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Read the press release here.

Crowded UES School Told to Take More Kids

By Amy Zimmer | May 27, 2011 8:35am
The newly approved boundaries are the blocks of color on this Upper East Side school zoning map.
The newly approved boundaries are the blocks of color on this Upper East Side school zoning map.
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courtesy of DOE

By Amy Zimmer

DNAinfo News Editor

MANHATTAN — Like many schools in the overcrowed Upper East Side, P.S. 151 has a kindergarten waitlist.

But just after the school made offers to 18 students who live within its zone, the school's parent leaders found out the DOE had gone behind their backs and made offers to 18 students who live outside it.

These extra students will force the two-year-old school to add an additional sixth grade section, parents said, worried it would increase the crowding there and be a burden to P.S. 151's long term goals.

"This week, without our prior knowledge, the Department of Education extended offers to 18 families from P.S. 290 while we ourselves already have a significant waitlist," Caroline Hall and Lori Levin, co-heads of P.S. 151's Parent Teacher Association, wrote to Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott on Thursday.

Parents and officials posed for a photo in 2009 while scouting for a location for P.S. 151.
Parents and officials posed for a photo in 2009 while scouting for a location for P.S. 151.
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Courtesy of Jessica Lappin's office

Hall and Levin, who along with other parents fought to get the school opened as a way to alleviate the neighborhood's overcrowding, blasted officials for their "grossly understated" estimates of incoming kindergarteners.

"These offers are going to force our fledgling school to expand to six kindergarten sections — a capacity beyond construction plans, beyond budgets and beyond long term sustainability," they wrote.

It "will only detract from our ability to provide the individualized attention that so many of our students desperately need."

Parents of P.S. 151 students have spent a few years tarrying with DOE officials as they struggled to open their school and find it a space for it.

Also known as the Yorkville Community School, P.S. 151 will be relocating from its temporary space in a former Catholic school at 323 East 91st St. and into a permanent home this fall in the Richard R. Green High School of Teaching, at 421 East 88th St.

That building's renovation is slated to start after the school year ends.

Parents said they had voiced concerns about the DOE's classroom math throughout the recent process to rezone the Upper East Side's school district, which was undertaken to address the area's burgeoning student population.

During the rezoning, parents — and co-op boards — in the P.S. 290 area had successfully fought to keep their blocks within 290's zone even though they were warned that not all students would get a spot there.

At a meeting last month, DOE officials told parents that P.S. 290, on E. 82nd Street between First and Second Avenues, had 65 kids on the waitlist.

They said that students would be sent to P.S. 151, 158, 198 and 267, but also anticipate that many students will drop off of wait lists and go to Gifted and Talented programs.

DOE officials insisted that P.S. 151 had room.

"Our No. 1 priority here is making sure all of our children have a seat in kindergarten," a spokesman said, "and where we have a bit of extra space we need to make sure we're using it to serve kids."