GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

In New York City, schools live and die by statistics. If statistics take a nosedive, schools are closed, no ifs, ands or buts. Of course, everyone knows the old saying about liars, damned liars, and statisticians. So you’d think before taking the draconian step of closing a school, statistics would be checked with great care.

You’d be wrong, of course. But if you were relying on the local papers to inform you, you’d never know it. In fact, it appears Secretary of Education Arne Duncan gets his info straight from Mayor Bloomberg’s PR machine, and that appears good enough for President Barack Obama as well. Amusing though it is to watch politicians jump like trained seals, doing whatever it takes to grab the money Obama and Duncan dangle before them, their utter lack of vision and common sense is unsettling, to say the least.

One of the most vexing aspects of this administration’s frenzy to close schools is its absolute willingness to accept and propagate explanations like this one. While the much-ballyhooed statistics are outrageous and inaccurate, it appears true that no one’s actually planning to bulldoze Jamaica High School, as far as I know. Of course, that’s only as far as I know.

Still, even if the building will remain, does that mean residents will still get what they’ve always gotten?  Right now, if you live in Jamaica, you have the option of attending Jamaica High School. That would certainly change once Chancellor Klein places new schools in the building and stops admitting new kids to Jamaica High School.

This probably doesn’t much worry politicians. For one thing, highly publicized school closings tend to take the spotlight away from the spectacular failures of administration. Queens high schools are short 33,000 seats, and Jamaica’s neighbor, Francis Lewis High School, is already massively overcrowded. While the state and city make grand public gestures about school closings, they’re doing nothing of substance to address the space issue.

If new schools were truly the panacea they’re made out to be, they’d embrace troublesome, learning disabled and non-English speaking students, and magically make them graduate in four years no matter what. In practice, such students are far more likely to be sent to endangered comprehensive high schools. In the case of Beach Channel, it seems to have been sent the toughest of Far Rockaway’s kids even before Far Rockaway closed. After its closure, the trend continued, leading many to ask whether Beach Channel was set up for failure. Does anyone really believe newly created schools will embrace these kids? More likely, they’ll load up remaining neighborhood schools with them, causing even more closures.

School closing plans call for new specialized schools. But what if, for example, you live in a neighborhood with no neighborhood school, and your teenager informs you he does not wish to attend, say, the new Michael Bloomberg School of Basket Weaving? For one thing, he may not be interested in basket weaving. And even if he is, what happens if the basket-weaving expert they’ve located to run the school, after a particularly successful vision quest, decides she wants to go back to the commune and study Zen? Or what if she’s reassigned by Chancellor Klein after the New York Post determines she’s misused a word like “jihad”?  Who’s gonna show your kid how to weave that basket?

Sure, there might be another school. Maybe that one teaches social justice. Or quantum physics. Maybe it’s a language academy that allows kids to brush up on their Sanskrit. That’s almost the same as basket weaving. And there may even be another basket weaving academy, perhaps in another borough. They say travel is broadening, and this could be your kid’s opportunity to learn that firsthand.

That’s what we call “school choice” here in New York City. Fundamentally, it means Mayor Bloomberg can choose to close your neighborhood school whenever he damn well pleases, and you can choose to like it or lump it. After all, that’s what mayoral control is all about, despite the prattling of a few fringe lunatics who oppose it.

It’s true there are hearings before school closings. I’ve been to a couple recently. At the most recent Jamaica hearing, Deputy Chancellor John White got up and recited several false and discredited statistics. He had to pause several times and threaten to stop the proceedings altogether in order to do that. Then he settled down in a chair and spent a good deal of time playing with a Blackberry (or perhaps with Super Mario) under the table. A student stood up and chided him for not paying attention to the proceedings.

I found that very curious. I, a lowly teacher, keep my phone on vibrate and do not take it out during classes. Part of my job is to model behavior for teenagers, and therefore they have my full attention when I work with them. I find it amazing the DoE has determined that local parents, students, teachers, clerics, and others don’t merit the same respect I give my kids as a matter of course. Even more amazing, of course, is that they can’t be bothered to actually listen to objections to their “proposals,” not one of which has yet been voted down by the rubber-stamp PEP.

It is indeed convenient to have a neighborhood school. Kids are going to learn that the hard way over the next few years, as New York City can be a very big place when you don’t get into a school in your neighborhood. It’s kind of a perfect storm, as their free or subsidized Metrocards go the way of the dodo (or the neighborhood school). Parents may miss the neighborhood schools too, when they reach into their pockets to pay full price for public transport. And there’s nothing that increases property values more than a good neighborhood school — so why not fix them instead of trashing them?

But that’s neither here nor there. DOE bigshots ride around in Town Cars, send important messages on their Blackberries, and go to gala luncheons. They can’t be bothered with such things. And if the rabble wants to voice contrary opinions on school closings, they get a chance on January 26th at Brooklyn Tech.

Of course, Tweed has pretty much got its ducks in a row there, as it appears working people may have to stay all night in order to make comments. School closings represent the most contentious issue they’re facing, and they’ve now delayed a few votes on Chancellor’s regulations designed to take even more power away from those pernicious, meddling public school parents — you know, the ones who have the audacity to want a say about whether or not charter schools get to chop off pieces of the schools their kids attend.

Still, they’ve left a bunch of contract votes beforehand, to make sure everyone sits through hours of nonsense before getting to what they came for. That’s problematic for those who have to work. It’s one thing to roll into Tweed and do whatever it is they do there all day, but it’s unwise, for example, to face 5 groups of 34 teenagers after 8 minutes of sleep.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew has called for the meeting to be devoted to school closures only. If the DOE denies that request, they’ll be acknowledging publicly what many of us already know to be true-that under mayoral control in New York City, there’s only one opinion that counts. It’s beginning to appear they can’t be bothered even to pretend to listen to anyone else’s.

Can Jamaica, for example, be improved? Of course it can, and the fix is easy. Deliver the class sizes NYC has taken hundreds of millions to provide. Modernize — offer technology that represents 2010 instead of 1950. Go ahead with the JROTC already planned for Jamaica — a magnet program that’s proven wildly successful in my school, Francis Lewis. Institute other magnet programs. But there’s no such plan for Jamaica, and no such plan for any other school under the gun.

Under this administration, we shoot first and ask questions later. The result is neighborhoods without schools in which local kids grow, play, and learn together — hardly neighborhoods at all.