10
February 6 - February 19, 2013
New middle schools pitched for Morton St. BY l I N Co l N A ND e r s o N Two middle schools may be coming to the soon-to-be-vacant West Village building at 75 Morton St. Members of the 75 Morton Task Force discussed possible school plans for the building on Jan. 24. The committee is a joint initiative of Community Board 2 and the District 2 Community Education Council. According to a School Construction Authority official, a likely scenario for the building between Hudson and Greenwich Sts. would be two middle schools, including a number of special education students. The 177,000-square-foot, seven-story building can accommodate 900 seats for students, of which S.C.A. would like 90 seats to be for special ed students. District 2 middle schools are typically not zoned, so the Morton St. building would likely draw a sizable number of students south of Canal St., where there are not many middle school choices. The site is currently used by the state Office for People With Developmental Disabilities, which was supposed to have already vacated, but the move-out was delayed by Superstorm Sandy. As part
of the approval last year of the Rudin residential redevelopment project for the former St. Vincent’s Hospital campus, the city agreed to buy 75 Morton St. from the state to help address the Village’s shortage of school seats. However, C.B. 2 and C.E.C. members weren’t set on the S.C.A.’s preferred uses for the building, and are still considering different mixes of uses, notably including an elementary school. Bob Ely, a neighbor who championed obtaining 75 Morton St. for a new school, said he felt that if there are to be two middle schools, an appropriate complementary use would be a good, small high school, along the lines of the Upper West Side’s Beacon School, which one of the middle schools could feed into. A big concern of P.S. 3 parents is that they’d like students for the middle schools to be screened by geographical preference, meaning local kids would get first dibs. But, Ely said, as opposed to elementary schools, middle schools generally don’t work that way. District 2 covers a very broad area, stretching from the Battery to the Upper East Side.
Fighting to make Lower Manhattan the greatest place to live, work, and raise a family.
Ed Koch and AIDS Continued from page 7
“I know that we were careful not to create a new entitlement program for home care since it would be very costly and we do not provide these services free of charge to any other group,” Botnick wrote. “However, the need for hospice services is unique to this group and would not be nearly as costly as home care since the number of patients are far fewer.” City Hall was also aware of the criticism of its actions. New York City’s AIDS services were regularly compared to San Francisco’s, with New York always losing. An analysis by Botnick showed that the services and absolute dollars spent by each city were comparable; the caseloads were not. As of February 1985, San Francisco had 932 AIDS cases and New York City had 3,206. Koch’s struggle with needle exchange illustrates the degree to which his administration would not champion controversial actions even when his health commissioner was telling him they would work. In mid-1985, Sencer wrote Koch telling him that by “forcing addicts to use others’ needles and syringes, we are condemning large numbers of addicts to death from AIDS… Under these circumstances shouldn’t we attempt to practice preventive medicine and do something to interrupt the transmis-
sion of the virus? I think we should.” Instead, Koch took the advice of Kenneth Conboy, his criminal justice coordinator, and first asked the city’s five district attorneys for their views on this “sensitive public policy question.” Conboy recommended that Koch not yet approach the Legislature to change the state law requiring a prescription to possess a syringe. Conboy also wrote that since this was “principally a moral question, I think you should broach the matter privately with Cardinal O’Connor and other ranking spiritual leaders in the City.” Faced with opposition that was intense in some quarters, Koch took no action until 1988 when the city’s health department opened a pilot needle exchange program that served just 200 drug injectors out of the estimated 200,000 in the city. In an email to Gay City News, a sister publication of Downtown Express, Charles Kaiser, a friend of Koch’s, wrote, “[T]here are many politicians who have tried to keep their sexuality a secret who have had terrible records on gay rights issues. Ed Koch does not fit in this category. He actually has the longest pro-gay rights record of any successful New York politician I know of… So whatever his failures during the AIDS crisis, I have never believed that they were a result of his own discomfort with who he was.”
The Ramaz School, a nonprofit organization, is seeking quotes for security enhancements. Work would include: security CCTV system equipment and installation of closed circuit television equipment. Contact Mamadou Deme for specification and bid requirements at 212-774-8000 x 6655 or Mamadou@ramaz.org All interested firms will be required to sign for the proposal documents and provide primary contact, telephone and email address Quote/Proposal response is required by 05/11/13 Work is to commence by 07/01/2013 and be completed by 08/01/2013
• • • • • • PUBLIC MEETING NOTICE • • • • • • The Hudson River Park Neighborhood Improvement District Steering Committee in conjunction with Friends of Hudson River Park will be hosting 4 Public Meetings on the proposed Improvement District. We hope you can join us to get more information, ask questions, and show your support at one of the following meetings:
Assemblyman Shelly Silver If you need assistance, please contact my office at (212) 312-1420 or email silver@ assembly.state.ny.us.
Monday Feb. 11th @ 3:00pm Fulton Center Auditorium (119 Ninth Ave.)
Tuesday Feb. 12th @ 6:30pm Manhattan Youth Downtown Community Center (120 Warren St.)
For more information please contact Jeffrey Aser at 212-757-0981 (Jaser@fohrp.org) www.HRPNID.org