Good morning. It’s Friday. Today we’ll look at a parochial school building in Brooklyn that is getting a new life with a charter school. We’ll also get details on the Federal Aviation Administration’s move to fire two air traffic controllers who had left early on the night a jet collided with a fire truck at LaGuardia Airport in March.
Students sometimes take a year or two off as their academic careers unfold. A school building in Brooklyn is doing the same thing. The building, in Sunset Park, housed parochial schools for more than 100 years. But the most recent occupant closed last year. Now a charter school is coming. The charter, Launch Schools, is leasing the building as a permanent home for its high school. Launch plans to do renovation work before teachers and students arrive for their first classes there a year from now. “One school’s ending is often another school’s beginning,” said Emily Glickman, an educational consultant. “A building is often more permanent than the school in it. With limited real estate in New York and onerous building regulations, educational institutions change, merge, relocate and evolve.” She added, “What parents want — private, public, parochial or charter — is going to evolve, but the schoolhouse needs to be there.” Parents in less affluent neighborhoods traditionally relied on parochial schools as an affordable answer when they were dissatisfied with public school options and unable to afford private schools. But there has been a drumbeat of parochial school closings in recent years, raising the possibility that empty buildings could be repurposed. That was an appealing prospect for Launch. It opened in temporary space last year in a building that several schools had cycled through, most recently a pre-K-through-fifth-grade charter across the street. About a third of Launch’s students live in Sunset Park. Alexis Rubin, the executive director of Launch Schools, adding that in conversations with parents, it became clear that there was interest in a small school option, especially at the high school level. Sunset Park has “a huge range of public elementary and middle schools, but the high school options are fewer” beyond Fort Hamilton High School, she said. One option disappeared last year with the closing of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Academy, which had occupied the imposing Ruskinian Gothic building on Sixth Avenue for the last few years. “Enrollment problems — that’s the story here,” said the Rev. Joseph Dionne, the parochial administrator at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, adjacent to the school building. He noted that the academy had been independent from the parish. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn said in announcing the closing of the academy that enrollment had dropped 36 percent over five years, to only 85 students, slightly fewer than half the total in 2020. By 2025, the school was spending $11,600 per student, more than double the tuition of $5,500 a year. Deacon Kevin McCormack, the superintendent of schools for the diocese, said last year that the decision to close had been made “after a thorough analysis with the hope there was a way to turn things around.” “Unfortunately,” he added, “the pattern of student enrollment and the financial condition of the academy did not make that possible.” Launch is leasing the building from the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, the order known as the Redemptorists, which owns it and operates the basilica. Rubin said that Launch had agreed to put roughly $4 million into the building. She said that Launch was looking to build new science labs and a college counseling suite “that will look like a college library where students will have access to 21st-century technology.” The plans also call for additional bathrooms and updated lighting and flooring. The building that Launch has occupied has only classrooms, Rubin said, adding: “It doesn’t have a gym. It doesn’t have a theater.” The Sunset Park building is adjacent to a gym that will continue to be controlled by the church; the students will have access to it. The building also has a theater that she said Launch could use as it builds a drama program. She would not disclose the rent, beyond saying that “it’s a rent we can afford.” WEATHER Expect partly sunny skies, possible showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon and a high near 84. Tonight will be mostly cloudy, with chance of rain, and a low around 68. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until Sept. 7 (Labor Day). QUOTE OF THE DAY “It didn’t feel right to come in and bulldoze and completely change the character of the neighborhood.” — Ben Krone, an architect who runs a small development firm that spent $400,000 to save a single maple tree outside four new townhouses in Red Hook, Brooklyn. The latest Metro news
We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. F.A.A. moves to fire two LaGuardia controllers
The Federal Aviation Administration is cracking down on timecard irregularities at airports across the country, including “shoves,” the term used when controllers leave their posts early. Two controllers at LaGuardia Airport did that on the night a jet collided with a fire truck in March, according to two people familiar with the matter. My colleague Karoun Demirjian writes that the agency is now moving to fire them as part of its investigation into timecard fraud. She says their early departures potentially left the tower short-staffed before the crash, which killed two people. The F.A.A.’s moves come as the National Transportation Safety Board continues its inquiry into the accident. A spokesman for the N.T.S.B. declined to comment about whether the board had also uncovered evidence of timecard fraud. According to the board’s preliminary findings about the crash, only two controllers were in the tower when an Air Canada jet landed and slammed into a fire truck that had been given clearance to cross the runway. The investigators noted that it was unclear if other controllers had been elsewhere in the tower, raising questions about whether official records correctly reflected staffing levels that night. But it was not immediately clear how early the two controllers at LaGuardia had clocked out. And some seasoned air traffic controllers questioned why the F.A.A. had chosen this moment to take aggressive moves against a practice that shift supervisors have long used as a way of rewarding overtaxed employees, many of whom are required to work six days a week to make up for staff shortages. The Department of Transportation, responding to a request for comment about the controllers and timecards, provided a statement from Sean Duffy, the secretary of transportation, suggesting that a majority of controllers were accurately reporting their hours. “But when a small percentage of individuals take advantage of the American taxpayer, unfairly add additional work to their fellow controllers and impact the airspace — we have no choice but to act,” he said. METROPOLITAN DIARY Mr. October
Dear Diary: It was a rainy, late-October afternoon in 1961. I was walking down Seventh Avenue after visiting a trade show at the New York Coliseum. A young man wearing a blue business suit, a white shirt and a tie was standing under the awning outside the Stage Delicatessen. After passing him, a lightbulb went off in my head. I turned around and approached him. “You’re Roger Maris,” I said. “Yes, I am,” he replied. Then he added, quite pleasantly: “Your umbrella is dripping on me.” — Walter Gray Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
