Gentrification usually attracts good schools. Rarely does it close one.
This week, parents and teachers learned that the Children’s Aid Society was considering closing an early childhood education center in Greenwich Village. Officials of the charity cited the neighborhood’s increased affluence.
The school, at 177 and 219 Sullivan Street, is part of the Philip Coltoff Center, which opened 119 years ago, when the Village was populated by legions of poor children.
Richard R. Buery Jr., the president and chief executive of the Children’s Aid Society, said the group was no longer fulfilling its mission of helping the poor at the site.
“We can’t really justify,” Mr. Buery said, “the big disconnect between having so many resources focused on serving a population — while clearly a population that needs and deserves the service — that simply has access to more resources and opportunity than a place in the South Bronx, who are in our mission to serve.”
The center provides classes for about 1,000 children, as well as extracurricular programs for older students. There is also a popular preschool distinguished by a relatively inexpensive tuition of $6,000 to $15,000, depending on age (by comparison, the nearby City and Country School has a tuition of about $26,000 a year for 4-year-olds), and a more democratic admissions system than most of its peers — children are admitted by lottery.
The decision to close is not final, and the buildings have not yet been put on the market, Mr. Buery said.
After serving Greenwich Village for more than a century, the Children's Aid Society is looking to leave the neighborhood.
The charity, which has run early-education, nursery and art programs in the neighborhood at its Philip Coltoff Center since 1892, told community members this week it is considering closing its programs in Greenwich Village and putting its two Sullivan Street buildings up for sale.
"Our mission is to support low-income families in high-poverty communities and so we have to place our limited resources where the need is the greatest," says Richard Buery, the organization's president and chief executive. "We can reinvest the money from the sale of the Sullivan Street buildings into services in needier areas such as Harlem and the South Bronx."
The planned move, which will be voted on by the charity's board later this month, comes as a number of community organizations and amenities in the area are shutting down or closing programs. In 2008, Greenwich House, a nonprofit community center, closed its preschool programs due to financial difficulties...
"This has dealt a huge blow to parents who have such limited options for nursery schools in the area," says Joe Mihalow, a parent of 2-year-old twins that attend the society's programs.
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