GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Academy for Scholarship and Entrepreneurship Principal Zenobia White talks with middle school students.

The principal of a Bronx secondary school is calling the city’s plan to cut her middle grades a blessing in disguise.

Across the city, school communities and closure opponents are gearing up to protest this year’s round of city proposals to close or truncate 25 schools. But at the Academy for Scholarship and Entrepreneurship in the Bronx, one of the six principals whose secondary schools could lose their middle grades is raising a white flag.

In some ways, it’s easy for ASE Principal Zenobia White to accept that her school will shrink by three out of seven grades over the next two years. She doesn’t have to start thinking about looking for another job, as she would if the school had been proposed to phase out completely. And her job could get easier once she has fewer students to move forward and a smaller staff to develop and observe.

But losing her middle school also means giving up on a vision to usher neighborhood students through their entire adolescence at a single school. Her hope was that by meeting students early in their academic careers, ASE teachers would be able to have a sustained impact on their performance, and the high school would avoid a common pitfall — enrolling students who are performing far below grade-level.

“When you have a middle school, you’re always making choices,” White said when I met with her at the Wakefield school building this week. “I’m a person who wants to support every last child, every last initiative, but the reality is it’s just literally impossible to do that when you have so many things going on at once.” (more…)