PS/MS 394, dwelling to the Central Brooklyn Literacy Academy in Crown Heights on Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025.
Picture by Paul Frangipane
A brand new college will open subsequent month to assist assist college students who wrestle with dyslexia and different studying disabilities, Mayor Eric Adams informed New York News in a one-on-one interview on Monday.
The Central Brooklyn Literacy Academy will open in time for the 2025-2026 college 12 months, which begins on Thursday, Sept. 4. Positioned at 188 Rochester Ave. in Crown Heights’ College District 17, the college was constructed from an present constructing — M.S. 394, which town introduced would progressively shut by 2027-2028.
Chalkbeat reviews that the college would give M.S. 394 college students precedence admission and will assist college students in grades 2 and three who wrestle with dyslexia and different language-based studying challenges.
Adams, who has a private historical past of dyslexia in public colleges, mentioned the brand new college will assist be certain that “no student is left behind,” together with these with disabilities.
“Our personal journeys should become our personal professional missions,” the mayor shared. “And going through the challenges of a learning disability as a child impacted my desire to go to school and my socialization skills.”
Adams mentioned he dreaded going to high school every single day. He didn’t need to learn. It was not till he was in faculty that he found he had dyslexia.
“Once I learned that, I went from being a D student to being on the dean’s list,” Adams mentioned, including that he made it his mission to assist households with youngsters who’ve disabilities get the assistance they want in class.
PS/MS 394 in Crown Heights on Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025; the location of the brand new Central Brooklyn Literacy Academy.Picture by Paul Frangipane
In line with knowledge from the NYS Training Division, almost 150,000 school-age youngsters from New York struggled with studying disabilities in 2023. Roughly the identical variety of youngsters had been enrolled in particular schooling companies and packages in 2022, however over 154,000 had been enrolled in these companies in 2021.
The lower within the variety of youngsters receiving particular schooling companies in 2023 might presumably be on account of extra obtainable assist companies.
The Brooklyn college would require sure standards for admission, together with scoring under a selected threshold. Admission remains to be open, and extra data is offered on the web site, bkliteracyacademy.org.
“This is an upstream approach to help our children and families deal with learning disabilities. And dyslexia is really one of the important ones,” the Brooklyn-born mayor defined.
Melissa Aviles-Ramos is the chancellor of NYC’s public colleges, the biggest public college system within the nation. She mentioned the Central Brooklyn Literacy Academy builds off the success of the South Bronx Literacy Academy, established in 2023 following guardian advocacy to supply important sources to college students with dyslexia and co-occurring circumstances like ADHD and nervousness.
“The intervention is extremely targeted,” Chancellor Aviles-Ramos mentioned. “Students have to score below a certain threshold. And that’s indicative of having a print-based disability. Then, they can enroll in the school.”
The varsity is open to all college students who qualify. Courses can be small, round 5 to 6 college students, much like the Bronx academy. Classes will hone in on phonemic consciousness to assist college students perceive multi-syllabic phrases and the right way to chunk these phrases collectively, Aviles-Ramos defined.
“Yes, while things of this nature can happen and do happen in a general education classroom, but for students who need this kind of intervention, rather than have them in a separate class, there is a school dedicated to giving them this around-the-clock intervention,” the chancellor described.
In the meantime, NYC Public Faculties celebrated the newly launched state take a look at scores for studying and math on Monday, displaying a rise English Language Arts (ELA) proficiency of seven.2 factors since 2024, from 49.1% to 56.3% amongst metropolis college students. NYC math scores additionally fared properly, growing by 3.5 factors since final 12 months, from 53.4% to 56.9%
Metropolis officers credited the enlargement of NYC Reads and NYC Solves teaching programs this 12 months for enhancements.
