The city is closing the troubled Bronx school where a bisexual teen who said he was bullied fatally stabbed a classmate.
City schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña announced her aim to close the Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation on Monday, along with plans to shutter or merge 18 other struggling city schools, starting in June.
Fariña said the decision to close Wildlife Conservation came after students fled the school following the September classroom killing — and few kids applied to go there next year.
“Students have asked to leave,” Fariña said. “When you start looking at things like that, the message is really written for you.”
Wildlife Conservation has been under intense scrutiny since Abel Cedeno, 18, according to police accounts and the teen’s jailhouse interview with the Daily News, plunged a switch blade into the chest of fellow student Matthew McCree, 15, during their history class. Cedeno is also accused of stabbing McCree’s friend.
Cedeno pleaded not guilty to a manslaughter charge in the attack. He says he “snapped” after enduring weeks of anti-gay slurs and other abuse from classmates.
Since the stabbing, the crumbling school has all but collapsed. Forty-five families have requested safety transfers to get their kids out of Wildlife. Principal Astrid Jacobo was removed from her job amid an ongoing investigation. And just 15 kids listed the school as their first choice for the academic year that begins in September.
“My anticipation is, that by closing it and allowing the kids to go elsewhere, that we’ll actually be offering them — and the staff — better opportunities,” Fariña said.
She said the city has no firm plans for the Wildife campus once the school is closed.
Besides Wildlife, Fariña said the city will close 13 other schools that were targeted for reasons including shrinking enrollment and poor academic outcomes. Those schools include nine that were part of Mayor de Blasio’s controversial, $600 million Renewal Schools turnaround program.
On NY1 Monday evening, de Blasio said he was “very satisfied” with how his Renewal Schools program played out, even with many closing after the city pumped money into them. He said the prior administration was too quick to close schools without giving them a chance to turn around.
“The question in my mind was always, if we gave the school the help it needed, could it turn around? The ones that could, and that’s the majority as we see it, we’ve been proven right on,” de Blasio said. “The ones that didn’t, well, look, we said from the beginning we knew not everyone would make it.”
Forty-six schools will remain in the program and will continue to receive added supports such as extra counselors, extended days and additional social services.
Fariña said she will also close another four schools that were not in the Renewal Schools program, including Public School 25 in Brooklyn, where enrollment sank to just 109 kids in 2017.
The city will also merge five struggling and shrinking schools with other nearby schools that are more effective, Fariña said, and remove grade levels from another school.
Students and staffers from the affected schools will get special help finding slots in better schools, Education Department officials said.
Education Department officials also said the city would be opening new schools and that more information on those plans would be available in the coming weeks.
The department’s plans must be approved by de Blasio’s educational policy panel. The panel is scheduled to vote on the plans in February and March.
These troubled public schools will close in June:
Manhattan Public School 50 — Vito Marcantonio
Coalition School for Social Change
High School for Health Careers and Sciences
New Explorers High School
Urban Science Academy
Bronx Public School 92
Brooklyn Collegiate: A College Board School
Queens Public School/Middle School 42 — R. Vernam
Queens Middle School 53 — Brian Piccolo
KAPPA IV
Academy for Social Action
Felisa Rincon de Gautier Institute
Brooklyn Public School 25 — Eubie Blake
Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation
With Jill Jorgensen
