Andree Carroll Celestin Hector, founder of a remote Port-au-Prince school, holds a school uniform. The school’s tailor and at least fi ve students were killed in the Jan. 12 earthquake. Uniforms often serve as a financial barrier to education in Haiti and Hector donates them to students. Hector’s sister in Tribeca is looking to help the school reopen.

Tenants of Independence Plaza North have been arguing for years that their apartments should be rent- stabilized — and now U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara is taking up the cause.

Bharara’s office wants to recover tens of mil- lions of dollars the feder- al government paid I.P.N. owner Laurence Gluck to support the Tribeca apart- ment complex’s low-income tenants. Bharara, in New York’s Southern District, also wants many of I.P.N.’s 1,339 apartments declared rent-stabilized.

Diane Lapson, president of the I.P.N. tenant associa- tion, sees the U.S. attorney’s case as support for a similar case the tenants brought sev- eral years ago, also arguing that their apartments should be rent-stabilized. That case

“[The federal govern- ment] wouldn’t make a move like this if they thought there was a question about it,” Lapson said.

Stephen Meister, Gluck’s lawyer, disagreed, saying the U.S. attorney’s case was politically motivated. Meister also threatened to “make it my personal busi- ness” to make things worse for I.P.N. tenants if they win their case and are declared rent-stabilized.

The U.S. attorney’s com- plaint, filed in October of last year, echoes the ten- ants’ earlier case by argu- ing that many Independence Plaza apartments should be rent-stabilized because Gluck received a J-51 tax break. Not only should the apartments have been rent- stabilized while Gluck was getting the tax break, but

Community Board 3 said it would tackle the contentious issue of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s proposed service cuts to several East Side bus routes that may drasti- cally impact thousands of bus riders who regularly use the M15 City Hall branch line, the M9, M8 and M22 buses. Some subway service

The cuts include bus routes connecting Battery Park City to the Lower East Side and will be felt through- out Lower Manhattan.

C.B. 3’s district manag- er, Susan Stetzer, said the severe reductions are sched- uled for discussion at the board’s Transportation and Public Safety/Environment Committee meeting Wed.,

Downtowners look
to put brakes
on bus cuts

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Twenty days after the devastating earthquake, The Children’s Harvest elementary school here was silent this week, a thick layer of dust coating the empty benches and tables.

The building itself was barely dam- aged, just some cracks running up the walls, but the quake toppled the sur- rounding homes, killing at least fi ve young students, along with some of the teachers and parents.

Andree Carroll Celestin Hector, the Haitian-American woman who found- ed the school in 1998, gave a tour on

Monday of the intact building and the crumbled neighborhood. A leader in the community, Hector was focusing on getting food, water and tents for the many newly homeless.

Two thousand miles away, Carroll Hector’s sister and brother-in-law, Jacqueline and Jean-Paul Fils-Aime, sat in their Tribeca apartment, mourning Haitian relatives who were killed and worrying over Hector and the future of her school.

“You’re living two lives,” Jacqueline Fils-Aime said. “The one life is here, you want to be strong, and the other one is that you want to go there. You just want to hold them.”

Jacqueline said she is drawing strength from brief phone conversa- tions with her sister, who is determined to stay in Haiti.

Jacqueline and her husband have received an outpouring of support from their neighbors in Independence Plaza, the middle class housing com- plex where they have lived for 30 years, and from Washington Market School, Poly Prep Country Day School and other local institutions. They hope to start collecting money soon for Hector and The Children’s Harvest school.

The Alliance lost another River to River alum last fall when Valerie Lewis, one of the festival’s founders and an Alliance veep, left to become executive director of the Brooklyn Youth Chorus Academy.

The tire swing that gave Tire Swing Park its name now sits propped against a post in the mud pit of the demolished park, apparently unwanted.

But the State Dept. of Transportation, which ripped down the tire swing and all the other play equipment last fall to reconstruct the area, also known as W. Thames Park, now says the tire swing has found an admirer.

“We have a person who wants it,” said Tom Mellett, the construction manager, told Community Board 1’s Battery Park City Committee on Tuesday.

A D.O.T. spokesperson later said the agency did not have information about the mysterious tire swing admirer. The swing belongs to the project contractor now, so anyone who wants it has to go through the contractor.

Traffi c guru Sam Schwartz, who writes our Transit Sam column and runs his eponymous consulting firm Downtown, has just hired Howard Roberts, the former head of New York City Transit to be a senior vice president of transit. In addition to running the world’s largest subway system from 2007 to 2009, Roberts previously led the country’s fourth largest rail system, the SEPTA in suburban Philadelphia.

The memory of the bruising Downtown school rezoning is not likely to fade anytime soon — and many people are glad to put the issue behind them.

When some Community Board 1 members started push- ing for new school seats in the historic Pier A building this week, C.B. 1 member Jeff Galloway had one important caveat: “Only if they come with the zoning already decided,” he said, as members of the Battery Park City Committee laughed in agreement.

The B.P.C. Authority is still looking for proposals for the pier — spokesperson Leticia Remauro said the authority hasn’t received any formal submissions yet but expects to get some before the Feb. 16 deadline.

“In old Tribeca, it was kind of more normal,” Silberman said of the readings she now conducts in quiet corners of the Whole Foods cafe.

Silberman, a Community Board 1 member, limits her read- ings to personal events in people’s lives, not large world events. Unless she was doing a reading for PresidentObama, her predic- tions skew more toward luck in love than international politics.

EDITORIAL PAGES. . . . . . . . . . . 22 - 23 YOUTH. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24 - 26 ARTS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 - 30 CLASSIFIEDS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31

99 Wall Street
212.514.5676 / 212.514.5677
tcpswallstreet@gmail.com

88 Fulton Street
(Corner of 33 Gold St.)
New York, NY 10038
212.587.8930
212.587.8935

Isak
Barber
Shop

Isak
Barber
Shop

Isak
Barber
Shop

The upcoming week’s schedule of Community Board 1 committee meetings is below. Unless otherwise noted, all committee meetings are held at the board office, located at 49-51 Chambers St., room 709 at 6 p.m.

An article in the Jan. 29-Feb. 4 Downtown Express, “Power shutdown at 60 Hudson raises questions,” incorrectly identified the owner of 60 Hudson St. as GVA Williams. The owner was formerly known as GVA Williams but is now known as First Service Williams.

The dark, frigid air was Francesca Petrucci’s only com- pany when she arrived at P.S. 234 just after 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday to register her son for kindergarten.

Another mother soon joined her in line outside the cov- eted Tribeca school, and a handful of other parents followed, taking their places in the below-freezing temperatures.

At 7 a.m., P.S. 234 Principal Lisa Ripperger arrived at the school and handed the parents numbered slips of paper, allowing them to go somewhere else to warm up before returning to the line.

“At some point today I’ll start feeling my toes again,” Petrucci said, back in line and in good spirits shortly before 9 a.m. “What we sacrifice for our children!”

Kindergarten enrollment at Downtown’s fi ve elementary schools started this week, and worried parents immediately began jockeying for spots. While P.S. 234 and the other schools do not prioritize applications based on the order they are received, parents still camped out at P.S. 234 to make sure they registered early.

On Monday, the fi rst day of kindergarten enrollment, Petrucci arrived at P.S. 234 at 9 a.m., only to find that she was too late and the school had already registered 30 chil- dren, which is P.S. 234’s daily maximum. She asked a secu- rity guard what time the first parent arrived on Monday and was told 5:45 a.m. So, early Tuesday morning, she donned layers upon layers of clothing and prepared to wait.

Like most of the 25 shivering parents in line Tuesday morning, Petrucci is zoned for P.S. 234. The District 2 Community Education Council just voted on the final zone lines last week, after a months-long battle that pitted neigh- bors against each other. The end result was that Tribeca west of Church St. was zoned for P.S. 234; eastern Tribeca, the Seaport and the northern Financial District were zoned for the Spruce Street School; the rest of the Financial District and Battery Park City south of Albany St. were zoned for P.S./I.S. 276; and Gateway Plaza and north B.P.C. were zoned for P.S. 89. P.S. 150 in Tribeca, Downtown’s fi fth elementary school, chooses students by lottery.

Since the zone lines were only decided last week, some of the parents waiting outside of P.S. 234 were uncertain of their zoned school. Others knew they weren’t zoned for P.S. 234, but they still hoped their children could attend.

Salman is zoned for P.S. 89, and his two older children went there, but Salman said 89 got more and more over- crowded and he wants his 4-year-old daughter to have smaller classes. Although P.S. 234 has been crowded as well, Salman said he was impressed by the school’s reputation. He also plans to apply for P.S. 276 in southern B.P.C. and hasn’t ruled out the Spruce Street School either.

outside of the zone to apply, though everyone should apply to their zoned schools as well. First priority will go to children with siblings in the school, then to in-zone children without siblings.

“It’s highly unlikely that any of these schools will be able to accept students from outside their zone,” said Danny Kanner, spokesperson for the Dept. of Education.

If a school does have a few extra seats, Lower Manhattan students will have an equal chance of getting in as students from the rest of District 2, which stretches through the Village, Midtown and the Upper East Side.

Many Downtown parents and some C.E.C. members had hoped that P.S. 234, P.S. 89, P.S. 276 and the Spruce Street School could swap zoned children who wanted to attend one of the other schools, but Kanner said that would go against the city’s policies.

The city hopes that Downtown’s schools will be able to accommodate all siblings and zoned students, but if too many zoned kindergarteners apply to a given school, the city will hold a lottery for that school in the middle of March, Kanner said. In that case, any students who do not get into their zoned school will have priority to get into another Lower Manhattan school.

shortest enrollment window and is accepting applications from the fi rst 30 families who arrive at 9 a.m. each weekday morning until Feb. 12.

resources you need, plus a community
o independent proessionals looking
to network, learn and do business.

Parents waited out in the cold near P.S. 234 Tuesday, the fi rst week of kindergarten applications. The smaller zone for 234was approved last week and parents do not get priority by registering early, but they came just in case they got shut out of the school’s 30-a-day limit.