Kent Hoffman, an assistant principal at the High School for the Contemporary Arts, is excited about new construction projects and space at the school’s Evander Childs campus, where there will be one less tenant this year.

After this past school year, the city’s Department of Education (DOE) closed both Evander Childs in Williamsbridge and Walton in Kingsbridge Heights – two storied, but recently underperforming high schools in District 10. Both schools stopped accepting students in 2005.

In their absence, the 11 smaller schools on the two campuses — including Hoffman’s — which have been phased in over the past four years, will gain some much needed elbow room.

“There has been a lot of construction over the past couple of years,” Hoffman said. “This will allow for the final reorganization, and hopefully we’ll have our own space. We always need more classrooms, storage space and offices.”

These small schools are now getting new construction projects, more space and are hiring more teachers and accepting more students. Security will not change, but scheduling will. And those changes will be decided through dialogue among the campuses’ principals, said Melody Meyer, a DOE spokesperson.

Evander Childs, which opened in 1913 and was named for a popular teacher, will be getting new art rooms, science labs, a black box theater and a renovated auditorium, Hoffman said. Walton, which opened in the early 1920s, will be getting a new library. It will also reopen the pool that has been closed since the 1980s, according to the DOE.

Walton, however, probably will not have more space, as Individual Pathways, a program for Walton dropouts to earn their degrees, will be moving from East Tremont into Walton, said Dr. William Rodriguez, the principal at Celia Cruz High School for Music on the Walton campus.

Small Schools, Big Gains

Evander Childs and Walton are two of the 24 large high schools in the city the DOE has either closed or is in the process of closing. The city has been pushing for small schools since 2002, which, proponents say, have a more personalized atmosphere and are more flexible in partnering with community and private support organizations.

Small school administrators at the Evander Childs and Walton campuses said issues of overcrowding, violence and low graduation rates at the two schools were not as bad as the media made them out to be.

But both large schools had been placed on the Impact Schools list in 2004 for having some of the worst school safety records in the city. Both schools were overcrowded, according to students and parents. And the schools graduated only about 35 percent of their students in four years, a DOE report found.

“Walton and Evander Childs had a long history of poor performance,” Meyer said. “The school structure of these large schools failed to meet the needs of the students.”

The small schools have been overwhelmingly successful. Since their arrival, graduation rates have spiked and both campuses have been taken off the Impact Schools list (Evander Childs in 2005, Walton in 2008). Overcrowding is down, too. With last year’s enrollment at these small schools ranging from 328 to 532 students, they were able to reduce class sizes, according to the DOE.

“I’ve been here for four years, and the building looks significantly different,” Rodriguez said. “Now kids feel safe and we have high attendance and graduation rates.”

At the Evander Childs campus, 80 percent of students graduated in four years, and 64 percent did at the Walton campus, according to a DOE report on 2006 graduates. At three of the small schools, graduation rates hover at or above 90 percent.

“Small schools provide the opportunity for every adult to know every student, instead of one adult who is expected to know all the students,” said Capt. Barbara Kirkweg, principal at the Bronx Aerospace Academy on the Evander Childs campus, whose military-style school has graduated more than 90 percent of its students the past two years. “Small schools have been proven to be successful. Why else would I be here?”

Small Schools by the Numbers

The DOE has closed or is in the process of closing five other Bronx high schools: Morris, Theodore Roosevelt, South Bronx, Adlai E. Stevenson, and William H. Taft. This coming school year, the Bronx will have 113 of the city’s 291 small schools.

Citywide, 19 large high schools, including Bedford Park’s DeWitt Clinton and Fordham’s Grace Dodge, have been converted into Small Learning Communities (each with about 250-450 students and led by a core group of teachers and staff), instead of creating new schools with new administrations. Meyer says that model works best with middle-performing schools.

Moving On

The DOE says the legacy of Walton and Evander Childs will be maintained because the campuses will retain their names, sports teams will be campus-wide and alumni networks will be maintained.

But not everyone is happy with the transition.

“Parents are not thrilled since Evander had 15 students who didn’t graduate [this year],” and will be forced to transfer to finish up, said Patricia Appleton, Evander Childs’ parent coordinator. “Students are sad and very upset since they have no school or teachers to come back to,” Appleton said.

Still, hundreds of alumni from the schools showed their support by attending Walton’s and Evander Childs’ closing galas.

“Though we’ll miss everyone, life is full of changes and we have to move on,” Appleton said.