Keep public parks public

Juan Gonzalez is a Daily News columnist.

She may have attended one of Manhattan's elite private schools, but Bronx City Councilwoman Helen Foster wants to know why City Hall is seeking to further privatize public parks with special deals for her alma mater and other prep schools. Foster, who attended Nightingale-Bramford School on the upper East Side and who now presides over the Council's Parks and Recreation Committee, announced yesterday a special Nov. 3 public hearing to review a proposed Parks Department franchise agreement that has many public school parents furious. The agreement between the Parks Department and 20 elite Manhattan schools, reached quietly over the past year, would give those schools privileged access to virtually all athletic fields at Randalls Island Park every weekday afternoon for the next 30 years. "It's another example of this administration creating a two-tier system of parks," Foster said yesterday....(more)