Students still looking for a place to land when school starts next fall will have two new options opening up inside of DeWitt Clinton High School, including one with a successful Manhattan pedigree.

As part of its new plan to improve performance inside Clinton, which saw its four-year graduation rate drop to 50 percent, the Department of Education is gradually shrinking enrollment of the storied 115-year-old school and starting up two new smaller schools.

The plan was vigorously opposed by the entire school community and local elected officials who believe the co-locating of two schools inside Clinton will ultimately lead to its closure sometime in the near future. After more than a decade of overcrowding and an increasing population of special needs and English language learners, Clinton supporters felt the DOE set the school up for failure.

After approving the plan on March 11, the DOE recently revealed the identity of the two new schools as Bronx Collaborative High School and World View High School. Each will admit 108 students next fall and the following three years. At the same time, Clinton’s overall enrollment will drop from around 3,800 to around 2,250 by 2016.

With the application deadline for the second round of the high school admissions process fast approaching on April 12, parents and students will only have a short time to get to know Clinton’s new building mates.

In a recent press release, the DOE said nearly three out of every four students (74 percent) were admitted to one of their top three high school choices, while 90 percent of students were matched with one of their top 12 choices.

While the DOE trumpeted these numbers as a success story, that still leaves thousands of students in the Bronx and citywide who weren’t matched or didn’t apply at all. The latter group represents the so-called over-the-counter or “OTC” students who are often less prepared and have less active parents than those who apply to schools during the first round.

The new schools at Clinton will accept students from throughout the city, but give priority to Bronx students as well as those students who make their interest in the school known by attending an information session, an open house or visit the school’s exhibit at the DOE’s high school fair (see sidebar).

In a recent blog post listing recommendations for the second round of high school applications, Clara Hemphill, a columnist for InsideSchools, a website that tracks city public schools, included both older schools that still have open seats and new schools opening in the fall.

Of the eight Bronx schools named, one was the Macy’s Honors program at Clinton, which screens applicants for the cream of the crop and still has open slots, and the new Bronx Collaborative High School.

Hemphill said she included Bronx Collaborative because it is modeled after the Institute for Collaborative Education (ICE), an East Village secondary school (grades 6 through 12) founded two decades ago. Last year, ICE received an “A” on its DOE progress report and graduated 86.4 percent of its high school student in four years. Clinton, on the other hand, has received two straight “F’s” and, last year, graduated only half of its students in four years.

Bronx Collaborative High School’s founder and principal, Brett Schneider, is a former assistant principal at ICE.

“In general, good leadership and a coherent, well thought out plan make a school successful and it seemed to me that Brett Schneider has the experience to pull it off,” Hemphill said in an email.

In literature and on its website, Bronx Collaborative promotes itself as a place where students are “academic detectives, bringing New York City’s unique resources and rich history into the classroom to investigate and solve real-world mysteries.”

Bronx Collaborative and World View High School both say they will have “social justice” components and teach students how to use technology effectively and positively. The two schools will also offer Native Spanish Language Arts and Spanish classes. Bronx Collaborative says it plans to offer French in the future.

While Word View will have strict uniform requirements — white button-down collared shirts, ties, no jeans, slacks or skirts, black or brown shoes — Bronx Collaborative appears to be more casual. It doesn’t have uniform requirements, according to its bio in the DOE’s high school directory, and, if it’s like ICE, students may be calling teachers by their first names.

It’s unclear exactly how the new schools will affect Clinton’s programs and staffing next year, but it will be significant. Decreased enrollment will mean decreased staffing that won’t always be proportional. For example, although the school will lose less than 10 percent of its population next year, administrators said the counseling office will probably be cut in half, from 20 counselors to 10.

Editor’s Note: For more on Bronx Collaborative High School, visit bxchs.org. For more on World View High School, visit worldviewhs.org.

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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.