NEW YORK — After months of community opposition, New York City Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels on Monday yanked controversial plans to open the city’s first artificial intelligence-focused high school and to overhaul three Upper West Side middle schools.

The proposals — to open Next Generation Technology High School in Lower Manhattan and to close, cut back the grades of, or relocate The Center School, Manhattan School for Children, and The Riverside School for Makers and Artists — were on the agenda for this month’s meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy on Wednesday.

In an email to the panel on Monday morning, just hours before the first of multiple protests against the plans was scheduled to kick off, Samuels said he was removing the proposals from consideration for now.

“Withdrawing these proposals is not an end to these important policy conversations that we will continue having in partnership with the community,” Samuels wrote in the memo, obtained by the New York Daily News.

The chancellor added that he was considering ways of strengthening parent and community engagement when opening, closing or reorganizing schools: “We want to consider the various perspectives on this matter, so that we can make meaningful changes.”

It was unclear if some of the proposals had the votes to clear the PEP, the majority of which was appointed by the former mayor, Eric Adams.

The chancellor’s reversal comes after Samuels last month withdrew a fifth proposal that would have closed Community Action School on the Upper West Side.

That proposal made national headlines and led to months of reckoning with racial bias after a Center School parent was caught on a hot mic during a remote school board meeting. The mom, a Hunter College professor, was overheard saying the students were “too dumb to know” they were “in a bad school” — while a young girl was speaking arguing to save the school.

The plan to reconfigure the four Upper West Side schools — set in motion by Samuels while he was a local superintendent there before his promotion to chancellor — was supposed to address enrollment declines in the district and give popular schools more classrooms to allow them to lower class sizes.

When the closure of Community Action School was taken off the agenda, families at the other three schools said their beloved programs should be given the same consideration.

“The DOE now has an opportunity to move forward in a way that restores confidence and helps begin to repair what has become a contentious situation,” said Councilwoman Gale Brewer, a Manhattan Democrat who represents the district. She pushed for a new building for the Center School.

Separately, the plan to open Next Generation Technology High School, which was scheduled to be voted on by the PEP at the same meeting, also stirred up controversy as a growing parent advocacy movement is calling on the Mamdani administration to pause the use of AI in the classroom.

Instead, some students and parents think the city should expand an existing middle school in the building where “Next Gen” was scheduled to open. But Lower Manhattan Community Middle School families and advocates said that proposal was not considered, with the city instead forging ahead with plans to open a selective high school that could screen out children during the admissions process.

While a win for the children and families at the impacted schools, the withdrawal of all proposals will likely pose challenges for the Mamdani administration, which is facing a dramatic structural budget gap and is under pressure to find savings by taking action on under-enrolled schools.

It will also disappoint hundreds of families who applied to Next Gen interested in technology-focused opportunities and rigorous high school options, according to advocates for the proposed school.

A spokeswoman for the public schools did not immediately return a request for comment.

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