City Set To Buy Building For Beacon School

An Upper West Side high school under investigation for trips its students took to Cuba is getting support from the Department of Education on another matter: real estate.

The Beacon School now leases its building, on 61st Street between Amsterdam and West End avenues, under a contract that ends in 2010. But the education department plans to acquire the building, and officials are in negotiations with the landlord, a spokeswoman, Melody Meyer, said.

A plan by the department's School Construction Authority will come up for a vote at the City Council today, one of the school's supporters, Council Member Gale Brewer, said. A Democrat of the Upper West Side, Ms. Brewer said she expects the plan to pass easily.

Soaring property values in the area had raised concerns that the department might not want to buy the building, which city records show was last purchased in 2005 at a price of $31 million.

Department officials have been investigating Beacon since the spring, when it was reported that teachers at the school had taken students on trips to Cuba over the last several years. The federal government limits travel to the communist country.

A spokeswoman for the office of the special commissioner of investigation, Laurel Wright-Hinckson, said the investigation is ongoing.

Cuba was a topic at the school's graduation yesterday, according to two sources who attended but asked not to be named. The sources said a parent who spoke at the commencement began her speech by spelling out "V-i-v-a Cu-b-a" and "R-e-d B-e-a-c-o-n."

Ms. Brewer, who also spoke at the graduation, said she left too early to confirm the incident. But the council member said she does not think the trips are a source of controversy. "They've been going to Cuba for years," she said.

Ms. Brewer pointed instead to what she described as the school's excellent teaching, resources, and leadership, calling Beacon "what you dream of in terms of high schools."

The department's decision to buy the school building was welcome news to another Beacon parent, Jeanne Kerwin, who will have two children at the school this fall. She said the Upper West Side, with all its new residential construction, needs even more schools.

"We are going to have a problem down the road," she said.