• Home
• About
• Contact
• Coverage Area
• Blog
• Health Column
• Local Directory
• Archive

PS 204 Teachers, Parents: Current Building Not Up to Par

By REBECCA THOMAS

For half an hour twice a day, the children of PS 204 in Morris Heights have a playground. Before the school day at 8:30 a.m. and after it ends at 2:45 p.m., a section of West 174th Street outside the elementary school is closed off with police barricades. This small stretch of road also doubles as the school’s gym. If the weather is bad, the barriers aren’t set up at all. On those days there is no playground and no physical education classes.

“We have no playground, no gym, no library, no computer lab, no art room,” said Bill Geelan, a science teacher at the school.

School administrators have been lodging complaints about the building’s facilities since PS 204 moved onto the site in 1990. Now teachers and parents suspect that the academic success of the school is handicapping their childrens’ chances of moving into a new building a few blocks away on Macombs Road near West Tremont Avenue.

“My fear as an educator is that the Department of Education is saying, ‘Their test scores are fine, they are not a priority.’ We feel we’re ignored because we do well,” said Geelan. This year, over 80 percent of PS 204 students exceeded state standards for English, as did 97 percent in math. These scores are at least 20 percentage points higher than the city average.

The students may be meeting standards but the building they learn in is not. It has 12 bathroom stalls for 326 students. There is no air-conditioning or ventilation system — windows face onto walls and temperatures can climb to over 100 in summer, Geelan says. There is no school bell and Geelan carries the water for experiments to class in buckets because the room has no running water. The rooms are split into classrooms using partitions.

            CRYSTAL NISSING, A CONCERNED PARENT

Plumbing is an ongoing problem. “The bathrooms are in the basement. When the rain is really bad outside, the water comes up through the toilets and the sinks,” said Crystal Nissing, a parent at the school.

The PS 204 building is a former synagogue which the Department of Education leases from a private owner. It was built in 1924. “The building is deteriorating. It’s not meant to be a school,” said Ted Garcia, the president of Community Education Council 9.

Next September, a new school building – IS 338 – will open at 1740 Macombs Road. The city’s Department of Education [DOE] would not comment on which schools will be moving into the new 900-student capacity facility; neither would they say whether IS 338 will have a completely new school administration, or whether existing schools will simply be moved in.

The IS 338 building will have a playground, an auditorium, a science lab, a gym, as well as digital displays and air-conditioning, according to Albert Aronov, who works for one of the architecture firms involved in the project.

The Department of Education says that it does not prioritize failing schools for new buildings. “Decisions to move schools for facility reasons are not affected by test scores,” said William Havemann, a DOE spokesman. He would not say whether PS 204 will be moving into IS 338.

The DOE did not respond to the school’s request to allow a reporter to tour the current PS 204 site.

The consequences for PS 204 if it does not get new facilities could be dire. Nissing says she will have to move her daughter if things do not improve.

“The teachers [at PS 204] are spectacular. There are charter schools I could have put my daughter into but I picked this school because it’s so good and feels like a family,” she says. “The sad thing is, as much as I love that school, if a new school does open there, I am going to be forced to transfer my daughter. She deserves a library, a playground. She deserves better than what she gets here.”

Ed. Note: A public meeting will be held on Nov. 12, so that local residents can learn more about IS 338, and what the DOE has planned. For more information, see here.

Comments

Current Print Edition

• Mount Hope Monitor – Twitter Feed

  • Photography exhibit captures Bronx parks "before they were parks." http://bit.ly/a6Emnk~posted~2 weeks ago
  • Help PS 204 students in Morris Heights get the supplies they need in time for the new school year. http://goo.gl/b/hXuJ~posted~3 weeks ago
  • BxNN Presents: The 33rd Senate District Candidates on the Issues. http://bit.ly/cMVXOJ~posted~1 month ago
  • Check out the BxNN's new events calendar http://bit.ly/9Taaba~posted~1 month ago
  • Assemblyman Nelson Castro is holding a spate of health fairs in the west Bronx this month http://bit.ly/b25Mtz~posted~1 month ago