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Julia Richman: The award-winning school that Klein would destroy
Apr 24, 2008 4:15 PM
Urban Academy science teacher Nancy Jachim, with 11th-grader Aime Silfa, shows off paprika peppers that her students grew and then dried.
Closing large high schools and redesigning them into smaller ones has been one of the education changes that predated Schools Chancellor Joel Klein but that he has nonetheless championed. That would not explain, however, his plan to bulldoze the Julia Richman Education Complex, one of the city’s best examples of the small school movement where the graduation rate exceeds those of both the city and the state.
Just this month, JREC was named the recipient of a national design award. It has been lauded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which called it a model for urban educational reform. Parents, students and community leaders are outraged at the chancellor’s plan to demolish the school.
The Department of Education has spent $30 million re-designing the 82-year-old building so that each of its schools — four specialized high schools, a middle school for autistic children and an elementary school — can operate autonomously.
The building boasts two large gymnasiums, a swimming pool, a modern, 1,400-seat auditorium, a separate performance theater, a custom-designed library, a health clinic that provides free services to students and even a center where student-parents can drop off their young children each morning.
Nevertheless, the chancellor plans to raze the building as part of a land swap made with Hunter College. Klein and City Hall officials secretly sealed the deal with the City University of New York to turn over the Julia Richman site to Hunter, which plans to erect a new high-rise science center.
Neighborhood kids Zoe Rose (left) and Sadie Ellis would be sad to see the school, including its state-of-the-art library, torn down.
In return, Hunter agreed to sell its auxiliary campus on East 25th Street to a private developer. The college has promised to require the developer, as part of any new condominium construction, to build a replacement site for Julia Richman.
In the meantime, the six schools — Urban Academy HS, Talent Unlimited HS, Vanguard HS, Manhattan International HS, PS 226 Junior High Annex and Ella Baker Elementary School — would be relocated to a new building two miles away. But many parents say it will be impossible to recreate the success that has been achieved.
UFT President Randi Weingarten urges members of the JREC family to stick together in their fight.
An award celebration at the school on April 14, which Klein did not attend, centered on the American Architectural Foundation’s Richard Riley Award for excellence in design and service to the community. In making the presentation to school administrators, Ronald Bogle, the foundation’s president and CEO, stated: “Julia Richman is the only school on the East Side to win — and I mean the east side of the United States of America!”
Show of defiance
The school’s auditorium was brimming with people, in a show of defiance against the chancellor’s plan to destroy the building. Parents, teachers, and community leaders were joined by concerned neighbors. The Ella Baker Elementary School drummers helped set the mood of resistance. Talented young musicians and vocalists from other schools performed.
UFT President Randi Weingarten was there to congratulate the administration and staff for making all six of the schools places where parents want to send their children and where educators want to teach.
“If we can stand together and make it clear we will not take no for an answer, we will win this one, too,” she vowed, bringing the audience to its feet.
The auditorium, with perfect acoustics put in by MTV, is unlike any other in any school in the city and is regularly used as a practice space by professional musicians in the community. The Inter-School Orchestra, which graced the stage for the celebration, also rehearses there.
“And this is what they want to tear down? Are they out of their minds?” said Jane Hirschmann, a parent leader who is working with the school to fight Klein’s plan to destroy the building.
“We don’t want them to disrupt this community,” said Sheila Maguire, whose son attends Urban Academy HS. “There’s nothing like this in terms of the sense of community, a sense of belonging.”
The 1,400-seat auditorium, unlike any other in any school in the city, features curtains, lights, a catwalk and sound system all donated by MTV.
Others describe the campus as an “ecosystem,” a vibrant center of the community.
“The kids stay late, until all hours doing homework, being with friends who come from all over,” said another parent. “They love being here.”
Why it works
The reason JREC is a small school campus that works, said Urban Academy Chapter Leader Terry Weber, “is because all the principals and APs are part of a building council whose decisions require agreement from everyone.”
“This is our state-of-the-art building. We don’t want any other,” Louis Delgado, principal of Vanguard HS, declared in accepting the national design award.
The enthusiastic audience at the celebration included alumni from the days when Julia Richman was the premiere all girls’ school in the city.
“They had the most beautiful girls,” remarked a 1950 alum, who preferred to give only her first name, Evelyn.
She recalled that actress Lauren Bacall was a year ahead of her when she attended. “I remember the talk when she got her big break,” said Evelyn. “People were saying, ‘Oh, she’s going to Hollywood, she got a job.’”
You can tell the people at JREC care for the building like a home when you step into it. Much of the original architecture has been maintained. The high-ceilinged lobby, named for a custodian who recently retired, features towering pillars topped with gold-painted capitals, rising above a spotless, tile floor. When the building opened in 1924, it was visited by the Prince of Wales. Other historical touches include wrought iron railings in extra-wide halls and marble shower stalls by the pool.
The land deal requires the approval of Community Board 8, which will be taking up the issue at its next meeting at 310 East 67th Street, on May 12. More on the effort to save JREC is available on the school’s Web site, www.jrec.org.
Roy Reid, teacher of photography and history at Urban Academy HS, said: “Over the 12 or 13 years, each of the schools has carved its own space,but there’s a sense of working together. Sometimes I and other teachers come downstairs and work with the infant toddler center. Some of the kids from Ella Baker can sit with some of the high school students. We have high school students tutoring others in the rest of the building.”
Social studies teacher Nell Hirschmann-Levy noted that “the Mount Sinai clinic that gives free services to students would not necessarily move with the schools. That would be a huge loss.”
Staff, students, parents and neighbors were reminded of the plan to tear down the building when they turned out for the April 14 ceremony to present the school with the American Architectural Foundation’s Richard Riley Award for excellence in design and service to the community.
FLASHBACK! UFT Vice President Michael Mulgrew (right) joined Rev. Al Sharpton and others at a protest march last year when the plan to demolish Julia Richman and give the land to Hunter College was first announced.
Urban Academy teachers (standing) Becky Walzer and Terry Weber, the chapter leader, with students at a lunchtime Pizza and Math session, where students work on their math homework or receive tutoring (while also eating pizza).
Students pass through the beautifully decorated, wide hallways.
