Taking aim at guns, p. 4
Volume 82, Number 34 $1.00
West and East Village, Chelsea, Soho, Noho, Hudson Square, Little Italy, Chinatown and Lower East Side, Since 1933
January 24 - 30, 2013
Zone split O.k.’d for Village schools; reaction split, too BY SAM SPOKONY In a close finish that one member called the hardest decision she’d ever had to make there, the District 2 Community Education Council voted on Wednesday night to split the zone currently shared by Greenwich Village’s two public elementary schools, P.S. 3 and P.S. 41. The 6-to-4 vote — a vote that had been delayed nearly two months due to the exten-
Photo by John Winkleman
Brad Hoylman cut a political profile at his swearing-in at F.I.T. on W. 27th St. on Sun., Jan. 13.
Nice guys don’t finish last; hoylman is sworn into office BY LINCOLN ANDERSON A week before a crowd of hundreds of thousands gathered in Washington to celebrate President Obama’s inauguration, a smaller, but no less passionate group of more than 500 gathered at F.I.T.’s Haft Auditorium in Chelsea for the swearing-in of one of their own — the new state senator for the 27th District, Brad Hoylman. The state Senate district includes Greenwich Village, Hudson Square, most of Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen, part of the Upper West Side, Midtown and East Midtown and most of the East Village, plus Stuyvesant Town
and Peter Cooper Village. The 27th’s lines, which were recently redrawn, unite Greenwich Village in one district. Major additions are the East Village and part of Midtown, including Times Square, while lost was the Upper West Side north of 72nd St. For President Obama, his inauguration marked the start of his second term, as he now confidently settles into office for another four years, after mapping out a firmly progressive agenda in his speech on Monday. For Hoylman, on the other hand, it was just the start — yet, in a sense, also the end, as in the
fulfillment of his long quest to hold elected office. In 2001, Hoylman ran in a crowded field of candidates for City Council in Lower Manhattan’s First District, finishing a close second in the primary election to Alan Gerson, losing by just 500 votes. Hoylman went on to rise to the chairpersonship of Community Board 2 — no easy feat in itself — and six years ago was elected the Village’s Democratic district leader, an unsalaried, party post. And yet the goal of higher elected office continued to elude him.
sive and passionate debate between teachers and parents from both schools — approves a Department of Education proposal to split the zone that P.S. 3 and P.S. 41 have shared for 42 years. The split will go into effect in 2014. And in an unexpected turn made about an hour before that decision, the council also voted to amend their resolu-
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L.e.S. confronts youth violence; ‘Unity rally’ on tap BY SAM SPOKONY Local residents and youths, community organizations and settlement houses, elected offi cials, police and other stakeholders are working to create new partnerships and dialogue in response to the Jan. 4 shooting that killed a 16-year-old Baruch Houses resident. While it was not their first meeting following the murder of Raphael Ward,
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those stakeholders gathered on Jan. 17 at Grand St. Settlement — only steps away from the site of the shooting, and a place where Ward was enrolled in recreational programs — for a landmark discussion about ideas to help quell the plague of youth violence in a Lower East Side neighborhood dominated by public housing. The
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