GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

“As an Education Pioneer, Debra worked at Village Academies Network, a charter school management organization operating two schools in Harlem, New York. At Village Academies she was responsible for the relocation of Harlem Village Academy to a district space. She worked with contractors and vendors to negotiate purchasing and facility upgrades. She was also responsible for implementing the technology plan for the school which involved working with the e-rate program and various other vendors and stakeholders. She now works for the NYC Department of Education as Senior Director, Portfolio Planning.”

How can Debra Kurshan be objective and concerned about the public schools when her prior experience, before working with the DoE, was in the realm of charter schools? She will only talk charter schools, think charter schools, support charter schools and will try to make the public schools — charter schools! MISMANAGEMENT!

Jamaica High School is an icon and I was at the town meeting last night. I am an 1972 alumni, my brother, 1976, Uncle 1963 and I am still in the neighborhood, living in Holliswood, I was so emotional hearing the news and seeing the passion that filled the room last night making beautiful noise. People came in numbers, old, young and of every culture. I am a business leader, a parent and one who is passionate about education, culture, diversity and Jamaica High School was pivotal in who I am today.

Council member Leroy Comrie spoke and shed light on what is really happening. I totally believe there was a systematic plan to shut this school down all the way from importing the Rikers Island kids into JHS, to the lack of skilled language teachers, to the lack of funding, to the lack of a wide array of classes, and I remember the great day when about 5000 teens seemed to flourish and excel in so many areas. The funding went all over but here.

We were told to e-mail every day Joel Klein, jklein@nycboe.net and Mike Bloomberg at http://www.nyc.gov/html/mail/html/mayor.html to tell them that the people will not let this happen and they can not justify this action. I have a contact list of 5000 business leaders and will instruct them all to join me with this action.

It was stated that the funding went to other schools and with the revitalization of Jamaica, JHS was not in the plans to stay and this was decided a long time ago. Keep JHS and spend the funds here instead of closing it down and opening up 2 other smaller schools. JHS will not accept 9th graders in 2010 and those there will still graduate….but, with what funding……what skills will they graduate with. What attention will be spent on these students??? It is apparent that they are just not cared about at all and it shows with deceptive proposal and plans and decisions that were already made.

The building is land marked and if the bulldozers came to take it down, I would not be alone lying in front of the machines daring them to move.

The passion tonight was real and the next meeting will be January 7, 2010 at 6;00 PM at JHS—this has just begun.

The QHST (Queens High School of Teaching) is the model that if brought into JHS, the JHS icon will flourish and the students would emerge as viable citizens of their city, this state, the nation and the world. With all the languages there and the rich culture, train and hire teachers who know different dialects, know how to bridge the gab and unite the cultures, bring resources in the school and offer music, art, sports, academics clubs, community service projects and with the QHST model, no child will fall inside the cracks.

The momentum is building and there will be the bigger protests organized since the Viet Nam years and we just begun. The building is the most beautiful in the city, the campus is inspiring and the students need the backing here and they will show off what they can do. They just need the right leadership with the right programs with the language barrier addressed and we, the parents, the community and the business leaders are here to support the life of Jamaica High School for years to come.

I offer my PR services freely for this cause and my passion is solid with this mission.

Gayle Naftaly
access.office inc.

866-391-2780 * 917-821-6576
fax 866-514-9127
gnaftaly@accessoffice.net * http://www.accessoffice.net *

give or view my compliments -www.eCompliments.com/GayleNaftaly/

Rocket Fuel for Business * Rainmaker, Entrepreneur, Coordinator, Leader, Organizer with Contacts
Services: * Marketing, Public Relations, Word of Mouth & On-line Marketing and Virtual Assistants on Call
Serving: * Those who want to grow their business big time, are long term thinkers, recognize the importance of a marketing strategy and are ready to start now.

Member of: IBWC – Director of Communications * Queens Chamber of Commerce – Membership Committee * Powerful You! Women’s Network – Member and Facilitator * Women on the Fast Track – Member * BizBuilders Group – Referral System for Global Business

Links of Value:
http://www.connectingdotstoday.com – Joint Venture Opportunities * http://www.buzzyourbiztoday.com – facebook, Linkedin, You Tube, myspace, Twitter * http://www.linkedin.com/in/accessoffice10 , http://www.twitter.com/GayleNaftaly * http://www.steppingstonesforyou.com *give or view my compliments -www.eCompliments.com/GayleNaftaly/

Debra Kurshan is trying to close down the school. She needs to do better than it. Jamaica will stay open and the students are doing great and are improving within the years.

I have an entirely different kind of comment. The auditorium at Jamaica High School appears to be extraordinarily beautiful. The beauty suggests that the claims of some that the high schools of the past were merely designed to be factories to produce workers for real factories are perhaps over-stated. Why would people have built beautiful schools to produce workers for ugly factories? The real shame is that schools of genuine beauty became dungeons of failure.

I think the rhetoric is too much here. Jamaica HS is not closing down. The organization is closing. This school is half empty and has been that way for years while others in Queens are bursting at the seams. Why? The school is terrible. It should be shut down and new school organizations allowed to grow in its place. So the school is not shutting down, just the organization.

Of 371 students who were slated for graduation in 2009, 256 graduated.
The real graduation rate for our seniors is 69%, not the 46% number that DOE numbers show.
New York State did not count 20 of our graduates when calculating our graduation rate which is easily over 50%, using any standard, and not under 50% for years as the DOE claims.
Our graduation rate the last four years has risen as fast as NYC’s national test scores in Math. The DOE declares the test score gains a rousing success but they ignore Jamaica’s advances a call us a failure.
Many of out students are Special Education [170] or English Language Learners [259], or Students with Interrupted Formal Education [71], or other non traditional pupils who require more than four years to graduate. If a student is still in attendance at Jamaica or in another accredited program, why should we be held accountable as if they failed? They didn’t fall short. Some only need to pass a Regents exam to graduate. The NYS Regents are moving to five year graduation rate standard. Could you complete a diploma on time in Italy if you moved there with no prior knowledge of Italian?
Jamaica has close to a 100% graduation rate in both the Gateway and Finance Academy programs.
142 of our 2009 graduates received the prestigious Regents Diploma, 35 an Advanced Regents Diploma.
The state wrongfully labeled us as a persistently dangerous school in 2007 because we had a zero tolerance discipline policy and we honestly reported even the most minor infractions.
The DOE sent a letter to all of our parents telling them we were dangerous and asking them if they want to transfer. When hundreds left, the DOE slashed our budget so we lost virtually all of our young stuff and then six months later DOE cut our budget again forcing further stuff reductions.
DOE never sent a letter to parents telling them that we are no longer a persistently dangerous school yet enrollments are starting to rise again.

I, Doreen Mohammed, am sincerely writing this today, to inform, as well as to question, the reasoning of the closing my dearest Jamaica High School. I am sixteen years old, a junior in the eleventh grade, in the prestigious and honorable Gateway Honors Program at Jamaica High School. My grade point average in my latest transcript is a 98.64% and I am currently the valedictorian amongst my high achieving peers. I am extremely confused and enraged on your proposal to close down Jamaica High School, officially by June 2013 because your reasoning is quite, I must say is invalid.

You, employees of the DOE, claim that our school has a low graduation rate, which is supposedly under 50%, which isn’t true. Within the past 6 years, our graduation rate has increased significantly from 38% to 69%, yet you all don’t note that remarkable progress. When an increase of this sort occurred at another school, quite similar to us, you, Chancellor Joel Klein, applauded the school for their incredible progress. So why don’t we get the credit and honor we deserve, as other schools do?

You all must note that our student body population is quite remarkably different from the other high schools in New York City. We have an amazingly diverse student body population and everybody fails to attempt to comprehend this. Amongst our 1526 talented students, 76 of them are self-contained students who get Special Education in the most restrictive environment, & 259 of our fellow students are English Language Learners (ESL) students, who need to learn English from scratch practically. The ESL students are quite new to the United States, coming from many different places all over the world. It’s very hard for them to learn English and it takes time as well as effort.

Additionally, we have also received many students who have had many behavioral issues in their pasts. Some excellent examples are the students that we received from Rikers Island, who had troubled pasts & histories. That naturally led to a major increase to the amount of negative incidents that would occur at our school in the past. It also led us, unfairly, to becoming labeled as a persistently dangerous school as well, which we successfully were able to change. That really damaged our reputation greatly. It wasn’t our fault that we got a whole lot of unmotivated & troubled students who need a lot of help and note, time, to successfully graduate and excel. Despite the type of students we received & do receive, we do a pretty great job with them. We aren’t like other high schools yet we get blamed for it. When we came off the list of most dangerous schools, no one was officially notified of this at all.

As I mentioned before, we received a lot of ESL and Special Education students, who obviously require more time than other students to graduate. This does indeed contribute to our low graduation rates, which as I said before, has significantly increased over the years. Despite our major disadvantage in the competition with other high schools in our graduation rates, nobody applauds us for our astonishing accomplishments. This is gravely wrong to us because we deserve to be accredited for helping the naturally disadvantaged students, yet we get condemned for it.

In matter of fact, typically many of our students were forced to go here in the first place. Our school is a zoned school, & has had an extremely negative reputation in the past due to our label of “persistently dangerous“. Other schools have incidents just like us, but they don’t report it unlike us so get away with it. That incredibly brings unmotivated students who come here as a last resort. Amongst all of these disadvantages, the budget cuts are literally killing us year by year. We used to have so much, yet now we have so less compared to our grand past.

We don’t have a music teacher at all anymore, so obviously we can’t have any music classes, which I must say, students are required to take and pass in order to graduate. We used to have AP Chemistry but we lost that due to these cursed budget cuts. Additionally, we used to have AP Spanish and a whole lot of other native languages but we lost them as well. We used to have six College Now classes, but now we barely have four. The Boys Bowling Team has to pay to practice at the bowling alley due to these budget cuts. My fellow students and I wanted to start a Badminton Team but our school honestly can’t afford it. We lost many excellent teachers and will indeed lose more if the school shuts down. That really deprives many innocent students of an excellent high school experience, which everyone deserves to be able to endure. Trust me, I would know.

We lost Mr. Rule, our excellent law coordinator and advisor of both our highly prestigious Law Program and Law Team, which I joined this year. We lost Ms. Rachel Wolff, our awesome Gateway Honors English teacher for both Gateway and regular freshmen classes. She was also the advisor for the Archon/Arista Honor Society. We will lose Ms. Jesusa Merioles, our marvelous Living Environment teacher who has a record of a 100% Regents passing grade, all of her students do indeed pass the Regents. She used to be our incredible Medical Club advisor, which I was the president of last year. She used to teach Psychology at our school but we lost that course due to lack of funding.

We will lose Mr. Madramootoo, who will is our greatly talented yearbook advisor and my current English teacher. He is the head of our Folio class, which creates the awesome yearbooks the seniors get yearly. Our school couldn’t afford the equipment required to help to create such beautiful yearbooks. So Mr. Madramootoo was so dedicated and passionate about us and his job, he bought all of the expensive equipment required to create our yearbooks. He bought for our school’s yearbook, a personal HP laptop and two professional cameras, all which we will lose if we lose him as our yearbook advisor. So my graduating class, as well as the future graduating classes, will be deprived of these special privileges.

We will lose Mr. Hertz, my amazing mathematics teacher back in freshman year. He made me and my peers pass and excel on the Regents. I didn’t even study a single bit for that math class or the Regents, yet I got 100’s on his exams and an 86 on that Regents. Despite all of these disadvantages which were caused due to these cruel budget cuts, great successes have emerged from our Jamaica High School. Back in 2008, a Gateway Honors student named Deroy got into Harvard University with a $25,000 annual Coca-Cola Scholarship based on his academic excellence and his SAT scores. Last year, our Gateway valedictorian got into New York University as well. Many prestigious universities accept our students.

We have AP US History, taught by Mr. James Eterno, who’s also a global teacher and the Union leader of our schools’ Union, who does an excellent job. We have AP Calculus and AP English as well, both which I plan to take next year if we don’t lose them. Our school miraculously still has AP Biology, which lacks some serious funding. We only have it for 3 semesters for only 1 session for barely 45 minutes when we are supposed to have it for 2 semesters for 90 minutes. We can’t afford the equipments and materials required to conduct the laboratory experiments, which deprives us of a lot. I luckily passed the AP Biology exam with a 3, but if I had gotten what I was supposed to get, I would so get a 5. Our school can still afford to conduct the annual Cardboard races which are quite educational and a great experience. We get to apply Physics on to how to construct the cardboard boats successfully, so that they don’t sink in our Olympic sized pool. This was started by our awesome Physics teacher, Mr. Pecorino, and still lasts miraculously.

We have many excellent sports teams, like our Girls Track Team which has won the Queens Championships since so long. Our school gives us so many opportunities, such as scholarships, college trips, both non-paid and paid internships, also plenty of volunteer experience as well. Through our school, I was able to volunteer at the Margaret Nursing Home and Rehabilitation Center nearby our school for 120 hours. I also completed a paid and comprehensive internship, as well as volunteer, at DRUM, Desis Rising Up And Moving, last summer. I currently volunteer at the American Red Cross and I plan to volunteer at Queens General Hospital, and also complete their paid internship this upcoming summer. Through my grand high school, I plan to get plenty of scholarships to prestigious universities such as Ivy Leagues like Harvard and privates like NYU. Our high school has many excellent programs as well. We have the Gateway Honors, Law, Engineering, Finance, Robotics, Law, and Art Programs, all which practically have 100% graduation rates. In matter of fact, we are one of the few schools in New York, who actually provide an Art Program with advanced art classes and surprisingly an Art Regents.

You all really desire to acknowledge the funny yet unfair part, our school gets less funding per student than Queens Collegiate. For Queens Collegiate, they receive $7710.83 per student while for Jamaica High; we receive only $7153.98 per student. Queens Collegiate receives $556.85 more per student than us. Additionally, they have ten smartboards while we have only two smartboards. The budget costs per teacher greatly differ as well. For Queens Collegiate, it cost $61,504.00 per teacher while for Jamaica High is $82,230.00 per teacher. We are charged $21,726.00 more than QC. QC has 75 working laptops while we have only 25. They get separate bathrooms, 13 stalls per student while we have only one bathroom for each gender, used all day by many students. They intrude into our school, take away our first floor gymnasium, our bathrooms, part of our third floor, and worst, are able to join our school teams/clubs and yet they don’t pay us a single penny. They’re ripping us off for absolutely no money! That’s seriously not fair! They need to get their own school and their own building!

I know this and many other people do as well, you employees of the DOE don’t honestly care about the students. You only care about yourselves, this is all just corruption. You all claim that you plan to rescue the students who are failing, yet none of them practically will be accepted into the new competitive schools that will accept only students who have 3’s and 4’s on their state-wide exams. You all aren’t helping the problem, you’re just avoiding it. So why doesn’t the Department of Education help these students by providing us with the funding we need for our students, instead of hurting all of us even more? Help us, don’t destroy us! Excellent teachers will lose their jobs for practically no reason and the DOE is wasting our taxpayers’ money for nonsense! On top of that, we are in a major recession! If the DOE can’t fund us properly now, where will all of this money come from? Where is it coming from? We will fight to the end and even if the DOE decide against us, we will cause an uprising! Give me Jamaica or give me death! (Influenced by Patrick Henry, from American Revolution)

DOREEN MOHAMMED

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.

Keep fighting to keep Jamaica open.

Hei Jamaica High School is one of the great activies and many school to do this things for this jamaica.and please save this type of school in the world.

Sorry Ms. Mohammed, the e-mail address is incorrect: the correct address is monica.ice09@gmail.com.

I attended JHS and graduated in 1957. JHS was a high school that prepared you for college and a career.I attended NYU in the evening and worked as the assistant to the Dean of Admissions during the day. My college was paid for by NYU.Jamaica High School was large and had the offerings of a college. We were very proud to go to JHS. I always felt confident as I was prepared for anything with my high school education. I later embarked on a television career and traveled the world working in various countries.At no time did I ever feel intimidated when I met heads of state in various countries. I was well grounded with my high school education and a great supporter of a public education even though in lower grades I attended a private school. I now own a successful real estate company in NYC that has been in business 20 years.. There are so many well known students that came out of JHS; it is the ivy league of high schools. One should look very carefully at the problems that are there now and fix them, not destroy the school and its past.The building is a landmark building and the school is a landmark school! When you read the passion of the top honor student there, you realize it is the adults that run the schools that have failed JHS today, not the school that has failed the students. You can’t keep dumping problem students in a school without support. Would a Harvard or Yale close because they had some problems for a few years? Let Jamaica High School be the the guiding light for a public high school education with our flag flying high on the hill as a beacon of hope for all. Let Jamaica High School’s history be the opportunity for every student.. Give it the support it needs and let the past alumni be the role model for tomorrow’s students as the Statue of Liberty is the beacon for new citizens coming to America.. I am so grateful for the opportunities I was given at Jamaica High ScHool and would like the school that was voted the best in America be a guiding light for America’s future citizens. Marilyn Roche Kaye class of 1957

DOE claims that our school has a low graduation rate, which is under 50%.However within the past 6 years, our graduation rate has increased significantly. So i am here to make my plea with you the DOE to halt your harsh and unnecessary decision to close Jamaica and instead of bashing it you support us.

I think the last comment by a kid attending Jamaica High speaks volumes about why the school needs to be closed. At first sight I thought this message was in Dutch. I think It is sad that the Parents are fighting the closing of the school. “SMALL” Schools have a a much easier time attending the the needs of their students. Kids don’t get lost. The Principle often knows all the kids by name, and teachers have and easier time getting the kids attention, and giving them the attention they need. I have all three of my children in small schools Bard, Thomkins Square Middle School, and The Neighborhood School. 2 out of 3 of which share buildings with other schools. And ALL of these schools I would highly recommend. Small Schools are great!!

QueensParent, you who frequent these board should know that this “Death Spiral” that you blame the staff of Jamaica of having perpetrated on “themselves” is simply ludicrous. Death Spirals or Black Holes of Educational Achievement are achieved systematically by simple strategies that the BOE/DOE have implemented systematically since the late 1990s and accelerated after Bloomberg and Klein reign came into being.

Stop making yourself seem more lacking of sense that your ideas/philosophies already so clearly reflect.

BTW, why do you bother to go to these public hearings, where you well know that the same people who have created this “Death Spiral” are making a mockery of themselves, why are you so interested in hearing from “irresponsible” adults who have failed their students and “failed” themselves into “closure.”

Your position makes no logical sense whatsoever.

I read with concern about the parent who believed the letter from someone who said he was a JHS student and he couldn’t write or spell. He also didn’t sign his or her name. How do you know it’s a JHS student?. It could be someone who doesn’t want the school to continue; it’s done all the time in business and cowards never sign their name.I am a former Jamaica High School student from decades ago and I believe pationately in a public school education. By the way. if there is any truth in the badly written letter, that student should have learned how to write in grade school not high school. A high school is “higher learning.”. Why not focus on your students in the special classes at JHS and applaud & encourage their accomplishments. with their almost 100% graduation rate. Replicate what they do and let them be the mentors and role models for other students and give them credit for this. I sat on a Board of a school in a tough area of Manhattaan, the school had tough rules. Many students had problems but the staff and teachers were given the tools to succeed.They sent 50,000 students to college over many years..You can’t take kids from Riker’s Island with problems, no support and send them to a regular school,you destroy the school. The final insult after you send these disruptive students to JHS is to send a letter asking parents ” do you want to have your child go to another school?…as JHS is dangerous”Who made it that way? With this letter, you are setting the school up to fail. Jamaica High School can be a great school again with support. It shouldn’t be a dumping ground for students that break the law. Expell them, that is what private schools do, they don’t send letters.Promote the students who excel and parents would once again beg to have their teens go to Jamaica High School.Use your honor students as models for success and get successful alumni to participate further as role models, Jamaica High would succeed.. Private schools promote their successes and they succeed. These students deserve a good education, great sports and a chance for scholarships. Good schools should not be only for the wealthy. We have an obligation to give our students that opportunity and restore Jamaica High School to greatness for all. It is the American way. Marilyn R. Kaye

Check out classmates.com and look for Jamaica High School. The posting are active and the support to keep it open is unified. Keep up the momentum. Save Jamaica High School. Fix it and keep it in the community.