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You’re understating two important points, Stephen: good people are what good people do. In other words, the prospective good you hope (and probably will) accomplish in your new school is contingent on what you rightly call your complicity in a straight-out evil process that harms students, teachers and communities. A fraught situation, to say the least.

Second, your separation of the policies governing schools from classroom pedagogy is too facile: there is indeed a tremendous amount of overlap between them, as we are all finding out to our dismay. Without wanting to unduly judge your decision, you are participating in a process driven by agendas far different from yours, and you’d do we’ll to consider how long you’ll be allowed to practice the teaching you seek for your students. Every public school is a target, and you’re fooling yourself if you think your turn won’t come.

You might want to ask what Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Walcott would prefer you and your colleagues do, and thus feel confident in doing the opposite.

The unspoken thing about starting a new school is the hierarchy of the new school over the closing school.  As a veteran teacher, I have been through two school closings, my second being Legacy, and the snobbery that the kids and teachers of the closing school experience by the kids, teachers, and administration of the new school is extremely damaging.  There is this idea by the new teachers and students that the closing school members are defective, that they failed.  Everyone may say that they are supportive and don’t judge but it happens.  I’ve overheard teachers and students at the new schools talk down about the closing school.  I’ve been told by new school members how they aren’t going to make the mistakes of the failing school.  It’s amazing to me the hubris, as you put it, that people have when opening a new school, how sure they are that they won’t fail.  
I am glad that you had reservations in starting at a new school.  It gives me hope that you will make sure that the relations between the new and old school stay friendly, but I am not confident that this is going to happen.  I am no longer at Legacy but I do keep in touch with my students and they say that the worst part of the year so far has been the dismissiveness of Harvest towards the Legacy kids.  Some kids told me of being chased out of the cafeteria despite it being their scheduled lunch period because the Harvest teachers didn’t want the Legacy kids mingling with the Harvest kids.  

As I stated earlier, Legacy was my second phased out school.  I can’t tell you how depressing kids find it that the school they spent years at no longer exists.  It’s as if we’ve erased part of their life away.  This idea that something that was, no longer is, and how the kids are suppose to deal with that loss is never discussed with any real importance when we discuss school closing.  We don’t discuss how those kids feel about themselves and their education, past and future, when they come from a closing school.

I hope that all this public angst you’ve shared with us leads to a more sympathetic viewpoint to the kids that you are sharing the building with.  That somehow you make sure the kids at Harvest understand that this could be them in the future, that given the current political climate in education no one is guaranteed that when their 10 year reunion comes around their school may no longer exist.

Thanks for the comments, Michael.  I think you raise good points.  I’m not sure, though, if there is a point any of us can take within the DOE that doesn’t make us participants in processes driven by agendas different than our own.  

Thank you for raising all these important points.  I would really like to discuss them further in person if you’re willing, in the hope that we can find a way to bring our teachers and students together to start building connections between our schools. I don’t have my own classroom, but am generally in Room 411 in the afternoons. 

(In response to Michael’s second comment)

I absolutely cannot – that was one of the points of the piece. I accept the criticism for being complicit in the school closing policy. I have made the decision that it’s more important to me to be able to create a new Coalition School.

I agree with you that all our work involves ethical compromises and prioritization (and not just with NYCDOE but any work within a system of exploitation on what is literally blood-soaked (and gratefully rain-washed) land).  I also agree with your point that the dynamics of learning (and implicitly, actual experience) should be our focus rather than just the container politics (thanks for that word).  And I share your hope that your thoughtful and creative pedagogical relationships can make a big difference for some students (and adults) and that you can ameliorate the disheartening dynamics between the Legacy and Harvest students and staff.  Looking forward to further thoughtful posts about your work.