While hydrofracking was not listed on the packed agenda for Upper West Side Community Board 7’s first meeting of the new year last week, the contentious issue did receive a fair amount of attention during the public session of the meeting. The general consensus in the room was opposition to any fracking in upstate New York, which Gov. Cuomo appears on the verge of approving.

New York State Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal, who represents District 67, stated that there should be “no rush” to approve fracking, citing the inadequacy of the Department of Environmental Conservation health and safety reports and the potential costs to the climate. Her firm stance on the issue was met with applause from concerned community members who attended the forum and board members alike. Several politicians and their spokesmen echoed this call for caution. The board has taken

New York State Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal

the position that fracking should not be done unless the safety of the water supply for 8 million New Yorkers can be assured, CB7 Chair Mark Diller said in a phone interview after the meeting.

Angela Fox, a concerned community member and head of an anti-fracking coalition called The Mothers Project, which emphasizes the danger to women and children who might be exposed to toxins, namely radon, in gas extracted by fracking. This danger exists whether or not New York State performs fracking itself, since the city pipes in fracked gas from other locales. “She painted the picture of a mother standing at the stove with a baby on her hip, cooking dinner on a gas stove using fracked gas and absorbing the toxins,” Diller said.

“Radon, a byproduct of fracking, is the second leading cause of lung cancer next to cigarettes,” Fox pointed out. “If we get Marcellus Shale gas from nearby, it doesn’t dissipate.” She is also, notably, the mother of Josh Fox, a prominent environmental activist who directed Gasland, a documentary that exposed the dangers of fracking.

It is questionable what CB7 can do to mitigate the damages imposed by fracking if Gov. Cuomo does decide to approve it in select areas upstate, but local legislators such as Rosenthal and newly sworn-in Sen. Brad Hoylman (who replaced Tom Duane) offered a few words on the issue. Both say they remain committed to continuing the legislative fight for their respective districts.

Having reached a consensus on fracking, the board got down to business on issues that proved thornier to reach agreement on, including some lengthy discussion on the Manhattan Core Parking Amendment, which affects off-street parking regulations in Manhattan Community Districts 1-8, such as how many spaces parking garages must set aside for monthly versus transient parkers. “Our concern,” said Diller, “is that we do not want to do anything that will encourage more driving to the Upper West Side.”

Additional reporting by Amy Zimmerman.

Laurence Tamaccio lives near the West Side Highway, the part that exposes its aged, rusty underbelly and concrete legs, held high above Riverside Park South. In his view, it’s an eyesore—and he wants to cover it with vines and waterfalls.

“Seeing it on a daily basis, it started to sort of wear me down aesthetically,” he said.

Tamaccio, an architect who describes his job as “making things that look awful look better,” posted slides of his High Line-esque vision on YouTube. Trellises and ivy cover the highway’s pillars from 61st Street to 72nd street in the digital image of Tamaccio’s dream.

Tamaccio, who lives on Riverside Boulevard, has launched a petition to achieve community support, though it hasn’t circulated widely yet.

Community Board 7 passed a resolution to support “continued exploration,” but Tamaccio says, “The community is not as aware as it needs to be.”

Community Board 7 Chair Mark Diller said it’s safe to say that no one finds the highway attractive. He added, “I have not heard other proposals to beautify the highway.” He has heard, though, efforts to keep the highway elevated for people who use the park beneath it.

Heather Lipton of 140 Riverside Blvd. said, “Vines would be gorgeous,” though she hadn’t considered the highway to be an issue before.

“After a while you kind of get used to it,” said Leslie Pilcher, 31, of West 63rd Street.

Tamaccio doesn’t believe painting the highway would be enough.

John Hart, an artist who has lived nearby for over 20 years, disagrees. “A light blue would be better,” he said, to “blend it in with the sky.” The vines on the structure, he said, “would draw more attention to it.”

Jerry Julian, 45, who has lived in the area for several months, said he agrees with Tamaccio that the structure needs to be reworked. “I would love to do what Boston did with the Big Dig and put it underground,” he said.

There have been efforts to rebuild the highway underground. It was originally elevated from 72nd Street to Chambers Street but a downtown section collapsed in 1973, leading to a project called “Westway,” which died after years of controversy. Then there was a plan for the Trump (later Extell) developers to rebuild the park and bury the highway but necessary federal transportation funds have yet to be acquired.

“People are under the impression that ultimately it’s going to be underground,” Tamaccio said. There is space for a tunnel, but after Hurricane Sandy sent Hudson River water onto the park, Tamaccio thinks it’s less likely the tunnel will ever be built.

There are skeletal ramps from the old highway, protruding from the new one above the park south of 72nd Street. Tamaccio sees these shelf-like pieces as potential waterfall areas.

He says the skeletal strips of old highway have preferable structure, upheld by arches. The elevated track for the 7 train in Queens also has a pleasing pattern of arches, he says, but most of the highway over Riverside Park South seems like a “patch-up” job.

His plan has grown to include gray water catching systems to make use of drainage pipes and a year-round café to assist with funding—though after Sandy, the café should be elevated, he said.
Drawing from how the High Line came about, Tamaccio says the next stage is to form a nonprofit organization. He’s talking to experts, officials and collaborators.

“It’s my community and it affects thousands of other people,” he said, adding, “It’s part of the Manhattan greenway.”

Photo by iheartfishtown, courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.

When the Department of Homeless Services (DHS) announced in July that it would soon move 200 homeless families into two residential West 95th Street Buildings, community members, elected officials and Community Board 7 (CB7) objected. The buildings were designed as single room occupancy units for low income residents, they argued, and were not equipped to provide treatment for the homeless’ large population of addicts and the mentally ill.

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, City Council Member Gale Brewer, Assembly member Linda Rosenthal and Community Board 7 chair Mark Diller sent a letter to DHS Commissioner Seth Diamond at the time asking him to suspend efforts to place the homeless families in the two buildings, 316 and 330 West 95th Street.

Yesterday, DHS decided not to listen. The Department moved 10 of the families into the former building, with plans to add the remaining 190 – a total of over 400 new residents – to both buildings over the next few months, according to Diamond.

“We’re absolutely furious about it,” one of the buildings’ 71 existing residents told New York Post. “No one was told anything at all.”

Now, Stringer, Brewer and Rosenthal are joining with State Senator Adriano Espaillat, Community Board 7 and Upper West Side residents in calling on DHS again to suspend immediately all efforts to refer clients to the buildings.

“[T]he proposal to house 200 adults, who are currently homeless, in 100 tiny rooms at 316 and 330 West 95 Street on a temporary basis is poor planning, poor policy, and includes little if any transparency,” said Brewer in a statement. “The process should have included a substantive planning discussion with Community Board 7, elected officials, current residents of the two buildings, and responsible neighborhood leaders to find a solution to the need for shelter for homeless individuals.”

Stringer agreed. “New Yorkers understand that all neighborhoods share in the responsibility to provide housing to those in need,” he said in a statement. “But abruptly moving a 400-person shelter into a residential neighborhood in the dead of summer with no community consultation, no contract and no long-term plan only creates bad will and sets back the cause of fighting homelessness.”

“By failing to conduct a dialogue with the community and the elected officials who represent it,” said Rosenthal, “DHS and its former commissioner Robert Hess have disrespected thoroughly this neighborhood.”

According to a letter sent to Community Board 7 on July 19, DHS will be contracting with a company called Aguila Inc. to operate transitional housing facilities at 316 and 330 W. 95th St. They will house 200 adult families, which could mean upward of 400 individuals.

When determining where and how to house its homeless residents, the city is pulled by two laws that sometimes place a greater burden on certain communities. New York is a right-to-shelter city, meaning that DHS is responsible for providing a bed for every resident, every night. It also has to adhere to the fair share doctrine that calls for every community district to house an equal number of the city’s homeless population—in other words, the city can’t place a cluster of shelters in one neighborhood in the Bronx and leave other neighborhoods without any shelters.

But when the number of homeless New Yorkers comes close to the number of available beds, an emergency situation is created that allows DHS to site temporary transitional housing in neighborhoods without regard to the fair share rules. It’s this emergency loophole that has Upper West Siders upset.

“All of [the elected officials] have gotten lots of emails from residents in the community who are just fed up with the city placing people on 94th and 95th Street corridors when there’s a homeless emergency,” said Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal. “This is a decade already that they’ve looked at this area as the go-to place. This is a very generous and giving neighborhood, but I think the people in the neighborhood have just reached their limit.”

Rosenthal joined City Council Member Gale Brewer, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and Community Board 7 chair Mark Diller in sending a letter to DHS Commissioner Seth Diamond, strongly urging him to suspend the efforts to move people into the West 95th Street facilities.

Part of the objection from local officials stems from the fact that these buildings were designed as single room occupancy (SRO) units, small, inexpensive rooms with shared bathroom and kitchen facilities that could provide permanent housing for low-income residents. But owners and landlords of SROs have a greater incentive to rent to DHS, which Rosenthal said pays $111 per room per day, adding up to much more than a typical $600 or $700-per-month rent on an SRO unit.

Locals insist that they don’t object to housing the homeless in their community, but that they shouldn’t be burdened with a sudden influx of homeless adults when they already have a high number of shelters.

“The Upper West Side in general, and this corridor of the West 90s in particular, currently provides shelter to the homeless and other vulnerable populations through a variety of facilities. These buildings collectively serve thousands of people,” read part of the letter to Diamond.

“This is not NIMBY,” said Diller in an email. “In fact, there are existing buildings being used to serve vulnerable populations as close as a half-block from the location. Rather, it is about achieving the right kind of balance for the vulnerable population, the other residents of the proposed buildings and the surrounding community.”

DHS did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this article, and Rosenthal said that the agency has not been forthcoming with the community.

Robert Hess, a former DHS commissioner who is now the chairman and CEO of Housing Solutions USA, which will be merging with Aguila and operating the facilities, wrote in a letter to the Community Board that his company “seek[s] to meet [clients’] needs through a comprehensive continuum of care, knowing the lasting, positive change cannot occur unless the complexity of the problems our clients face is acknowledged and addressed.”

Hess would not speak with a reporter for this story, and his company repeatedly refused to answer any questions about the operations planned for 316 and 330 W. 95th St.

Students study Hebrew at another location of the Hebrew Charter Network.

A neighborhood that went to battle to fiercely oppose the opening of one charter school in the recent past is now set to welcome another with open arms.

The Hebrew Charter School Center is preparing to open its newest school in Community Education District 3, which covers the Upper West Side as well as parts of West and Central Harlem. Last year, many Upper West Side parents and politicians, as well as the community board and the Community Education Council (CEC), fought to keep a branch of the Success Academy Charter Network from opening there, mostly based on the fact that the school was to be co-located with the Brandeis High School complex.

Despite the vehement objections of education activists and two lawsuits, the school opened last fall and received 515 applications from within the district for 74 seats for the 2012-2013 school year.

But the Hebrew Charter school has received stamps of approval from the CEC and the community board and received its charter from the New York State Board of Regents in June, clearing the way for it to open in the fall of 2013 somewhere in southern Harlem. It will be called Harlem Hebrew Language Academy.

Mark Diller, chair of Community Board 7, said that one of the most attractive parts of the school’s application to the board was that it was committed to finding its own privately owned space and would not be co-located with an existing public school.

“It truly net adds seats rather than reallocating them,” Diller said in an email. “[The school also] has both a commitment to and a track record (at its sister school in Brooklyn) of encouraging applications from and actually enrolling and serving children with a variety of special needs, as well as English language learners.”

Diller said that the presentation made to the board focused on the value of bilingual education; how it can help those struggling with English as well as create a “level playing field” as all of the students learn Hebrew for the first time.

That element, the dual-language immersion program, is the other thing that sets the future school apart from other educational options in the neighborhood. The school will teach secular Hebrew, which board member David Gedzelman said is one of the ways they can attract a very diverse student body.

“We try to create integrated schools,” Gedzelman said. “We try to position our schools in geographic areas where the district itself is diverse so that we can create diversity.”

Gedzelman points to their school in Brooklyn, which he said has about 45 percent minority students, as an example of the makeup they hope to have for District 3.

“Our model of a dual-language program with modern Israeli Hebrew [means] there’s one constituency that naturally seeks out the school”—Jewish families—“and that helps to diversify the school,” he said.

Gedzelman said they’ve been working with churches and community-based organizations in Harlem to get the word out about the school and convince families that it’s not just for Jewish kids.

“Hebrew has gone through a lot of evolution over the last 30 years,” Gedzelman said. “It’s a modern secular language. It’s the language of the state of Israel, which has 7 million citizens—25 percent of the population is actually not Jewish.”

He said that Israel’s growing tech sector, as well as Technion—Israel Institute of Technology’s partnership with Cornell University to build a giant tech campus on Roosevelt Island in the next few years, makes Hebrew an attractive second language for any young children. One of the teachers at their Brooklyn school, an African American and a Muslim, learned Hebrew himself in order to teach gym classes in two languages, Gedzelman said.

The teaching model at the school will be based on immersive language learning as well as constant individualized assessment of students to tailor their learning. There will also be an emphasis on community service. The school plans to open with three sections of kindergarten students, 26 in each class. Its charter is currently K-5, but Gedzelman said they hope to expand up to 8th grade when they renew their charter.

The proposal would add 190 buildings to the Upper West Side’s Riverside-West End Historic District between West 79th and 87th streets. Although the proposal must go before the City Council, which has 120 days to make its decision, many who had been promoting the extension for years consider this small step a success

“This extension is a perfect complement to the existing historic district and deserves the same degree of protection,” said Robert B. Tierney, chairman of the LPC, in a press release. “A number of owners, block associations and preservation advocacy groups, in particular the West End Preservation Society, were instrumental in bringing this extension to fruition, demonstrating the broad-based support for the landmark protection of this historic neighborhood.
Josette Amato, executive director of the West End Preservation Society, said that since its founding in 2007, the organization has pushed for an extension of the district. The group commissioned a Columbia University study to evaluate the stretch of blocks in March 2009. As it turned out, the commission offered to expand the district even further than the society initially suggested—a welcome change for Amato.

“We had several representatives at the vote and we were just overwhelmed—we were so incredibly happy,” Amato said. “Some people in the room were actually breaking down in tears. We were just thrilled.”

Local resident Sukey Gutin, who lives on West End Avenue and West 85th Street, thinks the decision fosters an awareness of the neighborhood’s rich background.

“I’m absolutely delighted because we’re preserving some history, which doesn’t seem to mean much to most people,” she said. “This district is livable and charming, and I think it’s one of the last areas that can be preserved.”

Mark Diller, chair of the Upper West Side’s Community Board 7, said the Board “enthusiastically and overwhelmingly” supported the creation of the Riverside-West End Historic District.

“West End Avenue is a desirable neighborhood, and it can only remain so if it is preserved,” Diller said. “It takes government to do it, and I’m proud that my Board supported it.”

Local elected officials have also expressed their support for the district extension, and Amato said their help was instrumental in gaining the commission’s favor.

“Regrettably, West End buildings are being demolished one by one,” said Council Member Gale Brewer in a statement. “Unless we act, it will become just another hodge-podge of high-rise warehouses occupied by people who think of New York as a motel on the way to somewhere else.”

The extension is only one piece of a larger proposal under consideration. The commission will also consider extending the West End Collegiate District, from West 70th to West 79th Street, and the far northern end of the district, from West 89th to West 109th Street.
Despite this success, Cristiana Peña, interim executive director of LANDMARK WEST!, another group that advocated for the extension, doesn’t think future extensions will be a shoe-in.

“West Siders know better than to think of this as a fait accompli,” Peña said in an email. “Our continued collaboration and perseverance is critical.”

The extension has not achieved all-around support; the Real Estate Board of New York has spoken out against it, arguing that further landmarking would prevent property owners from making even the slightest changes to their buildings. The Board did not respond to requests for comment.

But Amato said that the landmarking will not heavily hinder building changes.

“We don’t see it as dropping development or freezing anything in time,” she said. “What we do see it as is having oversight or guidance on what changes will take place and what development will actually occur. We don’t think this will prevent anything from changing.”

Community Board 7 wants Fashion Week to find a new home.

Residents have long complained about the noise, removal of greenery and lack of access to Damrosch Park because of the many concessionaires that occupy the space throughout the year, all issues addressed in the Board’s resolution. And as locals see it, Fashion Week is the biggest culprit.

“These are problems that need to be solved right under the windows of working people at the Amsterdam Houses and heard beyond that immediate area,” said Mark Diller, the chair of Community Board 7. “There’s almost nothing left of what the community can use of Damrosch Park.”

Fashion Week moved from Bryant Park to Damrosch Park, a small corner of Lincoln Center’s campus, in 2010. Residents near Bryant Park once complained about the noise and crowding that Fashion Week brings; today, Damrosch Park locals are crying foul.
“It’s just a shame,” said Claudette Ekberg, who has lived near Lincoln Center for 50 years. “I try to avoid it because of all the hoopla going on.”

Gail Missener, a resident of the nearby Amsterdam Houses, is mostly concerned about the noise emanating from the park.
“Why do they have to be so loud? You’d think they’re playing for the deaf,” Missener said.

Along with Fashion Week, the Big Apple Circus and other concessionaires keep Damrosch Park abuzz 10 months out of the year. The park is operated by the Department of Parks and Recreation; in July 2010, it began a 10-year license agreement with Lincoln Center, which allows the Center to contract with third-party concessionaires to hold private, commercial events in the park. In its resolution, the Board recommended that residents should be able to have year-round access to the park.

Community Board 7 is also concerned that neither the license agreement between the city and Lincoln Center nor the agreements between Lincoln Center and its concessionaires were submitted to the Board for approval.

“A very important part of the public outreach is that they had no say in the seizing of their park, and this resolution speaks to that,” said Geoffrey Croft, president of New York City Parks Advocates. “It remains to be seen, of course, if the administration is going to continue to ignore the wishes and desires of the community.”

Council Member Gale Brewer conditionally approved the twice-yearly event finishing out the five years at the park and has maintained her support for the jobs that Fashion Week provides. However, the noise complaints must be addressed, she said, and residents must be able to get around while Fashion Week is in session.

“There is also an issue of making sure that there is access to the street,” Brewer said, adding that local residents are also inconvenienced by the nearby Fordham University construction. “If these issues are dealt with, I will not object to the five years.”

Brewer sent a letter in April to Mark Page, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, asking about the law regarding revenue generated from staged events at the park and whether there is an exception that allows the money to go to Lincoln Center instead of the city’s general fund. Page’s response noted that the issue is the subject of potential litigation and that he had forwarded Brewer’s concerns to the law department.

Diller said he values the board’s relationship with the Parks Department and the mayor’s office and that the Parks Department has made some efforts to replace the greenery that was removed to accommodate the concessionaires, but he thinks more still needs to be done.
“We hope the resolution will give us a platform to work together,” Diller said. “We understand that there are competing interests for this space. The benefits of that ought to be shared by the whole community.”

Every summer, a string of events hit the city that provide, depending on your perspective, either a fun-filled, leisurely day of shopping, eating and entertainment or a hellish, traffic-jamming, noise-making, government-sanctioned takeover of public places. To many, they are just street fairs. Some love them, many enjoy them, and some scratch their heads with wonder at how such things are allowed so often.

There are different types of street fairs permitted by the city: multi-block and single-block. (Block parties, which require only the closing of one block and don’t involve the sale of any goods or services, are categorized separately but must get similar city approvals.) The multi-block events are the big ones that take place on the avenues and span anywhere from a couple blocks up to, on the Upper West Side, 15 blocks. They’re all run for the benefit of nonprofit organizations, from churches to schools to charity groups, and they all have to go through an approval process that lets the community board and local residents weigh in first.

“The street fairs on side streets tend to be to benefit an organization, and one of the requirements, not surprisingly, is that the organization is actually on the street,” said Mark Diller, chair of Community Board 7. “You usually hear a bit of grumbling about parking and amplified sound because people’s homes are right there.”

Diller said that overall, the board doesn’t hear too many complaints about street fairs; some people don’t like them when they happen right in front of their building, but the city doesn’t usually allow the same side street to be closed more than once a year.

While the approval process on the Upper West Side is relatively calm and uncontroversial, Upper East Side community board members have recently been grappling with resident complaints about the sheer number of street fairs and whether ones specifically held for private institutions, like a street closure for a private school’s graduation celebration, should be approved at all.

At Community Board 8’s March meeting, several board members spoke out against specific street closures for relatively small events, based on how the sponsoring organization behaved in the community and how it ran its event. Some opposed allowing Marymount Manhattan College to have a four-hour block party, but supported churches and other schools hosting similar events. One church event drew support from some who pointed out that the church is committed to social service in the community and vitriol from others who called their event “horrible” and “outrageous.” The board disapproved a block party hosted by Lenox Hill Hospital because it’s a private event and not open to the public, as well as two applications from the Central Park Precinct Community Council for two separate block parties because they normally have their meetings on the West Side.

“Let them have their street fairs in Board 7 where they chose to have their meetings,” said David Rosenstein, a sentiment echoed by many members. The board is considering amending their criteria for street fair and block party applications to address the differences between public and private events, as well as tightening the requirements for community involvement.

On the West Side, City Council Member Gale Brewer said that she hears from some people who are vehemently opposed to fairs taking over their streets, but that she also has a unique viewpoint gained by attending every major fair in her district and seeing firsthand how residents interact with the events. She brings a table, sets it up with pamphlets on city and local issues, and spends the day chatting with people who come by. “It’s a lot of work, but I’ve never missed one,” Brewer said.

While some residents have complained that the street fairs cater to visitors at their expense, turning their streets into tourist attractions, Brewer said that the proof is in the depleted stacks of flyers at the end of the day.

“Tourists are not interested in tenant information; I can see that it’s local people,” she said.

The biggest complaints tend to be over traffic—streets are rerouted and curbside parking becomes even tighter than usual when several avenue blocks are closed—and the fear that street vendors are siphoning business from the brick-and-mortar stores that sit just behind the temporary booths. Recently, however, some of the major street fair production companies—like Mort and Ray Productions, which puts on many of the Upper West Side’s major festivals—have been making efforts to accommodate merchants by offering them prime spaces outside of their own stores at discounted rates and agreeing not to place a vendor selling dresses outside of a women’s clothing boutique or a cupcake truck outside of a bakery.

“We take great care to make sure that no one is selling a similar product to merchants,” said Andrew Albert, executive director of the West Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, which produces the Amsterdam Avenue and Columbus Avenue festivals. “We’ve got a very sophisticated computer program that we paid a lot of money for that ensures that doesn’t happen. We also walk the avenue and speak to the merchants and tell them about the fairs.”

He said he’s heard from some small business owners who were delighted to find that street fair foot traffic morphed into regular customers.

“There’s Gazala’s at 78th Street, a Middle Eastern place,” Albert said. “After people sampled their food at the fair, people came back for months afterward. It’s a great way to promote the business.”

Albert stressed that the Chamber of Commerce picks up the entire tab, on top of a fee it pays to the city, to keep the streets clean and safe during and after their events, which is a requirement of all street fairs.

“Everyone thinks there’s tremendous money in it, but there’s really a lot of expenses too,” Albert said. “We hire the Doe Fund to help clean the street afterward; we actually leave the street cleaner than when we found it.” They also employ extra security to supplement the police officers the city sends out, and charge each vendor a sanitation deposit that they only get back if they leave their space spotless.

“People really do vote with their feet,” Albert said. “It’s a day when the street is free of traffic and people are just free to walk and schmooze with our neighbors.”

Upper West Side’s 2012 Street Fairs

24th Annual Broadway Spring Festival, May 6, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m., Broadway between West 93rd and 96th streets

On a Wing: Family Festival, May 19, 12 – 3 p.m., Belvedere Castle, Central Park; Mid-park about 79th Street

Ninth Avenue International Food Festival, May 19-20, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m., 9th Avenue between West 42nd and 57th streets

Amsterdam Avenue Festival, May 20, 12 – 5 p.m., Amsterdam Avenue between West 77th and 90th streets

25th Annual Livable West Side Festival, May 27, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m., Broadway between West 82nd and 86th streets

35th Annual Plantathon and Crafts Fair, June 10, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m., Broadway between West 73rd and 82nd streets

Summer on the Hudson: 10th Annual West Side County Fair, Sept. 9, 1–6 p.m., West 71st Street Basketball Courts

19th Annual Upper Broadway Autumn Festival, Sept. 15, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m., Broadway between West 110th and 116th streets

Columbus Avenue Festival, Sept. 23, 12 – 5 p.m., Columbus Avenue between West 66th and 86th streets

24th Annual Upper Broadway Harvest Festival, Sept. 30, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m., Broadway between West 103rd and 106th streets

20th Annual Upper Broadway Fall Festival, Oct. 6, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m., Broadway between West 110th and 116th streets

21st Annual Broadway Fall Festival, Oct. 14, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m., Broadway between West 86th Street and 90th streets

Upper West Side parents are usually clamoring for more public school space, and now the conversation has turned toward the impending demand for middle school seats. At a joint Community Education Council (CEC) and President’s Council meeting last week for District 3, concerned parents and board members hashed out the issues facing the district’s number of middle school seats; some insisting that there is an imminent shortage approaching, while others viewed the prediction with skepticism.

Even those who agree that the district should ask for more seats were divided over how the request to the Department of Education (DOE) should be worded  and where a new school would be located.

“No one can argue that we need more middle school seats,” said Community Board 7 chair Mark Diller, confirming that the board is supportive of the push. “The very next issue is, of course, where?” Diller emphasized the need for the CEC to use data to back up their requests.

Stefan Koster, parent of a middle-school-aged daughter who recently went through the process of finding a school, presented data to the board showing what he and a group of other parent volunteers had determined regarding future middle school space in the district. They insist that the DOE is not taking into account an upcoming influx of middle-school-aged students and that there will be a severe shortage of seats by 2013.

“More and more young families like mine have decided it’s kind of cool to raise a child in the city,” as opposed to moving out to the suburbs, said Koster after the meeting. “If the DOE does not hear the community scream out in its need for more school seats, I fear that we’re going to reverse that whole aspect of people coming into and staying in the city to raise kids. How long can the Upper West Side stay a cool place if nothing happens?”

Analyzing data from the DOE, Koster’s group concluded that an increasing number of students are remaining in District 3 for middle school based on the fact that in 2011 there were 765 “first choice” applicants for 480 middle school seats in the district, which they say points to a demand that will only continue to grow.

While many agreed with their premise, the question of how to successfully convince the DOE that the seats are eminently needed was still unanswered. Some advocated just requesting any available district space for middle school seats before deciding specifics about a new school.

“If we don’t take the space, Eva’s going to get it,” said Stefanie Goldblatt, the treasurer of the President’s Council, referring to the CEO of the Success Academy Network charter schools, Eva Moskowitz. “Let’s just grab space and figure out what goes there later.”

Goldblatt touched on a nerve that reverberated throughout the meeting: the fear that if the CEC doesn’t determine what they need quickly enough, that the DOE will allocate more public space to charter schools.

Others raised the issue of ensuring an equitable location that would serve the entire district, including the neighborhoods in the northern section that are composed largely of minority communities.

“The northern part gets charter schools; the southern part gets new schools,” said Camille Goodridge, a CEC member and co-chair of the middle school committee. “We need just as many quality schools as everybody else. Minority students need the same as everybody else.”

Some members were cautious about jumping to conclusions and asking the DOE for a new school without further consideration of the data and the potential possibilities.

“I don’t question whether or not we need middle school seats,” said council member Noah Gotbaum in an interview later. “But I want to make sure as a CEC member that it’s done by consensus, that it’s very much representative of the entire district.”

As the CEC continues to determine the best course of action, parents are rallying behind Koster and his group’s petition, hosted at MiddleSchoolBabyBoom.com, a name that speaks for itself. So far, 644 parents have signed on in support of explicitly asking the DOE to create a brand-new, separate middle school.

But some think that there are still more factors to explore before that should happen.

“We could potentially take high school seats and use them for middle school seats,” Gotbaum said. “We have to have everyone in the conversation. We can’t allow the DOE to set us against each other. There’s no planning going on at the top. That’s part of what we have to watch out for.”

“It would be the worst cut in our history,” said Singer during a July 17 meeting of Community 7’s youth, education and libraries committee.

Six-day service is also under threat. West Side branches have already cut down on hours and instituted a hiring freeze. If the proposed changes go through, the surviving libraries would only open four days a week, according to Singer. Free programs for children would also be eliminated.

In response to the crisis, the library has instituted a fundraising and letter-writing campaign. To date, nearly 100,000 letters of support have been collected.

The committee also discussed the school that Extell Development Corp. will construct as part of its Riverside Center development. Issues under contention include financing, square footage, traffic safety and drop-off procedures. Because the new school will not have a ground level yard, parents will need to drop their children off on the sidewalk, or escort them into the school

“From a parent management perspective, that is a bad idea,” said Mark Diller, the committee’s chair. “There are some kids that just can’t let go. Also, having adults walking around the building—there is a safety issue.”