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.

Girls Prep Charter, Hedge Funds, and Space Wars in District One

Sunday's NY Times had an article called "Scholarly Investments" which talked about Hedge Fund millionaires and billionaires and the push for charter schools, mentioning some of the charter invaders we have been covering: Harlem Success, PAVE and Girls Prep.

The Tiger Foundation, started by the hedge fund billionaire Julian Robertson, provides a large chunk of financing for several dozen charters across the city. Mr. Robertson’s son, Spencer, founded his own school last year, PAVE Academy in the Brooklyn, while his daughter-in-law, Sarah Robertson, is chairwoman of the Girls Preparatory Charter School on the Lower East Side.

Ahhh, synergy. And good cash flow.

Still, Mr. Curry has been “knee deep in educational issues” since his 20s, he said. He co-founded two Girls Prep schools and is head of the board of the newer one, in the Bronx. The schools are “exactly the kind of investment people in our industry spend our days trying to stumble on,” Mr. Curry said, “with incredible cash flow, even if in this case we don’t ourselves get any of it.” The reference is to the fact that New York State contributes 75 to 90 percent of the amount per student that public schools receive.

Of course hedge fund characters love charters. We're paying for most of them and they get to raise private funding so they can pay Eva Moskowitz $370,000 a year. "These guys get it," said Moskowitz. They sure do get it. And Moskowitz makes sure to get her share. Why doesn't the reporter question the logic of us paying up to 90% of the costs and charters using the extra money coming in to pay such high salaries and who knows what other perks? These sharks aren't only in this for the kids. Edu-business, indeed.

The reporter, as we usually find, mentioned the tainted Caroline Hoxby (see Ed Notes' Nov. 13 Hoxby Hocked) study on charters in NYC outperforming public schools:

A study released in September by researchers headed by Caroline M. Hoxby, an economist at Stanford who is a fellow at the Hoover Institution, concluded that on average New York City charters outperform local schools. But another study by a different group of Stanford researchers last summer suggested that nationally the numbers are muddier.

What's muddy is the press' insistence on harping on Hoxby despite the flaws and questioning why the data munchers in hedge funds would be so enamored of faulty data.

Make a wish, Mike

And then there's this weak-kneed comment from our fearless UFT leader Mike Mulgrew:

“I think it’s all good and well that these people are finally stepping up to support education,” said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, referring to wealthy hedge funders. “But I would wish they would do it in a more foundational way, a way that would help all the children instead of just a small group.”

Mike has got to be kidding. Stepping up to the plate? Sure, to kill any remnant of teacher unionism.

Below find reports from parent activists Lisa Donlan and Leonie Haimson regarding Girls Prep charter school and the impact of its attempt to grab more space on the schools and students in District 1 on the lower east side. Sorry but the chart of D. 1 demographics did not come out and trying to fix it did not work. Email me if you want a copy.

From Lisa:

The hedge fund-spawned Girls Prep Charter in District One recently mentioned in a number of news stories wants to add on Middle School grades, by pushing 300 additional seats into one of the local "underutilized" ( offers small class size and more than 3 cluster rooms for enrichment for several hundreds of students) school buildings.

if we compare the demographics of GPC and the schools being targeted for space, it seems that the GCP is not equitably serving students in the local community despite the legal mandate to do so.

GPC serves NO ELL students, offers no CTT or self contained classes and serves no BOYS in a district whose students arew 12% ELL on average and 23% special education ( CTT/SC) and 8% SETTS ( push in pull out)

District One is an all choice district that allows any family to apply to any school in the district.

There are currently a dozen middle school options available to all District students, including the GPC students who are largely from out of district.

see below portions of the DoE's memo:

To: District 1 CEC

Fr: Community Superintendent and the Office of Portfolio Planning

Re: District 1 – Scenarios around Space Needs

Date: November 15, 2009

The following memo outlines the needs as identified by the Department of Education (DOE) in District 1 and the process by which the DOE has engaged with all schools to understand more information about school needs as well as the available space. The memo also outlines potential scenarios to meet these needs. This is a follow-up to the September CEC meeting which underutilized space was discussed.

District Needs:

1. Girls Preparatory Charter School of New York (“Girls Prep”), a charter school currently serving grades K-5 with two sections per grade, is in need of space for their middle school. The Girls Prep middle school will serve grades 5-8 with three sections per grade. Girls Prep is currently housed in M188. There is sufficient space for the K-4 elementary school in M188, but the current configuration of the building does not have enough space for Girls Prep to serve its middle school grades long-term. At scale, Girls Prep requires 10 sections for its K-4 elementary school and 12 sections for its 5-8 middle school (22 total sections).

Available Space

The original list of buildings discussed at the September CEC meeting was as follows:

· M015 (houses P.S. 15 and D75 program; hereinafter referred to by building code “M015”)

· M020 (houses P.S. 20; hereinafter referred to by building code “M020”)

· M056 (houses Henry Street School for International Studies, University Neighborhood Middle School, and Collaborative Academy of Science, Technology & Language Arts Education; hereinafter referred to by building code “M056”)

· M137 (houses P.S. 184; hereinafter referred to by building code “M137”)

· M188 (houses P.S. 188, Girls Prep, and D75 program; hereinafter referred to by building code “M188”)

Since September discussions were held with all principals, Network Leaders, SLTs, and building surveys were conducted of M020 and M137 to understand the space and the current situation in each of the building. Based on those conversations and surveys the following buildings were removed from consideration for having space:

· M015- Given the standard instructional footprint that allocates cluster space there is not additional space in the building for a new program or school

· M056- Due to the high need Special Education population located in the building and the existing programmatic needs in the building it did not make sense to add another organization into the building

Furthermore the following building was added to the list as potentially having space:

• M025 (houses School for Global Leaders, Marta Valle Secondary School, and Lower East Side Preparatory High School; hereinafter referred to by building code “M025”)

GIRLS PREP CHARTER

On its website, the school makes extraordinary claims regarding its success and rights to public school space:

http://www.girlsprep.org/

Girls Prep Closes the Achievement Gap for Latina and African-American Students! Number 1 school in District 1! The results are in! Girls Prep students excelled on this year's English Language Arts exams. 98% of our third graders and 92% of our fourth graders met or exceeded standards. These scores place Girls Prep as the second highest scoring charter school in New York City! We are thrilled that our girls scored so well on the assessment! These results are just one amazing outcome of years of collaboration, hard work and thoughtful planning. Parents, students and teachers, please take a moment to congratulate yourself, each other, and the third and fourth grade students. Save Girls Prep are parents and supporters of Girls Prep Charter School who believe every child must have equal access to a quality education. Girls Prep's ranks among the top 1% of NYC public schools, traditional or charter, in terms of the achievement of its students.
Save Girls Prep believe all children in District 1 should have access to a high performing school such as Girls Prep. Charter Schools are Public Schools and have every right under NYS Law to share space in a public school building.

On the website GPC also offers transportation to parents to the December PEP meeting to make a show of strength for their cause.

---

Let's repeat Lisa's statement we extracted earlier in this post:

Yet, if we compare the demographics of GPC and the schools being targeted for space, it seems that the GCP is not equitably serving students in the local communityt despite the legal mandate to do so.

GPC serves NO ELL students, offers no CTT or self contained classes and serves no BOYS in a district whose students arew 12% ELL on average and 23% special education ( CTT/SC) and 8% SETTS ( push in pull out)

District One is an all choice district that allows any family to apply to any school in the district.

There are currently a dozen middle school options available to all District students, including the GPC students who are largely from out of district.

DISTRICT 1 SELECT DEMOGRAPHICS 2009

	District One	P.S. 184	Girls Prep	P.S. 188	P.S. 15	UNMS	CASTLE	HSISS	P.S. 20
Total enrollment	11,653	640	263	400	235	180	292	525	590
% Charter Students	11%
SC Classes		0	0	1	3	2	2	3	3
CTT Classes		1	0	6	1	2	3	1	5
IEPS	23%(ES) /29%(MS)	2% = 11 stds	8%	21%		36%	27%	30%	16
SC/CTT	15%(ES) /21%(MS)	.7%= 5 stdts	0	15%	18%	20%	21%	22%	10%
% ELL	12	5%	0	16	21	15	7	15	18%
% Title One	80.1	77.8	68.0	92.6	96.5	89.6	80.8	69.9	97.1
#/ %STH	4%		4=2%	51stdts =13%	24stdts =11%	6=3%	3=1%	9=2%	3=.5%
% in district			43
% out of district			57
% Hispanic	48	5%		64	58	65	62.3	58	60%
% Black	19	6%		33	30	26	18.5	28	10%
%Asian	19	80%		3	8	2	15.1	10	26%
%White	13	7%		1	3	6	3.4	3	2%
%Am Indian	1	.9%		0.3	0.5	0.4	0.7	0.4	.7%

Sources and References:

- DCEP 2009-10, p.5, author Sarah Kleinhandler, school district improvement liaison

- ‘Girls Prep at a glance’, author Miriam Raccah, executive director Public Prep

- 8/10/2009 ATS snapshot K students D1

- DOE D1 K-8 Special Ed Percentages base on 2009 projections (08/04/09)

- D1 poverty percentage, author Jean Mingot, budget officer Manhattan integrated Service Center 10/26/09

- School portals DOE website Aug. - Nov 2009

- ATS website 10/23/09

- STH report from ATS 09/22/09, author Cecilio Diaz, Office of Youth Development Manhattan ISC

Lisa Donlan

CEC One

Leonie follows up with: more reasons to reject expansion of Girls Prep: lack of space

More on District 1:

1. The total student population is growing faster in D1 Elementary school buildings between 2007 and 2008 than any other district in the city, according to DOE’s blue book data (which include charter schools already housed in their buildings).

Total student population in elementary school buildings is up 4.1% -- by far the fastest growth anywhere.

(Second fastest growth is D25 at 3.9%; D 20 at 3.2%; D 24 at 3%, D26 at 2.9% and D28 at 2.5%, all in Queens, then D31 Staten Island at 2.4% and finally D2 at 2.3%.)

2- Gened/CTT/G&T Kindergarten enrollment increased in D1 by 10.9% between 2008 and 2009 (not even including charter schools), according to the DOE class size reports. (They are tied with D5 as second fastest Kindergarten growth in Manhattan).

3- Kindergarten class sizes are up 22% since 2007 – probably the sharpest increases in the entire city. Now, more than 51% of Kindergarten students in D1 schools are in classes of 21 or more.

Their schools simply don’t have the space for this expansion, unless in the future they want class sizes to continue to increase even more sharply and/or kick out their preKs.

Meanwhile, the small classes and the access to preK were probably the main reasons that achievement in District 1 schools improved more than any other district in the state between 2001 and 2008, according to the DOE’s own calculations.

For the DOE power point showing this, check out http://www.scribd.com/doc/20954070/New-York-City-School-Performance-October-2009

Rather than further damage the opportunities of students in D1, the lesson should be that whatever D1 is doing, the rest of the city desperately needs: more space, so that schools can provide smaller classes and more preK, not less.

Leonie Haimson