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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.

I attend Jamaica High School & it definitely doesn’t deserve to be closed down. It’s a magnificent & excellent institution with an amazing hsitory. I’m a junior in the intensive Gateway program & I have a 98. 6 A+ average. I’m working my way to being admitted into an excellent college, like many of the previous Gateway students who attended Jamaica High. I plan to apply & get into an Ivy League, like Columbia or Cornell, maybe even NYU. Just 2 years ago, a boy from Gateway got into Harvard on a Coca-Cola scholarship. Our school has awesome potential but it seriously needs some funding in order to achieve successfully. We used to have AP Chemistry & AP Spanish but budget cuts took those away from us. We used to have 6 College Now classes, but now we only have 4 and 1 of them isn’t even properly funded. The Boys Bowling Team still exists but they had to pay in order to be able to practice from their own pockets. Our school barely has paper for us to use & the copiers don’t always work. In my art class, we only recently got new colored pencils since all along we had used short broken ones. We don’t even have a music teacher anymore. Mr. Rule, an awesome law & AP US history teacher, isn’t here anymore. Also we are going to lose Ms. Merioles, who’s an great biology teacher & our Medical Club advisor. We’ll lose Mr. Madramootoo, who’s a great English teacher & excellent photographer for the yearbook, also the senior advisor for Folio (yearbook). We may even lose Ms. Dibinis, a legendary & amazing Chemistry, Forensics, & Biology teacher. Despite all of these econmoic troubles, our school still manages to thrive. I was able to take AP Biology with Ms. McLean as an excellent teacher and pass the exam with a 3, despite the lack of funding causing us not to have any labs & a whole semster short. I am currently taking AP US History with Mr. Eterno and it’s my most favorite course, this man can teach & I know I will excel on that exam for sure. I’m also taking College Now Algebra & Trigonometry & plan to take on more college courses. I also intend to take AP Calculus & AP English if we still have them. I also plan to take Folio (yearbook) if it still exists because they, with Mr. Madramootoo, do an marvelous job at making magnificent yearbooks. There are plenty of students like myself in Jamaica High School, not only in the Gateway Program, who have the potential but not the resources. We get to apply for many scholarships, college trips, & beneifts as well. The problem is that we being gradually deprived of all of the benefits we deserve due to these LOUSY BUDGET CUTS!!! I won’t let Jamaica close down, I WILL FIGHT FOR MY SCHOOL!!!

hats out to DOE for ruining my high school experience. congrats! you really deserve a round of applause!

I agree with I noticed that.

Its a shame that all of these excellent teachers the students mentioned will now have their names and reputations sullied as ATRS and hear from the new teach for america crowd how they deserve to be fired so they can get jobs.. In all of this data driven madness does the students who actually receive the education opinions matter? What truer form of evaluation exists then whether or not the student felt you did your job to the best of your ability?

ty. it is time for us to find out the true facts.

if they close the school im snuffin someone -.-

I am a Junior Gateway student at Jamaica High School. I will graduate with my classes in June, 2011. I am an immigrant in this country. I’ve been in US for about two years and a half. I have been in this school since I moved and I am an active peer tutor in Jamaica High School in Math and Science. I have received a Congressional Achievement Award from US. House OF REPRESENTATIVES for showing academic achievement and excellence in Peer Tutoring session last year. If I didn’t get help from my teachers and guidance I would’ve never acquired this award promptly. I am one “OF THE MANY” evidences that Jamaica High School is not an unsuccessful school.
When I heard about the propose of phasing out of Jamaica High School by June, 2013 I was thwarted both intellectually and physically. This is a complete inexpedient decision of Department of Education. I do not accord with this inequitable decisiveness.
The Gateway Program, the advanced academic program of Jamaica High School, has been active since 1960s. This program prepares us to excel on standardized exams such as Regents and to succeed in college. Last year Gateway Program launched a peer tutoring program so that we can help the students in their weaker subjects and also gain some personal teaching experience in our high school career. As a result of this more students who attend in peer tutoring are passing their classes with adequate grades and doing substantial in their regents. With all of these great features, the school funding is so low that sometimes we do not have enough copy paper to copy handouts. I’ve seen this in many of my classes. Sometimes even if we do have some handouts, the printing is too small for us to read. This is because of the numbness of the DOE towards this school. Last year in my science lab we had to use secondhand test tubes and funnels which had been being used for last several years. I remember when I was doing the TITRATION LAB in the chemistry lab where I never got the lab with 0% error. This was not because of my procedure but the spoiled chemicals which were used by other classes in the school for many years. I completed that lab minimum of 10 times, but I never had a precise result. With all of these difficulties in school why DOE attempt to phase out the school, when they failed to provide the school with sufficient resources and funding?
In the spring of this year Jamaica High School received a grade of “B” from the Annual Quality Review. This fall, Department of Education issued a grade of “D” to Jamaica High School and proposed to close out, this is totally absurd.

I graduated from Jamaica High School in 1994. Leaving Ryan Middle School in 1991, I was warned by classmates that if I went to Jamaica, horrible things would happen to me. Thankfully, I ignored their warnings and entered Jamaica in 1991, and it was the best decision I ever made in my life. The school’s unsavory reputation was just that: a reputation. The reality was that students were given amazing opportunities to learn, to be exposed to people from a myriad of backgrounds, and to make lasting friendships. I was more than prepared for college thanks to Jamaica, and had I paid attention to the school’s reputation, I would have missed all that. Many of the wonderful teachers I had are still there, and I know from firsthand accounts that Jamaica continues to offer students the same opportunities that my classmates and I had fifteen years ago.

My neighbor currently attends Jamaica and is enrolled in the selective Gateway program. No one in her middle school had even told her that the program existed. Rather than attend Jamaica, her teachers were advising her to apply to small schools that she would have to travel nearly an hour to reach, but she chose Jamaica instead. She’s glad that she did, and doesn’t want to attend any other school. She heard all the same sorts of stories that I had heard years before, but she entered Jamaica in spite of her concern that the warnings would come true. Since starting at Jamaica, she has blossomed into a scholar, and she and her family are so impressed with the education she is receiving at Jamaica that her younger cousin and several younger friends applied to attend Jamaica beginning in September. Contrary to what the statistics and the school’s reputation suggest, she’s getting a fantastic education and loves going to school — as do her classmates.

Jamaica is a special place. The interaction between current students and alumni is one of the things that I think makes Jamaica special — how many schools really exist where alumni of all ages clearly love their school and embrace each other as family, regardless of what year they graduated? I once saw a 90+ year old nearly leap with excitement when he learned we shared Jamaica as our alma mater. Current and former students alike (along with current and past teachers) celebrated Jamaica’s new status as a historic landmark last summer, and the hundreds of attendees were there to celebrate not just the building but the school.

Would this love of school exist in a smaller school in that great building? I doubt it. Would students receive a great education in a small school? Possibly. But there are no guarantees, and students have been receiving a fantastic education at Jamaica High School for over 100 years. Students are still receiving fantastic educations at Jamaica today. Some students struggle with academics due to learning challenges, others enter the school without mastering skills at lower grades, and others simply are challenged by the need to begin learning English as high school students. Regardless, they all receive an education at Jamaica. What kind of home will these students find in smaller, more “selective” high schools? And if the city has the financial resources to launch and fund several new schools in the Jamaica building, why hasn’t it allowed Jamaica’s current students to benefit from those resources? In spite of funding cuts, graduation rates and test scores are improving, and to close the school without first dedicating the resources to support the teachers’ efforts is shameful. Instead of providing resources to a school striving to improve itself, the city has reduced the number of teachers in the school and left some classes this year without permanent teachers as of late in the fall term. The students, teachers and families most affected by the city’s decision to close the school are right to be infuriated and to feel betrayed by the city. Jamaica should be kept open to offer all students an education while also providing all the things a large school can offer with proper funding that a small “academy” can’t: a wider variety of athletic teams, varied extracurricular activities, more diversity, and a wider range of elective courses. The school needs the city’s support, not its condemnation.

I hope that they keep Jam-Rock open and why can’t people put their real names (BarbieBoi)

afsan is full of him self ” i never got o% error because the chemicals were contaminated.” wow

What [the city] should have done and what they could have done was to give us the funding, let us lower class size, let us have reasonable guidance caseloads and let us see if it works,” Eterno said. “Then if it doesn’t work, then you can make the case to close us down.”

I agree with this the most because it makes da most sense. How can u no somthing is goin 2 work when you nvr gave it a cjance 2 work. We have a lot of kids in our school rather than cut down fundings the city should give us more funding. In QC kids have laptops, smart boards and we dont even have enough money 4 paper.

I’m a junior at Jamaica High School. Although I’ve only attended this school for two years, I have benefitted from academic support; I was not always successful at math, but my teachers’ dedication has helped me improve. I’m writing to express my concerns about the proposed phasing out of my school by June, 2013; In Jamaica High School, the Gateway program is an advanced academic program designed to guide students to enroll in many different activities and help them excel in high school as well as in college. Jamaica High School have decades of history and if our school is phased out, all our history will be lost. Jamaica High School is a magnificent school.