M&A Almost Closed in 1978

Back in 1978, M&A students were almost moved out of the Castle. The city of New York proposed that the students of the High School of Music and Art be moved to Haaren High School. Check out the photo from the New York Post and read the Daily news article dated April 20, 1978 about the student protests and what caused all the confusion.

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The sixteen-year old in the front with the white shirt is Tove Wagner - Class of 1980.

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New York Daily - Thursday, April 20, 1978, Page 281

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Board of Ed
Kills Plan on
​Schools Move

By Mark Liff

​In a last-minute switch, the Board of Education called off plans yesterday for the wholesale move of four Manhattan high schools populations to make room for a “campus laboratory high school” near City College.
 
The board originally planned to move LaGuardia HS of Music and Art from W. 135th St. and Convent Ave. to the building now housing Haaren HS, at 889 10th Ave., at W. 59th St. This was to allow for the creation in central Harlem of an “experimental secondary school serving a student body representing a cross-section of the immediate community,” according to the board’s calendar of actions.
 
Included in this proposed mass migration was the transfer of students from Food and Maritime HS and Haaren to the nearby completed Park West HS building, at 50th St. and 10th Ave.

​But, hours before the board’s scheduled vote last night, the proposal was withdrawn and a substitute motion was submitted. “There will be a campus high school idea,” said one top school official shortly before the vote. “It will be at Music and Art’s present site, but we don’t exactly know when.”
 
Awaiting New School
 
The board reportedly is counting on a City Council resolution directing the Board of Estimate to allocate the funds for a new high school on W. 65th St. and Amsterdam Ave. This facility is now a foundation in the ground, funds for its completion having been frozen in the fiscal crisis.
 
“Music and Art will move into a Lincoln Center site only when the board feels the building is ready,“ the official said. “No one else will move into Haaren next year.

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New York Daily - Thursday, April 20, 1978, Page 281

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