PS 161, Brooklyn: ‘Running on empty’

PS 161, once the jewel in the crown of District 17 in Brooklyn, is about to lose grades 6 through 8, the middle school that parents fought so hard to have added to the original K-6 school back in the mid-1980s.

Former Brooklyn Borough Representative Robert Astrowsky remembers the school in its glory days: “A stable anchor in the community, a place where staff wanted to work and parents wanted to send their children.”

It was because of those strengths and student success that parents pushed hard for the addition of a middle school, he added.

The Crown Heights neighborhood school began to decline with the advent of the Klein/Bloomberg reform era. In 1999, 98 percent of PS 161’s 8th-graders were reading at grade level and 100 percent met proficiency standards in math. By 2005-06, 8th-grade math scores had fallen to 75 percent at or above standards and to 12 percent in 2009-10. Between 2005-2006 and 2009-2010, ELA scores also plummeted from 90 percent at or above standards to 18 percent.

Over the last three years the K-8 school’s annual grade on its progress report has dropped from A to C to D.

Successful programs that had met the needs of the predominately Caribbean community that the school serves were not supported and staffing needs were not properly addressed, said Chapter Leader Sophia Rainford.

Rainford, who has taught at the school for 14 years, blames lack of DOE support, resources and professional development for the deterioration. She describes a dedicated staff “running on empty.”

The new principal who arrived in September never had a chance to implement his plans for an afterschool program for grades 3 through 8 — the test grades — a Saturday school and a flag football team.

Parents are concerned that the displaced middle school students will have to start looking for another school in September. They, along with staff, expressed their anger at a recent demonstration.