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New Brooklyn Middle School Aims to 'Reflect Diversity'
by Leslie Albrecht --
Families want the new M.S. 839 to draw students from Red Hook, Park Slope, and Sunset Park.
KENSINGTON — District 15's eagerly awaited new school M.S. 839 will have just 100 students when it opens this fall, but its leaders say they want to make sure those seats are filled with children from every corner of the sprawling area.
“Parents want a school that reflects the diversity of the district,” the new middle school's future principal Michael Perlberg told DNAinfo New York. "In order to do that we need to make sure that families in every part of the district have information on the school and the ability to apply."
To accomplish that goal, Perlberg is meeting personally with parents at many elementary schools in District 15, which includes parts of Red Hook, Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Gowanus, Sunset Park, and a sliver of Fort Greene.
He's also distributed information sheets in eight languages to every District 15 principal and he's holding a series of evening meetings for interested families. Dates and times were still being finalized on Thursday; check the M.S. 839 website for updates.
M.S. 839, which opens this September at 713 Caton Ave. on the border of Kensington and Windsor Terrace, will be open to students who attend elementary school or live in District 15. There will be no interviews and test scores won't play a role in the admissions process. Seats will be filled using a random lottery.
The new school's selling points include a state-of-the art building that M.S. 839 will share with P.S. 130's third, fourth and fifth grades. Each school will have its own science lab and the building has both a full gymnasium and a "gymatorium" — a combination gym and auditorium. There's also an enclosed outdoor play area and the school is just a couple of blocks from Prospect Park.
In addition to the newly constructed facility, parents can expect a school whose educational approach was crafted with local families in mind, Perlberg said. To create M.S. 839, Department of Education officials met with hundreds of parents and students and conducted focus groups.
The community-led planning process was a radical departure from the DOE's old method of plopping schools into neighborhoods without consulting families first, Perlberg said.
District 15 families pinpointed three themes at the brainstorming sessions, Perlberg said. First, they asked for a curriculum focused on "hands-on" or "project-based" learning, meaning that M.S. 839 will "get students out into the community and connect their learning to the real world."
Parents also said they wanted M.S. 839 to support kids emotionally as well as academically. To achieve that, students will meet regularly with advisers, who will each serve as a "point person" who knows how the student is doing in all of his or her classes. Advisers might discuss topics like how to build healthy relationships, and how to manage big academic projects.
“Students were really concerned that they were going to be thrown into middle school and weren’t going to be supported,” Perlberg said. “It’s a crucial transitional moment and if we don’t support them through that, it can have pretty negative consequences.”
Families also said they wanted M.S. 839 to offer a range of subjects, instead of focusing on just one area like other District 15 middle schools, some of which specialize in topics like performing arts. “[Families] want the school to be a school where students can explore art, music, technology, and get exposure to lots of different things,” Perlberg said.
Perlberg, who was previously the assistant principal at the Bushwick School for Social Justice, said he's thrilled to help bring a new middle school to life.
"Middle school can feel like a really confusing period in your life,” Perlberg said. "The opportunity to build a new school that tries to tackle that problem head on sounds amazing to me."
Families can start applying to M.S. 839 next week when the DOE hands out special application forms for new middle schools. The process is separate from the first round of middle school applications, meaning that students could apply and be accepted at both M.S. 839 and at an existing middle school.
For more information, check the M.S. 839 website.
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