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HUH?

Two Principals…surely that’ll save this cash strapped city some money. [rolleyes]

Two principals and how many A.P.’s at each school? The DOE really knows how to save money. How many secretaries at those schools will be excessed to cover the salaries of the new principals that they are putting in? I’m a school secretary that has 17 years of seniority and I was just excessed because of a budget reduction at the school and I was the only secretary on staff. When school starts on 9/7/10 the school won’t have a secretary. The principal only has money for a one day a week secretary. The DOE can’t help schools that don’t have enough money for the basic personnel that should be in each school, but it can pay for two principals at other schools. Oh, I forgot those principals probably were trained at the Principal’s Academy. Another thing the DOE is very good at is closing schools and then turning them into three or four smaller schools. In the long run they are paying the salaries of three or four principals. For the first year the smaller schools are pretty good, but once they have to start taking the same students that caused the school to close down to begin with you have three or four small bad schools in one building. Why not invest the money on the one school and try to turn it around. Put in a second principal to help. The DOE will be saving money in the long run. The only problem will be is that they will have too many principals coming out of the Principal’s Academy and not enough schools for the principals to work in. The DOE has to keep closing schools and creating smaller ones to keep up with the number of available principals the DOE is churning out. You don’t hear that principals might be laid off. You don;t hear that a principal could excess an AP because the budget is bad.

The Race to the Top money is going to force the lowest 10% to close each year, you can count on dozens of new charter schools every year and many teachers and staff will be excessed. But now we have plenty of principals for all these new “small” schools.

The problem is that as soon as getting money is involved, there are no principles. It doesn’t matter to the clowns at Tweed that in many cases, the schools are put on these lists for technical highly questionable reasons. If somebody says if you fire the Principal, no matter how talented or unjust it is, then we will give you more money, bye bye Principal. Bye bye ethics (the Race to the Top garbage is indicative).

This administration claims Children First. That has been shown to be a total crock. We all know that. This is just the latest manifestation of that damn the Children, damn the teachers, damn the Principals, damn the paras, damn the secretaries, damn the kitch staffs. Just let us see the money. I defy anybody to tell me I’m wrong.

Here’s my question…I think I know Brooklyn pretty well. The neighborhood where FDR is located does not seem to be swarming with families new to the country where ESL would predominate to such a degree. So here’s my question. Where are all these ESL students coming from. It certainly can’t be that these are kids who would have gone to Erasmus, Tilden, Wingate, South Shore, Canarsie who can’t attend these schools any more because after all, one has to make sure the new small schools opened in these buildings look good on their stats to make the unqualified, arrogant, uncertified lawyer masquerading as an educator look good in his “crusade” to rid the system of so called “failing” schools. It surely can have nothing to do with that, now can it?

Jeff S:

According to the DOE website 40% of FDR students are ELL, and, the entire student body is

40% Asian

33% Hispanic

18% White

9% Black

10% SpEd

If u peruse the census tracts the neighborhood surrounding the school does have an increasingli immigrant neighborhood.

As u r aware Asian student outperform other ethnic minorities.

If u check out the State website they disaggregte the number by subgroup … Doesn’t look like FDR is populated by the overflow from closed large HS.

One of the schools has been well on its way in raising its stats. As noted in its reports for the past two years the ELA regents scores have been 60 to almost 70 percent of the students that took it have passed it. The low ELA scores was why it was put on the list of poor preforming schools. This school is nestled in one of the of the most affluent neighborhoods in Brooklyn and the children that attended are the children of the surrounding low socioeconomic areas. They are the most receptive and loving children yearning to be filled with information necessary for educational success. This school has learned what makes this child tick. What makes her realize that just because she had a baby in eighth grade that the world is ready for her greatness. I as a parent feel that even though this school is one of the eleven it is well on its way to being the model school of sucess. What has made it work it the sensitivities it has for its student and their constant seeking and desire to include the parents in all the changes necessary to make the school successful. The proof to the pudding is the alumni returning thanking the staff for their dedication. What is even more sucessful is number of students with special needs sitting in colleges and being successful in their college careers. I can continue saying great things about this school but the truth is that it has been happening because the staff does not give up. Noone knows any of these things because all the media writes is what they think is wrong with it. The media has been detrimental to the view of the school but not hindering of its success!!

It bothers me 2. Let’s not forget NYC students didn’t do 2 well on the ELA tests. Maybe 2 much computer time is more 2 blame than teachers.