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December 3, 2009

DOE to close four more schools, including Jamaica HS

by , at 5:45 pm

Jamaica High School, a long-beleaguered school in central Queens, is among four more schools the Department of Education today said it would phase out beginning at the end of the school year.

The other schools are the School for Community Research and Learning, a Bronx high school; the Academy for Collaborative Education, a middle school in the Bronx; and PS 332, a neighborhood K-8 school in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood. All four schools have poor state test scores and problems maintaining enrollment and discipline, according to the department. They join four other schools whose proposed closures were announced yesterday.

According to the school governance law passed in August, the proposed closures must be given public hearings and approved by the city school board, known as the Panel for Educational Policy. The panel has never rejected a DOE policy proposal.

At more than 1,500 students, Jamaica is the largest school the department has so far this year indicated it would close. It has jumped on and off of the state’s list of “persistently dangerous” schools, and its graduation rate has hovered below 50 percent. This year, it has more than 500 ninth-graders but fewer than 200 twelfth-graders, according to DOE enrollment data.

Back in September, Arthur Goldstein, who teaches at Francis Lewis High School, offered some recent history about Jamaica’s trials in a column on GothamSchools asking why more wasn’t being done to help Jamaica improve. He wrote:

The city labeled Jamaica a “priority” school, and then an “impact” school. Ultimately, the state labeled the school “persistently dangerous.” Under NCLB, this triggered a letter home to all Jamaica parents, offering them an opportunity to transfer their kids to another school. Understandably, the school population dropped precipitously. Was Jamaica persistently dangerous, or was it just reporting more incidents than its neighbors? …

The DoE’s position was that Jamaica needed surveillance cameras, police, and metal detectors to improve. [UFT chapter leader James] Eterno felt it would’ve benefited more from additional counselors, teachers, and social workers. But that was not to be the case.

Below are the city’s bullet-points about why it is moving to close the schools, taken from an e-mail sent to reporters by a DOE spokesman, William Havemann:

Phase-out of PS 332 (23K332):

  • The Department of Education is proposing the phase-out of PS 332 Charles H. Houston, an elementary and middle school in District 23 that currently serves students in grades K-8. Under this proposal, the school would stop accepting new kindergarten classes starting in September 2010.
  •  The school has earned a C grade on its annual progress report for three consecutive years.
  • Student performance at PS 332 lags behind student performance district-wide:
    • In 2008-09, 51.8% of PS 332 students were proficient in ELA, compared with 58.9% of students district-wide.
    • In 2008-09, 61.2% of PS 332 students were proficient in math, compared with 85.9% of students district-wide.
  • Demand for the school is low.
    • Only 60% of the students attending the school are zoned to the school.

Phase-out of the Academy of Collaborative Education (05M344)

  • The Department of Education is proposing the phase-out of the Academy of Collaborative Education (ACE), a middle school in District 5 that currently serves students in grades 6-8. Under this proposal, the school would stop accepting new sixth grade classes starting in September 2010.
  • ACE earned a C on the 2007-2008 Progress Report and a D on the 2008-2009 Progress Report, including Fs in both the Environment and Student Progress sections.
  • There is widespread dissatisfaction with the school across all constituencies:
    • The school earned zero points out of fifteen on the Environment section of the 2008-09 Progress Report.
    • Only 44% of students feel that their teachers inspire them to learn, and only 27% of students feel safe at school.
    •  Zero percent of teachers feel that order and discipline are maintained at the school.
    • Only half of the school’s parents indicated that they were satisfied with their child’s education.
  • Safety is a serious problem at the school:
    • The school was named to the State’s list of “Persistently Dangerous” schools in August 2009, even though other schools in the same building do not experience the same level of safety incidents as ACE.
  • Student achievement at the school is consistently low:
    • In 2008-09, only 38.1% of ACE students were proficient in ELA.
    • In 2008-09, only 47.0% of ACE students were proficient in math, a more than 10 point decline from the 2007-08 in a year when most schools experienced significant gains on State math exams.

Phase-out of Jamaica High School (28Q470)

  • The Department of Education is proposing the phase-out of Jamaica High School, a Queens high school 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 Jamaica High School has stagnated below 50% for years:
    • In 2008, the graduation rate was 44.5%.
    • In 2009, the graduation rate increased slightly to 46.2%. This slight increase still leaves the school twenty points below the projected Queens average of 67%.
  • Jamaica received a C on its 2006-2007 Progress Report, a C on its 2007-2008 Progress Report, and a D on its 2008-2009 Progress Report, declining in all three sub-categories.
  • Students fall behind early in their education, and the school doesn’t successfully get these students back on track.
    • Only 46.7% of first-year students accumulated ten or more credits in 2007-08.
    • In 2008-09, this figure declined, with only 44% of first-year students accumulating ten or more credits.
  • Demand for the school has increased slightly, but remains extremely low.
    • The school currently enrolls 1,527 students, and is significantly under-enrolled despite the presence of severely overcrowded high schools elsewhere in Queens.

Phase-out of School for Community Research and Learning (08X540):

  • The Department of Education is proposing the phase-out of the School for Community Research and Learning, a high school in the Bronx 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 school graduates fewer than half of its students:
    • In 2007-08, the graduation rate was 47.3%.
    • In 2008-09, the graduation rate was 43.9%.
  • The school received a C on its 2006-2007 Progress Report, a B on its 2007-2008 Progress Report, and the lowest possible C on its 2008-09 Progress Report — with a D in both the Progress and Performance sections.
  • Students fall behind early in their education and the school doesn’t successfully get these students back on track:
    • In 2007-08, 48.9% of first-year students accumulated ten or more credits.
  • In 2008-09, 53.1% of first-year students accumulated ten or more credits.
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  • Arthur Goldstein

    “The panel has never rejected a DOE policy proposal.”

    One might ask–what, then, is the point of its existence?

    It’s remarkable that the DoE, which has done nothing whatsoever to help Jamaica, will have the audacity to point to its closure as a victory. It’s an abject failure and they own it.

    It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if they sent Jamaica’s entire population to Francis Lewis so we could experiment with a 24-hour school day. After all, when that fails, they could just close our school and blame the teachers.

  • http://www.classsizematters.org Leonie Haimson

    Jamaica HS was one of the best HS in NYC until this administration ran it into the ground. What a travesty.

  • insiderknowledge

    How can a school be closed if they get a C? If every school is an A or B does that not mean that the system is flawed? How are all A’s equal? Some school by very nature has to be better then another which means you cannot have all A’s or all B’s.. Lets face it this continual closing of schools is not a phasing out of a single school its a phasing out of public education. after all the big schools are gone they will start picking off these new small hallways?schools and replace them with charter schools.

  • http://missmalarkey.blogspot.com miss malarkey

    InsiderKnowledge, I agree with you- my middle school, while not the best, was far from the worst back in 2004 when we were “restructured” and broken into three schools. We were in corrective action, but we weren’t SURR. The resturucture was disastrous, especially for the kids who had to attend the new schools. My school kept most of the experienced teachers and we transitioned well, but the same can’t be said for the other two schools. It seems like only recently that the other schools are getting their footing, but in the meantime, an awful lot of kids were “left behind.” (And class size, which had always been high, got even higher because we lost classroom space to offices.)

  • triple 3

    This is great news for kids. I’ve been to the Academy of Collaborative Education, and it was incredibly bad, closing it is the best possible news for the kids forced to attend such a dangerous dropout factory.

  • Truman

    This is not the case. I speak for the students of Jamaica High School being that I currently attend Jamaica High School. I am in the 12th grade. If anything is happening to Jamaica HS, it’s that we are improving. I walk the halls everyday and honestly, I haven’t witnessed any type of disruption that would make my school even be considered a school on the denounced list. I have not seen no fights this year. I’ve seen much more teachers concerned with the quality of education we receive. I’ve seen students persistently working hard. Why are we under enrolled? It’s simply due to the 2006 situation, when our school was on the “persistenly dangerous” list. Many students were transfered out because we were labeled something we really weren’t. Since 2007, the school improved in everything. Actually, we had police and truency who were constantly being called to go to other schools because those schools were having so much trouble. To close Jamaica High School is an absolutely ridiculous idea and the proposal should be thrown out the window. Get the facts straight before you propose garbage!!

  • ZS6291

    JAMAICA HIGH SCHOOL IS IMPROVING. I GRADUATED JAMAICA HS, DURING THE YEAR OF 2008 & HAVE HONESTLY NOT BEEN FACED IN DANGER IN ANY TYPE OF WAY. IF ANYTHING, I WOULD THINK IT’S SAFETY IS INCREASING DUE TO ALL THE SECURITY GUARDS, SCANNING & NOW CAMERAS. NOW THAT ALL THAT HAS BEEN DONE, THEY’RE DECIDING TO SHUT IT DOWN. THERE ARE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS GOING ON IN THIS WORLD THESE PEOPLE NEED TO FOCUS THERE ATTENTION ON. LET JAMAICA HIGH SCHOOL LIVE ON!

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  • S. Miller

    Another southern Queens High School being shut down. Where are all these kids going to go to school when all of the other Queens High Schools are severly overcrowded?

  • KD

    JAMAICA HS is the best! Ever since my child had gone there he tells me something he learned everyday! I don’t think this school should close down

  • sodeskune

    How do we stop the closure of Jamaica High School. Why are we letting this mayor who barely got re-elected close another large high school to replace with half-baked themed schools?

  • I noticed that…

    Concerned citizens, parents, and stakeholders join the teachers and staff members to tell the mayor and klein – NO MORE CLOSING OF SCHOOLS UNTIL THE DOE PROVIDES THE NECESSARY RESOURCES THAT WILL KEEP THE SCHOOL IN EXISTENCE! Go to your councilperson, assemblyperson, your community based organizations. Write letters to the mayor telling him that he’s making a grave mistake by closing so many schools. There will be thousands of students displaced because the mayor and klein use these senseless, ficticious, fraud-laden data, to make decisions that will affect not only the students, but THE COMMUNITIES. Remember, the losers are the students – Every Child Will Be Left Behind!

  • sharmin piancca

    This is absolutely unacceptable news. As a student attending jamaica high school for about 2 and a half years now and maintaining an A average as part of the Gateway program, I would personally like to testify against all so called ”acceptable reasons” behind closing this school down. Jamaica high school is NOT a dangerous school. the DOE, by labeling us as one hurt our incoming students more than they admit. The students and staff who are actually attending and working at jamaica high school know whether the label ”dangerous” was acceptable or correct. furthermore, it is NOT the students’ fault that they were not provided with adequate resources to pass and excel in their classes. What the DOE should have done is given us the proper resources and then decided whether it was working or not. Frankly, the students should not be blamed for the DOE’s incompetence. The real failure here has proven to be the DOE for their unreasonable decisions and for not doing their job properly.I hope they remember WE ARE the future.

  • sharmin piancca

    hats out to DOE for ruining our high school experience!

  • Jamaica Teacher

    Sharmin Piancca and all the other Jamaica kids are a delight to work with. People must note that many of our kids are students with limited English proficiency and they are advancing very quickly as they adapt to the US.

  • liz

    I dont think Jamaica High School should be closed , because the school is a gud school, from the teacher to the student they are good. Jamaica is a landmark and should be given a chance to improve, the students and teacher are sad because the school is going to be closed down………………………I hope D.O.E do something about it and not close down the school

  • Diane Hicks 98-00 student

    i was suppose to graduate in 2000……..i found this website thru facebook…. and i am just so upset they are closing jamaica high…. i actually just walked through the front yardacross to get to the park.. yesterday after coming from my sister school edision….. as i walked by that i had so many memories of when i was attending that school…. i felt sort of weird like something was wrong ….. i seen he teachers , staff and security at the front doors as the late kids walk pass them to get inside the school….. i remembered having at school at 821 am and i never could make it on tome i would reach school at 903 am for attendence i remember my teacher mr. klugman he use to havea plastic glove on his hand cause i guess he was allergic to the chalk…… that class was so hard … because i was placed in the wrong class … it was my 10th grade yr which was my first yr because my jr high school whent up to grade. but any was i was in a math class with seniors…. and i didnt know what the heck was going on… it was three other kids from my jr high in that class and every time mr. klugman would say u should have learned this last yr … us 4 would look t each other like we dont know this stuff…. but back to the walk i took across the front yard… i can remember one yr it was my bday and i was kicked out of school because a lady said it was in appropriate but i had my coat on all day so i always felt she could have handled that better. and i remember being picked up by truancy soon as i crack the door open on the lucnch room side …… jamaica high was a very crowed school…. it was so many kids there i guess i felt invisible…. if was a very very different ent from jr high ….. which it should be but i guess i just wasnt ready then…… all my stories are not the best … and i dont wish anyone to follow my foot steos either on the approach that i had for high school…… i didnt turn out so bad i obtained my ged 2 months after dropping out….. jamaica is the only high i ever attended and those are the memories i will have the rest of my life went it comes to school experience……. oh yeah mr eterno was my history teacher and i can truely say i enjoyed his class and that was one of the class i passed …. he is a great teacher…… and his eyes always matched his shirt if he wore a green shirt his eyes was green if he wore an blue shirt his eyes was blue……. dont shut jamaica down bloomberg ur a millionare u can do anything u put ur mind too!!!!!!!!!!

  • Jamaican

    Jamaica hs should be shut down. I agree with the statement that almost all the students felt invincible and its not the teachers faults. Wild students couldn’t be controlled and there was nothing to be done about it. They kept on giving repeat offenders of violence against other students and even teachers 2nd and 3rd chances. So yes they did seem invincible and other students followed the same path. I mean ever kid wants to do whatever they want whenever they want. The school was really missing discipline (not refering to a rod.) the minute you commit acts of violence you should be put on parole ( more like a watch list an if you continue there will be no 2nd or 3rd chance). That school was a dump and getting teens to think about college and future education was unheard of until senior year which better school will start preparing students with PSAT as early as sophmore year a early junior year with SATs.
    I actually feel sorry for the community schools that will pick up the other students like Edison hillcrest and fransis Lewis. The students will never adust and only be bad example for their future peers

  • Michael Fiorillo

    The closing of Jamaica High School is the clearest example yet of the attacks being waged by Bloomberg and Klein. Instead of providing support and additional resources,they and their consultants from McKinsey and the Kennedy School of Government are aggressively destroying community institutions that have been in place for many decades, replacing them with untried experiments whose shelf-life will probably be no more than a few years. They will continue to churn and reorganize the small schools that replace Jamaica and other schools, until they can finally put in place the for-profit EMOs (Educational Management Organizations) that are their ultimate goal for the system.

    This is not policy in the traditional sense, it’s social vandalism.

  • http://sinksalive.blogspot.com KitchenSink

    Just wondering, Michael – why not EMOs? They couldn’t be worse than some of the “dropout factories” (not my words) we are dealing with now in our city.

  • http://www.lawandjusticempu.webs.com Galen Williams

    Jamaica High School has gotten a lot better. We have to give credit to the Principal Acham for taking us off the dangerous schools list. We’ve gotten better over the years and we will get a lot more better as the years go on!

  • SEEMA SINGH (JONAS)

    FIRST OF ALL, YOU DO NOT JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER, ALL OF THESE SO-CALLED FACTS ARE WHAT JAMAICA IS PORTRAYED TO BE, YOU WOULDNT REALLY HAVE ANY RIGHT TO SAY ANYTHING UNLESS YOU EXPERIENCE THIS SCHOOL FIRST HAND; OUR SCHOOL IS UNITED AND IF IT DIDN’T MEAN THIS MUCH TO US WOULD WE REALLY FIGHT FOR IT AS MUCH AS WE ARE…………….. THINK ABOUT IT………..I WANT YOU PEOPLE TO TAKE A MOMENT AND THINK ABOUT YOUR HIGH SCHOOL YEARS, ……………………………………………………………………..THE TEACHERS, SENIOR ACTIVITIES, YOUR YEARBOOK…………………………ALL OF THIS WILL BE NEGATIVELY AFFECTED IF YOU CLOSE OUR SCHOOL, ………….THIS IS NOT THE TEACHERS FAULT!!!!!!!!!!THE STAFF, THE TEACHERS, AND STUDENTS——–WE HAVE THE BEST IN THE CITY;;;;;;;;IN NO WAY ARE WE GOING TO LET SOME OVERLY-CONFIDENT NYC MAYOR TAKE THIS BEAUTIFUL LANDMARK FROM US, WE HAVE THE BEST SCHOOL BUILDING, BECAUSE OF WHAT WE ARE LABELED AS ………….SHALL WE NOT DESERVE A BUILDING AS EXTRAVAGANT AS THIS? SEE FOR YOURSELF………..THIS IS CHANGE WE DO NOT BELIEVE IN………….GIVE ME JAMAICA HS OR GIVE ME DEATH………..IN THE WORDS OF PATRICK HENRY

  • SEEMA SINGH (JONAS)

    STOP RUINING MY HIGH SCHOOL EXPERIENCE, WE ARE WILLING TO FIGHT FOR OUR SCHOOL, DOESN’T THAT TELL YOU SOMETHING?!?????!!!!!???

  • SEEMA SINGH (JONAS)

    CLOSE THOSE OTHER SCHOOLS, WHO DON’T CARE ——–WE DO, WE SHALL PREVAIL………..

  • SEEMA SINGH (JONAS)

    WE WILL HAVE AN AUDITORIUM FULL OF PARENTS, JUST WAIT AND SEE………

  • sawrajpal singh

     Jamaica High School should not be closed down because this school has had an old prestige of traditions. The Gateway Program in Jamaica provides many courses that challenge a regular student. We as the students of Jamaica High School disagree with the closing of Jamaica High School. Also, Jamaica High School has many student with bright futures and I believe there are much worse schools in New York which need improvement. Our school has a bright future with many intellectual minds. Therefore, save Jamaica High School and it’s future.

  • Invictus

    KitchenSink, the education of the future citizens of this city is not a BUSINESS experiment that can be tried and be outsourced anywhere else.

    Sure companies can move their sweatshops to the lowest paying place in the planet and moving them constantly around but we cannot afford to do mess around with education because we are not supposed to make students who are so unqualified and later find them in some garbage dump like the stuff those businesses produce.

    To all Jamaica High School students, cheers and I really hope that your turn out will be an angry and powerful one, a testament to the charade that Kleinberg is committing against all communities in NYC.

  • Michael Fiorillo

    KS,

    “Why not EMO’s?”

    1. The will inevitably, and soon, bring about multi-tiered, for-profit schooling.

    2. the same folks who would profit from the EMO’s are the one’s who’ve starved urban public schools over decades, a point to refuse to acknowledge.

    3. If you like HMOs, you’ll love EMO’s.

  • http://gothamschools.org Ellen Marshall

    I am a former student of Jamaica HS. When I walked up the hill I felt like I rose up to the top of Mount Olympus. It was a great school with the United Nations enrolled. It has a long, prestigous history and deserves to be shaped up and saved. To let it fade into oblivion would be a travesty.

    Ellen Marshall Class of 1976

  • TriLLer

    ok first of all lets face it Jamaica high was a great skool way back in the 80s but from the 90s till now it just got worse from kids bringing in weapons to drugs to even haveing sex in school, and so on i mean this school is not the only one there is way way more but if they want to close it there is a good and a bad, the good is that they are closing it down the bad is all the kids are going to go some where else in another school and do the same probably worst !. so ether way at the end of the day its not the parents or DOE its the damn students that is F ingg the whole system up !

  • Zara Awan

    Jamaica high school is one of the best schools in Queens. And it does not deserve to be closed down. In think that DOE does not care about the teachers and the students. All they want is our beautiful building and since it is a landmark building, DOE had their eyes on us for a while. They tried to close down the school two years ago and failed. We will not let them close Jamaica high school.If the DOE says that students will do better in other schools then i think they are totally wrong.It is because it depends on the students how they study. We were never given enough resources to improve. We can still proof that Jamaica high school is a much better school than they think. We will fight for our school. And we are not going down with a fight.

  • warner porsch

    To close this school is obscene. I graduated from this school many years ago when it was among the best in the city. Why is it failing now?
    The board of ed or powers that be can make this school anything they care to by expending the resources and attention needed to make the school a satisfactory performer.
    If the bureaucrats have success in closing this school what’s next?  What will become of the actual school building and grounds? Where will the students be dispersed to? Is this building on the national register of historic places?
    If not it deserves to be.
    What a waste! 

  • Afsan Quayyum

    I am a junior Gateway student at Jamaica High School in Queens. I will graduate with my class in June, 2011. I am an active peer tutor in Math and Science. In Jamaica High School, the Gateway Program is the advanced academic program which was launched in 1986. This program prepares us to excel on standardized exams such as Regents and to succeed in college. We take College Now classes and A.P. classes and receive college credits during our high school career. Gateway has approximately 97% rate of graduating. Graduates from the Gateway Program leave high school with more than the required number of credits. Gateway also prepares us for the Advanced Regents Diploma. Gateway has more experienced teachers. Students who have high academic achievements receive special awards every year. We also receive service credits by volunteering in the school library, peer tutoring or helping in the guidance office. Gateway students have above average attendance rate. Last year, the Gateway Program launched a peer tutoring program so that we can help the students succeed in their weaker subjects. As a result of this, more students who come to the tutoring sessions are passing their classes and their regents exams with improved grades. In the spring of this year, our school received a grade of “B” from the Annual Quality Review. In June 2009 our school was declared a landmark because of its history and its beautiful architecture. Not many schools in New York City have this admirable, beautiful edifice like ours. This decision of phasing out of Jamaica High School is concerning the students and parents in Jamaica High School. I was helped by the Gateway Program miraculously. I have been in Gateway Program since 10th Grade. By then my GPA was 93.3% and now in the junior year I have acquire a GPA of 98.90% and increasing. There are plenty of students in Gateway Program in Jamaica High School who have very high GPA and prominent number of credits and academic achievements and will proceed to great colleges successfully. DOE shouldn’t cut down this opportunity.
    I think closing Jamaica High School will not be a great idea, when we have these great programs to help the students. If Jamaica High School is phased out the efforts of the students to do better in their studies and improve their grades will be halted. Our lives will be devastated because there will be nothing for the school to continue in future. Gateway does remarkable help to the students in the Gateway Program and outside the Gateway Program. DOE should not take away this opportunity of learning from the students. This phasing out decision might have many negative consequences in our lives. I can not think how the Gateway Program will continue if the school is phased out. We might not have any opportunity to learn things in the classroom or outside the classroom.

  • http://gothamschools.org Ellen Marshall

    My name is Ellen Marshall, my graduation year was 1976. I am a proud product of the NYC school system. I have heard that there has been television news coverage about the protestation of the closing of JHS. I missed this coverage and would really appreciate it if someone who is following these events would post and update on what is going on. I would think if there was an organized barrage of post and electronic messages to Bloomberg and Klein they might get the message. Let’s try to send a STRONG message that we DO NOT AND WILL NOT ACCEPT THIS HAPPENING.

    Ellen Marshall East Windsor, New Jersey email: Ellenmarshall@msn.com

  • sharmin piancca

    justice has prevailed. And to that I say “IN YOUR FACE BLOOMBERG!”

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