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October 18, 2011

Parents at P.S. 256 say their school is cash-strapped, not failing

by Philissa Cramer, at 6:31 pm

Natavia Schurry, the mother of a kindergartener at P.S. 256, protests the school's threatened closure. (Megan Hester)

An after-school rally at Brooklyn’s P.S. 256 today took aim at the idea that the school is failing, even though it got an F on its most recent progress report.

The Department of Education included P.S. 256, a Bedford-Stuyvesant school, on a list of 20 low-performing schools that are being considered for closure. But parents and staff say the school is doing its best with limited resources.

Budget cuts have cost P.S. 256 its art and reading teachers and shrunk its tutoring program, according to Jimmy Dinkins, vice president of the school’s parent-teacher association.

“How are you going to put a school on a sinking ship and then expect us to pass?” Dinkins asked before the rally today.

DOE figures show $427,000 in budget cuts since 2008 for the 400-student school, where fewer than 4 in 10 students pass state reading and math tests.

Dinkins said he and other parents suspect that the DOE is trying to figure out how to free up space for the Community Partnership Charter School, whose middle school grades moved to the P.S. 256 building last year, to expand.

Today’s protest followed an “early engagement” meeting with DOE officials last week. The department is holding a series of meetings for each of the low-performing schools before announcing which it will try to close. At an “early engagement” meeting at Cypress Hills’ I.S. 171 last week, community members argued that new leadership was turning the school around.

Dinkins said he believes so much in P.S. 256 that he kept his daughters, who are in kindergarten and second grade, enrolled even after the family moved to another neighborhood.

“If I moved to Queens I would still come here,” he said.

 

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  • http://twitter.com/MaryConwaySpieg Mary Conway-Spiegel

    When others in advocacy/education see the budgets at-risk schools “work with” year after year they are shocked, SHOCKED schools get by.  Schools like 256 are being starved…and no amount of “great” teachers can overcome the poverty of the population + the DOE’s imposed poverty.
    If you look at all the schools on the current list you will notice a pattern:  08/09 – A, 09/10 – C, 10/11 F…give or take a letter or two.  What happened between A and F?  What happened between A and F?  Or A and D?  or B and F?  
    And why are the neediest schools also the schools who suffer the most during layoffs?  Please write that story.

  • Curious Parent

    If it is true, why is 256 being cut more than others? Do they not get Title 1 money?

  • Ken Hirsh

    I didn’t notice anything in the story that suggested that this school is being cut more than others.  It would be interesting to see an analysis of that.

    Meanwhile, GS, what happened to the student count since 2008?  Has it stayed the same?

  • il flerpolo

    Right.  $427k sounds like a big number.  It is a big number.  But there are a lot of big numbers smacking schools all over the city.  You need to be able to make apples-to-apples comparisons before you can take the next step in any analysis.  This should be the immediate reaction of anyone with critical reading skills and a rudimentary facility with numbers.  Sigh.  

  • michael

    If the DOE wants your building for their charter schools, they are going to starve your school of funding then shut you down. It is a never ending cycle that will only end once king Bloombucks leaves office after making all his friends rich through non-regulated contracts.

  • You suffer from data blindness

    I disagree. Cuts are cuts. We’re not talking 1-2% here. We’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes as much as a million. The amounts are devastating, the damage being done is not yet apparent and the story sure isn’t told with data comparisons. Some schools are suffering more than others and it is children who are in need of more individual attention who are no longer getting it and suffering the most. I witness this damage and suffering everyday with my eyes, not on a data sheet. You’re data has made you ignorant.

  • Ken Hirsh

    “You suffer…”,

    What if you cut school revenues by 10% but the number of children in the school is reduced by 50%?  Isn’t the number of children relevant?  How do you know that this school is suffering more than the typical DOE school in terms of financial cuts?You have it backwards: if you wrote “Your lack of data had made you ignorant”, I would, in some regards, agree! 

  • Tim

    PS 256′s enrollments per the official student register, enrollment has declined slightly since 2008, although I can’t find figures for the current year:

    2008: 421, 2009: 386; 2010: 381; 2011: 398 

  • Tim

    PS 256′s enrollments per the official student register, enrollment has declined slightly since 2008, although I can’t find figures for the current year:

    2008: 421, 2009: 386; 2010: 381; 2011: 398 

  • il flerpolo

    http://schools.nyc.gov/AboutUs/funding/schoolbudgets/fy12SchoolBudgetOverview.htm?schoolcode=K256

    http://schools.nyc.gov/AboutUs/funding/schoolbudgets/fy12SchoolBudgetOverview.htm?schoolcode=K321

    Looks like PS 256 had its budget cut by $77,000 this year.  PS 321 had its budget cut by $216,000.  So obviously PS 321 has been suffering far more than PS 256.  I mean, $216,000 is more than $77,000. 

    (This post was sarcastic.)  

  • Pingback: Press Coverage from our NYC School Closings Protests! - Alliance for Quality Education

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