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In its third attempt to find a home for a Chelsea middle school, the city is proposing to rent a former Catholic school.

Starting next year, the city will rent Saint Michael’s Academy to house the Clinton School for Artists and Writers, Department of Education officials announced today. The city is moving the Clinton School from its current home at P.S. 11, which is rapidly expanding. The Clinton School is due to move into a newly constructed building when it is finished in 2014.

But the city has proposed and abandoned two previous plans to move Clinton into temporary space since January. The most recent proposal, which would have moved the school into an East Side building currently shared by the American Sign Language and English Lower and Secondary Schools, sparked fierce protests from parents at all the affected schools. Critics of the plan, including the United Federation of Teachers, also voiced concern that adding 300 middle school students to the building would create fire hazards. On the eve of the citywide school board’s vote on the plan, the city backtracked, saying it would explore other options. (more…)

A prolonged battle against the city’s plan to shuffle space at five Manhattan schools spilled onto the sidewalks of East 23rd Street yesterday.

The plan to relocate Chelsea’s Clinton School for Artists and Writers into the building shared by the American Sign Language and English Lower and Secondary Schools has drawn fierce criticism from parents at all of those schools. City officials have argued that even with the Clinton School in their building, the ASL schools will have ample space to maintain their unique sign-language based instructional program. But parents contend that moving the Clinton School’s nearly 300 students into the building will create overcrowded classes and prevent students from seeing each other as they sign.

Clinton parents have proposed staying one more year in their current space in P.S. 11, a rapidly expanding zoned school, but the city and P.S. 11 parents say that school is also nearly bursting with students.

The city is swapping a plan that would have relocated nearly 100 disabled students to a new building for a plan to disperse the students into special education programs throughout the city.

Under the Department of Education’s original proposal, roughly two-thirds of the students at P.S. 138, a school for severely disabled students, would have moved to share space with the American Sign Language and English Secondary School, a middle and high school that gives admissions preference to deaf students.

That plan was scrapped after P.S. 138 parents and elected officials protested that the new site posed safety risks and that students would not be able to get around the school easily.

Some parents are saying that the department’s new plan is not much better. (more…)

A plan aimed at easing crowding in District 2 has parents up in arms because it would force a popular middle school to move from its long-time home.

The plan would move the Clinton School for Writers and Artists to P.S. 33, roughly five blocks from its home on the fifth floor of P.S. 11 in Chelsea. The move was finalized at the end of last week just as the school’s parent-teacher association sent a letter to the Department of Education rejecting the placement.

Though parents and the department agree that P.S. 11 is too overcrowded for the Clinton School to remain there, there’s disagreement over whether P.S. 33 is an appropriate relocation spot.

In a letter sent to the DOE last Friday, co-president of the PTA Darren Taffinder asked that the Clinton School be given one more year at P.S. 11. Taffinder wrote that he and other parents couldn’t agree to a move to P.S. 33 without knowing how much space their school would have and without a promise that the move is temporary. (more…)

75 Morton Street, the subject of a rally last summer, could still become a school. (GothamSchools)

A meeting about overcrowding in Manhattan schools last night ended in surprising fashion: with the Department of Education being lauded for listening to parents.

Parents from one local school, the Clinton School for Writers and Artists, showed up to the meeting of the Community Education Council for District 2 in red, as planned, to protest the idea of their school moving. Hundreds of other parents arrived armed with protest signs and talking points about the need for more school seats in the district, which covers most of Manhattan below 59th Street and the Upper East Side. Advocates have criticized the DOE for understating the extent of crowding in the area.

But the mood relaxed after John White, the DOE official on hand, dispatched with the idea that Clinton would be asked to move. White said the DOE instead would try to ease crowding by finding a new space for Greenwich Village Middle School. That school is eager to move out of its current location on the top floor of the already overcrowded PS 3 building.

One potential site for the school, according to White: part of the state-owned office building at 75 Morton Street that parents and elected officials lobbied mightily last summer for the DOE to obtain. (more…)

Yesterday, I wrote about parents who are protesting what they fear is a Department of Education plan to move their school, the Clinton School for Writers and Artists. This morning, I spoke to a mom who wouldn’t mind seeing the move happen.

Greenwich Village Middle School is on the top floor of PS 3.

The mother is a parent at Greenwich Village Middle School, where parents and school officials have been hoping for a larger space. They might have gotten just that had Clinton vacated its space in Chelsea. Instead, the Greenwich Village school will open this fall in the same space it now occupies. Parents say the space, on the top floor of PS 3, is overcrowded and stressful.

According to the DOE, Greenwich Village Middle is only at about 93 percent capacity. But school leaders say the tight quarters have left the school without a library, up-to-snuff science lab, or dedicated gym. (It shares a gym with PS 3.)

Plus, parents say the crowding causes stress, especially for teachers, who can’t have their own classrooms because every space must be used every period of the day. When one teacher is almost finished with a class, another teacher has to “sneak in at the last minute” to start preparing for the next period, PTA President Marianna Mott Newirth told me.

On top of that, there are no dedicated classrooms where students can receive special education or English as a Second Language services. Those services happen in a broom closet or in the hallways, Mott Newirth told me.

“There’s no breathing space between classes,” she said. “It’s like traffic: When there’s gridlock, it’s stressful.”

Chelsea families have been organizing for weeks to oppose a city plan to relocate their middle school. But city school officials say no such plan has ever existed.

In fact, they say they never even made a formal proposal to move the Clinton School for Writers and Artists, a small school currently sharing space with an elementary school on West 21st Street.

The apparently mistaken idea has its roots in the popular school’s desire to expand. Department of Education officials suggested moving Clinton to PS 33, a nearby, lower-performing elementary school that has classrooms to spare. But Clinton’s principal, Jeanne-Marie Fraino, convinced DOE officials that the move would not be good for her school, so they dropped the idea, DOE spokesman Will Havemann told me today.

“We have no intention of moving Clinton for Fall 2009,” Havemann said.

The news has not gotten to Clinton parents, who are sending frenzied e-mails in advance of a meeting tomorrow of the Community Education Council for District 2, the elected parent council that is supposed to advise the DOE on school siting decisions. “We should dress in red so we can make our presence felt,” read one e-mail sent to Clinton parents. (more…)