Graduating (former struggling) Student Voices Opinion on Beach Channel HS

Here are a series of comments left by chilenkon, a student who just graduated after what looks like years of struggle (note the change in point of view from blaming the school to taking some responsibility). BCHS is a school the DOE is trying to close but is part of the NAACP/UFT suit. I live in Rockaway Beach, a barrier penninsula that is not easily accessible. This is my local neighborhood school and its closing forces students to do a lot of traveling to mainland schools, putting the most at-risk, non-motivated students in a precarious situation. Stories like these are part of the underlying reasons for the law suit. I will be at the press conference today supporting the NAACP (New York City Parents and Community Stakeholders To Convene Press Conference Supporting NAACP Lawsuit).

chilenkon has made a comment on Beach Channel High School:

well, am a recent graduate at BCHS class of jan 2011....to tell u the truth i dnt think this school should be closing... i call this school a 2nd chance school, why?..because i should've been graduated in '08 from FRHS....in '08 i just began to start doing good at Far Rock and when i was 4 credits away from graduating from FR they slam the doors on me saying they cnt give me the classes i needed...

 believe it or not once they said that i though that i was gonna end up on the streets with no diploma, no shot on going to college, work on a low paid wage flipping burgers or w.e..... i been judging this school all my life thinking it was a bad school i always said that the teachers, guidance, and staffs are just like from FR....

.but i was wrong BCHS i believe the 2nd baddest school, welcomed me with open arms and helped me with what i was supposed to do.. in '10 i gave up on this school thinking i should take the easy step and went for my G.E.D. after all that i felt like i gave up 2 easy only being 4 credits away and BC didnt gave up on me....they still had all my info and i came back to the school..and wit having almost 20 staff members behind my back pushin me to get through, i have successfully graduated.......

hopefully the DOE or BOE see this comment, and see that this school does its best to have a better graduation % rate (it is upto the students if they want it or not)..its a great school.....like a quote i read ''dnt judge a book by its cover'' so i say....dnt judge BC from the outside or from what the papers say or the graduation % rate is, give it a chance like they gave me the chance to be successful


You can reply to this comment by visiting the comments page.

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The WAVE on Beach Channel HS, updated

Here are reports from Wave editor Howard Schwach in the Dec. 25 edition. It is worth putting the comments of BCHS student Chris Petrillo up first. He was scheduled to meet with Joel Klein on Weds. but reports came in that he was dissed. You can see Chris challenge Dist. 27 Supt, Michelle Lloyd-Bey at the Dec. 15 meeting here. Chris appears around 1:40 seconds into the video.


Truth from the mouth of a student

Chris Petrillo, who will be 18 shortly after the present school break, says that, for him and his fellow Voyager Learning Community students, the problems began with last year’s cuts to the school budget.

Petrillo, who has been in the learning community for all of his BCHS career, told The Wave on Monday that the program was really good for the first three years he was in it.

“We had 20 students in a class and a group of teachers assigned just to the learning community,” he said. “Each of the four learning communities were themed. We could zero in on one area – like Science – and we really got a good education.”

Then, at the end of his sophomore year, the DOE made massive budget cuts in the school, excessing 32 staff members.

A number of teachers who taught the learning communities were cut. Class sizes went to 35 from 20 and some classes were cut entirely.

“We now have learning communities in name only,” Petrillo, who is leading the student drive to keep the school open, said.

WAVE EDITORIAL

DOE’s Own Facts Don’t Support BCHS Closing

Towards the end of the 2008-2009 school year the Department of Education issued on its website a “Quality Review” for Beach Channel High School. That report was the final assessment by a team of “experts” who spent a few days in the school. That review rated the school as “Proficient,” clearly not the top rating possible, but not the bottom either. The Quality Review report commented on how the school had gone from “academic poverty” to proficiency, mostly by instituting four “learning communities,” each focused on a single theme and each taught by a discrete staff of caring educators. Shortly after the report was released, the DOE cut 32 staff members from the school’s budget – most of them young teachers in the learning community program. The cuts forced class size in those critical classes to 35 from 20 and took away many of the support personnel assigned to the program.

There are many students and staff members who believe that the school was set up to fail by a city agency that has other ideas for the building – a charter school owned by State Senator Malcolm Smith and backed by former Representative Floyd Flake, two of the most powerful politicians in the state. They may well be right. In the past few years, two new schools began drawing the more educationally motivated students – the brightest — from Beach Channel. The Channel View School for Research began a high school organization and the Scholars’ Academy, a gifted magnet middle school, began a high school as well.

That left only those who could not go elsewhere at Beach Channel. Of its 1,330 students, nearly one-third are special needs students – a very high number for any comprehensive high sch ool. In specifying why the school needed to be closed down, District 27 Superintendent Michelle Lloyd-Bay said that the school no longer served its students and that the parents were unhappy with the school as well. Yet the last school survey showed that 85 percent of those parents responding said that they were happy with the edu cation their student was getting at the school.

There is something not quite right about the closing of the only comprehensive high school on our isolated peninsula. Something needs to be done and it needs to be done before the Educational Priorities Panel [Panel for Educational Policy], beholden to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, makes its final decision on January 26. It is probably already a done deal, but once the vote is taken, it is written in stone. We can’t allow that to happen.

BCHS Quality Review: ‘Proficient’

By Howard Schwach

Shortly before the city’s Department of Education decided to phase out and close Beach Channel High School, the Rockaway Park school earned a “Proficient” rating on its 2008-2009 Quality Review,” records show.

Superintendent Michelle Lloyd-Bay and Ewel Napier from the DOE address the crowd early in the meeting that was held at the school last week. “Beach Channel is a large comprehensive high school that through leadership, vision and resource management skills of its principal is starting to emerge from a period of academic poverty,” the DOE’s own report says. “The road has been long and challenging but one which the entire staff appreciates, is beginning to reap the rewards for their endeavors and sustainability. The students respond by attending more regularly, participating more fully in the life of the school and leaving many of their personal issues at the gates of the building.”

A group of students wait to speak at last week’s meeting. A number of them challenged the superintendent about her contention that the school no longer addresses student needs and that parents have lost confidence in the school. The nine-page report, which calls the school “Proficient,” says that “much of this transition [from academic poverty to proficiency] is due to the formation of a number of small learning communities within the large school.”

“Establishing the school’s small learning communities is a major factor in raising attendance and in the development of a safe and secure environment for learning,” the Quality Review report says.

Yet, it is these very learning communities that the DOE “imploded” last year by cutting staff and increasing the number of students in each class, some of the school’s senior students charge.

Assemblywoman Audrey Pheffer, BCHS UFT chairperson Dave Pecoraro and student Chris Petrillo wait to speak to the DOE officials present at the meeting. Chris Petrillo, who will be 18 shortly after the present school break, says that, for him and his fellow Voyager Learning Community students, the problems began with last year’s cuts to the school budget.

Petrillo, who has been in the learning community for all of his BCHS career, told The Wave on Monday that the program was really good for the first three years he was in it.

“We had 20 students in a class and a group of teachers assigned just to the learning community,” he said. “Each of the four learning communities were themed. We could zero in on one area – like Science – and we really got a good education.”

Then, at the end of his sophomore year, the DOE made massive budget cuts in the school, excessing 32 staff members.

A number of teachers who taught the learning communities were cut. Class sizes went to 35 from 20 and some classes were cut entirely.

“We now have learning communities in name only,” Petrillo, who is leading the student drive to keep the school open, said.

Gerlisa Hills, 18, another senior in the same learning community agrees.

“All the good education ended,” she said. “The school did not have money for the number of teachers the program needed, and most of the teachers who left were from the learning communities. I have a stake in this building. My parents went here and my sisters. This is really going to impact the kids who want to come [to BCHS].”

“When the budget was cut, Beach Channel did not have enough money to sustain the small learning communities, which had been working so well,” Petrillo added. “The students lost the structured, nurturing environment that these communities provided.”

Opponents of the closing say that the school lost all of the better students to both the Channel View School for Research, which shares the same building with BCHS, and the Scholars’ Academy, the district’s gifted magnet school, which is right across the street.

The DOE website says that the school houses 1,330 students. Of those, 240 receive English as a Second Language services and 239 have In - dividual Education Plans denoting special education services. That means more than one-third of the students at the comprehensive high school have special needs.

The DOE held a public meeting to announce the closing and to address questions from the school community and local residents.

At that meeting, held at the school on December 15, District Superintendent Michelle Lloyd-Bay told the 125 participants that the school had to close because it was no longer serving its students.

Lloyd-Bay told the meeting, “We are only messengers here. This is done, and the question is, how do we move forward?”

“The statistics show that this school is no longer equipped to help students move ahead,” she added. “The parents have expressed their dissatisfaction and it is time to phase out and close the school.”

Yet, according to the results of the last school survey, completed in the 2008-2009 school year, statistics on the DOE’s own website show that, while less than half of the parents completed the survey, of those who responded, 81 percent of the parents said that they were “happy” with the education their children were getting at BCHS.

In addition, 83 percent of those parents who responded said that they had an adequate opportunity to be involved in their child’s educational experience.

Why then, if the parents are not unhappy with the school and it re - ceived a “proficient” rating, is the school being closed?

Lloyd-Bay, who is not responsible for the district’s high school, but was the only local school official present at the last meeting, did not return calls for clarification.

It seems, however, that the DOE is sending a mixed message by closing a school that the agency itself says is improving.

One of the areas in which the school is doing well, the Quality review says, is working with fewer teachers and less money.

“The school’s use of a diminishing array of resources does not affect student learning,” the report says.

The Education Priorities Panel [Panel for Educational Policy], which has to vote on January 26 whether or not to phase out and close the school, will host a community meeting in the school auditorium at 6 p.m. on January 6.

At that meeting, three commissioners will hear community comments, but there will be no questions allowed.

The Utter Farce of the Beach Channel HS Closing (and the other 19 schools) Part 1

This column for The Wave was submitted today but was delayed until the Jan 1 edition. It may need some updating by then depending on reports of the meeting between Beach Channel student Chris Petrillo who was supposed to meet with Klein and possibly Bloomberg today. I spoke to Chris yesterday and he said he would defend his school from being closed. (You can see Chris on tape from the Dec. 15 meeting here.)

by Norman Scott

It's been a busy two weeks and my blog has been humming with activity since so many school closings were announced by Tweed. With the holidays coming, I'll keep this report shorter than usual and urge those who want more in depth coverage to read Howie Schwach's reports and check out my blog.

I videotaped much of the meeting held at Beach Channel on Dec. 15. The star of the meeting was student Chris Petrillo who challenged Michelle Lloyd-Bey, the DOE hit woman sent in to lead the sheep to slaughter. "Were we set up to fail," Chris asked, pointing to the placement of Scholars Academy and Channel View to drain away the better performing students? "Why are you closing us? Why not just fix us?"

Lloyd-Bey's pathetic response to Chris was, "Yes you should have been fixed. But for whatever reason it didn't happen." Sure. "For whatever reason" was the best she could do. Lloyd-Bey said she was not the superintendent for high schools and the current superintendent just became superintendent of District 20 and a new person was coming in as Tweed moves deck chairs on a ship sinking faster than the Titanic. The outrage of closing so many of the schools may prove to be Tweed's iceberg. (And do not forget the creation of so many teachers without positions who still have to be paid, known as the ATR conundrum. Some see the massive school closings as a political move to create pressure on the UFT to give up the ATRs, but I will follow up with more on this on the blog.)

Chris made such an impression that as we went to deadline he was supposed to meet with Joel Klein and possibly Bloomberg on the afternoon of Dec. 23. We hope to get some reports for the next column in two weeks. We are efforting to get Chris together with student leaders at Jamaica HS and Maxwell HS to build a united front of students defending their schools. (A recent student led demo against the rescinding of free MTA cards may be a precursor.) If a student activist network grows, this will be more than an iceberg for Tweed. Think "fast moving glacier."

Lloyd-Bey spent the entire meeting absolving herself and the DOE of responsibility and having almost no answers for Chris or the other speakers. "Why didn't they send someone who actually know something," people incredulously repeated over and over? Lloyd-Bey has been a major fixture in District 27 and Rockaway schools for a long time and played a role in the closing of Far Rockaway High School, one of the reasons for the influx of so many students that led to the destabilization of Beach Channel. Lloyd-Bey (one day we'll explore more of her history) is a typical Kool-aid-drinking agent of Tweed who only talks about one-way accountability in blaming the schools and teachers. She and another Tweedie repeatedly stated that only 50% of the teachers had the "right" to apply for jobs at the new schools if they were "qualified." Howie Schwach asked how they could not be qualified if they are already teaching at BCHS?

By the way, the one thing that Lloyd-Bey said at the meeting that was completely true was in responding to a teacher who questioned why teachers had to look for new jobs with this rejoinder: "It is in your contract." BCHS Unity Caucus Chapter Leader Dave Pecoraro, who is known as a good CL was standing on line at the time waiting to speak as I gave him the high sign because he supported the 2005 contract.

Clearly Lloyd-Bey agreed with the decision to close Beach Channel and said so openly. When I raised questions as to whether BCHS was given the resources to succeed, she recited the usual litany of options that have not worked at other schools and pretty much said, "Ask your administration where those resources went," in effect throwing the principal under the bus.

It was pointed out repeatedly that one of the options Tweed has before closing a school is leadership change, something they no longer seem to be opting for since almost all principals working today have come under the BloomKlein era and would entail an admission of failure. Another of Tweed's icebergs. Is the DOE so devoid of leaders that this option is not to be considered? It is interesting that BC's principal Dr. David Morris remained out of the auditorium for most of the meeting. "The apathy and inaction since the announcement by Dr. Morris speaks volumes," said a commenter on my blog. Morris must have been promised a safe haven if he doesn't lead a battle to keep the school open (there do not seem to be ATR principals). Contrast his actions to the principal of Columbus HS in the Bronx who led her school's teachers, parents and students at the PEP meeting two days later to stand up for her school. The principals of Jamaica HS and Maxwell are also encouraging teachers and students and parents to fight to keep their schools open.

Under the new governance law passed this summer, all school closings must be voted on at a Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) meeting. Tweed ran into another iceberg by scheduling all 20 closings and lots of other business for the Jan. 26 meeting which was scheduled to be held in Staten Island. Manhattan PEP member Patrick Sullivan requested a change in venue as outrage poured out at this farce and Tweed backed away and moved the meeting to Brooklyn Tech HS.

Three politicians, Lew Simon, Erich Ulrich and Audrey Pfeiffer made strong statements at the Dec. 15 BCHS meeting. But they are just words without action. The entire control of the school system has been handed over to madmen and women by the politicians and making nice at a public meeting does nothing to change things. Ulrich did take some follow-up action with a petition that expressed his outrage at not being informed by Tweed of the closing of a major school in his district. But will he make a strong stand to save Beach Channel? As a Bloomberg supporter don't bet on it.

Oh, were you wondering where our own PEP rep from Queens stands on the closing of large Queens schools like Beach Channel HS and Jamaica HS? There is talk about putting pressure on the Queens PEP member Dmytro Fedkowskyj. We'll see how he votes on Jan. 26. He is clearly a puppet of Borough President Helen Marshall, who in a sea of suck-up to Bloomberg borough presidents (excluding Scott Stringer who appointed Patrick Sullivan) leads the pack. She even has less respect than Brooklyn Bloomberg lackey Marty Markowitz. If Fedkowskyi goes along and votes to close schools in his constituency he should be called on to resign and we can only hope thousands of students from Beach Channel and Jamaica HS show up at Helen Marshall's door. The next meeting at Beach Channel will be on Jan. 6. (To be continued.)

See my blog for video of the Beach Channel meeting and reports of the raucous December PEP meeting held so far up in the north Bronx I thought I was in Canada. They really need to hold a PEP meeting in Alaska where Joel Klein can declare: "I can see data from here!"

The Wave's Howard Schwach on Beach Channel High School Closing: What Isn't The DOE Telling Us?

Howie gave me permission to publish these 2 pieces he wrote on Beach Channel HS due to its immediacy (WAVE articles on the web are embargoed for 2 weeks). First is his commentary followed by his report on the informational meeting held at Beach Channel on Dec. 15. There were stories out yesterday that local Republican recently elected Erich Ulrich is outraged at not being notified by the Tweed death squads that a major high school was being closed in his district. Sources are talking about putting pressure on the Queens PEP member Dmytro Fedkowskyj but he is just a tool of horrendous Queens borough president Helen Marshall. One day we can only hope thousands of students from Beach Channel and Jamaica HS show up at her door.

Here are links to my reports on the meeting with video attached. (I have more video which got sidetracked by my working on the PEP meeting vids.)

Tweed's Shameful Performance at Beach Channel High...

Note the video of the senior at Beach Channel named Chris confronting Michelle Lloyd-Bey, the DOE flunky assigned to put a public face on the death squad. Rumor has it that Chris and Joel Klein somehow made contact and Chris supposedly has a meeting with Klein lined up where Chris will argue the case to save his school. And Chris is a senior who will not be affected by the closing.

Beach Channel Meeting Video #2
In this video Schwach and I confront Lloyd-Bey, who denies she played any role in the influx of kids from Far Rockaway HS but in fact played a major role in the closing of Far Rock which was the exact cause of the influx of kids to Beach Channel. Have these people no shame? Guess not.

The Rockaway Beat

Beach Channel High School Closing: What Isn't The DOE Telling Us?

Commentary By Howard Schwach

Beach Channel Drive High School So, the Department of Education has announced the phase-out and closing of Beach Channel High School, something that I have been predicting for months.

The DOE went a long way in destroy ing Beach Channel High School by placing two competing programs in Rockaway, one that drew all of the high level students and the other that took the rest of those who could read and write.

If you do not believe that the Scholars' Academy, with its own high school, right across Beach Channel Drive from BCHS drew some of the top students that might have attended BCHS and that the high school unit of the Channel View School for Research drew the rest of the motivated students, just talk to some parents.

What BCHS was left with were all the students who could not get into those two schools.

I spoke with Deputy Chancellor John White last week, shortly after the announcement was made, and he told me that there will be a new school in the BCHS building next year to share the facility with the Channel View School for Research.

That school, he says, will be designated as 27Q324, housing 432 students in grades 9 to 12.

He also said that the school would not have an "admission screen," meaning that it will take any student who wants to attend.

That begs the question: If the students are going to be the same, what sense does it make to close the school in the first place?

If the Far Rockaway High School closing is any example of the way it will play out, then many of the students who would have been slated for Beach Channel High School will wind up instead at mainland schools such as John Adams. There is no place else to go because, for the first time in more than 120 years, there will not be a comprehensive high school on the peninsula.

White was right when he said that the change will be good for the security of the neighborhood and for the community in general.

The questions that need to be asked are, will it be good for Rockaway's students, those who can't earn their way in to the new schools; and, will it be good for the mainland schools where the Rockaway kids finally wind up?

First of all, I believe that White was being disingenuous in his answer to my question about whether or not the new school would be for all Rockaway students.

Perhaps I'm being too tough on him. Perhaps he is being lied to by his bosses just as we are.

In any case, I believe that the new school at BCHS will turn out to be a charter school hosted by State Senator Malcolm Smith, and will quickly become the high school equivalent of his Peninsula Preparatory Academy that now runs in some trailers in Arverne By The Sea.

Call me skeptical, but I see it coming. It's almost as if the DOE set out to destabilize the school so that Smith could eventually have it as his own.

After the announcement of the phase-out of Far Rockaway High School in 2007, many of the thugs who could not find places in the new, small schools at the Far Rockaway Edu ca - tional Campus were sent in stead to Beach Channel High School, completely destabilizing that school.

We've written about this previously.

From The Wave edition of November 30, 2007.

The opening months at Beach Channel High School were marred this year by a spate of disruptive incidents, including drug possession, weapons possession, fighting, insubordination to school security agents and staff, and even an attack on the school's dean. Most of these incidents were perpetrated by students who were transferred to the Rockaway Park school from Far Rockaway High School, officials and school staff say.

In all, sources say, more than 50 students who are zoned to attend Far Rockaway High School because they live nearby showed up at Beach Channel High School in September with transfers in hand.

A Beach Channel High School staff member, who asked not to be identified because he had no permission to speak with the press, said that many of the transfers were problem students.

"Some of them had criminal records, some had been suspended for fighting and for theft," the source said. "Others were gang members in their home neighborhoods and were at war with the gang members at Beach Channel [High School] even before they got here."

The source told The Wave that two administrators at the school outlined the problems caused by the newcomers in a memo that was sent to Department of Education officials.

While this newspaper was denied access to the memo by DOE officials, a source at the school said that the memo detailed the problems caused by the transfers, including the 50 who came from Far Rockaway High School. In addition, 16 other transfers came to BCHS from alternative programs, including some who had been incarcerated. Eleven came from full-day special education programs, including the hospital day school program.

"[The transferred students] caused lots of mayhem in the building for the first few months," the source said. "From the beginning of September

until mid-October, more than 25 of those students were involved in disciplinary actions, some of them very severe. They were a real problem."

Last month, the DOE placed BCHS on its list of "Impact Schools," those that require special attention and more school security resources.

That designation came after an incident where a Far Rockaway High School student got into the building and joined transfers from that school in beating another student in the cafeteria. And, while the DOE admits that there were many problematic transfers to Beach Channel High School, a spokesperson said that the school was not being singled out in any way.

"Beach Channel has not been singled out as a dumping ground for troubled students," deputy press secretary Andrew Jacob told New York Times columnist Samuel Freedman. "I don't see how anyone can make the argument that one school is being favored or disfavored over any other."

He said that many of the Far Rockaway students were sent to Beach Channel simply because that school had open seats and is close to Far Rockaway.

"There is nothing out of the ordinary about the process of getting their transfers," he added. Any large high school in the city is going to be dealing with students from a wide variety of backgrounds."

Will this progression of closing schools and reopening them for a small percentage of the original student body, sending the "unwanted" elsewhere and proclaiming victory continue with the Beach Channel closing?

Will the "other school" at BCHS turn out to be a charter run by a politicallyconnected local such as Mal Smith or Floyd Flake, as we have perdicted?

Only time will tell.

Lots Of Angry Questions; Few Answers At BCHS Meeting

By Howard Schwach

City Councilman Eric Ulrich speaks at the BCHS meeting on Tuesday night while Assemblywoman Audrey Pheffer and UFT Chapter Chairperson David Pecoraro await their turns. District 27 Superintendent Michelle Lloyd-Bay looked like a hockey goalie unable to stop the slap shots coming at her hot and heavy in the Beach Channel High School auditorium on Tuesday night.

A question about where the majority of students would go after the school was phased out and closed.

"I can't answer that question," Lloyd- Bay said.

A question about where teachers would find new jobs and whether or not they would be fired should they not find a new position in a year.

"I don't have that information," Lloyd-Bay said.

A question about why the school did not receive the support it needed to stay afloat, support that has already been promised for the new school that will take the place of BCHS.

"I wasn't involved, and I really can't answer that question," she said.

About 125 parents, students, school alumni and staff gathered in the auditorium on Tuesday night to find answers as to why their school was being closed and what would happen next.

Department of Education representative Ewel Napier speaks as District 27 Superintendent Michelle Lloyd-Bay backs him up. Because the district's high school superintendent was "attending another meeting just like this one elsewhere," Lloyd-Bay, who is the superintendent for elementary and middle schools, was thrown into the breach. As the questions got angrier and her answers more evasive, the meeting turned into a shouting match.

Ewel Napier, the DOE's deputy borough director for the Office of Family Engagement and Advocacy, began to read a list of a dozen bullet points about what students and parents should do under the phase-out and closing plan.

Although the plan still has to be voted on in a January 26 meeting in Staten Island, both he and Lloyd-Bay acted and spoke as if it were a done deal.

The school's UFT chairman, Dave Pecoraro, however, says that the city agency is in for a fight.

"More than 2,000 years ago, the Maccabees revolted with a much smaller army and against a greater foe than we face," Pecoraro said. "As long as we are above ground, we have a fighting chance."

Parents and alumni wait to speak. "The new school slated for this building will seat only 125 kids. We have double that coming in each year. Where will the other kids go?" he asked.

Denise Sheridan, a mother of a special needs student at the school, said that her daughter was getting a good education at the school and that she feared that would change during the phase-out period.

"The city is setting our kids up for failure," she told The Wave outside the auditorium. "I have no idea where my kid will get her services, because I am sure the new school will not take special needs students."

Dr. Davis Morris, the school's principal, was also standing outside the auditorium, as if he were not invited to the meeting.

He declined to comment on the meeting or on the closing of his school.

"We are all soldiers here," Morris said. "We all follow orders."

Parent Denise Sheridan speaks to officials as Democratic District Leader Lew Simon waits. Lloyd-Bay added to that when she told the meeting, "We are only messengers here. This is done, and the question is, how do we move forward?"

"The statistics show that this school is no longer equipped to help students move ahead," she added. "The parents have expressed their dissatisfaction and it is time to phase out and close the school."

Maria Camacho, the personnel liaison for the citywide operations center, angered many in the crowd when she said that teachers at the school would have to reapply for their jobs and that only 50 percent of them could be hired for the new school, the others being forced to move into the "open market system."

"Those teachers who are qualified for the new school can be rehired," she said.

When an ex-teacher said that he was confused, because all of the teachers presently in the school had to be qualified to hold their jobs, she answered that the new principal and a panel of others would have to decide whether the teachers were qualified for that school, which brought catcalls and angry shouts.

Special needs teacher Patti Holloran asks where her students will go as other students wait to speak. Where would those teachers who were deemed not qualified find jobs?

Camacho shrugged and said, "They would have to go elsewhere or become district teacher reserves [teachers without jobs who fill in as subs.]"

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announc - ed last week that he is moving to fire all DTRs who have not found a permanent job in one year.

In many cases, however, the excessed teachers are more costly than new teachers, and principals are quicker to hire the cheaper teachers, experts say.

A number of angry parents stood in line to take the microphone to charge that DOE officials set up the school for failure by sending students from the closed Far Rockaway High School who destabilized the school and then by diverting much-needed resources to both the Scholars' Academy and the Channel View School for Research, a school that shares the building with BCHS.

City Councilman Eric Ulrich was angered because no advance notice of the closing was sent to his office and because no plans were apparent for those students who would not be admitted to the new school, which will open next September.

"If they can't get into the new program, there is no place in Rockaway for them to go," Ulrich said. "If they can't get a free bus pass and can't afford public transportation off the peninsula each day, where are they going to go?"

Assemblywoman Audrey Pheffer was also angered.

"You had a responsibility to have somebody here tonight who can answer these questions," she said. "People came here to find the answers to their concerns and all they get is 'I can't answer that, and the person who can is not here.' "

Democratic District Leader Lew Simon also challenged Lloyd-Bay.

"You force our kids to go off the peninsula for school, then you take away their bus passes and add a toll on the bridge. You have laid-off parents and single parents who can't afford that. Somebody has lost their mind," he said.

There will be another meeting at the school on January 6 at 6 p.m., Napier said. Three members of the city's educational panel will be present and locals can make statements, but no questions will be allowed.

The Educational Priorities Panel will meet on January 26 in Staten Island for a final vote on the closing.

Locals are petitioning the board to move that meeting to a more central location for Rockaway residents.

"It's another example of the way the DOE treats us," a parent said. "There are no schools being closed in Staten Island, and that's where they chose to hold their meeting."

Pecoraro was more sanguine.

"I didn't know that there was a blizzard coming, but this meeting was a real snow job," he said. "Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow."

Beach Channel Meeting Video #2

Wave editor and former teacher Howard Schwach and Ed Notes' editor and Wave education columnist Norm Scott raise questions about what happens to teachers and students when the school is closed and why the responsibility only falls on the shoulders of the school.

I won't comment much as the video speaks for itself. Note who the UFT contract states - a contract agreed to and forced down our throats by the UFT leadership – that 50% of the teachers have the RIGHT TO APPLY and IF QUALIFIED will be considered. Shameful. Who are the mismanagers? the DOE or the UFT? Howie, who taught for over 30 years and is a great ally for teachers to have in running an influential newspaper, raises points about where kids and teachers will go asks, "If they are not qualified how could they be teaching?"

By the way, the Lloyd-Bey who responds to me played a major role in the closing of Far Rockaway HS, so her claim she had no part in what kids ended up at Beach Channel is false. In addition, she talks about responsibility to the kids who don't graduate, but what about responsibility to the 50% who do graduate?

(I have an hour of tape but you tube only allows 10 minute segments.)



Note: Video quality has been reduced to shorten loading time.

Tweed's Shameful Performance at Beach Channel High School Closing Meeting

There is so much to say about the meeting last night where Tweed sent people who had few answers to parents, teachers and students. I was there with Howie Schwach, editor of The Wave (#10 in NY Magazine's Reasons to Love Living in NYC) to cover and have about an hour of tape. Here are 3 students. Chris wants answers and asks "why didn't you fix us?" Ingrid says there will be more dropouts if they close the school, especially with the loss of free transit for students. Another student wants to know why the PEP meeting to decide the fate of the school will be held in Staten Island. Oh, the hypocrisy. Michelle Lloyd-Bey who played a big role in closing down Far Rockaway is all about data and stats. Clearly, human issues don't count, but she talks about the "concern" for the students.

I have some good stuff from politicians and teachers and Howie and I. More over the next few days.

Behind the Beach Channel High School Closing

Did the Closing of Far Rockaway HS Turn Beach Channel Into the Next Target?
by Norman Scott

The recently announced closing of nine public schools, including Beach Channel, the only comprehensive high school in Rockaway, has raised questions as to whether school closings are part of an attempt to engineer space in public schools for pet charter school projects by financial and political supporters of Mayor Bloomberg.

Charges have been made that school closings are based on artificially manipulated educational factors and statistics in order to satisfy a politically motivated agenda to create a semi-privatized system using public funding. The focus has been on the privately managed charter schools which hunger for space in public school buildings. Are these school closings just real estate grabs for people connected to the Bloomberg administration? The decision to close Beach Channel is being examined by some in the context of the charter school interests of current and former Rockaway politicians like State Senate leader Malcolm Smith and former Congressman Floyd Flake. Smith is a founder and on the Board of Peninsula Prep Charter School, which is viewed as a potential occupant of a vacated Beach Channel building and Flake has been a long-time backer of charter schools.

Was Beach Channel "set up" for closure by the NYDOE? When the Gotham Schools blog announced the closing of Beach Channel High School this week it made this reference:

Beach Channel received attention in 2007 after students and teachers complained about a destabilizing influx of students who had not chosen to attend the school but were placed there. Those students included many who would have been zoned for Far Rockaway High School, a large school nearby that has since begun to phase out.

Beach Channel received this attention in Samuel Freedman's education column in the NY Times on Nov. 7, 2007 which was titled: A High School Struggles With Surprise Students. [The column is now defunct, with some charging its demise was due to his exposure of many of the flaws in the Bloomberg/Klein education agenda.]

Freedman described Beach Channel as a

"school [that] has been destabilized...by an unannounced influx of students from outside its attendance boundaries. Some arrived with histories of disciplinary problems or even criminal activity, school records show, while others had been in full-day special education programs. Others brought volatile gang allegiances from their home neighborhoods, according to school personnel. And in no case did Beach Channel receive advance warning...
[A] detailed memo written by two...assistant principals paints a vivid picture of an improving school rattled by the violent or criminal behavior of several dozen students that the memo says were foisted on Beach Channel...
....the department [of education] does not dispute that in the first month and a half of the [2007] academic year at Beach Channel, as the memo describes, there was a spike in disruptive incidents: drug possession, weapons possession, fighting, insubordination to school safety officers and an attack on a dean. The memo lays the responsibility for many of these episodes on the newly enrolled students. The net result, the memo said, was a 'crisis situation.'"

The Beach Channel closing was announced amidst a flurry of other large high schools closings. The fazing out of Jamaica HS and Maxwell Vocational School in East NY in Brooklyn has raised a stir. Maxwell has suffered some of the same issues Beach Channel has faced since nearby schools like Jefferson and Lane were closed and other area schools like South Shore and Canarsie are being fazed out. Small public and charter schools that add one grade at a time cannot absorb the influx of students from fazed out schools, in particular the students in special ed and ELL's (English Language Learners). As we went to deadline, a rally at Maxwell was to take place on the afternoon of Dec. 9, with teachers from schools around the city who are seeing a future of mass school closings and teachers being forced into becoming Absentee Teacher Reserves (ATRs) after their schools closed expected to attend.

Schools on the chopping block, theoretically, will have their day in court. Proposed school closures must now be given public hearings and approved by the Panel for Educational Policy [PEP], the current school board, which has functioned as a rubber stamp, since the new school governance law was passed during the summer. The PEP, however, has never rejected a DOE policy proposal. The January 26, 2010 PEP meeting at which many closings will be discussed will be held in Staten Island which has had no schools closed in this round of closings. Activists from some of the schools to be closed are trying to organize as many people to attend as they can.

The DOE's Educational Impact Statement announcing Beach Channel's closing stated that "Approximately 1,345 high school seats will be eliminated by the phase-out of Beach Channel. However, the majority of those seats will be recovered with the phase-in of new schools throughout the City." Note it does not say they will be recovered in Rockaway. Certainly not at Channel View serving grades 6-12, also occupying space at Beach Channel. Channel View's enrollment for 2010-11 is capped at 600 and will not have to suffer the same problems Beach Channel went through when Far Rockaway was closed.

With Rockaway being so isolated geographically, the closing of the only large comprehensive high school on the peninsula will have a major impact on students: those remaining at the soon to be closed school, those not accepted into the new small schools and the schools they do end up at. Schools targeted for closing suffer enormous deterioration as morale suffers from a sense of moving deck chairs on a death ship. The nearest large high school is John Adams in Ozone Park, which may end up being overloaded and destabilized by the Beach Channel influx. That a local school like Channel View is capped and John Adams will be forced to accept the Rockaway kids is one of the fault lines in the Bloomberg/Klein program.

One of the consequences of the national educational reform agenda that Bloomberg and Klein have signed onto has been the death of many locally zoned neighborhood high schools, which are seen as obstacles to their plans. The closing of Beach Channel is one more domino to fall in a process that will leave few large high schools left standing.

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Leonie Haimson a parent activist who heads Class Size Matters commented on the Beach Channel Educational Impact Statement, which can be downloaded at http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/BB6C514A-6B19-4FAA-B808-C407D693A972/73431/27Q410_BeachChannel_EIS1207091.pdf, commented:

"This is the worst EIS I have ever seen. These people clearly [at Tweed] don’t have any idea on how to run a school system; or maybe they just don’t care. Approximately 1,345 high school seats will be eliminated by the phase-out of Beach Channel. However, the majority of those seats will be recovered with the phase-in of new schools throughout the City……[where are these new seats? They do not say. The vast majority of HS are already hugely overcrowded.]

All current grades 9-12 students at Beach Channel will have the opportunity to graduate from the school, assuming they continue to earn credits on schedule. Current Beach Channel students enrolled in grade 9 for the first time will have the opportunity to participate in the citywide high schools admissions process so that they can begin in a different school for grade 10 in September 2010 (pending satisfactory completion of promotion criteria and grade 10 seat availability). Current Beach Channel grade 10 students and students who are repeating grade 9 are encouraged to meet with their guidance counselors to explore their options for the 2010-2011 school year.

Now according to the DOE many 9th graders aren’t accumulating enough credits; this is one of the reasons they have decided to close the school. What happens to them? God knows. Surely the discharge rate will go sky high at this school. The DOE is hoping no one will notice.

The city’s bullet-pointed reasoning behind the closure, taken from an e-mail sent to reporters by DOE spokesman William Havemann, is below:

Phase-out of Beach Channel High School (27Q410)

The Department of Education is proposing the phase-out of Beach Channel High School, a high school in Queens that currently serves students in grades 9-12. Under this proposal, the school would stop accepting new ninth grade classes starting in September 2010.
The graduation rate at Beach Channel has consistently remained below 50%:
In 2007-08, the graduation rate was 46.1%.
In 2008-09, the graduation rate was 46.9%.
Credit accumulation rates are also low:
In 2007-08, only 52.1% of first-year students accumulated 10 or more credits.
In 2008-09, that figure fell to 50.8%
Demand for the school is low and declining:
In 2008-09 1,522 students enrolled in the school.
In 2009-10 this number fell to 1,345.
Beach Channel received a C on the 2006-07 Progress Report, a C on the 2007-08 Progress Report, and a D on the 2008-09 Progress Report, including an F in the Progress and Environment sub-sections and a D in the Performance sub-section.
Parents, teachers, and students expressed widespread dissatisfaction with the school on the 2009 Learning Environment Survey:
Only 59% of students believe that their teachers inspire them to learn, and only 56% of students feel safe at school.
Only 56% of teachers believe that order and discipline are maintained at the school.
Only 68% of parents believe their child is safe at school.

Beach Channel and New York's future

11/23/07

Colleagues and friends:

As we've been reporting in Substance for more than five years, the Beach Channel plan is typical of the way in which the general (i.e., community based) high schools are sabotaged under mayoral control.

As the dictatorship creates more and more "choice" schools (selective enrollment, charters, whatever they are called), more and more of the "leftover" kids are channeled into the remaining general high schools. Then, because of "standards and accountability", the administration can prove that these schools are "failing" (and probably "persistently dangerous") to justify closing or flipping them (to charters or other privatization schemes).

In Chicago, this is the pattern that has been followed for more than a decade, with the ugliest examples coming forward within the past five years, since Arne Duncan began closing schools for "failure" in 2002 and converting them into something or other else.

So far, five general high schools in Chicago (all of them all-black) have received this treatment, and most of their space has now been taken away from their communities and handed over to the privatizers.

Collins High School (1313 S. Sacramento, West Side, North Lawndale) is now "Lawndale College Prep Charter High School."

Austin High School (231 N. Pine St., West Side, Austin community) now houses Chicago's "entrepreneurship small charter high school" (American Quality Schools); a thingy called the "Austin Polytechnic" (another choice school, but run by a group of "progressives"), and (soon) another small selective school.

Calumet High School (8010 S. May, South Side) is now "Perspectives Charter High School" completely exclusive (admission requirement; they can kick you out if your fail to follow your performance contract; etc.)

Englewood High School is graduating its last public kids in June 2008, while "Urban Prep" (a much hyped all-boys charter school, uniforms and all that) and "Team Englewood" (a different kind of something or other) are taking over the building where, among others, Lorraine Hansberry went to school.

If people are not organizing and publicizing these acts of sabotage as they occur, and challenging them when the next stage of privatization takes place, you will lose as completely as Chicago did. You are probably in a better position because your union leadership may be venal, but at least they are not dumb (as most of Chicago's are), because you still have competitive newspapers (and some other media) and because they haven't destroyed your infrastructure of union and community activists at the local school level.

Every day, I heard from someone at a general high school that's being sabotaged by corporate "school reform" in Chicago. And every one of those people is so frightened ("Look what they did to you..." is often part of the mantra, referencing the fact that they got away with firing me and blacklisting me from public high school school teaching, Chicago and suburbs) that he or she will not be quoted on the record.

Ultimately, "BloomKlein" will micromanage its media spin, right down to going after every individual who is quoted against their programs, whether at Beach Channel or elsewhere. I suspect that the principal and the UFT chapter leader at Beach Channel have already been warned in some fashion. By documenting and exposing every instance of that kind of stuff as it happens, you may be able to avoid the fate Chicago's general high schools have been suffering.

Otherwise, the script for your future has already been written here, and that story on Beach Channel is a prophecy of what the future holds for dozens of high schools that will be "stuck" with the "leftover" kids until the BloomKlein propaganda machine discovers (like that famous scene out of "Casablanca") that there is "failure here."

Well what did you expect, M______ when you sabotaged us for the last five years? Rhodes scholars and Mother Theresa?

George N. Schmidt
Editor, Substance

www.substancenews.net