As Sam Freedman in the NY Times reported today in his column (posted on Norms Notes), Beach Channel, our local high school in Rockaway, has been disrupted by an influx of over-the counter students, many of them disruptive, gang members, in severe need of special services and other issues that can be used to close the school down. The closing of Far Rockaway, the other large high school in the area, in favor of small schools that do not have to take the most difficult students, has left them with few places to go. We made the same point when the closing of Tilden, Lafayette and South Shore in south Brooklyn were announced last year.
Leonie Haimson commented on her listserve:
Typical actions by DOE, diverting more “over the counter” students to Beach Channel HS, destabilizing the school and putting it on the impact list.
This was a school that was allocated over $1 million that it said would be used to reduce class size; and was expecting to lower class size, according to just-released DOE chart to lower class size to 27 from 29.5. Wonder if indeed that occurred, or if the additional students foiled those efforts.
SED took as a great advance, they told me, Tweed’s promise not to undermine any principal’s efforts to reduce class size by sending more OTC students.
Freedman wrote:
A certain cynicism [exists at the school] given the Education Department’s penchant for closing large high schools that can be depicted as failures. “I don’t know if the D.O.E. didn’t think about it,” [UFT Chapter Leader] Pecoraro... said about the effect of the involuntary transfers. “The worst thing is if they did think about it and they’re planning for the demise of Beach Channel.”
Bet on it Dave.
Ed Notes has discovered that in attempt to further the Tweed policy of promoting small schools while denigrating large high schools and closing them, BloomKlein will give cell phones and other incentives to the groups of students that can have the most impact on a school that can lead to its closing in the fastest possible time. Bloomberg is making a fleet of limos available to those students who cannot make it to school in the morning. The student winning team will be sent to Washington for a 2 week trial in disrupting Congress.
3 comments:
I wish. Or better yet , send them to sit next to Bloomberg and Klein when they are brainstorming on more ways to screw with us. Happy Thanksgiving Norm!
this is EXACTLY what happened at Columbus HS in the Bronx - the horrid overcrowding, leading to back-to-back sessions when freshmen students left school at 5:45 pm! now they are struggling to maintain a "medium size" school - on a "campus" model along with 4 "small" schools - and are getting slammed every year and threatened with closure...and most if not all of the great programs that used to exist when it was a "large" (functioning, not over-crowded) high school - such as the creative and performing arts, computers, business and technology, the ceramics studio, the dance studio, the film and television program, the co-op program, the dedicated music and art rooms, the auto shop, etc - are long gone gone gone (yet the Phys Ed/athletic programming and teams are doing well....hmmmm)
oh I forgot then Columbus wound up on the IMPACT list after the over-crowding...so there you are - the pattern is established.
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