School would replace New School for Arts and Sciences
By Steven Antioco
santioco@hunter.cuny.edu
A team of local teachers is spearheading efforts to establish a new high school in Hunts Point with a program devoted both to college preparation and vocational training.
Hunts Point High School will be under the wing of New Visions for Public Schools, a private organization that works in partnership with the city Department of Education and has spent millions in grant money to pioneer the creation of small schools with curriculums based on specific themes. The target date for opening the school is September 2009.
The team behind Hunts Point High is made up of faculty members from the New School for Arts and Sciences on Longwood Avenue, which the Department of Education has ordered closed in 2010 when its current students graduate.
The team is collaborating with Hostos Community College and John Jay College of Criminal Justice, as well as forming partnerships with local businesses and nonprofits.
In order to set itself apart from the New School, said Dr. Joseph Wint, “We’re going to have a tighter program where we will be able to monitor the students very closely.”
Wint, a teacher at the New School for Arts and Sciences, has been chosen by the planning team to be the principal of Hunts Point High if the city Department of Education approves the proposed new school.
Wint said in an interview that the school will provide a solid academic foundation to prepare students either for college or the workforce. Central to monitoring students’ progress, he said, will be a system of advisories in which each teacher will mentor 20 students in a kind of expanded homeroom, the better to “catch them before they fall.”
His ideas for the school were born from a reading of the Hunts Point Vision Plan, the city’s long-range plan for neighborhood improvement, which calls for encouraging the growth of food–
related industry, connecting residents to jobs in the Hunts Point Food Distribution Center and fostering eco-industrial businesses while cleaning up the environment.
Noting that the Hunts Point Food Distribution Center is the largest in the nation, the new school will offer a program in culinary arts, to provide students with a path to jobs in the field.
“Parents, students and the business community welcome the idea enthusiastically,” the proposal says, and the school’s founders predict that students who complete the program will have “a solid future in the job market.”
Other career and technical education programs will be offered in cosmetology, technology and forensic science, in which students will be trained to apply science to investigations and testimony in court cases—from crime scene investigations and ballistics to environmental forensics, in which investigators locate the sources of pollution.
John Jay College’s Criminal Justice Department will be the school’s partner in the forensics program, the proposal says, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook will offer teachers training in the field.
Saying that a “Bronx Renaissance” is taking place, the proposal also envisions an arts program backed by a new foundation to be created by the school. The plan calls for the school to sponsor a Hunts Point arts festival that will display student work and present a concert by the school choir, a dance recital and readings of student poetry.
In all its programs, the proposal says, the school will use a multi-disciplinary approach. For example, ninth-graders will read Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” in their English class and watch film versions from classic performances to “West Side Story.”
In social studies they will study Renaissance history; in art and music they will draw the dress of the period and listen to its music; in math they will design a theater; and in science will undertake a chemical analysis of the sort of potion the star-crossed lovers drank to commit suicide.
“Students will walk away with a feeling of engagement that satisfies their thirst for knowledge and their desire for a rigorous academic experience,” the proposal concludes.
Hunts Point High School has won the backing of Community Board 2, the United Federation of Teachers, Unitas Therapeutic Community, the Hunts Point Development Corporation and Mothers on the Move, according the proposal.
However, Kellie Terry-Sepulveda, executive director of The Point Community Development Corporation sounded a note of caution. While she did not criticize the proposal for the school, she expressed some skepticism about the New Visions model, telling The Hunts Point Express that she was concerned about the number of educational experiments that started, faltered and then were replaced by new schools.
“It seems our kids are like guinea pigs,” said Terry-Sepulveda, who has two sons who have not yet reached school age. “It’s difficult to believe that the first year will be smooth.”
Nevertheless, says Wint in the proposal for the school, if Hunts Point is to be a viable community, “there has to be a Hunts Point High School.” Young people in the Bronx, he says, are not appreciated for their potential, but “kids here are just as good as anywhere else. All they need is exposure.”
“Hunts Point needs a school,” echoed Michael Mulgrew, the United Federation of Teachers vice president in charge of career and technical high schools—schools that prepare students to enter the workforce after graduation.
He pointed to reports by the New York City Independent Budget Office and the state Board of Regents that show such schools outperforming conventional high schools.
Mulgrew said it’s not going to be easy getting Hunts Point High up and running well, but added, “When someone is trying to get something done, we have to help them.”