Retired teacher Norm Scott writes:
While closing schools is not as widespread as it was under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, it is still occurring and it is very troubling. The Department of Education still fails to provide proper resources for schools and then calls them failures… James Eterno, ICE blog
I’m taking the subway up to Yankee Stadium tonight, not for a Yankee game, but to take the long walk from there to 1000 Teller Ave for the JHS 145 hearing. I never go to the Bronx, even for Yankee games, because it is as far away from where I live as possible and still be in NYC.
If Eva and her little band of slimeballs show up to tell us about their scholars I’m going to be retching, so I better not eat.
This is not about closing a struggling school but about yet another giveaway of a school building to Eva Moskowitz, who has enough money to rent Radio City Music Hall for a test-prep rally, but wants to toss poor kids into the street in another avaricious grab. And the DOE is closing the school – or trying to – because they fear the slings and arrows of the charter lobby publicity machine.
As for the UFT — they are supposedly doing things behind the scenes. Ho-hum –when what is needed is a strong public stand against the Farina/deB giveaway to Eva. DeB thinks if he pays off charters they will lay off him in the election. Good luck with that.
I reported on teacher Jim Donahue’s heroic efforts to help organize resistance — Closing JHS 145 So Eva/Success Academy Can Ge..
When Jim spoke at the UFT Ex Bd they acted dumb — it was Jim and MORE that asked for the item to be pulled from the March 22 PEP agenda which so far has not happened. March 22 may turn into a redux of Bloomberg era resistance.
James Eterno reported on tonight’s hearing at the ICE blog:
SCHOOL CLOSING BATTLE IN BRONX TONIGHT
The common perception from the UFT is that school closings are not a real problem under the current Mayor Bill de Blasio and his Chancellor Carmen Farina. While closing schools is not as widespread as it was under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, it is still occurring and it is very troubling. The Department of Education still fails to provide proper resources for schools and then calls them failures.
Tonight there will be a Joint Public Hearing to save Junior High School 145 in the Bronx. JHS 145 is slated for closure. Eva Moskowitz has already claimed the building for one of her Success Academy charter schools.
The only trouble with this arrangement is the school community at 145 is waging a valiant fight to save their school. Tonight is their Joint Public Hearing, a public meeting required before a school can be closed. If you can make it to the Bronx this evening, I suggest that you attend the hearing to show your support for 145. Get there before 6:00 p.m. to sign up to speak. Schools targeted for closure need the public to be behind them to have any chance of surviving.
I certainly know how the JHS 145 people feel as Jamaica High School, where I taught for 28 years, was phased out and then closed in 2014.
Here is an email from MORE leader Jia Lee on tonight’s JHS 145 hearing.
Colleagues,
An injury to one is an injury to all. Success Academy is slated to take over the building where JHS 145 has been for generations. Incredibly, SA has advertised for their new middle school even before the vote has taken place at the March 22 PEP.
The staff and families of JHS 145 are fighting to keep their school open. They serve students who have been mislabled based on faulty test score metrics. A large showing of support for the school and resistance against charterization will send a message to the DOE that we will not stand by while they destroy public schools.
Please join me at this joint hearing with JHS 145 and Success Academy
JHS 145
1000 Teller Ave. Bronx NY
Take any train to Yankee Stadium or
take the A or 1 train to 181 Street in Washington Heights, then take the Bx35 bus toward the BX.
The city and DOE failed this school and the 300 students who attend it. Some of the failures are outlined in this article. The imperious land-grabbing EVA of NYC is like a vulture, preying on the remains of the Arturo Toscanini School, until it was designated by the impersonal title of “JHS 145.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/city-failed-students-closing-renewal-school-article-1.2946153
To be fair, the teachers’ union also failed this school, if the facts in the opinion piece are correct.
It seems that teachers were teaching classes they weren’t trained to teach, which means they should have been let go and replaced by teachers who knew the subject. And perhaps the city would have had to pay higher wages to get better teachers to come to that school. But maybe the DOE tried first to make the school work with the teachers they had — this op ed claims that approach was a failure. Was it wrong to give experienced teachers the chance to be re-trained in the hopes they could help these kids? Or should they have been forced to leave earlier and if they couldn’t find another job, tough luck?
Perhaps the best way to address the problems in a renewal school is to shut it down and use the money to open a new school that starts fresh hiring the teachers it needs for those kids and paying them whatever it needs to pay them to get the ones who are needed (ESL, etc.)
Where I differ with the pro-charter folks — and especially with Success Academy — is that I want oversight of the new school so they aren’t simply getting results by unethically pushing out the kids who are too much trouble to teach. Let’s face it, very few (if any) of those kids would be welcome in a Success Academy school but I would certainly support a new school whose mission was actually to teach all kids instead of only teach the kids who give bragging rights to a morally bankrupt CEO who seems to have lost any ounce of compassion for students who won’t benefit her bottom line and her own unquenchable thirst for power and fame. She wants to be admired, even if the people who admire her as are morally bankrupt as she is (see Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos).
I think we need to have an important discussion as to whether failing schools deserve to be able to start from scratch with teachers and how resources are allocated there. But I have no doubt that turning around a school with a population of students as disadvantaged as it seems the students at JHS 146 are is something that will “fail” if the only way of judging success is by test scores.
I am wondering, NYCpsp, if teachers were simply “plugged” into positions on purpose, i.e., a tactic well-known to lead into “turn-around” schools (experienced in ILL-Annoy), whereby a teacher, for example, of 6th Grade Social Studies is moved to a 3rd Grade general classroom position, guaranteed to ensure failure (as people get their certification, say, in K-12, so they are put in any grade, even though their experience/area of expertise may be a specific grade).
This was used to force teachers out. In NYC & elsewhere, it’s used as muscle to force the closure of public schools to make way for predators such as Evita.
That having been said, teaching is the ONLY profession whereby people are moved like checkers. In law, a firm would not tell one of its lawyers to become, say, a real estate attorney had she/he been practicing in torts. Nor, in medicine, would a practice or hospital tell a pediatrician to become a geriatric physician. No respect for the teaching profession.
It all has to do with what people do best in the area(s) they do best. One size does not fit all, & when administrators &/or government overseers purposely move teachers from the positions they’ve trained for or are experienced in, the bottom line is that they are hurting the students, in the name of “saving” them.
As usual.
“Charter Chess”
Counting schools before they hatch
That’s assured with million$, natch
Closing schools in charter chess
That’s the smell of sweet Success
Great!
I do liken it more to checkers, though–or something even less.
Chess requires real thinking skills, problem solving & strategy, none of which the public school destroyers possess.
This is more like a willy-nilly, all-over-the-place hot mess.
Well, well, well
Let’s separate flies from cutlets, as Putin says…
If there is a definition of a school failure, PS 145 is a great example of that:
8% proficient in ELA, 4% proficient in Math. This is worse than a plain babysitting service would achieve, with no teaching
I think, the school, which consistently shows these or worse results, should be closed, and it has nothing to do with Success Academy
The latter, however, is acting opportunistic and in self-interest. They will NOT take any of the kids from this school, as they do not accept students after 3rd grade.
The best solution in this case, I think, would be to OBLIGATE Success Academy to offer a seat to all of the PS 145 students, and the DOE to oversee the transition closely. But that won’t happen…
Thank you for your support. The battle isn’t over. We know that we are up against the 2017 Galiath, but we will not go down without a fight. I’m truly disappointed in how political agendas and money has taken center stage and that the futures of these students are not priority. These students need and deserve more from the city. Another displacement will not provide a chance at success.
I am sure ALL this —-, is to DISTRACT us from what’s really going on.
Whiskey, Tango, Fox!