UFT, Elected Officials Eye State Site for New School; Cite Need in Village
By ARI PAUL
A school may grow in Manhattan.

The Chief-Leader/Adrienne Haywood James 'WHEN YOU FIND SPACE, GRAB IT': United Federation of Teachers Vice President Richard Farkas said the availability of a state building on Morton St. is a perfect match for a neighborhood in need of a school and with 'no space' elsewhere to build it.

With the support of the United Federation of Teachers, which believes school overcrowding is straining its members, Greenwich Village activists took a step forward Aug. 6 in turning a state building on Morton St. into a public middle school, something the neighborhood lacks.

The building at 75 Morton St. is currently owned by the Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, but the state had been seeking to sell it for either commercial or high-end residential development. Local parents had been pushing for a new school, saying that overcrowding was forcing them to send their children either to expensive private schools or to public schools outside the neighborhood.

Took Case to Chancellor

"The good news is, is that because of everyone's activism ... this issue has been brought to the Empire State Development Corporation; this issue has been brought directly to the Chancellor," City Council Speaker and mayoral hopeful Christine Quinn told the crowd assembled in front of the building. "I am very confident that because of today's event, because of everyone's work we will be standing outside this building in a different way welcoming students into this building."

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and Community Board 2 leaders also voiced optimism that the talks with the city would result in adding the school on Morton St. as well as developing two small high schools west towards the Hudson River.

Plays Suburban Card

UFT Middle Schools Vice President Richard Farkas said that the city should convert the space into a school because Mayor Bloomberg had agreed with the union that class size in the middle schools should be reduced.

"Do any of our parents send their kids to schools where we have sixth, seventh and eighth grades of 25?" he asked the crowd, prompting a cry of "No" from parents. "Well, they do on Long Island and they do in Westchester, and why can't we have it here?"

Mr. Farkas later said that while money was available to expand, the problem in Manhattan centered on the lack of available space. Coming out of District 24 in Queens, Mr. Farkas noted that then-Queens Borough President Claire Shulman in the 1990s created a "war room" addressing the issue and successfully added modular space. He said a similar war room in Manhattan under the auspices of Borough President Stringer would yield similar results.

"What we have in Manhattan is a problem in District 2, which is just experiencing a tremendous growth, and there's no space to build schools," Mr. Farkas said. "So, when you have a space like this, this is something that we have to latch on to because it just doesn't exist."

Mr. Stringer vowed that his education war room would include input on school development from parent advocacy groups and educators' unions.

"We're all going to be at the table," Mr. Stringer said. "We're establishing a war room-type mentality to look at school congestion not on a monthly or on a yearly basis, but on a weekly basis."