‘Tribeca High School’ Is in the Works

By Ronald Drenger

A new high school is coming to Lower Manhattan, possibly as early as September.

Community School District 2, in partnership with the YMCA of Greater New York, plans to open the school Downtown with a ninth-grade class of 125 students from all over the district. After four years the school would hold 500 students. District 2, the Y and Community Board 1 have been negotiating for the use of part of the Downtown Athletic Club building at 19 West St., near Battery Park. At the same time, the Y is studying the feasibility of opening a YMCA branch in the building. The district says it has identified, but declines to name, an existing Downtown school building that could house the new school for a year until a permanent building is ready. But if a permanent site isn’t secured this month, District 2 may defer the school’s opening for a year, according to the district’s spokesman, Roy Moskowitz. Nevertheless, the school has a designated principal, Robert Rhodes, now an assistant principal of School of the Future, a middle school and high school in District 2. He would not comment for this article, but his voice mail at the school last month said that it takes messages for "Tribeca High School." The school has also been called the "Millennium High School." The school’s collaboration with the YMCA would go beyond any program that the organization now runs in schools around the city, according to the school’s planners. "This is different because we’re involved from the ground floor with the administration of the school," said David Rinaldi, the YMCA’s director of youth development programs and a member of the school’s planning team. "We’re built in and we’re there from day one. We’re not outsiders. For us, this is a paradigm shift."

The YMCA has been involved in curriculum development and YMCA staff will help provide academic support, such as tutoring, homework help and advice on study skills, individual and group counseling, and recreation, arts and leadership programs, including community service projects, preparation for college life, and mentoring. Downtown community leaders have long wanted a new Downtown school. Recently, Community Board 1 and District 2 have worked together to find a site and raise money for a Downtown high school, collaborating on the board’s recent launch of a $15 million fundraising campaign. But CB1 members involved in the school effort said they were unaware that District 2 and the YMCA had already drawn up detailed plans for the school. They said they intended to play a significant role in designing whatever school opens Downtown. "As we move forward with raising money, we will have discussions about what kind of school we want," said Madelyn Wils, CB1’s chair.

The Board of Education has said it will pay to lease a Downtown building and run the high school. But money has to be found to construct a building or, more likely, to convert an existing building.

Along with Stuyvesant, Lower Manhattan has three other high schools—Murray Bergtraum, the High School for Leadership and Public Service, and the High School of Economics and Finance. All of them, like most high schools in the city, are overseen by the Board of Education rather than the school district. But community leaders in Lower Manhattan are putting their faith in District 2 to create a small, non-specialized school more to their liking.

The new school will be the district’s sixth high school. It is one of 24 new schools being created as part of a five-year, $30 million program being managed by New Visions for Public Schools, a New York City education reform organization that focuses on creating small schools. Each school in the program, called the New Century High Schools Initiative, involves a partnership with a community organization or university. The collaboration with the Y, said Jill Herman, project director for the grant program, is a work in progress, but it promises to bring the "enormous resources" of the Y to bear in focusing on the social development of the teen, with programs for parents as well.

"We don’t have a model of how the partnership will work," she said. "A lot of it will develop in different ways, [based on] the needs of the community it will serve."

.Last year, District 2 received a $50,000 grant from the program to plan the school, and last month won an implementation grant that will provide $1,000 per student over four years, or approximately $500,000.

While many local parents are eager to see a high school created in Lower Manhattan, according to the district’s plans the school will be open to students from throughout the district, which extends up to West 59th Street and East 96th Street—and therefore may accommodate only a relatively small number of Downtown students. The district opposes zoning middle schools or high schools for a particular neighborhood.

The parents who spearheaded an effort to create a high school on the Upper East Side are upset that a new high school that will open in September won’t give priority to local children.

But according to Moskowitz, "Once a school gets established, and especially as we build a greater network of high schools under the jurisdiction of District 2, it’s likely that a majority of students will come from surrounding neighborhoods and we think that will happen naturally."

CB1 may lobby the district to modify its policies, especially if the community raises a substantial amount of the money needed to create the school.

"We still hope to push for prioritization of Downtown kids," Wils said "It’s a conversation in progress."
Board member Paul Hovitz said the community would support a school that met the needs of Downtown families.

District 2’s plans for the new school are laid out in its grant proposal to New Visions, a copy of which the district provided to the Trib. The school is intended to accommodate students who attend elementary and middle school in the district but "who are excluded from places in schools of choice and have few options" when they reach high school, the proposal states.

Many high performing middle schoolers who do not test into Stuyvesant or the other specialized schools often find that they cannot get a seat in one of the few other preferred public high schools in the district. Some parents that can bear the expense—up to 10 percent of the district’s families, according to Moskowitz—move their children into private schools or out of the city.

District 2 hopes to admit students whose standardized test scores mirror the district’s overall performance levels, which are stronger than city-wide levels. And the district office wants the student body to reflect the district’s ethnic and racial mix, and the 21 percent of district students whose first language is not English.

The school was to be discussed further on May 2 at a meeting of CB1’s Youth and Education Committee.

• Four years of English, social studies, math and science, as well as three years of a foreign language.

• District 2’s ARISE math curriculum, continuing the "new math" programs mandated by the district in primary and middle schools.

• Science includes 9th grade biology, 10th grade earth science, and chemistry and physics in combined 11th and 12th grade classes.

• A "modified" Advanced Placement curriculum in which A.P. content is integrated with English and social studies classes throughout the four grades. Some seniors will take the A.P. tests.

• Ninth and 10th-grade students will take two English classes: writing three times a week and a literature four times a week.

• Eleventh and 12th-grade students will be mixed in some courses. They will choose electives, studying specific themes, such as the history of U.S. immigration, and doing projects tied to the themes.

• Emphasis on writing in all subjects, including science.

• An afterschool program, organized by the Y, that will keep the school open to 6 p.m.