DNAinfo Reports on Efforts to Stop the DOE proposal for CTE

DNAinfo reports on the protest that took place outside the High School for Cooperative Technology on Friday.

Politicians, students and teachers are calling for the Department of Education to drop plans to redevelop the School of Cooperative Technical Education on 96th Street between First and Second avenues because they say no one affected by the proposal was consulted.

Read the full article here.

DNAinfo Reports: P.S. 199 Parents Break From PTA to Fight Redevelopment at UWS School

DNAinfo reports today on the movement by PS 199 parents against the proposed demolition of the school:

"A group of parents at P.S. 199 is breaking from their PTA to fight against the Department of Education's proposed demolition of their school.  

More than 200 supporters have signed a petition against the DOE's plan, which would give a developer the right to knock down and rebuild the school and develop a high rise
on top of it."

Read the full article here. 

Op-Ed Piece: Coveting Public School Land Leads to a Bad Deal

An Op-Ed piece by Mel Wymore in WNYC SchoolBook (a site created by the NYTimes and WNYC).

Here's one excerpt:

In the case of P.S. 191 on West 61st Street and P.S. 199 on West 70th Street, the ECF requested “expressions of interest” to demolish and redevelop these public schools, offering what amounts to a goody-bag of tax perks for the developers involved. Simply put, it’s a sweetheart deal designed to attract builders of luxury towers, with schools on the lower floors, not one designed to serve our kids, our community or New York City.

Read the full piece here. 

United Federation of Teachers Article and Letter

We originally posted on the United Federation of Teachers article about the proposed demolition of the schools here.

Subsequently, they published our Letter to the Editor:

Parents oppose selling schools
MAY 16, 2013 NEW YORK TEACHER ISSUETo the Editor:
Thanks for your article “Schools for sale” [May 2]. The city and Department of Education are pursuing actions that are disruptive to students and parents, and expensive to the city in the long term, while providing little to no upside for increasing the quality or quantity of educational resources in the affected neighborhoods.

Read the full letter here.

Press Coverage of the CEC3 Meeting

The CEC 3 meeting about the fate of PS 199 and PS 191 was covered by both The West Side Rag and DNAinfo.  Read the The West Side Rag coverage here.

The DNAinfo article was controversial.  Check out the comments.  It can be read here.

United Federation of Teachers reports on Schools for Sale

From the UFT New York Teacher Issue:

The offer sounded like a typical enticement to developers by a property owner eager to cash in. 

The owner “is pleased to offer for your consideration three prime development sites” in Manhattan that present “truly special opportunities” to build luxury high-rises of “significant height and tremendous views.” 

But nothing about this appeal was typical. 

The three sites proposed for redevelopment are public schools that together serve about 2,300 students: PS 191 and PS 199 on the Upper West Side, and the School of Cooperative Technical Education (Co-op Tech HS) on the Upper East Side.

The article mentions that some P.S. 199 parents are hoping for a new middle school:

PS 199’s parent association hasn’t taken a position yet, although some parents say they may consider the proposal if the new school includes a middle school, which the neighborhood desperately needs.

Yet, we've demonstrated, which you can read here, that with the existing proposal this is not possible.  Additionally, the PTA co-president, Eric Shuffler is also quoted expressing concern that the proposed school may not be able to accomodate any more students  than the existing school.

“Some parents have said that it seems stupid to do this just to rebuild a school,” said Eric Shuffler, PTA co-president at PS 199. “They’ve asked, what’s the point to even have a conversation about this if we end up with the same number of seats?”

And the lack of transparency from the DOE is glaring:

Parents and educators have more questions than answers. Where and for how long would students and staff be relocated as one school is torn down and a high-rise is built? What kind of amenities would they have to do without while they are relocated? In deals clearly aimed at unlocking development dollars, would the affected school receive some of the money generated? Will the community have a real say in what gets built?

 Read the Full Article here.

Could Beacon HS be the Temp Site for P.S. 199 or P.S. 191?

New York Press reports on CB7's Youth, Education and Libraries Committee meeting from last week.

The committee also discussed the Beacon Building Working Group, which was formed in March to deal with future plans for what will be a vacant space when the Beacon School relocates. Beacon High School will be moving from their current location on West 61st Street to a new spot on West 44th Street in the autumn of 2015. Mark Diller, who chairs the Beacon Building Working Group, addressed concerns in the community that the organization would simply serve as a rubber stamp to approve Beacon as an interim space for P.S. 199 (270 W. 70th St.) or P.S. 191 (210 W. 61st St.), both sites that Department Of Education (DOE) has shown interest in reconstructing.

Read the Full Article. 

Our Guest Post in Vanishing New York

Vanishing New York is a fantastic blog dedicated to writing about the wonderful sites and neighborhoods in NYC that are disappearing.  Please read our guest post and look through the site.

Here's an excerpt from our post:

The Lincoln Square community has undergone major upheaval over the past few years, with the building of countless high rises, including the Trump Buildings on Riverside Boulevard, all of which have significantly changed the neighborhood from a close-knit, family-friendly community to something very different, a place unaffordable to many. These real-estate developments have also disrupted long-established school catchments and contributed to major overcrowding in schools. As a result, many children are forced to sit on waiting lists for their local public schools.

Read the Entire Post Here. 

New York Times Article on City Selling Public Land

More about the City grabbing public land for private development.  This recent New York Times article is about displacing a local community center for a luxury high-rise.

The center has been here in East Harlem, amid public-housing towers that are home to about 3,480 residents, for more than 55 years. Most of the programming comes through the Union Settlement Association: after-school, summer, tutoring, arts, college prep, job readiness, fatherhood, re-entry, teen night, mental health and life skills.
Six days a week, the center draws people from as far as Staten Island. But lately there has been fear in the neighborhood, inspired by a plan of the New York City Housing Authority to raze the building housing the center for private residential development.

Read the Full Article. 

NYTs Op-Ed Piece on Midtown East Development - Some Simularities

A piece penned by Robert A.M. Stern questioning Bloomberg's push to redevelop Midtown East without proper foresight and planning, similar to how the push is being made to develop the PS 199 site and other school sites in the city.  Some highlights:


Protecting the integrity of the area:

Are we preparing to make the same mistake again, on multiple sites? The rezoning study makes no mention of protected-view corridors. Can we guarantee that in the future the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building will not be lost in thickets of taller buildings?

Planning backwards, infrastructure should come first:

And what of our streets and subway platforms? I commute through Grand Central several times a week, and at 6:20 a.m., when I catch my train to New Haven, the terminal is already full of people. When I return at 6:30 or 7 p.m., I can hardly make my way to the stairways and escalators that lead to the Lexington Avenue subway platforms.

How will the added workers quartered in these new buildings get from their trains to their desks? The plan says that special assessments and payments in lieu of taxes will guarantee “pedestrian network improvements as development occurs.” There is nothing wrong with privately financed infrastructure improvements. But the study, if I read it correctly, gets it backward: first you put in the infrastructure, then you build the buildings. Look at the example of Grand Central, the private enterprise that spurred all this development in the first place.

Read the full piece here. 

DNAinfo.com Article about plans for the Beacon HS Building

DNAinfo.com has an article about plans for the Beacon High School building.  A new Beacon High School is being built and the DOE is working on plans for the old building.

One possibility mentioned in the article:

But the planned walk-through, which does not yet have a scheduled date, has sparked concerns that the Department of Education may be eyeing the Beacon building as a new home for P.S. 191, if the city goes forward with its proposal to tear down both P.S. 191 and P.S. 199 and replace them with privately developed high-rises.

Promises have been made concerning the process for PS 191 and PS 199 but as far as we know nothing  has been put into writing:

In response to parents' concerns about the proposed demolition of P.S. 191 and P.S. 199, Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott committed at a recent town hall meeting to get more feedback from residents before moving forward with the plans. Walcott assured anxious parents that the DOE's Educational Construction Fund, the arm that proposed the two school sites for private redevelopment, was not on the verge of issuing a request for development proposals, said Shuffler, who attended the town hall."[Walcott] did state very clearly that he would allow community input before the RFPs went out," added Maack, who also attended the meeting.

Read more: http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20130422/upper-west-side/new-committee-plans-future-of-beacon-high-school-building#ixzz2RCLtwaHE

Coverage in the New York Observer

Preservationists Agitate to Save Durell Stone-Designed PS 199 From Demolition

By Kim Velsey 4/15 8:00pm

Ever since the Department of Education posted a Request for Expressions of Interest in three public school sites late this fall—seeking proposals for three “prime development sites” that included PS 199 on West 70th Street—the local community has risen up in protest.

As with other such sites, it’s almost certain that no matter what developer the city selects, the plan will involve a luxury condo tower on the 99,000 square-foot site with a replacement school on the tower’s lower levels.

And while DOE has not yet made any final decisions about the site, the possibility that the school might be razed has not only angered the contingent of parents and teachers that one would expect to be riled by such an announcement, but also preservationists, who are now mobilizing to protest the destruction of the 1963 building, designed by the noted modernist architect Edward Durell Stone.

Go to Full Article

Comments on the NY Daily News Story / Problems with ECF/DOE Projects

This comment was made in the article:

“There is so much misinformation,” said Douglas MacLaury, senior vice president of the Mattone Group, one of the developers vying for the PS 199 site. “The neighborhood gets a brand new school paid for by the residential development that rises on the site. This is a win-win for the neighborhood, children, city, and the developer.”

Not really true.  The latest ECF/DOE projects were poorly planned and are over crowded. After 4 years of displacement, the last ECF project, PS 59, opened with 1st grade and kindergarden wait-listing and a scrapped pre-K program. See the following articles:

http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20120522/midtown-east/ps-59-scraps-pre-k-program-amid-overcrowding

http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20120403/murray-hill-gramercy/waitlists-stretch-first-grade-at-ps-59

http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20120319/murray-hill-gramercy/kindergarten-waitlist-expected-at-new-ps-59-building-midtown 

Moreover, the developer lost financing and is only now looking to complete the project, see the Wall Street Journal article.

You can read more background information on our start here page.

News of our Efforts in the NY Daily News

"Upper West Side parents are blasting a little-known city program that lets private developers tear down old schools to make room for luxury housing and a new educational facility, saying the approach hastens overdevelopment and bypasses the normal public approval process.

The Department of Education’s Education Construction Fund is eying three such sites — but is encountering resistance at Public School 199 on W. 70th St., designed by the modern architect Edward Durell Stone."

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/upper-west-side-school-eyed-housing-irks-neighbors-article-1.1312096#ixzz2Q43dJaVW

Wall Street Journal Highlights Problems with Past ECB/DOE Projects

"The World-Wide project came a result of a complex public-private partnership. The site actually is owned by the city's Department of Education, which in 2006 agreed to lease it to World-Wide for 75 years. As part of the deal, World-Wide agreed to rebuild two aging schools now on the site: an elementary school and a 1,400-student high school. 

The agreement was billed by the city as an innovative way to pay for new schools, given that the proceeds from the lease—which the city in 2006 said would be worth $325 million—would more than cover the price tag for the school construction.
After the downturn hit, the tower plans were put on ice. But World-Wide went ahead with construction of the schools, which were built on the same property in a way that also left space to build the tower. The schools, which were paid for by the city, opened in the fall, and the developer also built adjacent retail space that now holds a Whole Foods."

This development raises the question of how the school was paid for when the developer postponed the building of the tower when they lost funding.  Did the city go out of pocket contrary to the so called advantage of this pubic/private development?

Go to the Full Article

The Larger Context of City Privatization

What the city is proposing with the development of public school sites fits into a larger trend of privatization of public lands in the city.

See this article on Damrosch Park where the city is allowing the use of a public park for private profit.

This New York Times article about selling off Public Libraries.

And even worse, the proposed private developments of NYCHA properties as described here and here.

Two Excerpts from the West Side Rag Article

Here are two excerpts specifically about our efforts fromt the West Side Rag article:

"Here’s what some people are doing to try to stop or slow the process:

• David Saphier, who lives near PS 199, has started a site called 199 Demolition: Community Share Center that has lots of information on the proposals, a fuill library of documents, and regular updates about the project and meetings about it. If you’re at all interested, it’s definitely worth checking out the site and getting on his email list. Saphier has also created  a petition that already has more than 400 signatures (they’re aiming for at least 500) asking the city to stop the process. “We are asking that the proposal to demolish P.S. 199 end and that a more appropriate solution to our neighborhood’s needs be developed in close cooperation with the Lincoln Square community,” the petition says.You can read and consider signing it here. Saphier says that if you contact him through the site, he can send paper copies of the petition."

and

"One quick note: we have heard from some people that there is no other room for new schools in this area. But private schools have found all sorts of space: The Mandell Schoolleased a large space in The Aire on West 67th street, and Collegiate is building a new schoolbetween West 61st and West 62nd. The city, meanwhile, has failed to prepare for the influx of new children after a huge building boom in the 2000′s, notes Saphier. These demolition plans will add more kids, and there are few indications that the new schools will be much larger than the current ones. Says Saphier:
“The city is not broke now but it does have a problem in that much real estate development was encourage by the Bloomberg administration with no provision for additional education resources. The PS 199 school district had a population increase of nearly 50% between 2000 and 2010 (Manhattan as a whole increased 3%) and yet tax breaks were given to developers with no provision for addition classroom space. The city and the DOE are now trying to correct their poor planning on the backs of an already over burdened neighborhood and the school children involved.”

Read the Full Article 

See our Coverage in the West Side Rag

PETITION AND BILL AIM TO SLOW OR STOP PROCESS OF DEMOLISHING UWS PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Posted on April 3, 2013 at 10:19 pm by West Side

New efforts are underway to stop or slow the process of demolishing two local public schools so that developers can build high-rises with new schools in their place.

Parents and local residents near PS 199, on West 70th street, have been especially active trying to stop the plans. And State Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell has introduced a new bill that would make the city use a public process to get the developments approved.

First, some background: months ago, the city put out a“request for expressions of interest” (RFEI) to developers asking them if they were interested in building new high-rises on land that currently houses PS 199 on 70th street and PS 191 on 61st street, as well as a third school on the Upper East Side. The Department of Education didn’t tell parents at the school that it was doing this. The new buildings built on the sites following demolition of the current schools would have new public schools inside them, paid for using tax-exempt bonds backed by taxpayer funds. Lease payments from developers would help fund the bond payments, meaning the city would presumably spend much less money than if the school was built using just public money.

According to drawings, parts of the new schools would be located underground — at PS 199, part of the school would be on the same level as the building’s parking garage. The residential portion of the building on 70th could be as tall as 34 stories, or 46 stories with a special permit. At the one on 61st, the building could be 20 stories, or 36 with a special permit.

Go to Full Article

Press Recognition

Our efforts are starting to get some press recognition:

The Real Deal

Curbed