Comments on: Unraveling three and a half months of “turnaround” twists: Part I

By: bee

bee — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 03:25:00 +0000

I liken Turnaround to the game of Musical Chairs, where one by one the chairs are taken away until only one chair remains. It is indeed an ugly process!

By: Guest

Guest — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 02:54:00 +0000

Turnaround sounds like a fun dance around the Maypole, It is a euphemism for firing the principal, firing the staff, and killing a school. It is an ugly process with a pretty name.

By: Sad Turnaround Teacher

Sad Turnaround Teacher — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 02:39:00 +0000

There should be a huge story on the absolute farce of these “public” hearings. No one is listening or hearing as our school communities have spoken loudly and clearly, backing up our pleas with data. “DO NOT CLOSE OUR SCHOOLS!” Do you hear us? Does anyone care? The PEP meeting of Bloomberg’s educational panel will rubberstamp these closures — all 26 schools this Thursday, 6pm at Prospect Heights High School. Just think, Dewey will be closed with a graduation rate above the city-wide average and a college readiness rate 8.5% ABOVE the city average. How can Bloomberg justify this — oh yeah, he doesn’t have to.

By: Norm

Norm — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:17:00 +0000

Here is a section from the Dec. 26, 2006 post on Ed Notes:

Where’s Waldo – er– the Union at Far Rock?

With
the recent announcement that 5 schools would be closing, 3 of them
large high schools in south Brooklyn, I thought this story of how the
UFT operates in relation to these closings would be of interest. Ed.
Notes and ICE have been opposed to these closings, calling for the
resources to be placed into the schools to fix what is broken. The
breaking up of large schools into smaller schools is a gimmick that just
moves teachers and children around as chess pieces and serves to
further destabilize other large schools as students, especially ESL,
special ed and ultimately discipline problems, are forced into them. It
also destroys what is often strong UFT chapters. Now add the disastrous
provision from the ’05 contract that teachers from these schools who do
not find jobs will end up as subs and the new ’06 provision that after a
year as a sub these ATR’s will be offered an “incentive” to leave. How
fast can you say Guantanamo?

Below is a note printed in the April
’05 edition of Education Notes from a 3rd year
teacher at Far Rockaway back in 2005 when they announced the closing of
their school.

By: Norm

Norm — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:14:00 +0000

“The union has long opposed school closures.” Only depends on how you define “long.” In fact the union went along with school closures and even supported them until the DOE became too aggressive with the 19 closures. And the law suit was to stop the closings on the grounds the DOE violated procedures. In fact the UFT history on school closings is shameful with the noted statement by Randi Weingarten that Lafayette HS should be closed, a domino effect that has put the next school down the line, Dewey, in grave jeopardy. Where was the UFT when most of the large schools in the Bronx were closed as the dominoes fell one after another? It was so clear what the plan was and the UFT was a partner in many ways.
Ed Notes was reporting on the UFT inadequate response all along. Before the blog the print edition reported in April 2005 which I posted when the blog went live. Here is a link to a Dec. 2006 post on the closing of Far Rockaway HS which destabilized Beach Channel. http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2006/12/wheres-waldo-er-union-at-far-rock.html. I’ll follow up with a comment from that post for those who don’t go to the link.
Even now the UFT has not put political capital into fighting school closings, often letting each school fend for itself. In fact when the turnaround models were announced in past years there were no criticisms from the union about that model.

By: A Brooklyn Turnaround Victim

A Brooklyn Turnaround Victim — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 23:42:00 +0000

The media has been too quiet on the upcoming vote..as our the schools, including mine….has me worried and a little confused…..

By: Transformation Teacher

Transformation Teacher — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 23:28:00 +0000

Still wondering if they will announced that “after listening to public comment” they have decided to remove one to three more schools off the list to make the process appear more democratic. If so, my money is on Bushwick Community, due to Tisch’s comments, and one of the larger schools in Queens to appease some of the Queens politicians that have been so vocal against this.

By: Transformation Teacher

Transformation Teacher — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 23:28:00 +0000