GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Councilman Ruben Wills present Richmond Hill Principal Frances DeSanctis with allocated discretionary funding.

Parents at Richmond Hill High School hadn’t heard that Mayor Michael Bloomberg was given a chance to reverse his bid to overhaul their school yesterday when they gathered to strategize against his plan.

But it wouldn’t have made a difference if they had: Bloomberg rejected the opportunity, created by a resolution in the city’s teacher evaluation talks with the UFT, and vowed to proceed with plans to “turn around” 33 struggling schools, including Richmond Hill, anyway.

When I told some of them the news that Bloomberg had reaffirmed his intentions to move forward with the turnaround, they said the news didn’t change their agenda: to figure out how to halt the turnaround, which would cause the school to close and reopen with a new name and many new teachers. They pressed Principal Frances DeSanctis and City Councilman Ruben Wills, who both attended the parent association meeting, for suggestions about how to fight back against the city’s plan.

Carol Bouchard, the parent coordinator, said she left an “early engagement” meeting with Department of Education officials under the impression that the school could still go back to the restart model, which involved sharing the school management duties, and SIG funding, with and Educational Partnership Organization. She said Bloomberg’s recommitment did not cause her to abandon hope.

“I feel like it’s still hanging,” she said. (more…)

Students and parents rally outside Cypress Hills Collegiate Preparatory Academy today. Photo by Emma Hulse.

Less than six years old, Cypress Hills Collegiate Preparatory School is the small-schools dinosaur on its campus — and it could be on the verge of extinction.

After just barely escaping an F on its latest report card, the DOE placed Cypress Hills Collegiate on a shortlist of schools that could be shuttered due to poor performance. The school had gotten an F on its first progress report grade in 2010.

Today, students rallied in front of the Franklin K. Lane building, where Cypress Hills Collegiate shares space with three other schools, to defend their school. The protest was the latest in a series of events supported by the Coalition for Educational Justice, which has helped community members at a number of schools at risk of being closed push back against the DOE’s characterization that the schools are low-performing. On Tuesday, parents and elected officials representing 15 of the 47 schools will bring that message to the DOE’s Manhattan headquarters.

Before the rally, student organizers told me that Cypress Hills Collegiate would be more successful if there were more computers and elective courses and if students could use the building’s library.

“It’s not being used at all,” said sophomore Odalis Rojas about the library. Rojas belongs to the Future of Tomorrow youth organization run by the Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation, which founded Cypress Hills Collegiate. “It is there for no reason.”

Gabriel Cano, a senior on Cypress Hills Collegiate’s student government, said instruction had grown more challenging during his time at the school. But it had also become less interesting, he said, with budget cuts causing the school to cancel cooking and sign language classes and reduce extracurricular activities. (more…)

During one week in October, District 17′s superintendent held “early engagement conversations” at three schools the department is considering closing.

At each school — M.S. 587 on Oct. 11,  P.S. 22 on Oct. 12, and P.S. 161 on Oct. 13 — the superintendent, Rhonda Hurdle Taylor, heard community members explain why their schools should get another chance.

Then she resigned, and Buffie Simmons took her place.

DOE officials said the personnel change would have little impact on school closure decisions because Hurdle Taylor, like all superintendents, was required to document thoroughly what happened in the engagement meetings.

But parents in District 17 are wondering whether Simmons, who is new to the district, understands the local issues, according to a parent leader, Barbara Simmons (no relation). In contrast, Barbara Simmons said, Hurdle Taylor had worked in the district for many years, including as principal of P.S. 390, now closed, when Simmons’s son was a student there.

The leadership change is just one of several reasons that the three schools are protesting their potential closure today in the latest in a series of rallies organized with the support of advocacy groups that oppose school closures. (more…)

Natavia Schurry, the mother of a kindergartener at P.S. 256, protests the school's threatened closure. (Megan Hester)

An after-school rally at Brooklyn’s P.S. 256 today took aim at the idea that the school is failing, even though it got an F on its most recent progress report.

The Department of Education included P.S. 256, a Bedford-Stuyvesant school, on a list of 20 low-performing schools that are being considered for closure. But parents and staff say the school is doing its best with limited resources.

Budget cuts have cost P.S. 256 its art and reading teachers and shrunk its tutoring program, according to Jimmy Dinkins, vice president of the school’s parent-teacher association.

“How are you going to put a school on a sinking ship and then expect us to pass?” Dinkins asked before the rally today.

DOE figures show $427,000 in budget cuts since 2008 for the 400-student school, where fewer than 4 in 10 students pass state reading and math tests.

Dinkins said he and other parents suspect that the DOE is trying to figure out how to free up space for the Community Partnership Charter School, whose middle school grades moved to the P.S. 256 building last year, to expand. (more…)