Last week, Senator Velmanette Montgomery welcomed Chancellor Richard Carranza back to Bedford Stuyvesant to meet with the principals and students of Boys and Girls High School Campus and discuss their needs.
Once nicknamed the "pride and joy of Bed-Stuy," Boys and Girls High School, located at 1700 Fulton Street, struggled in the last decade with an image tarnished by academic underperformance, high principal turnover and low enrollment.
The high school was tapped in 2017 by the city as a Renewal School for its underperformance. And now it is seeking to make a comeback with a variety of new initiatives-- ones that slowly have gained the City's attention.
The meeting was a follow-up from the summer when Senator Montgomery invited the Chancellor to visit Boys & Girls High to hear directly from student who were eager to communicate their needs, including more advanced placement classes, electrical upgrades and repairs to their auditorium and other facilities, more resources for the research and service pantry, and lighting for the Nelson Mandela field.
The chancellor's second visit was to share good news: Since the summer meeting, eight AP classes were added including Environmental Science, US and World History, Calculus, Language and Literature. Additionally, funding was provided to the Research and Service food pantry; and upgrades to the student laundry would be completed by October 7.
The chancellor also promised a full assessment of the building's electrical system in the next two weeks.
BGHS slowly but surely seems to be trying to make a comeback.
"It's the staple of the Bedford-Stuyvesant community," BGHS Principal Grecian Harrison-Walker said in an interview with DNAinfo. "I mean, no matter what, no matter where you go, anyone and everyone knows about Boys and Girls High School."
