Two schools collide as one shrinks and the other gains migrant students

In recent weeks, a bitter clash over space has erupted in a beloved New York City school building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where two programs have shared over the past ten years.

It’s a struggle that mirrors the events that created two of the biggest demographic shifts in New York City’s recent history: the Covid-19 pandemic and the surge of migrants from the southern border.

One of the building’s residents, Public School 145, has added more than 120 new students due to an influx of newcomers. The Department of Education has proposed moving the other, West Prep Academy, which has lower enrollment, to a separate but outdated building to make room for its growing neighbor.

The conflict exposes broader fault lines in New York and other major American cities. The nation’s public schools have lost more than 1.2 million students since the pandemic began and are facing major budget cuts as a result. Urban areas with large numbers of poor families have been hit The hardest. By 2031, enrollment could fall by another 2.5 million nationally, much of it due to declining birth rates.

On the other hand, the increase in the number of new immigrant families in New York and elsewhere is helping offset some of the losses at schools well positioned to benefit from the influx. But it has raised questions in some areas about how resources and space are used and could set communities on divergent paths.

The plan to split PS 145 and West Prep Academy has highlighted how painful change can be. A school building is more than a collection of lockers and classrooms. It is often the heart of a neighborhood and the anchor for a village of children and educators.

“It’s always full of emotions,” the school’s chancellor, David C. Banks, said during a news conference Thursday. “One of the schools has to move, and there is a lot of hullabaloo about which one.”

Two schools. Two population problems.

New York City once had 1.1 million schoolchildren. Today, that figure has dropped to about 915,000.

For the system’s leaders, the decline has raised major concerns about the future. About 12 percent of the city’s 1,600 schools had fewer than 200 students last school year.

“Students equal dollars,” Daniel Weisberg, the first deputy schools chancellor, said at a town-hall-style meeting in Brooklyn last fall. “We don’t like to think about it that way, but that’s just the economic reality.” He added: We have too many schools that have fallen below critical mass.”

Migrant children entering the system have helped offset the losses, but only partially, and not in all schools. According to officials, the city has lost more than 120,000 students and added more than 30,000 immigrant students in recent years.

West Prep Academy is a close-knit high school that includes a unique program for students with autism. About nine in ten students are black or Latino. More than 40 percent have a disability.

It is a refuge for vulnerable children who are not welcome elsewhere, parents say. The data shows that by the time students leave eighth grade, they have typically made more academic progress than their counterparts at other schools with similar populations.

But enrollment at the school has fallen in recent years, from more than 200 in 2018 to roughly 170 students this year. The decline has been largely driven by the departure of black families from the area, and school officials say West Prep needs to grow to a more “sustainable size.”

At its neighbor, PS 145, one in three students is homeless; two-thirds are black or Latino.

In a neighborhood with several coveted elementary school options, PS 145 once struggled with a chronically low enrollment rate. But as New York City became an epicenter for an influx of migrants from Latin America and Eastern Europe, the school’s bilingual programs in Spanish and Russian made it ideal for new families from those places.

Enrollment has increased by 25 percent over the past five years and now stands at over 480 students.

The growth has forced the school to make tough decisions about space, teachers said. The library is gone. Therapy sessions for students with disabilities are held in cramped spaces. Media and arts programs have been scaled back.

“These are all things that every student should have,” said Lauren Balaban, co-president of the PS 145 parent-teacher association.

“But we have a problem,” she added. “We do not have the space in our building to provide the services our children need and deserve.”

The Department of Education plans to move West Prep to a nearby building next fall. Built in the 1890s, the building is not accessible to students with disabilities and has no outdoor space. Parents and teachers have wondered whether their school would be treated differently if it served a more affluent and white student body.

“There is a perceived disparity here,” Jennifer Holland, a West Prep parent leader, said at a recent hearing on the possible move. She added that she was frustrated by the choice of an inaccessible building. “You are driving out a population for reasons that are not justified.”

‘It’s going to happen more often’

As New York moves and merges schools after an enrollment drop, other cities are grappling with an even more serious problem: closures.

This month, San Francisco became the newest city district announce plans to close public schools. San Antonio has said it does 15 percent from his schools. Boston could close so many half.

Other cities could feel similar pressure as districts anticipate the expiration of billions in federal pandemic aid, and schools with higher percentages of disadvantaged students are likely to becoming a victim.

“It’s very difficult, and it’s going to happen again,” said Douglas Harris, a professor at Tulane University who has studied the issue.

Such closure plans have led to mass protests and hunger strikes.

Marguerite Roza, a scholar at Georgetown University, said districts sometimes delay changes to “avoid the backlash that comes with announcing school closures.” But putting off difficult decisions often makes them all the more painful, she added.

Officials in New York have tried to proceed cautiously. Closing schools could be politically dangerous for Mayor Eric Adams as he tries to convince the state Legislature to let him retain control of the system — and as he seeks reelection for a second term.

As the system’s finances tighten, city officials have blamed costs related to the influx of migrants for recent education budget cuts. But registration rose this year for the first time in almost a decade, largely thanks to the newcomers.

Even with the new students, schools are still competing for a much smaller number of children.

Some West Prep teachers worry they are being set up to fail. They like being a small community and say it can be difficult to attract new families if the 127-year-old building they could be forced to move into is lacking compared to other local options.

“It’s an injustice,” said Tyi Ellis, president of the West Prep parent association. “Nobody asked for this.”