Seniors Lana Kvint and Eva Sadej are helping establish a school in New York City named Poly-Science Technology Engineering Math, or Poly-STEM.
Poly-STEM is still in the planning stages. A proposal will be submitted to the Department of Education (DOE) for approval of the school.
Poly-STEM’s prospective Principal Jolanta Rohloff asked Stuyvesant Principal Stanley Teitel last summer for two gifted female Stuyvesant students to help her in the planning process of the school.
“She told me that she was opening up a high school […] with specialization in math, science and technology,” Teitel said. “She asked for some female students that wouldn’t mind working with her.”
According to Kvint, Rohloff “wanted to work with students [who] were interested in science and math so that she could figure out other ways to get other kids interested in it.”
Teitel asked Advanced Placement (AP) Biology teachers Dr. John Utting and Roz Bierig to nominate two students. They selected Kvint and Sadej.
“I chose them because they were top students in my [AP Biology] class last year,” Bierig said. “I felt that they would be able to give a great amount of input into the school.”
“[Eva and I] were really interested in having so much impact on countless generations of kids,” Kvint said.
For the past few weeks, Sadej and Kvint have been helping Rohloff make decisions about the proposed school’s classes. Some questions they have considered include which grade each gender should have health class and whether freshmen should take physics or biology. They have also considered having a dance program at the school.
“I have a lot of different ideas about what schools should be like,” Sadej said. “I basically know what [science classes] I liked over the years, what has worked for me and what should work for other students.”
Teitel said student perspective is important in establishing a school. “There are things to think about that don’t always cross the minds of adults because we’re not in your shoes,” he said.
“Our students, the girls, could actually add something to what it’s like to go to a school that specializes in math, science and technology,” Teitel said.
Junior Ksenia Timachova was in favor of students helping shape a school. “The whole purpose of high school is to help students learn,” she said. “Students know what environments are best for other students.”
Rohloff requested female students because Poly-STEM was originally planned as an all-girls school. This idea was dropped in favor of a co-educational school with some gender-separated classes.
The girls have some ideas about catering to the different strong points of each of the gender-separated classes.
“The girls’ classes are going to play on the strengths of the girls,” Sadej said. “The girls’ classrooms will probably be […] quieter and more of a non-competitive environment. For the boys’ classrooms, the teacher will have a microphone and maybe even competitive little games.”
“We at the department do not take a stand on whether gender classes are a good or bad thing,” DOE Director of New School Developments Julian Cohen said. “If [Rohloff] believes that this is a way to engage both girls and boys and get them interested in science, we support it.”
Poly-STEM will most likely be built in Brooklyn near the campus of its partner college, Polytechnic University. “Students could perhaps take classes on the [Polytechnic] campus,” Cohen said. “The college could also support the teachers, provide professional development for them.”
The school is scheduled to open by September 2008.
Poly-STEM’s classes will be focused on STEM careers, but it will also have a strong humanities department. Rohloff plans for the school to include grades six through 12, with approximately 80 to 101 students per grade.
“It’s just a proposal,” Cohen said. “It doesn’t reflect that this school will be opening.”
Rohloff previously was principal of Lafayette High School in Brooklyn until March 30, 2007. According to a December 12, 2006 New York Times article, “Lafayette Among 5 High Schools to Close,” she was forced to step down after her management angered teachers and students at the school. The article said teachers “felt belittled after [Rohloff] offered them extra money to decorate hallway bulletin boards, pushed recent immigrants into English-only classes and overruled grades that some teachers gave students.”
According to insideschools.org, an independent guide to New York City public schools, the graduation rate of Lafayette is 43.6 percent. The citywide average is 60 percent. Lafayette, among four other failing schools, is slated to be closed and replaced by several smaller high schools by 2010.
Rohloff declined to comment.