FiDi Parents Celebrate the 'Saving' of Their Promised Middle School

Chanting "We saved our middle school," Spruce Street School parents and kids turn what was to be a protest rally into a celebration. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

Amid hugs, sign-waving and cheers, Spruce Street School parents rallied in front of their school Wednesday morning to celebrate the news that their promised middle school, due to open next year with two sixth grade classes, is a sure thing.

"We saved our middle school!" parents and kids joyfully chanted before the start of the last full day of the school year. "We did it!"

What was first planned as a protest had turned into a triumphant gathering by the parents. The previous afternoon principal Nancy Harris was informed by Department of Education officials that the Spruce Street School, P.S. 397, will for certain become a k-8.

Among those at the rally was the Collins family—Marie, Charlie and 2nd-grader Samantha—who held “thank you” signs for the DOE, among others, rather than the ones they left at home, with such messages as "Carmen Fariña Don't Disappoint Us."

"I'm thrilled," said Marie, whose family lives in nearby Southbridge Towers. "Now I don't have to send my daughter far from my neighborhood to go to middle school. I want to keep her in my community."

The parents had mobilized a mere five days earlier, following comments by schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña [1] that cast doubt on the future of the middle school and set off a flurry of concern among parents.

Fariña had been asked at a news conference about the potential use of Spruce Street's planned middle school classrooms for an expanded elementary school. She declined to rule it out, saying "everything is on the table."

"We're looking at all possibilities," Fariña said. "Are there schools where it makes more sense to allow the school to grow in a different way?"

The chancellor's response, reported in the online Trib, sparked a well-organized effort to save the middle school just days before the school year ended. Parents quickly formed a "middle school task force." They launched an online and in-person petitioning campaign, bombarded elected and education officials with calls and emails and set up a Yahoo Group to aid communication among the many parents involved.

"We are professionals and we pooled our strengths and resources and we got the job done," said PTA co-president Stacey Kurylo, one of three mothers who led the campaign. "Most of us are business owners, lawyers, and entrepreneurs doing multiple things, so multitasking is not an issue."

"We have a very committed and fierce parent community," said Elda Rotor, a parent who had the short-lived title of Spruce Middle School Task Force Media Coordinator.  "We all trust each other to do the best we can and bring our skills together."

The campaign gathered steam at a June 18 PTA meeting, where Harris expressed, with unusual public candor, her feelings about the unresolved fate of the middle school. Though she stopped short of taking a position on whether the middle school should go forward, she was unequivocal about the uncertainty that hung over the school's families.

"It's not fair to parents and it's especially unfair, by June 18, to really feel that pit in your stomach of what's going on," Harris told the parents. "At the end of the day, it should have been resolved a long time ago, whatever the resolution is."

"I'm certainly not in the same position as you," the principal added, "but I personally have felt frustrated and jerked around for years, as well, on this issue."

According to a DOE official, who asked not be identified, the middle school had not been confirmed because it had yet to receive a "thorough review," but "there was never any serious consideration for this not being a middle school. Every single proposal is looked at because, you never know."

"This community was very adamant that this was something that they want to see," the official added, "and we listened to them and we reviewed and we said, yep, this makes sense."

Questions over the fate of the middle school have been raised repeatedly at meetings of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's School Overcrowding Task Force.  And school officials—including, as recently as last year, then-Chancellor Dennis Walcott—have maintained that the middle school would open. But at the June meeting of the task force, DOE officials in the room were silent on the subject.

At that meeting, Silver said he was calling on Fariña to honor the commitment. "I want to reiterate that we were promised a k-to-8 school," he said, adding, "We look forward to seeing the DOE live up to that promise."

Now that it has, Charlie Collins, like many other parents, says he is relieved.

"The possible derailment of this was on the eve of our children going into fifth grade and it was a major point of stress," he said.  "We have built a community of 300 families and we want to continue in that building. This was a great decision by the chancellor."