Rezoning option gives parents hope

The Department of City Planning announced last week that a possible third scenario was under consideration in the heated school rezoning debate underway on the Upper West Side.

The Community Education Council for District 3 spent much of the summer discussing the two scenarios previously proposed by the Departments of Education (DOE) and City Planning to ease overcrowding in the district. But the opposition to both has been so vehement that it seems the education department felt compelled to reconsider.

So far, the existing Scenarios A and B involve either opening a new elementary school in the P.S. 191 building at Amsterdam Avenue and W. 61st Street — since 191 will be moving into the new 342 building at the Riverside Center — or moving P.S. 452 16 blocks south into 191’s building instead. It is unclear what would then happen to P.S. 452’s current O’Shea campus at Columbus Avenue and W. 77th Street.

Both options would redraw zoning lines, but to varying degrees. Scenario A — opening a new elementary school — would only affect students up to W. 90th Street, while Scenario B — re-siting 452 — would shuffle students all the way up to W. 116th Street. The appeal of the latter proposal, education officials say, is that students in Harlem and the northern regions of Community Education Council (CEC) 3 might be able to attend schools further away on the Upper West Side, thereby integrating some of the most segregated schools in the city.

Since June, seven meetings have been held to present the scenarios and offer the public time to comment. Four of those have taken place in the past week. At the first, a rezoning committee working group session, committee chair Kim Watkins’ goal was to identify ways to connect with and inform families who would be affected by the rezoning but had not attended previous meetings — especially residents of the Amsterdam Houses public housing complex at Amsterdam Avenue and W. 63rd Street — in order to spread the word about the two public hearings this past Saturday and Monday.

But after a third scenario was proposed at the CEC’s calendar meeting the next night, it was suddenly unclear what communities need to be reached out to.

“It made things sort of infinitely more confusing for the people that are already not typically involved,” Watkins said. “The concept of having a couple more weeks to get the word out … seems to have relaxed us a little bit. It seems that the DOE is not going to propose that 452 move. I’m working my very hardest at the moment to try and figure out if we can’t get information on that third scenario sooner rather than later.”

More hearings will be scheduled for October after the new scenario is formally revealed, and the CEC plans to continue connecting with more families in the district to get their feedback and involve them in the process.

Watkins and Joe Fiordaliso, president of CEC 3, were adamant about separating CEC 3 from the DOE. “When folks have asked questions at our meetings, requested information, we’ve always followed up with the department,” Fiordaliso said at the working group session. “They don’t exactly have a stellar track record when it comes to responsiveness and transparency.” Though the CEC did not draft the proposed scenarios, their role is crucial: they will vote on one of the two — or three — scenarios by November for recommendation to the Panel for Educational Policy, which will then make the final decision on where the schools will go. The CEC will also decide where to draw the zoning lines.

Even with the CEC’s vote approaching, and despite having few details to share about it, the DOE floated the possibility of a third scenario last Wednesday. They did reveal that this third option would not re-site P.S, 452, but that it would redraw zoning lines up to the northern part of the district anyway in order to benefit those students and increase diversity throughout the district as well.

“For one, everyone supports moving 191 to the new building,” said Sarah Turchin, director of planning at the DOE. “One thing people really like about Scenario B is that it includes schools in the northern portion of the district, so we’ve been asked if there’s a way we can include schools in the northern portion but maintain elementary school capacity.”

Turchin went on, saying, “That is an additional scenario that we’re exploring while continuing to focus on our shared goals with the CEC of increasing diversity [and] alleviating overcrowding.” These sentiments garnered loud applause, and went on to be echoed by the vast majority of the speakers at all four of the past week’s meetings.

At last Wednesday’s calendar meeting as well as the two public hearings on Saturday and Monday, residents of the Lincoln Towers buildings on West End Avenue and W. 70th Street were particularly vocal in their opposition to both Scenarios A and B because the redrawn zoning lines would split their community in two. One building would be zoned for P.S. 191 and the other would remain at P.S. 199, which residents insisted over and over again that they had worked together to make success.

“This feeling of community is why so many residents are speaking out,” one mother of a child at P.S. 199 said. “A zoning line that affects only a handful of kids has turned into a petition with over 2,600 signatures. This is the type of community that helped establish 199.” Another Lincoln Towers resident argued at an earlier meeting that they were not “chess pieces” for the DOE to “shove around on the board.”

No further information was given as to Scenario C, which served as a sign of caution for some parents who had been pleading for a third scenario for months. Turchin said the new plan would be presented to the CEC at their Sept. 28 meeting. The DOE is expected to have a final map and plan to the CEC in October for them to vote on in November.

Madeleine Thompson can be reached at newsreporter@strausnews.com