Wadleigh gets reprieve, but ‘Eva’s still coming’

Miller PhotographyEven though their school was removed from the closing list, representatives from Harlem’s Wadleigh Secondary School still turned out at the PEP meeting to support other schools. With just one day to go before the city’s Panel for Educational Policy was set to vote on closing 25 schools, the Department of Education on Feb. 8 granted Harlem’s Wadleigh Secondary School for the Performing Arts a rare reprieve, removing its middle school from this year’s closing list.

Both Wadleigh and Knowledge and Power Preparatory Academy VII, a Brooklyn middle school, were removed from the DOE’s hit list.

Faculty and students at Wadleigh, who waged an aggressive campaign to save their middle school, said they are happy about the sudden reprieve, but that they are also disturbed that their school, which now must contend with an impending Harlem Success charter school co-location, remains in the DOE’s crosshairs.

“Obviously we’re happy that our school has been spared, but our students are still without the supports they need,” said Anthony Klug, the school’s UFT chapter leader. “We’re determined to do the best we can with what we have.”

Wadleigh librarian Paul McIntosh, a central figure in the fight to save the school’s middle grades, said that he believes the reprieve was meant to “demobilize” the Wadleigh community, especially as it faces a fight over co-location with Harlem Success boss Eva Moskowitz in the fall.

“We’ve made them blink, but it hasn’t changed the landscape at all,” McIntosh said. “Eva’s still coming.”

Klug, along with McIntosh, other colleagues, students, community members, Harlem elected officials and parents from Wadleigh, still attended the PEP meeting the following evening despite the school’s removal from the list. Klug noted that the closing schools fight is much larger than any single battle over an individual school’s fate.

“While our school was saved this year, we’re here to support other schools and to protest the process of closing schools, not helping them,” Klug said.

The DOE announced the appointment of a new Wadleigh principal that same week.

“While these two schools continue to struggle, what we learned is that they are also poised to quickly improve,” the schools chancellor, Dennis M. Walcott, said in a statement explaining his decision.