GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Children from the Bay Ridge Child Center drop off petition letters to Mayor Bloomberg.

Educators and children gathered to deliver more than 5,000 letters and petitions to Mayor Bloomberg to save their child care programs, which will be affected by the proposed city budget cuts. The cuts are shaping up to be a main point of dispute in budget negotiations between the mayor and City Council. Those negotiations are underway now and must be completed in time to finalize a budget by June 30.

When I spoke to Valerie Reidy, principal of the Bronx High School of Science, earlier this week, she said criticism about how she manages teachers and the student newspaper distracts the public from her students’ accomplishments.

“They work so hard, they study so hard. I hate to get caught up in administration-kid rivalry,” she said, adding that she doesn’t hold criticism by students against them. “The kids who push back — that’s what they’re supposed to be doing. I fully understand.”

A teacher at the school followed up on Thursday, sending a picture of 221 Bronx Science students taking Advanced Placement World History exams in a school gymnasium. The test took place on the penultimate day of a two-week spree of AP exams. (more…)

Present and former teachers from schools around the city that were targeted for closure rallied at Foley Square Thursday afternoon.

Teachers union president Michael Mulgrew told teachers to dress for a funeral today.

Teachers who worked at schools that the city has closed or is trying to close gathered at “Mayor Bloomberg’s Cemetery” — actually Foley Square, in Lower Manhattan — to mourn the Bloomberg administration’s school closure policies.

Joined by about 60 union members, the teachers displayed pictures of tombstones etched with the names of schools the city has targeted for closure, including Bread and Roses High School, Legacy High School for Integrated Studies, Manhattan Theater Lab School. (more…)

Student protesters unfurled a banner listing names of the schools that could close this year.

Students from at least five city high schools walked out of classes this afternoon in opposition to the city’s school closure proposals. (more…)

We usually have to patrol dismissal time to meet large groups of students, so we’re always excited when teachers bring their classes to us. Today’s visitors: a group of high schoolers and their teacher from the Henry Street School for International Studies, a small high school on the Lower East Side.

If their teacher (in a blue shirt) looks familiar to readers, it’s because he’s Collin Lawrence, the author of a series in the Community section about four years working in a troubled Brooklyn high school. He landed at Henry Street after spending last year teaching English in China.

Henry Street doesn’t have an active newspaper club and students in the group said they aspire to become pharmacists, basketball players, forensic scientists, and photographers — not reporters. But we did our best to win them over to journalism, walking them through the fast pace and ever-changing challenges of a typical day at GothamSchools. We also talked about how strong reading, writing, and math skills can be useful in any profession.

Just a reminder: If you’ve got a journalism class or after-school club and want to come visit, let us know.

Families from the nonprofit New York Communities for Change stand behind teachers union president Michael Mulgrew at a press conference to criticize how the DOE has responded to the threat of toxins in schools Wednesday morning.

Weeks after the city announced that students at a Bronx elementary school had been exposed to toxins for years, parents and lawyers from New York Lawyers for the Public Interest are renewing their call for city officials to protect students against another toxin found in schools: PCBs, which are present in older light fixtures. (more…)

BaShan Taylor reads a script opposing school budget cuts over the phone. (Photo: Chris Arp)

With less than 10 days before the city’s budget deadline and no deal yet on education cuts, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio is encouraging parents to take to the phones.

When Chris stopped by the “11th Hour Phone Bank” at de Blasio’s 1 Centre Street office earlier this evening, about 20 people had turned up to make phone calls. Organizers said they hoped to ask 2,500 people tonight to call 311 with their opposition to the budget cuts and planned teacher layoffs. (more…)

Calling their protest “Fight Back Friday,” teachers and parents at a handful of schools wore all black today in opposition to Mayor Bloomberg’s threatened teacher layoffs and budget cuts. (more…)

Michael Hall, the father of a second grader at P.S. 114, said the Canarsie elementary school should remain open.

Teachers, parents, and community activists protested the city’s plans to shutter a Canarsie elementary school today in front of the Department of Education’s headquarters. (more…)

Though the citywide school board has already voted to close Christopher Columbus High School, students, teachers, and alumni rallied on the steps of City Hall today to make the case for their Plan B. Columbus’s faculty wants to convert their large, traditional high school into a charter school, but it will need the city’s permission first.

“I think our challenge has been to get the Department of Education to take our proposal seriously,” said Columbus teacher Christine Rowland. In the last year that Columbus has been working on its charter application, the city has promised to help, then offered conflicting advice and no support, Rowland said.

At the rally today, Columbus faculty and students urged the DOE to accept their proposal to keep their school open. In order to convert into a charter school, more than half of Columbus students’ parents have to vote to approve the change and Rowland said the school has already collected many of their ballots. But the response from a DOE spokesman indicated that the department isn’t interested.

“Columbus ranks in the bottom 6% of all high schools across the city, and one of every two students who walk through its doors doesn’t graduate on time,” spokesman Jack Zarin-Rosenfeld wrote in an email. “We’re not willing to gamble that the same organization that has failed kids year after year can suddenly turn around. This commnity needs new and better schools for families, and that’s what we intend to provide.”