A prolonged battle against the city’s plan to shuffle space at five Manhattan schools spilled onto the sidewalks of East 23rd Street yesterday.
The plan to relocate Chelsea’s Clinton School for Artists and Writers into the building shared by the American Sign Language and English Lower and Secondary Schools has drawn fierce criticism from parents at all of those schools. City officials have argued that even with the Clinton School in their building, the ASL schools will have ample space to maintain their unique sign-language based instructional program. But parents contend that moving the Clinton School’s nearly 300 students into the building will create overcrowded classes and prevent students from seeing each other as they sign.
Clinton parents have proposed staying one more year in their current space in P.S. 11, a rapidly expanding zoned school, but the city and P.S. 11 parents say that school is also nearly bursting with students.