Past issues
Feeds
The Paper in print
Twitter
Facebook
Contact
Email updates Twitter Facebook RSS Feeds
A city education panel has killed MS 571, a Prospect Heights middle school that will be shuttered to allow a charter school to take its place.
The Department of Education made good on its vow to close the failing Underhill Avenue school in an 8–4 vote by its Panel for Education Policy on Thursday night, a vote that came despite complaints that MS 571 “has made improvements” in its consistently miserable scores in just about every academic category over the past few years.
The middle school had shared space with PS 9 — and now the elementary school parents and teachers are outraged that their school will share space with Brooklyn East Collegiate Charter School — currently at a Crown Heights high school — after MS 571 is phased out.
PS 9 officials have said that if the middle school is eliminated to make room for another sixth- though eight-grade program, that new program should be run by the PS 9.
MS 571 failed because its students have scored in the bottom 10 percent on math tests, and the bottom two percent on English tests in recent years, officials said.
The school earned a D grade on its city progress report last year, which gave it F grades in categories including student performance, progress and overall “school environment.”
Brooklyn East Collegiate, which opened last year as only a fifth-grade program, is looking for a new home because its current space is temporary and it will now operate with two grade levels.
Now that the phase-out is imminent, students at MS 571 will be allowed to graduate, but no new students will be allowed to enroll.
©2011 Community Newspaper Group
By submitting this comment, you agree to the following terms:
You agree that you, and not BrooklynPaper.com or its affiliates, are fully responsible for the content that you post. You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening or sexually-oriented material or any material that may violate applicable law; doing so may lead to the removal of your post and to your being permanently banned from posting to the site. You grant to BrooklynPaper.com the royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual and fully sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such content in whole or in part world-wide and to incorporate it in other works in any form, media or technology now known or later developed.
Print this story
Digg this
Del.icio.us