NYC Schools Chancellor Faces Pressure to Fix Small School Shortages

New York City schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels faces increasing pressure to address the academic gaps created by the city's network of underenrolled high schools.

A recent analysis found that 72 of the city's high schools with fewer than 250 students operate on shared campuses. At Murry Bergtraum High School for Business Careers, the city's smallest traditional high school, roughly 90 students last year had only one math teacher and two available math courses. Despite a per-student budget nearly twice the city average, the limited offerings forced some students to attend night school to meet basic graduation requirements.

Johanna Bjorken, a parent whose son attends Urban Assembly Maker Academy on the same campus, highlighted the disparity in a September letter to city officials. Her son takes Advanced Placement Calculus, while his peers at Murry Bergtraum rely on night classes for core subjects. Bjorken noted that the school's situation has been known for years without action.

Amy Piller, principal of Urban Assembly Maker Academy, said the system pits schools against each other on shared campuses. She stated, "On shared campuses like ours the system accidentally pits us against each other, right when we need to share resources the most." Piller recently revealed that her school is a finalist for a grant to convert an unused locker room into a shared academic space for all schools on the campus.

Samuels indicated at a town hall last week that he is not crafting a citywide plan. Instead, five working groups are devising blueprints for underenrolled schools in their respective districts. None of these groups currently includes high schools, but Samuels told parent leaders this week that the Education Department is looking at creating campus working groups for high schools. City officials have not shared a timeline for this work.

Mike Sill, secretary of the United Federation of Teachers, said the current approach leaves principals up to their own devices. Some principals have already pooled course offerings, such as at the Theodore Roosevelt campus in the Bronx, where six co-located schools opened advanced courses like calculus and statistics to the entire campus a decade ago. Michael Barakat, principal of Bronx High School for Law and Community Service, called the scheduling challenges manageable compared to the alternative of students not having calculus.

Experts note that pooling resources is complicated by different bell schedules, grading policies, and fragmented leadership. Shael Polakow-Suransky, president of Bank Street College of Education, questioned how much shared instructional work impedes on the autonomy of each school. Kristin Kearns Jordan, former CEO of Urban Assembly, suggested the city could use empty space on underutilized campuses for new programs, citing recent STEAM centers in Brooklyn and the Bronx as a model.