By Staff Reporter
BUFFALO — Less than two weeks after Buffalo Public Schools laid out a plan to close eight buildings and relocate thousands of students, Interim Superintendent Ebony Prophet-Bullock is already rewriting pieces of it. The district says community feedback drove the changes. Families at a West Side bilingual school say the rewrite still leaves them with fewer real options.
The original proposal, which the Chronicle covered when the board set up its process, would have merged Leonardo da Vinci High School and Research Laboratory High School into Riverside Academy and limited transfer choices for students at PS 33 Bilingual Center. Under revisions reported this week by WKBW, those two high schools would instead merge at East Community High School on Northampton Street, closer to where the programs now operate. Riverside Academy would house Buffalo Rising Academy and the Career Collegiate Institute, which serve alternative education, high-school equivalency and vocational students.
“The feedback has informed several adjustments, or tweaks, as I would like to call them, to our original recommendations,” Ms. Prophet-Bullock said, according to WKBW.
“Our responsibility is to ensure that Buffalo Public Schools remains capable of providing high-quality educational opportunities for students we serve today and those we serve tomorrow,” she said.
What changed — and what did not
The revised map still treats closures and consolidations as proposals, not final votes. Ms. Prophet-Bullock told WKBW the district still has to verify building capacity, staffing, student services and transportation before it can say the new placements are feasible. That verification sits with district staff and, ultimately, with a Board of Education that has not yet adopted a final plan.
For PS 33 families, the district added PS 64 and PS 156 to the list of possible receiving schools. Schools 3, 30 and 76 remain under consideration. The superintendent has said bilingual education would remain available somewhere in the district. That assurance has not settled every parent.
Tim Monreal, who has three daughters at PS 33, told WKBW bilingual education has been important to his family and to Buffalo’s growing Hispanic population. “Although access to bilingual education in theory will still be there, it would actually result in a decrease in bilingual education,” he said.
Mr. Monreal said he appreciated that board members were listening and pressed them to keep talking with families. “We want to see it continue to be a process of transparency, a process of open communication and really, at the end of the day, a process of what is best for the community here in Buffalo,” he said.
Why the Riverside swap matters
Moving the da Vinci–Research Lab merger from Riverside to East Community answers a distance complaint that parents and staff raised after the first announcement: Riverside sits far from the East Side campuses where many of those students now travel. Putting alternative and career programs into Riverside, Ms. Prophet-Bullock said, could also keep district administrative offices already in that building in place and preserve Riverside’s community role.
That trade-off is the kind of choice districts make when they shrink footprints to match enrollment. It also concentrates risk. If capacity or transportation checks fail at East Community, the district will be back in front of families with another map. If they succeed, two specialized high schools will share one building while alternative programs inherit another — decisions that shape not only bus routes but which neighborhoods keep a neighborhood high school identity.
The next public test
The district’s first in-person public meeting on the proposed changes is set for 5:30 p.m. Thursday at Renovation Church, 567 Hertel Ave., WKBW reported. That forum is where the “tweaks” will meet the people who have to live with them: bilingual families measuring real seats, high school parents measuring travel time, and board members who will eventually cast the votes.
Accountability here is shared. Ms. Prophet-Bullock’s office drafts the recommendation. The board votes. The state Education Department does not design Buffalo’s consolidation map, but it does oversee fiscal stress and building utilization that districts cite when they close schools. Families at PS 33, and at the high schools facing merger, are asking for something narrower than a slogan: a published capacity check, named receiving seats for bilingual programs, and a timeline that does not treat “proposal” as a moving target.
The Buffalo Chronicle is seeking comment from Interim Superintendent Prophet-Bullock’s office and from Board of Education President Dr. Ann Rivera on the capacity review timeline and bilingual seat counts under the revised plan. Any responses will be added to this story.
Featured photo: Former Public School 11 in Buffalo. Photo by D-Day via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
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