The Martin Luther King Jr. Educational Campus is a five-story

public school Public school may refer to: * State school (known as a public school in many countries), a no-fee school, publicly funded and operated by the government * Public school (United Kingdom), certain elite fee-charging independent schools in England an ...

facility at 122 Amsterdam Avenue between West 65th and 66th Streets in Lincoln Square,

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, near

Lincoln Center Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 millio ...

. The campus is faced on Amsterdam Avenue by a wide elevated plaza which features a self-weathering steel memorial sculpture by William Tarr., p.323 The same steel was used by architect Frost Associates in the curtain wall of the building, the interior of which has an arrangement of perimeter corridors with floor-to-ceiling windows, leaving many classrooms on the inner side windowless. The school is across West 65th Street from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts.

History

The building was formerly the location of Martin Luther King Jr. High School, which opened in 1975. According to ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', the school had been troubled throughout its history, gaining a bad reputation for its construction delay, planned curriculum restructurings, low student enrollment, and abysmal academic performance: It has a history of violence, including the shooting of two

tenth grade Tenth grade or grade 10 (called Year Eleven in England and Wales, and sophomore year in the US) is the tenth year of school post-kindergarten or the tenth year after the first introductory year upon entering compulsory schooling. In many parts of ...

students inside the school on January 15, 2002, the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. Other violence had occurred in the school: The closing of the school was included by

Chancellor Chancellor ( la, cancellarius) is a title of various official positions in the governments of many nations. The original chancellors were the of Roman courts of justice—ushers, who sat at the or lattice work screens of a basilica or law cou ...

Joel Klein Joel Irwin Klein (born October 25, 1946) is an American lawyer and school superintendent. He was the New York City School Chancellor, Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, the largest school district, public school system in t ...

and

Mayor In many countries, a mayor is the highest-ranking official in a municipal government such as that of a city or a town. Worldwide, there is a wide variance in local laws and customs regarding the powers and responsibilities of a mayor as well a ...

Michael Bloomberg Michael Rubens Bloomberg (born February 14, 1942) is an American businessman, politician, philanthropist, and author. He is the majority owner, co-founder and CEO of Bloomberg L.P. He was Mayor of New York City from 2002 to 2013, and was a ca ...

in the education reform policy. The school was closed on June 27, 2005 by the

New York City Department of Education The New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) is the department of the government of New York City that manages the city's public school system. The City School District of the City of New York (or the New York City Public Schools) is t ...

Current configuration

The high school has been replaced by seven separate high schools which operate on different floors of the building. Students wear uniforms to distinguish them from the other schools and have separate lunch and dismissal times. The schools, listed by the date of their entry into the campus, are: *2002 – High School for Law, Advocacy, and Community Justice: The school is commonly known as MLK Law, due to its cumbersome official name. The High School for Law, Advocacy, and Community Justice graduated its first class in June 2006, consisting of approximately 60 students. In 2008, the school partnered wit
M.O.V.E. Inc.
to implement a mentorship program. *2002 – High School of the Arts and Technology: The High School of Arts and Technology uses the third floor of the building. Ms. Geiger was its founding principal, who retired in 2016 and was replaced by the current principal, Mariela Graham. The school has now become a part of Urban Assembly, which is a non-profit organization that helps underserved youth become college and career ready. *2003 – Manhattan/Hunter College High School for Sciences: Students spend their first three years in classes in the MLK complex. Seniors spend their entire fourth year of high school on the

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admi ...

campus on the

Upper East Side The Upper East Side, sometimes abbreviated UES, is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 96th Street to the north, the East River to the east, 59th Street to the south, and Central Park/Fifth Avenue to the wes ...

, taking a mix of high school and college-level courses. Manhattan Hunter Science is a part of the Early College Initiative. While many

high schools offer students the chance to take college courses, what makes Manhattan Hunter different is the level of support the students receive. Their high school English and social studies teachers travel with them to the college and offer regular classes there. While the students take college courses in math and science, the high school English and social studies teachers offer hand-holding and advice for all the subjects. The college courses in math and science tend to be large lecture classes, with as many as 600 students. A collaboration between Hunter College and the

, Manhattan/Hunter High School for Science offers classes to help students prepare not only for college-level academics, but also for the freedom and responsibility of college life. The new school is designed to address the fact that more than one-third of college students nationally drop out before completing their freshman year. *2005 – High School for Arts, Imagination And Inquiry *2006 – Urban Assembly School For Media Studies *2006 – Manhattan Theatre Lab High School (founded 2004, moved into complex 2006). This school was shuttered in 2015, in the wake of poor performance and allegations of cheating. *2013 – Special Music School High School

References

Notes Further reading
"The Metal Detector: Tales From School"

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

, Sept. 29, 1996
"Principal Tries to Bolster Image of School Bearing King's Name"

, Jan. 20, 1986
"Stockholders of a Can Company Take Meeting to 'Partner' School"

, May 23, 1984

External links

H.S. 490 Martin Luther King Jr. High School
at InsideSchools.org Official websites:
High School for Law, Advocacy, and Community Justice

High School of Arts and TechnologySpecial Music School High School
nyc.gov websites:
High School for Law, Advocacy and Community Justice
* ttp://schools.nyc.gov/SchoolPortals/03/M541/default.htm Manhattan/Hunter Science High Schoolbr>Special Music School
{{DEFAULTSORT:King, Martin Luther Ed

King King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen, which title is also given to the consort of a king. *In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the tit ...

Public high schools in Manhattan