A massive influx of illegal immigrant children in Manhattan schools may push a school for children with disabilities and special needs out of an academic building and into an “inadequate” site, according to a report from the New York Post.
The school, West Prep Academy, reportedly serves 170 students, which mainly include children with special needs. West Prep is being overrun by the enrollment at PS 145, which shares the same schoolhouse.
PS 145 has enrolled lots of illegal immigrant children, reportedly “flooding” the system. Reportedly, more than 30,000 migrant children have been sent to public schools in New York City in recent years.
“We’re at a point where now parents are not feeling heard,” one academy parent told The Post. “I see all of these parents expressing these real concerns for why this is not going to work for their kids.
“We don’t agree with this change because we are actually, as teachers and parents and advocates, looking at the actual educational and developmental impact on the children with regard to this change,” the parent added.
City Education Department officials reportedly offered West Prep a new spot, but it is a nearby building with “no outdoor space, a gym that doubles as an auditorium and no adequate accommodations for its disabled and special needs kids” (via NYP):
The school has been at the Bloomingdale building for 13 years and has seen its enrollment dip from over 200 in 2018 to the current number of 168, according to city education department records.
PS 145, meanwhile, saw its student population inch upward from 339 in 2019 to 349 for the 2020-2021 school year — before jumping to 382 for the current school year, the data show.
West Prep administrators said they understand the realities but are uneasy with the hasty decision to shove them into a new home that is ill-suited for their students — and, at minimum, are asking for a delay in the decision for about a year.
“At West Prep Academy we just want a building that is equitable to the one we have or a better facility,” said a magnet school specialist who asked to be identified only as Ms. Costa.
“We just want this to be done the right way,” she said. “Helping one group of students should never hurt another.”
Surge of migrant kids at NYC school could push special needs private school out of shared building https://t.co/6BXb5jxEBW pic.twitter.com/iM7BiH9X8F
— New York Post (@nypost) March 25, 2024
“It’s disingenuous to say that they’re looking out for the best interest of students and things of that nature when you’re willing to jeopardize kids’ academic futures,” Jibil Saleem, a sixth-grade teacher at the school, told The Post.
“They kind of came in, they looked, they basically determined that both schools are working within a footprint,” Saleem said. “That was last year, and then coming into this year it was just essentially like I said — we were blindsided,” adding that “We didn’t know that they somehow looked at the report and convinced people higher up that we still need to go.”