Evacuated From Their Building, Students Will Remain Displaced for Months

Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times The building on East 12th Street housing Girls Prep and East Side Community High School was evacuated last month over a structural problem and has been closed since.

One Monday morning last month, administrators at Girls Preparatory Middle School in the East Village were greeted by a Department of Education official with an alarming message: Get out. Now.

There was no time to grab books or bags, lest the 89-year-old, five-story building on East 12th Street collapse with hundreds of schoolchildren inside. The evacuation was spurred by a custod ian's discovery that the brick facade was pulling away from the steel structure, weakening an exterior wall.

The Sept. 24 evacuation also hit East Side Community High School, a small public school serving grades 6 to 12, which shares the building with Girls Prep, an all-girls charter school. Since then, hundreds of students have been displaced, and educators and frustrated parents are left scrounging to make do.

And it's going to stay that way until late February, Education Department officials said this week.

For now, East Side's students are at Norman Thomas High School on East 33rd Street and at Public School 1, around the corner from the school's now-blockaded building.

Girls Prep's students are at P.S. 158 on East 77th Street. But space there is limited â€" Girls Prep is squeezed into nine classrooms, down from 15 at its home building, and some classes are being held in stairwells.

“We're just determined to try and minimize the disruption,” said Ian Rowe, the chief executive of Public Preparatory Network, which runs Girls Prep. “We're doing everything in our power to not have the kids pay the consequences for what has transpired.”

Mr. Rowe and Mark Federman, the East Side principal, lauded teachers, students and parents for rallying together.

But without their textbooks and other materials, it has been rough. On a few occasions, the Education Department allowed several staff members and teachers to run into the old building to grab much as they could in an allotted time. Mr. Rowe likened it to a surgical military strike.

The wall repair is surgical, too. It has to be removed and replaced carefully, brick by brick. Education Department officials told parents in a letter sent out Monday, and at a meeting on Tuesday, that they aimed to reopen the building after the winter break in February.

While parents said they understood the safety concerns, many wish the city would do more to help with the adjustment.

Elizabeth Ishmael, 47, stepped outside Tuesday's meeting to vent.

“We need these kids relocated, and they're not answering our questions,” Ms. Ishmael said. “To me, they're not trying very hard.”

Ms. Ishmael said her 14-year-old son Omar, an A-student at East Side, was having trouble making the adjustment.

“He doesn't like to go to school in the morning,” she said. “Every morning is a struggle.”

But there have been some benefits. Jennell Joseph, mother of an 11-year-old at Girls Prep, said the temporary location was closer to her Upper West Side home. That means more time for her and her daughter, Nicole Nelson, to sleep in.

Ms. Joseph credited Girls Prep for managing the chaos, but worried that the students could not possibly learn everything they should this year.

“I have no idea how they expect the kids to be successful,” she said. “Our girls are basica lly refugees.”

DOE Letter Re Girls Prep (PDF)

DOE Letter Re Girls Prep (Text)