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The new fight over the new school

The city has finally named a site for a long-awaited elementary school for the Financial District after a years-long fight for space, but Downtowners aren’t declaring total victory yet. In fact, they’re preparing for a whole new battle over exactly what the new school will look like, aiming to maximize the rare opportunity to create Downtown classroom space, and make sure it will be enough.

“We really need to get the most out of this,” said Tricia Joyce, a parent and the co-chair of Community Board 1’s Youth and Education Committee. Days after a 476-seat school was announced for 77 Greenwich St., school advocates and local parents started drawing up their wish lists for more seats, larger facilities and even a middle-school expansion — all to satisfy Lower Manhattan’s staggering population growth, which they say the Dept. of Education is too slow to address.

Paul Hovitz, co-chair of CB1’s Youth and Education Committee, said that in the earlier struggle to get Spruce Street School into the Gehry Building, the community learned too late that simply securing a site is not the end of the battle for school seats.

“The mistake we made was being so happy we were getting the school there that we didn’t press for more floors and to have more than two classes in a grade — because two classes on a grade was so small,” he said. “By the time we realized, everything was set in stone.”

Joyce agreed that the challenge now is to secure greater community participation in designing the new Greenwich St. school. “We have learned a lot since Spruce Street School was approved and built, and we’ll be doing everything necessary to make sure we stay ahead of all the potential issues,” she said.

The Greenwich St. school, which will have an entrance on Trinity Pl., will be included within the new mixeduse development planned for the site of the former Syms discount clothing store between Rector and Edgar Sts., south of the World Trade Center.

The plan for the school is expected to be finalized by this summer, according to the School Construction

Authority and the developer said the project will be complete in 2019. “We’re very happy to hear the news,” said Wendy Chapman, a co-founder of the advocacy group Build Schools Now. “But of course we have concerns.

We have seen how dire the population growth is, we’re going to hope that the Deptartment of Education and the S.C.A. give the community input as to what the final outcome of this school is.” Chapman said she would like to see the school expanded to include a middle school, spanning grades K-8, or at least increase the number of seats — which she emphasized is always cheaper than building another school later on.

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http://www.downtownexpress.com/2016/...he-new-school/