It’s a lesson in division.
The city wants to close the middle school it opened in 2012 for students who matriculate from popular Brooklyn Heights elementary school PS 8 in order to create a new six-through-eighth grade learning house to serve even more kids in the classroom-starved area.
Education leaders on Oct. 30 revealed a plan to close MS 8 — where students graduating from Hicks Street’s PS 8 get priority enrollment above others in the district — and replace it with a new facility in the same space, where those students wouldn’t be prioritized, which they said will also bring in more funding and alleviate other issues that PS and MS 8 faculty face.
“This is a unique proposal, we’ve never done it before,” said Max Familian, the Department of Education’s director of planning. “We feel the school will have more money, and that the proposal has a lot of merits.”
MS 8 — which occupies a Tech Place building that also houses four other high schools and education programs — and PS 8 are roughly one-mile apart, but share the same staff and budget, requiring teachers to schlep back and forth throughout the school day, according to the acting superintendent of District 13, which includes schools in neighborhoods that run from Vinegar Hill to Bedford-Stuyvesant.
“I really commend the principal for the work she’s doing, but it’s really unfair to her in comparison to other principals in the city that don’t have to endure the hardship of being in two places in one day,” said Zina Cooper-Williams.
And in addition to getting its own staff and budget, the proposed, yet-to-be-named middle school would also welcome even more students by adding a sixth grade class, according to MS 8’s principal, who said the new facility would likely expand on the learning house’s current mission and curriculum.
“There is not a plan to bring a new middle school with an entirely new vision,” said Trish Peterson. “The plan is to build upon MS 8, and just make it bigger by one class.”
And the so-called truncation of MS 8 would not impact enrollment at PS 8, which now educates 688 youngsters — 139 more than its capacity, according to city data — but has still turned some hopeful pupils away even after education bigwigs controversially cut the area it serves by about 50 percent in 2016.
Some parents, however, worried the new middle school won’t get its fair share of city money from the so-called Fair Student Funding program — which doles out cash to schools serving the five boroughs’ neediest tots — after officials previously promised it would get the highest possible amount of cash in earlier discussions about the proposal, but dialed that pledge back to saying funding would increase but the exact amount wouldn’t be decided until the spring during the recent meeting about the scheme.
“Forgive me if it feels like there’s a little bit of some backpedaling on the funding,” said a Brooklyn Heights mom, who requested anonymity because her kid is a PS8 student.
Parents can voice more opinions on the middle-school plan this month at two public hearings ahead of the city’s Panel on Education Policy’s Nov. 28 vote on the plan, which, if approved, would take effect in September 2019.
Voice your opinion on the plan during meetings at the George Westinghouse Campus (105 Tech Place near Tillary Street in Downtown) on Nov. 19 at 6pm, and at PS 8 (37 Hicks Street between Poplar and Middagh streets in Brooklyn Heights) on Nov. 20 at 6 pm.
