School Closing Poison Pills: Jane Addams Under Attack and Columbus HS Doomed?

COME TO THE GEM CLOSING SCHOOLS MEETING TO START TO FIGHT BACK: OCT. 26

The school closing, reorganization, reconstitution, turn-around - whatever you want to call it - game is starting up early this year. Brian Lehrer had Beth Fertig and Gotham's Maura Walz and Anna Philips on this morning with their new joint project of following 3 schools for the year. They're calling it The Big Fix when it should be called "The Fix Is In". Just listen to what they has to say about Columbus HS which Anna is covering as the DOE starves it of resources and squeezes it to death like a Python's prey.

Or Inside Job if you want to see what the Ed Deform mentality did to the economy.

See the WNYC web site and leave comments.

This morning we heard from old pal Glenn Tepper at Jane Addams HS
 

Please forward:

Chancellor Klein and the rubber-stamping DoE deliberately force-fed Jane Addams a series of poison pills, over a period of several years, all with the intended outcome of causing the school to implode over time.  And now all the band-aids in the world can't stop the hemorrhaging.  All along, the plan was to destroy the school.

Right to the end, the DoE continues to get the name of the school wrong:  It's Jane Addams High School for Academics and Careers, not Jane Addams High School for Academic Careers (which makes no sense).  Although I brought this to the attention of several DoE honchos, over several years, the error has continued.  Why admit fallibility?  Why bother to fix something when the plan has been to cause the school's slow demise?

-Glenn

Friends,
From a teacher at Jane Addams HS where I worked from 1980-2007. The best and most compassionate teachers in the world taught at Jane Addams, for decades an oasis  in the infamous south Bronx, a school my colleagues and I truly loved.

The DOE is indeed going mad.
Dana Lehrman

Hello Dana,
They are coming after us...  The superintendent came to school on Thursday and Friday. The report below is what they plan for us.  They are blaming the teachers. . .  it is crazy. This week we are having both the quality review and people from the state to look at our school and decide what to do.  But, they pretty much have their minds made up.  They know that the parents won't speak up.  We only had 3 parents at the meeting.  It was supposed to be at 3pm and we had 6 parents.  But, the superintendent said she was told it was 5pm.  So the 3 of the parents left.  We are an easy school to close because parents aren't going to fight.

Anyway, please forward this information on to people who care because we need to speak out.
We need to be heard.

Thanks - a teacher at the school

FACTS? 
http://schools.nyc.gov/community/planning/changes/bronx/addams
 
If you look at the numbers - that despite the fact that we have 500 fewer students in the last 5 years. . . we have more special ed students.  We also now have more ELL learners with IEPs and about the same number of overage students.  In 2006 we had 19 kids in temporary housing, last year we had 105.  

http://schools.nyc.gov/documents/oaosi/cepdata/2009-10/cepdata_X650.pdf
http://schools.nyc.gov/documents/oaosi/cepdata/2008-09/cepdata_X650.pdf
http://schools.nyc.gov/documents/oaosi/cepdata/2007-08/cepdata_X650.pdf
 
They are comparing our results to a "peer group."  If you look at the demographics of the schools below it's crazy that they consider these schools equal to Jane Addams.  

One of the schools they are comparing us to is New World High School
http://schools.nyc.gov/documents/oaosi/cepdata/2009-10/cepdata_X513.pdf

Belmont Preparatory High School
http://schools.nyc.gov/documents/oaosi/cepdata/2009-10/cepdata_X434.pdf

Thd New Mareketplace report predicted what would happen as Bloomberg and Klein started shutting down schools.

http://www.newschool.edu/milano/nycaffairs/publications_schools_thenewmarketplace.aspx

GEM Focuses on Closing Schools

The Grassroots Education Movement is holding a meeting focused on the closing schools on Oct. 26.
Last year the UFT never tried to organize all the closing schools into a strong body of resistance but took each case individually, arguing that some schools should be closed no matter what poison pills were fed to the school.

That is the focus behind the meeting - to try to bring this year's target list together before the ax falls.
We are developing a fightback toolkit modeled on the toolkit developed last year to fight back against charter school co-locations.

We are flyering as many of these target schools as we can get too - yours was on our list.

GEM General Open Meeting on School Closings:
Tuesday, Oct. 26

**** please forward widely ****


School Closings
An Educational Solution or a Political Attack on Public Education?

Tuesday, October 26 4:30-7 pm
CUNY Graduate Center
34th and 5th Ave. Room 5414 (Bring ID)
Trains:  N, R, D, F, Q, B, W, V, 6, 1/2/3
Grassroots Education Movement
gemnyc@gmail.com
www.grassrootseducationmovement.blogspot.com

·            What is the impact of closing schools on students, parents and teachers?
·            How is closing schools being used to dismantle and undermine the public education system?
·            What is the effect of closing schools on our educational system?
·            Can schools under threat band together to fight back en masse?
·            How can GEM and others work within the UFT and schools to create an effective fightback movement?
·            Help put together a toolkit that schools can use to fight back. See a draft at the GEM blog.

President Obama has called for the closing down of 5000 supposedly failing schools nationwide. Here in NYC the Bloomberg/Klein administration has closed over 100 schools, with dozens more slated to get the ax. Smaller public schools or charters have replaced many. In both instances, there is some proof that through various means students with the most intense needs are not accepted with the same frequency as the traditional public schools.

School closings, reorganizations, reconstitutions, and "turn arounds" have become a mainstay of the so-called education reformers, code words used by edubusiness free marketeers. Are the educational needs of students the main consideration? Or, lurking in the background, is this merely a tactic to empty school buildings of tenured, unionized, and higher-cost more senior teachers, as well as the most at risk students, and to replace these schools with charter schools run by privatized interests with the right political connections?

What can schools in NYC do to fight back? The UFT has shown it can be a force in mobilizing thousands of people (PEP, Jan. 2010) and win the high ground, but has relied on a court case which was won based on narrow procedural grounds instead of the broader issue of whether closing down schools is sound educational policy. While the 19 schools were ordered kept open for one more year (Klein has made it clear he will attempt to close them this year) the DOE undermined attempts to recruit entering freshmen.  Meanwhile, the UFT and the DOE agreed to allow new schools to open in some of these buildings, thus further undermining them.

In Chicago, the actions of teachers, parents and students managed to reverse decisions to close six schools. Can an alliance between schools under attack be forged to create a strong response? Bring your experiences and ideas to a discussion with the Grassroots Education Movement (GEM).  Join with others in attempting to analyze what is behind the mania for closing down public schools and destabilizing education in low-income neighborhoods.