| In little more than a year, Lower Manhattan fifth graders and their families will have a new option for middle school. The 75 Morton Street School, slated to welcome its first class of sixth graders in the West Village (four blocks north of Houston Street, between Hudson and Greenwich Streets) in September 2017, will become the zoned school for children from Tribeca and Battery Park City.
While many students in Lower Manhattan choose to apply to highly regarded public middle school programs (such as those as I.S. 276, I.S. 289, and the Lab School), these accept only a limited number of students, and admission is not guaranteed to any applicant. In fact, the chance of attending any of these has become more remote in recent years, as crowding at Lower Manhattan elementary schools has created an acute shortage of seats in desirable middle schools.
For students who do not apply to (or are not accepted at) one of these, the alternative is to attend the “zoned” middle school for their district, where a seat is guaranteed. For more than a decade, the zoned middle school for Lower Manhattan has been the Simon Baruch School, located on East 21st Street and First Avenue. While this school has a laudable academic reputation, the distance and difficulty of the commute has resulted in very few Downtown families sending their children there.
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| The Department of Education’s maps of the two zoning options it considered for the new school. The version at right (circled in red) was recently approved by the Community Education Council for District 2, which includes Lower Manhattan. |
This is about to change. On Tuesday, the Community Education Council (CEC) for District 2 (which includes Lower Manhattan) voted to approve a zoning proposal by the Department of Education that includes Battery Park City and Tribeca in the catchment for the new school at 75 Morton Street. (The CEC also considered, but rejected, a separate zoning proposal that would have excluded students living south of Canal Street.)
This comes after months of lobbying and advocacy by Lower Manhattan community leaders and elected officials. Tricia Joyce, chair of Community Board 1’s Youth and Education Committee, describes the decision (which guarantees seats to students from local elementary schools, such as P.S. 276, P.S. 89, P.S. 234, and P.S. 150) as, “a huge accomplishment and great effort by this community board.”
State Assembly member Deborah Glick, who has pushed for the new school at 75 Morton Street to become the zoned middle school for Downtown, said, “as the population of New York City grows, particularly in communities in Lower Manhattan, ensuring that a new middle school has a zone that can serve an appropriate portion of our community is important to meeting the education needs of local students.” |
