Parole Facility Planned Next Door to St. Ann's School
The U.S. Attorney’s Office is planning to open a major parole facility at 147 Pierrepont Street, a Ratner-owned property located between the lower and middle school buildings of St. Ann’s School in Brooklyn Heights. The new center, which would consolidate two existing parole offices in the Downtown area, is slated to serve 1,700 Federal parolees…
The U.S. Attorney’s Office is planning to open a major parole facility at 147 Pierrepont Street, a Ratner-owned property located between the lower and middle school buildings of St. Ann’s School in Brooklyn Heights. The new center, which would consolidate two existing parole offices in the Downtown area, is slated to serve 1,700 Federal parolees and be manned by armed guards, according to an email from a member of the school community. A call to Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez’s office revealed that she and other public officials are trying to schedule a press conference at some point in the future to protest the location of the new facility. They better get moving: The new space (pictured on the jump) is supposed to be open for business as early as mid-August, just in time to welcome the kids back to school. UPDATE: This statement just in from Congresswoman Nydia M. Velázquez: Locating a parole office just steps away from a school is extremely troubling. Anything that puts the security of our children at risk is unacceptable. Before all other considerations, their safety must be the top priority.GMAP
Guest at 9:00 pm on 7/13-so what you’re saying is that you care about all children except the ones who go to private school. Vile hypocrite. If the facility was opening next to your child’s school, you would be the first out there with a picket sign. Anyone with an ounce of common sense would agree that parents have a right to be concerned and ask questions. If this was happening next to a public school, it would be just as problematic.
My parents were quite concerned about the state of the public schools but ultimately decided they were unwilling to sacrifice their children on that particular altar, for which I am quite grateful. Like many St Ann’s parents, they paid the tuition by giving up many other things — owning their own house, expensive vacations, saving for retirement.
The chance to attend a school which is centered above all around education and to take classes from a teacher who could write as below, was an extraordinary privilege. I only wish more people could share it.
And I hope the teacher whom I quote below speaks for the school. Certainly he speaks for me.
“I’ve been teaching at St. Ann’s for over 30 years. It’s a city school–safe for reasons that make suburban schools unsafe. Our safety comes from knowing all kinds of people firsthand, and knowing that people, young and old, live in the same society, gate their communities how they will. The biggest danger, statistically, to teenage people is not parolees or other potential lawbreakers, it is the automobiles they use to get around and hang out beyond the reach of urban public transportation. For kids under those ages, I could easily argue that the greatest risk could be poor immunities due to lack of everyday contact with large numbers of disease carriers. That’s the paradox: protect yourself by excluding others and you run the greater risk that the protection will fail. I’ll throttle incipient references to national politics except to point out that the Eastern (east of Brooklyn Bridge) and Southern (west of Brooklyn Bridge) Districts of the federal court system are quite separate, but that both handle drug prosecutions, which are, because of the dumb “war on drugs,” an overflow business in every District.”
People, we all know you send your kids to private schools so they don’t have to deal with the reality of the city. Don’t pretend otherwise. If you want to work out a better tomorrow for children then let’s include all the children of this city. Otherwise yes there will be a lot of resentment in this forum and others towards the entitlements you have. It’s not the money. It’s not the education you want to buy for your kids. It’s the fact that you couldn’t care less about anybody else’s kids. One thing that dealing with the DOE teaches the rest of us parents is that we have to work hard to lift up all the children in all the schools. Parents of children who have been vocal about the cuts to the budget and the increased obsession of the Bloomberg admin with testing have been protesting on behalf of changing a system. Not just making sure their kids will have a better situation in their school. But when you are only talking about the safety of your childrens’ school it is so the opposite of what most parents in this city are fighting for. So when we have issues getting our kids safely to school because the city’s school bus problems are so outrageous or the classroom sizes are so large in all public schools which makes it difficult for kids to get the attention they need, the quest to make sure some guys who are heavily guarded keep away from your kids does seem a bit narrow of a concern. Potential is something you are looking to buy for your kids. Potential is something that all kids deserve. And if you think money isn’t buying your kids a better shot at a sunnier future than why are
8:27- what you said. Very well.I do understand the rich/poor dichotomy but for me the adversarial process is what I find problematical. Everything is competitive, not in a positive way- but as in let me beat down the other guy so I can have mine…and his too. And it seems to me the idea of we are all adversaries extends to nearly every part of American life. I truly don’t care is someone is rich- I care about the air of entitlement people have- rich and poor. I care if people are poor because poverty is debilitating for individuals and society. And I care when the rich believe having money entitles them to more privileges than poor people. Stuff- yes. rights- no.
But none of us should work our differences out through children. Whether in St. Ann’s or public school, they are owed a chance to fulfill their potential and if we do our jobs right, their potential will be awesome.
Bloomberg didn’t go to Private School – Obama did – Kennedy’s – well I’m sure you know their story. So because may go to an Ivy school, the parolees are OK. I personally don’t think that it is a hugee deal. It’s the prejudice against well off people that baffes me. I can assure you that if this was happening next to a Publicly funded school, that there would be outrage. Why the double standard. Pure misplaced animosity. The country is too divided among Far right and far left – what happened to moderate democratic stance with choice as central theme. We are still the most free nation in the world for upward mobility and free expression. That’s not to say that it’s perfect – far from it – as perfect as humans are on the whole – but the opportunity is there for change. Give children the right tools, analytic, verbal and technical along with sensitivity to underprivilege and this is where the potential lies.
Move to Cuba. I did lots of drugs when I was in Public high school in NY. Crashed so hard on amphetamines that I prayed to die one morning. Maybe if i was at Private School the drugs would have been better quality. We need the Bloombergs, Obamas and Kennedys – certaintly don’t need angry insecure people who think that the world is against them…
Geeze– alot of you peeps are downright mean! Bottom line, parents have a right to ask questions when a parole facility goes in next door to a school. Asking questions out of concern for your child’s safety doesn’t make you a bad person.
Just because some of you commenters harbor resentment towards private schools and apparently this particular school for your own reasons, and just because many of you enjoy the process of flaming each other, doesn’t change that fact.
People who send their kids to private school are still taxpayers who support public schools and all kinds of other community things.
@!2:25: “Oh and about 20% are there on Financial aid scholarship obtained largely through tuition padding and active engaged fundraising.”
Dude, are you high? Put down the crack pipe. Get a job because your wife is sick of having to work so hard to pay the full tuition at old st. a’s for the kids. there is no “tuition padding.” only the tiniest minority get any kind of financial aid. Not that it matters, really, that you are so unaware but only schools with endowments (e.g. packer, the manhattan private schools) can give significant financial aid (20% of the student body on aid is a HUGE figure; nothing like that has ever been imaginable in the wildest wet dreams of the st. a’s admin;)
yet many of the commenters here are accurate nonetheless. st. a’s is home to the children, for the most part, of the most privileged of the denizens of the new cashed-up nyc. and although you could argue that it sucks that they will have to eyeball people who have gotten caught for the crimes they committed, it’s also really not that serious that they have to deal with reality. when they get to HYP (harvard, yale, princeton) and are among the future obamas, cuomos, spitzers, zabars, bloombergs, trumps, and kennedys (and their spawn) whom they will know, fuck and be friends with lots and lots of those kids will commit much, much worse crimes than the poor sods reporting to their parole officers in this new facility (on pierrepont st) and will never, ever get caught much less punished or have to deal with a parole officer. so get over it. The world is already so unfair, life is already so tilted in favor of these privileged kids who get to go to bosworth’s dream of a
I know they did have a smoking room, yes. Or at least allowed students to smoke, I can’t remember, actually — I didn’t go there, but I heard.
On the bright side, something I think many Brooklyn parents should appreciate: perhaps this will make it easier to get little Haven and Johann in!