New York’s Coveted Public Schools Face Pupil Jam

Boy does this sopund familiar!

BY ELISSA GOOTMAN
Published: May 9, 2008

Of all the draws of 200 Chambers Street, a luxury TriBeCa condo with floor-to-ceiling windows and a swimming pool, Sherry Hsiung was particularly attracted by Public School 234, the celebrated elementary school next door.

But when Dr. Hsiung, a dermatologist, tried to register her son for kindergarten last month, she was shocked to hear that because of a surge in applications, he would be placed on a hold list, and could not be guaranteed a seat. Instead, he could be assigned to an elementary school elsewhere in District 2, which stretches to the Upper East Side. “I’m totally at a loss,” she said. “This is a public school.”

Parents consider it a sacred tenet of city life: If you move into a good elementary school’s zone, your children can go to the school. But Lower Manhattan’s population has experienced a post-Sept. 11 baby and building boom, and the highly regarded schools in the neighborhood — P.S. 234 and P.S. 89, in Battery Park City — are faced with a glut of children and nowhere to put them. Some three dozen children are already on the waiting lists for these schools, an unusual predicament that has surprised parents, setting off an avalanche of outrage on playgrounds, at meetings and on the Internet.

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