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Read the press release here.

New Elementary School Coming to Lower Manhattan

By Julie Shapiro | March 14, 2011 4:01pm
Downtown's new elementary school will open in 2012 in temporary space in Tweed Courthouse, which has six classrooms on the ground floor.
Downtown's new elementary school will open in 2012 in temporary space in Tweed Courthouse, which has six classrooms on the ground floor.
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Flickr/joseph a

By Julie Shapiro

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

LOWER MANHATTAN — A new elementary school is opening in lower Manhattan next year, the Department of Education announced Monday.

To combat kindergarten waitlists and overcrowded classrooms, the city will start the new school in temporary space at Tweed Courthouse in the fall of 2012, and it will likely move into a permanent new home by the fall of 2015, the DOE said.

The Department of Education had planned to give the six Tweed classrooms to Innovate Manhattan, a charter middle school, for the next three years. The move was met with outrage from local politicians and education activists, who argued that the community needed the seats for local elementary students instead.

Downtown's new elementary school may be built at the Peck Slip Post Office.
Downtown's new elementary school may be built at the Peck Slip Post Office.
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DNAinfo/Julie Shapiro

The DOE announced Monday that Innovate Manhattan would spend just one year in Tweed and would then have to find another home to make way for the new downtown elementary school in 2012.

"We've won a significant victory," said Julie Menin, chairwoman of Community Board 1, who fought the charter school along with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and others. "This is outstanding news."

The new school will start with two kindergarten classes in the fall of 2012 and will add another grade each year. The school will likely find a permanent home at the Peck Slip Post Office in 2015, though the DOE is still negotiating with the United States Postal Service to buy the site.

The city will draw a new zone to serve the new school, which could affect the zones for downtown's four other elementary schools. The zoning process will likely start later this year.

The DOE's announcement Monday came as P.S. 234 in TriBeCa prepared to send out wait list letters for its 2011 kindergarten class. The popular school received 160 applications for 125 kindergarten seats this year.

Eric Greenleaf, a P.S. 234 parent and New York University professor who has done population projections for lower Manhattan, said the new school isn't the ultimate solution to overcrowding downtown.

"It's great news, but there's more they need to do," Greenleaf said.

He predicts that the new 476-student school will be full almost as soon as it opens, and he wants the Department of Education to add at least one more class per grade.

"There's just not enough space," Greenleaf said.