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Read the press release here.

Education Dept. Reconsiders Unpopular Downtown School Rezoning Plan

By Julie Shapiro | October 27, 2011 12:53pm

LOWER MANHATTAN — The city is rethinking its unpopular rezoning plan for lower Manhattan's schools after hearing from hundreds of angry parents, a Department of Education official said Wednesday night.

The DOE may decide to scrap the most controversial aspects of the plan, including sending north TriBeCa children up to P.S. 3 in Greenwich Village, rather than to the popular but overcrowded P.S. 234, said Elizabeth Rose, a portfolio planner with the DOE.

"We've gotten [your] feedback and we're thinking about it," Rose told the District 2 Community Education Council Wednesday night.

"We need time to think about if there are ways we can address the [P.S.] 234 waitlist without this particular strategy."

The DOE's initial plan, unveiled last month, would send TriBeCa children living above North Moore Street up to Greenwich Village, creating a ripple effect that would bump Village children up to Chelsea, displacing families from local schools there as well.

Many parents, including several CEC members, slammed the proposal at hearings over the past month, saying the DOE was just spreading lower Manhattan's overcrowding problems north, inconveniencing hundreds of people for a negligible benefit.

North TriBeCa parents, in particular, objected to crossing Canal Street to take their children to school at P.S. 3 and worried that their property values would suffer as a result of the move.

"What I really hear is, 'We want you to go back to the drawing board,'" Rose said Wednesday, summarizing the feedback she has received.

Rose declined to comment on the other zoning alternatives the DOE is considering, but said she would update the CEC with a new iteration of the proposal at a meeting next month.

The changes could affect parts of District 2 from Chelsea to downtown. The proposed zoning changes to the Upper East Side, which is also part of District 2, are not currently being reconsidered, the DOE said.

The reason the DOE wanted to cut P.S. 234's zone in half is because the school receives far more applications annually than it can accommodate and last year had a kindergarten waitlist of 38 children.

If the extra TriBeCa children are not sent north to P.S. 3, it is unclear where they would go to school.

Rose previously mentioned that there is extra space in Chinatown, at P.S. 1 and P.S. 126, but so far she has not proposed sending Downtown children there.

The CEC, a body of apppointed and elected parents that has final say on rezoning plans, is scheduled to vote on the rezoning in December.