A reply to Councilman Cohen's PS 24 stance

I am writing as the outgoing co-president of the Spuyten Duyvil School (P.S. 24) parents’ association (PA) whose term ends this month, so these are my views and not the official views of the organization.

Councilman Andrew Cohen is a good friend and he, along with other of our elected officials, has been very involved with developments at P.S. 24. I am sure Councilman Cohen is convinced he is doing the right thing for our school and our children but, sadly, I must publicly take issue with him.

It’s June 2016 and the councilman is still fighting the “war of October 2015” when news of the loss of the annnex enraged our parents and the press feeding frenzy on “deskgate” thrilled Riverdale readers for several weeks. The simple truth is that all the players in the annex story —  Donna Connelly, Manny Verdi, the prior PA leadership, our elected officials and, most of all, the incompetent Michael Cona, lease negotiator for the School Construction Authority — bear responsibility for losing the annex. Fingers can and will be continuously pointed until all the players leave this mortal coil, but history will absolve none of them.

So now it’s June 2016 and where are we? We are without a permanently assigned principal and we have no timeline as to when the leadership situation will be resolved by the Department of Education (DOE). We are going to be housing over 1,000 students in a building built for 620 for the first time in our history. A makeshift renovation project will get underway at the end of June to shoehorn our entire fifth grade back into our main building. Class sizes promise to balloon and there is no foreseeable time when our music room, computer room and fully operating library will be returned to us. Our cold lunchroom, which feeds hundreds of children a day and serves as a community event space and alternative gym, will get a third of its space lopped off this summer.

The councilman continues to focus on Manny Verdi (“Self-interested administrators at P.S. 24,” June 9). Our elected officials have chosen, since October, to make him the focus of their concern and as a result have given him leverage and power beyond what his limited skill set should command. Manny has wrought terrible mischief at the school in an effort to protect his job or strike a financial deal with the DOE to go away. The political campaign by some of the elected to have his head has given him the inspiration and leverage to prepare a frivolous lawsuit and probably a phony C-30 “inquiry” to shut down that process as well.

Manny should go, but Manny will clearly not be pushed out. That the DOE can’t come up with a plan to re-assign an unhappy, disgruntled AP from P.S. 24 is another dramatic example of the utter incompetence, timidity and risk-aversiveness of DOE leadership from the district superintendent right up the chain to Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña. It boggles the mind.

But where is Councilman Cohen’s leadership to address the longer-range issue of overcrowding at P.S. 24, the Robert J. Christen School (P.S. 81, the David A. Stein Riverdale/Kingsbridge Academy (M.S./H.S. 141, RKA) and schools throughout his district? This is a problem that has been building for years, before Donna Connelly and Manny Verdi arrived in Riverdale, and has steadily gotten worse. The annex was taken over six years ago as a stopgap measure to relieve the overcrowding our school was facing before Connelly arrived. Year after year of seven or eight kindergarten classes entering P.S. 24 has swelled the school census to its current historic highs. 

Riverdale is getting younger. Census data for 2010 showed a 25-percent increase in the 0-5 age group for ZIP code 10463. Not only have many new buildings been erected; many apartments built and occupied in the late 60s and early 70s in Riverdale have populations that are now aging out and young families are moving in. Yet the last time a single seat was added to Riverdale elementary school capacity was 1970.

Let’s call a spade a spade: we hear from Councilman Cohen and Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz that they are not convinced that the overcrowding is really a result of demographic shifts in Riverdale. They tell us they are concerned that if we build unnecessary capacity, the DOE will fill seats with children from outside the P.S. 24 zone. All kinds of numbers are bandied about as to how many out of zone students there are at P.S. 24. We hear that P.S. 24 is overcrowded mostly because of mismanagement by Donna Connelly and Manny Verdi. 

The New York Post headline calls Riverdale a “Tony Nabe.” Well, let me tell The Post something. There are no one percenters sending their children to P.S. 24 — no investment bankers, no hedge fund managers, no white shoe law firm partners. Yes, we are doctors, lawyers, psychologists, researchers, but we are also teachers, policeman, fireman, physical therapists, school aides, sales people. We are a vibrant, diverse, and dynamic school community. Our families hail from many countries and speak multiple languages at home. We are a blend of races, ethnicities, religions and economic backgrounds. We are Latino, White, African-American, Asian. Multi-racial and multi-cultural. We are a diverse school and proud of it. 

I, for one, am not concerned about in- or out-of-zone provided we have sufficient capacity to accommodate all students. I’m not sure what the councilman and assemblyman are trying to “protect” as the Riverdale zone, but I’m of the opinion that any parent that does whatever necessary to find the best school for his or her child is precisely the kind of parent you want in a school community.

So I say to Councilman Cohen, stop fighting the October wars, stop personalizing the school leadership issues, stop denying the changing demographics of Riverdale and show us the leadership we need to capture the resources to provide a decent education for our children. The DOE has had some $45 million dollars in its capital plan for new seats in Riverdale for several years now. Where is the strategy to capture this money and put it to work? Where is the effort to build on this $45 million and capture additional allocations for school capacity in our neighborhood? If Councilman Cohen wants a lasting legacy that he can be proud of, let him lead this effort. 

Bob Heisler is the outgoing co-president of the Spuyten Duyvil School’s (P.S. 24) parents’ association.