Brooklyn Prospect Charter School with elementary and middle schools in District 13 and 15 as well as a high school and International Charter School (ICS) in Downtown Brooklyn’s District 13 currently serving students in Kindergarten to 5th Grade plan to merge during this school year.
This fall the Boards of the International Charter School and Brooklyn Prospect Charter School voted to merge and submitted a full merger packet to SUNY for consideration. Once the merger is finalized, 5th grade students at ICS will have seats at Brooklyn Prospect’s Clinton Hill Middle School and can continue onto Brooklyn Prospect High School if they choose. The goal is for ICS to formally join the BPCS family by June 30, 2021, and begin the 2021-22 school year fully integrated into Brooklyn Prospect.
Brooklyn Prospect Charter Schools set aside around 40% of seats to students residing in NYC who qualify for free or reduced price lunch. Both schools like all Charter Schools admit students by lottery and do not screen students.
Brooklyn Prospect Charter School is an IB world school and models its curriculum on the International Baccalaureate Program. The school has continuously had long wait lists in the admissions lottery and is a sought-after school due to its diversity, curriculum and the fact that it offers tuition-free Kindergarten through 12th Grade education.
International Charter School of New York that opened its doors in 2015 currently has two locations due to space issues – one at 55 Willoughby Street and one at 9 Hanover Place. The school’s many year-long search for a permanent home offering Kindergarten to 8th Grade seemed to come to an end with the lease of 30 Clinton Avenue near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Permits were filed in 2019 to build a 5-story building featuring 50,000 square feet of space and 725 seats. According to a spokesperson of the school, they are not moving forward with the building on Clinton Avenue as the City refused their application for a special use permit. ICS and Brooklyn Prospect are working jointly to identify a long term real estate solutions for ICS’s needs in District 13. They expect to announce some decisions in the 1st quarter of next year.
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