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petitioning chancellor klein
December 21, 2009
Queens City Council members petition Klein to save schools
City Councilman David Weprin (right) signs a petition urging the DOE not to close 20 city schools. Councilman Eric Ulrich (left) plans to deliver the petition to Chancellor Joel Klein's office this afternoon.
Members of the Queens City Council delegation called on Chancellor Joel Klein to abandon plans to close 20 city schools today.
Standing on the steps of Tweed Courthouse and joined by colleagues representing other boroughs, Queens Council members accused the Department of Education of threatening to close schools without first trying to improve them or seeking community input.
City Councilman Eric Ulrich, who represents Rockaway Beach, said the DOE did not notify his office before announcing its proposal to close Beach Channel High School.
Ulrich is circulating a petition signed by nearly all of the Queens Council members calling on the DOE to abandon its plans to close the borough’s schools.
Ulrich said he intended to deliver the petition to Chancellor Joel Klein’s office this afternoon. (He jokingly said he might nail it to the doors of Tweed.)
Many of the 11 Council members and members-elect who attended the news meeting called for discussions with parents, community leaders, and the teachers union about how to improve struggling schools before resorting to closure.
“The Chancellor is turning his back on these students and these schools,” Queens Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley said. “That is unacceptable.”
Three of the 20 schools the DOE has marked for closure this year are in Queens and two of the three — Jamaica and Beach Channel — are large high schools. Critics of the DOE’s plans to shutter the schools worry that the closures would displace students from eastern Queens, crowding them into already crowded schools such as Francis Lewis High School.
City Council members petitioned Chancellor Joel Klein to abandon plans to close 20 city schools.
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December 21st, 2009 5:49 pm
Kudos to the councilpeople for signing the petition. However, Klein is taking orders from Bloomberg and he’s beholden to the mayor. So will the mayor get a copy of the petition, too?
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December 21st, 2009 6:16 pm
I hope he does nail the petition to the door of the DOE……. and to the door at City hall.
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December 21st, 2009 7:51 pm
Getting to seven votes: the Manhattan and Bronx PEP reps have been independent voices, can the Queens Council members convince the Queens Boro Prez appointee to vote No. How about the Brooklyn Council members? How about David Chang, the chair … an academic? It took a year to collect 60 votes in the Senate for a watered down Health Care bill, can parents, kids, teachers and the union dig up seven votes to postpone school closings? Six weeks to go …
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December 21st, 2009 8:10 pm
The thing about a chancellor who serves at the pleasure of the mayor is–well–he isn’t really a chancellor. A chancellor ought to represent kids, not the mayor. How it’s in kids’ interest to close their neighborhood schools rather than fix them eludes me utterly.
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December 21st, 2009 9:26 pm
Yes Ellen, like Martin Luthor so should the people of Queens. But signing this petition is like the citizens of Poland signing a petition to ask Hitler to spare the Jews lives. Only difference is Hitler would have considered it.
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December 21st, 2009 9:28 pm
With all due respect, NYCE, I’m starting to like the term “Chancellor.”
Every time I hear it in the context of parent and educator outcry, I think: FAT CHANCE!
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December 22nd, 2009 1:39 am
Finally, those councilmen with some pull in local government are trying to spearhead a movement. Now if only parent’s in the community can be just as outraged by the Chancellor’s(mayor’s) decisions. King Bloomberg must be fought at every front to stop this insanity regarding these school closings.
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March 13th, 2010 5:11 pm
Closing failing schools is short sighted and misguided. Clearly some of the proposed closures are motivated by other criteria (like for example Moskowitz’s interest in them and her connection to Klein/Bloomberg). Resources that include and also go beyond money must be provided to schools that are not meeting the needs of all their students. Looking at criteria beyond standardized test scores must also be part of the full picture. Economic status has been shown to be a strong predictive element linked to student success and that would fall squarely in the hands of the local and federal government and their success with stimulating the troubled economy. Parent involvement is another top key when examining the factors that lead to student achievement, yet when parents of these schools came out to support their schools the parent voice was ignored. We can’t claim to be collaborative or responsive to all stakeholders when moves like Klein/Bloomberg’s evidence exactly the opposite.
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