Leonie Haimson filed a Freedom of Information Act request for fairly simple information: she asked for the accountability reports on the top officials at the NYC Department of Education. The bad news: there are none. No one at the top is held accountable. Their performance doesn’t matter. It is not measured. They have no growth scores..

Mayor Bloomberg’s third term really is coming to an end. In an unprecedented move, the Mayor’s Department of Education (which does nothing substantive without his approval) abandoned plans to tear down two schools so that developers could build luxury projects on their land. This retreat was the result of strong community opposition from parents and community members on the Upper West Side. This is a victory for democracy.

The students would have been displaced while developers put up high-rise apartment buildings.

“One of the schools saved, P.S. 199 on West 70th Street, was designed by the modernist architect Edward Durell Stone. Laurie Frey, a member of the Community Education Council in District 3, said that as a liaison to P.S. 191 on West 61st Street, she was relieved because under the plan that had been considered, half a playground would have been destroyed and children would have been attending classes on two floors below ground level in the new building.

“Asking 6-, 7-, 8- and 9-year-old children to walk past the demolition of their schools and then see a high rise go up is not a good way to engage with the core curriculum,” she added.

Here is a summary of the situation by Asemblymember Linda B. Rosenthal, who represents the area affected. She sponsored legislation to assure that all future dispositions of land by the New York City Department of Education and related agencies would be subject to a review process that included representatives of the affected communities as well as a public hearing. This would assure, at the least, that the DOE would not be able to take the community by surprise and give away its schools and land to developers.

VICTORY!

UPPER WEST SIDE SUCCESSFULLY FIGHTS OFF DOE REDEVELOPMENT OF OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS!

In a victory for Upper West Side schools, the New York City Department of Education (DOE) bowed to community pressure and has announced that it will not move forward with plans for redevelopment at Manhattan P.S. 191 and Manhattan P.S. 199. I am gratified that DOE came to realize that trying to force a project of this magnitude without any public process on the Upper West Side will always be met with a wall of united opposition.

The DOE first proposed to demolish these schools and the School of Cooperative Technical Education on the Upper East Side with an advertisement to developers in a November 2012 issue of Crain’s. The DOE would have leased the land to a private developer who would demolish the schools and build luxury housing with a school at the base. Make no mistake about it: this plan was never about education or providing seats for our children–it was conceived as a giveaway to developers. The DOE did not notify anyone in the targeted communities of its intentions and, even after a community outcry, gave just one presentation in February which provided little useful information.

On the Upper West Side, we refuse to stand for the City playing games with our public schools, and I wrote to the DOE to express my disgust with its refusal to engage the community and let parents have a say in its decision on whether to redevelop any of the schools. I also sent DOE a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request for answers to many of the questions it left unanswered and worked with the affected communities of both schools to organize informational meetings and rallies. The marvelous collaboration with community leaders and area elected officials culminated last night in a rally and forum attended by hundreds of parents, teachers, children and community members who made their voices heard and said no to redevelopment.

This victory, coming on the heel’s of last night’s public meeting, would never have been possible without the thousands of Upper West Siders who signed petitions, wrote letters, demonstrated and organized. I especially want to thank the following groups and fellow elected officials for their efforts and advocacy:

Coalition to Save Our Schools
Museum Magnet School / Manhattan P.S. 191 Redevelopment Committee
United Federation of Teachers
Lincoln Square Community Coalition
Amsterdam Houses Residents Association
Coalition for a Livable West Side
New York Communities for Change
Congressman Jerrold Nadler
Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer
State Senator Brad M. Hoylman
State Senator José M. Serrano
State Senator Adriano Espaillat
City Councilmember Gale A. Brewer

However, DOE will unfortunately continue pursuing its secretive redevelopment process at the School of Cooperative Technical Education at 321 East 96th Street. I was told that DOE will release a Request for Proposals, but it does not have a firm timeline for doing so. Targeting the school whose students are most geographically dispersed and less organized does not make DOE’s agenda any more palatable. If the East Side community opposes this development, I am sure we will work together to save their school.

I want to again congratulate the Upper West Side on showing the City that we have had enough of backroom deals and secret plans. The students of P.S. 191 and P.S. 199 can go on summer vacation knowing that they will have a school to return to in the fall!

Linda B. Rosenthal
Member of Assembly – 67 AD