Why the Proposed Success Charter School Isn’t for My Children
By Gary Culliss
There’s a baby boom going on in New York City. While this boom is a flattering testament to the revitalization of New York, it also means that many of our public schools are now overcrowded.
As a father preparing to enroll my daughter in kindergarten this coming fall, I was surprised to learn of the long wait lists and uncertainty facing many public school parents. So when I read about a new charter school proposed for District 3 on the Upper West Side, I was excited to hear about another possible option to relieve overcrowding.
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School Plans For Riverside Center
By Roland Li
Upper West Side parents and members of Community Board 7 demanded construction of a school at the Riverside Center development that would be large enough to alleviate crowding problems in District 3.
“Overcrowding in the southern district has reached crisis proportions,” said Noah Gotbaum, president of District 3’s Community Education Council, which covers the West Side from 59th Street up to Harlem. Read more
Students’ Vision Will Shape New MLK Campus Plaza
Walking by the Martin Luther King High School campus, it’s hard to tell that there are actually six different theme-based high schools housed in the same complex, at 122 Amsterdam Ave. and West 66th Street. In its current dilapidated condition, not many people use the plaza outside the building, but faculty and students of Manhattan Hunter High School for Science, one of those six schools, want to change that. Read more
Nursing Home Help For Crowded School
P.S. 163 officials and parents are planning for an influx of new students, and help may come from Jewish Home Lifecare. The nursing home is in discussions with the public school to provide space in its new development on West 100th Street.
Jewish Home Lifecare, based on West 106th Street, generated some controversy last year when administrators announced the construction of a new state-of-the-art nursing facility on West 100th Street. Read more
Space Squeeze for New District 3 Primary School
Despite the urging of District 3’s Community Education Council, the Department of Education said it was not possible to increase the number of grades at P.S. 452, a new school slated to open in the I.S. 44 building on West 77th Street in fall 2010.
The department is planning to start three kindergarten classes at the school, but the parent council wants that number increased to five. The move, the parent council argues, would help ease pressure at nearby crowded schools, especially P.S. 87 and P.S. 199, both of which are far above capacity. Read more
Turf War
New York City’s smaller islands offer a bit of a headache. For every Rikers Island or Hart Island, which fulfill their functions ably—the city’s prison and potter’s fields, respectively—there is an Ellis Island, which provoked a legal dispute between New York and New Jersey that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Or a Governors Island, which nobody seems to know how best to utilize. Or a Randall’s Island, which, despite all of its advantages, is mostly known for controversy these days. Read more
School Gets Approval
Despite reservations from some residents, Community Board 7 voted in favor of Columbia Grammar & Prep’s expansion at the Jan. 5 full board meeting.
Following several revisions and meetings with community members, Board 7’s Park’s & Preservation Committee issued a resolution describing the one-story extension as “relatively minimally intrusive to the character of the donut”—the area of common green space behind the school—“and to the views, light and air, and quality of life for the neighbors.”
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SCHOOL EXPANSION CLEARS HURDLE
Community Board 7’s landmark committee approved Columbia Grammar & Prep’s rear-yard expansion Dec. 10. The committee voted unanimously in favor of a new proposal that members felt was contextual with the surrounding buildings.
Columbia Grammar ditched plans for a glass enclosure opposed by neighbors of the school, which owns several buildings on West 94th Street between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West.
At an October community board meeting, nearby residents told board members that the project would disrupt the character of the “donut”—the collective backyards of a landmarked block that forms a rectangle of green space.
Residents also complained that a glass-enclosed school space would add intrusive light after school hours and allow kids to play right outside their windows.
The newly-planned 16-foot brick enclosure addresses those complaints, said Howard Weiss, a lawyer and spokesperson for the school.
“Columbia Grammar, in deference to those concerns, went back and studied an alternative,” Weiss said. “The children could gather inside the enclosed, covered space.”
The school will also strip layers of paint on the building to bring out the original brick façade.
“[The extension] will have a feel of the original building,” Weiss said.
This project is similar to several others that prompted residents to complain about rear-yard expansions of Upper West Side schools.
The full board is slated to vote on the project at the Jan. 5, 2010 meeting. Board decisions, however, are advisory. The Landmarks Preservation Commission will officially approve or reject the plan.
School Worker Assaulted
A school safety agent was hit Dec. 7 at 9:49 a.m. after she broke up a fight between two students at Brandeis High School, at 145 W. 84th Street between Columbus and Amsterdam avenues. Police said that, after the fight, one of the teens turned his ire on the agent and struck her in the chest. The 17-year-old teen was arrested for assault.
REMEMBERING LONG TIME PRINCIPAL
Sidney H. Morison, a longtime educator and principal of P.S. 84 the Lillian Weber School, may be immortalized on an Upper West Side street.
The pioneering principal led the school for 26 years, from 1969 to 1995. He died Oct. 16 at the age of 77.
His wife, Jacqueline, is planning to request that Community Board 7 honor Morison by renaming West 92nd Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue, where P.S. 84 is located. His widow said she wanted to rename something after Morison, who was an education advocate and pioneer of dual-language education.
“What better thing than to rename the street where the school is,” she said. “He had this thing about the community, for the underdog, for social justice.”
Morison, a Bronx native, moved to the Upper West Side to attend Columbia University. He taught math at Joan of Arc High School on West 93rd Street before becoming chair of the mathematics department.
“Sid Morison was a man who believed that all children could learn, and made that belief a reality,” wrote Hannah Hess, an education author, in a letter to Community Board 7. “It would be only fitting to have the street on which the school is located named for Sid Morison.”
