Comments on: Spike in anti-school closure protests begins to heat up the winter

By: Schools closures – everywhere! « Save Our Schools

Schools closures – everywhere! « Save Our Schools — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 21:18:17 +0000

[...] Spike in anti-school closure protests begins to heat up the winter [...]

By: sri chinmoy johnson

sri chinmoy johnson — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 18:28:26 +0000

When a school shifts in 40 years from best to worst everyone wrings their hands and blames the BOE or City Hall. The reason for the fall is obvious, but racially tinged. If the student body goes from 90% White and Asian to 90% Black and Latino, the end is near. The Asian kids at Jamaica HS were the only reason the GPA’s didn’t fall completely off the chart. The Whites abandoned ship years ago when “diversity and ESL” replaced excellence in academics. No kid can learn in an environment where chaos is the rule rather than the exception.

By: sodeskune

sodeskune — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 00:22:46 +0000

Well if people were shocked at the grade changing shenanigans over at Lehman, they should investigate how many schools under-report suspensions and other incidents at their schools. We have kids who should be suspended for fighting, but they aren’t because no one wants to report those incidents on ORRs. It will tarnish our record for the SQR. It’s a house of cards. Perhaps Jamaica should have lied like all the other schools that are not facing closures.

By: Alan Coles

Alan Coles — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:03:34 +0000

As a teacher at Jamaica High School for 25 year’s, and the Girl’s Track Team coach for the same time, I personally believe that the planned closure at Jamaica was orchestrated by the Board of Education year’s ago. How do you close a school that is in a prime location, and can accommodate several charter school’s or specialized school’s. Let me tell you how. First, you send 34 student’s from Rikers Island Correctional Facility to that school in one year followed by an unknowed amount of these same students the following year’s. Then you send student’s from as far away as Brooklyn, and Far Rockaway who academically could not function in their area high school’s to Jamaica. The cancer has now been injected into a viable school’s to mix with those student’s who were doing well before these student’s arrived. These negative student’s, I’m sure, accounted for most of the reported incidences ( such as fights,thefts, robbery’s,etc.) The Principal at the time, Jay Dickler, did everything in his power to control these students by reporting these incidences, and suspending those students. Because of these actions the State Education Department under the No-Child-Left-Behind-Act deemed Jamaica a persistently dangerous school due to the high incident rate that was reported. Second, the State sends every student’s parent in the school a letter reaffiming that the school is dangerous and that every student had a right to transfer out of Jamaica immediately. The BOE made it very easy for those parent’s to transfer their children out, even giving them a simple form letter to fill out if they wanted to discharge their children. At that point Jamaica lost a majority of their brightest Freshmen that year, as well as upper classmen. Third, the BOE makes up it’s own grading policy, with all it’s flaws, stating that they will close any school that does not make the grade. Jamaica received a “C” last year and worked twice as hard the next year to improve that grade. Surprise, the school now receives a “D”. If I was a betting man I would say the grading policy was fixed. Forth, the BOE now say’s we only have a graduation rate of less then 50%. Again, the number’s are questionable. School statistic’s show otherwise with our graduation rate in the mid 60′s to 70%. Fifth, we are one of those school’s that have a high number of newly arrived Foreign and ESL student’s who usually take more time to graduate. These new school’s do not accept these students, where will they go once Jamaica is dismantled, Francis Lewis, Van Buren, Bryant? Jamaica is a viable school with many superior programs to offer. My Track team is the defending Outdoor Queen’s Champion for the past 5 year’s. My athletes have to be academically eligble in order to compete. We go against the cream of the crop as far as high school’s in Queen’s with less then half the enrollment. Our school must be doing something right. And last, due to declining enrollment the BOE cuts our funding making it impossible to even offer evening programs in order to graduate more students. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this scenario out. We were intentionally targeted to fail.

By: Read: Monday Morning Memo Edition || Dropout Nation

Read: Monday Morning Memo Edition || Dropout Nation — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:30:06 +0000

[...] reform isn’t about popularity. Judging by the protests over the closing of Jamaica High and a few other New York City schools, Joel Klein [...]