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  1. to be fair, there’s a BIG difference between elementary and middle school. more opportunities for violence and bullying in middle school, and the discrepancies in intelligence/knowledge and willingness to be educated are much more pronounced.

    young teens are vulnerable and need emotional and intellectual support. i think it’s ok for parents to recognize if their child could not survive in a culture that they do not fit in, and could be victimized. easy to say someone else’s kid should be thrown in a situation that they probably can’t handle.

  2. They did go to a school and make it better. Arts & Letters has enrolled dozens of PS 8 kids over the years (the current PTA pres. is a former PS 8 PTA president and one of that school’s early cheerleaders)–but A&L is decreasing in size and likely will not enroll many kids from outside once its own elementary school is up and running. And the all-girl’s middle school, which is downtown, enrolls, well, only girls. District 13 desperately needs some good, high-performing middle schools.

  3. No space in area for middle school, they dreaming. Why don’t they do what Seth Philips and his staff and teachers and parents and kids did at PS 8, go to a school and make it better. What is going to happen anyway.

  4. I’m all for turning outhouses into museums, but that outhouse is non-contextual! It’s covered w siding and lights. I question whether it is even original. Perhaps it is a shed from Sears!

  5. If white affluent parents were trying to build a “neighborhood” middle school in Atlanta, Jackson, Little Rock or name your favorite southern city (or Yonkers for that matter), the NAACP would order an investigation of this attempt to reimpose segregation.

    But when white liberal Brooklyn Heights parents do it, it’s perfectly OK.

  6. I disagree… in Brooklyn Heights there are a lot of well-salaried, house-poor folks. Because they spend too much on real estate doesn’t put them in the “heart of the middle class” — it reflects poorly on their decision-making and family planning.