By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
LOWER MANHATTAN — The Department of Education's plan to permanently ship lower Manhattan children to Chinatown schools and elsewhere could jeopardize Downtown's recovery post-9/11, angry parents told city officials on Thursday.
"It's as if they're putting a big sign over downtown that says, 'DOE to families: Stay out,'" said Eric Greenleaf, a parent leader at TriBeCa's popular P.S. 234.
P.S. 234 could not fit all of the students who applied this year, so the DOE plans to bus 21 kindergarteners to P.S. 130 in Chinatown this fall, sparking alarm among many in TriBeCa.
Opponents are concerned by the move because the city is planning to permanently rezone all of lower Manhattan's schools to re-route some of the neighborhood's children to P.S. 1 and P.S. 2, both on Henry Street in Chinatown, according to Elizabeth Rose, a portfolio planner for the DOE.
Some children may also go to P.S. 3 in Greenwich Village, she said.
"We need to look at all the capacity we have in lower Manhattan, which is not just the four schools we typically talk about," Rose said, referring to the well-liked P.S. 234, P.S. 89, P.S. 276 and the Spruce Street School.
But Paul Goldstein, district office director for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, said people have moved Downtown specifically to send their children to those schools.
"If you're going to take that away from this growing, still emerging community, I think you're going to do some harm," Goldstein said at Thursday's meeting, which was hosted by Silver's office. "This formula of taking kids and busing them out...is not going to be well received and could easily harm the future growth [of lower Manhattan.]"
Parents said the solution is to build more schools, not to rezone the ones that are already here. The city is planning to build one new elementary school at the Peck Slip Post Office site, but parents said it would barely make a dent in downtown's overcrowding problem.
"Our children are bearing the brunt of it," said Tricia Joyce, a P.S. 234 parent. "It's devastating this community…. We've been saying it's important [to build another school] for three years. Now it's a crisis. People will have to leave this neighborhood."
While Rose acknowledged that lower Manhattan's schools will be "tight," for the next few years, she said the city does not have any money right now to build new classrooms, beyond the ones planned for Peck Slip.
"We will simply have to work with what we have," Rose said.
Several of the waitlisted P.S. 234 parents attended Thursday's meeting and begged the DOE to reconsider sending their children to P.S. 130 this fall.
"Who wants to send your 5-year-old to a school where he's not welcome?" asked Joe Berko, who lives across the street from P.S. 234 but did not win the lottery for a kindergarten seat for his son. "Please, listen to this community [that] is crying out."
But Rose repeated the city's position: Parents who are unhappy with the situation can submit formal placement exception requests, which the city will evaluate over the summer.
Also this summer, Rose will begin working with the District 2 Community Education Council on the broader rezoning plans, which will take effect in the fall of 2012 and could cover much of the area south of 14th Street.
Rose hopes to do public review of the rezoning in early fall and receive final approval from the CEC before the end of November.
