Arts & Letters Expansion Approved for P.S. 20
At last night’s meeting of the Community Education Council, the expansion of the Urban Academy of Arts & Letters, which already serves students in sixth through eighth grades in an existing space within P.S. 20, was approved. Kindergarten and First Grade classes will begin next Fall, with a grade to be added every year after…
At last night’s meeting of the Community Education Council, the expansion of the Urban Academy of Arts & Letters, which already serves students in sixth through eighth grades in an existing space within P.S. 20, was approved. Kindergarten and First Grade classes will begin next Fall, with a grade to be added every year after that; the gifted charter school would serve K through 8 by the 2015-2016 school year. We don’t have a lot details at this point, but we gather there was some drama at the meeting. According to a tipster, in response to all the pushback from P.S. 20 parents, a rep from District 15 showed up to offer space for the new Arts & Letters school in their new building at 4th Avenue and Butler Street. Evidently this helped turn the tide back towards locating the new Arts & Letters elementary school at P.S. 20, and the petition to expand ended up being approved. If anyone has more details, please email or just add them to the comments section and we will update the post.
lesloaf, if it isn’t a charter school, can you explain to us how the “partnership” between the city and the private organization (“Citizen Schools”) works? presumably, the city has to be flexible with the rules in order to get the money?
I have an 8th grader at Arts and Letters. It was developed as a Region 8 school so draws students from Districts 13, 14, 15 and 16. I am opposed to the expansion because of the middle school loss of seats. District 15 will lose 20-25. Right now 50 seats (out of 100 for incoming sixth graders) go to District 13. The proposal would cut the available seats in half with priority given to continuing 8th graders.
At the end of sixth grade and for much of last year I tried to get my child transferred back into a District 15. I was unsuccessful because all middle schools were at or over capacity.
I don’t think it will be a “gifted” program. This runs contrary to the mission of Urban Assembly but I don’t know whether that will become an issue.
As for class composition, A&L will have to strive to be a reflection of the PS 20 community based upon race, free lunch eligibility, and special ed.
I just find it very sad that a middle school that has excelled at education some of the most struggling and challenging students will cut class seats. A middle school in Prospect Heights is on the closure list and District 13 will be expected those students and two of the middle schools in John Jay will close to make room for Millennium Two.
Brooklyn Prospect Charter School (a District 15, 6th through eventually 12th grade) is expected to announce their new site tomorrow. They are currently housed in the new Sunset Park High School.
glad to hear there will be a d13 preference. any idea whether it will be a straight lottery (like community roots) or something more mysterious (like BNS)?
More corrections: A&L is NOT a charter school. Also, “CEC” (the body that approved the expansion) stands for “Community Education Council” and not “Council on Exceptional Children.”
Arts & Letters is a lottery school, not a G&T school. There’s no test to get in. This is a very welcome development in District 13, which desperately needs more elementary and middle school options. The school has been open to students from District 15 and other districts, but will now be limited to District 13. And from what I understand, the principals at PS 20 and A&L are very cooperative and are not engaging the usual turf wars, which is to everyone’s benefit.
it is not a g&t program but a charter school. the issue was that the ps 20 community felt that a charter elementary (with more money and fewer rules to follow) would necessarily draw the more dynamic and involved parents away from ps 20 and other local zoned schools.
i think the elementary school will have to have a different application process than the middle school. the expectation seemed to be that it would be by lottery, but i think there was much debate about whether there would be preferences for d13 kids (apparently, the middle school has no such preference, which was part of the problem) or diversity, etc.
For what it’s worth, they’re the best performing middle school in the district. Which, however, is not saying much.
District 13 desperately needs better school options, especially for middle school.
According to Inside Schools (http://insideschools.org/index12.php?fs=1640), A&L is not a G&T program, but students do have to apply. The reading and math scores do not impress, but maybe they have improved recently.