Highbridge activists have taken their demand for a new middle school to the heart of city government.  More than 50 residents, religious leaders and education advocates rallied on the steps of City Hall December 11. They were supported by local politicians including Councilmembers Helen Diane Foster, Maria del Carmen Arroyo, and Robert Jackson; and state Senator José E. Serrano.

Currently, there are no middle schools in Highbridge. Once local children graduate from elementary school, they must travel to schools east of Grand Concourse, such as C.I.S. 166—on E. 164th Street and Grant Avenue—or JHS 145—on Teller Avenue and E. 165th Street.  This long commute, sometimes requiring children to take multiple buses and trains, has raised numerous concerns for the parents and children of the community. For one, there is the issue of safety; parents worry about kids as young as nine or 10 years old traveling without parental supervision to unfamiliar neighborhoods.

If parents choose not to send their kids alone on buses, that means extra time and hassle in the morning. “How many single-parent families you got?” asked Lorenzo Dufau, 87. “The mother’s gottta go crazy getting the kid someplace in the morning.”

Residents also said the lack of a middle school nearby forces Highbridge children to wake up as early as 6am in order to arrive at school in time and avoid earning poor attendance marks. Denita Brown, a student at JHS 145 , said it takes between 30 minutes and one hour to travel there from her home on 165th Street and Woodycrest Avenue. Brown said she is often at least 30 minutes  late to school. “Every day when I come in late, my teachers tell me I have to wake up earlier,” Brown said. “And my attendance is poor.”

Building Pressure

Middle-school advocates have a  location in mind for the new facility—University Avenue between W. 168th Street and the High Bridge Park.

The December 11 rally comes after months of unsuccessful efforts on the part of education activists to meet with chancellor Joel I. Klein , as well as the city’s School Construction Authority, to discuss building a school there. During those last few months, the demand for a new school has grown louder, and attracted increasingly- prominent support.

 On October 17, a crowd of more than 100 people—including Councilmember Arroyo and Assemblymember Aurelia Green—gathered at CES 11 for a community forum on the middle school issue. After the forum, more than 50 people marched from the school to Highbridge Park.

Less than a month later, on November 15, a meeting of residents, religious leaders, and representatives of local schools was held at Mount Hermon Baptist Church. At the meeting, Rev. Wendell Foster, who formerly held the District 16 seat currently occupied by his daughter, Helen Diane Foster, proposed the rally at City Hall.

“Since they can’t get attention in their community, they go down to City Hall and take the fight there,” Foster said in a recent interview. Foster was a leader in the 1970s movement for a new elementary school in Highbridge, in which residents and education advocates shut down Ogden Avenue in support of their demands.

“They said we didn’t need that school—they had trailers on the back of PS 11,” Foster said. “We made our point and they built us a school,” he said. (The city ultimately constructed P.S. 126 on Ogden Avenue).

On November 18, 20 supporters of the current middle school plan—most of them community religious leaders—signed a letter to Klein, expressing frustration that he had so far rebuffed their efforts to meet and discuss the proposal. Signatories include Father Michael Sepp, pastor of Sacred Heart Church; Milroy A. Grant, minister at Church of God; Rev. Albert Sutton Sr. of Friendly Baptist Church; and Imam Moussa Zaidy Wague of Masjed Deyaue.

The letter went on to again request a meeting with Klein and the School Construction Authority before December 11; the request was not met, though a small group of key supporters and elected officials are scheduled to meet with deputy education chancellor Kathleen Grimm on December 19.

At the December 11 rally, Helen Diane Foster indicated that the community would be ready to take more direct action if the city did not meet their demands. “We’re not afraid to shut down Ogden, Jerome, stop the construction of the new Yankee Stadium,” Foster said.

City Argues New School is Unnecessary

A spokesperson for Chancellor Klein did not return requests for comment for this story. 

Marge Feinberg, a spokesperson for the School Construction Authority, said she was not aware of the rally and press conference at City Hall, but added that K-8 schools were being constructed near Jerome Avenue and W. 172nd Street, and on Macombs Road just north of W. 176th Street.  “We do not see a seat  need in the neighborhood,” Feinberg said, in a statement emailed to the Horizon.

As for the second of these two facilities, Chauncy Young, a leader of United Parents of Highbridge and a driving force behind the middle-school campaign, said that Feinberg’s citing of the school near Macombs and W. 176th Street exemplified the city’s lack of understanding that construction of new facilities in District 9 did not automatically mean that Highbridge would be served; Young noted the school would be north of the Cross-Bronx Expressway.

Jack Doyle, executive director for New Settlement Apartments—the local affordable housing- advocacy group that is developing the school near Jerome Avenue and W. 172nd St.—said that new facility will serve roughly 1100 students in pre-kindergarten through the 12th grade; Doyle estimated roughly 230 to 260 of the students would be in grades six through eight.

Doyle said that construction had, in fact, not yet begun on the new school, which he added would likely open in 2011 and feature a swimming pool, competition-sized gym, auditorium, and science labs.

Doyle declined to weigh in on whether he thought this new school would—or should— satisfy the demands of local residents for a middle school in the community.

“I really think it’s for the parent leaders and other folks to comment,” Doyle said.