Long ROADS Ahead In School Co-Location Battle

By Harrison Golden

BRONX -- Inside 1010 Reverend James Polite Avenue, students share one cafeteria, one gymnasium, and one computer lab. They walk the same hallways in between their class periods, and they walk through the same doors at the beginning and end of the day. But soon, there will be three separate high schools calling this address home.

The organization Reinventing Options for Adolescents Who Deserve Success, or ROADS, plans to operate a charter school, ROADS II, inside the facility. The site currently houses both Schomburg Satellite Academy and Bronx Regional High School. The move is scheduled for this fall.

“The ROADS team brings the best of high quality school reforms to charter schooling and New York,” Susan Miller Barker, Interim Executive Director of the SUNY Charter Schools Institute, wrote in a statement. “I commend the hard work they have done in bringing these proposals to fruition.”

The school hopes to serve as a “second chance” facility for roughly 150 students, all between ages 15 and 17. Many will come from foster care facilities, homeless shelters, and juvenile courts. Students will receive 215 days of instruction per year. Classes will begin each day at 8am and end at 6pm.

But these programs will come at a cost for the two schools already in the building. If the city’s educational oversight panel approves the plan, Schomburg would lose roughly two-fifths of its classrooms, while Bronx Regional would give up approximately a quarter of its current space. Teachers working there fear that the repositioning will interfere with students and their classes.

“I do not see this ending well,” said Dirk Peters, a English teacher at Schomberg. “Students will be fighting for space and, most of all, for educational opportunities. The community needs to speak out”

The New York City Department of Education, who placed ROADS II into its prospective location, insists that the building will not exceed its “target capacity” of 1,622 students. As of September, the location holds roughly 1,080 students. James Foreman, Jr., a law professor at Georgetown University and a proposed member of the ROADS board of trustees, does not believe these changes will obstruct enrollment or scheduling at the institutions.

“The charter will work with the already existing schools to examine the best way to meet our educational model,” Foreman wrote in an e-mail.

ROADS is no stranger to co-location. Its first school, ROADS I, opened in Brooklyn in September 2011 and currently shares a building with Aspirations Diploma Plus High School.

According to the Department of Education, over 40 percent of the city’s K-12 schools share space. While nearly 54,000 students attend charter schools citywide, roughly two-thirds of them do so in a co-located facility.

“Public education is the last bastion of space where poor, working-class students can get a chance to learn,” said Marissa Torres, a 5^th grade teacher at P.S. 261 in Brooklyn, which is located near Success Charter School.

City educators, school administrators, and parents will participate in a citywide public hearing on the plan scheduled for March 12. Angelique Ramirez, whose son attends Bronx Regional, plans to attend.

“Even if there is some room to be flexible with the rooms now, it can’t stay like this forever,” said Ramirez.

Ramirez also plans on following the upcoming educational oversight panel vote on the proposal, set for March 21.

“The schools have to come up with permanent solutions and plans eventually,” she added. “This might solve some things, but it won’t be the end.“