Quantcast

The DNAinfo archives brought to you by WNYC.
Read the press release here.

Downtown Parents Fight Charter School Planned for Tweed Courthouse

By Julie Shapiro | November 24, 2010 5:02pm
In addition to housing the Department of Education's headquarters, Tweed Courthouse also has six classrooms on its ground floor.
In addition to housing the Department of Education's headquarters, Tweed Courthouse also has six classrooms on its ground floor.
View Full Caption
Flickr/joseph a

By Julie Shapiro

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

LOWER MANHATTAN — Downtown parents are raising the alarm about the city’s decision to move a new charter school into Tweed Courthouse next fall.

The parents had hoped to keep the six classrooms in Tweed for local elementary kids, to alleviate overcrowding at nearby schools.

But the city is giving the space to Innovate Manhattan Charter School, a new middle school that focuses on individualized learning plans and projects, said Elizabeth Rose, a portfolio planner for the Department of Education. The school's model, called KED, originated from a for-profit Swedish company called Kunskapsskolan that runs 33 schools there.

"We have a real opportunity to see it," Rose said at a meeting hosted by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver Tuesday, "to understand what works well, what does not."

The Spruce Street School is slated to move out of Tweed Courthouse and into its permanent home in the base of Frank Gehry's Beekman Tower next fall.
The Spruce Street School is slated to move out of Tweed Courthouse and into its permanent home in the base of Frank Gehry's Beekman Tower next fall.
View Full Caption
DNAinfo/Julie Shapiro

Silver, though, agreed with local parents and said the space-starved downtown community has no room for Innovate Manhattan.

"The [Department of Education] would better serve lower Manhattan by using the space at Tweed for elementary students and scrap the plan for a charter school," Silver said.

The Tweed space currently houses the Spruce Street School, which is moving into its permanent home in the base of Frank Gehry’s Beekman Tower next fall. Innovate Manhattan will then take over the ground floor of Tweed for three years, Rose said.

At Silver’s meeting on Tuesday, Eric Greenleaf, a P.S. 234 parent and New York University business professor, presented figures showing that downtown will soon be short hundreds of elementary school seats, as the neighborhood’s population boom ages into kindergarten.

"There’s a huge, huge shortage of space," Greenleaf said. "We’ve got a real problem…Keeping Tweed for downtown kids is essential."

Rather than putting downtown's anticipated extra kindergartners in Tweed over the next few years, the city plans to put them in the Spruce Street School’s new building, squeezing in two extra classes per grade.

But Silver, Greenleaf and others are worried that stuffing too many children into Spruce could prevent Spruce’s middle school from opening. The middle school’s launch has already been delayed from fall 2011 to 2015.

"This is an emergency," said Kimberly Busi, co-president of Spruce’s PTA. "The timeline has run out...These are our children’s lives we’re gambling with."

The real solution is for the city to build another elementary school in lower Manhattan, but they have not yet found a location.

The city’s first choice is to buy the Peck Slip Post Office building and convert it into a 400-seat elementary school, but they have not heard back from the United States Postal Service on their proposal, Rose said. In the meantime, no other school sites have panned out.

"It is not an easy area to find elementary space," Rose said. "[But] we are committed to trying to find a long-term solution for this community."