First Green School to Open in the Bronx
NEW YORK — After an eight-year struggle and millions in fundraising efforts, the students of the low-income Bronx neighborhood Highbridge now have its first middle school. Students, some of whom formerly took three buses in the early morning hours to arrive at school, now have an education accessible to them in the comfort of their own neighborhood with the opening of Highbridge Green School. The school is one of 21 schools that opened in the Bronx this fall.
Designed by New York-based Fletcher Thompson, the four-story $34 million school opened with modern, innovative facilities and is positioned to be the greenest building in the Bronx with the first-ever green roof.
“I think we’re really trying to expand what being green means,” said Principal Kyle Brillante. “It’s about sustainability but it’s also about showing enthusiasm for belonging to a community.”
Brillante said curriculum incorporates the green features of the building, which include rooftop gardens, a greenhouse, solar panels, wind turbine and a rainwater collection system.
“Seeing yourself as part of a system makes you more thoughtful and receptive,” Brillante said. “You start to see the interconnectedness, which is an important lesson to middle school students.”
The greenhouse and garden has student-produced vegetables that are served in the school’s café. The gardens and greenhouse are also connected to a science lab where students receive instruction and hold discussions about their environmental efforts.
“My ideal vision in working with students and teachers is giving students a say in what they grow,” Brillante said. “My vision is that the garden will look different year-to-year and dependent upon the grade.”
The United Parents of Highbridge (UPH), the leaders in the tour de force to construct the Highbridge Middle School, began their endeavor in October of 2006.
“The first thing we needed to do was get the city to acknowledge that we actually needed a school because our neighborhood is very isolated on a hill,” said Chauncy Young, lead organizer for UPH. “That was a struggle that took quite some time.”
The neighborhood, with nearly 40,000 residents, currently has five elementary schools but was without a middle school or high school. When plans were finally approved, Young said UPH wanted to make sure environmental education and efficiency would be a key component in the school.
“We felt that environmental studies was a very large and growing field,” he said. “And most kids in the Bronx don’t really have access to the environment.”
UPH raised approximately $2 million in order to provide students with the ideal green features, Young said. Construction by the Ianelli Construction Company Inc. of Brooklyn began in August 2010, utilizing regional and sustainable building materials. T
The green roof will also be utilized as a community space in order to provide environmental education to local residents.
The school opened this fall for the first sixth grade class, consisting of 130 students. Each school year another grade level will be added to Highbridge Green, which will accommodate sixth to eighth grade students.
“We already gave double the applicants for the available seats, so obviously there’s a lot of interest,” Young said.
According to Brillante, Highbridge Green Middle School is an answer to a need in accessible education based in environmental sustainability and consciousness.
“There is a crucial need for this kind of building and this kind of curriculum,” Brillante said. “The Bronx, in a lot of ways, is where the green revolution is happening.”