Wednesday Linkfest
Fourth Avenue Construction. Photo by Hugh Crawford New Subway Cars with Info [NY Times] Smith Street Subway Restored [NY Daily News] Brighton Board Axes Landlord [NY Daily News] 70 Washington Update [Curbed] NYC Condo Market Slowing a Bit [UPI] $1.4 Million for a Playground? [Daily Heights]
Fourth Avenue Construction. Photo by Hugh Crawford
New Subway Cars with Info [NY Times]
Smith Street Subway Restored [NY Daily News]
Brighton Board Axes Landlord [NY Daily News]
70 Washington Update [Curbed]
NYC Condo Market Slowing a Bit [UPI]
$1.4 Million for a Playground? [Daily Heights]
Back to the shitboxes, Mr Anonymous: Maybe your 100 year old house is a shit box and if it is then maybe you should spend the time to fix it. But most of the houses in this area have withstood the test of time which I can assure you will not be the case for the Katan Shitboxes. Everything that he builds is inferior and damaged. What he does is work the system for profit. He pay’s off, threatens and bullies his way through our city. The system is designed to protect Vultures like him. Not the poor slobs that work for him, or the neighborhoods that he overruns and last but not least the people who buy his SHITBOXES. Did You ever try to sue someone like him?
I agree — some parents are just obsesssive about PS 321, but I’ve also heard from parents who feet that it’s already too crowded and their kids don’t get enough individual attention.
I have heard very good things about PS 39, and I’ve even directed parents to the Board of Ed’s website to compare scores, etc., but some of them just don’t care — it’s 321 or nothing!
The most important factor in eductational success will always be parental involvement. These parents who think that their kid will automatically be a genius because he goes to a certain school may be in for a rude awakening.
And considering that most of the people buying here are well-educated themselves, I don’t think they really need to worry about their kids’ academic success, provided they make the effort to consecrate sufficient time to helping the kids with their homework, reading to/with them, etc…
I have a lot of friends with kids at PS 39 – sounds like parental involvement is on the upswing, and that’s just as important to a good school as having a good principal (well, both are needed actually). If only real estate agents start touting 39 the way they do 321 – I think spreading the hype around would help everyone.
and per David’s question, it’s not that one development I’m thinking about, there are many more just finished or nearing completion – several new condo units on 3rd below 5th ave., and those big new buildings on Carroll and 4th, just off the top of my head…
Be realistic about this – its 150 units and the biggest unit is 2brs how many kids could possibly come out of this development?
While we are on the subject, how is PS 124? My kids are beginning to reach the age when this all becomes relevant and we feed to that school…
Thanks
Oh, also, you’re right that the real solution is to improve other schools in the area, but frankly most of them are quite good by NYC standards and tend to be avoided by lemming-like parents on the basis of a few impressions they hear thirdhand at the playground. (But I’m biased, since I have a kid at PS 39.)
Agreed, but I guess what I’m saying is, if you think that PS 321 parents are going to be upset by the crowding, imagine the wailing if the city actually does something about the crowding by building a new school — and zoning some of the old PS 321 families out of the new, smaller 321 zone.
And by the way, if that rezoning happens, it *should* shut out students above 7th Avenue as much as students below 7th. No one should be able to claim they have more right to stay in the zone because their rent is higher or their home worth more. Too bad for them. It doesn’t matter what your real estate agent told you or how much more you paid because you knew you were getting into 321 — taking that kind of thing into account would be antithetical to the idea of public education.
As for the Children’s School, it’s not a zoned school. There’s no catchment area and admission is by lottery. Crowded or not, more construction should not affect it one way or another, except maybe to make it harder to get in.
Rezoning is the most likely of those scenarios, and it’s just as likely the students shut out will be from above 7th ave. as below.
Once the envisioned overcrowding happens, 321 will certainly not be as highly esteemed as it is now. It doesn’t matter whether new development is on 4th ave or PPW, or how affordable it is – the school can’t absorb all those kids without losing some of the things that make it so desirable.
Hopefully by then, parents will have invested as much energy to help improve other nearby schools as they do now shoehorning themselves into the “good” school zone.
again, I do think the 4th ave. upzoning isn’t bad by itself, but the assumption that the existing schools can handle all the extra students without any plans to expand (the Children’s School is crowded too), or create a new school, is very shortsighted. Especially considering that good schools are such a big part of the real estate pitch.
As I recall, school crowding was taken into consideration, or at least discussed, during the rezoning. But ultimately the decision was, better to build on a big avenue than on the side streets. Really, what’s the alternative? Allow for expanded building on 4th Ave. *except* in the school zone for the richest Park Slopers?
321 is a victim of its own success, or its own reputation, anyway. You can’t expect people not to want to move there. So either you build more housing in the zone, to accomodate demand, or you forbid the housing and thus drive up the already inflated prices in the zone — using zoning to create, in essence, a prohibitively expensive private school district within a public system. That can’t be the goal of zoning policy.
The other option, of course, is to expand, but 321 has only so much room to expand on its physical plant. Eventually, you can either have more crowding… or you can build another school and rezone. And won’t the families who are redistricted out of the 321 zone be delighted then!