Member of Panel That Will Decide Fate of Three UWS Schools: 'It Clearly Wasn’t Enough Time’

*PEP member Naveed Hasan and his two children on the Upper West Side. Photo courtesy of Naveed Hasan*

By Gus Saltonstall

Upper West Sider Naveed Hasan is in the middle of his fourth term as a member of New York City’s Panel for Educational Policy, otherwise known as PEP, whose members include former teachers, school advocates, parents, and education specialists. Throughout his tenure, Hasan has been elected by other Manhattan volunteer school leaders as the borough’s representative on the panel.

PEP is a 24-member body that oversees different aspects of the New York City Public School system; it considers and votes on issues designed to give all students equal access to school resources and opportunities.

One of the panel’s responsibilities includes casting final votes on proposals related to whether public schools will be moved, merged, or closed. This includes schools on the Upper West Side.

On April 29, PEP members will vote on the fate of a trio of Upper West Side schools, which West Side Rag has reported on extensively. If approved, all of the proposed changes would take place this upcoming fall.

The proposals are:

Relocating the Center School from its current building at 100 West 84th Street to the Riverside School for Makers and Artists building at 300 West 61st Street.
Closing the middle school at the Riverside School for Makers and Artists at 300 West 61st Street.
Closing the middle school at P.S. 33 Manhattan School for Children at 154 West 93rd Street.

Hasan, speaking exclusively to the Rag, said that he does not think “the process has played itself out appropriately in terms of scheduling” when it comes to voting on the three Upper West Side schools. He said he was speaking both as a member of the panel, and for the parents and students who are a part of the communities at those schools.

“I don’t think this has been an appropriate amount of time to make this decision,” Hasan added about the upcoming vote at the end of April related to the three Upper West Side schools. “I don’t think I can support any of these proposals for 2026.”

Hasan also articulated an assortment of critiques related to his working relationship with the Department of Education.

Here is our interview with Hasan, which has been lightly edited for clarity.

WSR: How do members of the PEP stay up to date with the school situations they have to vote on?

Hasan: The formal process is incredibly abbreviated and does not really allow for the thoughtful consideration that the PEP wants to take, especially those members who are actually looking to engage, opposed to following directions. We want to try to get involved much earlier in the process. Right now, there’s something called Chancellors Regulation A-190, and that only mandates that there be a formal notification for the September start of school, 180 days in advance. In my opinion, that’s totally inappropriate, as that means it’s happening after the admissions cycle has taken place.

For this set of Upper West Side proposals, PEP members found out about the official notification to the [three] schools in January, which is after middle school admissions have closed [December 12, 2025]. That is a sticking point for me on how this is not an appropriate timeline for any of these proposals, including for the three schools on the Upper West Side.

In this case, we start with interrogating the DOE on various things related to what these proposals are, on what it means for the individual schools, what it would mean for the spaces that are available, and we still have huge logistical questions when it comes to these Upper West Side schools. I’ve been to all of the buildings. I’ve visited all of the schools. But in the formal process, there’s only a legally-mandated-by-state-law public hearing roughly 10 days before the vote, and then we get a summary of what was said, and we’re asked to vote based on that. The legally mandated things are very sparse and very late. And finding out and getting started on this in January, in my view, was also too late.

[West Side Rag asked the city’s Department of Education (DOE) for comment about the Upper West Side school proposals slated for a vote on April 29 and about Hasan’s criticism of the timing of information released to PEP. Here is part of DOE’s response:

“PEP members have continued to receive access to data, information, and community engagement opportunities, with individual requests addressed in a timely manner commensurate with their scope. In this case, uplifting of the proposals began in December 2025, well before their public posting. Panel members were then invited to visit the affected schools, attend community meetings and meet directly with Chancellor Samuels to discuss the proposals in depth, all ahead of proposals being formally posted.”

The statement continued, “We all care deeply about our students and communities, and we are continually committed towards these closely collaborative partnerships that advance co-governance, academically rigorous programming, and truly integrated schools for all of our students.”]

WSR: Has the PEP been hearing from community members of the Center School, Riverside School for Makers and Artists, and Manhattan School for Children?

Hasan: I’ve gotten around 1,000 emails from members of those District 3 schools.

WSR: Is that common?

Hasan: In the cases where I would say we haven’t had appropriate notification and engagement, I would say yes. But, it’s not universal. We saw at the last PEP meeting last week, the Brooklyn proposals came to us, and the communities they affect asked for us to pass them. They said they were happy with how the process played out. They had been speaking about these changes for years, and that’s what it takes to have buy-in from the people who are going to be impacted by a proposal vs. what we see repeatedly in Manhattan, especially in District 2 and 3, where things are dropped on a school community only a few months in advance of a final decision being made on something that will happen next school year. It’s not conducive to having constituents buy in. This is something that takes a minimum of 12 months to get done correctly.

WSR: And in those emails from Upper West Side District 3 community members, is it consistent in their opposition to the proposed changes?

Hasan: For District 3, yes. For all of these possible District 3 changes, for all four of the schools, including the one that is not on the table for this year, that community is well aware that the Community Action School is still on the chopping block for next year. They are demanding [to know] what it will take to save them as a school that provides very valuable services for the vulnerable students in our community. It’s not clear they have an answer to that. They can be told in six months or nine months that they will be closed for 2027. That’s not something I would like to see.

[At the beginning of March, DOE announced it would halt a proposal to phase out the Community Action Middle School also at 154 West 93rd Street beginning in the fall of 2026. The agency did not state, though, whether it would return to the proposal in following years.]

Hasan: For all of these District 3 proposals still on the table for this upcoming fall, we have a real concern around any schools remaining on the Upper West Side that serve vulnerable Black and Brown students. These affected schools have services they’ve been providing for decades to these communities, it is their staff and school leadership that has made it a priority for many years to provide these services. To hold against them low enrollment, or moderate test scores, is not the whole equation. These schools are providing something that is necessary and we need to help support and expand them, opposed to just saying, “You’re at the bottom of our enrollment numbers, this doesn’t make financial sense for us, we’ve got to close you.”

WSR: Do you resonate with the messaging from Upper West Side parents that not enough time had been allowed for these decisions?

Hasan: If I were one of the impacted parents by one of these Upper West Side proposals, I would have the same negative feelings that are being expressed to all of the PEP members and elected officials. In that case, and having received so many of these emails from community members of these schools, it clearly wasn’t enough time.

You need to give communities – parents who have the ability to choose where they send their kids to school –the confidence that they will have a full admissions cycle, before they are forced to think about what happens with their kids. In this case, they don’t. I don’t think this has been an appropriate amount of time to make this decision.

[DOE told West Side Rag when asked for comment: “New York City Public Schools has a responsibility to thoughtfully plan for the long-term strength and sustainability of our schools to ensure students have access to robust academic programs. As such, our teams work towards thoughtfully designed, community-driven approaches focused on addressing the pressing topics impacting our school communities. The working group for this proposal brought together principals, educators, families, district and school leaders, elected officials, and community representatives.”]

WSR: And as a member of the PEP, do you feel like you’ve been given enough time to confidently make these decisions?

Hasan: If we had spent two or three months in the fall doing this vote prep work, that might have been fine. That would have aligned with the amount of time needed to ask about data, and also the desires and needs of parents. But those two things are not aligned right now. It’s not that I need more than a year to think about this and come to my decision, but I don’t think the process has played itself out appropriately in terms of scheduling. My advocacy right now is to do any changes for the following fall, we have review and vote on them the prior fall. We should have been presented with this Upper West Side school issue in September and voted before November, making a decision one way or the other, so we would have the same two or three months to go over it, but also been in alignment with the applicants to these schools. That gives the families the chance to transfer at the correct season.

WSR: And how has it been, getting the necessary information about these Upper West Side schools from the Department of Education?

Hasan: That’s one of the things I have an ongoing complaint about in how the process plays out under Mayoral Control. There is a very tight control of what is ever shared with anyone when the city doesn’t have to legally do it. I still haven’t gotten some of the data requests in this case, or even those from years ago, about the impacts of votes that we had made. This is an ongoing problem that I and other PEP members have with the Department of Education.

It seems to be the way they operate under Mayoral Control. They don’t want to share information unless they are forced to. We have been told on repeated occasions when reviewing contracts or school data, to file a Freedom of Information Act request, which to me is completely insane as a sitting board member. We should be able to formally request things and get them in a very timely fashion, before we vote on things. [Freedom of Information] requests are multi-year processes to get data. That leaves both me and other people involved with the process with a lack of trust.

[A spokesperson from the Department of Education said that there was “just one” outstanding request from a member of the PEP related to the Upper West Side school proposals, and it was submitted on March 27 and involved around 300 pages of documents.]

WSR: Can I ask how you’re planning to vote April 29 on these three Upper West Side school proposals?

Hasan: Yes. I am looking forward to this final, legally mandated engagement to happen on the topic before that. But, given that I expect to hear exactly what I’ve read from the families of these Upper West Side schools and in the individual meetings we’ve had with the schools, I don’t think I can support any of these proposals for 2026.

I would like to see a reconsideration under the new, interim acting District 3 superintendent on what it means to both support the schools that need support and to find different changes we can make to solve the problems that are fiscal and impacting City Hall in a budgetary fashion. Our students are not just numbers. That would then give us time for the process.

If we just thought about this for another six months, to bring these District 3 proposals or some iteration of them back in the upcoming fall, we would be in a much better place, where the community won’t just up and leave public schools because of the way they were treated.

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