The education department is reversing course on its plan to close the middle school grades at two kindergarten through 8th grade schools on the Upper West Side, just days before a vote was set to be held by the Panel for Educational Policy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
The city pulled three proposals regarding Upper West Side schools from the agenda for the Panel for Educational Policy meeting this week
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Two schools had been set to lose their middle school grades, and another had been set to move buildings
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But parent pushback led Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels to allow for more time to consider options for the schools, which have faced lower enrollment<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s a sigh of relief. I’m excited, right? It feels like a stay of execution, and now the hard work begins,\u201d Tiffany Noel-Rodriguez, a parent at P.S. 191, the Riverside School for Makers and Artists, said.<\/p>\n
That city planned to phase out grades six through eight at P.S. 191, pointing to low enrollment and poor performance. But parents like Noel-Rodriguez say the school, which welcomed more than 500 migrant students over the last several years, simply needs more support.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow we start on a clean slate. Now we make sure that our ENL students get the support that they need, that our community students get the support that they need,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The education department planned to relocate The Center School to P.S. 191\u2019s building, to provide them more space. But Center School parents say the move was a bad fit for their program, built around theater arts.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile 191 might be a great school for a typical school, it doesn’t make sense for a school that needs a full size theater,\u201d Giin Levy, a parent at The Center School, said.<\/p>\n
That proposal has also been pulled, as have plans to close the middle school grades of the Manhattan School for Children, where the education department had once again cited falling enrollment. Parents there say the school has been rebounding under new leadership.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe that this school serves a really important and unique purpose, and that it deserves to stay K to eight and that it deserves to stay on the Upper West Side,\u201d Olivia Greer said.<\/p>\n
Parents at all the schools said they were thankful to Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels for pulling the proposals.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had parents who joined public hearings, gave a lot of feedback and ultimately the feedback all centered around: our families wanted more time,\u201d Samuels told NY1.<\/p>\n
Samuels knows the proposals well\u00a0\u2014 he proposed them, back when he was superintendent of Manhattan\u2019s District 3. The deliberation over the future of these schools is not over, but Samuels says the new superintendent deserves time to work with the community and develop his own strategy.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I could have predicted that I would be chancellor, I would probably have approached things a little bit differently,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Asked what he might have changed, he said, \u201cThis was very ambitious, would have been the most ambitious move. And I felt like\u00a0\u2014 so I would have probably done a smaller number.\u201d<\/p>\n
Similar discussions are likely to play out citywide, with enrollment in public schools declining \u2014 driving some school populations to levels hard to sustain.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to be a leader in creating sustainable schools, creating wonderful opportunities for young people. And you only have that when you have a school that is well-funded with a certain number of kids,\u201d Samuels said. \u201cIt\u2019s critical that we have the community engagement necessary. We’re not going to always agree. It’s not going to always be easy.\u00a0 But at the end of the day, we want to make sure that people understand the why behind everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parents at all three schools say they\u2019re ready to work toward other solutions.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re here and we’re really ready to sit down and do the work with you. And we understand it’s not going to be easy,\u201d Greer said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The education department is reversing course on its plan to close the middle school grades at two kindergarten…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":211803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[203,25,67,3691,5215,75,84,83,9,24,63,27,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-211802","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-app-education","9":"tag-app-top-stories","10":"tag-education","11":"tag-emma-barnett","12":"tag-jillian-jorgensen","13":"tag-manhattan","14":"tag-manhattan-headlines","15":"tag-manhattan-news","16":"tag-new-york","17":"tag-new-york-city","18":"tag-nyc","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211802","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=211802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}