UWS Middle School Fights Against its Possible Elimination: ‘We Are Not Just Going to Roll Over’

By Gus Saltonstall

Tiffany Rodriguez’s family has been connected to P.S. 191 on the Upper West Side for more than a decade. She has a pair of kindergartners at the school, another in the sixth grade, and a fourth child who graduated and is currently at LaGuardia High School of Music and Art.

Rodriguez no longer knows, though, if her three younger children will make it to eighth grade graduation day at P.S. 191, otherwise known as The Riverside School for Makers and Artists, at 300 West 61st Street. Her uncertainty comes from a “potential proposal” to “truncate,” i.e., eliminate, the middle school grades of P.S. 191 that is currently under debate by the city’s Department of Education.

If the department’s “potential proposal’ were to become implemented, P.S. 191 would continue to serve grades 3-K through fifth, but its 127 middle school students and their families — the majority of whom are Latino — would be left to find new schools. And in their place at P.S. 191, some 250 middle school students would be relocated from the Center School at West 84th Street and Columbus Avenue.

“How can the only solution for our school be to truncate, which is a fancy word for kick out,” Rodriguez told West Side Rag in a phone interview. “It feels like a death.”

Representatives from the DOE previously explained that the possible Center School relocation and the truncation of the P.S. 191 middle school had to do with the New York State law to cap class sizes by the start of the 2028 school year, and the overcrowding going on at the Center School’s current building on West 84th Street, which it shares with the P.S. 9 elementary school.

“It’s a travesty,” Michael Robles, a middle school parent at P.S. 191, said to the Rag about the possible decision to eliminate the sixth through eighth grades. “Mine is a sixth grader. The sixth and seventh graders get the short end of the stick here because they are going to wind up losing their identity, losing their community in having to go somewhere else, and then having to start over again. I’m in a special situation because my kid is special needs.”

WSR reached out to the education department to ask for the rationale behind the possible dissolution of the current middle school at P.S. 191 and where its students likely would be relocated. The Rag also asked for DOE’s reaction to the comments of multiple parents, who alleged that grades had fallen at P.S. 191 in part because the school didn’t get adequate support after welcoming hundreds of new students during the 2023 migrant influx to New York City. According to parents, the school lacked additional Spanish-speaking teachers and a Dual Language Bilingual Education program to accommodate the new Spanish-speaking children.

A teacher who formerly worked at P.S. 191 for six years, and spoke to the Rag on the condition of anonymity, said they taught themselves Spanish in their personal time to interact with the new students.

“I had a full class of non-English speaking students, and I learned Spanish to teach them,” the teacher said. “Bringing in migrant students is not what equated to the demise of the middle school, but I think it was handled really poorly and a lot of teachers were left to figure it out on their own.”

In response to WSR’s questions, a DOE spokesperson referred to the same statement it gave when the Rag asked for a comment in our January 20th story on the Center School community pushing to remain in its current building, rather than moving to P.S. 191.

“Authentic community engagement is a cornerstone of any thriving school system, and we strive to provide all schools with facilities that best meet their needs,” according to the statement. “We convened working groups throughout District 3 beginning last school year to collectively identify those needs, and to develop potential solutions. While we have begun early conversations with families and school leaders about how best to support long-term planning, no formal proposal has been issued at this time. We will continue to consult closely with families, educators, and local partners.”

“I was upset,” Rodriguez said when she first found out about the possible elimination of the P.S. 191 middle school. “The fact that it’s the solution that the superintendent’s office has come up with, given that we’ve been asking for help for two to three years.”

The most recent call for help, said Rodriguez, came after the influx of new migrant students.

“We welcomed them,” she said. “They are part of our community now. That is who we are, we are a welcoming community. We’ve tried to figure it out to the best of our abilities, but when you don’t have provisions and planned strategy, the kids fall behind.”

Documented, a news organization reporting on New York City’s immigrant communities, found that Riverside School for Makers and Artists was among the most impacted schools in the five boroughs during the wave of students entering public schools in 2023 who did not speak English. The Upper West Side school was fourth among the city’s public schools in the growth of its English Language Learner (ELL) student population, according to Documented.

Rodriguez added that she was “extremely worried” about the possible need to search for a new school. “Our children are not academically competitive, so if you split them up, and send them to schools that are competitive academically, our children will fall further behind.”

Robles shared a similar sentiment.

“It looks like you’re just moving around a bunch of kids that were not performing, so they can be less of a problem somewhere else,” he told the Rag. I’m terribly disappointed.”

The P.S. 191 community also created a petition to push back against the possible proposal to eliminate the middle school, titled “Save Riverside School for Makers and Artists Middle School,” which has been signed more than 870 times.

“We are active participants in our children’s lives just like the Center School community,” Robles said. “We are not just going to roll over and not speak up for our kids. To think otherwise would be a travesty.”

Read More:

• An UWS Middle School is Pushing Back Against Possible Relocation: ‘This School is Our Home’
• UWS Middle School Meets With DOE Reps To Discuss Possible Move: ‘We Want to be Heard’

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