Basis Independent Brooklyn
This is a rendering of the new private school that is slated to open next fall on Columbia St. in Red Hook.
Dismissed!
Community Board 6 shot down a plan on Wednesday to open a pricey private school in Red Hook just blocks from one of the city’s largest housing projects.
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An Arizona-based educator is seeking to open its first private school, called Basis Independent Brooklyn, on Columbia St. next fall, but the board slammed the plan, saying that the $ 23,500-a-year in tuition school is “inappropriate” for the blue-collar, truck-heavy area.
“I don’t see how the school will benefit anyone from Red Hook,” said board member Frances Brown, a resident of the Red Hook Houses, who claimed that the operator failed to inform any tenants of the complex about its plans.
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The neighborhood first learned about the plans for the new school at the board’s Landmarks and Land-Use committee meeting last month, in which the committee voted to support the plan.
Basis Independent Schools, which runs 12 charter schools in Arizona, Texas, and Washington, D.C., needs a special permit from the city Board of Standards and Appeals to build the proposed five-story school on a lot between Bay and Sigourney Sts. that is zoned for manufacturing.
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Red Hook business owners say the school would create traffic problems and endanger the growth of local industry, since it would be built along a heavily utilized truck route.
“We need to do more to stop speculators from trying to tear away the vital industrial fabric of South Red Hook,” said concrete mogul John Quadrozzi Jr. of Gowanus Bay Terminal.
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The operator of the planned 1000-seat, kindergarten through 12th grade school claims that the school does plan to offer scholarships, but just not in the first school year.
“It is unfortunate that members of the community were not persuaded of the benefits that our world-quality, STEM-focused, liberal arts program will bring to Red Hook and Brooklyn,” Mark Reford, the CEO of Basis Independent Schools, told the Daily News.
nmusumeci@nydailynews.com
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