BROOKLYN — Parents at Ditmas Park’s P.S. 217 pride themselves on their school’s diversity — more than 30 languages are spoken in its hallways and the parent association provides interpreters to help all families be included in their child's studies.
Now, however, many families at the school worry for the future of their diverse student body after the Department of Education announced it would re-draw the boundaries of their zone, along with those of P.S. 134, 139, 245, 152 and 315, in order to create a new school at 510 Coney Island Ave. in Kensington.
The proposed new school has been in the works for nearly a decade and is slated to open next year.
Families in the area had long been clamoring for it to be used exclusively as a middle school, but the DOE recently surprised parents by announcing last month that it plans to use it to house a K-8 school with only roughly 90 of 750 seats set aside for middle schoolers.
Parents say the current plans bear no resemblance to their requests.
“They have apparently been carving out a rezoning of our little corner of District 22 for about a year, but none of us had seen the map until they came to our school at the end of September,” said Audrey Walen, co-president of P.S. 217's parent association, who has a first grader there.
The new boundaries were revealed at a Sept. 26 meeting held by District 22’s Community Education Council.
The council is expected to vote on the proposal Monday night, Walen said, which has raised eyebrows since it’s the Jewish holiday of Sukkot and some community members won’t be able to attend.
The proposed rezoning from a DOE presentation.
Walen said the school feels strongly about keeping its diversity initiative intact after many years of building it up to its current state.
When Walen's older child attended P.S. 217 eight years ago, the parent association only drew a handful of moms, she said. But when the school was rezoned five years ago to include some blocks with several middle-class families, things began to change.
These families helped energize the parent association and focused on reaching the entire school community, she said, enlisting interpreters to help reach families that come from countries as varied as Bangladesh and Nepal, Somalia and Albania.
The blocks that had been added just a few years ago, however, would once again be removed from the school’s zone under the DOE's new plan, Walen said.
“We now have this active parent association with community engagement providing translation services,” she said.
“My great fear is that by taking out the swath just added five years ago, we’re dismantling what is finally an effective community. We’re not a prestigious school, we’re just a good school with a committed community who want to continue what we’re doing.”
She added that parents at her school feel the DOE's rezoning plan didn't include any feedback from the community, noting that while DOE officials claimed to have discussed the changes with area School Leadership Teams — made up of parents and school administrators — P.S. 217’s team was never briefed on the matter.
Moreover, P.S. 217 has seen enrollment drop in recent years, from more than 1,300 to under 1,200, according to Walen.
Losing more students would mean losing more funding for the Title 1 school, where the majority of the student body qualify for free or reduced lunch, she said. That could cost the school needed funds for enrichment programs.
“They started planning the building years ago, but the reality on the ground when you finally get a new building is different. If you want to build a school to relieve overcrowding, this building, located at the very northern end of our district, is not the ideal place," said Joel Siegel, president of the Ditmas Park West Neighborhood Association.
He commended the work parents at P.S. 217 have been doing, calling it “a model for integration and multiculturalism in New York City.”
Instead of changing its zone, he'd rather see a local middle school to help children like his stay nearby. His son graduated P.S. 217 last year and now travels an hour to Williamsburg for middle school — which could be avoided with a middle school in the area, he said.
“The building is not going to be meeting our needs for middle school,” he said, noting that roughly 75 percent of the kids at P.S. 217 and the nearby P.S. 139 go to middle schools outside their very large district, which stretches from Ditmas Park to Mill Basin.
A DOE presentation about the rezoning said it aims to alleviate overcrowding and kindergarten waitlists in Ditmas Park, noting that P.S. 217 was operating at 117 percent capacity this year.
DOE officials said they've engaged with the district’s Community Education Council, elected officials and the broader community throughout the process to ensure the proposal would meet the needs of families in the district.
