Restricted enrollment at TC's public school concerns locals

As plans progress for a new public school run by Teachers College, new announcements about its location, size and potential students have concerned some local residents.

At a Community Board 9 meeting last week, University officials explained that plans for the school’s immediate future will include kindergarten through fifth grades, rather than pre-kindergarten through eighth grade as expected.

Officials also clarified that only children residing within the Department of Education’s District 5 would be able to apply–leaving out a portion of CB9 students who live in education District 6.

The school is a topic of community debate because its establishment was included in the Community Benefits Agreement for the University’s Manhattanville expansion, meant to benefit West Harlem. But the school’s temporary opening location will be in East Harlem, with two kindergarten classes housed within PS 133 on Fifth Avenue between 130th and 131st streets.

Jim Gardner, associate vice president of external affairs at Teachers College, said that decisions about space and students are out of Teachers College’s hands.

“We have to work with the space we can secure right now,” Gardner said. “This will be a district school. We see this as a partnership with DOE, but DOE is the governing authority on deciding these matters.”

The DOE determined that there were no available buildings to allow for a pre-K through eighth grade school, he said.

“I can boil it down to one word: space,” Gardner said.

The benefits agreement does not specify the grade levels to be included in the school. But only a month ago, Nancy Streim, vice president of the Office of School and Community Partnerships, told donors at an event that the school would gradually expand up to eighth grade.

“Our original plan, our hope, and our dream is that the school would be for children from pre-K through eighth grade,” Streim said. “The site that we are looking at will house a part of our program, so we’re starting with the elementary school, and then over time as we grow, we’ll need additional space so that we can complete the program up through the eighth grade.”

Gardner said that the Teachers College school would be out of PS 133 after one year, and that a permanent site has yet to be decided—though it “will be at the heart of Community Board 9.”

The benefits agreement states that Teachers College will work with the DOE “to develop the school in CB9, but if not in CB9 then in another suitable location that serves the students of CB9” as approved by the West Harlem Local Development Corporation, the organization charged with overseeing the distribution of benefits.

“The decision again for this school to serve all of District 5 was the Department of Education’s,” Gardner said.

But some have suggested that the restriction of the applicant pool to only students in District 5 is depriving many other students in CB9 of the opportunity to benefit from a school originally dedicated to serving members of that area.

“The people at the meeting, I think, were justifiably very upset,” CB9 member Walter South, said.

“There’s no reason why the chair of Community Board 9 … shouldn’t be involved with these negotiations,” South added, suggesting that this would ensure that the entirety of CB9’s interests were represented.

CB9 chair Larry English could not be reached for comment.

emily.neil@columbiaspectator.com