Carroll Gardens School Rezoning Up For Discussion This Week

CARROLL GARDENS, BROOKLYN — City and local officials have scheduled a series of meetings to get feedback on a possible rezoning of District 15's elementary schools, where 436 new seats at one Carroll Gardens school could help with overcrowding.

A meeting scheduled at P.S. 32 Monday night will be the second time the public can weigh in on the plans since they were first brought to District 15's Community Education Council in April. The council will also look for public comment about the rezoning at its calendar meeting Thursday and at another meeting June 12.

Each meeting will let residents give feedback before the city's Office of District Planning comes up with a definitive proposal for how to fill 436 new elementary seats at P.S. 32 that will become available next school year when an addition to its Hoyt Street facility is done.

The rezoning, which will redraw the lines of the zones set up to determine which elementary students go to which school, was first brought up in a November presentation where the city reported that 22 of District 15's 26 elementary schools are over utilized.

P.S. 32 is 82 percent to capacity with its current 634-student limit while other schools are well over 100 percent capacity, including P.S. 29 that has about 200 students more than its 761-seat capacity, or P.S. 58, which has nearly 300 more students than its 765-seat limit.

The plan will also look at the makeup of each school so that the new zones can promote diversity and equity for the district's elementary children, officials have said.

The Office of District Planning expects to have a proposal drafted this year and has said that once a plan is approved it will go into effect for the 2020-21 school year. Pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and any new students to the schools will most likely be the ones affected by the changes, officials said.

A representative with the office said the rezoning and new construction is one of several strategies that can be used to address overcrowding. Mayor Bill de Blasio has committed to adding 83,000 new seats to the city's schools, 57,000 of which are in the latest capital plan.

The representative added that District 15's overcrowding is not unusual when compared to other districts across the city. The district has an overall utilization rate under 100 percent across all its schools, he said, which is on par with many other districts in the city.

Monday's meeting on the rezoning will be held at P.S. 32's 317 Hoyt Street space. The calendar meeting on Thursday will be held in P.S. 676 at 27 Huntington Street. The June 12 meeting will be held at P.S. 29 at 425 Henry Street. All meetings will start at 6:30 p.m.