Save the Julia Richman Educational Complex

*Updated 11-20
Regarding the city's planned demolition of the Julia Richman Educational Complex, a group of 6 small schools occupying half a city block on 68th and 2nd Avenue (right near me- picture to come) and the NYC Department of Education's plans to hand the choice real estate over to Hunter College because Hunter just can't seem to figure out how to bus its college students from one part of the city to another:

...As JRECs website is reporting, Hunter College wants to take over the Complex, tear it down and dislocate its six schools to a brand new site on 25th Street and the East River so that it can build a 'state of the art' science center and a new CUNY Graduate School of Public Health. Science students and researchers and faculty would benefit tremendously with being in a facility adjacent to the main Hunter Campus," says college spokesperson Merideth Halpern. For heaven's sakes.. stop the whining.

All I have to say is they pay spokespersons way too much to say something that baseless, weak and unsupportable. Look at any great college or university and you will find its undergraduates located separately from its teaching hospitals... should I make the list for you, Joel Klein and Jamie Smarr? Start with 2 of the city's largest teaching hospitals: NYU and Columbia and work your way on Upstate. Goodness, Cornell University is located hundreds of miles away from one of its flagship teaching hospitals Weill Cornell, located right here in NYC. Give us all a break.

Parents and their children at JREC are begging you to please, stop the whining Hunter College and start the teaching... in your own facility on 25th Street at the East River. Shall I help you locate the hospitals in your property's own back yard that can mentor your students? Do you need the city's residents to take up a collection for MetroCards for the students who need to travel a few miles downtown or can you simply use the millions of dollars you'd be saving on not demolishing a perfectly good newly renovated building to get yourself a few buses... No? I didn't think so. Better to displace a group of elementary, middle and high school children than College bound adults.

Thank you Juan Gonzalez of the NY Daily News, for an article titled 'City's Bad Lesson on Revitalized Schools' originally published on November 15, 2006. As Gonzalez writes, the newly refurbished/renovated/and rehabilitated Julia Richman Educational Complex has become "a national model for urban educational reform, and experts flocked there from all over America to study its methods." (In fact, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has spent its own funds to support and promote the success of these small schools.)

The 6 small schools have been lovingly brought back to life and higher educational standards with a great deal of sweat equity on the part of the building's 6 Principals, spearheaded by Ann Cook and a team of dedicated teachers and administrators hell bent on promoting the school's reputation for excellence. They are touting the need for JREC to stay just where it is. As many other small schools that have worked similar magic will tell you, the building works because the building works. I will show you gorgeous newly built schools in parts of the Bronx where the paint isn't dry that are struggling to make their schools work half as well as JREC. Any one of these educators will tell you it simply isn't how new the building is, but how its special characteristics have blended to create the total effect. Jamie Smarr, shame on you for saying a new building will solve all their problems... Juan Gonzalez asks the quite reasonable question:

"what has been the response of Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to one of his system's biggest success stories? Demolish it." Gonzalez explaines how JRECs administration feels about this dislocation: "Relocating their students more than 2 miles away from their current site will destroy the close relationship their small schools have nurtured with the local community. Even worse, they say school officials, in typical Bloomberg-administration style, never asked their opinion on the sale and demolition of their schools."

Surprise, surprise. The City not being forthcoming about its plans.

*However, I'm very curious as to where the Daily News writers got their information about the amount of money spent to renovate the Complex printed in this article from the November 16th edition of the Daily News which says the city spent $15 million on renovations and the school officials and neighborhood groups fighting the destruction of this school have been reporting on their website that $30 - million that is --- was spent on it. As this is a pretty huge discrepancy I'm wondering where they got their facts...? ("Critics railed yesterday against plans to tear down an upper East Side school that's undergone $15 million in renovations as officials defended plans to put up a college science center on the site.") I'm assuming they mean 'rallied.' (*Update from the Daily News reporters Jimmy Vielkind and Erin Einhorn that the $30 million figure might include money spent before 1995, ie, they state "it might be more inclusive. Erin Einhorn, the other reporter, said she got that number from the department of education and it goes only to 1995.")

Check out the quote where Jamie Smarr in typical DOE sellout fashion is saying that "the school will continue to require to have maintenance issues..." that school was practically rebuilt over a period of years not months, and now they say that building will be at no cost to the taxpayers. What about a tear down of a perfectly good building? This is no Yankee-Shea stadium (take your pick). City officials are going to surely deceive their way into getting this project covered...one way or the other. They just don't have a leg to stand on other than to bully the school out of existence.

Never mind they are completely ignoring the statistics which clearly indicate that thousands of new apartments are being built here on the East Side alone within the next 3-5 years. Forget about 7 years from now, where are these children supposed to go? Shall we say every one of them will be going to private school? Taking away a building that is suitable for 1,700 children that is now in top condition for the next 50 years is short sighted to say the least.

Decide for yourself if the Department of Education is being up front about their plans. The DOE continues to say its not a 'done deal' ...The woman in my video (being edited at this time- up real soon) attended a meeting where the Chancellor says otherwise.

Read the Daily News article referenced above, and this article from the NY Times written on June 28th

As background:
This is off of a flyer available on the Save JREC website:
Why spend $150 million dollars to simply replace a sound educational building?
Hunter College could build the facilities it needs on the land it already controls at
25th street, without also building a replacement for the Julia Richman Schools.
• Isn’t it better for Hunter College to locate its health sciences facilities near its
affiliated hospitals downtown?
• Nearly $30 million dollars of public money has just been spent to renovate the
Julia Richman Education Complex. This is not just “any old building.” It is a
sound structure that has been carefully and thoughtfully renovated to meet the
needs of its occupants.
• JREC is the jewel in the crown of educational reform. It is nationally recognized
example of how to redesign a large school building to house a complex of small
schools and supporting services. There is a constant flow of visitors from across
the nation and abroad to study this educational model.
• Ella Baker Elementary School (PreK-8th grade) at JREC serves the children of
workers at Hunter College and the nearby hospitals. Moving this school
downtown would hurt Hunter College staff and remove this strong educational
option for many families working in the area.
• Neighborhood institutions, such as Mount Sinai Hospital, the Neighborhood
Coalition for Shelter, the Burden Center for the Elderly, and Manhattan Eye and
Ear Hospital, provide services to and internship possibilities for JREC students.
Engagement with this community is part of the success of these schools.
• It is particularly unethical for a sister institution to evict a successful education
complex simply to meet its own real estate desires.

NY Protest site
The Essential Blog- small schools
For more on this story Mike Klonsky