Art classes in and around PLG

Ah, fall!  Crisp, cool weather; bright autumnal colors; and.... learning opportunities! 

We're lucky enough to have not one but two fine sources for art classes in the area. Both are small, independent operations run by residents. Manor Arts offers art classes for kids and adults in PLG proper. And Urban River Arts is a few blocks north of PLG in Crown Heights. Check 'em out.

Public support needed for PLG charter school on Tuesday

The NYC Department of Education (DOE) has scheduled a public hearing for the proposed Lefferts Gardens Charter School on Tuesday, July 21, at 5 pm.  The application process is getting down to the wire now, so if you'd like to see a k-8, environmental-science school in the neighborhood, please come out and show your support. Better yet, sign up to speak about your interest in the school by coming prior to 5:30 and signing up. The DOE needs proof that the community supports this school in District 17.

Here are the details:

Tuesday, July 21

Speaker Sign in: 5:00-5:30 PM

Presentation, Questions, Comments: 5:30-6:30 PM

Community School District #17 Office

1224 Park Place

Brooklyn, NY 11213

UPDATE: The office is in the Maggie Walker Campus that also houses M.S. 390

Speaker comment is welcomed, speakers must register. Written comments will also be collected on the day of the hearing and can be submitted via email to: charterschools@schools.nyc.gov.

Lefferts Charter School meeting at K-Dog - Wed. April 1

The organizers behind the Lefferts Charter School are holding a public meeting at K-Dog (43 Lincoln Road) next Wednesday, April 1, at 7 pm. They'll be discussing their plans for an environmental science elementary school in the neighborhood and soliciting donations to help make it happen.  For a bit of background, see our earlier post. Hope you can make it!

PLG charter school in the works

Yesterday was pretty mixed for my kid and me. On the down side, I accidentally threw him out of his stroller onto the subway platform concrete. (He cried for a minute but, fortunately, no harder than he does when I take paper towels away from him.)

On the upside, I heard that some Maple Street School parents, headed up by Renee Ciccone, are hoping to start a charter school in the neighborhood. If all goes according to plan, the Lefferts Gardens Charter School, an elementary and middle school focused on environmental science, will open in 2010. The organizers are in the process of applying for approval from the Board of Education. If they succeed, the City would likely place the school in one of the two pre-existing public schools in PLG; the new school would then share the building with the old. 

The charter school would start small. As the Maple Street School Newsletter reports:

During its inaugural year, the Lefferts Garden Charter School would have 100 seats divided evenly between kindergarten and first graders, adding 50 new students and a new grade each year thereafter until the school has 450 students, grades kindergarten through eight. 

Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden would partner with the school, helping it with its mission to use environmental science as a tool for teaching math, reading, and other basic subjects.

In order to pull this off, planners are enlisting volunteers from the neighborhood to help out. In a couple of weeks, there will be an open information forum at K-Dog so that neighbors can find out more about what's in the works and how to get involved. We'll post the date and time shortly, so stay tuned...

RELATED:

Board Members Resign From Lefferts Gardens Charter School
Update on Lefferts Gardens Charter School
Public Turns Out for Charter School Hearing

Maple Street School featured in "Next American City"

Next Amercian City, a quarterly magazine about urban issues, prominently features the Maple Street School in its latest cover story. The article looks at co-op preschools around the country, but draws on Maple Street as a sort of model. (Download pdf)

Maple Street typifies the new face of the pre-school co-op. Located in a historically black, working-class neighborhood that has attracted wealth over the past decade, the school charges $12,132 per year per full-time student ($8,112 for half days). It is diverse economically and racially but skews toward the postboomer educated idealists who now populate central Brooklyn: 64 percent of the parents are white, 24 percent multiracial and 10 percent African-American. Almost 60 percent of the families have household incomes below $125,000, and most have two working parents.

Maybe it's just me but $12,132 seems like a lot of money for preschool; and co-ops are said to be a bargain! As a soon-to-be parent myself, I shudder to think of what a conventional preschool costs.