Brownstoner is Brooklyn's most read
website about real estate, renovation
and neighborhood news. Read More»
Downtown School Trying to Spurn P.S. 8′s Advances
In this town, everything comes back to real estate, even schools. Tensions can run particularly high when public and charter schools with strong track records and involved parents seek to expand by moving in on unused turf at schools where the student body has been shrinking. Just witness last year’s heated battle between the well-funded Arts & Letters and the less stable P.S. 20 in Fort Greene. A similar scenario is now playing out in Downtown Brooklyn, where P.S. 8, an elementary school in Brooklyn Heights which has enjoyed surging popularity over the last decade and recently completed a physical expansion of its own, is making a play to launch a middle school at the Westinghouse and Polytechnic High School on Tillary Street which is less than 80 percent full. (Great building, by the way. It was a Building of the Day last month.) According to the Brooklyn Eagle, more than 30 P.S. 8 parents turned out on Monday night to express support for the plan. Council Member Steve Levin was also there to speak in favor: “The expansion into a middle school will mean that students from P.S. 8 will be able to continue their education at a local, quality public school.” Levin is joined in his support of the expansion by State Senator Daniel Squadron and Assemblymember Joan Millman. Though everyone in the P.S. 8 crowd is saying the right things (we’re going to be good neighbors, this is not a take-over, etc.), parents of the vocational high school aren’t buying it. “I hear everyone talking about being a good neighbor,” said Khem Irby, first vice president of the District 13 Community Education Council. “A neighbor doesn’t live in your house.” She also warned that mixing middle school and high school students could be trouble: “High school students might be having sex in the hallways.” In addition to the obvious class and race tensions just barely below the surface, there’s also the conspiracy theory that city has been deliberately shrinking Westinghouse to make room for the P.S. 8 expansion.
P.S. 8 Middle School Plan Meets Westinghouse Resistance [Brooklyn Eagle]
02/08/2012 9:00 AM
Comment
Checking in at Voorhees Hall’s Glassy Reno
Here’s a progress report on the glassing of CUNY’s Voorhees Hall. The process began last month and is part of a larger, $30 million building upgrade.
Voorhees Hall Getting Glassy [Brownstoner]
Exterior Transformation Underway at CUNY Building [Brownstoner]
02/07/2012 2:43 PM
Comment
Voorhees Hall Getting Glassy
Last week we posted renderings for 186 Jay Street, CUNY’s Voorhees Hall, and here’s a shot of the in-progress exterior transformation of the building. Work on the facade is part of a larger, $30 million renovation that also covers classroom enhancements, a new lobby and other building upgrades. You can see more renderings of the building, which used to sport a brick facade, here.
Exterior Transformation Underway at CUNY Building [Brownstoner]
01/20/2012 2:42 PM
Comment
Handsome Former School in Bed-Stuy is Sold Off
The NYC Partnership Housing Development Fund sold the former Catholic school at 180 Bainbridge Street to an entity called “Bainbridge Realty Holdings LLC” for $2.4 million. We featured the Bed-Stuy property as a Building of the Day last year, when local residents were trying to get it designated as an individual landmark and have the Partnership rehab it as housing. According to DOB records, the building has been calendered for landmarking. We didn’t hear back from the Partnership and couldn’t find any information on the firm that bought the building. Does anybody know what may be in store for it? Here’s hoping it doesn’t have a date with the wrecking ball. GMAP
01/20/2012 9:30 AM
Comment
Exterior Transformation Underway at CUNY Building
CUNY’s Voorhees Hall, at 186 Jay Street in Downtown Brooklyn, has been under renovation for a couple of years now, but recently signs went up announcing that the facade is being re-clad. The building, which used to be clad in brick, will soon be much glassier. The architect on the project, Der Scutt Architects, notes the following about 186 Jay’s new look: “The distinctive architectural curtainwall incorporates low-E energy-efficient glazing, and shadow boxes to add shade and visual interest in a grid that emphasizes the technology of the curtain wall. Window openings, which had been blocked off in a prior renovation, are to be re-opened to bring natural light to classrooms, offices, and laboratories. A trellis screen following the curtainwall motif unifies the uneven penthouse elevations and will be lighted at night.” The $30 million renovation also covers classroom enhancements, a new lobby and other building upgrades. Construction began way in the spring of 2010, and work is supposed to wrap this spring. Click through for more renderings! (more…)
01/11/2012 10:00 AM
Comment
Politicians Rally for NYU’s Overhaul of 370 Jay Street
Yesterday a bunch of politicians held a rally in support of NYU’s proposal to build out a grad school at 370 Jay Street, the former MTA building in Downtown Brooklyn that’s been in sorry shape for years. The group, which included Borough President Marty Markowitz, State Senator Daniel Squadron, Assemblywoman Joan Millman and Councilwoman Letitia James, said the city should allocate funds to the university as a runner-up winner in the competition Cornell was named the winner of earlier this week. Markowitz said that while Cornell’s plans to build a science center on Roosevelt Island are “wonderful,” according to the Daily News, “370 Jay Street is practically empty, doing nothing now but housing some switches.” Squadron noted that compared to Cornell’s plans, the NYU rehab of 370 Jay could be accomplished “for pennies on the dollar.” NYU is looking for $20-$25 million in city funding for the proposed grad center. Councilwoman James said Brooklyn should be about more than “basketball and burgers,” according to the Eagle, and that it should also be about “books and brains.” The mayor has said that funding for a proposal other than Cornell’s could be decided on within the next few weeks.
Rally Boosts Science Center At 370 Jay St [Eagle]
Brooklyn Pols Still Pushing for NYU Downtown Brooklyn Plan [NY Daily News]
NYU’s Plans for 370 Jay Street May Still Happen [Brownstoner]
12/22/2011 9:00 AM
Comment
City Buys Lot for Planned Kensington School
The School Construction Authority recently purchased the empty lot at 701-11 Caton Avenue, between East 7th and 8th streets, where a new school is planned. According to public records, the SCA spent $8.8 million on the property. According to the Kensington Area Resident/Merchant Alliance’s blog, there was a public hearing in February for the proposed pre-K through 8th grade school and the school is likely in the design phase right now. Plans call for a 750-seat school that’s around 20,000 square feet. GMAP
Photo via Property Shark
12/21/2011 11:00 AM
Comment
Cobble Hill Success Academy Charter School OK’d
Last night the Panel for Educational Policy approved the controversial plans to co-locate Success Academy Cobble Hill charter school at the school building on Baltic and Court streets. By all accounts there was a significant turnout of parents and educators opposed to the school. Nevertheless, Patch reports that 12 of the 13 members of the school panel voted in favor of Success Academy’s co-location. The Times story on the vote draws parallels between Cobble Hill and the Upper West Side, as some parents in the Manhattan neighborhood also mounted a vocal campaign against a Success Academy there: “Cobble Hill shares many similarities with the Upper West Side: It has desirable elementary schools at or near capacity, as well as million-dollar homes blocks from public housing developments. In an earlier interview, Ms. Moskowitz said her network, Success Academy Charter Schools, meant to serve both.” Another Success Academy was also approved for Bed-Stuy.
Charter School Approved for Affluent Brooklyn Enclave [NY Times]
PEP Approves Co-Location of Brooklyn Success Academy [Patch]
Brooklyn Success Academy Cobble Hill Charter School Approved [NY Daily News]
12/15/2011 9:00 AM
Comment
Improvements at Ft. Greene, Clinton Hill Schools
Gotham Gazette has a story today looking at how public schools in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill are believed to have improved dramatically in recent years, and parents who once sent their kids to schools outside of the district are now forging documents to get their kids into it. The story’s focus is mostly on P.S. 11, and the article attributes the school’s improvements and increasing desirability to gentrification that has resulted in creative-class parents who have more time to be involved with their kids’ education. The new wave of parents helped force out the school’s unpopular principal, according to the article, and then raised money and put in volunteer hours. One parent who had a kid at the school had this to say: “It’s totally a class issue, because the parents who stay at home can be more engaged. For schools in neighborhoods where there’s not a lot of resources, it’s not gonna be one in two parents who can come in and help out.” According to Dr. Jennifer Stillman, a researcher who looks at schools in gentrifying neighborhoods, improvements are predicated on a snowball effect of early adopters to a school system then attracting other parents: “Stillman’s research found that the successful integration – racial, economic, and cultural – of this new parent group into the existing schools and is key to a school managing the kind of ‘turnaround’ many parents seek. ‘There is a key moment in a school that successfully integrates, where the early majority decides to stay,’ Stillman said.”
Parental Involvement is Formula for Success in Brooklyn Schools [Gotham Gazette]
Photo by PropertyShark
12/14/2011 9:30 AM
Comment
Closing Bell: Students Celebrate Brooklyn History
We were sent some photos of seventh grade students at the Fahari Academy Charter School, in Flatbush, presenting a museum of Brooklyn History of their own devising. The students studied Brooklyn history during the past month and put together museum exhibits for an end-of-the-semester project. Topics included Prospect Park, the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Coney Island, and famous Brooklynites such as Jay-Z, Jackie Robinson, and Tupac Shakur. Students also recreated a model of the Brooklyn Bridge, constructed according to the bridge’s original plans. Click through for a couple more shots! (more…)
12/13/2011 4:00 PM
Comment
Hundreds Protest Cobble Hill Charter at Hearing
By all accounts, the DOE hearing last night over the proposal to co-locate a Success Academy Charter in the school building at Baltic and Court was a rowdy affair. According to the Eagle, there was a much bigger group assembled to protest the plan than to support it: “While hundreds of parents and officials were firmly and vocally against the co-location of Success Academy at the site, roughly a half-dozen supporters held a press conference before the hearing.” The paper also notes that the people in the crowd at the hearing booed and cried “Shame!” as testimony was given, and that one man was escorted out by police. McBrooklyn reports that one of the main concerns voiced by opponents has to do with the amount of space in the building, which is already home to the School for Global Studies and the School for International Studies: “Parents and teachers said the facilities are maxed out already…Teachers said that there was barely enough time in the gym for the middle and high schoolers to get their mandated PE in before they graduated.” Patch, meanwhile, notes that many politicians have come out against the charter taking space in the building, including Assemblyman Jim Brennan, City Councilmembers Brad Lander and Steve Levin, State Senator Velmanette Montgomery and Assemblywoman Joan Millman. Meanwhile, the Panel for Educational Policy is scheduled to vote on the matter later this month at Newtown High School in Queens—the vote was originally supposed to take place in Midtown—and some parents have started an online petition demanding that the vote take place at Brooklyn Tech instead.
Hundreds Attend Heated Hearing on Success Charter [Patch]
Explosive Cobble Hill Success Academy Hearing [McBrooklyn]
Emotions Explode at Raucous Cobble Hill Charter School Hearing [Eagle]
Protesters Disrupt DOE Hearing On Proposed Brooklyn Charter [NY1]
12/01/2011 9:30 AM
Comment
Hearing Tonight on Cobble Hill Charter School
The controversial proposed opening of the Success Academy Cobble Hill charter is going to be the subject of a DOE hearing tonight, and Patch suggests the proceedings might get heated based on an earlier meeting about the school that devolved into a shouting match. The proposal is to locate the school at Baltic and Court streets, in the building that houses the Brooklyn School for Global Studies. Among the folks who have come out against the plan is Assemblywoman Joan Millman, who rallied against Success Academy yesterday and said she supported introducing a pre-K and kindergarten program to the district instead. As Pardon Me for Asking puts it: “Emotions are running high in regards to the latest school controversy in the neighborhood.” The hearing will take place at 5:30 tonight, at 284 Baltic Street.
Hearing Tuesday for Success Charter School [Patch]
Worries About Success Academy Opening in Cobble Hill [Brownstoner]
New Charter School in the Works for Cobble/Boerum Area [Brownstoner]
11/29/2011 9:00 AM
Comment
Closing Bell: Movie Tracks the Opening of Bed-Stuy School
Filmmaker Jyllian Gunther shot four years of footage at Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Brooklyn Community Arts and Media High, starting when the high school opened in 2006, and is now looking to get funding to complete the movie. Here’s what Gunther has to say about the film, which is currently titled “Growing Small”: “I followed the school from opening day thru it’s first graduation at the Brooklyn Museum four years later and the community participated in the making of the film. It is not an advocacy film or a policy film, but really an intimate story about what happens when a community of young, idealists try to bridge the urban education gap.” There’s a Kickstarter campaign here, and the film’s website has more clips and information about the movie. Growing Small [Official Site]
Growing Small Fundraising Campaign [Kickstarter]
11/22/2011 4:00 PM
Comment
Worries About Success Academy Opening in Cobble Hill
The planned opening of the charter school Success Academy Cobble Hill isn’t sitting well with a number of parents, according to the Eagle, and the school is holding a meeting this weekend to address their concerns. Some parents don’t want an existing public school to have to share space with the charter. There are also allegations that the charter network and its founder, Eva Moskowitz, gamed the system in getting the school approved for District 15 because an application was originally submitted to open it in District 13 (which includes Bed-Stuy, Fort Greene and Brooklyn Heights). Jim Devor, parent and president of the governing body for District 15, offers this opinion: “They deliberately misled SUNY [State University of New York] trustees and regulators into believing they were helping children in need when their true agenda is to create a beachhead in Brownstone Brooklyn.” Devor also said that District 15, which includes Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Boerum Hill and Park Slope, is in need of middle and high schools rather than another elementary school. Meanwhile, a parent who sends her kid to PS 32 in District 15 recently had an item on Patch about how a Success Academy colocation in PS 32′s building would lead to overcrowding “in the parks and other public areas after school.” The informational meeting this weekend is taking place on Saturday at noon at the Carroll Gardens Public Library, 396 Clinton Street.
Controversial Cobble Hill Charter School Raising Eyebrows [Eagle]
New Charter School in the Works for Cobble/Boerum Area [Brownstoner]
10/27/2011 9:00 AM
Comment
Details About NYU’s Designs on 370 Jay
The Daily News has a story with more information about how NYU wants to take over the former MTA headquarters at 370 Jay and turn it into a grad school: The university wants to make it a facility called the Center for Urban Science and Progress “where scientists and engineers would work on problems vexing cities around the world, from traffic congestion to energy efficiency.” NYU has submitted the proposal in the hopes that it will win the competition to construct a new science graduate school with city funds; although Stanford and Cornell’s proposals to build schools on Roosevelt Island are said to be the frontrunners in the competition, an NYU official says “It would not be very costly for the city to figure out what it’s going to do on Roosevelt Island between Stanford and Cornell, and then at 370 Jay, we’ll be fixing up a site they wanted to fix up anyway.”
NYU Eyes Former MTA Headquarters for Urban Grad School [NY Daily News]
N.Y.U. Looks to Overhaul 370 Jay [Brownstoner]
10/26/2011 10:00 AM
Comment
Revisiting the Arts and Letters Expansion
There was plenty of conflict last year when Arts and Letters, a progressive public school which shares space with P.S. 20 on Adelphi Street in Fort Greene, announced its intentions to expand from middle school down to lower grades. With a finite amount of space in the building, families of P.S. 20 students—many of whom had attended the school for generations—feared being squeezed out by the growth of a school that clearly also represented a wealthier and whiter contingent. In an article that looks back on the conflict, City Limits includes some interesting statistics about Fort Greene demographics:
That the neighborhood has undergone a dramatic change is as plain as the sparkles on Amira’s party shoes: While in 2000, the district’s poverty rate was 25 percent, a decade later—even after the 2008 economic nosedive—it was 17 percent, according to statistics from NYU’s Furman Center. Housing prices, $225,000 on average in 2000, had nearly doubled, to $413,000 a decade later. The racial scales had tilted as well: In 2000, about 30 percent of the area’s residents were white, and about 45 percent African-American. By 2010, nearly half of the neighborhood’s residents were white, and no more than one in three black. (The Hispanic population dropped slightly in the same interval, from about 30 to about 25 percent.)
The article says that the increase in students has strained the infrastructure somewha, and quotes suggest that there are still resentments and philosophical divides between parents of the two schools, but at least the two heads of school are presenting a united front. “We had an open and honest conversation, just the two of us,” says the founder of Arts and Letters. “We’re on the same side, of what’s good for the kids. Even with mistakes, we’re always focused on what’s good for the children.”
We’re curious to hear how parents think the expansion is working out–for both Arts and Letters kids as well as P.S. 20 kids.
2 Schools, 1 Space: Scars Linger from Controversy on Adelphi Street [City Limits]
Photo by Marc Fader for City Limits
10/26/2011 9:30 AM
Comment
Construction Begins at PS 17 in Williamsburg
Late last week we caught workers nailing a construction sign up at PS 17, the Henry Woodworth school at North 4th Street between Driggs and Roebling. Looks like the building will be getting exterior masonry repair and parapet, roof, and window replacements. All the work is supposed to be finished by December of next year. GMAP
10/11/2011 2:40 PM
Comment
New Charter School in the Works for Cobble/Boerum Area
Former Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz’s Success Charter Network plans to open a new school called Success Academy Cobble Hill next year, according to Schoolbook. The location of the school has yet to be determined, but it will share space with other public schools. Two possibilities mentioned in the article are the buildings that house the Math and Science Exploratory School, at 345 Dean Street (pictured above), and the Brooklyn School for Global Studies, at 284 Baltic Street; both buildings have room for more than 600 additional students. The school will eventually run from kindergarten through 8th grade. Moskowitz says she expects the school to be controversial with some: “There’s a deep anticharter sentiment out there, and I’m sure there will be opposition coming from that corner.” Update: Success Charter Network sent out a press release today saying another charter would also be opened in Williamsburg. The websites for the schools will launch on October 17th and have applications on them: Success Academy Cobble Hill and Success Academy Williamsburg.
Success Charter Is Planning a School for Cobble Hill [Schoolbook]
Photo via PropertyShark
10/07/2011 11:31 AM
Comment
Hidden Treasure in a Flatbush School’s Closet
NY1 discovered that a Tiffany window has been gathering dust and hidden from view in the closet of the former Erasmus High School. That the window exists in a public high school is, of course, “very unusual.” The city doesn’t know how much it’s worth and says it will be restored when the school system’s budget allows. According to the story, it was installed in 1919.
Tiffany Stained Glass Window Uncovered At Flatbush Public School [NY1]
08/01/2011 11:00 AM
Comment
Gowanus Artists Getting Booted for Charter Build
Tenants in the warehouses on 3rd Avenue and Nevins that will be demolished to make way for a new building that will house the Brooklyn Prospect Charter School aren’t thrilled about uprooting, and one has filed a lawsuit over the vacate order landlord Jack Elo issued, according to an article in Patch. The story says artists lived in the commercial lofts for decades with their old owner’s blessing despite the fact that the lofts weren’t zoned for residential use. Elo, who purchased the buildings 18 months ago, claims that no one lives in the buildings and that he hasn’t broken the law. John Romano, who says he’s lived in his loft for years, has filed a lawsuit against Elo fighting the eviction and has also applied to the New York City Loft Board to see if the building’s certificate of occupancy can be changed so that it’s legal for residential use. Romano says: “We are going to fight and hopefully we can get the community involved. This has been my home for 16 years, the neighborhood is finally turning around and I want to benefit from that.” All of this comes as Brooklyn Prospect Charter scrambles to find a new space for the upcoming school year; even though construction on its 3rd Avenue building hasn’t started, the facility is supposed to be ready by the middle of next year.
Goodbye Artist Lofts, Hello Brooklyn Prospect Charter School [Patch]
More Info on Charter School Coming to Gowanus [Brownstoner] GMAP
07/12/2011 11:00 AM
Comment
bklnite
Feb 09, 2012 | 11:02 AM