Beloved West Side H.S Will Be Forced To Swap Buildings With Women’s School After Ed. Vote
Edwards A. Reynolds West Side High School will be swapped into a smaller building in East Harlem, which now houses the Young Women’s Leadership School. Opponents of the highly contested decision included Gale Brewer, who told The Spirit about why she advocated for a one-year deferral of the decision.
| 05 May 2023 | 05:22
Edward R. Reyolds High School, also known as West Side High, is a so-called “transfer school” for at-risk students which has been housed at its current location for over 50 years. Now it is being forced to move to East Harlem, stirring community controversy. Photo: Google Maps/Streetview
The Young Woman’s Leadership Academy in an all girl’s public school, which is moving from its East Harlem home, into the building that currently houses Edward R. Reynolds West Side High. Photo: Street View/Google Maps
Early in the morning on May 2nd, after a tense seven hour hearing, the New York City’s Panel of Educational Policy voted to exchange Edwards A. Reynolds West Side School–located at 140 W. 102nd St.–with The Young Women’s Leadership School, by a vote of 12-9. The West Side School, which was custom-built 50+ years ago to help at-risk kids get their high school diplomas, would be relocated to an East Harlem building that now houses the all-women public high school.
West Side High, as it is known, would lose facilities such as a health center, an on-site daycare center and a kitchen. Attendance at West Side High and other so-called transfer schools has dropped during the pandemic. Five years ago, the school had 500 students, but a tally from the past school year showed about 200 students.
The women’s school is part of a network of all-girls public schools devised by Ann and Andrew Tisch, billionaires who partnered with the New York Department of Education to open The Young Women’s Leadership School of East Harlem in 1996.
West Side High is a transfer school for a diverse array of underserved students, including foster care youth, teenage moms and kids transitioning out of the criminal justice system. Proponents of the swap cited the lower enrollment numbers as a rationale for moving the women’s school, which has growing enrollment, into the West Side building.
Alyssa Cartagena, a student at West Side High, told the nonprofit education news site Chalkbeat that she is on track to get her high school degree this year–namely because West Side High has a daycare center where she can drop off her son, who was born last year. “I was nervous, but I was also relaxed knowing I was so close to him, and I can stop by anytime,” Cartagena, age 19, told Chalkbeat. “It was easier for me to focus in class.”
The swap had been diligently opposed by politicians including Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, who wrote in a statement: “I fully understand that these proposals would allow for both schools to utilize buildings that better align with the current and projected size of their student bodies. However, I believe that these proposed re-sitings, in their current form, are not in the best interests of the student bodies of both schools, due to their failure to align with the real needs of these students.”
Gale Brewer, the councilwoman for New York City’s District 6 on the Upper West Side, also lobbied against the swap. She proposed an array of strategies for increasing enrollment at West Side High in a memorandum to New York City Schools Chancellor David C. Banks, including: a new open house on Tuesdays, as well as the group’s Friends of West Side High School and Goddard’s Learning to Work Program preparing recruitment campaigns. She also noted that “the current principal, Marangelitza Rivera, has enrolled 35 students over the last month.”
In the memo, Brewer further asked for a one-year deferral of the proposed swap, and noted that she had told Sandeep Kandhari of the Center for Family Representation–during a City Council oversight hearing on the barriers to justice and lack of support services in family court–that West Side High had the personnel necessary to help young people access adequate support services.
In an interview with The Spirit, Brewer said that the narrow approval of the swap had left her “very upset,” adding, “I’ve been a part of that school since it existed. I know the principal, they have excellent teachers. Students feel comfortable in that school. Everybody is welcome.” Decrying the Women’s School–which Brewer noted would be situated in an office building–as a product of lobbyist money, she said that the “space makes the school.”
Brewer didn’t know if this was the end of her fight to preserve the environment West Side School offers, and mentioned refitting a nearby Orthodox school with HVAC to rebuild the community locally. “It’s hard to be objective in this situation,” she concluded, wishing that the vote had a different outcome.