District 10 rezoning may help school to create a culture

By Kate Pastor

New zoning being proposed in Community Education Council District 10 may finally bring some relief to teachers and administrators at The New School for Leadership and Journalism, MS 244.

Since it opened in 2005, the single largest problem facing the school has been its two unruly entry points, one in sixth grade and the other in seventh grade.

“What our goal has been for the last five years is to advocate for us to receive all our students in the sixth grade,” said Eduardo Mora, MS 244’s assistant principal for the seventh grade, or “scholars academy.”

The thought behind the desire is that the school’s culture needs to be instilled in students as early as possible.

The preliminary proposal does not meet that goal, but would reduce the number of seventh graders enrolling each year.

PS 310 and PS 307 currently feed into MS 244’s sixth-grade class and PS 246, PS 340, PS 86 and PS 360 feed its seventh grade.

The change would reduce the number of students zoned for MS 244 and turn PS 246 (now a kindergarten through sixth grade school) into a kindergarten through fifth-grade school.

“It’s a first step in the department’s efforts to get all elementary schools either to be K through eight or K through five because you know the majority of people really have their middle school choice starting in sixth grade,” Marvin Shelton, District 10’s Community Education Council president said.

The 55 to 65 students who usually move on from PS 246 to MS 244, would be zoned for PS 399 and schools being created within it instead.

“It reduces the number, [but] we still face the same issue of having a double entry,” said Mr. Mora, adding that only once the school gets a single sixth-grade entry class it will be able to establish a consistent culture at the school over three grades it spans.

“It’s a small step but we’ve been advocating for a change in this since the building opened,” he said.

The proposal by the Department of Education’s Office of Portfolio Development is only preliminary, said Mr. Shelton. Other data, such as how many students will be affected, need to be added to the proposal before it’s formalized and the 45-day clock starts ticking for the CEC to vote it up or down.

Mr. Mora supports the measure but says more still needs to be done.

“We’re held to the same standard of other middle schools in the city that are not facing the same dilemma we are,” he said.

This is part of the November 26, 2009 online edition of The Riverdale Press.

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