UWS Schools Rezoned To Ease Overcrowding, Desegregate Schools

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — A controversial city plan to change the default student populations for a handful of Upper West Side elementary schools — aka, redraw each school's geographical zone — was approved Tuesday night by the Community Education Council (CEC) for School District 3. Through this rezoning process, similar to the one currently being implemented down in Brooklyn's rapidly gentrifying DUMBO/Vinegar Hill area, city education officials hope to alleviate school overcrowding and diversify some of the campuses within NYC's "extraordinarily segregated" school system.

All but one member of CEC 3, a group of 10 parents elected to represent community interests in School District 3 (encompassing the Upper West Side and South Harlem), voted in favor the plan Tuesday night. The plan will be implemented during the 2017-2018 school year.

The highly anticipated vote was the culmination of 18 months' worth of high-strung public input sessions, at which the district's most vocal parents strongly objected to rezoning their kids' schools.

However, the CEC's final vote Tuesday didn't come as much of a surprise to most parents in attendance, as the Department of Education (DOE) plan on the table largely mirrored a set of rezoning recommendations drawn up by the CEC in October.

"By approving this proposal we are gong to relieve overcrowding, we're going to increase diversity in our schools, and we're going to give all of our schools in the best chance to be successful," CEC president Joe Fiordaliso said Tuesday.

As members of the CEC discussed the zoning plan Tuesday they empathized with parents who were upset by zone changes, but insisted the plan must be passed for the common good of the community.

"We all want what's best for our kids but when our self-interest casts a shadow over the interests of others, when a decision is made in self-interest that inflicts harm upon others, we have to reconsider the way we make our decisions," said Kim Watkins, chair of the CEC zoning committee.

The plan, as approved Tuesday, would reshape school zones for all district elementary schools from West 59th to West 116th street. The most drastic zone changes focus on three schools in the southern end of the district, PS 452, PS 191 and PS 199.

PS 452 on West 77th Street, which is at max capacity, to the building currently occupied by PS 191, a school full of students from the Amsterdam Houses, a nearby public-housing project. PS 191 would then get a brand-new building within the Riverside Center, a fancy new development a couple blocks south.

The move would give PS 452, which currently shares a building, its own facility 16 blocks further downtown — and the room to take on more students. Despite praise from PS 452 administrators and faculty, some parent vehemently opposed moving the school.

In an attempt to alleviate concerns of moving the school 16 blocks south, the CEC and DOE agreed that all students who attend PS 452 will be able to be bussed to their new, further away school.

Then, perhaps most controversially, all future school kids living in two buildings within the Lincoln Towers community — 165 West End Ave. and 185 West End Ave. — would be directed to attend PS 191 as their default campus, instead of PS 199, where all their Lincoln Towers peers would still go to school.

While the rezoning plan may anger some parents, and may not perfectly solve the districts problems, CEC members said Tuesday it was the best first step toward righting the wrongs of school segregation.

During Tuesday night's meeting CEC member Kristen Berger said that 18-months ago the council was looking for a simple solution to solve complex problems in the district, but that zoning proved incredible challenging.

"There is no way to do any of these changes in isolation. So I believe that this complex plan we've come up with is truly the best solution for our students," Berger said. "I understand that complexity is challenging but challenging issues have no simple solutions."

Here's a diagram of the new school zones:

PS 199 is a consistently high-performing school made up of mostly white kids; a low percentage of its student body receives free lunch. On the other hand, the PS 191 student body is mostly poor, black and Hispanic. (In an effort to encourage parents to enroll their children in PS 191, the DOE recently announced the school would implement a Gifted & Talented program for students in the third grade and higher.)

During this year's fiery rezoning sessions, PS 452 Principal David Scott Parker, for one, made an impassioned plea in support of moving and expanding his campus, as the DOE had suggested.

But that didn't do much to ease outrage among the various groups of Upper West Side parents who felt their carefully laid plans to get their kids into high-performing schools would be crushed, or that existing school communities would be ripped apart, if the neighborhood's historic school zones were modernized.

Several parents from PS 87 said they were concerned the rezoning would make their school even more crowded, if some PS 452 parents elected not to follow the school to its new location. (Under the DOE's plan, PS 87's zone takes on certain areas previously zoned for PS 452.)

An even larger group of parents from PS 199 said they saw the "fracturing" of the Lincoln Towers community as "inconceivable" and inhumane.

One parent even called the plan a "diversity experiment" that unfairly cast Upper West Side kids as test subjects.

The DOE's rezoning plan for the Upper West Side, as approved by community leaders Tuesday, will only apply to future students. Current students will not be removed from their schools, and their younger siblings will be grandfathered in.