{"id":211547,"date":"2026-04-27T19:02:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T19:02:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/211547\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T19:02:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T19:02:19","slug":"nyc-withdraws-plans-to-open-ai-focused-high-school-and-close-uws-middle-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/211547\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC withdraws plans to open AI-focused high school and close UWS middle schools"},"content":{"rendered":"

After months of community opposition, New York City Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels on Monday yanked controversial plans to open the city\u2019s first artificial intelligence-focused high school<\/a> and to overhaul three Upper West Side middle schools.<\/p>\n

The proposals \u2014 to open Next Generation Technology High School in Lower Manhattan and to close, cut back the grades of, or relocate The Center School, Manhattan School for Children, and The Riverside School for Makers and Artists<\/a> \u2014 were on the agenda for this month\u2019s meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

In an email to the panel on Monday morning, just hours before the first of multiple protests against the plans was scheduled to kick off, Samuels said he was removing the proposals from consideration for now.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithdrawing these proposals is not an end to these important policy conversations that we will continue having in partnership with the community,\u201d Samuels wrote in the memo, obtained by the Daily News.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Center School. (Google Maps)<\/p>\n

The chancellor added that he was considering ways of strengthening parent and community engagement when opening, closing or reorganizing schools: \u201cWe want to consider the various perspectives on this matter, so that we can make meaningful changes.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was unclear if some of the proposals had the votes to clear the PEP, the majority of which was appointed by the former mayor, Eric Adams.<\/p>\n

The chancellor\u2019s reversal comes after Samuels last month withdrew a fifth proposal that would have closed Community Action School on the Upper West Side<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That proposal made national headlines and led to months of reckoning with racial bias after a Center School parent was caught on a hot mic during a remote school board meeting. The mom, a Hunter College professor, was overheard saying the students were \u201ctoo dumb to know\u201d they were \u201cin a bad school\u201d \u2014 while a young girl was speaking arguing to save the school.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Manhattan School for Children. (Google Maps)<\/p>\n

The plan to reconfigure the four Upper West Side schools \u2014 set in motion by Samuels while he was a local superintendent there before his promotion to chancellor \u2014 was supposed to address enrollment declines in the district and give popular schools more classrooms to allow them to lower class sizes.<\/p>\n

When the closure of Community Action School was taken off the agenda, families at the other three schools said their beloved programs should be given the same consideration.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe DOE now has an opportunity to move forward in a way that restores confidence and helps begin to repair what has become a contentious situation,\u201d said Councilwoman Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan), who represents the district. She pushed for a new building for the Center School.<\/p>\n

Separately, the plan to open Next Generation Technology High School, which was scheduled to be voted on by the PEP at the same meeting, also stirred up controversy as a growing parent advocacy movement is calling on the Mamdani administration to pause the use of AI in the classroom<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Instead, some students and parents think the city should expand an existing middle school in the building where \u201cNext Gen\u201d was scheduled to open. But Lower Manhattan Community Middle School families and advocates said that proposal was not considered, with the city instead forging ahead with plans to open a selective high school that could screen out children during the admissions process.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Riverside School for Makers and Artists. (Google Maps)<\/p>\n

While a win for the children and families at the impacted schools, the withdrawal of all proposals will likely pose challenges for the Mamdani administration, which is facing a dramatic structural budget gap<\/a> and is under pressure to find savings by taking action on under-enrolled schools<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It will also disappoint hundreds of families who applied to Next Gen interested in technology-focused opportunities and rigorous high school options, according to advocates for the proposed school.<\/p>\n

\u201cEnsuring that every child has access to academically rigorous and truly integrated education remains our focus, and withdrawing these proposals is not an end to these important conversations,\u201d said Nicole Brownstein, a spokeswoman for city public schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo our school communities: we heard you. Over the coming months, we\u2019ll continue to partner with our communities to explore how to strengthen family participation around school changes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After months of community opposition, New York City Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels on Monday yanked controversial plans to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[67,85,267,9,24,264,12,63,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-211547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-education","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-county","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}