A packed auditorium on Thursday night for a meeting with the DOE and The Center School. Photos by Gus Saltonstall.
By Gus Saltonstall
The Center School auditorium was near max capacity Thursday night for a meeting between representatives from the New York City Department of Education School District 3 and members of the Upper West Side school community.
The topic at hand? A “potential proposal” to relocate the Center School from its current home at West 84th Street and Columbus Avenue to the P.S. 191 building at 300 West 61st Street, while also “truncating,” i.e., eliminating the middle school grades of P.S. 191, so it will only serve grades 3-K through fifth.
Hundreds of Center School current students, parents, alumni, and teachers filled the auditorium on Thursday evening to listen to the presentation from the school district and share their thoughts.
“I am not responsible for how this process began, I am responsible for how this process unfolds,” Interim Acting District 3 Superintendent Reggie Higgins said to begin the meeting. Higgins has only been in the job for a matter of weeks after the previous superintendent for the UWS district, Kamar Samuels, was named the new school chancellor for the Mamdani administration. “I want to hear from you,” Higgins said.
The presentation was then led by Deputy Superintendent Mariele Graham, who stated that the possible Center School move was related to student enrollment and class size, and the upcoming class size cap for all New York City public schools, where class sizes must be no greater than 20 to 25 students, depending on grade level, by the start of the 2028 school year.
“This building has been overused for years,” Graham told the room. “It’s been at least at 105 percent capacity since 2021.” The Center School shares the West 84th Street building with the P.S. 9 elementary school.
Graham went on to say that the Department of Education had been considering a possible move for the Center School since November 2024, when it toured the shuttering Manhattan Country School at 150 West 85th Street.
She added that working groups had begun in January 2025 to more broadly discuss the state of School District 3, which eventually led to discussions about a possible Center School relocation plan that included invitations to the middle school’s principal, PTA president, and parent coordinator, and that this group continued to meet this school year to discuss possible scenarios.
Graham speaking to the Center School community on Thursday night.
When it came to the possible P.S. 191 building relocation, Graham added that the school district was looking into theater space near the building that the Center School would be able to share, and mentioned fields in Riverside Park that might be open by this fall as a substitute for the loss of the large yard part of the school’s current building.
Following Graham’s remarks, different members of the Center School community spoke, many pushing back against the sentiment that the relocation plan had been discussed and urging for more time and thought to go into any possible move.
“To say this [the possible move] has been discussed, no it hasn’t,” one parent leader with multiple children at the Center School said to the room. “Maybe with you and a few other people, behind closed doors, but it clearly didn’t include parent engagement.”
A different leader of the Center School PTA said, “We all want what is best for the kids, and we need the appropriate time and space to come to that decision.”
The meeting continued with a variety of speakers from the Center School community, including multiple women who went to the school themselves and now have their own children attending. “She always told me how special the Center School was, and she was right,” a current student said about her mom.
A mother and daughter who both attended the Center School, speaking to the importance of the school in their lives.
“We are deeply concerned about the lack of community engagement with this process,” a different parent said. “We want to be heard. We want a seat at the table.”
Also at the meeting was a parent from P.S. 191, who spoke about the possible move from their side. Earlier this month, the school started a petition called “Save Riverside School For Makers and Artists Middle School.”
“We, the families of The Riverside School for Makers and Artists (PS/IS 191) and other stakeholders in District 3, strongly oppose the proposed dissolution of the middle school at PS/IS 191,” reads the petition, which has been signed by 365 people. “We demand that any proposed change be postponed until at least Fall 2035, ensuring that all current students—including families with incoming kindergarteners who enrolled or planned to enroll with the reasonable expectation of a K–8 pathway—are able to graduate through 8th grade.”
As stated by a DOE official, the choice to possibly dissolve the Riverside School for Makers and Artists Middle School is separate from the situation at the Center School, but because the space at the West 61st Street school could soon become available, it became a viable option as a potential future home for the Center School.
A sixth-grade student at the Riverside School commented on the petition, “We love our school. Please don’t kick us out. We would have to travel far and won’t be with our friends because we aren’t all going to the same school. I’ve been here since pre-K.”
Multiple steps need to still take place if the Center School relocation to the P.S./I.S. 191 building were to happen this upcoming fall, including the publication of an Educational Impact Statement, a Joint Public Hearing with the affected school communities, a Public Comment Analysis, and an eventual vote by the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) board.
WSR plans to publish a larger article at a later date related to the situation at The Riverside School for Makers and Artists.
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