New day, new school option

Volume 22, Number 32 | The Newspaper of Lower Manhattan | December 18 - 24, 2009

The city’s Dept. of Education presented this school zoning option at a meeting Wednesday night.

Dec. 17, 2009

By Julie Shapiro

A new option for zoning Lower Manhattan’s schools would divert children in southern Tribeca to P.S. 89, in order to allow children in northern and eastern Tribeca to attend P.S. 234.

The Dept. of Education presented this new option at a District 2 Community Education Council meeting Wednesday night. It is based on the parent feedback the city received after floating its original two zoning options last month.

The new option moves Gateway Plaza families from P.S. 89 to P.S. 276, as they requested. It also moves the Financial District east of Broadway from P.S. 276 to the Spruce Street School, which will likely get a mixed reaction from parents.

But the most surprising change in the new option is that buildings in southern Tribeca, including those across the street from P.S. 234 on Warren St., would not be zoned for 234. Instead, they would be zoned for P.S. 89, which is also nearby but is across the West Side Highway in Battery Park City.

The city’s new option would take care of one of the problems with the previously proposed Option 1, which would have divided the Whole Foods building into two school zones, with the high-end condos at 101 Warren St. zoned for P.S. 234 while the rentals at 89 Murray St. were zoned for the Spruce Street School. Under the city’s new proposal, the entire building would be zoned for P.S. 89 instead.

The city’s new option is similar in some ways to one that C.E.C. member Michael Markowitz presented at a public hearing last week, but they differ in terms of which parts of Tribeca will go to P.S. 234. Both the D.O.E. and Markowitz are calling their new plans “Option 3.”

The C.E.C. will hold a public hearing on all of the zoning options proposed so far in the second week of January. All the options are designed to be temporary.

To read the article Markowitz’s school zoning plan that appeared in this week’s issue of Downtown Express, which went to press before Wednesday’s C.E.C. meeting, click here.

Julie@DowntownExpress.com