WASHINGTON HEIGHTS — As Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña visited the George Washington Educational Campus on Monday to promote her agenda on the city's expanding collaboration between co-located schools, students had their own agenda, trying to get the Schools Chief to pony up funding to improve their building.
The visit was Farina's first time on the campus, home to four high schools: The College Academy, High School for Law and Public Service, High School for Health Careers and Sciences and High School for Media and Communications — which was her first stop.
After watching a student-produced video highlighting the school’s media goals and programs, Fariña gave the students at Media and Communications a homework assignment for all schools in the building. She asked for a student-produced advertisement on how the schools “meshed together.”
The students then had a big request of their own, to back their goal for a state-of-the-art auditorium.
“We want to show our chancellor around, because our school is media and communications. We want to show her how we’re implementing new programs that are going to be focusing on that,” said Brian Zarzuela, 17. “We also want to talk to her about how we would like some renovations in the auditorium… we need proper ventilation, new lights — because students come here to become radio jockeys, musicians or acting — so we want to be able to showcase how we can implement that into the school for the new kids coming here.”
Student representatives from each school then led the chancellor to the High School for Health Careers and Sciences, the High School for Law and Public Service and then finally The College Academy.
The health career and sciences students introduced Fariña to the Aquaponics STEM-learning lab, which relies on fish and plant-based experiments. The program, teachers said, is a partnership with Cornell University’s Cooperative Extension program.
From there, Fariña visited the High School for Law and Public Service on another floor in the building, which showed off their legal programs, and how students hold mock trials with a classroom setting similar to court.
The tour wrapped up with the College Academy on the second floor, where Fariña was able to talk to Spanish-speaking students about the benefits of sharing resources with the other schools.
“The more you share resources, the more resources you have… You can’t do a baseball team with just one team, but if all the schools come together that’s really great,” Farina told one student.
“And you’re nice to each other, no matter what school you are."
Her visit came on the same day she visited the Evander campus in The Bronx, the Springfield campus in Queens and the Thomas Jefferson campus in Brooklyn.
The city has been expanding its co-location initiative program, which seeks to "foster collaboration between co-located schools to build a strong culture and share resources to provide even more opportunities for students and staff,” according to a DOE spokeswoman.
