|
The Binder |
CPE1 Update:
Parent and teacher reps met for hours yesterday with the Chancellor's "team" which included
Phil Weinberg, Laura Feijoo, Louis Herrera, Yolanda Torres. A group of supporters sat on the steps of Tweed as a show of support. A 120 page binder listing Garg transgressions, including violating numerous chancellor regs, was handed over.
Below is my column this week, a brief attempt to explain the CPE1 situation to the Rockaway community in a nutshell.
Published in The Wave, April 14, 2017
http://www.rockawave.com/node/243225?pk_campaign=Newsletter
Parents support UFT Chapter leader Marilyn Martinez at her hearing. When
I was a young teacher dreaming about teaching in a child-centered
progressive school (which I never got to do), the model school set up in
East Harlem (District 4) in the mid-1970s by Debbie Meier, one of the
gods of teaching in this country for 50 years, was a magnet for teachers
and parents looking for alternative ways of working with kids that were
far from the mainstream. Central Park East (CPE) became a nationwide
model, offering elementary school children a private school model of
education and making it available to parents who did not have the means
to send their kids to elite schools. A major component of such education
in Debbie’s vision was a non-segregated and diverse population that
would be roughly one third black, Latino and white in a neighborhood
where such an option was not available. Call it the one of the early
concepts of choice within a public school system which is so pushed by
the charter school lobby. Debbie won a McArthur Genius Award for her
ground breaking work in New York and in Boston.
The CPE model was the furthest thing from today’s no excuses,
test-driven, anti-union, rigid, corporate as opposed to student-driven
charter factory floor concepts.
People from all over the nation came to study the practices in the
school, which involved student choices in what they would learn, in
addition to a wide degree of latitude for teachers; a democratically run
school where major decisions on hiring and practices were decided
jointly by teachers and administrators with a lot of parent input.
Principals sometimes referred to themselves as “head teachers.” The
closest model in Brooklyn is the Brooklyn New School in Park Slope.
The original CPE, now known as CPE1, was replicated into a CPE 2 and
then a CPE middle and high school, though over the time the practices
diverged in the different schools. CPE1 was the school that retained
many of the original constructs, one of which is that testing is the
least important aspect of a rich education in an elementary school
especially since our youngest children grow at different rates
intellectually and emotionally and branding kids based on test scores at
such an early age is debilitating. Thus most parents who choose to send
their kids – in fact, fight to send their kids – to the few progressive
public schools there are have been opting out of taking tests once they
became the measure of success and drowned out all the other factors of
what makes for a good school and a good education.
In the past year and a half, CPE1 progressive education, the teaching
staff and the majority of parents have come under attack by the
Department of Education with the installation of a principal, Monika
Garg, who has no experience in progressive education, was a high school
administrator with little or no knowledge of how elementary schools
work, but especially of how CPE1 has operated through its history. Garg
has gone after experienced and tenured teachers which culminated in the
recent removal of chapter leader Marilyn Martinez, which has galvanized
an already active parent group that has been fighting back against Garg
and the DOE. At Martinez’ hearings, between 50 and 100 parents showed up
in support. Last week, after a massively attended School Leadership
Team (SLT) meeting that attracted over a hundred people, including State
Senator Bill Perkins and former City Councilman Robert Jackson, the
parents read a statement calling on Garg to resign.
Garg read her own statement refusing to resign saying that she
answers only to her superiors, the Superintendent Alexander Estrella and
Chancellor Farina. In our system the people running schools do not have
to answer to the stakeholders – the parents, teachers, or the general
community. Since the mayor was given control over the schools in this
city in 2002, the arrogance of whoever is running the system, no matter
what party, has only grown worse.
After the SLT meeting, parents at CPE1 were fed up enough to refuse
to leave the auditorium and engaged in a sleep-in, not emerging until 9
a.m. the next morning. I was there to cover the story for my blog and
The Wave, along with the NY Times, Wall St. Journal, WCBS, WNBC, The
Daily News and other press.
I have been the only one embedded with the parents and teachers since I first met with them a year ago.