School Rezoning Scaled Down

By [Dan Rivoli] The Department of Education presented a new, scaled-down proposal for rezoning Upper West Side public schools. The new proposal for the 2011 school year, presented at a Dec. 2 Community Education Council meeting, will only change the zone lines affecting four public schools. According to Elizabeth Rose, an education official who presented the plan, the goal is to create a new zone for P.S. 452, a new public school on 100 W. 77th St. and Columbus Avenue that just opened in September. The original plan was to rezone the entire Upper West Side to relieve overcrowding in the southern part of the neighborhood. The proposed lines, however, do lower the number of students in P.S. 87 and P.S. 199. P.S. 87, for example, would drop to 153 kindergarten children from 183; the K through 5th grade population eligible to attend the school would decrease to 644 from 804 children. At P.S. 199, there would be 137 eligible kindergarteners, which is 29 fewer than the current number of zoned students. For K through 5th grade, there would be 107 fewer students at 599. P.S. 191 will see a slight increase in the number of eligible K through 5th graders in the zone proposal. The Community Education Council, a parent body that reviews local school issues, must vote on the rezoning plan.