By Rebecca Henely
Despite minor opposition about the procedure behind it, Community District Education Council 30 voted 7-0 with one abstention last Thursday to rezone various public schools in the Jackson Heights area to include PS 280 on the map, a former Catholic School that was reopened by the city in September.
“District 30 Community Education Council worked incredibly hard with the [District 30] Superintendent [Phil Composto] and they did a wonderful job,” said Barbara Mylite of the United Federation of Teachers.
Isaac Carmignani, co-president of CEC 30, said the council had been working on creating a zoning district for the new school since July, three months after the city planned to replace The Blessed Sacrament School with a public school. Carmignani said they began the process early to complete it by January 2011.
The Blessed Sacrament School had closed in 2009 due to low enrollment. It has been leased by the city from the Brooklyn/Queens Diocese. For the past year, it has been taking in new students who did not have a zone.
Now it will be accepting students from a zone with the approximate boundary lines from 37th Avenue between Junction Boulevard and 90th Street on the south side, to 97th Street between 35th Avenue and Northern Boulevard on the east side, to Northern Boulevard between 97th and 94th streets on the north side, as well as the block between 93rd and 94th streets below 34th Avenue. Carmignani said this means the school districts have also been rezoned for Public Schools 69, 92, 148, 149, 212, 222 and 228.
“We have to carve out that zone, so it pushes out into the others,” Carmignani said.
At the meeting, a woman from the audience protested the voting on the new school district, saying it was done without proper advance notice. Jeff Guyton, co-president of CEC 30, said the rezoning had to be done at the meeting so parents could start registering their children by Jan. 7.
There were no other objections to the plan at the meeting, which was a change from previous meetings. Carmignani said complaints about the first drafts of the rezoning that were later remedied centered on students who would have to cross over major roads to get to school, children being sent to a different school than the one associated with the early childhood center where they were enrolled, kids being sent to one school district when they lived across the street from a school in another district and neighborhoods with historic connections to a school that want to keep that connection.
The zoning for one apartment complex, Brulene Cooperative on 34th Avenue between 93rd and 94th streets in Jackson Heights, also had to be redrawn as students from one of the buildings would be going to a different school from students in the other building in an earlier draft.
“Opposition has died down as concerns have been addressed,” Carmignani said.
He said the rezoning only affects students new to the system. Students who have older siblings in one of the other public schools will be sent to that school regardless of zone, so long as their older sibling is still going to that school. PS 280 currently houses only kindergartners and will add a grade level every year until it has classes from K through 8. The school will take in 400 students at capacity.
Guyton said the council will continue to collaborate with the city Department of Transportation to monitor implementation of the rezoning.
Reach reporter Rebecca Henely by e-mail at rhenely@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4564.
