Defend Your School

I just got a call from a former teacher at my school who I haven't heard from for a long time. She and her husband, also a former teacher at my school turned fireman, were at dinner with an old friend who teaches at Gompers HS in the Bronx. He told them that the DOE Death Squad came to his school to tell them the news they were about to die as a school. He was beyond outrage. "I'm not going down without a fight," he said. "We have no one to talk to about this." I have just the people for you," she said. I'm about to call him.


Join the fightback with other schools

Come to the GEM meeting tomorrow - Monday, Dec. 14 at 4:30PM at CUNY, 34th st and 5th ave. rm 5414

Also - attend the Norman Thomas rally on Thursday, Dec. 17, starting at 4pm. 33rd st and Park Ave. If you are in a closing school or one to be closed in the future (many more of you than you think). Click on pic to read email for a pdf.

Support the joint TJC/ICE/GEM resolution on school closings at the DA this Wed.


The UFT and School Closings

This just came in from a chapter leader at one of the few large high schools left:

Will we see Michael Mulgrew and other big UFT Brass there at the Norman Thomas demos, or any other demos at other closing schools? The CL Update in mentioning closing schools but fails to say what UFT central will do. It said Mulgrew offers the UFT's “full support”. Can anyone tell us what that means? Why not setup the fax blitz like they did for school budget cuts? We could hit the City Council and state legislators for a start. In our contract with the DoE in PAGE ONE it states: "…the Union and the Board mutually agree to join together with other partners in the redesign and improvement of our schools, INCLUDING CLOSING those that have failed and supporting their restructuring." How long has that been in there? Why have it in there? I know NCLB and SURR have their requirements, but why should we have that in there knowing full well the DoE closes schools not on the SURR list or required under NCLB. Maybe the new contract should stipulate that such schools cannot be closed/reorganized without the consent of the UFT. Fat chance.


The UFT policy of school defense is to treat each school individually and not to bring schools together city wide and fight en masse. While the individual struggles to organize staff, students, parents, alumni and community forces is crucial, without taking things to the next step by bringing it all together, this is a losing strategy that might lead to win a few battles, but lose the war.

Note how UFT shills like Peter Goodman tosses out the same UFT line in a piece called How to Fight Your School Closing: A Carefully Constructed, Interactive Grassroots Campaign Can/May Save Your School where he doesn't mention one thing the UFT could do to save your school. In other words, it's all on your backs. How typical. Goodman in another recent piece talked about failed leadership in this piece Piscis Feteo ex Caput: Failing Schools Are Caused By Failed Leadership at the Highest Levels, Deflecting Responsibility to Principals and Teachers is Cowardly. but naturally leaves out the failed leadership of which he is part of in the UFT that enabled the ed deformers to deflect responsibility to teachers.


Read Randi in NY Times and gag
The Detroit teachers contract is devastating - I don't have the details handy but it is a catastrophe for teachers and the union. But here is what Randi has to say about it:

Randi Weingarten in a New York Times ad appearing in the Sunday December 13 edition of the Week In Review on p. 5

What Matters Most: Detroit Teaches America a Valuable Lesson

“…This tentative agreement includes several reforms that will drive the enhancement of school achievement, including school based bonuses, peer assistance, and review and a new, comprehensive teacher evaluation system. At the same time, both parties recognize the severe financial conditions of the district and sought innovative approaches to saving money. Teachers, who are also struggling in these tough times, are being asked to sacrifice - by agreeing to a reduction in pay received now and deferring pay increases until the third year of the contract. Teachers will receive a bonus when leaving the district. The players also recognized the need to address skyrocketing health care costs and agreed to measures that will save the district millions…

I've been saying it for years. That the UFT/AFT are enemies of teachers.


But there is hope: Schools Fight Back
Schools are organizing and we'll chronicle as much as we can while working with GEM, ICE, TJC and others to bring people together for joint actions.

Jamaica High School
I can't say enough about the work Chapter Leader James Eterno has been doing, along with the rest of a supportive staff and student body. As you know, James is the ICE/TJC candidate for president of the UFT against Mike Mulgrew and may be too busy to do much campaigning. But the UFT election is secondary to trying to save Jamaica HS. What I want to point out is that James, like so many other ICE/TJC candidates are amazing fighters (remember, James was part of the most militant crew that left the moribund New Action when they sold out and helped found ICE). They have spine, something so much of Unity Caucus and New Action is missing.

I will do more on Jamaica - over 800 students and alumni have signed onto their Facebook page and there is a meeting at Jamaica this Weds, Dec. 16 at 6pm (the UFT DA is at 4pm). Today there is a great column by Jamaica NY Times sports columnist George Vecsey, an alum, who interviews , Nyles Bynum an all-American student athlete now playing at Temple, titled

In Defense of His Old School

He [Bynum] played football and basketball at Jamaica, was on the honor roll all four years, and was an academic all-American as a senior. He described how one teacher monitored the academic progress of athletes, how coaches encouraged him to study, how guidance counselors helped him apply to college. He ticks off their names, lovingly, starting with Sue Sutera, the tennis coach and mentor to the past generation. “Twenty-five years — and I ain’t going away,” Sutera said last Thursday at a meeting of Jamaica supporters.

Vecsey says:

Whenever I have returned over the past decade, the school has consistently seemed clean and orderly and remains so under Principal Walter G. Acham, a strong presence who carries out board policy and praises the tradition of Jamaica, volunteering, “This is a special place.”

Under a new law, the city must observe a 45-day review period, including a hearing at Jamaica on Jan. 7. The decision will be made by the Panel for Educational Policy at a public hearing Jan. 26 on Staten Island, a location that does not amuse some people in Jamaica. “High school is the best time of your life,” Bynum said. “I’ve always wanted to come back, but it would be hard to come back to some satellite school.”

Over 2000 members of Friends of Jamaica HS on Facebook. Join.


Columbus HS ask people to send letters to the NY State Ed Dept

The way the accountability is structured presumes that a school receives a fairly constant population guided basically by urban geographic and socioeconomic factors that change extremely slowly over time. This is not the case for Columbus - we have received a major influx of the highest needs students that has left AYP and absolute 4 year graduation rates a virtual impossibility. We are not a failing school - although we can and do always strive for improvement - we have many students who graduate over 5, 6, and 7 years. Our most recent 7 year statistics are a graduation rate of 81.5% (NYC average being 72.2%) and our drop out rate was 18.2% (city average 27.8%). Many of our students, and notably our English Language learners who arrive in their junior or senior years with no English take far longer to pass Regents Exams - particularly English.

Our population is mobile and vulnerable and needs to be supported rather than crushed. The DoE plans to replace Columbus with an existing school (KAPPA) from district 10. The students from this school are much lower need than those at Columbus, in fact they are lower need than the prestige programs already housed on the campus. This is one more step in the segregation of students that has been going on for that last 10 or so years - bringing in a large number of high ability students from this existing school in September and having no place for our special needs students and recent immigrants who will then be sent to a more distant large high school.

I posted the entire letter on Norms Notes. Click below.
Columbus HS Letter to NY State Regents


Maxwell HS rally, Dec. 10:
Angel Gonzalez has put up his video of last week's rally, attended by UFT honchos, including Mulgrew, whom Angel caught applauding when Charles Barron said we should close down Tweed.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1fbzg4EUHU]

Click title to view video.
Dec. 9, 2009 Brooklyn, NY.

Mayor Bloomberg announced the closing of over 20 public schools. Maxwell High denounces this unfair callous attempt to privatize with charter schools. Over 250 people protested outside and then inside against the Dept of Education and the complicity of the District Superintendent. Teachers, parents, students and community are organizing locally and citywide to stop this wholesale ruthless assault on public education and school-workers.

CAPE at PS 15 Welcomes you to the Hornet's Nest

I said in yesterday's ed notes post that the DOE has created a hornet's nest at PS 15. The CAPEers have taken that ball and run with it.

"The DOE and its corporate allies isolate and identify communities they think they can overrun and outsmart. They target communities whose populations have historically had a difficult time organizing and accessing resources. We are sure they thought targeting PS 15 in Red Hook was easy pikins'... instead they did in fact unleash a hornet's nest. We are a group of parents and educators who will continue to demand to be heard, not just for the protection and preservation of our community public schools, but in solidarity to fight for the protection and preservation of public education for ALL of our children. Groups are forming across the city, advocates are joining forces.... Let's join together and stop the Bloomberg Administration's assault on public education.



Let's make the Thursday demo at Norman Thomas a pre-cursor of bigger things.

Closing the Roethlisberger Gap

Steve Koss sent along a link to this article (click headline below for full article.)

Pittsburgh School District Leads Nation In Ability To Spell 'Roethlisberger'

from the onion with some commentary:

I absolutely ADORE "The Onion" weekly newspaper, and this story from last week is one of the funniest and spot-on stories about education I have ever seen. I was practically rolling on the floor reading this, except that it's also tragically so sad in the reality of what it satirizes. The text is below.

Replace "Roethlisberger" in this story with NYS Math and ELA exams and you have a perfect and hilarious description of NYC schools under Joel Klein. The supportive comments from educational administrators sound just like the typical DOE P.R. stuff.

Gary Babad, do these Onion guys work for you? If not, maybe you should work for them!

Steve Koss

Here's a short excerpt:

"If you look at the data, our students were correctly spelling Roethlisberger only 43 percent of the time during the quarterback's rookie season," said Pittsburgh mayor Luke Ravenstahl, who called the 2004 statistic an embarrassment. "In just five years, we have increased that number to 92 percent. That's 54 percent better than students in California, 35 percent better than those in Oklahoma, and 96 percent better than those in the Cleveland area, who tend to spell Roethlisberger by adding the letters 'u,' 'c,' and 'k' after the letter 's.'"

"The bottom line is the Pittsburgh school system is giving its students a leg up on the competition, not only in America, but throughout the world," Ravenstahl added. "Our kids correctly spelled Roethlisberger 12 times more often than all the students in Europe and Asia combined."

Get Out the Swords: DOE proposes to let PAVE stay in P.S. 15 an additional five years

"We will not rest until the truth is exposed and the agreement for PAVE to leave by 2010 is honored. If the DOE or anyone else thinks we will give up; they are mistaken… through the courts through civil disobedience, one way or another- PS 15 and public education will be protected."

Power breeds arrogance. And absolute power breeds absolute arrogance. It was clear from the beginning that when a billionaire hedge fund manager's son wants a public school building for his play school, he will get it from the BloomKlein administration. Remember when Spencer Robertson declared at the Sept. 15 CEC15 meeting that he had found a building and will move out of PS 15 as soon as he could? The PS 15 community guffawed and called him a liar. They had been facing so many lies from PAVE that nothing was believable.

And so it was. And is.

Maura Walz at Gotham posted the news at Gotham last night that Tweed was going beyond the PAVE 2 year request and would allow PAVE to stay at PS 15 until 2015 and add 5 more grades. I forwarded the news to the CAPE crew at PS 15. They are pouring out their outrage in the comments section at Gotham. Join them.

Read the full CAPE response:

The DOE Does it Again

What is clear is that if a school functions too well to close, Tweed will go get them another way: Install a cancer/charter and allow it to grow unchecked while at the same time using your power to squeeze the healthy public schools until it gets sick and dies. It reminds me of those vines that start growing up a healthy tree and feeding off it until it kills the tree and takes over what is left.

Does anyone have a doubt that by 2015, PS 15 will be gone and PAVE will be occupying the entire building?

The CAPE response opens with:

It is unclear what is more disturbing: The Department of Education’s surreptitious school space utilization and formulas, their incompetence in interpreting these very formulas, their damning disregard for what is best for children not to mention parent and community voices, their corrupted charter school movement, their deliberate defiling of public education and community public schools, or their lubricated lies that slide off their tongues dripping and oozing with Orwellian language that loudly proclaims, “we have an agenda, and we fully intend to execute it.”

Near the end, CAPE says:

This is clearly a fight the DOE wants to have: RAISE YOUR SWORDS!!!

And raise their swords they will.

We met with CAPE the other evening, as Brooklyn GEM and CAPE are putting together a series of events on charter schools. There is not one meeting we have with CAPE where we don't come out feeling the entire time was productive. This is one savvy, tough group of public education advocates. That they are in one school gives us hope there are other such groupings around. I mean, earth is not the only planet in the universe with life.

I want to thank Tweed for doing such dumb stuff that led to this group coming together and joining up with other advocates forming around the city. They have uncovered some hornet's nest. As part of a group of organizers so often frustrated by the lack of fight all too many teachers exhibit, I genuflect to Tweed for helping to create CAPE. Keep up the good work. One day you will find thousands of people pounding at your door.

Better start beefing up security. Can you spell C-I-V-I-L D-I-S-O-B-E-D-I-E-N-C-E?

One Happy Fela and Parteeee at Gotham

Wednesday was an interesting day and evening. We got home late Tuesday night from a week in Florida at Singer Island near West Palm Beach - starting with 5 cloudy/rainy days and ending with 2 beautiful days.

I had promised to help a teacher who needed a chaperon for a school trip to see the new Broadway musical Fela about Fela Kuti, an African singer and political rebel. The NY Times gave the show one of the better reviews I've seen. So I headed over to the high school on Wednesday. The class was an interesting mix. It seemed mostly white and Asian, with a few black and Hispanic kids and a few Muslim girls wearing head scarves. My co-chaperon is an activist who is about to become a teacher and though we never met, is connected to ISO and knows all the players. We had a great review of the state of ed activism on the way to the city as we reviewed all the activist groups - and they are growing by leaps and bounds. Then we all crammed into McDonald's for a quick meal before the show.

I'm leaving the school and teacher out of this because who know what evil lurks in the hearts of school and DOE administrators. There is cursing in the show - HORRORS! And sexual innuendo – YIKES! The show is based on the idea that this was Fela's final performance in his theater and he treats the audience as he would a real audience for his show. The entire audience was filled with kids and Fela is loud and stimulating, so there was noise. Lots of it. But the performers want noise. They encourage it. And the kids loved it.

After the show, the actors, including Sahr Ngaujah who alternates in the Fela role with Kevin Mambo, came out to answer questions and talk to the kids. That was after almost 3 hours of performing - and Fela is on stage for almost the entire performance. There must have been a thousand kids or more and this was so orderly as to be scary. Imagine - a class size of a thousand. Take that Leonie! I better not give BloomKlein any ideas.

Speaking of Klein, my next stop was to head downtown to the Gotham Schools blowout open invite party on Lafayette Street. But first I had to meet a visiting cousin from Oakland for a drink over on Lexington and 47th St. He is a businessman/CEO and is convinced Obama is a socialist. But his business is drilling for oil, so what do you expect? His stepdaughter recently moved to Israel and married a Hassidic Jew who is not born Jewish but converted. She was born Jewish but was not religious until fairly recently. Now my cousin and his wife, who were at the upper levels of Werner Erhard's EST lifestyle movement in the 70's - my cousin was running the organization for a while, are becoming observant Jews.

That has been one strange trip and getting the latest details of this journey made me over an hour late for the Gotham Party. I was not the only one. I came up in the elevator with City Councilman Robert Jackson and Jan Atwell of the NYC Council. I mentioned how his complaint at a recent overcrowded PEP meeting at Tweed that it was a farce for them to hold meetings for the public in so limited a space has given Tweed an excuse to move the meetings to Outer Mongolia. I hope he complains about that and gets them to move the important Jan. 26 meeting where school closings will be voted on out of Staten Island, which has no schools being closed, and into a central location that can be reached from all boroughs. Like a large high school in Manhattan near good transportation. (Maybe Jackson can also be our spokesperson to the UFT which moved the Delegate Assemblies years ago from Fashion Industries HS which held everyone comfortably to the UFT building where they hold a meeting with a potential 3000 attendees in a space that holds 850. Way too often you have to think that Tweed and 52 Broadway were separated at birth.)

Anyway, we missed Joel Klein's speech. And also missed Diane Ravitch reading from her upcoming blockbuster book - to be released in March. I'm glad I got there in time to see her before she left. A few Tweedies seemed pleased that Diane was pretty nice to them.

The party was loaded with some of the influential ed people in NYC on all sides. Leonie Haimson and Jennifer Jennings (Eduwonkette), her former mentor and co-blogger as Skoolboy, Aaron Pallas (with an interesting anecdote about the party), Alexander Russo, who I met formally for the first time, Arthur Goldstein. I saw testing analyst Fred Smith and Jose Vilson, who wrote about the party (and the wonderful ed blogging community we are all part of). I had met Jose at a bloggers gathering hosted by Gotham's Philissa Cramer and Kelly Vaughan when Gotham first began. Kelly was there Wednesday. She left Gotham a year ago and is back teaching- in a charter school and seems to be having a great time. For those who do not know, Kelly blogged as one of the major ed blogs that was world famous for many years. Philissa was there taking pictures and reporters Anna Philips and Maura Walz, who I formally met for the first time. And of course, Elizabeth Green was the hostess with the mostest.

Gotham financial backer Ken Hirsch was there beaming, all suited up. You can disagree with Ken 100% and still have great conversations with him even though Ken also backs Harlem Success schools.

I got to hang out a bit with some of my favorite Tweedies in the PR department. The entire cast of thousands didn't attend - the party would have had to be held in Madison Square Garden to hold them all. The leader of the gang, David Cantor, who makes enemies when he posts to listserves but makes lots of friends in person, suggested I write a memoir. Sure, David, distract me so I get off BloomKlein's back. No wonder he gets the big bucks. When I left the party he was huddled with Eduwonkette, maybe making amends for the attacks Tweed made on her when she was anonymous. David is one party guy. Andy Jacob, former Tweed spokesperson, who I also met at one of Kelly Vaughan's parties, is now working for Tim Daly at The New Teachers Project. It was noisy, but I think Andy said that Daly reads Ed Notes (search this blog to see the nice things we said about him). Clearly a masochist.

Leo Casey was there for the UFT. I am more comfortable talking to Tweedies than to Casey (who I don't talk to). At least Tweedies show you the knife when they stick it in. I got more than a few questions from people asking my opinion of Mulgrew. Some Tweedies wanted to know how Eterno will do in the election. "He's pretty busy as chapter leader trying to fight to keep Jamaica HS open," I said. "Isn't it a done deal," she said? "It's never over 'til it's over," I answered. "Does Eterno have something up his sleeve," she asked? I smiled, not wanting to give away the big secret that the staff and parents and students at Jamaica are installing secret devices to blast out anti BloomKlein slogans in perpetuity when the new schools take over.

A couple of charter school people came over to chat. They say they are mom and pop charters and wanted to know what GEM and Ed Notes and ICE are so anti-charter when they claim they are countering the awful BloomKlein bureaucracy. They say they would love to talk to GEM about this issue and bring some unity. They seem to be really bothered by the actions of GEM and CAPE. We had a lot of good back and forth and will continue the conversation.

And then there was the charter school operator of all time. The one and only Evil Moskowitz. Talking to Leonie Haimson, no less. I was watching this scene with Francis Lewis HS chapter leader Arthur Goldstein waiting for fisticuffs to break out. "Let's throw a bucket of water on Eva and see if she melts," Arthur said.

Help elect Arthur to the UFT exec board on the ICE/TJC slate and you'll get laughs like these all the time.

See links to all of Arthur's pieces at Gotham on the ed notes sidebar.

Thanks to David Bellel for the photoshopping

Postscript: congratulations to the crew at Gotham for pulling off an event that brought so many people with varying views into one space. This was not a cheap thing to do and they are asking for financial support. I am kicking in a few to make sure they keep doing the great work they do. Head on over and do the same to help keep some vestige of independent education press alive.

Public Notice: The closure of all NYC public schools

From: "Panel for Educational Policy"

Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:39:36 -0500

Subject: Public Notice: Proposals for Significant Changes in School Utilization

Notice December 10, 2009

Joel I. Klein

Chancellor

Proposals for Significant Changes in School Utilization

Please find public notices for significant changes in school utilization below. To view the notices, either scroll down or connect via the links listed here:

1. The Phase-out and Eventual Closure of Public Education in NYC

Proposal for a Significant Change in the Utilization of School Building M, Q, R, X and R

The Phase-out and Eventual Closure of all NYC public schools

I. Description of the subject and purpose of the proposed item under consideration

Beginning in the 2010-2011 school year, all NYC public schools in this city serving grades K-12, will be phased out of operation, one grade level per year at a time. Grade K will be eliminated in 2010-2011, grade 1 will be eliminated in 2011-2012, and so on until all grades are eliminated in all boroughs.

They will be replaced with any charter school operator who comes to us with a plausible proposal or any hedge fund operator who has a pet project in mind. We will continue to have sufficient seats to serve our elementary, middle school, and high school students with resources currently allocated to public schools to be repurposed for high quality charter schools throughout the city. Any future proposal to site one of these charter schools will be addressed in a separate educational impact statement.

II. Information regarding where the full text of the proposed item may be obtained.

The Educational Impact Statement can be found on the Department of Education website: http://schools.nyc.gov/AboutUs/leadership/PEP/publicnotice/Proposals+1-26-10.htm

III. Submission of public comment

Written comments can be sent to NYC citywide Proposals@schools.nyc.gov.

Oral comments can be left at 718-935-4415 (but don’t expect anyone will answer the phone; we’re too busy having cocktails with the hedge fund operators)

IV. The name, office, address, email and telephone number of the city district representative, knowledgeable on the item under consideration, from whom information may be obtained concerning the item

Name: Chancellor Joel Klein, or one of his many Deputy Chancellors, better known as the “hit men.”

Office: Office of Portfolio Planning

Address: 52 Chambers St

Email: Portfolio@schools.nyc.gov

Phone: 212-374-6677

V. Date, time and place of public hearing for this proposal.

January 13, 2010 at 6:00pm

At infinite locations throughout the city (so you and the media can only attend one hearing at most; sorry!)

There will be no question and answer period. Questions about the proposal can be directed as indicated in section IV above.

Speaker sign-up will begin 30 minutes before the hearing and will close 15 minutes after the start.

VI. Date, time and place of the PEP meeting at which the Board will vote on the proposed item.

January 26, 2010

6:00pm

Michael J. Petrides School

715 Ocean Terrace, Staten Island (It’s the furthest we could arrange for it to take place; and anyway, what does it matter? We control the majority of the seats on the PEP and can do whatever we feel like doing. Thank you Gov. Paterson, Shelly Silver and the NY State legislature!)

Posted to the NYC Education News listserve by Leonie Haimson

Haimson on Paul Robeson Faze-Out: EIS of Paul Robeson HS; unbelievable!

This is even more incredible than the last EIS I read:

http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/F0043783-8608-433C-855E-99228622A268/73549/17K625Robeson_EIS1.pdf

There are no other schools currently located in K625. The 2008-2009 target utilization rate of K625 was 102%. It has a capacity of 1,155…..

10/31/2009 ATS Active Register): 1,020

Beginning in the 2010-2011 school year, Paul Robeson High School (17K625, “Robeson High School”), an existing school serving grades 9-12, will be phased-out of operation. Robeson High School is housed in school building K625 (hereinafter referred to as “K625”), located at 150 Albany Avenue, Brooklyn in Community School District 17 (“District 17”). There are no other schools currently located in K625. The 2008-2009 target utilization rate of K625 was 102%. It has a capacity of 1,155.

In the 2010-2011, Robeson High School will begin phasing out one grade per year. Grade 9 will be eliminated in 2010-2011, grade 10 will be eliminated in 2011-2012, and grade 11 will be eliminated in 2012-2013. Robeson High School will close in June 2013.

….. Due to the school’s failure to make significant progress, the DOE now proposes this phase-out and eventual closure. At this time there is no plan for the use of space made available by the phase-out and closure of Robeson High School.

Community Ramifications

Approximately 1,020 high school seats will be eliminated by the phase-out of Robeson High School. However, the majority of those seats will be recovered with the phase-in of new schools throughout the City and available seats in existing high schools….

Current Robeson High School 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 Robeson High School 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. There are sufficient high school seats in Brooklyn and Citywide to accommodate students that would have attended Robeson.

There are sufficient high school seats in Brooklyn and Citywide? As of last school year, 57% of our HS students attended overcrowded buildings at or over 100% utilization – 167,000 students, according to the DOE “blue book”, which most experts (and principals) believe underestimates the level of overcrowding at schools.

In Brooklyn, more than 50% of HS students attended overcrowded buildings -- nearly 44,000. Where are all these kids going to attend school? This is horrific and unbelievable.

And Look at this:

Personnel

All administrative staff and non-pedagogical positions at Robeson High School will be eliminated over the course of the phase-out and eventual closure.

All teaching positions at Robeson High School will be eliminated over the course of the phase-out. However, the elimination of these assignments will not necessarily result in an overall loss of teaching positions within the citywide system due to transfers to other existing assignments and the creation of additional pedagogical positions with the phase-in of new schools.

Never is it mentioned the huge cost to the system of putting all those teachers on ATR – on full salary but not assigned to regular classrooms anywhere. What could possibly be the purpose of this?

ED NOTE: Could the answer be an expectation that the ATR problem will be eliminated? My reading is that there will be no contract without some give on the ATRs. I'll get into more of this in an upcoming post.

Maxwell High School Rally: Dec. 9, 2009

Here are some early reports on the rally at Maxwell Vocational School yesterday. GEM/ICE member Seung Ok and the UFT's Unity Chapter leader Jeff Bernstein worked together. Mulgrew spoke. (If you are in a closing school or think you might be soon, attend the GEM meeting this Monday, the 14th at CUNY.)

Marjorie Stamberg has a report and some reactions from ICE/GEM Angel Gonzalez, along with a video of Charles Barron's speech. And the GEM leaflet pdf which I urge you to download and hand out in your school. (Or email me and I'll get you some. Or deliver it personally - for a free school lunch, Jamaican beef patty preferred.)

From our point of view, the UFT's attempt to address each closing on an individual basis is a losing strategy for all, even if they manage to win a small victory in one school. They are moving into desperation mode, with the attack of school closings and the bitter turn in contract talks. They are focusing on bringing people out to PEP meetings in the Bronx next week and Staten Island on January 26. I told them many years ago at Exec Bd meetings for instance - and even Randi personally - that the UFT should be embarrassed to have zero presence at these PEP meetings as I and a few others often ended up being the voice of the teachers. The UFT almost always had their Exec Bd meetings the same night, but they should have had people at each of these meetings. But then again, could they really effectively represent the voice of teachers when they support so much of the policies of the DOE?

On the issue of UFT more often supporting Tweed than teachers, I had some interesting conversations with some Tweed people at the Gotham Schools party last night. I complimented them on the brilliant and well-executed plan of full frontal assault on the public schools system and the union, making the point that the UFT was the only organization capable of throwing a road block in their plans, but instead supported and enabled them. Smiles could barely be suppressed.

Here is the GEM leaflet handed out at Maxwell and going out to closing schools.

"Stop Closings" GEM: Dec. 2009

Baron video from Maxwell Protest.

Councilman Baron at Maxwell High School

The community gathered in support of Maxwell High School. The Department of Education is planning to close down this school that has been has served the community since 1951. It has been steadily improving over the last three years. They have gone up a grade every year on the DOE's bogus school grading system. The DOE acknowledges that their grading system is worthless when even they don't pay credence to it. Keep your hands off our Public Schools Bloomberg!

Marjorie's report:

Here's a brief report on tonight's UFT demonstration outside Maxwell HS in East New York. It was held to protest the announced closing of the school. There were maybe 300 unionists, students and parents there by the time we all went in to the public forum after the rally.

The school closing massacre comes in the context of the mayor's Thanksgiving eve speech in Washington declaring war on the UFT, made with Obama's Education Secretary Arne Duncan sitting next to him. A week later, Bloomberg announced the closing of a slew of schools (now up to 22 as of today), including Jamaica HS, Columbus in the Bronx, Norman Thomas in Manhattan, Broad Channel in Queens. This is huge.

Politically, we are now at an important moment where teachers broadly understand Bloomberg has declared war on the union, and the minority population sees that the city will close down their schools, throwing thousands of kids into the streets, disrupting their education and throwing teachers out of the classrooms.. The sense of the need for joint struggle was palpable in the crowd tonight. Here all the issues of class and race come together.

Later at a public forum inside there was a very hot meeting where parents, teachers, and students, participated in ripping the Board of Ed spokesman to shreds. UFT president Mike Mulgrew spoke, but attributed the blame only to District 19, not to Bloomberg.

Many students and parents spoke powerfully of the school's proud record of educating students, helping them achieve careers in many fields, supporting them and challenging them along the way.

I personally spoke saying Bloomberg has a policy of educational colonialism--the schools he's closing mainly effect minorities. Ninety schools have been closed since mayoral control because he has an agenda of union busting and privatizing education.

It seems to have finally dawned on the [UFT] leadership, with this round of school closings, that if they don't fight to defend the schools now, the union will be devastated. But their whole modus operandi (m.o.) is how to avoid a showdown. Look how they dealt the ATRs, the issues of standardized testing, merit pay, etc. But they can't sidestep this one. What is needed is a real independent mobilization of labor, students, and parents.

The UFT bureaucracy at this point is focused on treating each closing school individually. But the situation has gone so far beyond where it can be fought school-by-school. Some of us took up the chant "Fight Back -- Citywide," which struck a chord with the crowd. We need to go to City Hall in mass protest, have informational meetings in schools across the city, start marching across the Brooklyn Bridge, join with other labor unions, such as the TWU. The situation also raises the issue of the need for a workers party -- you can't fight Bloomberg with Democrats.

There is a new CSEW-UFT flyer out on the situation (PDF attached). I will be advocating for this approach at the delegate assembly and other upcoming meetings.

--Marjorie Stamberg


Angel Gonzalez sent this email which is posted at the GEM blog:

Congrats to Seung, UFT chapter, & parents: phenomenal work at Maxwell !

GEM, ICE, TJC represented!

In an outside rally and indoor forum, Over 250 people shouted down the bankruptcy of the Mayor Bloomberg and his lackey Dist. Superintendent. Through the night, GEM, Councilman Barron, and crowd hollered out and clearly delivered our messages:

1. Stop the charter privatization schemes.
2. Fightback Citywide.

UFT Mulgrew was there and heard these chants loud and clear. Now lets put the heat on our union bosses.

Let's make sure these messages get out to all our schools and at all UFT levels.

Stop the Corporate-Government-Education-Privatization-COMPLEX!

Angel Gonzalez

"There is no victory without struggle; nor is struggle possible without sacrifice!"
¡No hay triunfo sin lucha; ni hay lucha sin sacrificio!

NAEP Outside NYC and George Schmidt Response

From a contact embedded in an urban school system administrative operation:

Hi Norm,

I mentioned several months ago that I might be helpful in preparing some analyses from the NAEP TUDA math results. Here are some bits from NYC, Washington DC, and Chicago.

It seems like the NYC story has been pretty well covered by the media, but the DC and Chicago stories have not. In both DC and Chicago, there are significant racial disparities in test score gains, with black kids making the least progress in both cities. In DC, the scores of 8th grade black kids dropped, and black 4th graders in DC made much smaller gains that whites. The Chicago story is similar.

Given how both Rhee and Duncan (like your own dearly beloved Joel Klein) love to rhapsodize over "closing the gap," these results seem to be fairly damning.

I sent it to George Schmidt who sent this response:

12/9/09

Norm and friends:

You can share this as widely or narrowly as you want. As usual, you can "use my name."

Thanks for the NAEP heads up. We can run it if someone makes it into a more coherent article, without mentioning any "names." Let me know.

There is enough craziness here in Chicago to fill the rest of the Obama term, only now it's being exported to the entire USA. By the way, as I've already reported, the destruction of Chicago's public schools, which is much further advanced than New York or D.C. based on the same master plan, has also included so much simple old fashioned political corruption that it will take us ten years just to dig out the Arne Duncan era. You can re-read Susan Ohanian's final version of Jerry Bracey's investigation of the "Save-A-Life Foundation" (SALF) at Substance or at Susan's Web site, but remember, that's the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

By my estimate, during the Duncan years Chicago Public Schools doubled the number of no-bid contracts for everything from simple commodities to the most expensive (privatized) computer systems. "Save-A-Life..." was just almost a sideshow. The Big Show is massive privatization.

And of course it was all done behind the smokescreen of the "emergency" in the school system (now 14 years old, since the Amendatory Act established mayoral control here in Chicago) that required special ongoing anti-democratic powers for the mayor and his appointed schools chief and school board.

The (probably a suicide) death of our school board president (Michael Scott) less than a month after President Obama dispatched Eric Holder to Chicago to try and keep the lid the growing Chicago scandals (that's a plural) ranging from simplistic old style corruption like SALF all the way to the surrender of large chunks of Chicago (and the schools, especially high schools) to the drug gangs (you can Google "People" and "Folks" to get some idea of how deep the problem now is here; Mexico is comparable) dramatized the situation again. Holder ordered that Michael Scott (President of the Chicago Board of Education) not be photographed with him (the Attorney General of the USA) while he was in town. Scott, for all the crocodile tears after his death, was one of the most pernicious servants of corporate "school reform" right up to his death, promoting school closings and charterizations at levels New York is just beginning to experience.

Here is the latest big thing to watch out for as they close more high schools in New York and bash more veteran teachers: the lifeboat effect.

As (middle class, usually white) parents begin to believe that a regular public school is a terrible fate for their children, and traditional public schools are starved of resources, one logical step (as soon as I say this, you'll say "Of course") is to try and bribe some public official into getting your kid into one of the remaining "good" public schools. After all, a couple of thousand bucks in hundreds in an envelope is cheaper than tuition to one of the major private schools (unless you're a Hedge Fund manager and don't remember when a drawer full of $100 bills was real money).

Coming soon to a major urban school district near you.

And The New York Times thought they had seen "corruption" when you had those old community school districts. My bet is you're already in the midst of the same kind of privatization and charterization corruptions we had reached here by the final years of Arne Duncan's Kleptocracy, but haven't dug it out yet.

Can't wait to read more about NAEP.

As always,

Solidarity Forever,

George N. Schmidt

Editor, Substance

www.substancenews.net

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.

------
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.

Maxwell HS Community Fights Back Against School Closing

Join us to expose the injustice of school closures!

W.H. Maxwell HS (CTE), a career and technical school since 1951, would be 0.8 away from a B rating had it not been for the Mayor’s random changing of the cutoff scale. Expose the plans to make space for the mayor’s charter school takeovers.

Maxwell FACTS:

· 4 year weighted graduation rate : 72.5 %

· In 2006, our physics students won 1^st prize in the city’s science fair sponsored by Con Edison.

· In 2008, 21.66% of the seniors successfully tested for and received the HSTW Award for Educational Achievement – which also requires college preparatory classes in English, Math , and Science.

· Unlike Charter Schools, we don’t give up on any student: ELL (5%), Special Education (22% - double the average), and student moms (daycare services).

· Two current students serve as the President of the New York State Health Occupations Students Association (HOSA) and Senior Vice President.

· Our HOSA contingent made it to the National Competition last year.

· We have graduates who attend Cornell, NYU, SUNY, CUNY

· Our students get real educational experience with institutions like Brookdale Hospital, Jamaica Hospital, City Tech, Medgar Evers, Touro, Rainbow Inc.

· Our graduates have become Designers, Opticians, Physicians, Nurses, Medical Assistants, Engineers, Cosmetologists, Graphic Artists, Entrepreneurs, Advertisers, etc…check out our Face book page by searching “Maxwell Grads – we really need your support”

· In 2006, we received an F after being overcrowded from the overflow of other school closures. Who will be next when our students get crammed elsewhere?

Come voice your demand that Bloomberg and the Billionaire’s Club listen to the neighborhoods they claim to want to help!

There will be two rallies at W.H. Maxwell HS (CTE) - 145 Pennsylvania Ave, East New York, 11207. C train to Liberty Avenue station:

Wed: Dec. 9^th parents/community forum – 6 pm. Rally at 4:30 pm.

&

Tues: Jan. 12^th CEC/SLC/ DOE forum– 6 pm: open mike sign-up starts 5:30, ends 15 minutes after speakers start. Rally starts 4:30 pm.

For Further info, contact: Positivelypessimist@gmail.com.