Early today, the Panel for Educational Policy voted to close 19 schools. (Times, DN, NY1, Post, WNYC)
Read GothamSchools‘ minute-by-minute updates to see how the votes went down.
The lead-up to the votes was filled with angry criticism of the Department of Education. (Times, NY1)
Juan Gonzalez: Last night’s vote lays bare the way sentiment has turned against the mayor. (DN)
One lower-profile decision by the PEP will divide Staten Island’s PS 16 into two. (Staten Island Advance)
Joel Klein: Australians should quiet their “cynical,” “simplistic” criticism of school ratings. (The Australian)
President Obama’s State of the Union speech will propose an education funding hike. (Washington Post)
Jeff S
I read that article in the Australian press. All should read it. The Chancellor is totally being his usual inept, incompetent and uncertified self. Grading schools does demean children. How does a kid feel when he reads his school got a D? Don’t you think his friends kid taunt him big time? Besides, what ill effect does it have on a kid’s college application if his school is rated D or F? And this business how his grading system has improved performance in the schools. Give me a break. Of course graduation rates have improved. Tests have been dumbed down., Principals, fearing for their jobs, are changing grades. Look at what happened when Klein put in one of his super Principals into which school was it Lehman?
The contempt of this man for anything resembling edudation has produced a catastrophy for our city. I used to think it would take a decade to recover from the damage he has done. Now I wonder if we will ever recover from it. And just because something is reformed, that doesn’t make it better.
Wait till the you know what hits the fans with these 20 school closings how many more teachers will end up in the ATR? And when they can’t find jobs because Principals are charged in their budgets for the actual salary, another bird brained Joel Klein initiative, of course they are reluctant to hire senior teachers on maximum. Wouldn’t you be? An d let’s not go into the utter failure the Leadership Academy has been producing Principals lacking the experience needed to properly fulfill the most important role of being able to supervise teachers and work with them to improve their teaching. Everything else is just fluff and if I was a senior teacher with 19 years experience and some Principal who spent three years teaching and suddenly become a Principal came into my classroom, it would be very hard to take anything he or she said to me seriously. Nobody is qualified to be a Principal before a minimum of 5 years of teaching and at least 3 years of being an Assistant Principal. I have yet to meet a Principal without these minimum qualifications who is capable of doing the job. But things like that seem not to bother our uncerrtified Chancellor. Too bad the State Senate lost his you know whats and didn’t insist the position of Chancellor must be held by an educator, no exception period. Then we would have been rid of him. But until that day this clown is removed, education in our city is doomed.
Bay Brown
I attended the PEP meeting last & have been trying to follow the story, but still wonder: What is going to happen to all the teachers of the closed schools? Do they get a package or bought out?
Jeff S
What happens? Very simple……the new schools can choose a certain number of teachers…a certain number of teachers are retained in the present organization as remember the schools don’t close for 3 years actually….they simply don’t take new 9th graders….the rest are excessed and have to fend for themselves….if they can’t find a satisfactory match, they go into the ATR (provided they are appointed) and when they can’t find jobs because many of themn have quite a bit of experience and are on higher salary steps, you will hear the Chancellor screaming that just because they can’t find jobs that are mutually satisfactory to them and the prospective Principal, they must be incompetent and he must have the right to terminate them after say 9 months. That is one thing the UFT simply cannot allow to happen and I’m pretty sure theyt won’t. Of course what Klein will not mention is one of the reasons many will not be able to find jobs is the budget. One of Klein’s most bird brained “reforms” was to budget each school based on the actual teacher’s salary not the usual each tgeacher represents 1 unit with the budget based on average teacher salary. More fireworks from this incompetent and obviously arrogant Chancellor are coming.
Pogue
As far as the Bronx is concerned…get ready De Witt Clinton, Lehman, and Truman high schools, you’re about to be overcrowded and overwhelmed into failure and oblivion. Now THAT’S New York City Democracy, Bloomberg Style!
Invictus
Next on the extinction list:
Flushing High School
Newtown HS
Grover Cleveland
Long Island City
and many many more.
They seem to be gunning for the major remaining ones and they will be slated for something in the next round.
Nevertheless, looking at the overcrowding rates at large Queens HS, they might get more tactical and decide to overhaul the administration that allowed “thing to go down so far…” and get new leadership….after all, students will need to go somewhere until the small schools get organized for more students.
Sooner of later, even the newer smaller schools will feel the brunt of large numbers of under served and also academically challenged students.
jonahstars
What happens to the Mayor and his cronies? That’s what I want to know. Elected by a small margin, yet Bloomberg insists on acting like he has a mandate to do these things. I think people need to start looking at the legislature that agreed to mayoral control. Folks who support this mayor need to pay politically for his folly.
http://nyceducator.com NYC Educator
I don’t think they’ll get rid of the leadership. After all, the leadership is correct 100% of the time. That’s why they can have massive hearings and not listen to a single word from the hundreds who spoke against them. That’s why they don’t need to respond to facts that contradict their statements. That’s what mayoral control is all about.
19 schools were slated to be closed last night. The scumbags on the PEP passed the motions. As many speakers pointed out last night, the PEP has no authority to do this. We the workers, students, and teachers have the power to stop this. Last night not one person spoke in favor of a single school closing — not even from the panel which approved 19 of them. There is a unanimous consensus that these cuts are racist, classist attacks and must be stopped.
Now is the crucial moment. The sham PEP has been fully exposed. We must take matters into our own hands. We must walkout, occupy and strike to stop ALL school closings, layoffs, fare hikes, Metrocard cuts — all attacks on students, workers and the oppressed.
The UFT leaders must be exposed for their treachery. After weeks of demonstrations called by grassroots coalitions fed up with the UFT rubber stamping Bloomberg’s policies, the UFT leaders were forced to mobilize some rather small portions of their membership for the demonstration and meeting last night. This is not enough. The UFT, together with students and parents, has the power to shut the entire city down. Instead, union leaders share stages with politicians who pay lip service but scramble to keep us from mobilizing. The union leaders try to give us chances to symbolically display our anger without making a real fight or winning real change.
We cannot accept this intolerable situation. Thousands of teachers are facing layoffs, thousands of Black and Latino students are being displaced from their schools, and 500,000 students with free/reduced-cost Metrocards will lose these by September. Just like the UFT refuses to mobilize its teachers for a strike or actions to stop the closings, TWU100 refuses to mobilize transit workers against the MTA’s attacks on working class students.
Those of us who see and expose these betrayals must come together in common action. We must fight together so strongly that the union leaders have no choice but to support us or be sidelined entirely.
Now that the PEP has voted, we must immediately begin preparations for escalated and continued struggle, while realizing that many of our so-called “leaders” will be ready to drop the struggle and accept the PEP’s many-year plan to attack, underfund and close public schools.
Sending a message is not enough. We must make the change we seek.
NOW we must immediately fight together on these grounds:
SUPPORT MARCH 4TH ACTIONS TO DEFEND EDUCATION!
OCCUPY CLOSING SCHOOLS AND KEEP THEM OPEN!
USE AN OCCUPIED SCHOOL TO BUILD A GENERAL ASSEMBLY FOR A REAL STRUGGLE AGAINST ALL ATTACKS ON EDUCATION!
STUDENTS AND WORKERS, BUILD A GENERAL STRIKE!
UFT MEMBERS, STAND TOGETHER AND FIGHT DESPITE THE TREACHERY OF THE BUREAUCRATS!
BEWARE OF ALL THOSE, EVEN IN OUR OWN RANKS, WHO STAND IN THE WAY OF THE MILITANT BATTLES NEEDED TO DEFEND OURSELVES FROM THE CAPITALIST ATTACKS!
Invictus
NYC ED, I was referring to the leadership of those large, State Targeted schools in Queens that maybe, that is a big MAYBE, DOE will decide to do cosmetic changes and get new leadership for those huge behemoths.
Perhaps the leadership you are referring to are those SS stormtroopers that Kleinberg handpicked to push the bottom and switch the lights off for 19 schools.
http://nyceducator.com NYC Educator
True leadership seems to be in entirely too short supply nowadays.
Invictus
NYC Ed,
The biggest farce is the Leadership that comes out of the Academy of Edeots that Kleinberg has instituted.
Well, lets not get cynical here, look where the brightest and most ambitious “Leadership” go and run their lies and get $$$$ to bail out their pathetic misadventures.
http://nyceducator.com NYC Educator
I’ll tell you frankly–I don’t feel cynical today. I feel heartbroken. I can’t believe or fathom the utter disregard for people, opinions, or facts that pervades City Hall.
NYC Educator, I expected the PEP to vote as it did, and still, I share an overwhelming sense of disgust. I am glad you do not feel cynical; the fight does not have to be over. It is up to us to continue to fight to keep these schools open. If you are a UFT member, you should strongly push to use more UFT resources to mobilize demonstrations, pickets, walkouts and strikes. Encourage your students to spread the call for a general walkout and strike. Teachers may be bound by the deplorable Taylor law — which must be overthrown as well — but students are not. A general strike of public school students, supported by teachers, parents and workers — has the power to shut down the entire city. Until we stop pleading for help from the very people appointed by the Mayor to attack us, we will get nowhere.
All solidarity to the students and teachers of the closing schools!
Carry forward with grassroots mobilization when the UFT leaders do nothing!
Michael Fiorillo
We live in an Age of Impunity, where the overclass is fully confident of its ability to spit in the public’s face, smirk and dare it to respond, while they cannibalize the public and private wealth of the nation What happened last night, and will continue to happen unless it is stopped, is further sad evidence of that.
As Warren Buffett, the “oracle” of late-stage US capitalism, said in a moment of candor: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” (NYT, 11/26/06)
What’s happening here and in other urban school systems around the country is the point of the spear for the privatization of every remaining public good in the US, and its control by privateers. And the opportunists, apologists and other useful idiots for it will continue to cloak themselves in media disinformation and sanctimony.
Farewell, America. Despite your many imperfections, you were a wonder to behold. So sad to see you dismember yourself, for the benefit of plutocrats who are so unworthy of the struggles and sacrifices made by your people.
rexuther
” its a disgrace that students believed they were watching democracy in action and that their voices really mater in government , But instead they were watching a bogus puppet show under the rule of an illegal third term mayor who paid the 8 members he appointed to kill our schools without even looking at the evide…nce we provided as false DOE statistics about our school” the other member just followed… suit cause there were no closures in staten island …. i applaud the integrity of mr sullivan, mr fedkowskyj, mr okotieuro, and ms santos for voting against these closures!!!”
there is no democracy in nyc….. there is only the rule of a tyranical mayor who is a corrupt businessman and does not care about the will of the people in any way shape or form, and the fact that the state and federal government has allowed him to do so only tells me that there is more corruption now then in the late 1880′s in america! these are the actions of a leader that caused revolution in 1776 yet it is allowed to go on in 2010
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