A Community Vision for a Middle School at Atlantic Yards

Brooklyn Community Board 8, the members of Community Education Council for New York City School District 13, parent advocates and civic organizations, along with our elected officials, have joined together to announce M.S. OneBrooklyn, a community vision for a new public middle school to serve District 13. M.S. OneBrooklyn would be located in the school facility being created at the Atlantic Yards project expected to open in September 2018, and would help meet a significant local need for a dedicated intermediate school accessible to all District 13 students.

In our vision, M.S. OneBrooklyn will be a learning environment that prioritizes academic excellence and recognizes the potential of every child to achieve. M.S. OneBrooklyn will preserve and extend the diversity of students that exists in and across our District 13 public schools.

M.S. OneBrooklyn will provide high quality instruction in performing, visual and language arts, and will leverage its unique proximity to Brooklyn’s leading arts and cultural institutions to provide experiential learning that reaches beyond the classroom. By partnering with the arts and culture communities that are the heart of Brooklyn, M.S. OneBrooklyn will offer a curriculum that recognizes the intrinsic value of the arts and culture while also using them as a critical lens through which students learn to see themselves, the communities around them, and the role of the arts and culture in society.

M.S. OneBrooklyn will offer a comprehensive STEM curriculum, starting with the firm math and science foundation needed for the challenges of high school, college and careers. By partnering with education experts within Brooklyn’s expanding high-tech and maker sectors, M.S. OneBrooklyn will build upon the fundamentals by introducing students to the skills they need to help shape our future, including software engineering and robotics.

M.S. OneBrooklyn will offer dual language studies, in order to provide continuity in the bilingual and bicultural educations of the students in our six District 13 dual language elementary school programs and to support our new English language learning students in their pathways to college and careers. We stand prepared to work with the NYC DOE’s Department of English Language Learners and Student Support in this initiative.

As a mid-size middle school located in a new, centrally located, state-of-the-art facility, M.S. OneBrooklyn will be attractive and equally accessible to all rising District 13 middle school students. The M.S. OneBrooklyn vision can align with a larger strategy within District 13 that strives to ensure that appropriate learning conditions are available to students of all grades. The vision recognizes both that space is at a premium, and also that a mid-size middle school at Atlantic Yards should be an integral part of any plan that seeks to optimize the use of present and future school facilities.

In the days ahead, the vision for M.S. OneBrooklyn will be further developed through continued dialogue with parents, neighbors, City agencies, and elected representatives to ensure that it represents the highest and best use of this valuable resource at the Atlantic Yards site, and that it respects and integrates with its surrounding community.