Charter School Planned For Clinton Avenue To Face Hearing

CLINTON HILL, BROOKLYN — A one-story building on Clinton Avenue previously home to an asphalt contractor could turn into a five-story charter school should an application for the lot be approved, records show.

The application, which will face a public hearing in two weeks, proposes building a school at the site that will be run by International Charter School, which currently is in its fourth year running an elementary school from two spots in Downtown Brooklyn.

International Charter School of New York declined to comment about the new space, but directed Patch to explore its website for more information.

It seems from blogs on the site that the elementary school is relocating to the 30 Clinton Avenue spot as its permanent location. During the approval process for its current school, opened in 2015, ICS was awarded a rent subsidy for its first five years of operation and negotiated a lease for what it referred to as a "starter home."

The school currently teaches kindergarten and first grade from a spot on Willoughby Street and second grade and above a short walk away from a spot on Hanover Street.

This past December, the charter staff updated parents by saying that it had found somewhere to custom build a five-story school that could serve as its "permanent home," presumably the 30 Clinton Avenue location.

"This week we signed a lease for a five-story building, in our school district, that will house ICS for at least 31 years," the blog reads. "The building, which will be custom designed for us, will include a regulation gym, cafeteria, playground, roof garden and dedicated classrooms for art, music and science. We are now in the process of clearing the typical bureaucratic hurdles."

Permits for the building show that it would be 60 feet tall and about 50,000 sure feet, according to YIMBY. It would include a 20-foot-long yard in the back.

International Charter School first opened in 2015 with 155 students and has since grown to serve more than 300, according to its website.

Executive Director Matthew Levey has said he started the school to help provide another option for parents in Community School District 13, where public schools have become overcrowded as the neighborhoods see a population influx.

"There's been a rapid expansion in families — people deciding to stay and people moving to Brooklyn," Levey said in an interview when the school first opened. "While there are about 22 public elementary schools in Brooklyn, many of them are struggling to educate children to a level that makes parents happy."

Levey said the International Charter School sought to include a "commitment to curriculum" that it perceived as lacking in some public school options. The curriculum focuses on building children's cultural literacy and background knowledge, he said.

The public hearing on the application for the 30 Clinton Avenue spot will one of two scheduled before Community Board 2 on Wednesday, March 20. The hearings will begin at 6 p.m. and the Clinton Avenue application is second on the agenda.

Both will be held in the Metrotech Center and will be followed by the board's Land Use Committee meeting.