New York City wants to close two Harlem schools at the end of this school year, and the students in both are overwhelmingly Black and Latino. The Education Department proposed the closures Monday, with a vote by the Panel for Educational Policy scheduled for Dec. 16.
The School of Earth Exploration and Discovery Harlem, known as SEED Harlem, has 40 students and is the city’s smallest middle school, Chalkbeat reported. Just over half are Black and 44% are Latino. Nearly all come from low-income families, and half have disabilities. The Urban Assembly School for Global Commerce, a high school, has 112 students, more than 90% of them Black or Latino. The city first floated closing Global Commerce in late October.
The city’s case is about size and cost. SEED Harlem has lost 68% of its enrollment since 2022-23 and enrolled only six sixth graders this year. Officials put its cost at $93,000 per student, nearly four times the citywide average, and only 21% of its students are proficient in reading and math. At Global Commerce, enrollment is down about a third since 2021-22, and just 20% of students met the city’s benchmark for advanced or career coursework, against 63% citywide in Manhattan. Chancellor Kamar Samuels has said: “If a school is more underenrolled, it’s more likely not to offer the advanced classes that you need.”
Those numbers are real, and the system does have a problem: K-12 enrollment has fallen about 19%, roughly 187,000 students, in 12 years. But the numbers describe what a school has been left with, not what its children deserve. Students with disabilities and families with the fewest options are the ones who will be reassigned, and the city has not said where the 152 students at the two schools will go.
The proposal lands differently because of what happened in April. After petitions and protests from Upper West Side families, Samuels pulled plans to close two small middle schools there, P.S. 191 and Manhattan School for Children, and to move The Center School. He said he wanted to listen to families who asked for more time. Both schools were also small, with about 126 and 130 middle school students.
The Center School is back on the list. Officials now propose moving it 1.5 miles north to West 109th Street, which would free its shared building on West 84th Street for the elementary school P.S. 9 and allow smaller classes there under the state’s class size mandate. The Center School has 247 students, 55% of them white, and 23% come from low-income families. The city says the theater upgrades it is promising at the new site will come with a stage that is “smaller and shallower.”
Education Department spokesperson Dominique Ellison said the department “remains committed to meaningful engagement with communities before issuing any proposals.” Harlem families should hold the city to that sentence. A 2025 plan to relocate The Center School fell apart over a lack of engagement. Harlem parents deserve the same time, the same hearings and the same willingness to pull a plan that Upper West Side parents got.
Official closure documents and public hearings come before the Dec. 16 vote. A Bronx middle school, I.S. 224, is also slated for closure but has not yet been formally proposed.
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