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the chopping block

December 9, 2011

Ten more struggling schools proposed for closure or truncation

by Philissa Cramer, at 1:36 pm

The Department of Education has named seven more schools it intends to close and three more schools where it aims to lop off middle school grades.

The 10 schools named today join 15 whose proposed closures or truncations were announced yesterday. The new additions to the closure list include three long-troubled high schools; two middle schools started under the Bloomberg administration; and the middle school grades of Wadleigh Secondary School for the Performing Arts, where scholar Cornel West last week pledged to fight any closure plans.

Under the proposals, Manhattan’s century-old Washington Irving High School, which the DOE had shrunk in recent years, will stop accepting new students and will close its doors in 2015. So will Grace Dodge Career and Technical Education High School, where students recently complained that they had been left without teachers in some classes. And Samuel Gompers Career and Technical Education High School in the Bronx, where students had been sounding the alarm about the school’s status for years, will also close.

Both Washington Irving and Grace Dodge are in their first year of federally funded “transformation,” an improvement strategy reserved for the most struggling schools. Department officials said that the schools chosen to replace Washington Irving and Grace Dodge would get their federal funds in an arrangement that the city used to support 16 new schools this year.

Altogether, 11 middle schools are closing in a year that Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott promised to focus on improving weak middle schools and opening new ones.

The final tally affects 25 of the 47 schools that the DOE shortlisted this fall for possible closure. Sixteen schools will stay open but will receive a “Targeted Action Plan,” a new addition to the department’s efforts to address struggling schools.

The plans will list steps the schools should take to improve and goals they must meet to stay off the chopping block, department officials said. The schools could also get extra resources, either from the city or through federal funds designated for overhauling low-performing schools.

Schools that escaped closure include Herbert Lehman High School, where leadership change followed a grade-changing investigation; a middle school in the same the building as an elementary school slated for closure yesterday; a secondary school that shares Wadleigh’s building; and Cypress Hills Collegiate Preparatory School, where students pointed out that their school was on par with other schools on its campus that weren’t on the closure shortlist.

At Brooklyn’s Juan Morel Campos Secondary School, which will remain open, students had been prepared to “occupy the building” if closure had been proposed, according to an organizer from the Coalition for Educational Justice, Fiorella Guevara.

Over the next two months, the department must hold public hearings at each of the schools on the chopping block. The Panel for Educational Policy is set to vote on the closure plans at its February meeting. The panel has never rejected a city proposal.

The seven schools added to the closure list today:

P.S. 22, Brooklyn
P.S. 215 Lucretia Mott, Queens
Washington Irving High School, Manhattan
Samuel Gompers Career and Technical Education High School, Bronx
Grace Dodge Career and Technical Education High School, Bronx
Aspire Preparatory Middle School, Bronx
Knowledge and Power Preparatory Academy VII, Brooklyn

And the three additional schools that will lose their middle grades:

P.S. 298 Betty Shabazz, Brooklyn
Wadleigh Secondary School for the Performing Arts, Manhattan
Frederick Douglass Academy VI, Brooklyn

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

    As a volunteer advocate for Samuel Gompers High School in the Bronx I am furious closure is the decision made by the DOE.  Last month elected officials toured Gompers and pledged support for the school to remain open.  Why?  Elected officials in the Gompers district/community know that multiple pathways to success are the key to educating successful citizens.

    Elected officials know the youth in their districts have been hit the hardest by the recession.  We ALL know “College For All” may be the hypnotic mantra du jour that sells student loan packages, but the courses in technology and engineering Gompers offers educate and employ our youth.

  • Ticked-Off Taxpayer

    Eva Moskowitz has an agenda of opening at least 40 schools in her “Success” network.  Looks like closures are on speedup so the DOE can fulfill her quota before the next mayoral election.  And mayoral control was supposed to take the politics out of running the schools!

  • anonymous

    While one shouldn’t be outraged or surprised by these schools being on the list, the biggest outrage is that no charter schools (even the criminally bad Williamsburg Charter HS was spared) are on the list. Also, Campos and Cyprus Hills should probably be closed… I guess just not yet.

  • Transformation Teacher

    “Both Washington Irving and Grace Dodge are in their first year of federally funded “transformation,” an improvement strategy reserved for the most struggling schools. Department officials said that the schools chosen to replace Washington Irving and Grace Dodge would get their federal funds in an arrangement that the city used to support 16 new schools this year.”
    How could that be legal?  That is federal money given to NYC to support struggling schools.  Now you are shuttering the schools and giving the money to brand new schools, which being brand new are obviously not struggling yet.  You give them money and don’t give them any chance to improve?  Mayor Bloomberg you are becoming more and more of a disgrace everyday.

  • Xbcw

    Eva is coming into Wadleigh next year, that is why they are closing our middle school…to make space for her students!  It is only a matter of time before HSA is allowed to expand and they take over the building entirely…The DOE disgusts me…

  • Amazed former WCHS teacher

    I cannot believe that the Williamsburg Charter High School is being allowed to function. It’s beyond my understanding – I worked there years ago and it was a wreck. Sounds like it has become even more so. Oversight? Accountability?

  • UWSmom

    Truly outrageous to lose the Wadleigh School for the Performing Arts Middle School grades. Man oh man…the reach of Success Academy bigwigs blows my mind…again.

  • Mike

    Lots of schools could be labeled “low performing”.  Why are these schools being targeted?

  • Xbcw

    because charter schools want their space…

  • bee

    Eva’s schools do seem to be taking over, like invasive bindweed, skulking cockroaches or an army of sneaky rats.

  • Rbpowel1

    The DOE has moeny to replace existing schools with charter schools but no money to fix what is wrong in existing schools…go figure

  • anonymous

    I think you are probably correct. Charters want these spaces and they have the resources and connections to get what they want.

  • Tmc80tmc

    Many of these schools are in rough neighborhoods and have populations of difficult to teach children. If NYC wants to make a war against low performing schools don’t think they can’t do it on the cheap. $50k a year job is paltry compensation in a school where there is a significant risk of being injured by a student and/or looking out for the welfare of a student in conflict with another student or students. If nothing else changes, you will have to first train teachers to be corrections officers , then train them to be teachers. Sure, very costly, but if you want to improve low performance you have to give teachers the tools to change violent and ghetto culture behaviors. As many nice things I can say about CUNY masters programs, this they ABSOLUTELY DO NOT TEACH their teacher degree students!!!

  • Michael M. (parent still)

    And what becomes of the students?  Turns out we have an indication based on Chicago having tried — and turned away from — a closure strategy.

    Current Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was previously the Superintendent of Chicago Public Schools (CPS), from June 2001 to January 2009.  During that period, Chicago closed a number of schools.

    In a report dated October 2009, the Consortium on Chicago School Research published a study which focused on 18 CPS elementary schools closed between 2001 and 2006, and what happened in the ensuing years to the 5,445 affected students. 
    http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/content/publications.php?pub_id=136

    Bottom line:
    “…eight in 10 Chicago Public Schools
    (CPS) students displaced by school closings transferred to schools
    ranking in
    the bottom half of system schools on standardized tests. However,
    because most
    displaced students transferred from one low-performing school to
    another, the
    move did not, on average, significantly affect student achievement.”

    But it did allow Duncan to say he closed failing schools.  Did he help those schools’ students?  No.

    Chicago has modified their strategy.  New York?

    Like the LMFAO song “Party Rock” says: 
    “Every day I’m shufflin’
    Shufflin’, shufflin.”

  • School Daze

    I am a teacher at Grace Dodge H.S.  The DOE does everything backwards.  Puts in a principal 29 years old with two years teaching experience.  Sets up programs that when the students graduate only 5% end up going into that field.  Sends a principal who is known for closing schools down and promises that he is there to facilitate a positive learning environment.  

    Disgrace Dodge = Dysfunction of Education (DOE)

  • Mking12

    Closing schools has become an area of specialization for the mayor.  He feels that by making racist  comments about where some of us(minorities) are educated,  justifies his reason for getting rid of most of us.  Most minorities attend schools that they can afford.  Not these Ivy leagues.  He needs to spend a day in some of our schools classrooms and see how much we really care about our students. 

  • Jim Callaghan

    Randi Weingarten assigned Michael -”Two years without a contract” Mulgrew to “babysit” P.S. 14 in Staten Island, which is on the closing list. The fact that he was an abysmal failure impressed Weingarten mightily so she moved him ahead of a half dozen more qualified candidates and installed him -by a vote of 100 members of the UFT executive committee- as president. Weingarten was a big believer in the Peter Principle.Mulgrew paid almost no attention to the school. He resisited my efforts to get him interested, even when the Staten Island Yankees mascot “Yogi” was mugged in a stairwell. (Yogi’s mom is a teacher). When cameras caught a perp breaking into a teacher’s car, and the 120 precinct cops declared it a minor crime, I asked Mulgrew to use our contacts in the NYPD School Safety Dept to get the case prosecuted. He Refused. (School Safety Supervisors are UFT members).Because it was on the SURR list, the school was entitled to $100,000 in state monies. When I started calling the state Education Department, I received an email from Ellie Engler- who wasnt even staff director then, asking me why I was calling the agency. (Even then she was covering up).Then Randi scheduled a press conference with Congressman Vito Fossella, which was abruptly canceled. (that was before we discovered he had two families).Mulgrew told me it was all for show anyway; Randi wanted to prove how she could “work” with Republicans.Randi visited the schoool, got her photo-ops, put on her concerned face, promised more UFT resources, then wallked away- as she and Mulgrew did to most schools that needed help. That is what really happened and no amount of UFT press releases will erase the abandonment of UFT members, the parents and students.Pay close attention to who gets the charter school and watch as Mulgrew rolls over for Bloomberg again.Because of her utter failure at places like PS 14, Engler was promoted to staff director where she has only two jobs: to cover up for the DOE and to harass the staff who were trying to help the members who paid their salaries.

    -Jim Callaghan, former NY Teacher reporter.

  • Toxie

    The NY State Attorney General is investigating WCHS and the entire Believe Network. It’s been in the news. All three schools are on one-year probation right now. WCHS was forced to sever its ties with the Believe Network. The end of those schools as we know it is in sight.

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