Peace Academy Middle School Is 1 Of 3 Schools Slated To Close By DOE

Two District 14 schools and one District 13 school is on the chopping block from the New York City Department of Education (DOE), proposed to be closed at the end of this school year in June 2016. Peace Academy Middle School, at 300 Willoughby Avenue, is one of those institutions, with its 48 students to be re-distributed and -enrolled in other nearby schools come September.

The announcement marks the first time new Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña has announced a planned school closure in her tenure. “Closing a school is always a difficult decision,” Fariña said in a statement.

The other two schools being considered for closing are the School for the Urban Environment and Foundations Academy, both at 70 Tompkins Avenue in Bed-Stuy. Peace Academy and School for the Urban Environment are the city’s lowest-enrolled middle schools, and Foundations has the city’s fourth-lowest graduation rate, as noted by Chalkbeat New York.

According to Chalkbeat:

Officials said the schools struggled to attract and keep students, which led to such severe funding shortfalls that the city had to supplement their budgets just so they could provide basic courses like math and English. The schools also posted very low test scores — only 2 percent of Peace Academy students passed last year’s state English tests, while none at Urban Environment passed — and they suffered from high teacher turnover, officials said.

Low enrollment was reportedly also key to the DOE’s decision to close the schools.

“Schools with such a low enrollment cannot provide the robust education our students deserve,” Fariña stated. “We will work closely with families and students at these schools to make sure they are supported and enroll in new schools that will better meet their needs and lead to better student outcomes.”

Fariña has repeatedly said that she believes schools with very few students are unsustainable because they cannot afford to offer a wide enough array of classes and services, since funding is tied to enrollment. But, until now, she has moved to combine such schools with their neighbors rather than close them.

Michael Mulgrew, the head of the city teachers union, said Fariña called him over the weekend to brief him on the closure plans. She made it clear that the overriding factor in her decision was the schools’ size, he said.

“The chancellor to me was like, this is literally about the enrollment numbers,” he said. “They are so small.”

The planned closures still have to be voted on for approval by the DOE’s Panel for Education Policy in the spring.

Does your child attend Peace Academy Middle School? What do you think of this development?