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Hundreds of families have submitted early-bird applications to the newest charter school in Eva Moskowitz’s chain, which so far lacks a home but has seen no shortage of controversy.

Upper West Success Academy reports that 357 families have filed applications since the school was approved last month. Two-thirds live in District 3, the diverse and relatively wealthy district stretching from 59th Street to 122nd Street on the West Side of Manhattan where the school will be located.

“Given that every great elementary school on the Upper West Side is overcrowded and the terrific private schools cost more than $30,000 a year, it’s hardly surprising that Upper West Side parents are lining up for a high performing charter school,” Moskowitz said in a statement. Her organization is also touting the results of a phone poll that found 70 percent of neighborhood parents would support the school opening in the area. When told that the school would share space with another public school, support dropped to 59 percent.

But applications from 269 district families and a poll of 300 households does not “demand” make, according to parent leaders who are pushing back against the school. They say the city would do better to invest in existing schools rather than to carve out space for a charter school. (more…)

Parents and elected officials gathered at City Hall today to protest crowding in Manhattan that has led to long waiting lists for public school kindergartens. (GothamSchools Flickr)

A crowd of shell-shocked parents gathered outside City Hall this afternoon, angry that the Department of Education hasn’t found seats for the hundreds of rising kindergarten students who have been placed on waiting lists for next year at their local public schools.

The waiting lists, which include 273 names in just two Manhattan districts, mean that families in baby- and building-boom areas like the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, and Greenwich Village could find themselves unable to secure a spot at their neighborhood school’s kindergarten.

The lists attracted extra attention yesterday after news leaked that the city was considering closing or relocating prekindergarten classes at two Greenwich Village elementary schools, PS 3 and PS 41, in order to make room for kindergartners.

Parents at the rally said they felt confused and powerless. “As far as I can tell, I don’t have a Plan B — other than home school or moving to Jersey,” said Jay Douglas, whose 4-year-old son is number 42 on a waiting list for PS 187 in Washington Heights.

Elected officials joined the parents at City Hall today to criticize city officials for not planning ahead to meet the demand for spots in public schools. Scott Stringer, Manhattan’s borough president, said the DOE is “closing its eyes” to a widespread capacity problem, warning that taxpaying parents will pack up and move, taking their kids and tax dollars somewhere else if they can’t enroll in their local public school. (more…)

It’s déjà vu all over again for parents as the Department of Education reveals its latest round of school closures.

Last year, City Council members complained that the DOE announced school closures without first discussing them with community members. Like other parent advocates, council members argued that the DOE’s actions were in violation of the state’s education law, which requires the chancellor to “consult with the affected community district education council” before closing or substantially changing schools.

But despite the outcry, the district-wide community education councils aren’t any more in the loop this year.

“The CECs were notified the same day the staff was told” at each school, DOE spokeswoman Melody Meyer told me today.

For District 15′s CEC, at least, that notification came in the form of an e-mail yesterday afternoon, after the principal of PS 27 had already been told her school would be closing in June, according to the council’s president, Jennifer Stringfellow. (more…)

An adapted Obama poster used at last night's District 3 diversity rally.

An Upper West Side parent council last night put its stamp of approval on a plan to ease overcrowding in public schools there. But opponents of the plan, who have been criticizing it for the past two months as stamping out diversity, kept up their fight until the very end.

The council’s resolution means that two schools, the Anderson School and the Center School, will relocate to other buildings in the neighborhood next fall. In 2010, people living in three small sections of the neighborhood will be reassigned to different elementary schools. All that remains now is for the Department of Education to execute the changes.

Opponents of the resolution included both Center School parents who don’t want their school to move and advocates of diversity, who think the resolution will make schools in the area more segregated. Some of those parents rallied before the meeting yesterday.

(View a video from last night’s rally, during which speakers condemn Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and swear to keep fighting for diversity. Yes, “Sex and the City” actress Cynthia Nixon appears, but unlike in last week’s video, she has a non-speaking role.)

Before the council approved the resolution in a 7-1 vote, dozens of parents, neighborhood residents, and elected officials delivered one-minute speeches expressing their support or opposition. The speeches lasted more than an hour. (more…)

A few people protested outside last week's CEC meeting; more are expected tonight.

A rally this evening against a parent council resolution to relieve overcrowding in Upper West Side schools will try to move beyond a bitter fight between two schools to focus on the broader issue of diversity in the neighborhood’s schools.

The Community Education Council for District 3 voted last week after a contentious meeting to introduce a resolution that would move two schools and reduce the zones of two others. Tonight, six members of CEC 3 must vote to pass the resolution.

Before tonight’s CEC vote, a rally will give voice to parents who say the resolution, if enacted, would reduce diversity in several of the neighborhood’s school buildings. “Is this what we want in our city?” asked Jeanne Kerwin, a parent who is one of the organizers of tonight’s rally.

At stake is the fate of the entire two-month-long rezoning process. If the resolution is defeated tonight, the Department of Education, not parents, will decide how to deal with the space crunch at neighborhood schools. (more…)

The group that proposed eliminating zone lines to combat segregation in District 3 elementary schools isn’t happy with a parent council’s resolution about rezoning the district.

The Community Education Council for District 3 decided last week to take a simple approach to rezoning, recommending that two schools move to new buildings and that zone lines around two others be tweaked. Some in the community had opposed the plan on the grounds that the changes would make school buildings more segregated. But the CEC said it wasn’t permitted to consider diversity in the rezoning discussion.

In a public letter, the Center for Immigrant Families, which has long pushed for more integrated schools in the district, says it is “beyond comprehension” that the CEC’s resolution lacks “even a mention of what is equitable or fair.” (more…)

A resolution to move an Upper West Side middle school passed on Wednesday night, but not before Cynthia Nixon — “Sex and the City” actress, Alliance for Quality Education spokeswoman, and parent at the school — was shouted down briefly during a heated public comment session.

Nixon was stepping into a fight that has been raging on the Upper West Side for months. The fight began as a discussion about how to deal with overcrowding at public schools but has spiraled into a raging debate about class and race and privilege in Upper Manhattan. Confrontations have gotten incredibly emotional — and personal: On this site, a commenter posing as Cynthia Nixon’s fictional son, Brady, from “Sex and the City” accused his “mom” of hypocrisy. And parents at Nixon’s school, called the Center School, have charged another school’s parents with racism and class prejudice, citing postings from last January on the Urban Baby Web site that called Center School students “thugs.”

At issue is a plan that would move the Center School from its current home inside a larger elementary school on West 70th Street, PS 199. Supporters of the plan tout it as an easy way to relieve crowding at the elementary school, which is growing so quickly that parents fear it will not have room to hold their younger children. Opponents, including Nixon, argue that moving the Center School exacerbates segregation by race and class. (PS 199, a zoned school, is two-thirds white, while the Center School, which draws its students from throughout the district, is half white and has a higher proportion of black and Hispanic students.)

If the plan becomes official, which it almost certainly will after Wednesday’s vote, the Center School will move to another school building several blocks away. (more…)

This flier, which disparages Center School Principal Elaine Schwartz, appeared on the building's fence and around the neighborhood.

A tiny middle school on the Upper West Side that has flown under the radar for much of its 26-year history has become the object of intense scrutiny in recent weeks as its principal and parents threaten to derail the neighborhood’s plans to alleviate overcrowding.

A plan proposed last week by the Community Education Council for District 3 would require the school to move from its longtime home to a larger space several blocks away. That plan, and the Department of Education’s response to it, will be the topic of a CEC 3 meeting tonight.

But Center School Principal Elaine Schwartz has opposed relocating since the DOE originally suggested the idea in September, and the school’s loyal parents have lined up behind her.

“We are totally unified,” parent Alan Madison told me. “When it comes to the education of our children, we listen to [Schwartz].”

Schwartz, the 26-year-old school’s founding principal, told the New York Times last week that she opposed a move under any circumstances.

As Schwartz and her school have dug their feet in, tension has wracked the PS 199 building on West 70 Street, where the Center School is the sole occupant of the top floor. (more…)

CIF's 2003 report about segregation in District 3

Rather than tinkering with zone lines, District 3 should do away with school zones altogether and instead institute a near-random lottery for school placement, advocates for the district’s immigrant families say.

The Center for Immigrant Families says students should be assigned to schools not because of where they live but by a lottery that takes into socioeconomic status into account. This type of admissions system, called a “controlled choice” program, would be radical for New York City.

Cambridge, Mass., has had a controlled choice policy in place for more than two decades. Some parents in Cambridge say the policy is too formulaic and are advocating for a return to neighborhood schools, the Harvard Crimson recently reported.

In a letter sent yesterday to the Community Education Council for District 3, CIF argues that the district’s residential segregation requires attention: “The catchment seats increasingly reflect the gentrifying reality of our neighborhoods and further cement segregation.” (more…)

The New York Times reported yesterday that anxiety over an impending rezoning of the Upper West Side had families frantic about whether their assigned neighborhood school could change overnight. Last night, the parent group that ultimately gets to approve any change took a step toward eliminating the worries, recommending a scaled-down rezoning that would affect only a small number of families.

Since the Department of Education first proposed rezoning the area in late September, some Upper West Side families feared being shut out of their neighborhood school, and at least one school, the Center School, railed against a plan that would require a handful of schools to relocate.

In a meeting last night that was closed to public comment, the Community Education Council for District 3 recommended that the Center School vacate the building it shares with PS 199, in which classes must be held in hallways, and move seven blocks south to PS 9. Space would be made available there by relocating the citywide gifted school, Anderson, to a middle school building on West 77 Street.

Center School administrators and parents oppose such a move, saying that the school has thrived in its current location, despite its tight quarters. (more…)