Musical schools
Summer break is hardly a vacation for more than 90 schools across the city that will be moving into new locations for the new school year. For some, moving means a home in a brand-new building, while for others, it is a less-than-welcome change. Many of the moves involve charter schools which some public schools have resisted housing in their buildings.
On Monday, The New York Post highlighted parents' and students' upset over the Coalition School for Social Change's move from the West 50s to East Harlem, an area they say is known for gangs and violence. Families of the Bronx Early College Academy are not happy about the school's move to the South Bronx. The move from Riverdale to a troubled middle school campus takes the school farther away from Lehman College, where students in the upper grades will eventually take classes.<!--more-->
The siting of charter schools in existing zoned schools has long been a contentious issue. In March, parents filed a law suit against the DOE for its plans to close three neighborhood schools (PS 194 andPS 241 in Harlem, and PS 150 in Brooklyn) and replace them with charter schools. Although the DOE eventually backed down from its decision to close the schools, the middle school grades of PS 150 and PS 241 are being phased out and charter schools will move into their buildings nonetheless. (PS 150 will become home to Brownsville Collegiate and Leadership Prep Brownsville, which will both open in September, and Harlem Success IV will move into PS 241.) Harlem Success II, which was slated to move into PS 194, is instead relocating to PS 123, where it was met with opposition earlier this month.
In Marine Park, however, parents and community members successfully petitioned to keep the Hebrew Language Academy from opening in their local middle school, IS 278. HLA, like five other new charter schools, has found space in private facilities. but most of the more than 20 new charter schools will open in DOE buildings.<!--more-->Not all moves are unwelcome, though.Frank Sinatra High Schol for the Arts, which opened in 2001, will stay in Long Island City, moving to a brand-new modern glass building with "state of the art performance hall, theatres, art studios, and practice rooms," according to Exploring the Arts, the organization which worked to fund the building's construction.
The Peace and Diversity Academy has a long-awaited a permanent home. In 2004, the small Bronx high school opened at Herbert H. Lehman High School, and then relocated in 2007 to the fourth floor of Cornerstone Academy for Social Action,a new elementary school. Now the school will move one last time to a brand-new building in Morrisania. It will share the space with Metropolitan High School, which has been housed in trailers while the building was under construction since it opened in 2005.
A highly regarded small District 2 high school, Baruch College Campus High School is moving from cramped quarters in Baruch College buildings, a few blocks uptown to the School for the Physical City, which is phasing out. Meanwhile Ross Charter, currently split between two sites - will be vacating Physical City and Tweed Courthouse and will share a building with East Side Community High School.
PS 65, the Little Red School House in Brooklyn outgrew its 1897 landmark building, and has housed its lower grades at a separate site two miles away. This fall, the school will be reunited under one roof in a brand-new building just blocks away from its original site. The Department of Education's decision to move Achievement First East New York Charter School into the old building, however, was not well-received by the Cypress Hills community. According to the Daily News, local parents hoped the building would be used to alleviate overcrowding in other neighborhood schools not to enable a charter school to expand.
Stay tuned as more changes are sure to be announced! And please share your thoughts about new schools and moves in your community.
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