Millenium Expansion Approved for John Jay
Last week there was a heated public hearing about the DOE’s proposal to move Manhattan’s elite Millennium School into the John Jay High School building in Park Slope where three low-performing high schools and one middle school currently coexist. At that meeting, critics of the plan asked DOE put more money into the existing schools…
Last week there was a heated public hearing about the DOE’s proposal to move Manhattan’s elite Millennium School into the John Jay High School building in Park Slope where three low-performing high schools and one middle school currently coexist. At that meeting, critics of the plan asked DOE put more money into the existing schools rather than fund a new one. Their pleas fell on deaf ears however, because today the NY Times reports that a Millennium, which has a competitive admissions process, will in fact open its Brooklyn branch next Fall in the school that the neighborhood has “shunned…because of its poor academic performance.” According to The Times, the DOE saw this as an opportunity “to open a high school in a neighborhood where many families found they had to look elsewhere for a top-quality high school.” (77 percent of the families in the area are white while just six percent of the current student body is white.) The article does not mention if the existing schools will receive any extra funding along with the start-up costs allotted to Millennium.
Plenty of Discord Over John Jay Expansion Plan [Brownstoner]
Photo by wallyg
The Population Registration Act can’t be far behind…
they should combine all the schools back together and rename the place Hoodrat High. cuz that’s essentially what it is.
*rob*
P.S. I am the actual parent of a real-live high school student so I know what I am talking about!
One of the reasons most Park Slope parents have never considered sending their kids to the schools in the John Jay building is because there are metal detectors. As a result, it’s not possible for students to circumvent the prohibition by the DOE against bringing cell phones to school. Since students have a choice of high schools, most shun the ones in the John Jay building for this reason, and that degrades the quality of the student body–the city just dumps kids there who don’t get chosen by more selective schools. If Millennium II in the building doesn’t bring the end of metal detectors, it’s not going to be an easy sell to more affluent families. The anti-cellphone rule is really ridiculous, just as ridiculous as the prohibition against hailing black cars on the street. Both invite don’t-ask-don’t-tell rulebreaking and the resulting cynicism against the Dept. of Ed. and the city.
I don’t understand why current students/parents who attend John Jay are so quick to get up in arms over putting a fancy pants private school in their HS but aren’t as quick to fix the pervasive problems that have plagued that school for DECADES!
Crank – I agree with you. But if Yonkers tried this all hell would break lose.
“students and families committed to education should have a decent school available to them”
You forgot to preface that with “White Park Slope.”
Makes sense to me that students and families committed to education should have a decent school available to them.
Brooklyn, Arkansas?
At least in Arkansas the educated white people send their kids to private “academies.”
Can you imagine what The New York Times would have said if five or ten years ago the Little Rock School District had carved out a separate school “in a neighborhood where many families found they had to look elsewhere for a top-quality high school.” Why it would have been racism, racism, racism, with a call for the Justice Department to investigate.
But somehow, it’s OK for the white liberals of Park Slope to have their separate high school (it is acknowledged that this new school will skim off the top minority students from nearby districts to make the school “integrated”).
Hypocrites.