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Alright!! Rockaway is going Green! Rockaway Park HS of Environmental Sustainability, cool. Absolute need for kids to focus more on science and engineering. Go Jennifer Connolly – love it…

I am not sure that changes are bad but i am concerned about the assumption of the indiscriminate right to change. The policy is to submit comments for consideration to the PEP. If the comments dates are close to or the same day as any vote on the change, how can the PEP do its due diligence and consider the proposals and comments received from the community? …..comments due on one day, vote required within two days?
Where is the opportunity for the PEP member to read and digest the community input?
How does the PEP member get his/her information?
Does the PEP member get the information?
Will full comments be provided to the member?
Will comments be condensed?

Shades of the MTA….or rather the MEA (Metropolitan Education Authority)

1. The replacement schools have been in the design phase for many months, without a site, the DOE plans schools and shops for sites.

2. The closing schools will be removed from student applications that were submitted December 1 and new applications will be distributed to all 8th graders (or whatever is the relevant grade). Guidance Counselors are expected to distribute, counsel and collect the new appllications, kids and families who are interested will submit new applications. In the past the number of “new” applicants was far below the number of seats available and schools continued to recruit into the fall. Most schools didn’t fill their quota is seats until year 2.

3. Staffing must comply with UFT Contract with “at least” half of the new staff coming from the closing school staff, in the past most staff did not come from the closing schools, either there were few applicants or the new school found them “unqualified,” new schools have wide discretion in defining “qualified.” (A mid 90s arbitration decision)

4. In the current climate of hostility even fewer families will chose schools housed in closing sites for fear of retribution. How is the DOE, or is it, going to deal with the kids in the phaseout schools and the “new” kids? A very serious safety concern … 5. Usually the kids in the new schools come from a wide geographic area, not solely the neighborhood of the phaseout school.

6. The DOE used to provide phaseout schools with additional funding and required a phaseout plan (to hire additional counselors, family workers, attend. tchrs, etc.), the additional funding ended a few years ago. 7. New schools received Gates funding (an extra $1,000 a kid – $400,000 over four or five years), while grad rates were much higher than the phaseout schools in the first few years they have declined in years five and six, and, they don’t serve the same kids that neighborhold schools served. 8. The only successful “turnaround” models in NYC, New Dorp and Hillcrest, took place without direct DOE involvement, principals with more than ten years of experience and a not-for-profit supporting the efforts, which have been highly successful

The Jamaica campus want to welcome Hillside Arts and Letters Academy. We were very impressed with Matthew Ritter’s presentation. The school is going to be a welcome addition to the Jamaica Campus. Finally, our children will have another viable option.

Michael, in the DOE plans, any students who are undercredited and also overage will be sent to more “suitable” programs, AKA: other remaining larger schools where there is “Space” or where there “should be space” made available for them.

For all that matters, no one at the DOE has really kept track of displaced students who are having difficulties graduating on time. The only time that they bother to keep these stats is when these stats are used to condemn the same schools that they have targeted for closure.

These students only become relevant in the larger, strategic play that the DOE has kept tabs on for their own plans.

I have seen students moving from other closing schools, going to another possibly failing school, some do graduate on time, IF, they find programs and administration that takes them under their wings, very often, the schools where they are admitted or honestly, dumped into, are themselves lacking of extra resources to make sure these students are educated properly.

Many will be part of the dismal drop out stats that are swept under the politician’s rug.

I remember there was a big fiasco a couple of years back where the DOE was supposedly questioned about their lack of “data” of what happens to discharged/dropped out students from HS.

Go Rockaway Park HS for Environmental Sustainability!!! I think it’s great that the Principal of the new school, Jennifer Connolly was born in the community and has deep roots there. Bringing this innovative educational program to the community is going to benefit the students. Congratulations! We should all support this new school!

Bari Randal (FRHS – 74) is very proud that her daughter, Jennifer Connolly, will be the school leader in September 2010 of Rockaway Park High School for Environmental Sustainability. Jennifer was born at St. John’s Episcopal Hospital in Far Rockaway and represents her family’s 4th generation of Rockawayites. Her maternal great grandmother, Nettie Randal spent her career proudly serving the community as an obstetrical nurse at Peninsula General Hospital. Her grandparents, Bertram and Joyce Randal, lived, worked and raised their 3 children in the Rockaways. In the early 1950s, her grandmother, Joyce Randal, served the community as a school crossing guard at P.S 39. Her mother, Bari Randal, was born at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Far Rockaway and is a proud graduate of FRHS in 1974. My daugther, Jennifer Connolly, was born with ‘sand in her shoes’ and raised on Rockaway pride. I hope you will join me in welcoming her and Rockaway Park High School for Environmental Sustainability to the community.

Jennifer Connoly as a principle will be the best thing for the Rockaways her goals for a better education for every child is the most important thing since so few children at high school age realize the importance of the high school education and college as they move on to face the world out there learning to use the tools that high school provides them Jennifer good luck in your future and i hope that the classes that graduate from beach channel high school reach there highest goals and meet all of there dreams GOOD LUCK IN REACHING YOUR GOALS

Barbara