Brooklyn Ed Council Votes to Rezone, Integrate PS 307 and PS 8

Pictured: Three potential students of a re-zoned Public School 307, which would unite kids from the swiftly gentrifying DUMBO neighborhood with those from Vinegar Hill’s affordable Farragut Houses.

UPDATE: Brooklyn’s Community Education Council 13 has voted 6-3 in favor of rezoning PS 307 and PS 8.

Below, a live blog of the Tuesday-night vote.

New York City’s “extraordinarily segregated” school system — the most segregated, according to UCLA researchers, in all America — could see one of its 32 mini-districts take a painful first step toward desegregation Tuesday night.

Just after 9 p.m., the 10 elected members of Community Education Council 13 (CEC 13) are scheduled to vote on a crazy-controversial NYC Department of Education (DOE) plan to mix up the default student populations for Public School 307 and Public School 8.

Aka, rezone.

“I don’t think, if I can remember — and I’ve been in this district forever — there’s ever been an issue this publicized,” Ed Brown, a member of CEC 13, said at the council’s last meeting on the issue.

“I’m having rezoning nightmares at night,” Brown said. ”I’m about to rezone my bathroom.”

Community School District 13 encompasses Brooklyn Heights, Downtown Brooklyn, DUMBO, Vinegar Hill, Prospect Heights and parts of Park Slope and Bed-Stuy.

However, this vote targets two schools in particular. PS 307, a plain brick building in Vinegar Hill, is currently filled mostly with low-income black kids — many of them from the Farragut Houses, an affordable-housing project across the street. PS 8, one mile west, is a much-clawed-over campus in tony Brooklyn Heights whose notorious 2015 kindergarten wait list launched a thousand helicopter-parent panic attacks.

So this new rezoning plan would essentially pull kids from gentrified DUMBO out of PS 8’s zone and into PS 307’s zone — thus freeing up space at PS 8 and diversifying the student population at PS 307. (At least in theory.)

The only real unifying reaction to this process, among the various Brooklyn communities affected by it, has been outrage.

Many DUMBO and (non-Farragut) Vinegar Hill parents — to generalize — feel they were never consulted by city officials, and are concerned about PS 307’s lower-range test scores. PS 307 parents — again, to generalize — feel that after years of building a quality, community-tailored education haven for their kids with no help from the DOE, city officials are now swooping in to flip it into another white school, all in the interest of the gentrifiers. And Brooklyn Heights parents mostly just feel like everyone isn’t taking the horrors of last year’s wait list seriously enough.

Now, with only 10 days left for NYC parents to register their kindergartners for the 2016-17 school year, tonight’s 6:30 p.m. meeting at PS 56 in Clinton Hill is probably going to be as sardined as Times Square at the ball drop.

But no need to brave the cold, and the madhouse!

Here lies your live Patch dispatch from Tuesday night’s wildly anticipated CEC13 vote on rezoning — and partially desegregating — two very different Brooklyn schools.

7 p.m.

PS 56’s auditorium is filling up slowly. All the regulars are here: the beat reporters, a couple TV news crews, PTA squads from both schools, a few DOE employees and, of course, a kid or two. The rezoning hoopla won’t start until around 8:30 p.m., so right now councilmembers are taking some time to rag on Fort Greene Success Academy, a local charter school whose principal just took leave amid a major scandal involving a ”Got to Go” list he made of kids perceived to be problematic. (A few of those kids’ parents are now suing the school in federal court.) “There’s lots going on in District 13 besides rezoning, believe it or not,” David Goldsmith, the council president, says to the gathering crowd.

7:30 p.m.

While we wait, here’s some strong insight and background on tonight’s decision from Rob Underwood, one of 10 voting councilmembers. He notes that even if DUMBO and Vinegar Hill kids are herded into the PS 307 zone, their parents could very well still choose not to send them to 307. He knows this because he’s watching the worst-case scenario play out in Park Slope. ”At my daughter’s pre-K at PS/MS 282, there are 10 kids in her class,” he writes. “We can’t give Pre-K seats away at 282, and the school is in the middle of Park Slope, one of the neighborhoods supposedly most burdened with overcrowded schools and generally considered a pretty desirable place for child rearing.”

“What’s different about 282 than the rest of the Park Slope schools?” he asks. “282 is 90% students of color.”

8 p.m.

Councilmembers have pretty much wrapped up all other business now, and are spending an impressive amount of time debating whether members of the public should be able to talk into the mic about PS 307 and PS 8 rezoning before 8:30 p.m. — or whether we should all just ”stare each other in the eyes” until the rezoning meeting’s official start time. Neighborhood politics! Woot.

8:20 p.m.

Parents from both PS 307 and PS 8 — but mainly the former — are starting to flood the room now and add their names to the public-comment list. Councilmembers appear worried that there won’t be enough time to squeeze each required segment of the rezoning meeting into a 60-minute window without the final vote feeling rushed/panicked. (Which has really been the main source of outcry throughout this whole process — a sense of hastiness and suddenness to a decision that could alter thousands of little lives.) Plus, Goldsmith, council president, has half-joked that PS 56’s janitor, who is “much larger” than he, is threatening to get physical if everyone isn’t out of here by 9:30 p.m. So yeah, this kind of feels like the calm before the storm.

8:45 p.m.

This place just got lit, quick. DOE employees are pacing the aisles nervously. The principals of PS 307 and PS 8 (pictured above) are sitting side-by-side in the center of the auditorium, also looking quite nervous but maintaining a united front. Local politicians are spitting their pieces into the mic like their careers depend on it. “Tonight is historical,” New York City Councilmember Laurie Cumbo says. ”This particular vote is being watched nationwide.” Cumbo says that although she ultimately supports the rezoning, she will fight for a mandate that PS 307’s student population remain 65 percent low-income. Next up is New York City Councilman Steve Levin, fresh off the controversial Brooklyn Heights library sale. He’s pro-rezoning, too. “We can use this opportunity to say to the world that we believe in diversity in our schools,” Levin says, adding: “We want to leave school segregation in our past and move forward together, and we owe that to our children.” (More on Levin’s stance here.)

9:10 p.m.

This public-comment period is shaping up to be one of the fieriest yet. Farragut Houses native Debra Stuart, a career parole officer, is taking the audience to church. “Schools have been systematically segregated into areas of people of color, and that hasn’t been a problem [until now],” she says. Stuart says she’s worried PS 307 won’t remain a sanctuary for the community that built it, and that local kids will be pushed out by more affluent newcomers. ”I am tired of better things being brought into the community and the community being denied those better things,” she says.

9:15 p.m.

Stuart is followed by three more opponents of the rezoning, including two representatives from the Church of the Open Door, Farragut’s go-to house of worship. “I say no! I say no! I say no!” one of the church reps shouts, to echoes of “No!” from the crowd.

9:20 p.m.

Now it’s DUMBO’s time to get angry. “The DOE did not even attempt to engage with the DUMBO community,” says local resident Doreen Gallo, reading from a statement prepared by DUMBO and Vinegar Hill neighborhood groups. She says PS 8’s wait list “should not take precedent over the rest of the CEC 13’s concerns.”

In a shock move, the normally verbose Ansley Samson, co-president of the PS 8 PTA, decides not to deliver her public comment. So the co-president of PS 307’s PTA gets in the last word, expressing outrage that a school that ”black and brown people built” might lose ownership to Brooklyn’s new gentry. “We feel disrespected,” he says.

9:40 p.m.

Each councilmember is now spending a couple minutes summing up his or her thoughts on this whole process. So far, Renee Burke, Amy Shire and Vascilla Caldeira appear to be on board with the rezoning plan, although they haven’t officially cast their votes. “It ain’t all about us protecting our little piece [of land] here,” Burke says. “It’s about expanding what we have and making it better.” Caldiera, for her part, says, almost on the verge of tears: “When our kids go to school, they’re not thinking about whether Johnny or Shaniqua have two different colored skins. They’re thinking about learning and playing… and if you feel like that shouldn’t happen, then you shouldn’t have moved to Brooklyn.”

(“I had laryngitis, but you know, I’m thankful that the lord gave me this opportunity to speak,“ Caldiera adds. Goldsmith, council president, confirms: “She really had no voice before this meeting. Now that is divine intervention.”)

9:55 p.m.

Goldsmith and Councilmember Ed Brown (pictured on the mic, below) also appear to be on board. ”With the eyes of a nation upon us... voting ’Yes’ means that we refuse to live as victims of the past,” Goldsmith says, to a collective snicker from the DUMBO/Vinegar Hill block in the fourth row. ”No, no, no,” they chant in a whisper. Brown drowns them out when he says: ”The other element in the room is not just race. It’s fear. ... What has happened on both sides, is that adults have frozen their minds.”

10:10 p.m.

Councilmember Horace Allison’s gears are still turning, it seems. Councilmember Underwood’s stance is also unclear, as he spends his couple minutes on the mic asking last-minute technical questions of DOE staffers in the front row. (Who, at this point, cannot contain their excitement — they’re grinning like a bunch of kids in a candy store.)

10:20 p.m.

Ben Greene, who serves as both CEC 13 member and co-president of PS 307’s PTA, is the first to come out expressly against the rezoning. “I don’t think we’re going to make history as much as we think, because I don’t think this proposal is set up to make history,” he says. Greene gets the loudest applause of the night when he ends his spiel with: “We at 307 want people who want to come.”

10:25 p.m.

The last councilmember to weigh in, Maggie Spillane, directly contradicts Greene. “I am not convinced that more time is going to make [the integration] process better or easier,” she says, apparently leaning toward the rezone. The auditorium is hushed and tense; all that’s left now is an official tally.

10:30 p.m.

The council has voted 6-3 in favor of rezoning PS 307 and PS 8. Burke voted No; Shire voted Yes; Caldeira voted Yes; Goldsmith voted Yes; Brown voted Yes; Allison voted No; Underwood voted Yes; Greene voted No; and Spillane voted Yes.