{"id":385950,"date":"2026-10-28T23:06:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T23:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/385950\/"},"modified":"2026-10-28T23:06:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T23:06:08","slug":"as-nyc-enrollment-drops-a-push-for-small-schools-in-shared-buildings-to-pool-resources","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/385950\/","title":{"rendered":"As NYC enrollment drops, a push for small schools in shared buildings to pool resources"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is part two of a three-part series. Here\u2019s the first story<\/a>. And sign up for Chalkbeat New York\u2019s free email newsletter<\/a> to be the first to know when the next story is published.<\/p>\n

As a parent leader for more than a decade, Johanna Bjorken has heard plenty of stories about New York City schools struggling with low enrollment.<\/p>\n

But Chalkbeat\u2019s investigation last month into the decline of Murry Bergtraum<\/a> High School for Business Careers \u2014 the city\u2019s smallest traditional high school with roughly 90 students \u2014 struck a nerve.<\/p>\n

Bjorken\u2019s son goes to school just two floors above Murry Bergtraum in a shared building in lower Manhattan where the students play on joint sports teams. Yet the schools feel worlds apart. While Bjorken\u2019s son takes Advanced Placement Calculus, students at Murry Bergtraum last year had only one math teacher<\/a> and two math courses<\/a>, Algebra I and II. Despite having a per-student budget nearly twice the city average<\/a>, Murry Bergtraum\u2019s limited academic offerings force some students to attend night school to graduate. <\/p>\n

\u201cI was shocked to hear that students, some of whom may very well play volleyball or soccer with my child, have to go to night school for basic graduation requirements, and moreover, that the school\u2019s situation has been known for many years with no action,\u201d Bjorken wrote in a September letter to city officials. <\/p>\n

\"AA list of the four small high schools sharing the Murry Bergtraum Educational Campus in lower Manhattan. (Michael Elsen-Rooney \/ Chalkbeat) <\/p>\n

Like school districts across the country, New York City is struggling with a small schools crisis after years of enrollment declines. What makes the city\u2019s situation unique, however, is how many of its small high schools share buildings with each other: 72 of the city\u2019s high schools with fewer than 250 students are on shared campuses, a Chalkbeat analysis found. <\/p>\n

Ten months into his tenure, pressure is mounting on New York City schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels to address the increasing number of small schools, which cluster the most vulnerable students in schools with the fewest academic opportunities. School leaders and experts say that long term, the city will need to close and merge underenrolled schools \u2014 a process that can be slow and politically unpopular. But many principals feel they can\u2019t afford to wait for that process to play out and feel a sense of urgency to ensure their current students have access to high-quality programs and advanced courses. Now, a growing chorus is urging Samuels to help small schools on shared campuses pool their resources. <\/p>\n

\u201cOn shared campuses like ours the system accidentally pits us against each other \u2014 right when we need to share resources the most,\u201d said Amy Piller, the principal of Urban Assembly Maker Academy, the school Bjorken\u2019s son attends on the Murry Bergtraum campus.<\/p>\n

We’re on a need-to-know basis.<\/p>\n

Every weekday morning, Chalkbeat New York is bringing thousands of subscribers the news on public schools and education policy that they need to start their day. Sign up for our free newsletter to join them.<\/p>\n

Samuels indicated at a town hall last week<\/a> that he\u2019s not crafting a citywide plan and instead is asking five working groups<\/a> to devise blueprints for underenrolled schools in their districts. None of those working groups includes high schools, but Samuels told parent leaders this week that the Education Department is looking at creating \u201ccampus working groups\u201d for high schools. City officials have not shared a timeline for this work. An Education Department spokesperson did not respond to questions about how, or whether, the city is helping schools in the same building share resources.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, some principals on shared campuses have pooled course offerings, while others have not \u2014 but are looking for guidance and support from the Education Department as they\u2019ve seen their rosters shrink.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey kind of leave principals up to their own devices,\u201d said Mike Sill, the secretary of the United Federation of Teachers.<\/p>\n

Inside the push to reimagine NYC\u2019s shared high schools<\/p>\n

About two decades ago, the Bloomberg administration made a big bet that small schools would better serve vulnerable students by providing them with more individual attention and ensuring they didn\u2019t slip through the cracks. The city shuttered dozens of troubled large high schools and opened scores of small new ones in their buildings.<\/p>\n

Small schools boosted graduation rates<\/a> and college enrollment<\/a>, but they couldn\u2019t provide the same variety of extracurricular or academic options as larger schools.<\/p>\n

As enrollment declined, some schools banded together in an attempt to provide students with more opportunities. At the Theodore Roosevelt campus in the Bronx, the principals of its six co-located schools decided a decade ago to open advanced courses like calculus and statistics to the entire campus since none of the schools had enough students to fill the courses on their own.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s challenging with scheduling,\u201d said Michael Barakat, the principal of Bronx HIgh School for Law and Community Service. \u201cBut what\u2019s the alternative? Kids don\u2019t have calculus? That\u2019s crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the Lehman High School campus in the Bronx, the principals of six small high schools in a sprawling building agreed in 2016 to align their bell schedules so they could open courses to everyone on the campus.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe sat down and figured it out,\u201d recalled John Powers, the former principal of Lehman High School, who retired in 2023. \u201cIt was something we all felt compelled to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some education leaders said the city can be more ambitious in helping small schools pool resources than just sharing courses. <\/p>\n

With nearly half the city\u2019s high school buildings sitting \u201cunderutilized,\u201d<\/a> it\u2019s worth trying to figure out how to use the empty space for new programs or academies to benefit all the students in their building, said Kristin Kearns Jordan, the former CEO of Urban Assembly, a nonprofit that helps run roughly two dozen small New York City public high schools.<\/p>\n

The city recently built STEAM centers in Brooklyn<\/a> and the Bronx<\/a> where nearby high schools can send students to get hands-on experiences in math and science. Those centers offer a model of what the city could build on shared campuses.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe possibilities are endless,\u201d Kearns Jordan said.<\/p>\n

Several of the schools on the Murry Bergtraum campus are already thinking about those possibilities. In a letter to families last month, Piller, the Maker Academy principal, said her school is a finalist for a grant to transform an unused locker room on the campus\u2019s top floor into a shared academic space for all of the schools on the campus.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs enrollment patterns change across New York City, large shared campuses like ours have an opportunity to rethink what sharing a building can mean,\u201d she wrote. Chalkbeat\u2019s story on Murry Bergtram \u201cnames a problem. I want us to be part of designing what comes next.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AAmy Piller, the principal of Urban Assembly Maker Academy, poses with students. (Courtesy image) Schedule clashes and fragmented leadership complicate resource-sharing on campuses<\/p>\n

Pooling resources, however, is not without complications. <\/p>\n

Besides having schools with different bell schedules, they may also have different grading policies. Some, for example, might focus on classwork and prioritize essays and projects, while others assign more homework and exams. Principals have to figure out how to split the costs of teachers covering shared classrooms. Further complicating matters, on many campuses, including Murry Bergtraum, schools in the same building report to different superintendents, meaning there\u2019s no single leader responsible for the whole building.<\/p>\n

Some education leaders hope a new position Samuels created \u2014 a supervising official overseeing all 11 high school superintendents \u2014 will help streamline decision-making for shared campuses. <\/p>\n

Shael Polakow-Suransky, the president of Bank Street College of Education and a former deputy chancellor under Bloomberg, said sharing courses can work for advanced classes and electives, but it\u2019s harder for core academic subjects where different schools may have specific \u2014 and clashing \u2014 approaches to instruction, behavior, or grading. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe key is how much does that shared instructional work impede on the autonomy of each school on the campus to do its model effectively?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Sharing resources often only benefits a portion of students, too, such as those who seek out advanced courses. That\u2019s part of why it can feel more like a \u201cBand-Aid\u201d than a systemic solution to the small schools problem, said Vivian Orlen, the former superintendent of Manhattan high schools.<\/p>\n

Barakat, the Bronx principal, agreed that merging schools is the \u201clogical next step.\u201d But for now, he said, \u201cI would hope that there are principals all over the place who are taking advantage of the opportunity to work with colleagues.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is part two of a three-part series. Here\u2019s the first story. And sign up for Chalkbeat New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":385951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[140620,359,140619,9,56,63,65,64],"class_list":["post-385950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-four-small-high-schools-share","tag-lower-manhattan","tag-murry-bergtraum-educational-campus","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385950","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=385950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}