Local Region 1 has submitted a proposal to the city Department of Education (DOE) to close MS 143 and, in its place, create a new middle school and allow a small high school currently sited there to expand.

After four years of failing to bring up student test scores, Irma Zardoya, Region 1 Superintendent, said the drastic step at the Kingsbridge Heights school was necessary.

“We gave them enough time to improve,” said Zardoya at the Community District Education Council 10 meeting earlier this month. “We needed to make a hard decision that may seem a little radical.”

Under the proposal, MS 143 would close by 2006. No new students would be admitted to the school in the fall, and the current 97 sixth graders would choose a new school next year. In 2006, the 434 eighth graders and 73 special education students would constitute MS 143’s last class.

A smaller middle school would take root at the school, serving 751 students instead of MS 143’s current population of 1060. Beginning next fall, an estimated 100 sixth graders, 284 seventh graders, and 73 special education students would attend the new facility.

Officials have yet to determine a theme for the school, but Zardoya said that DOE has developed a number of designs for small middle schools that local parents, teachers and the regional administration would choose from. 

The school will be divided into two “learning communities” based on how it is zoned. Only PS 310 on West Kingsbridge Road sends a sixth grade to the school, and these students would stay with the same teachers throughout their time there. The seventh and eighth grades, which include students from PS 86 on Reservoir Avenue, PS 246 on the Grand Concourse, PS 340 on West 195th Street, and PS 360 on Kingsbridge Terrace, would maintain their own teachers in a separate network.

Students could also apply to the Marie Curie High School for Nursing, Medicine and the Allied Health Professions, now housed at MS 143, which will expand to serve grades seven through 12. The small high school, formed in partnership with the Mosholu Montefiore Community Center, will house 75 students per grade with a total population of 450.

“Marie Curie has had good success,” said Zardoya, noting that the school maintains an attendance rate above 90 percent.

MS 143 has remained on the state’s list of schools needing improvement for the past four years. To address this, officials broke up the West 231st Street school into two smaller academies two years ago and new administrators were hired.

But the school’s state test scores barely budged. Last year, 14 percent of students passed the English test and 20 percent passed math. In 2003, prior to the redesign, the school’s average passing rates were 15 and 16 percent in English and math, respectively.

“MS 143 has a long history of underperformance,” Zardoya said. “How do you change a reputation of a school with parents not wanting to send their children there?”

But a group of MS 143 parents and teachers who confronted Zardoya after the Council meeting weren’t happy with her decision. “Is this the most effective way?” asked Tobie Buford, MS 143’s Parent Association president. “DOE has redesigned several schools and they are still ineffective.”

Dennis King, a local parent and DOE employee, was also upset. “There are a lot of great teachers who are former MS 143 students who came back to teach at the school,” King said. “When it’s redesigned, we’ve got to keep in mind that some things worked.”

Buford was confused about where MS 143 would end up during the transition, and she thought the proposal was more a product of DOE’s citywide overhaul than MS 143’s particular problems. “With [DOE] changing their ways, it’s leaving kids caught in the middle,” she said.

Most Council members did not comment on the proposal, but representative David Rivera was disappointed that it wouldn’t relieve overcrowding in other district areas.

DOE will decide on the plan by the end of January. If approved, MS 143 parents and teachers will convene to discuss the proposal. Zardoya, who is firmly behind the plan, also intends to involve the Council in promoting the plan to the community.

“I agree to work with you to identify the next steps of your involvement,” she said.

Joan Prince, a regional administrator whose husband attended MS 143, was saddened by the news. “He will be upset to hear that it no longer exists,” said Prince, whose husband attended MS 143’s first class in 1958. “It was a showplace at the time.”