Push for Parent Input On Rezoning Process

By [Sarah Seltzer ] If Community Board 8 has its way, Upper East Side parents will have continuing input into the likely contentious school district rezoning process, scheduled to begin this fall. At the board"s June 15 youth and education committee meeting, members unanimously passed a resolution to present to District 2"s Community Education Council, which covers the Upper East Side and much of lower Manhattan. The resolution asked that the parent council"s rezoning committee, a small sub-group that will spearhead the rezoning process, include in its meetings at least one parent from each affected elementary school in the neighborhood, a representative from the group Parent Leaders of the Upper East Side (PLUS) and a public member, who would regularly report back to Board 8. The resolution did not ask that these members get a vote, just that they be allowed to â??participate in an interactive manner. The rezoning process will reconfigure the catchment areas for neighborhood schools, attempting to distribute students into new, equitable zones. Right now, the neighborhood is plagued by crowded schools and long waitlists. Pamela Wheaton, project director of InsideSchools.org, said that rezoning is one of the few powers parent councils still have after the Bloomberg administration reorganized the governance of city schools. â??With burgeoning new housing and building in Manhattan in recent years, it"s been hard for the DOE to keep up with starting new schools, Wheaton said. â??Parents are upset because they"ve moved into neighborhoods, assuming they"re zoned to a certain school, then find out it"s too crowded. So it"s important that parents do have a say in whether or not schools are being rezoned, and where lines are going to be. Last year, the process was essentially given a do-over on the Upper East Side after the parent council rejected several department proposals that addressed overcrowding at local schools. Parent council members asked for extensive birth and demographic data to aid a longer, more thorough zoning overhaul that would address both present and future crowding issues. Board 8"s resolution, according to members present, was written to make sure that hot-button parental objections are vetted throughout the process, rather than at the end, when the rezoning resolutions are presented to the public. At the June 15 meeting, several parents expressed concern about getting demographic data from the department and other public offices, like the Department of Health. They argued that being able to use such data was even more important to a successful rezoning process than public input. The parent council has yet to specifically address the community board resolution. But last year, the parent council acknowledged the need for input and transparency, citing these as reasons to postpone a decision. â??We want to be able to listen to the whole neighborhood, said Sarah Chu, who heads the parent council"s zoning subcommittee. â??One of our concerns last year was there wasn"t much turnout for Upper East Side zoning meetings. Downtown parents had known rezoning was going to happen and so there was a lot of community involvement. Chu said that at the moment, the parent council had obtained demographic birth data from the Department of Health and was in the process of obtaining information about new housing developments from the borough president. Before rezoning discussions can begin, though, she said the Department of Education needs to furnish school enrollment data, as well as specifics on which buildings would be used by which schools. The process officially kicks off with a proposal from the department,â?¯which the parent council has the right to respond to or counter with its own ideas and tweaks. There is no official date set for this proposal, but the parent council expects to receive notice that recommendations are forthcoming several weeks in advance. The rezoning would go into effect for the 2010-2011 school year.