trinity Pl., will be included within the new mixeduse development planned for the site of the former Syms discount clothing store between Rector and Edgar Sts., south of the World Trade Center.

The plan for the school is expected to be finalized by this summer, according to the School Construction

Authority and the developer said the project will be complete in 2019. “We’re very happy to hear the news,” said Wendy Chapman, a co-founder of the advocacy group Build Schools Now. “But of course we have concerns.

We have seen how dire the population growth is, we’re going to hope that the Deptartment of Education and the S.C.A. give the community input as to what the final outcome of this school is.” Chapman said she would like to see the school expanded to include a middle school, spanning grades K-8, or at least increase the number of seats — which she emphasized is always cheaper than building another school later on.

“More is always better,” she said. “My feeling is get the whole thing, if you’re going to build out a space. The needs will continue — they’re not going to slow down. Downtown is only going to become more popular.” The community was originally promised 1,000 more school seats for Downtown back in 2013, a full two years after locals launched their push for a new school to serve the booming area.

But just a few months later, the D.O.E. effectively cut that Downtown commitment by more than half when it located over 500 of those promised seats to Hudson Square instead, Joyce said — which is technically within the same sprawling school district that stretches all the way from the Financial District to the Upper East Side — but did nothing to address the population surge Downtown.

Then it took the city almost another three years to find a location in the Financial District. “This is the school that we determined the need for in 2010, and it will not be built until almost 10 years later because of the process the D.O.E. operates with,” Joyce said. “It just doesn’t work.” Joyce and Hovitz think that the model the D.O.E. uses to predict school need is deeply flawed, and actually masks Lower Manhattan’s residential influx because the area is lumped in with much of the rest of the borough.

“Our growth is offset by other neighborhoods’ negative growth, and as a result they are not planning enough school seats,” Joyce said. Another issue that remains unresolved is whether — and where — the new school will “incubate” — the Dept. of Education’s term for setting up a new school in an alternate location while its permanent site is under construction.

Peck Slip School, Downtown’s most recent educational addition, spent three years incubating at the Dept. of Education’s headquarters at Tweed Courthouse on Chambers St. before it opened last fall at 1 Peck Slip. Classes for PS 276 and Spruce Street School were also taught there before construction on their permanent facilities was finished.

But a pre-K center moved into the Tweed classrooms last September, so it’s unclear whether there will be space available to incubate the Greenwich St. school before its building is complete. The Dept. of Education did not respond to questions about incubation plans. Some also worry that the school will be built with a ‘gymnatorium’ — a gym that can be turned into an auditorium — like the one built at Peck Slip School, rather than separate full-size facilities.

“It’s impractical,” said Theseus Roche, director of after-school activities at Manhattan Youth, which provides after-school programming at all of Downtown’s elementary schools. “You can get away with it on most school days…but after school, our programs commit to making sure that every kid is running around every day, and we really maximize those gym spaces.”

This week, the site’s owner, Trinity Place Holdings — the new, real estate-focused incarnation of the bankrupt former Syms Corporation — released plans for the mixed-use development set to host the school. The 500-foot tower will include about 85 luxury condominiums and 7,000 square feet of ground-floor retail on Greenwich St., in addition to the long-awaited school.

“We are proud to be a part of bringing a much needed new public school to Lower Manhattan,” said Trinity Place Holdings head Matthew Messinger in a statement announcing the plans. Construction will begin this year, according to Messinger, and is set for completion in 2019. As part of the development, the company will also seek permission from the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission to make changes to the 19th-century Robert and Anne Dickey House right next to the old Syms store.

The S.C.A. said that the landmarked building could form part of the elementary school. Joyce and Hovitz think many in the community might support giving the developer concessions for the overall building height in exchange for an even larger school — or even a middle school expansion that would cover preK through eighth grade.

“If it means going five extra stories to get five extra floors for the school, then we don’t have the luxury of turning that down right now,” Joyce said. But she said it shouldn’t have to come to cutting deals with developers if the city only got its act together in terms of school planning.

“If they can’t afford to build schools because of the real estate prices, then they need to admit it and partner with developers,” she said. “Unless they start planning infrastructure along with these developments, they’re never going to be able to keep pace with this population growth.”

In fact, a larger school on the lower floors could actually be a boon for the developer, as suggested by one of the selling points Messinger touted in his announcement. “What makes the residential component unique is that all condominium residences will start at an elevation of 150 feet, sitting above the school,” he said, “allowing for panoramic views of New York Harbor, the Hudson River as well as the New York City skyline from every home in the building.”

So a bigger school could mean even better views. The mayor recently announced that he is earmarking $868 million in his preliminary budget for 2017 to tackle school overcrowding through the S.C.A.’s fiveyear capital plan — money that will add 11,800 school seats to create a total of 44,000 new ones across the city.

Joyce is pleased by the funding, but jaded by past experience. She knows that with the school construction bureaucracy, money is useless until it’s part of a capital plan, which itself takes years to implement — all while the Downtown population continues to surge.

“The funding is a great first step,” said Joyce. “The problem is the capital plan is five years in front of us. It’s a mute point by then.” Last month, Borough President Gale Brewer and Councilmember Margaret Chin announced that that they would team up with other elected officials and community leaders to continue the work of the School Overcrowding Task Force set up by former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, after the fate of the panel was thrown into question by his conviction on federal corruption charges last year.

The first meeting of the reconfigured task force will be Feb. 5, and Hovitz said one of its top priorities going forward will be to push the Dept. of Education to improve the population-growth models it uses to predict future needs. Based on CB1’s latest population report, Lower Manhattan can expect a 10 percent population increase over the next year, far more that the D.O.E. is planning for.

“They really need to change their method,” Hovitz said. “We know from experience that their prediction does not hold up.” Joyce emphasized that now was the time to press the city for changes to the plan, before a design was finalized. “Let’s make sure to do this well this time,” she said. “We can not afford to mess this up.”