City Council to Vote on Site for Pacific Park/Atlantic Yards School

City Council will vote next week on whether or not to approve the proposed site for the location of an elementary and middle school as part of the Pacific Park/Atlantic Yards development. The current plan calls for it to be built on the northeast corner of Dean and 6th Avenue.

Meanwhile, local residents still hope the city will decide to drop the elementary school part and make it into a dedicated middle school. Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council Chair Gib Veconi emailed Brownstoner about the community campaign, which has been under way for some time:

District 13’s lack of a larger, stand alone middle school is a real gap. The lack of middle school options in District 13 is a major reason many families leave the district as their children are in the last few years of primary school.

In July, Community Board 8, Community Education Council 13, and the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council announced a vision for dedicated middle school at the Atlantic Yards site with a curriculum built around arts, STEM, and dual language known as M.S. OneBrooklyn It has since won the endorsement of most of the local elected officials in northwest Brooklyn, several arts and computer science organizations, and a thousand people who have signed a petition in support of the vision.

However, DOE has still not committed to using the facility as a middle school. This is a concern because the building is slated to begin construction in July and plans are already in development.

Atlantic Yards Coverage [Brownstoner]

Update: A spokesperson for Forest City Greenland Partners contacted us with some more information Thursday night, after this post was published. Once the siting is done, she said, “Greenland Forest City will construct a 100,000 sf school on lower floors of mixed use building with residential units above. The school is a flexible K-8 616 seat school allowing for both primary and/or middle school…Greenland Forest City Partners will manage both the core and shell and the fit out of the school. It will break ground in 2016 and open in 2018.”