12 Dean St. (Brooklyn, NY)

With the Little Room program still officially homeless after the 2010 school year, parents of Little Room children were shocked and dismayed to receive a mailing from BHMS trumpeting its $1.9 million purchase of the facility at 12 Dean St. The “strategic goal” of the new building is to increase enrollment in the general ed program at BHMS by approximately 40 students.

While the future for BHMS looks rosy, unfortunately the same can’t be said for the future of The Little Room: the program is still without a permanent home after 2010 and the November 15, 2009 deadline for winding down the Little Room looms large. In recent weeks, the Board of BHMS voted to move ahead with pursuing the transition of The Little Room to a new home at The League Treatment Center in DUMBO, but this process is by no means complete, nor is it even assured that it will happen at this point.

The Brooklyn Paper picked up on BHMS expansion story and they have some quotes from Head of School Dane Peters (whom they refer to as Dane Smith), who once again publicly emphasized out the financial drain of the Little Room on the school’s resources.

The push to separate the Little Room from the Brooklyn Heights Montessori School is due to irreconcilable financial and philosophical differences, Smith [sic] said, explaining that the state-regulated special-ed track is incompatible with the independent Montessori teaching model, in which students do not receive grades.

It’s also a drain on the school’s resources because the state’s reimbursements do not cover the Little Room’s expenses. Its students do not pay tuition either.

“It couldn’t sustain itself. We would have had to cut staff salaries,” Smith [sic] told The Brooklyn Paper. “The physical plant is costly. The state will only pay so much for overhead.” [TheBrooklynPaper.com]

Here’s what Dane Peters didn’t say to The Brooklyn Paper:

a) Like their Montessori counterparts, the 3 and 4 year olds enrolled in The Little Room program do not receive grades.

b) While Little Room students “do not pay tuition”, the State of New York pays the school for each child enrolled in the Little Room program.

c) BHMS is currently not receiving the maximum reimbursement per Little Room student from the State; Little Room parents offers to fundraise have been rebuffed by the school; and

d) In Roger Clark’s story for NY1, BHMS spokesperson Bob Liff, stated that, “…finances are always an issue with private education, that is not the core issue that’s driving this discussion.”

Scans of the BHMS “12 Dean St Purchase” mailing after the jump.