By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
LOWER MANHATTAN — A new principal is shaking up downtown's Murry Bergtraum High School in the hopes of getting its 2,445 students back on track.
The school's growing crisis deepened recently when it received a D on its most recent city report card, and principal Andrea Lewis promised this week to take a no-nonsense, no-excuses approach to operating the school.
Lewis plans to overhaul the school’s business-focused curriculum to make it more relevant to the 21st century, and she has already created a ninth-grade academy to start new students on the right path.
"The hope is to capture students in ninth grade," said Lewis, who most recently led the ACORN Community High School in Brooklyn. "You need to provide these students with all the support they can get."
Lewis has extra resources this year, including more security officers, because Murry Bergtraum, which is located under the Brooklyn Bridge, was just named a city "impact school” because of continuing violence and low test scores.
Some of the school’s chaos has spilled over into the community, with sporadic reports of students brawling on Fulton Street. Last spring, Murry Bergtraum students allegedly attacked a Southbridge Towers resident, and Southbridge put up a fence in response.
"If my students are creating a disturbance, call me," Lewis told local residents at a Community Board 1 meeting this week. "I will come there and [bring] them back."
Lewis has already reached out to local merchants and asked them not to serve students during school hours, when they should be on campus.
While CB1 members were glad to hear of Lewis’s stricter measures, the school’s students had a mixed reaction. GeeGee Powell, 16, a Brooklyn resident, said students used to get away with warnings when they broke the rules.
But when Lewis recently saw Powell wearing a hat in the hallway, she "snatched it off" without a word and refused to give it back, Powell said.
Other students described having headphones and cell phones confiscated, and they said the school is kicking students out permanently rather than suspending them. Many Bergtraum students also expressed concern about rumors that uniforms could be on the way, and several complained that Lewis had cancelled the senior cruise.
"She’s a tyrant," said Don Celestin, 17, who is from Brooklyn. "You don’t punish a whole class of people because of individuals."
However, some students were glad to see Lewis take firmer control of the school, where just 60 percent of the students graduated last year.
"I think she’s going to make a change," said Kevin Cestro, an 18 year old from Brooklyn. "Everything was worse last year."
"The school is getting a little bit better," agreed Tatianna Thompson, 16, from Brooklyn. "All the bad kids are getting kicked out."
Barbara Esmilla, the school’s former principal, who retired, "didn’t really do anything," Thompson said.
Lewis said she was working with students and parents to decide on what additional changes to make at the school.
Founded in 1976, Murry Bergtraum was once an elite city school, the first in New York to teach computer programming. Students vied for spots in the freshman class and looked forward to paid internships at the New York Stock Exchange.
But the school lost control of its admissions process in the mid-1980s, and by 2006 the overcrowded school had swelled to nearly 3,000 students, according to state statistics.
In the 2007-08 school year, 72 percent of the students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch and 13 percent had limited command of English, according to the state. Twelve percent of the school’s students were suspended that year, and 35 percent of the juniors failed state English and math tests.
While a group of Bergtraum students defended their school Wednesday afternoon and said they resented Lewis’ changes, one student said it was too soon to judge.
"It’s just the second week of school," said the student, who declined to give his name, but said he was in his junior year. "We’ll see."
