Enrollment issues may be eased at MS 244

The New School for Leadership and the Arts, MS 244 may be one step closer to a coherent cohort. 

Since founding the school in 2005, Principal Dolores Peterson said she and her faculty have had to contend with students who begin in sixth grade and students who begin in seventh grade. No other middle school in District 10 routinely admits students in two grades.

For years, MS 244 administrators have urged the Department of Education to reconfigure the three schools that feed MS 244’s seventh grade  –– PS 86, PS 340 and PS 360. In 2010, the DOE proposed dropping sixth grade from the three schools, but officials nixed the plan after it was met with protest by elementary school parents.

But PS 340 recently changed its mind. The school leadership team has started the application process to drop sixth grade starting in fall 2014.

Terry Moss, PS 340 Parents’ Association president, said the SLT voted to eliminate sixth grade because doing so would reduce crowding in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten and would ensure fifth-grade families have more choices when applying to middle school.

In November, overcrowding at PS 340 prompted the DOE to instruct parents of about 20 kindergartners that their children must transfer to PS 310 in Marble Hill this November. The mid-year transfers outraged parents, who protested the move for nearly a month before the department relented and permitted 16 students to remain at PS 340.

Mr. Moss said many families choose to leave PS 340 after fifth grade because their middle school options are much more restricted if their children enter middle school in seventh grade.

“Next year we’re only going to have 12 or 13 students that we’re guaranteed to have in sixth grade,” Mr. Moss said. “It’s not worth it to fight for that while we have so many kindergarten students and overcrowding there.”

A proposal to extend PS 86, located on the same block as PS 340, into a pre-kindergarten through eighth-grade school was floated this fall. If that plan were to come to fruition it would eliminate the need for PS 86 students to enroll in MS 244’s seventh grade. 

But Mr. Shelton said extending PS 86 is “just talk” at the moment. 

PS 86 Principal Fiona Tyson and PS 360 Principal Nancy Rodriguez Lewis did not respond to requests for comment. But historically, the PS 360 and PS 86 communities have opposed reconfiguration plans and have argued that eliminating sixth grade would tamper with parents’ choices and would prematurely push students into middle school. 

Former PS 86 Principal Sheldon Bernardo and MS 244 Assistant Principal Eduardo Mora  debated the issue in the opinion pages of The Riverdale Press in 2009 and 2010.