By Julie Shapiro
Without P.S. 234, there would be no Tribeca.
That was the consensus among P.S. 234’s alumni, parents and former principals, who gathered Saturday to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the school moving into its Greenwich St. home.
“Tribeca was like a tiny village,” recalled Anna Switzer, principal from 1991 to 2003. “P.S. 234 was very influential in getting people to come Downtown, instead of moving to the suburbs. It was a good school in a lovely neighborhood, so people decided to stay in New York.”
About 1,000 of those people came out on Saturday to enjoy the clear, warm weather at a carnival on Warren St. Children with red, yellow and silver balloons bobbing from their wrists pulled their parents toward the cotton candy and hot dog lines, while former students pored over photo albums inside the school, laughing at the strange haircuts and missing teeth in their kindergarten class photos. The four principals who have led P.S. 234 reunited to cut a massive cake that depicted the award-winning school in icing.
When praising P.S. 234, the one word that was on everyone’s lips was “community.” P.S. 234 is a place where teachers exchange ideas on educational philosophy, where parents linger in the schoolyard to talk and where everyone calls everyone else by their first name.
Current Principal Lisa Ripperger described the school’s effect on Tribeca as “ideally what should happen in all neighborhoods.”
Ripperger’s favorite moment at P.S. 234 is when the bell tolls from the tower above the school, signaling the start of the day. The children playing in the yard stop what they’re doing and Ripperger hears the pitter-patter of hundreds of little feet rushing for the door.
“They push up the stairs — they’re so excited and so eager to be here,” Ripperger said.
In that moment, “New York City can feel like a small place,” she said.
“It doesn’t seem like a big-city public school,” agreed Karie Parker Davidson, 41. “It feels like a small-town community school — but with a cosmopolitan curriculum.”
Davidson’s daughter Rose, 6, added, “My favorite thing is the whole school.”
During the celebration in P.S. 234’s yard on Saturday, a D.J. blared Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” and kindergarteners joined teenaged alumni in dancing by the speakers. Toddlers perched on picnic benches doing arts and crafts, while parents stood in groups, shading their eyes against the sun and keeping tabs on their freewheeling kids.
Lisa Metcalfe, 41, stood with another parent taking it all in. Asked what she likes about P.S. 234, she did not hesitate.
“It’s events like this,” Metcalfe said, sweeping her hand to include the festivities in the yard and out on Warren St. P.S. 234 gives Metcalfe’s first-grade daughter Natalie the same sense of community Metcalfe remembers from growing up in the New Jersey suburbs.
“She’s going to have the same experience I had, except in Manhattan,” Metcalfe said.
Natalie was stealing the show on the dance floor, with the assistance of some older girls who showed her the steps. Flushed and sporting a smile that showed off a newly lost bottom tooth, Natalie appeared by her mother’s side moments later, then dashed off in search of a new adventure. In between, she told a reporter that she liked school, especially her new gym teacher. Her favorite part of school so far? “We made pinwheels,” she said.
Former students signing the alumni wall inside the school remembered ice skating trips to Central Park on the 100th day of school, fifth-grade buddies that looked out for the younger kids on the playground and a lesson on the history of the Brooklyn Bridge that culminated in a walk over the bridge itself. Many named fifth grade as their best year — partly because they got to venture off school property for lunch.
“It’s weird but it’s a good feeling to be back,” Lynn Miao, a 14-year-old ninth grader at Trinity, said after signing the wall. “Graduation was really painful.”
It was hard to say goodbye to her friends, but it was also hard to leave her teachers behind, she said. Some of her favorite memories of P.S. 234 are of staying after school to help teachers grade papers.
“You didn’t hate your teachers,” Miao said, sounding almost surprised as she remembered. “You loved your teachers. It’s weird looking back.”
A think-tank
Sandy Bridges, who taught at P.S. 234 before becoming the principal from 2003 to 2006, described the school as an “educational think-tank.” The teachers always exchanged ideas and learned from what the others were doing.
“I miss that,” said Bridges, 41, who moved to Connecticut in 2006 to raise her son, now 2. “You don’t get the same thing as a stay-at-home mom.”
The think-tank approach goes back to Blossom Gelernter, the school’s first principal.
“Whatever ideas impelled us didn’t ever come from one person,” Gelernter said. “They came from the mix, and that was very important.”
P.S. 234’s foundation was to build on individual students’ interests with a creative, interdisciplinary curriculum, she said.
Gelernter, 77, sat in P.S. 234’s cafeteria Saturday, as one student after another approached her shyly and asked if she remembered them. Gelernter said she keeps a file in her head of each student’s face as it looked in kindergarten — a long way back for Gelernter, who retired in 1991. She often bumps into former students on the subway.
On Saturday, Gelernter beamed up at Melissa Paltoo, 27, who graduated from P.S. 234 in 1994 and is now working as a para-professional at P.S. 42. She is going to school to become a teacher.
Paltoo said it was both amazing and strange to be back at P.S. 234.
“I love this school,” she said.
Switzer, who became principal after Gelernter left, said the school’s philosophy reflected the neighborhood: a small, personal community with an open-door policy and an eye toward innovation. Switzer, 64, now works for a consulting company that contracts with the city’s public schools.
The scariest day
Saturday’s focus was celebration, but no history of P.S. 234 would be complete without the terrifying day that several alumni said was their most memorable: Sept. 11, 2001.
Caroline Scannell, 13, remembers that she was in her first week of first grade when a voice came on over the loudspeaker, asking the teachers to close their blinds.
“I got really scared,” she said.
Rumors flew, teachers cried and panicked parents flooded the school. The planes hitting the towers four blocks away sounded like explosions.
Scannell remembers running from the school with her mother, and her mother praying, “Please, let everybody be okay.”
Other students recalled being caught in the dust cloud, unable to open their eyes and barely able to breathe. Some students wore gas masks.
After 9/11, P.S. 234 could not return to Tribeca and found space in an abandoned Catholic school on 13th St. Bridges, who was a teacher at the time, remembers teachers and parents pitching in to get the building ready for students.
“We stuck together and got through that,” Bridges said.
Elena Stoeri-D’Arrigo, 14, remembers returning to P.S. 234 several months later to help clean the building.
“It was so weird to see it covered with dust, with trash everywhere,” she said.
P.S. 234 reopened in February 2002 and one student remembers celebrating with a song: “Back Where We Belong.”
A magical place
The seeds for P.S. 234 were planted in Independence Plaza, one of Downtown’s largest housing developments. The Board of Education decided to include school space in the building, correctly predicting that the Washington Market neighborhood, not yet known as Tribeca, would soon attract families. That space is now home to P.S. 150.
In 1976, the school that would become P.S. 234 opened in Independence Plaza with a handful of students as an annex to P.S. 130, then later as an annex to P.S. 3. Called “Independence School,” it was revolutionary from the start, recalls John Scott, 57, whose daughter attended the school from the day it opened.
Back then, teachers’ unions at other schools didn’t want parents in the classroom, but the small size of the Independence School made parent involvement essential. Parents raised money, staffed the lunchroom and bought supplies and furniture. They also recruited local artists to teach.
“It was just a struggle,” Scott said of the school’s beginning. “Because we didn’t have a lot of students, they wanted to close us. We always had to fight to stay open.”
Low enrollment was not a problem for long. The student body more than doubled in the school’s second year, “Then it just took off,” said Blossom Gelernter, the school’s first principal.
By the 1980s, the community realized that the growing school needed more space. After a slew of meetings and demonstrations, the city agreed to build the school on a sandy vacant lot on Chambers St. In exchange for the school, Community Board 1 approved the 496-foot Shearson Lehman building at 388 Greenwich St., now occupied by Citigroup.
“Getting P.S. 234 was like pulling teeth out of a dinosaur,” said Carole DeSaram, a longtime resident who is chairperson of C.B. 1’s Tribeca Committee.
Paul Goldstein, who was then district manager of C.B. 1, remembers getting the city to agree to fast-track the project, which opened in 1988 after only two years of construction.
“In retrospect, gaining P.S. 234 was a tremendous milestone for all of Lower Manhattan,” Goldstein said. “It was definitely the magnet that drew so many families into the neighborhood.”
Architect Richard Dattner designed the $15.2 million school, working closely with Principal Gelernter and the community.
“He actually listened to us,” Gelernter said. “That’s why we have wide hallways.” Dattner also designed nooks where students can work outside of the classroom.
“We tried to make it a kind of magical place, because the city is so hectic and busy,” Dattner said. He designed the school’s arches, bell tower and turrets to give students the feeling of entering a different world.
During the design process, some parents who were architects wanted to have more than a little input. At the meetings, those parents would ask Dattner, “Have you considered this?” and then pull out a roll of their own drawings, which completely redesigned the building, Dattner said.
Dattner is now designing another new school for Lower Manhattan: P.S./I.S. 276 in Battery Park City.
Carl Weisbrod, who became president of the city Economic Development Corporation soon after the school deal, called P.S. 234 “one of the best economic development projects E.D.C. ever did. It helped create a neighborhood and it is one of the best schools in the city.”
In 1991, Weisbrod negotiated the deal to build the school’s second yard on part of a city development site.
In its new home on Greenwich St., P.S. 234 kept growing. While the classrooms got crowded, Gelernter, who retired in 1991, said it was helpful to have more parents available.
“The nature of the school didn’t change,” she said. “It didn’t get to be a big impersonal school — ever.”
Overcrowding at the school pushed the city to open P.S. 89 and later to open an annex in an adjacent building. The school now has 820 students.
“Success means overcrowding,” said Switzer, the school’s second principal. “The city is always behind. But the school has done very well in spite of the circumstances.”
Caroline Scannell, who graduated fifth grade in 2006 with a class of 35 students, said she does not want the school to get any bigger.
“It’s a great neighborhood and I understand that, but go somewhere else,” she said, pretending to address potential residents. “I want the school to still be special in 20 more years.”
With reporting by Josh Rogers
