Parent Coalition Demands Retraction of Upper West Side School Rezoning Proposal

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — A group of Upper West Side parents have sent a direct challenge to the the Community Education Council District 3 (CEC) a week after it released a plan to rezone neighborhood elementary schools.

The group, which calls itself the Coalition of District 3 Parents, claims the CEC overstepped its bounds and violated the law when it revealed its rezoning preferences to the Department of Education (DOE). The coalition sent the CEC a letter Sunday demanding the council turn over information related to its rezoning plan and to retract the plan in its entirety.

In its letter the Coalition of District 3 Parents accuses the CEC of violating the Open Meetings Law, which requires public bodies to meet in front of the general public or at properly run executive sessions. Because the CEC unveiled its plan in a letter to the DOE not a public meeting, the coalition said that the plan was proposed unlawfully.

In the letter the coalition also said that the CEC's role in rezoning is limited to approving proposals.

"The CEC does not have authority to dictate to the DOE the terms upon which it will properly consider a proposal from the DOE—the only government agency with authority to make rezoning and/or resiting proposals—nor does it have the authority to hijack the proposal process," read the coalition's letter.

The letter cited CEC Joe Fiordaliso's statement that the DOE can "stand with us or not," as proof of hijacking the process.

Last Tuesday the CEC ignored vocal parent groups when it proposed a controversial rezoning plan that would attempt to alleviate school overcrowding and racially de-segregate the district by re-distributing kids between elementary schools.

The CEC's plan would relocate 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. Then, perhaps most controversially, all future schoolkids living in three of eight buildings in the high-end Lincoln Towers community (165 West End Avenue, 185 West End Avenue and 205 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.

Current students would not have to move schools, nor would their younger siblings.

Here is the Coalition of District 3 Parents' letter in its entirety:

Photo: Patch