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turnaround tales

January 25, 2012

As some schools protest turnaround plans, others wait and see

by Rachel Cromidas, at 4:01 pm

Two weeks after receiving the surprise news that their schools could close this June, some teachers are staging protests while others say they are too stunned to respond, for now.

At Herbert H. Lehman High School in the Bronx, Ann Looser is hoping fifty to 100 of her fellow teachers will stay after school tonight to protest city plans to “turn around” Herbert H. Lehman High School. As Lehman’s union chapter leader, Looser has led efforts to raise awareness about the city’s plan to “turn around” the school. Under the plan, which the city devised to keep federal funding despite a breakdown in negotiations over teacher evaluations, 33 low-performing schools would be closed and reopened after having half of their teachers replaced.

At Lehman, Looser and her colleagues have been trying recruit families, local politicians, and journalists to attend tonight’s “early engagement” hearing. The goal, she said, is to convince the city not to upend progress that the school had been making with the help of federal funds.

Under “restart,” Lehman had used the funds to offer credit recovery programs, peer mentoring, and extra training for teachers, Looser said. She said the extra help came at an important juncture, just as a new principal arrived after years of turmoil that included a grade-changing scandal. Purging the school’s teachers would set those efforts back, Looser said.

“We have a new principal who is from the community, and we’re really trying to make sure that Lehman High School is allowed to continue to offer the kinds of programs that we’ve been developing,” she said. “We want to ensure that those programs don’t go interrupted because we’re not here.”

The protest pattern is being repeated at schools across the city during meetings where city officials are presenting the closure plans. A meeting at William A. Maxwell High School last night drew a firefight, and teachers at John Dewey High School planned to show similar resistance at their school’s meeting last night. Parents at Long Island City High School have created a Facebook page to coordinate protest efforts.

But not every school caught up in the turnaround sweep is taking to the streets.

Chris Manos, the union chapter leader at William E. Grady Career and Technical Education High School, said he is encouraging staff to take a wait-and-see approach to their early engagement meeting, scheduled for Jan. 30.

“Instead of flying off the handle and creating a ruckus, why don’t we listen to what they have to say? Because at this point, nobody really knows what’s going on,” he said. “We want to hear what they’re stating as their reasons for closing our school — which I still don’t understand, to be very honest.”

Until recently Grady was receiving federal funding as a transformation school, arguably the least-invasive of the federal reform models. Under the model, the school raised its progress report grade from a D to a B, and funded after school tutoring programs and college visits. Grady is one of seven schools now up for closure that received B or A grades on their most recent city report cards.

Manos said the closure news also comes at one of the worst times for teachers interested in forming an organized opposition effort: Regents exam week.

“This thing hit us at such a bad time in the school year. It was a week before final exams, and now its also Regents week,” he said. “Right now we’re angry and hurt, but we still have the job of teaching the children and running the school. We went from a D to B — if that’s not showing improvement, then what is?”

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  • Anonymous

    Wishing all those at these schools the best of luck in these trying times.  I myself am trying to spread the word among my own fellow staff members about what is happening – far too many are NOT aware or just have an inkling of knowledge of the utter disaster that is happening within our ranks.   I hate to ask the question but am trying to truly understand what is happening.  Who will replace the hardworking, dedicated teachers who are not hired

    back?  Is the DOE going to replace them from the ATR pool?  Will these new teachers be recent graduates from colleges (those who student taught and are looking for a job) or will there be a massive influx of TFA members?  Anyone know?

  • NYCParent

    Paging Michael Fiorillo!

    Re this from last month –

    Michael FiorilloCollapse”In a world with even a wee dram of justice, these privateers would be not just be concerned with indemnification over issues such as teacher ratings, but with exposure to the RICO statutes. But then again, silly me, why worry about legal exposure when your patrons own the legislators writing the laws?”
    Could you elaborate on  ”exposure to the RICO statutes” and how you see it applying re teacher ratings, as well as to charter “chain” proliferation
    Thanks!

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002397245457 Mary Conway-Spiegel

    Distraction.  One thing DOE does the very best.  This newest re-positioning of the target and all the rhetoric that goes along with promoting these additional closures is a HUGE distraction…this is putting children first?

  • michael

    All the protesting, rallying, political, and parental support will fall on deaf ears. Once the DOE decides that they want your building for the new Charter schools, it’s over. There should have been more TEACHER involvement when the DOE started closing schools years ago. Those teachers probably felt that it would never happen to them only thinking of themselves. Surprise.

  • Vote NO!

    Many  in  the ” PLA  schools”  are  “beaten  down”  and   “numb”  from  the  past  18  months  in  “education  reform  purgatory.”  What  has  happened  to  the  students,  and  staffs  in  those  schools with  the ” SIG”  grants,  and  Danielson  observations,   should  not  happen  to  school  communities  anywhere  on  this  planet.

  • Cameron

    So true. The only thing to “wait and see” is to find out what the cut off age will be of the veteran teachers who will be placed in the ATR pool. (I’m guessing any teacher over the age of 35 or who has 10 or more years in will be the first to go)

  • nuff said

    Don’t worry I am sure the turnaround committee will be fair and impartial–you know like the PEP

  • Guest

    As a teacher in one of the 33 PLA schools, the one question we keep asking that no one seems to have an answer for is where is the evidence that this “turnaround” model is even beneficial for the students? When that question was posed at our early engagement meeting the Superintendant did not have any answers.In fact, he even said our model was working. So much for “Children First” And don’t even get me started on all of the stuff they have thrown at us for the past five years.

  • NYCParent

    Most likely they won’t bother replacing the teachers.  They’ll just put the students in front of computer terminals and tell parents their kids are now in the “I-zone.”

  • Hytsawdc3

    I’m sorry just a quick question for anyone who could respond.  What happens to the 50% of staff that is replaced?  DO they go into ATR pool?

  • guest

    yes, if they don’t find a job for the fall

  • michael

    Then the DOE will say that those teachers were from failing schools, and then labeled as poor teachers that  are a burden to the taxpayer. Then the DOE will call to fire them all.

  • Transformation Teacher

    At the Lehman early engagement meeting about two hundred parents and students came out to support the staff.  They spoke eloquently and intelligently, all in support of the Lehman staff.  They all were laying the blame directly on the DOE and Bloomberg for setting up this situation, not just at Lehman, but time and time again across the city.  People are finally starting to realize that this whole Ed reform movement is smoke and mirrors, and now is the time to turn up the heat on Bloomberg and the DOE.

  • Michael Fiorillo

    NYCParent,
    By privateers, I mean private entities that are being supported in their efforts to undemocratically take over a valuable public resource and eventually monetize every aspect of it. 
    Teacher ratings and charter expansions are tied together by the DOE’s use of unreliable/politically motivated evaluation metrics, along with a shoot-the-wounded policy regarding schools with concentrations of high needs students, to further destabilize and privatize the system.As for the RICO statutes, I was exaggerating (sort of), but extortion is an element of racketeering, and there is more than a little extortion in the way RttT forces financially strapped school districts to compete for funds that will compel even greater spending on even more tests, leading to further systemic disruptions, public school closings and charter school openings. Also, rackets are highly organized entities with overlapping networks. Likewise, corporate ed reform is made up of a heavily financed and marketed complex of corporate, foundation, academic and advocacy groups, who set the terms of debate, formulate policy and implement it. And those policies by their nature are foreclosing on what public education could be for more and more kids in the city. If the digital age shows us anything, it’s that data is for sale; do we want people running the schools who think our kids are data? Because, ad campaigns and smarmy rhetoric aside, that’s what these people think.

  • http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/ Norm

    There is a simple explanation for the difference between Grady and Lehman.
    Chris Manos, the union chapter leader at William E. Grady Career and Technical Education High School, is a Unity Caucus hack who tried to stop me from legally putting opposition lit in teacher mail boxes during the last election – until I called UFT central on him. He follows orders from the top of the union — and don’t forget Mulgrew preceded him as chapter leader.

  • DOE is trying to silence us

    This is such a same what is happening in the Bronx, CTE schools are closing, traditional schools in the larger older building are a target of closure. If it is true that the DOE sees no way to turn the “faling” schools around why do they wait until the school reaches “their” point of no return before they decide to do something. Why are funds available to support phasing scholls out and bringing in New Visions but never money to help school get a fiunctioning library? The mayor is out to break the union and this is his way of doing it. His plan is to leave office with a bang out the expense of our students. 

    OK readers repeat after me IMPEACH him!  

  • That Flerp Person

    “As for the RICO statutes, I was exaggerating (sort of), but extortion is an element of racketeering, . . . .”

    Fiorillo’s posts are incessantly hyperbolic.  You can’t take them at face value. More often than not, he’ll take poetry over precision. 

  • Cmanosuft

    Hi Norm, my decision did not come from Mulgrew or anyone else at the UFT it came from my staff. We are committed to prove the DOE wrong. My school should not be closed and the best argument we have will be the success of our students. Even if all of this goes down and the DOE gets it way we know that we did the right thing for the children

  • NYCParent

    Thanks Michael —  Doesn’t sound the least bit hyperbolic to me, but right on the money (as it were)!

  • Michael Fiorillo

    That Flerp Person,

    Thank you: being a target of your criticism is a badge of honor.

  • That Flerp Person

    Michael, thanks to you, also.  I’m honored that you take my criticism that seriously.

  • Fightbackfridays

    This current crisis has nothing to do with how well a school may be doing or the success of our students. It is an opportunity for a mayor, determined to sabotage our schools and destroy our union, to accomplish his goal. The time to voice our collective anger and disgust at being held hostage is now, otherwise no one will bother to notice as we are eliminated from our schools. We hope that you and your school join us next week for a citywide Fight Back. 

    In solidarity,
    Fight Back Fridays

  • michael

    Hey Gotham News, If you really want a good story try a little investigative work. First, go to every failing high school in the city that was shut down. Find out where the students who contributed to the school being listed dangerous ( through incident reports), and any student who contributed to the school failing (truants,homeless, special ed.. ESL, and those with discipline problem) resided, and how they ended up at those schools. Every time I had one of those students in my class I would ask them where they resided. It was usually in another borough, far from the school, or Rikers Island Juvenile Detention Center.

  • ASW

    I am a teacher at Grady and all for the ‘ruckus’!  I am not alone in this and will attend the meeting at Brooklyn Tech February 9.  

  • ASW

    When are we picketing?

  • ASW

    The 50% can apply to the 33 schools and if not hired, go to the ATR pool.  Smart, right?

  • http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/ Norm

    You are picketing when Mulgrew says it’s OK to picket.

  • bee

    Even though the DOE has already been proven wrong, they’ll do whatever they like, whenever they like. There is no academic rhyme or reason for the majority of what they do. Is the DOE way, the right way for the children?  If it’s not, stoicism will get you nowhere.

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