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Parents at district schools on the Lower East Side that may be forced to share space with an expanding charter school are telling the DOE to look elsewhere.

Girls Prep Charter School has requested building space from the DOE in order to expand its middle school program, which launched this year with one class of fifth-graders. The charter school currently shares a building with P.S. 188 and P.S. 94, a school serving disabled students, and cannot expand further in the space it occupies there.

DOE officials have three ideas for how to accommodate the new middle school, which they plan to present at tomorrow evening’s District 1 Community Education Council meeting.

In one scenario, P.S. 94 would move out of the district, allowing Girls Prep to expand in its current location. To compensate for the loss of P.S. 94, a new program for disabled students would open, sharing space with PS. 184, the Shuang Wen school.

Another suggestion would have the Girls Prep middle school open in a building currently shared by three secondary schools: the School for Global Leaders, the Marta Valle Secondary School and the Lower East Side Preparatory High School. The School for Global Leaders would then move into P.S. 20. This plan would also allow P.S. 94 to expand in the building it shares with P.S. 188 and the Girls Prep elementary school.

The third proposal would have the Girls Prep middle school share a building with P.S. 20.  (The full memo from the Office of Portfolio Planning outlining the three scenarios is below the jump.) (more…)

In the tug-of-war between charter school advocates and opponents over building space for the city’s charter schools, emotions frequently churn and bubble over; protests and shouting matches are not unheard of. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way, a team of district and charter school administrators who share a Lower East Side building said today.

Gearing up for a community meeting tonight about space issues in Manhattan’s District 1 that will feature their own building, administrators said they want to emphasize the need for a neighborly conversation.

“I’m not going to say it’s easy,” said Mary Pree, the principal of P.S. 188, which shares space with another district school and the Girls Prep Charter School. “Everyone would always like 10 extra classrooms.”

But Pree emphasized that her school’s relationship with the two schools is vibrant, and that the schools are working to develop even stronger connections between the parent associations at the school. “We’re a place where this collaboration is working,” she said. (more…)

Sonia Sotomayor with students from her high school, Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx. Photo via WhiteHouse.gov

A South Bronx school is racing to be the first to honor Sonia Sotomayor, the federal judge whose Supreme Court appointment is all but assured after being endorsed by the Senate Judiciary Committee today. 

At the brand-new Girls Prep Bronx charter school, one of the six classrooms opening this fall will be named after Sotomayor, who attended Catholic school just seven minutes away from Girls Prep’s home inside MS 302. Girls Prep CEO Miriam Raccah told me she made the decision with the school’s principal, Josie Carbone, after discussing Sotomayor’s Bronx roots.

“We mutually decided that we absolutely had to name a classroom after her,” said Miriam Raccah, the CEO of Girls Prep. “It just was a no-brainer.”

The naming is in keeping with a tradition at Girls Prep, a Lower East Side charter school that opened in 2005. At the original school, classrooms are named for Congresswoman Bella Abzug, the architect Zaha Hadid, and Brenda Berkman, who sued the city to open the fire department to women. Teachers often tell their students about their classrooms’ namesakes, Raccah said. She said the teacher who worked in the Bella Abzug room gave her students extra lessons about government.