One of the very few pre-K to 12 schools in the city, Michael J. Petrides is a highly sought-after school that, despite a rather remote location, has a diverse student body and draws children from across Staten Island.
Housed on the grassy campus of what was once the College of Staten Island, Petrides is surrounded by trees and nature trails. The site is also home to the Borough President’s Hall of Science, a two-story science lab for k-12 students.
Petrides gets high marks on the Quality Review for its teaching and efforts to engage students. Overall, Petrides students do well on the elementary and middle school standardized tests. Students in special education, however, lag far behind, and school officials acknowledge, on the comprehensive educational plan (CEP), that they must do more to address the needs of students with disabilities and those from low-income families. Petrides can point to a high graduation and college readiness rate, although its student struggle with the state high school Regents tests.
With about 1,300 students spread across 13 grades, there are relatively few students in each grade. Despite that Petrides offers a number of high-school credit classes in its middle school and advanced placement courses for high school students, fields a variety of sports teams and offers an array of extracurricular activities. Students may take Spanish or Italian.
School survey results, parent comments and press accounts indicate problems with behavior, discipline and bullying at the school.
Many families find the k-12 school attractive because it spares them from having to apply for middle and high school. At the same time, long-time principal Joanna Buckheit, a Staten Island native, tries to ensure that students don’t miss out on milestones marking the passage from one level to the next. Since students remain at the school for so many years Petrides offers a sense of community, with older students tutoring or mentoring younger ones, according to the Quality Review. According to the principal, a third of the school’s staff attended Petrides.
Special education: Petrides has a high percentage of students with special needs and offers a range of services, including team teaching classes with two teachers and a mix of general and special education students.
Admissions: Students must be Staten Island residents and are selected by lottery. Almost 1,000 students apply for the approximately 90 kindergarten slots. Continuing 8th graders have priority for high school admissions, meaning that there are many applicants for the open slots. (Gail Robinson, web reports, September 2018)
