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Change of schedule

November 28, 2011

DOE officials promise swift changes for Queens high school

by Rachel Cromidas, at 3:37 pm

Department of Education officials have promised to resolve scheduling problems this week at Queens Metropolitan High School — and to keep a closer eye on the school in the future.

Officials from the DOE and Children’s First Network have visited the school multiple times in the past week, observing classes and meeting with parents and administrators. They will also sit in on future Parent-Teacher Association meetings, according to a list of promises that officials outlined in a meeting with PTA members at Queens Metropolitan High School last week.

Since early in the school year, parents at the year-old school have complained of missing textbooks, incompetent substitute teachers, and multiple schedule changes that forced students to miss gym class, electives, and some core subjects.

After he discussed the problems by phone with one parent, the city’s Chief Academic Officer Shael Polakow-Suransky, told the audience at November’s regular Panel for Education Policy meeting that the DOE would act quickly and aggressively to fix the problems.

He was not among the officials who met with parents last week at an open meeting in the school’s auditorium. The officials said they had worked late into the evenings and through the previous weekend to address the issues and create new schedules, which took effect today.

According to John Sadowski, the parent who originally contacted Polakow-Suransky and has a son in tenth grade at the school, the officials a detailed a shortlist of promises for improving the school:

  • As of today, students will have new schedules which include time for gym instruction and more opportunities to take a foreign language, but fewer electives.
  • A DOE representative will attend all future PTA meetings.
  • A substitute teacher with a license to teach chemistry from the city’s Absent Teacher Reserve pool will teach the 10th-grade class until the end of November. The school will hire a permanent replacement by December 1st.
  • The school will order more chemistry textbooks to make up for the shortfall—administrators said they anticipated enrolling fewer students and did not order enough books last year.
  • The DOE will schedule a follow-up meeting with parents at the school to check the progress of these changes in the next three weeks.

Sadowski said several of the two dozen parents and three students who attended the meeting voiced concerns about the administrative problems. Some also criticized the leadership decisions their principal, Marci Levy-Maguire, made early in the year as issues began snowballing, but said they were willing to give her “another chance,” he said.

“Most people are optimistic,” Sadowski told me. “We feel like giving it a chance to see what happens.”

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  • Ellen

    A closer eye?  Who’s he kidding?  Any amount of ey-ing is closer that what was happening and keeping a close eye on anythng could mean just watching it fail.

  • Anonymous

    Who is accountable for this ongoing crisis and who will take responsibility for the failure to address it earlier; it’s nearly December, by God!  sometimes I think Tweed officials live on an alternate planet where accountability means blaming teachers & parents but leaving themselves, other educrats in the “networks” as well as incompetent and corrupt principals off the hook.

  • Mab

    Amazing this poor excuse for a principal should be long gone. She is the Kathy Black of queens. Would a teacher get these many chances? Throw her out of there she doesn’t deserve another chance.

  • Mab

    Amazing this poor excuse for a principal should be long gone. She is the Kathy Black of queens. Would a teacher get these many chances? Throw her out of there she doesn’t deserve another chance.

  • Done w/You

    Mab, you have no clue what you’re talking about. I’ve seen heroin addicted teachers nodding out at their desk. But because of tenor those sorry saps still have a job. There is so much dead weight in this system that any person with real vision to lead gets the life sucked out of them by these lazy teachers that can’t work a minute past their allocated time. Map, you suck.

  • Pogue

    Easy now, Michelle Rhee. No need for sour grapes.

  • Anonymous

    Hey!

  • http://nyceducator.com/ NYC Educator

    I’ve never seen a heroin addicted teacher nodding off at a desk, not one. Of course I’ve only been teaching 27 years, in two boroughs and half a dozen schools, so I’m sure my experience pales in comparison with the commenter. I do, however, share concerns about tenor, as sometimes those guys not only wear bow ties, but also scream so loud it grates on me.

    Kudos to Gotham Schools for allowing commenters to spout trenchant commentary like, “you suck.” Really classes up the joint.

  • Youaredone

    Your defending this principal who robbed kids of three months of learning. You know nothing which is quite obvious.The only dead weight is above your neck.

  • Youaredone

    If you saw a heroin addicted teacher and didn’t do what you should have done your not much of an administrator. It’s called tenure but then again you really don’t care because your a shill which is very obvious. Your a failure just like this fake principal was, she should lose her job and you should get one.

  • Ellen

    Done w/you…I think you meant tenure, not tenor….  or maybe you are criticizing bad singing?

  • Fop

    Hey Done
    The only reason someone would defend this loser is if she was your mother. This job was way over her head. The kids in the school realized this why can’t you? I’ll tell you why your this perfect administrator who are you fooling.

  • cl_pixie

    Only people with connections to the DoE get another chance.  As for those incompetent subs, maybe they were the ATRs who only serve a week sentence and were not even greeted or treated properly by the administration.  I am sure there are many qualified ATRs that can teach chemistry.  But notice the DoE will not even put out feelers for them.

    And why were “the teachers’ being observed?  They didn’t create this chaos, but someone needs to be blamed.  Notice how the union is not even mentioned in this so-called collaboration.

  • ALMOST X-MAS BREAK

    There are so many problems in so many schools with so many principals.  It is really about time the media started looking into the qualifications of these principals around the city.  How many principals are there?  I would estimate 1000, maybe someone actually knows.  Out of these 1000, can you imagine how many are really outright incompetent?  Plenty!  How many are under investigation?  How many go from failing school to failing school making their 140-150K per year?  Another dumb principal in another school somewhere and the DOE is CLUELESS.  Who’s running  this circus?  It can’t just be Bloomberg (who does not look to well but that’s another story).  There’s got to be other input coming from some direction.  What a bummer, 2 more years of this nonsense.  Hey, let’s close 50 more school and open 100 others and give out more money.  Huhh??

  • Vote NO!

    This  occurs  because  the  ideology  of  “education  reform”  comes  before  the  interests  of  the  schools,  or  the  kids.

  • Neil Friedman3

    Having the DOE monitor the situation is akin to hiring the fox to guard the hen house.

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