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Don't Split TriBeCa School Zone, CB1 Committee Says

By Julie Shapiro | October 12, 2011 12:53pm

TRIBECA — Splitting TriBeCa's school zone in half would create more problems than it would solve, Community Board 1's Youth and Education Committee said Tuesday night.

The committee voted against the city's proposed rezoning of TriBeCa, which would send children living north of North Moore Street to P.S. 3 in Greenwich Village, rather than to TriBeCa's popular but overcrowded P.S. 234.

Although the rezoning is designed to ease overcrowding and eliminate kindergarten waitlists, committee members said Downtown's booming population would quickly overflow the proposed zones.

"This zoning is capricious," said Tricia Joyce, a member of CB1's Youth Committee.

"It is going to send kids across community district lines for nothing, because we have too many children coming…. It's going to fail."

What lower Manhattan needs is more schools, not a reshuffling of students, Joyce and other committee members said.

In the meantime, committee members said it would be better to keep P.S. 234's current zone intact, even if that means another kindergarten lottery and waitlist next fall. This year, P.S. 234 had 38 children on its kindergarten waitlist.

At a public hearing last week, many North TriBeCa parents said they would rather brave the odds of a waitlist than be zoned for P.S. 3, which is about a mile away and requires TriBeCa families to cross Canal Street for the first time in decades.

Bob Townley, a CB1 member and executive director of Manhattan Youth, said there aren't very many children in North TriBeCa, so there is little benefit in dividing the neighborhood into two separate zones.

"You don't get much by zoning North TriBeCa up to the Village," Townley said.

"I don't think this zoning plan is what North Tribeca needs."

The community board's opinion is advisory, and the District 2 Community Education Council will make the final decision on whether to accept the Department of Education's proposal.

Shino Tanikawa, president of the CEC, said she and the other members would carefully weigh the community board's opinion.

"I think it is definitely a viable option for us to ponder and consider and debate," Tanikawa said of leaving TriBeCa's P.S. 234 zone intact.

"We really have to take that into consideration and figure out what is the best option for the community."

Lower Manhattan is getting one new school already, at the Peck Slip Post Office site, but Downtown education activists believe it will be too small to make a dent in the neighborhood's overcrowding.

In addition to keeping the current P.S. 234 zone intact for the fall of 2012, CB1's Youth and Education Committee also urged the city this week to enlarge the new Peck Slip School, find additional space to incubate the school while it is under construction and begin planning for an additional new school Downtown.

The Department of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday, but DOE officials have said in the past that they do not believe lower Manhattan needs another new elementary school in addition to Peck Slip, because there is space available nearby in Chinatown schools.

CB1's Youth Committee did not take a position on the other zoning changes the DOE proposed, which would carve a zone for the Peck Slip School and shift the zones for P.S. 89 and P.S. 276 in Battery Park City and the Spruce Street School near City Hall.

The committee will weigh in on those proposals in November.