Parents, Teachers at Ocean-Hill Brownsville's PS 150K Lied to by Tweed

Ed Notes first reported on the situation at PS 150 in Brooklyn's Ocean-Hill Brownsville on Jan 26, 2009 PS 150: The Real Game Behind Closing Schools

When the first parent meeting was held the DOE could not (and would not) answer their questions about the transition. All they said was we don't know. Parents were upset, but did not do anything immediately. The school - parents and teachers - were told that the "new school" was going to be a charter school with all that it implies. It was a small group of parents, but they found out their children will not automatically move from 150 to the new school. NOW they are angry and are planning some type of demonstration. (We will report the details in a follow-up post.)

The UFT will supposedly file a lawsuit today against the DOE based on the children being rezoned to other neighborhood schools illegally. (Of course, this is like shooting peas at Godzilla, but why not?)

The DOE is doing the same thing in Harlem by turning PS 241, the zoned school, over to Eva Moskowitz' Harlem Success and forcing the kids into the other neighboring schools. The local schools due to get the "rejects" (or the non-creamed) from the charter schools at both PS 150 and PS 241 are now upset and would join in some kind of action if there was an organizing force out there. Unfortunately .....

....the UFT is the gorilla in the room, but sits there eating bananas.

Law suits are not enough. The UFT should be organizing the parents and teachers at all the schools announced as being closed into a potent force. But we know the leadership really agrees with the policy of closing "failing" schools. Failing based on what? The DOE puts in a principal from the Leadership Academy who is a destroyer, not a builder and blames the teachers. We know the goal: replace as many public schools with charters as is feasible. Instead of a systematic approach to opposing this policy, the UFT opens its own charters schools and also looks to pick up pieces of the teacher training gravy train.

The Independent Community of Educators (ICE), despite being a tiny group, through its ASC-ICE Committee, has taken up the task of bringing people together from at least some of these schools to search for a means of resistance by holding a conference on March 28 at John Jay College.