Parents at a Manhattan special needs school are furious a massive influx of migrant kids could force their children out of their building and into a 127-year-old facility they claim is not safe or adequate for them.
West Prep Academy, a 170-student school on the Upper West Side serving primarily children with disabilities and special needs, is being overrun by a surge in migrant students enrolling at PS 145, which shares the same 105th Street schoolhouse.
On Tuesday, about 20 students and parents gathered outside the shared building, chanting “Stop the move!” They donned T-shirts that read “All Students Deserve FAPE(E)” — Free Appropriate Public Equitable Education.
The parents and children demanded that the Department of Education allow them to stay or give them a suitable replacement.
“We want to make sure that all students are safe, whether it’s in this current building or any building. We don’t want them to just offer us anything. Like we are pieces of trash,” West Prep Academy PTA President Ty Ellis told The Post.
West Prep’s predicament comes as tens of thousands of migrant children have overwhelmed the New York City public school system amid the city’s ongoing migrant crisis.
City Education Department officials have only offered West Prep Academy’s students an aging nearby building with no outdoor space, a gym that doubles as an auditorium, and no adequate accommodations for its disabled and special needs kids.
That building, once the home of the now-shuttered Ascension School on 108th Street, would be the academy’s new home this fall — despite having no upgrades or modifications.
Bianca Louch, whose son attends West Prep, said she was concerned that the children would no longer have a schoolyard to play in and would be out in the street instead.
“There’s smoke shops everywhere,” she told The Post Tuesday. “And there’s also people outside that are bums so why keep our kids in the street playing when there’s literally a park right there where they can play basketball and all the sports that they have.”
West Prep seventh-grader Justin Holland said he feels like he’s being “pushed out” of his safe space.
“This is a change for me and I don’t like change. I just don’t like how we’re being pushed into a new environment that’s not safe for me,” he said.
“And at West Prep Academy, the building we have today, I have a wonderful playground and we’re being pushed to a school that doesn’t have a playground.”
His classmate India Ringold echoed his feelings, saying she feels “safe in this environment” at West Prep Academy.
Sixth-grader Logan Padron said the cafeteria at the new location “looks like a prison.”
Denise Johnson, who has a son in sixth grade at West Prep Academy, said the new facility simply isn’t up to standards for special needs students — or any students.
“The issue is we are coming from a building that is substantial, with all equipment to service their students to a building that lacks resources,” she said. “So the issue for me is the building in itself. It’s not up to par for anyone to go into learning — it looks like a jail. And I don’t think that’s something that our black and brown kids should be provided by based off of someone else’s decision.
“The parents didn’t vote. If it’s a population [problem] there’s other options,” she continued. “This building is not equipped to house students with special needs. Students that don’t have any special needs — it’s not equipped, it’s 127 years old.”
Both PS 145 and West Prep are already in cramped quarters at their current building — and have their share of challenges to go along with the space crunch.
One in three students enrolled in the public school are homeless, with two-thirds black or Latino.
The academy, meanwhile, has programs geared to teaching children with autism, with 90% of its pupils either black or Latino, and 43% of them with disabilities.
But education officials say PS 145 now needs more elbow room and West Prep has to get out of the way to accommodate the new pupils.
West Prep Academy has been at the Bloomingdale building for 13 years and saw its enrollment dip from over 200 in 2018 to the current number of 168, according to city education department records.
PS 145, meanwhile, saw its student population inch upward from 339 in 2019 to 349 for the 2020-2021 school year — before jumping to 382 for the current school year, records show.
At a town hall meeting in January, parents and students packed the auditorium to give city education officials an earful — but it seemed to have no impact on the looming decision.
Kaliris Salas, a member of the DOE’s Panel of Educational Policy [PEP] for educational policy who will vote on the move, said she is worried about the state of the proposed building and the safety of the children.
“There’s multiple doors on the floors, where the children can open and can wander around there. There are concerns in terms of outdoor space. We know that children that are part of the ASC nests program have mandated outdoor time and services that cannot be provided in that building,” she said. “And so in turn, a lot of us on the PEP are very concerned about this particular move and would love for the Department of Education to address those concerns.
“In addition, we need to stop pinning school communities against each other. These two communities coexist in this building,” she added. “And the way that this utilization proposal has been put out into the community has helped foster divide instead of unity.
The PEP will vote on the relocation on May 22.
Parents have made a petition on change.org that currently has over 2,000 signatures to “Stop the displacement of West Prep children.”
