Questions About School Rezoning? You’re Not Alone
Monday night’s Public Education Town Hall meeting was certainly contentious. City Councilmember Brad Lander hosted the meeting, originally designed as a forum to strategize about creating healthy school lunches, connecting PTAs, lobbying against high stakes testing and reforming special education. But most of the parents who attended were there to voice concern over the proposed District 15 elementary school rezoning plan unveiled last week.
The Department of Education’s Director of Planning Carrie Marlin and District 15 Community Education Council President Jim Devor were on hand to listen to parents’ comments and answer questions. Things got testy several times in the course of the two-hour discussion period. Parents complained about:
• The gerrymander-like lines of the proposed zones.
• The break-up of the current PS 39 community (which isn’t overcrowded to the extent of PS 321 or PS 107).
• The decrease in property values for dezoned PS 321 blocks.
• The inclusion of Gowanus and the exclusion of parts of Park Slope in 321.
• The distance rezoning will create between schools and certain unlucky families.
• The cost of busing children to distant schools.
• The lack of transparency in the decision-making process.
• The lack of alternatives to rezoning.
• The disruption to dezoned families with kids attending PS 39’s pre-kindergarten.
• The propensity of parents to move into the 321 zone for a year to qualify their children and then move to another neighborhood while keeping their kids enrolled.
Some parents proposed alternatives, such as making the new St. Thomas Aquinas school a magnet school. Devor dismissed this plan by pointing out that very few families would opt out of PS 321 or PS 107. There were suggestions to build an annex to 321, to make the new school an annex for 321, and to make the new school a districtwide early childhood center. Both Devor and Lander said they initially favored the early childhood center idea but rejected it after studying it.
There was some consensus at the Town Hall meeting. Both parents and bureaucrats decried the fact that school construction is not keeping pace with the massive developments being built along 4th Avenue. And Devor, whose committee makes the ultimate decision regarding rezoning, agreed with the parents that the rezoning plan had a lot of problems, primarily the exclusion of PS 133 in the plan. Devor felt that any long term solution to PS 321’s overcrowding will require 321, 133 and 282 to be in the same school district.
To the surprise of many, Devor said that he was currently inclined to vote against the rezoning.
Lander did his best to maintain the peace, quelling the occasional angry audience outbursts. The more than 30 parents who lined up to ask questions were each given a chance to speak, though most questions went unanswered.
Those wishing to contact Devor should write to his assistant: rsmith45@schools.nyc.gov. Devor’s email mailbox is full.
