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Read the press release here.

DOE to Unveil New Downtown School Rezoning Proposal

By Julie Shapiro | November 3, 2011 9:54pm

LOWER MANHATTAN — The Department of Education will unveil its new plan for rezoning lower Manhattan's schools at a meeting next Tuesday night.

The DOE developed the new rezoning plan after parents panned the city's first proposal, which sent some TriBeCa children to P.S. 3 in Greenwich Village rather than to TriBeCa's P.S. 234 and also displaced students in the Village and Chelsea from their neighborhood schools.

"We really are listening to the residents of this community," Elizabeth Rose, a portfolio planner with the DOE, said Thursday at a meeting of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's school overcrowding task force.

"We heard the messages that this community does not want students to be zoned to P.S. 3."

Rose said the DOE is trying to find a way to accommodate all of Downtown's children in elementary schools near their homes, while also solving the overcrowding problem at P.S. 234, which this year had a kindergarten waitlist of 38 children.

"We're considering what the options are to address the demand at [P.S.] 234 in the area south of Canal Street," Rose said, as opposed to sending children south of Canal Street to the north.

In the past, Rose has mentioned available space at P.S. 1 and P.S. 126 in Chinatown as a possible solution.

Downtown families living east of Broadway, including many in Southbridge Towers, have said they would oppose sending their children to Chinatown schools, since there are two other schools that are closer to them: the Spruce Street School, which opened this fall near City Hall, and the new Peck Slip School, which will open in an incubator space in Tweed Courthouse next fall.

Rose said she was aware of the concerns at Southbridge Towers.

"We understand it would be incredibly disappointing to have two brand-new schools on either side of the [Southbridge] complex and not be zoned for them," she said.

"We do still need to think creatively about how…we utilize the capacity we have."

The DOE will present the new zoning proposal, which will also cover the Village and Chelsea, in addition to lower Manhattan, at a District 2 Community Education Council meeting Nov. 8 at 6:30 p.m. at M.S. 104, Baruch Middle School, 330 E. 21st St. between First and Second avenues.

Following the meeting, the new proposal will be available on the CEC's website Nov. 9.