Uptown School Tackling Poverty Through Music Finds Its Home

WASHINGTON HEIGHTS, NY — WHIN Music Community Charter School may have started teaching students in 2017, but it wasn't until a few months ago that its dream of running the only charter school with a special civic-and music-focused approach started to come into focus.

The school — which uses the Venezuelan El Sistema method of addressing poverty through music instruction — has been operating out of a shared space with M.S. 328's building on West 164th Street since opening in the 2017-18 school year.

But in December, school officials finally found space to make their permanent home.

"We literally started looking for private space the day we were chartered in 2016 — to have our own private home," Executive Director Charlie Ortiz said. "In Washington Heights and Inwood, finding a 40,000-square-foot facility is hard. But its all shaping up to be moving in the right direction."

WHIN signed the least for a four-story parking garage on West 181st Street, which it plans to renovate into the school, in December.

School officials have now started the perhaps equally long process of securing permits for the building, which will need a special permit from the Board of Standards Appeals to operate as a school. They will then need to apply for a Department of Buildings permit and begin construction, Ortiz said.

The new space will open by the 2022-2023 school year should all go according to plan, Ortiz said, the same year its first kindergarten class will reach their final year in fifth grade.

WHIN started with 74 kindergarten and first grade students and will reach its maximum of 324 kindergarten through fifth graders by 2021-2022.

Many of that first class of students were part of the WHIN after-school program on Bennett Avenue that sparked the idea to become the first full-time school dedicated to the El Sistema model in the country, Ortiz said.

"[We thought], 'Hey, if we want to do more of this what could it look like?'" Ortiz said. "The idea of a full-day inclusive school with music at its core finally developed. It's one of the few instances where a charter school is conceived by the families we serve."

Like all El Sistema programs, WHIN uses music instruction to instill ideals of "solidarity, harmony and mutual compassion" into its students in the name of inspiring social action.

"In our ensembles, we are all about those things as musicians and just as people," Ortiz said. "What we see is everyone starts to realize, 'Oh, I can’t do this myself, it just doesn’t work.'"

But unlike most El Sistema programs, which typically operate as after-school projects or visit schools for special classes, WHIN integrates teaching those ideals into all of its classes, whether it be math, literacy or physical education.

"It is everywhere," Ortiz said. "If there was a magic sauce, that would be it. We're constantly working toward how to connect what's going on in all of the classrooms."

The school also runs on the idea that music instruction can help all types of learners. Students with any kind of special needs are accepted as long as there is a seat available, Ortiz said.

So far, WHIN has met with Community Board 12's Land Use Committee and has started drawing up designs for the 506 West 181st St. building with Harlem architects GLUCK+.

Turning the parking garage into a "nice, modern, new" school will take about $11 million in Community Development Financial Institution loans and a few years of construction.

Ortiz said the final building will include a theater that is the "heart and soul of the school," a rooftop with outdoor space, classrooms, a cafeteria and other rehearsal spaces.

"I do anticipate the plans to grow and change, [but] so far it looks absolutely beautiful," he said. "We're really excited to move in."