LOWER EAST SIDE — A plan to open a new high school inside University Neighborhood High School this fall has been dropped, officials said.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration had approved plans to co-locate an Early College and Career Technical Education High School within University Neighborhood despite community opposition. But on Thursday, Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña announced that the new school would move downtown to Murry Bergtraum High School instead.
University Neighborhood High parents and City Councilwoman Margaret Chin opposed the co-location since its proposal last August because they said it would overcrowd the school that has improved from a D to an A grade within the last four years.
The New Career and Technical Education High School, which has an early college and career focus with a six-year program, will instead open nearby at the Murry Bergtraum campus at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge.
The proposed co-location was one of 49 approved by the Bloomberg administration before it left office at the end of 2013. Of those, the de Blasio administration revised one and canceled nine, including a proposal for a Success Academy Charter school to move into the Murry Bergtraum campus.
Along with New Career and Technical Education high school, Murry Bergtraum will also get another Career Technical Education High School that was originally proposed for Long Island City, as well as the Urban Assembly School for Emergency Management, which will move from its current space at West 49th Street.
U.N.H.S principal Elizabeth Collins, who took over four years ago when the school was in danger of being closed for its poor performance, said she wanted to grow from 200 to 500 students and expand special programing with a focus on early college classes in business and computing.
"I am happy for our students and for the students from the other school because they will get a good location," she said. "Their students and our students will have the facilities and the schools that will meet their needs."
