Public sentiment has turned against Mayor Bloomberg's dictatorial school reforms

Juan Gonzalez's column on the mammoth 3,000 strong meeting of the New York City Department of Education rubber stamp, Panel for Educational Policy:
"New York Daily News," January 27, 2010
"Public Sentiment has Turned Against Mayor Bloomberg's Dictatorial School Reforms"

Mayor Bloomberg has ignited a firestorm among parents and teachers with his latest move to shut down 19 more low-performing schools - including many of the city's biggest high schools.

The hundreds who filled Brooklyn Technical High School Tuesday night to protest a vote on the closings by the mayor's Panel for Educational Policy sent a clear signal: The tide of public sentiment has turned against Bloomberg's dictatorial school reforms.

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, those parents say, stacked their schools in recent years with huge numbers of special needs kids - especially English language learners and special education students.

Among the big schools to be shuttered are Christopher Columbus in the Bronx, Norman Thomas in Manhattan, Paul Robeson and W.H. Maxwell in Brooklyn and Jamaica High in Queens.

Klein never provided those schools with smaller class sizes and more resources, the parents say.

At a Jan. 7 hearing on Jamaica High, for instance, more than 800 people turned out. Klein aides admitted Tuesday that of 107 people who submitted official comments, not a single person backed the closing.

The chancellor simply ignores local sentiment. He prefers to spend much of his time promoting new charter schools or small public high schools, both of which enroll far fewer percentages of special needs children.

"I could easily get you a 75% graduation rate if you removed allthe students with nontraditional needs," said James Eterno, a social studies teacher at Jamaica High for the past 24 years and head of the local teachers union chapter.

At Jamaica High, for example, 17% of the students are English language learners and 11% are in special education. Nearly half of that special ed population - 4.8% - is classified as needing the "most restricted environment." That means they have emotional or behavioral problems that require highly specialized attention and resources.

At Queens Collegiate, a new small school Klein recently created in the same Jamaica High building, less than 4% are English language learners and none are in the "most restricted" special ed classification.

At Christopher Columbus in the Bronx, another school targeted for closing, an astounding 42% of the students are English language learners or special education - with 14% classified as needing the "most restricted environment."

These new closings will once again end up cherry-picking the best students for the small schools and charters. Special needs students will end up dropping out or being shuttled to another comprehensive school, which will then also be declared a failure.

Each of these comprehensive high schools has roots and traditions in its community. Closing them in this frenzied rush for small schools damages the fabric of our city's neighborhoods.

That's why furious parents are fighting back. And that's why the tide is turning on the Bloomberg school reforms.