GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

you they cant close the school with out knowing if the new principal is going to succed.they have to give her a chance. its pretty hard to be a teacher because if the students dont want to learn then the teachers cant do nothing about that. it doesnt matter how smart the teacher is nobody but i mean nobody can make a student learn.

Question: has DOE turned around a single low-performing school? If not, why not, if their theories of reform are so successful?

YOU KNOW ITS PRETTY EASY TO CLOSE DOWN A SCHOOL, BUT ITS PREETY HARD TO TURN IT AROUND. AND YOU KNOW IT IS VERY EASY TO GIVE UP BUT IT IS VERY HARD TO TRY AND NOT GIVE UP WHEN WE HAVE PEOPLE WHO ONLY CARE ABOUT MONEY

ACHIEVEMENT SEEMS TO BE CONNECTED WITH ACTION. SUCCESFUL MEN AND WOMEN KEEP MOVING. THEY MAKE MISTAKES , THEY FALL THEY GET STEPPED ON BUT THEY DONT QUIT.

YOU GUYS QUIT ON THE SCHOOL

AMEN TO THAT WHAT THIS PERSON SAID IS ABSOLUTELY TRUE

how can you close a school down without knowing what the new principal is going to do man people now in days dont have a brain they just sit in their rich chairs and be greety with their money if only superman were here or even better obama the president. obama obama obama obama is smarter than you doe losers. use your heads it might help now i see why we are in bankruptcy is because so many people arecrushing our dreams and instead of helping us they push us back to the ground until we cant get up but we will win you losers.

amen its all about money 100% true

Why are they still hiring people if the school is closing?

i think that the school should be close down when the mets win a world series which is never

I think that a program should be enforced for the mean time until school is closed down in 2012 for those particular students whose experience attending hasnt been of best quality, due to lack of respect amongst alumni. I think that it can up the score in making a beneficial progress towards reputation and curriculum for the next 2 yrs, being that there have been many situations the school has already dealt with. the main causes of why the class of 2012 will be the last. [concerned girlfriend of alumni]

When I arrived at BREC the place was in shambles. The awful, violent kids from MLK and other surrounding schools descended upon us like a hurricane. It was tough to teach, move in and around the halls, to get students to class without them fighting with security, cursing out teachers, to get the respect from students that teachers and administrators deserve. It what CHAOS!!! And, this is putting it mildly.

When Phyllis Marino was the Principal and John Angelet  the A.P., the students were impossible to control, let alone teach. Veteran teachers who taught for more than 10 years were being given an “F” in every area that you can think of, in particular their teaching. Marino believed that very few teachers in the school could teach. It was awful. Morale was beyond being low, it was hard to speak to teachers because the environment in which we worked in made each of us weary of speaking frankly to one another. Everyone was suspicious of everyone in the building. Lots of gossip made all of us feel even more uncomfortable.

Well, Marino left( Thank god) , she was an awful administrator. All she cared about were her hair, nails, outfits and high heeled shoes ( because she was shorter than Napoleon). 

Next came Angelet. Boy, talk about incompetent and nasty. We had some run ins and I told him many times that he was a liar. He lied so much that very few believed him or in his authority to run the school. He called so many cabinet meetings that it was difficult, once the schools were broken into small learning communities, to talk to any director or administrator. 

A lot of scandals came about under his reign: Math students in one class all getting a high passing grade on the regents because no one knew about the use of cell phones. What? Are you kidding me. These kids are on their text messaging phones all day, in class and out of class. So, it was no different on the regents exam. When 100% of a teacher’s students passes the Math Regents, it should make you wonder. Well, I overheard the kids talking about how they got over on two occasions. I even had a student tell me that “we cheated on the math regents, so what.” I couldn’t believe that she could do this, say it out loud, in front of my student teacher and not feel embarassed in any way. My god! “I Cheated on a Test” and so what. So, I wrote it up and made copies of the event. Guess what happened to those kids? They graduated without as much of an investigation. Need I say more? There were other scandals at the school from teachers having sex in the school, students having sex in the stairwells, drugs being sold and muggings going on in the 6th floor boys bathroom–one of my large, tall students told me that ” I wait to go to the bathroom at home because I don’t want to be mugged” or “I hate they they sell drugs in the building and nobody does anything.” He also told me about the intruders in the building who are in our school daily. I spoke to three male students who were afraid for their safety because anything could happen in the school at any time and not one of the SSAs could get their in time.

We have had students cheat on social studies exams where they were caught, we had the proof and most of them got away with it.

Ms. Polsonetti pushed teachers to pass seniors. While I wasn’t intimidated by her, she was outraged that Social Studies teachers would not change the grade on one of her senior’s regents exam that she took the test out of the grading room, which is illegal. Guess what happened to her. Hey, she runs the business school. Whoo, Hoo! I have heard that Ms. Amling allowed Polsonetti to get the students in her Business school to take the ELA( English Language)  in a room next to her office. She repeatedly went in to help the students answer questions, write essays. The proctor knew what was going on and wanted to alert the Principal, but he knew she was the one who allowed for this to go on. This same teacher also knows that a senior without the necessary credits to graduate was given 23 credits in one semester. Hey guess what happened to him? He graduated.

For the past five years about 40% of the students want to learn and give a damn. The others walked the hallways, took passes and never returned, gave excuses for not being in class, only to be caught in a lie later on. Students cheat as if it were a normal thing to do. Not many of them find it to be a problem. As the saying goes “everyone does it, so why should I care.”

The smalls schools didn’t work because you were taking a low functioning, dangerous school and making small schools out of it. No parent involvement that needs mentioning at all. We had the same kids, the same problems and the same low grades in classes and abysmal regents scores.

So, now we have BREC. Lisa Ostrum is a good administrator/principal. I hope she has the courage and conviction to do what’s right for BREC. Give it back its greatness and treat teachers and students with the utmost respect.

Nancy Amling has her Hudson School in the basement. She also had the pool completed and only her JHS students can use it. Hey, did you know that many of the now seniors came to our school because we had a “swimming program.” Well, we didn’t and we don’t.

Angelet has been let go from to AP positions because of his incompetence.

The new, and younger teachers are in the school because they are paid less than the veteran teachers and because they are mostly “airy, fairy” and believe in their own minds that they alone can make a difference. They keep up with all the “education speak”–team teaching, which fails because no one is taught how to make it work on site or off site professional development. All students should be allowed to be taught in one classroom based on their abilities. Okay, here’s what really happens, since no one knows how to do this, kids come in with reading levels from 5th grade to 10th grade. Your lesson must address all of their learning needs in 46 minutes. Now, I don’t know about you, but NO ONE, not one administrator, master teacher has ever taught any of us how to do this. When asked, they send you to a teacher that has no experience in this type of teaching at all! NO one has the time to do this.

A typical day at BREC when it was whole and when it was divided was the following, get the kids to class, get them on task, teach them what needs to be taught in a way that they can fathom. You must do this, deal with a kid who is crying or has a chip on her/his shoulder, deal with administrators who try the “I got you approach” when evaluating your teaching, students wandering into your classrooms who do not belong in the school, dealing with hats, earbuds, cell phones, texting etc. And what about the books that we have to make this happen. NOT ONE in the building. Check. I would love for anyone who does not believe that teaching is a profession to do all of this in 46 minutes. God Bless you and I’ll be calling you daily about my progress. Huh!

This year, things look good. The students MUST pass all of their classes in order to remain in the school. There are no repeater classes at all. Thank god. There are very few changes in programs because there aren’t enough classes to go around. We have 50 teachers and approximately 150 students. I like the fact that I don’t feel someone is looming over my shoulder to “catch me teaching in a style that is all my own”. The saying in most schools goes “If I, the principal/AP or other administrator feel that you can’t teach, we will give you an “F” rating. I hope I’m not speaking too soon.

Nancy Amling was a total you know what. She crushed the hearts and minds of many of my colleagues. The were considered incompetent, no performing their jobs properly, not providing enough materials for their kids to learn. She was the type that would give a kid an “A” if they made a nice drawing, or made a collage, or took a picture of something, somehow relevant to your class. She was not having kids fail the classes and pass the regents. So, many of the teachers cow towed to her and pass the kids even if they didn’t show up for class. It was horrible for those of us who had integrity to work in this environment. A leader does not have to worry about people to follow her, it is the dictator who forces people to follow her. In this case, she was the latter. She had our union rep in her front pocket. He would do anything,and I mean anything to please her, even if she went after teachers to destroy them. His job was and is to fight for the rights of his teachers. I can tell you from experience that he will NEVER help you. He talks a good talk, but he doesn’t help the very people who put him in the union rep position.

I cannot wait for the school to close. It is a blight on the area. It really is….from drug dealing to sex on the part of a few staff members, sex in the stairwell on many occasions by the students, bullying, stabbings at the train stations, gang violence, kids beating each other to within an inch of their lives for NO DAMN reason.

I think that I can say, this year is one that I look forward to. The teachers seem a lot calmer than over the past five or six years, the students are more focused on their studies, and it seems that it will turn out just fine. 

So, to my faithful colleagues, I wish you all the best this year. May you change the lives of our students in positive and uplifting ways and may you know that we are professionals helping our kids to be a service to the community and country where they live. May we all flourish this year, may we smile, may we laugh for the right reasons, may we take every single day anew and keep our heads held high and do what we do best, TEACH with a desire to instill in our students, devotion and service to self and others.

Good Luck and know that you are wonderful, we are wonderful people.

Have a GREAT year!

Have a great year everyone!!!!