GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

I think my school needs better PR. I work at Bayside HS and live in the same community and the school has over 50 community groups that use the school’s gyms, pool, athletic field, classrooms and auditorium for adult ed, sports teams, extra help classes and you name it every night and on every weekend. It has been a community hub for more than 10 years and the principal actively encourages this. Seems like everytime I read gotham schools you are pushing Franny Lew and Mr. Shama but they are late to the dance when compared with Bayside.

Who wants to take bets how long it will before Francis Lewis is broken up into those favored small schools?

I agree Mamar681. My point is not that this event is not a good community building effort, my point is that gothamschools continually pushes this publicity hound.

There are two reasons for this. First, running a school is incredibly demanding. There are literally hundreds of things principals rightfully prioritize over talking to a reporter, and they have a hard enough time getting to those as it is. Second, many principals prefer to stay under the radar. The minute you achieve success–of any stripe–in this city, people are itching to tear you down. There are people who are so invested in their opposition to this administration that they seem to feel compelled to cast aspersions on good things happening in the schools, whether they are happening with the support of — or in spite of — the DOE. So even when principals would like to draw some positive attention to their school, to their teachers, to their students and families, they are afraid to put themselves out there. It’s a pretty sad state of affairs, actually.

Philissa Cramer,

“… all too often principals and teachers decline to speak with us, even for positive stories.”

Perhaps therein you’ll find a topic for additional investigation and reporting: the climate of intimidation and fear that public school educators face here in NYC and nationwide. It’s a very ugly thing, and is having increasingly negative effects upon children and the communities they live in.

This climate of intimidation is pandemic, intensifying, and in some cases verges on the sadistic, as we’re seeing with the treatment of ATRs. Let no one think this doesn’t affect students, as GS’s own coverage has revealed the dysfunction in schools that have an insufficient number of teachers for Regents-level courses, yet refuse to hire qualified ATRs. And this feeds into the broader narrative of corporate ed deform – education controlled by the 1%, for the benefit of the 1% – whereby ever more public schools are rated as failing and subject to closing and privatization.

Wow. What a tempest in a teapot! I teach at FLHS and have to agree that our principal is a bit more concerned about his own public image than that of this school. The recent Times piece is proof of that. If he spent less time checking himself on rate my teacher and more time addressing the needs of this school, it would be better, But then again, this school is just an item on the resume of people like this.

To  the  staffs  at  Bayside,  Francis  Lewis,  and  Cardozo…In  a  few  short  years  your  schools  will  be  inundated  by  many  high  needs  students  from  the  many  PLA  schools  located  in  Queens.  Those  schools  have  been  completely  destroyed  by  this  entire  PLA  “transformation, restart”  program.  It  is  likely  many  of  those  schools  will  be  closed. This  will  force  the  remaining  large,  comprehensive  high  schools  to  take  the  high  needs  population  that  most  of  them  currently  serve. 

To put an end to this debate, one of the risks we run in allowing anonymous comments is that someone can post using another commenter’s “handle.” Our comments policy prohibits comments that are posted under an assumed identity, ie we would not allow comments by “Dennis Walcott” if it seemed clear that the chancellor had not posted them. However, it seems unreasonable to expect that handles that do not actual disclose an identity — whether “guest” or “PissedOFFteacher” — could be afforded the same protection. Of course, this issue would be solved if we did in fact require Facebook authentication, as the commenter above suggests!

The inside story is that Shama is part of Bloomberg’s inner circle and gets puff pieces written regularly about him.  He is cagey and underhanded;  he has aspirations beyond Francis Lewis High School.  Shama instituted the fake computer-based education system, Castle Learning, which supplants true education as a main component of the “credit recovery” program, giving Francis Lewis better graduation stats, and many of the  the kids involved drive-by diplomas.  He is all about technology and appearances.