School Pays Teacher Parents Tried to Fund

NEW YORK —  To the relief of admiring parents who had raised $46,000 to pay her salary, Lauren Zangara will teach their fourth-graders at PS 41 in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village after all.

Not only that, Zangara’s supporters will get their money back after a decision by Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew on Thursday that symbolically sent the head of a local school district to stand in a corner.

Crew ordered Supt. Anthony Alvarado to find the money to fund Zangara’s position out of the school district’s allocation of tax revenue.

Alvarado, who declined to comment, originally had said that District 2 in lower Manhattan lacked the money to retain the teacher.

Children cheered and hugged each other in the playground of PS 41 after Crew’s decision was announced.

“Oh, you saved Miss Zangara,” several pupils told their parents.

“We are absolutely thrilled,” said Diana Naples, whose son Noah, 8, reacted joyfully. “But I am worried [about] what will happen next year. We worked very hard to raise the money. I am glad Rudy Crew did open his heart up. The children will definitely benefit.”

“We were all happy and smiling and we applauded in our classroom when we found out the news,” said Jaime Lyn Seeman, 9. “We want kids everywhere to have small classes.”

“I think this is a total victory for the parents,” declared Neal Rosenberg, the lawyer who represented the parents who had filed suit for the right to use the money they raised to pay Zangara’s salary and benefits.

Chancellor Crew said that Alvarado had exceeded his authority when he gave the parents tentative approval to pay Zangara’s salary. “The parents of PS 41 acted in good faith on behalf of their children based on information provided by the school district,” Crew said. “I am not willing to penalize them because of the advice they received.”

At the same time, the chancellor continued his moratorium against parent associations funding full-time teachers, declaring that the issue “steps across the line of equity so critical to our system as well as individual schools.”

Crew said that he would confer with the Board of Education to formulate a policy which would “allow parents to make valuable contributions to their schools within appropriate limits.”

“This issue is systemic. It is not isolated to this school. It is part of the very fabric of society,” Rosenberg said. “The issue is what role do parents play in the direct supplementation of school budgets.”

“If you want to keep the middle class in public schools, you must give them a chance to improve the school. You can’t welcome the middle class into public schools with open arms and then tie their hands behind their backs,” the lawyer added.

It is not unusual for parents and parent associations to help pay for supplies, extracurricular activities and some part-time instructors. But the issue of public school parents paying the salary of a teacher in school systems funded by taxes is largely untested, veteran educators said.

District 2 officials reacted glumly to Crew’s decision.

“That school gets a classroom ratio of one to 27 in the fourth grade. Every other school in the district gets one to 32,” complained a spokesman for the district.

Zangara’s class had become an issue in New York’s mayoral campaign, where polls show Manhattan Borough President Ruth W. Messinger, the Democratic nominee, badly trailing GOP Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Messinger, who has made school overcrowding a key issue of her campaign, sided with the PS 41 parents. Giuliani backed Crew.

The chancellor met twice privately with a group of PS 41 parents, seeking a common solution.

“It was more of a victory than we anticipated,” Rosenberg said after the chancellor’s decision. “The parents received the results they wanted at no cost to themselves.”

Times special correspondent Lisa Meyer contributed to this story.