GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Columbus is not failing kids.  ”Graduating on time” means four years with a Regents diploma.  That works when a school sorts for good data, but when a student has just arrived from Albania mid-year, knows no English, has been declined from 9 Public Schools, is poor and over aged “Graduating On Time” is not always possible, FOR ANYONE – this is the way it REALLY is.  

Space grab anyone? Clearly Columbus is doing a good job; clearly the community wants the school saved; clearly the DOE doesn’t give a damn.

Every part of Zarin’s statement is a lie or a distortion. Zarin  ”This community needs new and better schools for families, and that’s what we intend to provide. “

Really?  Then why do two of the co-located schools in Columbus’s building serve students with the fewest needs in the district, according to the Doe? Is that how we serve Columbus’s community?
Zarin “We’re not willing to gamble that the same organization that has failed kids year after year can suddenly turn around.”
No, we know you don’t gamble. You made sure this school struggled. That’s why you sent  kids at the highest risk for failure across the borough to this school -.  You systemiclally flooded this school.  Your own data machines told you this would overwhelm the school years ago – and it did. 

Zairn  “Columbus ranks in the bottom 6% of all high schools across the city, and one of every two students who walk through its doors doesn’t graduate on time,”  – well, yes, except students enter the building in the bottom one percent of all schools, even according to the DoE’s own inadequate need measure. 
Wait. In a minute we’ll have to hear about Josh Thomas’s old school, Bronx Lab – and how wonderful it does with the “same kinds of kids”  – .2% self contained special ed to Columbus’s 12. Nearly a third of Columbus kids are sent to them overage already – and welcomed with opened arms.  Et tu Bronx Lab?  I think it’s one in ten. 

To spokesman Jack Zarin-Rosenfeld, you and everyone at Tweed set-up Columbus HS to fail! The DoE made every effort possible to place students there that will not take 4 years to graduate, but longer. Those in Tweed had to make sure that they choked Columbus in the hopes that the teachers and staff would reject the students, but they embraced each child that was not accepted in any of the other schools. I commend all in Columbus for your passionate fight to keep Columbus alive. All the teachers in the Bronx are cheering you on and jeering at those in Tweed.

I student taught at Columbus in the early 70′s. This school was the dream school of the Bronx, the one everyone aspired to go to if they could not get into Bronx Science. Parents moved so it would be a neighborhood school. This change breaks my heart. The school was set up to fail.