Politicians, Students Rally For Washington Heights High School

WASHINGTON HEIGHTS, NY — Elected officials stood with students and parents from Washington Heights' High School for Health Careers and Sciences on the steps of City Hall Thursday to ask Mayor Bill de Blasio and the Department of Education to reverse a decision to close the school.

Closing the High School for Health Careers and Sciences would unfairly punish students for the failures of the Department of Education, supporters said at Thursday's rally. Shutting the school down would signal the city is admitting its failure to improve the school, and would send a bad message to the rest of the city, elected officials said.

"Fixing schools, yeah it's hard, it requires patience," Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer said Thursday. "You need to be able to wait quite a bit of time — 2 or 3 years — for the reforms to take root. But the philosophy that everything needs to improve quickly or we'll just blow it up is rocking students' lives, families' lives and erasing the hard work that's already been done."

The Department of Education proposed closing the High School for Health Careers and Sciences along with eight other renewal schools in December. The high school is one of four schools located in the George Washington Educational Campus on Audubon Avenue and West 192nd Street.

The High School for Health Careers and Sciences was selected for closure because it did not show sufficient progress after its inclusion in the city's Renewal Schools program — which gives struggling schools extra funding and resources to help them turn around — according to an Educational Impact Statement prepared by the Department of Education.

The school struggles when it comes to both academics and enrollment, according to the DOE. The schools' college readiness rate of 21 percent is 29 points below the borough-wide average of 50 percent and its graduation rate has fallen from 70 percent in 2014-2015 to 62 percent in 2016-2017, according to an Educational Impact Statement. Enrollment has dropped from 657 students during the 2012-2013 school year to its current 466 students, according to the Environmental Impact Statement.

But despite the DOE's negative assessment of the school, the Washington Heights community strongly supports keeping it open. City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez said Thursday that the city's proposal to close the school has created a "collective effort" that has "brought everyone together," in support of the school.

"We hope that we go back after [the vote] to George Washington and I hope that the DOE will listen to the parents," Rodriguez said Thursday."How we can turn that campus into a college prep, where every single student should be ready to go to college. That is what the discussion should be all about."

In addition to the Borough President and City Councilman, State Senator Marisol Alcantara and Congressman Adriano Espaillat spoke in support of the school Thursday. Community Board 12, which represents the Washington Heights and Inwood neighborhoods, also voted unanimously in January to oppose closing the school.

The Panel for Educational Policy will vote on whether or not to close the school following the 2017-2018 school year on Feb. 28, according to the Department of Education. If the Panel for Educational Police votes to close the school, current students will be able to transfer to higher-performing schools in Manhattan or any of the three other schools in the George Washington Educational Campus, the DOE said.

Photo by Brendan Krisel/Patch