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Education officials are proposing to shutter two of New York City’s smallest schools, the first formal closure plans this academic year as Mayor Zohran Mamdani grapples with a growing number of underenrolled schools.
Two Harlem schools are on the chopping block: The Urban Assembly School for Global Commerce, a high school that serves 112 students, and School of Earth Exploration and Discovery Harlem, which serves just 40 children, making it the city’s smallest middle school. Both schools would close at the end of this school year.
Officials also plan to move The Center School, an Upper West Side school serving grades 5-8, to address overcrowding on a campus it shares with a popular elementary school. A plan to relocate the school to a different site last school year fell apart amid intense backlash.
All three Manhattan proposals are expected to come before the Panel for Educational Policy for a vote on Dec. 16.
The city is also gearing up to close a Bronx middle school, I.S. 224, Chalkbeat has learned, though the Education Department has not yet formally proposed it.
The Mamdani administration is facing growing pressure to close or consolidate schools as K-12 enrollment in the nation’s largest school district has plunged in the last 12 years by about 19%, or roughly 187,000 students. Declining headcounts have led to a glut of underenrolled schools that struggle to offer a full range of programs.
It remains to be seen whether these initial proposals represent the beginning of a larger push to merge or close underenrolled schools. Chancellor Kamar Samuels has indicated that addressing small campuses is top of mind and doing so could help reduce costs and expand academic offerings for students on campuses that are increasingly struggling to provide the basics.
“If a school is more underenrolled, it’s more likely not to offer the advanced classes that you need,” Samuels said earlier this year. “It may not offer the level of enrichment that you want to see.”
But Samuels has not shared a detailed roadmap for addressing the problem and has instead pointed to working groups in five of the city’s 32 local districts that are charged with coming up with community-driven plans on enrollment among a host of other issues.
Here’s what to know about the Education Department’s three proposals.
Closure proposal: School of Earth Exploration and Discovery Harlem
City officials say SEED Harlem has gotten too small to be sustainable. Enrollment has plunged 68% since the 2022-23 school year, and it enrolled just six sixth graders this year.
It is also underperforming, with just 21% of students proficient in reading and in math, according to state tests, roughly half the average in District 5.
The school illustrates one of the central problems with tiny campuses: They are simultaneously expensive to operate and struggle to offer a full range of programs. SEED Harlem spent $93,000 per student last year, nearly four times the city average even as it has been forced to cancel partnerships with outside community organizations and scale back enrichment programs, officials said.
The school serves a vulnerable student population. Nearly all of the school’s students come from low-income families, and half have a disability. Just over half the school’s students are Black, and 44% are Latino.
Closure proposal: The Urban Assembly School for Global Commerce
The proposed closure of Global Commerce, which Chalkbeat first reported last month, comes as the school has shed nearly a third of its students since the 2021-22 school year. It now enrolls 112 students.
Launched 13 years ago as part of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s push to open small themed high schools, the campus has been forced to end its career and technical education programs in supply chain management and marketing. With few staff on hand, its principal and assistant principal have stepped in to teach special education and some of its remaining career and technical programming, city documents show.
Like SEED, the school serves a high-need population: Nearly all of the school’s students come from low-income families. More than 90% of the school’s students are Black or Latino.
The Education Department also cited performance concerns. Just 20% of students met a city benchmark for advanced or career-oriented coursework, compared with 63% across Manhattan.
Despite the school’s challenges, the closure proposal has been gut-wrenching for students and staff, physical education teacher Gilbert Schuerch said.
“The amount of students I’ve held in my arms today,” he wrote on Substack after the closure was announced to the community, “and the number of tears shed — from me and the kids — has only reaffirmed how special this place has become to me and the kids.”
Relocation proposal: The Center School
Facing overcrowding in its current building on West 84th Street, city officials are proposing to move the school 1.5 miles north to a campus at West 109th Street that houses P.S. 165. Officials say the move will help The Center School and P.S. 9, the coveted elementary school that currently shares its building, shrink class sizes under a state mandate.
The school faced a different relocation proposal last school year to a building on West 61st Street that houses P.S. 191. Families pushed back against the move for a variety of reasons, including insufficient community engagement and because they said the new location would not be able to adequately accommodate the school’s theater program.
The school, which served 247 students last year, is relatively affluent: About 23% come from low-income families, 55% are white, and about 27% are Black or Latino.
Officials plan to upgrade the theater space at the new campus, though they acknowledged the stage is smaller and shallower.
Last year’s proposal to move The Center School also involved eliminating the middle school grades at P.S. 191. Separately, the city proposed to eliminate the middle school grades at Manhattan School for Children and close the Community Action School. Those proposals were withdrawn last school year. An Education Department spokesperson did not say if they are still under consideration.
“NYCPS remains committed to meaningful engagement with communities before issuing any proposals,” Education Department spokesperson Dominique Ellison said in a statement.
Alex Zimmerman is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.
