By Gus Saltonstall
The Manhattan School for Children on the Upper West Side will learn the fate of its middle school at the end of the month.
On April 29th, the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) will vote on the proposed shuttering of MSC’s middle school within the Joan of Arc Educational Complex, located at 154 West 93rd Street, beginning in the 2026-27 school year. If approved, there will be no new sixth-grade class at MSC, and the students headed into their seventh-and eighth-grade years will be the final graduating classes of its middle school, before the school switches to serving only kindergarten through fifth-grade students.
West Side Rag spoke with multiple parents at the Manhattan School for Children about their frustration with the seemingly shifting reasoning given by city education officials to justify the closure proposal.
“Our parents are extremely troubled by the ongoing pattern of changing justifications for the phase out of MSC middle school grades, and the lack of any serious attention to the direct harm the closure of MSC’s middle school grades will cause to our students, particularly those with disabilities,” Olivia Greer, a parent with a fourth grader at the school and twins who will be in kindergarten next year, and the chair of the school’s parent leadership team, told West Side Rag.
According to Greer, sometimes the closure is explained as necessary “because there’s not enough space in the building. Sometimes it’s that our test scores are low, even if they exceed citywide average. Last night they floated an entirely new reason around enrichment space.”
Parents also spoke about the school as a a “valued community” with unique aspects.
Within MSC’s middle school population, 35 percent of students have a documented disability, according to school data.
“One of the very unique aspects of MSC, but hardly the only, is that we have built a deep expertise in serving students with disabilities and in particular, mobility challenges,” Greer told the Rag. “We have students in wheelchairs. We have students on ventilators. We have students who use walkers. And we have built infrastructure to serve those students.”
The Rag reached out to the Department of Education for its reasoning in moving forward with the proposal to phase out MSC’s middle school. In an April 15th email, a spokesperson for the agency wrote, “Enrollment in the middle school grades has been low and declining for years, with very few fifth-grade students choosing to stay, limiting the school’s ability to offer a robust middle school experience.”
“This proposal would allow the school to focus on strengthening its K-5 program while supporting District 3 students in accessing middle schools with broader academic and extracurricular opportunities,” the spokesperson added.
On April 6th, Upper West Side District 3 Superintendent Reginald Higgins delivered the following explanation to the Upper West Side’s Community Board 7.
“At MSC, the conversation has understandably centered on class size and co-location, particularly with Lafayette Academy [another school within the Joan of Arc Educational Complex],” Higgins said. “When the Chancellor [Kamar Samuels] and I toured the building with the PEP members, he made clear that MSC prioritizes its enrichment spaces and service learning programs.”
“There are not to be owned by any one school, they must be shared by student need,” Higgins added. “Lafayette serves a similar student population, demonstrates strong outcomes along subgroups and yet their service providers are currently forced to deliver services together in a single room. That is not equity.”
Higgins testimony indicated a belief that MSC’s allocation of rooms for special education, which falls under the umbrella of enrichment services, was lopsided to MSC in comparison to Lafayette Academy — a different school that it shares the West 93rd Street building with.
Higgins made no mention of declining enrollment at MSC in those remarks, while the DOE made no mention of overcrowded enrichment spaces within the school building in its statement to the Rag.
Following that meeting, CB7 passed a resolution calling on the DOE to withdraw the proposal to begin closing down MSC’s middle school in the 2026-27 school year.
“Given the way the arguments in favor of this proposal have shifted and evolved over the past few months, I can no longer give the benefit of the doubt that they [DOE] even THINK they have treated us as partners,” Jessica Lane Weiss, a co-president of MSC’s PTA, wrote to the Rag in an email. Weiss is a parent of three students who are in the school’s seventh, fifth, and second grades at the school,.
MSC currently serves 407 students — 275 in kindergarten through fifth grade and 132 in sixth through eighth. The school’s sixth-grade class in 2025-26 is 44 students, which reflects a four-year high, data provided by the school’s leadership team show.
Laurie Kalinowski, the co-vice president of MSC’s PTA and a parent of a first and fourth grader at the school, who says she would keep her children at MSC for middle school, said she values the school’s inclusive learning environment.
“Children not only have tolerance for different learning needs but they embrace it as the norm DAILY, understanding that differences should be celebrated and valued, and something they can learn from because they are encouraged to do so,” Kalinowski wrote to WSR in an email. “MSC intertwines all levels of learning in their Integrated Co-Teaching [ICT] classrooms, with all children given the support they need from two teachers at all times in order for children to maximize their learning.”
Both Weiss and Kalinowski, along with Community Board 7, expressed concern about whether MSC students can find a comparable middle school to meet the social-emotional and physical requirements of current students, if MSC’s middle school were to close.
On April 15th, families were notified which public middle schools their children were accepted into, including 46 students who were given acceptance letters to MSC’s middle school, according to the school’s leadership.
When the Rag asked the DOE about this seemingly challenging set of timing, given that the MSC middle school might no longer exist after the vote on April 29th, a spokesperson responded:
“Students who applied to this school for sixth grade are being supported through the admissions process, including offers to other schools on their list and extended deadlines to accept offers, ensuring families have flexibility as the proposal is considered.”
Despite the help the DOE might be lending families of possible incoming middle school MSC students, Greer still questioned the timing of the process.
“There was no official proposal [for the MSC middle school closure] until March and the vote will be at the end of April, two weeks after families get their middle school placement,” Greer wrote to the Rag. “We will have a fully enrolled sixth grade. Families were notified on April 15, and then potentially be notified two weeks later that there is no MSC middle school.”
The April 29th PEP vote will determine the fate of the future of the Manhattan School for Children, along with that of two other Upper West Side schools: the Riverside School for Makers and Artists, and the Center School.
Read More:
- Member of Panel That Will Decide Fate of Three UWS Schools: ‘It Clearly Wasn’t Enough Time’
- City Halts Plan to Close Upper West Side Middle School: ‘Our Focus Must be on Healing’
- Racist Remarks Shock Participants at UWS Schools Meeting: ‘We Take These Matters Very Seriously’
- UWS Middle School Fights Against its Possible Elimination: ‘We Are Not Just Going to Roll Over’
- UWS Middle School Meets With DOE Reps to Discuss Possible Move: ‘We Want to be Heard’
- An UWS Middle School is Pushing Back Against Possible Relocation: ‘This School is Our Home
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