For years I’ve been wondering how PS 321 would manage to fit in all the new families moving to Fourth Avenue.

Do the math.

PS 321 is already overcrowded with over 1,400 students in six grades (pre-school through fifth grade) and bulging class sizes. With all the new buildings on Fourth Avenue that are currently in the catchment, it was obvious that PS 321 would need a new building or District 15 would need a new elementary school.

According to the New York Times, the Education Department is talking about a major rezoning which would determine who goes to PS 321, 107, 10 and a new school to be built on Fourth Avenue and Eighth Street.

This is, you might say, very big news in the neighborhood of Park Slope where parents are determined to send their kids to PS 321 or PS 107.

 “The DOE has not revealed which blocks would be rezoned, but in general, the proposal involves transferring the western end of P.S. 321’s zone, where Park Slope turns into Gowanus, to a new school to be opened on Eighth Street and Fourth Avenue. Some of P.S. 107’s southernmost blocks would be shifted to P.S. 10. The siblings of students already at the affected schools would probably be allowed to register at the same schools. The proposals were reported Monday by the news Web site dnainfo.com.”

Needless to say, people are a in a tizzy about this. I don’t know a thing about this new school on Fourth Avenue. Jim Devor, who runs the Community Education Council, had this to say about the situation.

“I don’t know how else you’re going to meet the needs of those children, unless we put saltpeter in the drinking water to prevent conceptions. Real estate brokers are going to go ballistic, but the alternatives we’re considering placing these children in are not exactly chopped liver.”

Liz Phillips, principal of PS 321, shared these thoughts about the rezoning.

“In the interest of maintaining the high-quality education we are committed to providing our students we are going to need to do something to keep our school from becoming so large that we are forced to have very high class size.”