Opponents Decry Idea of Relocating Upper East Side Schools

Hundreds of public school students marched through the Upper East Side yesterday to protest a proposal to give their school building to Hunter College in exchange for a new building farther downtown.

The Julia Richman Education Complex, located on East 67th Street, houses four high schools, an elementary school, and a school for autistic children. It has been held up as a model for reforming large inner city schools by splitting them into smaller schools.

Hunter College wants to use the site to build a new science and health professions building near its campus on East 68th Street. The college has offered to give the Department of Education a new school building that would be built on a plot of land it owns on East 25th Street.

Students, parents, community residents, and a few Hunter students who gathered yesterday in front of the Julia Richman building before marching over to Hunter's campus said the move would destroy an educational atmosphere that has been carefully cultivated.

"I'm disappointed they're trying to take it away," a sophomore at Urban Academy (one of the high schools contained in the Julia Richman building), Kifaya Douglas, 15, said. She started kindergarten at the Ella Baker School, also housed in the complex, and has attended school at the building for 11 years.

"This building is like a home to me.

The staff is like family," she said. "I feel like in the new building, they are to get shuffled around and it's not going to be the same education."

The deal depends on whether Hunter College can come up with the funds to build a new school to replace the Julia Richman Educational Center. School officials have said the proposal is in very preliminary stages, but a Hunter College spokeswoman, Meredith Halpern, said yesterday that it would seek private money to build a replacement school by selling the land it owns on East 25th Street. The buyer would be required to build the new school on that site in addition to any other developments, and the school would then be handed over to the Department of Education.

Ms. Halpern said the college would put out a request for an expression of interest from prospective buyers for the East 25th Street site by the end of this year. She added that the principals and building managers of the Julia Richman complex would be involved in the planning and design process for the new building.

"This is kind of a dream come true for principals: to have a brand new state-of-the-art facility given to them," she said.

If the deal goes through, Ms. Halpern said the new Julia Richman building on East 25th Street would be finished by 2010 at the earliest, before the college begins construction on the science building.

"Not one student will be displaced," she said.