General News
Community board votes against tearing down JREC
Jun 5, 2008 3:57 PM
UFT's Vice President Leo Casey (below) joins parents and community members who spoke out at a Community Board 8 meeting in favor of saving the Julia Richman Education Complex.
Community Board 8 has declared its opposition to a real-estate deal that would result in tearing down the historic Julia Richman Education Complex on Manhattan’s East 67th Street.
After not taking a position for more than two years, board members voted 26-8 against destroying JREC and relocating its schools, a proposal backed by Schools Chancellor Joel Klein that would accommodate Hunter College’s desire to erect a high-rise science tower on the JREC site. Outraged parents and neighborhood leaders have been voicing their concerns at board meetings for months.
Leo Casey
More than 200 people packed the May 21 meeting, filling every seat and crowding the aisles of Hunter’s School of Social Work auditorium at East 79th Street and Lexington Avenue.
UFT Vice President for Academic High Schools Leo Casey joined a speakout that stretched for more than two hours, making the case that JREC is an educational asset that has been recognized nationally by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, among other noted organizations.
“Julia Richman is not a piece of real estate. It is the home of six schools,” said Casey. UFT representatives have visited the schools and sat in on classes. “These are great schools, schools that you would want to send your children to,” he told the board.
If the building is destroyed, the schools — Urban Academy HS, Talent Unlimited HS, Vanguard HS, Manhattan International HS, PS 226 Junior High Annex and Ella Baker Elementary School — would be moved two miles away to Hunter’s auxiliary campus, but many parents say it will be impossible to recreate the success that has been achieved.
Besides, say parents, the Department of Education has spent more than $30 million redesigning the building so that each of its schools can operate autonomously, and to tear it down now would be unnecessarily costly to New York City taxpayers.
JREC boasts two gymnasiums that neighborhood children enjoy and an acoustically exceptional auditorium used by various orchestras. As was reported in the April 24 issue of the New York Teacher, the building won the American Architectural Foundation’s award for excellence in design and service to the community this year.
UFT President Randi Weingarten, who attended the rally for JREC in April, wrote a letter to the Community Board in May asking it to support the “jewel in the crown of the New York City School system.” She suggested its members visit the unique complex for themselves and asked them to make sure “that the Julia Richman Education Complex remain at its current site” and to urge “the city to help Hunter build its science tower at another more appropriate location.”
Science professors and deans from Hunter urged the board to consider their need for new labs and classroom space. Hunter is fast becoming the city’s premiere training ground for the health professions, said one biology professor.
JREC supporters countered the Hunter professors, saying it was better for the college to send its 25,000 science students to its downtown campus than to tear down one of the city’s best public school buildings.
