P.S. 145, also known as Bloomingdale Elementary, located at 150 W. 105th St., in Manhattan Valley, is preparing to welcome West Prep Academy, a middle school slated to move into the building at the end of June. Photo: Luis Ahumada

Reported on June 17, 2011

Teachers and staff at P.S. 145, also known as Bloomingdale Elementary, have begun packing up classrooms and moving furniture to make space for West Prep Academy, a middle school serving 121 students in grades six through eight, slated to move into the building at the end of June.

Despite initial concerns from administrators and parents at P.S. 145, officials at the Department of Education decided to relocate West Prep to make use of idle capacity available at the Manhattan Valley building. The move will help free up some space in the crowded M044 building, located at 100 W. 77th St., where an elementary school with approximately half the number of students will be moving into the building after West Prep leaves.

Roberto Padilla, the West Prep principal, believes his school will benefit from the move. He is particularly excited that his students will have regular access to a gym and library. His only minor concern: “The space we are going into was designed for pre-k children,” he said. “So we are taking kids who are growing and have big bodies, and putting them into spaces that were designed for small children.”

Some P.S. 145 parents have expressed anxiety about having middle school kids around their younger children. “The age is too different; we shouldn’t put big kids with little kids, it creates problems,” said Mark Hill, a parent of a second-grader enrolled at P.S. 145.

Tina Crocket, the president of the Parents’ Association at P.S. 145, agrees with Hill. She said, “The little pre-k parents are worried about having older kids around the playground, afraid their kids might get pushed around or bullied.”

Padilla isn’t concerned, “Right now we share a floor with another middle school and a kindergarten and there haven’t been any issues in the past two years since we first opened.”

Maya Jones, a teacher at West Prep, said her sixth-grade students had engaged in a buddy program with kindergarteners earlier this year. She said, “They loved it because they were kind of like mentors to the younger kids and it was a meaningful experience for them.” Like Padilla, she doesn’t believe the elementary school kids face added risks. Jones says the move will also benefit teaching at West Prep. “It will be nice for the art, math and science teachers each to have their own rooms; plus, we will have a teachers lounge – which will be great because presently this is like our teachers’ lounge” said Jones while sitting in West Prep’s congested administration office.

Limited space isn’t an uncommon problem in schools across the five boroughs. Recent budget cuts combined with a shortage of zoned school buildings in many parts of the city, among other factors, have exacerbated the overcrowding of schools.

According to Noah Gotbaum, the District 3 Community Education Council president, a shortage of kindergarten and elementary school seats has been particularly severe in the southern zone of the Upper West Side, where West Prep is currently located.

New high-rise buildings have attracted young families, which in turn, have increased demand for zoned elementary schools in the area, prompting the school department to shuffle schools around to free up space in buildings like M044 – which presently houses five schools and is operating above its 1,253 student capacity.

Despite the challenges, administrators at Bloomingdale and West Prep have started working closely together to make the move as painless and seamless as possible. “We are already collaborating and sharing ideas,” said Ivelisse Alvarez, the principal of P.S. 145. “It is going to be a successful co-location because both schools have made a commitment to make sure that all our students succeed.”

His students watched closely from their seats on the floor of the school’s central hall, and New York City Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein stood near the improvised stage. It was Oct. 28, three days before Halloween, and the lectern was flanked by two “Pumpkin πs” – jack-o-lanterns carved with the famous mathematical symbol.

“First of all,” began the principal, before stepping forward and thrusting the silver trophy aloft. “Yeah!”

Principal Kenneth Baum raises the trophy after being presented with the Intel Schools of Distinction Award. Photo: Sasha Chavkin

From their makeshift seats, the students responded with a burst of laughter and then cheers. The Urban Assembly School for Applied Math and Science had just won the Intel Schools of Distinction Award for its innovative teaching of mathematics, one of six schools in the nation selected for the prestigious prize.

The school seemed an unlikely candidate for the honor. The 6-year-old public school is located in Morrisania in the South Bronx, one of the country’s poorest neighborhoods. The area’s students got their biggest headlines recently, when a 15-year-old girl was struck by a stray gunshot fired by a 16-year-old boy. Between 81 and 90 percent of Urban Assembly’s students come from families receiving public assistance, with 94 percent eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, according to 2008 data from the New York City Department of Education.

Chancellor Klein called the improbable honor proof that the Bloomberg Administration’s policy of creating new small schools was working. Urban Assembly admits less than 100 students per grade, and according to a June 2009 report by the New School, it is one of 200 new small schools opened under Klein’s tenure since 2002.

“It’s so clear to me these schools are effectively creating options in places where there are very few options,” Klein said following the awards ceremony.

The chancellor’s embrace of small schools like Urban Assembly in Morrisania – one of 22 Urban Assembly schools, each with its own theme – indicated a dramatically different phase for a vision that began as a radical grassroots movement. The idea of creating small schools was first championed by leftist educators and community activists, who envisioned these schools as hubs for social change in poor communities. Mayor Bloomberg seized upon this idea in 2002, when he first took office and placed educational reform at the heart of his legacy.

As small schools have sprouted up across the city, some activists say that the movement’s original ethic of innovation and empowerment has been lost. Roughly 58,000 of the city’s 300,000 high school students now attend small schools, according to a report by the New School.

“The bureaucratic proliferation of small schools feels more like a management strategy,” said Michelle Fine, a Distinguished Professor of Urban Education at the City University of New York and longtime small schools supporter.

Advocates such as Fine doubt that a citywide decision to establish small schools can produce the sense of community that she said is essential in order for these schools to succeed.

Fine’s misgivings point to a broader concern: whether Urban Assembly represents a model of the small schools initiative, or an exceptional case trumpeted by the chancellor to mask a policy that has lost its moorings.

Bringing Math to Morrisania

In a 10th grade Alegebra II section at Urban Assembly, teacher Tim Jones taught his class about piecewise linear functions.

“As you know, I am Senator Jones,” he said. “You are my advisers and you need to tell me which is the best tax policy.”

The class was split up into two rows, preparing to face each another in debate. One group advocated a flat tax, an unchanging linear function, while the other promoted a progressive tax, a piecewise function for which the formula changed in each tax bracket. To get points in the debate, students had to back up their claims with references to graphs handed out by the teacher.

The students’ arguments were longer on social policy than on algebra. “The money from the rich can be used to help the poor,” said one student on the progressive side.

Still, Jones kept bringing them back to the graphs.

Assistant Principal David Krulwich said that the approach showed the school’s broader strategy for teaching seemingly abstract concepts such as piecewise functions.

“This is a really boring topic that no one wants to learn,” said Krulwich. “But tax policy debate is what makes it interesting too. To teach kids to think about a graph and make a logical argument based on it, we would argue, is much more important than learning to manipulate variables.”

The school has introduced a number of these types of innovations to spark students’ interest in mathematics. The key program is the school’s unique, internally developed curriculum that pairs math with a more traditional liberal arts subject such as architecture or social justice. This allows the students to think of math outside of its usual confines of equations and graphs and to see how it’s applied to real world settings.

The school has also adopted block scheduling to allow math to be taught in 102-minute periods. These longer classes provide laboratory-style lesson plans with more time for hands-on learning.

“We get to do activities to help you understand the math,” said 7th grader Iliana Lopez, 12, at the Intel award ceremony. “As you hear it, you can also visualize it.”

In addition, the school tries to build its community by sending teachers on home visits to the families of all incoming students.

Recent test scores and city assessments have shown that Urban Assembly’s approach seems to be working. Roughly 82 percent of its students scored at or above grade level in math, with 92 percent of parents attending parent-teacher nights, according to the Intel Foundation. The school’s most recent assessment from the New York City Department of Education also cited “a dynamic and talented principal,” “hard-working and fully committed” teachers, and a “challenging and stimulating” curriculum.

In Tim Jones’ algebra class, he stopped his students on several occasions as they tried to interrupt each other in the tax policy debate. The material seemed to have captured their interest – even if the enthusiasm was not devoted just to piecewise linear functions.

The Small Schools Movement

In New York City, the movement for small public schools first picked up steam in the 1990s. The campaign, said CUNY’s Michelle Fine, was a grassroots effort driven by parents, educators and community groups who wanted to promote equal opportunity and civic engagement in poor neighborhoods.

Deborah Meier, who created a network of small schools in East Harlem and was a founding figure in the movement, emphasized that school size was a means to creating communities where teachers can learn from experience and develop new practices accordingly. “Small schools give teachers the opportunity to use their minds,” said Meier.

As small progressive schools reached a critical mass in New York, the idea caught the eye of a new mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, who had pledged to apply the management acumen that earned him billions in the corporate world to improving city government. In 2002, Bloomberg won mayoral control of the schools and launched a sweeping initiative to open new small schools to replace failing high schools. The campaign was backed by outside funders, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The foundation has since contributed more than $78 million to the program.

For many of the movement’s initial backers, the victory was bittersweet. The centralized initiative seemed to undermine the spirit of local empowerment that their movement had advocated.

“Somehow Bloomberg and friends and Gates took small as though it were the point rather than a vehicle,” said Fine.

The Urban Assembly School in Morrisania was founded as part of the wave of new schools launched by Bloomberg and supported by the Gates Foundation, in a program called the New Century High School Initiative. Serving in his first job as a principal, Baum has led the school since it opened its doors in 2004.

Baum is a strong believer in the virtues of small schools. He said that the current system has not inhibited him from developing a creative curriculum.

“This award by Intel is outside recognition that not only are we doing things that are innovative, those things are working,” he said.

So far, the data has suggested that small schools have been getting results. An Oct. 2007 report prepared on behalf of New Century Initiative Schools found that the small schools graduated students 78 percent of the time, 17 percent more often than comparable larger schools. New Century schools also graduated students on time at a 20 percent higher clip than city high schools generally, at 78 percent rather than 58 percent.

But questions about their sustainability and their mission remain unresolved.

“A lot of the new small schools have been sort of splashed together without the critical elements of having educators and parents shaping and owning the school,” said Fine.

A 2006 report by the New York Immigration Coalition and Advocates for Children also found that small schools were not providing equitable access to English Language Learners or legally mandated bilingual services.

As the debate on small schools continues, the Department of Education is forging ahead. Department spokeswoman Ann Forte said that all 13 high schools that the city opened in 2009 were small schools. At the Intel award celebration, Chancellor Klein vowed to expand the program during Mayor Bloomberg’s third term.

“There is no question in my mind that it has improved graduation rates,” said Klein. “We are going to continue to create small, rigorous schools.”

With more than 6,000 visits last year and a 97 percent registration rate, officials at a school-based clinic in Public School 11 believe they will serve even more students this year.

Linda Mikolay, a nurse practitioner and supervisor of school-based clinics sponsored by The Ryan Center, said she believes the numbers will increase because school enrollment is up and parents are looking for affordable health care.

Adam, 7, receives treatment regularly form the Ryan Center's clinic in PS 11 for his allergies and asthma. Photo: Sonia Dasgupta

“We see every student whether or not they have insurance,” Mikolay said. “Sometimes if they have it, we’ll bill Medicaid.”

The Ryan Center is a community-based clinic that runs several school-based clinics in addition to its community health centers. It serves students from both PS 11 and The Clinton School for Writers and Artists – schools that share a building on West 21st Street in Chelsea.

Although the clinic only serves students at the school, medical treatments performed at the facility are free.

“We do everything from Band-Aids to doing physicals,” Mikolay said.

That includes school immunizations, administering flu vaccines, routine follow-ups for asthma and diabetes, throat cultures and rapid strep tests, which diagnose strep throat, all for free.

The center has a nurse practitioner, Christine Dahler, who can write prescriptions for children as well.

There are 122 school-based clinics in the five boroughs, according to the city Department of Education. Eighty of the clinics also serve students for mental health issues, according to the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Web site.

Those clinics are sponsored by local hospitals or other community-based clinics and receive some funding from the state, Mikolay said.

She said the number of visits have increased each year.

Starting in fall 2007, the clinic saw 5,983 students from both schools that year.
“We’re seeing kids without their parents,” she said. “Parents fill out a consent form allowing us to treat their children during the school day without their presence. If a child doesn’t have consent, we can’t treat them.”

Katherine Neville, a single mother from Morningside Heights, specifically chose PS 11 for her son, Adam, because of the school’s clinic.

The second-grader has asthma and allergies to dairy products, eggs, wheat and corn.
“He’ll go into anabolic shock if he ingests it or if someone else touches him after touching those foods,” Neville said. “He is also allergic to pets.”

Although Adam’s asthma has led him to visit the clinic often, she said, she is indebted to the nurses at the clinic after they saved his life last March.

Neville said after one of her son’s episodes, Dahler told her it was an abnormal reaction and to go to the emergency room.

She said doctors discovered her son had a collapsed lung.

“I can feel like my son is taken care of,” she said, “and in my case he is alive because of them.”

However, for families who don’t attend a school with a clinic there is another option.

The city health department has walk-in clinics in all five boroughs for residents to receive required vaccinations for their school-age children at no cost.

Children or adults can receive immunizations for Hepatitis B, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, measles, mumps and rubella.

Mikolay said this year, one more reason may make numbers increase citywide.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced on Sept. 1 the city would provide free flu mist and flu shots to all elementary school children.

“Parents are worried about how they can prevent their children from getting swine flu along with the regular flu this year,” she said.

Last year, she said the clinic served about 10 percent of the schools’ populations for influenza.

Where you can get more information:

There are four clinics – Fort Greene Health Center in Brooklyn, Chelsea Health Center in Manhattan, Corona Health Center in Queens and Tremont Health Center in the Bronx.

Although all clinics are open from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., the days they are open for walk-in appointments vary.