The New Millennium

 by Etta Sanders

The elevators on the 13th floor at 75 Broad Street look like those in any other financial-district office building. That is, until 8:15 every morning, when the ninth- and tenth-graders arrive.

The youngsters are students of Millennium High, the school that just moved to Broad Street and is billed as Downtown’s very own.

As with any high school, the corridor of the Millennium is
Ninth grader Lirie Hakaj takes a phone break during lunch.

Inside, it not only doesn’t look like an office building, it doesn’t look like a typical high school, either. The classrooms occupy the perimeter of the floor, and students sit where corporate executives once gazed upon neighboring skyscrapers. Instead of a drab corridor lined with lockers, a brightly lit ‘café’ furnished with 20 small tables and chairs welcomes students. Between classes they lounge on padded seats that match the pea-green and cantaloupe-colored walls. Rows of bright, new, empty shelves await the arrival of books for a temporary library.

“You’re really not aware that you’re in an office building,” said Robert Rhodes, the principal. “It’s like a building within a building.”


The school, which has its own ground-floor entrance, will expand next year to add an eleventh-grade class and by the fall of 2005 will be a full four-year high school with up to 500 students. Construction is set to begin on a library, a gym and additional classrooms on the 12th and 13th floors. (Gym classes are now held at the McBurney YMCA on 23rd street.)

Some of Millennium’s students said that one of the best things about the school is its small size. “Everyone’s friendly with everyone,” said Molly Bernstein, 14, who lives in Soho. “I like it.”

Millennium opened last year with only a ninth-grade class in a temporary home in an Upper East Side school. With $3 million from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, construction was completed in an eight-week sprint over the summer. When Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg stood on a makeshift stage at a ribbon-cutting ceremony a few days before the first day of school, the smell of fresh paint still hung in the air.

Amy Gladstein discusses Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" with her tenth graders.
The school was heralded not only as a welcome addition to Downtown education, but also as a symbol of the rebuilding of the neighborhood, a “great step forward in the revitalization of Lower Manhattan,” Pataki said.

In addition to attracting so much attention, Millennium has received major private funding. The National Football League donated $2 million, the Goldman Sachs Foundation $1 million, and last month the Columbus Citizen’s Foundation gave $1 million to build a ground-floor auditorium, which will be open for community use after school hours.

Applicants to the high school, which averages 32 students per class, must have at least an 85 grade-point average and fewer than 10 absences. Three quarters have scores at a level three or four on standardized tests. Among students who meet the academic criteria, priority is given to residents south of Houston Street. About half of the 220 students live Downtown, mostly in Chinatown.

Rhodes said that some parents in Tribeca and other parts of Lower Manhattan may have been hesitant to apply to a school that was so new, preferring more established choices, such as the Beacon school on the Upper West Side.

“There was some trepidation because we haven’t graduated a class,” he said, “We’re hoping that pattern changes. Why would you want you go to Beacon when you could stay Downtown?”