After months of waiting, organizers behind an unorthodox charter middle school got official word March 14 that they can move this September into the six classrooms of Tweed Courthouse—but for just one year.
In 2012, a new Lower Manhattan elementary school will get its start at Tweed and remain for three years until its building is ready, the Department of Education announced.
Negotiations are underway between the city and the U.S. Postal Service for leasing rights to vacated space in the Peck Slip post office for a 476-seat elementary school.
The original plan had called for the charter school, Innovate Manhattan, to occupy the space for three years. The Department of Education made its decision following intense pressure from Downtown school advocates as well as Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, State Sen. DanIel Squadron, City Councilwoman Margaret Chin and Community Board 1 to keep the Tweed seats for kindergartners. They said the space was needed as a stop-gap measure to ease overcrowding in Lower Manhattan elementary schools.
Julie Menin, chair of Community Board 1, called the DOE’s decision a “victory’ because Tweed’s seats will return to Downtown students after just one year. “I am thrilled that the DOE has backed down from its ill-conceived plan to house Innovate Charter Middle School at the Tweed Courthouse at the expense of desperately needed public elementary school seats,” Menin said in a statement.
Eric Greenleaf, a P.S. 234 parent whose demographic projects have been influential in the call for more Downtown schools, called the DOE’s decision “workable” for this year.
“It’s good that the DOE understands the need for space at Tweed,” Greenleaf told the Trib. “But Tweed alone does not provide enough interim space.
According to Greenleaf, by 2014, a year before a new school building is ready to open, all Lower Manhattan elementary schools will be at capacity, and that is before P.S. 276 and the Spruce Street School (P.S. 397) have opened a 5th grade.
“They need more interim space than Tweed and they need to plan for it now,” Greenleaf said.
In a statement, State Sen. Daniel Squadron called the DOE's decision a "significant step" in the fight against school overcrowding. "Today, the community was heard," he said.
Although the DOE proposed last November to put the charter school into Tweed, the long wait for final approval made recruitment efforts difficult. Even as 5th grade parents toured middle schools and listed preferences, Innovate Manhattan organizers could only point to Tweed as a possible site.
Eileen Coppola, who will be Innovate Manhattan’s head of school, said she believes the news will help boost the number of applications for the 150 6th- and 7th-grade seats.
“I’m thrilled to be going into Tweed,” Coppola told the Trib. “I’m not thrilled with the prospect of having to move in a year but understand the demographics and problems of finding seats for all our kids.”
Innovate Manhattan's program, called KED, is the product of a Swedish company, Kunskapsskolan, with 33 middle and high schools in that country. At the center of the philosophy is individualized learning. Each student meets weekly with a teacher who follows the child’s progress and helps him set his goals while encouraged to pursue his own interests.
Coppola quit her post at Hunter College High School last August following a much-publicized dispute with Hunter officials over the use of a single test to decide who is admitted to the academically elite high school. With a tiny percentage of blacks and Hispanics admitted to the school, she had argued for wider criteria that would include interviews, portfolios and other measures of potential performance.
Coppola, single mother of a 3rd and 6th grader who has taught in New York City public schools, including School of the Future, said that Innovate is compatible with her philosophy because it is meant to accommodate a wide range of students. Admission to the school will be by lottery
“The kind of kids who go to Hunter are one kind of student and that was great,” said Coppola, “but I really am pleased to be able to open a school that I think is going to be very high quality with high expectations, but we’re going to serve everybody who can walk in the door.”