Thursday's protests of school closings and the mayor's response

See video below of Thursday's night rally and Panel for Educational Policy meeting at Brooklyn Tech before the mass walkout. More information about the protests and the way the Panel rubber stamped the school closings and charter takeovers at NY1.

The Mayor responded on Friday with comments about how the vocal opposition of parents, teachers, students, and elected officials was "embarassing" and "undemocratic." See my response at the Brooklyn Eagle, Gabe Pressman's column, and the Wall Street Journal.

It is the height of arrogance for Bloomberg to criticize us for being undemocratic when he has treated our schools as his personal fiefdom, to do as he likes without any attention to our priorities, or the damage he is doing to our children.

And what is really embarrassing is the usual spectacle of the Panel for Educational Policy, in which he insists that all of his appointees vote lockstep according to his will, month after month, no matter how destructive and wasteful the proposals are. Their unthinking and unbending behavior is shameful; and rivals the worst excesses of the old Party Congress meetings under the Soviet Union.

In the video below, see students from the closing Metropolitan Corporate Academy singing "the DOE don't care about us"; remarks from Michael Mulgrew of the UFT, State Sen. Tony Avella of Queens, who called for a revolution to take back our schools, and City Council Member Jumaane Williams.

PEPSQUEAKS

Well of course the Bloomberg PEPSQUEAKS came up small once again last night. I left with Lisa Donlan and Julie Cavanagh around 10-something and we hit a bar on Lafayette S.t where we ran into other PEP fugitives. But I'll have to delve into the PEP details later. These late nights and all this activism just isn't leaving me any time for thoughtful blogging. When I got home around 12 last night, I realized I had left my video power pack and battery plugged in by the stage and I couldn't download the video without it. Oy! A trip back to Tech? Was the meeting still on? A check at Gotham and sure enough, there was Anna Philips still going at it. A few text messages back and forth and she found it. So now I have to head into the city to pick it up. And maybe some lunch and a movie. Thanks to Anna for this big favor. I owe her a scoop. I might have a goodie for her reward.

Before I leave, let me say that not everyone was happy with the UFT-led walkout and I'm in the process of sorting all that out, even my own feelings. I'm listening to all sides. NYC Educator was in the house and walked out (The Party's Over). 

I was thinking that they might all come back in and totally disrupt the meeting to such an extend that business couldn't be conducted, sort of what a parent group did on August 16. See my reports and videos:

• More PEP Video - PEP members walk off the stage to...
• Parents Close Down PEP - Commentary and First Vide...

Parent activist Lisa Donlan got into Michael Mendel's face during the walkout telling him that the PEP and all the other mayoral control crap is their RoseMary's baby and how dare they claim their own creation is illegitimate and then walk out leaving the people from PS 9K battling the DFER-led charter robots alone? We stayed to try to support them and I trailed after the green-shirted paid DFER gang even as they tried to run away from me and refuse to answer questions - but I got video of them distributing food - hey Joe Williams, with all the billionaires supporting you can't you afford to get something better than sandwiches?

It's even more fun listening to Lisa (who along with GEM's Gloria Brandman did a redux of the puppet show and the song "Which Side Are You On" when they spoke after the walkout, which really could have had an impact if the people had stayed) after a drink.

Here is a comment she made this morning:

The momentum that has been building for a year, died when the UFT and their followers walked out, leaving the victims of the closings and co-locations alone with the PEP and the astroturfed ERN coached charter folks. What exactly was accomplished by that stunt?

Other than making it clear that some give marching orders and the rest mostly march when told?

After all, the groups that led the walk out are now declaring the governance structure broken beyond repair- which is ironic because they are the very same groups that asked for this tweaked version of Mayoral control.

 Now its not working?

 Really?

What did last night do to advance any cause or strategy?

What are you proud of exactly?

See some of her other comments this morning below the fold.

Of course, this has been a tumultuous week. Monday's mostly student rally ending in a civil disobedience action opened things up with a bang (Video of CEJ Rally and Civil Disobedienc...)
followed by Tuesday's PEP meeting - Ed Notes links here

• And Now Folks, For the Entertainment Portion of Ou...
• Poison Pep Pills
• More PEP
• PEP Report

Gotham Schools blow-by-blow Feb 1 account with Anna Philips on the gun:

and of course last night's follow-up. Here are Gotham links - see especially Anna Philips' marathon effort: The Panel for Educational Policy voted to close 12 more schools. (GS, Times, DN, Post, NY1, WSJ). And make sure to read the comments.

MORE FROM LISA DONLAN



9:59 p.m. A charter school parent at the microphone elicits some boo’s by saying, “I’m grateful the UFT is gone and the riff-raff is gone because now the real parents can speak.”

“Chancellor Black,” the parent continued, “I hope you’re listening to every parent here.”

Black, who has been remarkably motionless throughout the night, nodded.

9:08 p.m. With students at schools slated for phase-out gone, much of the speech-making tonight is being devoted to two relatively minor space-sharing issue.

Both are plans to put charter schools with the Uncommon Schools network in district buildings: Brooklyn East Collegiate is set to move into the P.S. 9 building, and Leadership Prep Ocean Hill is slated to move into the building where P.S. 332 now is.

P.S. 9 parents complain that a charter school would block plans to expand the school to middle school grades. A Department of Education spokesman said that the move would only take away one classroom from P.S. 9 next year and that the school would receive multiple rooms back next year.

(In between 8 and 9 pm i mostly anti district school and pro charter speakers take the mic)

7:55 p.m. Anna estimates that there are about 350 people at Brooklyn Tech. The walkout cleared many people away.
-----------
Dmytro Fedkowskyj, the Queens Borough President’s appointee to the panel, starts the question-and-answer period by calling attention to the many concerns he heard about class size, technology, resources, and other supports in schools that are facing closure.

“I have taken a tour of Jamaica High School and I saw how the new schools did seem to have newer technology while Jamaica didn’t have it,” he said. “And it concerned me.”

Paymon Rouhanifard, a top official in the DOE’s portfolio office, responds that the inequality is simply a function of the way the department organizes school budgets.

“What you see in Jamaica is the fact that Jamaica has been around for a long time, by virtue it has a more senior faculty that has a higher budget need to soak up the salaries of those teachers. Its principal has to work around those challenges,” Rouhanifard said. “The new [schools] may have younger teachers so their cost may not be as high.”

Let's not forget that the UFT /CEJ/AQE/Immigrant Coalition and others cut a deal with the DoE back in 2007 that included cancelling a May rally, at a time when when protests were building citywide against the DoE's move to stand-alone schools in virtual networks.

FSF not only makes each school accountable for the actual teacher salary, thus making experienced teachers a financial liability, it also has allowed DoE to transfer hidden administrative and support costs to individual school budgets.

Thus the short term opportunism of the union and its allies helped DoE take major steps to destroy our schools.

We need a labor force and grassroots groups that will fight back, not accommodate and self deal.

Lisa Donlan

Last night's Panel for Educational Policy meeting

As predicted, the PEP (Panel of Eight Mayoral Puppets plus borough appointees) voted to approve ten school closings and several co-locations and expansions of Success Academy Charters into public school space.

See video of the Caped Real Reformers (parents and teachers ) singing "What a Wonderful World it would be" and students at Metropolitan Corporate Academy, one of the schools being closed, perform, ""DOE don't care about us" at last night's PEP meeting. More video of the evening's events at NY1, including Chancellor Cathie Black's annoyed response to the vociferous crowd.

Some lyrics:

They don’t know how to teach history,
they don’t know how to teach biology,
They don’t know much about science books,
they don’t know much about the cuts we took,
but they do know how to close down schools,
we’re fighting back you know that we’re not fools,
What wonderful schools they could be.

They know a lot about charter schools,
and that they think that merit pay is cool,
..Parents, teachers, students know there’s more
They know there’s more than just test scores
What wonderful schools these could be.

My comments last night:

Choice is not real choice if someone else’s child is being squeezed out into hallways, closets or basement rooms. Choice is not real choice if someone else’s child is being forced into larger classes or you are closing their school, against their will. Every time you close or co-locate a school you are creating more overcrowding and more disruption of someone else’s education. Every time you close or co-locate a school, you are undermining choices for all parents and their children, and imposing your own will on a community. Clearly the people whose lives are most affected oppose these proposed closing and co-locations. I urge you to listen to their choices, and to vote against these proposals.

And Now Folks, For the Entertainment Portion of Our Program - PEP Video: GEM Real Reformers Sing and MCA Steppers

Some lyrics:

They don’t know how to teach history,
they don’t know how to teach biology,
They don’t know much about science books,
they don’t know much about the cuts we took,
but they do know how to close down schools,
we’re fighting back you know that we’re not fools,
What wonderful schools they could be.

They know a lot about charter schools,
and that they think that merit pay is cool,
..Parents, teachers, students know there’s more
They know there’s more than just test scores
What wonderful schools these could be.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbVojmHITR4






See Cathie Black buckle when faced with jeers - look how nasty and annoyed she is. How much more abuse can she stand?
http://www.ny1.com/content/news_beats/education/133278/chancellor-black-criticiz

Also see commentary here: (Daily Politics, City Room)

Poison Pep Pills

The good thing about print journalism and writing a regular column is that you have to get your thoughts together in some orderly way, as opposed to ranting and doing stream of consciousness on the blog. The deadline for my semi-monthly Rockaway newspaper Wave columns is Wednesday at 9am. How to summarize last night's PEP in a thousand words? I began at 7:30am and just about hit the deadline - ok, so I missed by 10 minutes. (Boy, I think back to those 350 word compositions we had to write in school and how painful pulling every word was.)

I have a lot more to say about the UFT and Moskowitz strategies. Maybe after breakfast. Or lunch. Or the gym. Jealous? You can retire after 35 years. Or if it's up to Cuomo and Bloomberg, maybe not.

I copied the Gotham Schools links to stories about the meeting:
The city school board voted to close 10 schools. (GothamSchools, Times, Daily News, Post, WNYC, NY1)

Poison Pep Pills

by Norm Scott

February 2, 2011

With so many schools being closed this year by the Department of Education – 26 at last count ­– and charter co-locations – the word the DOE uses while I use "invasion" (one commentator compared them to bed bugs) there seems to be a Panel for Educational Policy meeting every day. Actually, there are two this month and two in March. Memories of last January's marathon ten hour horror story meeting where 19 schools were being closed still haunts people. So  now will we have two 5-hour marathon horror story meetings? Not so fast.

The Feb. 1 started at 6pm and ended at 1am. I gave up by 10:30 and headed home (which might explain some wobbly grammar in this column). This meeting was billed as a big confrontation between the UFT, which had called a pre-hearing rally akin to the one last January that packed Brooklyn Tech and led to a massive round of booing during Joel Klein's speech and Eva Moskowitz' Harlem Success Academy machine which followed up the next month with busloads of parents who cheered Joel Klein while spending the evening talking about how they need charters because the school Uncle Joel ran were so awful. But Eva loved Joel because he gave her whatever she wanted. Rumors she had him locked up in her basement with a ball in his mouth have not been confirmed but I suspect the real reason he left the DOE to earn millions as a propagandist for Rupert Murdoch was to get out from under Eva.

Well, the UFT decided to postpone their rally supposedly because the weather report was bad from Feb. 1 to the Feb. 3rd PEP (where the final nail is expected to be driven into the coffins of Beach Channel and Jamaica High Schools, among others). I don't think it was the weather but a strategy to avoid a major confrontation with the HSA parents. One of my colleagues in the Grassroots Education Movement commented: "I think their moving the rally date from the 1st to the 3rd is a tactical  disaster (compounding the fiasco of their wider strategy).  Moskowitz will able to dominate the hearing (hopefully the D3 parents will out mobilize them), the vote will happen and the result will dominate the news cycle - leading to demoralization and decreasing turnout for Thursday."

Eva didn't postpone anything and showed up, depending on the reports, with either hundreds or thousands of busloads and food for them all. How many buses does that take and what did this all cost? Money that could have gone towards getting her own buildings instead of take overs of public school space. But she has a political, not an educational agenda. She is pushing into white middle class areas where public schools are overcrowded and the massive Brandeis HS campus, which already has four high schools in it, is her target. There was a lot of pushback from just about every upper West Side politician and parent leader. The community board voted 40-0 against Eva and every single PTA lined up against her. But the final outcome of the Bloomberg-dominated PEP was a foregone conclusion (Egypt's Hosni Mubarek often complains he allows way more democracy than Michael Bloomberg does) and Eva prevailed again, but leaving in her wake another neighborhood of people filled with outrage. This time she picked the wrong neighborhood and look for some severe hostility from parents who want more high school space at Brandeis but will be denied as Eva expands her school grade by grade and pushes out some of the existing high schools - which I predict at least two will be set up for failure so they can be closed and have their space given over to Eva over the next few years.

The UFT did show, but mostly with staffers. At times it seems there are almost enough of those to fill a few busloads. I didn't see food for them but then again many of them have UFT credit cards. They did have blue tee shirts to counter Eva's orange ones. The UFT shirts said, "Chancellor Black Do Your Homework" on the front and "Fix Schools = A+, Close Schools = F". Okay, a little lame but at least there was a sense of some pushback at the charter juggernaut.

One of the highlights of the evening occurred when my pals in the Grassroots Education Movement ­– who term themselves the "Real Reformers" – did their usual thing, wearing their red capes with a big "RR" on the back and this month singing "What a Wonderful World This Could Be" with lyrics like "They don't know much about history....but they do know how to close down schools..."

Battle over public schools escalates with civil disobedience

Joel Klein called the misnamed "achievement gap" the "civil rights issue of our time." Fighting back against the ed deformer strategy of forcing the closure of many inner city schools to make way for favored privately controlled charters is the real civil rights issue of the time. On Monday January 31, I attended a rally of mostly NYC  high school students near City Hall  and Tweed focused on the forced closing of schools as part of the drive to privatize by short-changing these schools of resources. Shouting “Fix Schools, Not Just Close Them" and "What does democracy look like? This is what democracy looks like" two New York City Council Members and dozens of parents and youth were arrested for blocking traffic at Chambers and Centre Street following the rally. Council Members Jumaane Williams and Charles Barron were among those arrested. 

Students began a march to the precinct but on the way they were told that the police, to curtail the march, took the arrested to another precinct. The event was organized by the Coalition for Educational Justice, consisting of community-based organizations, and the Urban Youth Collaborative. I put up a 14 minute edited video of the rally, excerpts from speakers, the push into Chambers St., the arrests and the follow-up march to the police station. Fabulous stuff from a great bunch of students who did us all proud.  You can view the video at

http://vimeo.com/19443862

I'm loading up the camera for the next PEP meeting on Feb. 3rd where the UFT promises to come out in force. By the time you read this you might be hearing about a major disruption of the PEP at that meeting to attempt to stop the vote to close the schools. Or not.

Above blackout due to CIA censorship of sensitive material. B

When Norm is not spending his life videotaping PEP meetings, he blogs at ednotesonline.blogspot.com

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Check out Norms Notes for a variety of articles of interest: http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/. And make sure to check out the side panel on right for news bits.

Stop School closings and charter takeovers!

Come to the Panel for Educational Panel meetings on January 19th, Feb. 1st, Feb. 3rd and March 1st, where the fates of more than thirty schools, either closings or co-locations, will be decided.

Let your voices be heard against the forces that would privatize and undermine our public schools -- and damage the future of most of the students in these schools.

Let Cathie Black, our new Chancellor, hear how parents really feel about these proposals. She has said that she wants to listen to parents and other stakeholders; find out how sincere she is.

Click on the GEM flyer to the left, to print and distribute in your schools.

Patrick Sullivan on the core principle of the Bloomberg administration

"I represent the borough of Manhattan on what the mayor calls the Panel for Educational Policy but what is in the law the Board of Education of the City of New York. I see here today parents and their elected leaders and I see teachers from every borough. I see them from every race and I see them from every income level and from every political party. Why is that?

Because I've learned from talking to people is that every parent wants to the same thing for their kids: they want a rich curriculum, they want an experienced teacher, they want small classes, and they want room for their kids in their schools.

But what have I learned from sitting on the Board of Educaiton for three years? I've learned that instead of schools, we're going to build a billion dollar police academy. Instead of a rich curriculum, we get test prep and drilling in math and ELA. Instead of small classes, we get our kids packed 28, 30, 35, 40 in a class and that's wrong.

"But the worst of all this is the people who control our schools, the people who run our schools, the Mayor, the Chancellor, the Regents, they don't send their own kids to these schools. They have one idea of education for our kids and and an entirely different one for their own.

Beyond autonomy, beyond accountability, beyond privatization, the core principle of the Bloomberg administration when it comes to education is condescension: the idea that there's one idea of education for their children and a totally different idea of education for everybody else's, and that's what has to stop."

PEP Video Highlights

How do we go to teachers and say you need a masters degree and we’re going to ignore the fact that a masters degree is needed for chancellor and most important how do we go to a student in the sytem to study and work hard and pour their heart and soul into their education and build a record of accomplishment and when the big jobs come up if you don’t go to the right cocktail party you’re not going to be considered….I’ve been her 3 years and sometimes this feels like a front seat on a show called “The Death of Democracy.”…every day we get a little bit stronger---- PATRICK SULLIVAN




Check out Norms Notes for a variety of articles of interest: http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/

Video of Patrick Sullivan and tonight's PEP meeting

John Dewey HS in Brooklyn, NY Initiates Fight Back Fridays

Threatened with being closed down after being fed a poison pill by the NYCDOE of having the very programs that have attracted generations of students eliminated, an influx of students from other large high schools in Brooklyn and budget cuts, the John Dewey school community has implemented a Fight Back Friday series of before school rallies on Stillwell Avenue beginning at 7:15. If you are in the neighborhood stop by or honk as you drive by.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y3tXGAxCOs

______________

Join the Grassroots Education Movement and the Real Reformers at the November 16 PEP meeting at Brooklyn Tech at 5:30 as they perform the rap song "Will the Real Reformers Please Stand Up!" in front of the school as a prelude to the meeting.

Listen up, mayor and the NY Times

The Times ran an editorial last week, "Parents need to know", which claimed that NYC parents didn't understand how the weak state exams had been "shortchanging students" and that they did their "children no favor" when they disrupted a Panel for Education Policy meeting on Monday. This was after the PEP chair, David Chang, refused to let them speak in response to a long, deceptive power point that claimed, despite the collapse of the state test score bubble collapse, that the schools had made great progress.

The editorial also excused the state test score inflation by stating, "Weak state tests are a chronic problem throughout the country — one that education departments are only beginning to come to grips with." Oh please. The NY test score inflation has been obvious to nearly all objective observers since at least 2007, despite the fact that it conveniently allowed the mayor to claim great improvements during his campaigns for the renewal of mayoral control and re-election, illusions that were bought hook line and sinker by the mayor's allies on the Times and the other editorial boards.

The editorial ended by claiming that the schools have nevertheless been "narrowing the performance gap between white and minority students." Yet the gold standard, the national exams called the NAEPs, show no narrowing of the achievement gap in any grade or subject since the Klein regime began. Truly, the Times editors "need to know" and start living in the real world, for they, along with the chancellor and mayor, have lost all credibility, and should stop criticizing parents while displaying their ignorance of what's really going on in our schools.Our mayor, who famously said people could "boo him at parades" if people didn't like his educational policies, will likely see more booing of his Panel of Eight Puppets in the months to come, unless he wakes up and starts to listen.

Video of Patrick Sullivan and parent protest at the PEP meeting on Aug. 16

Check out the video from yesterday's Panel for Educational Policy meeting, where Patrick Sullivan, Manhattan member, observes that what he heard from the DOE's earlier test score presentation was "an attempt at spin to protect the reputations of the people who are responsible for the school system."

He makes a motion so that the Panel can hear "from parents and the public about what their concerns are about what I think is probably one of the worst debacles in the history of the public school system."

Yet PEP Chair David Chang refuses to bring the motion to a vote. Check out Patrick's explanation of how Chang's refusal was a violation of the PEP bylaws.

This refusal to let them speak led to an outcry from parents, chanting "Let us speak", and a subsequent walk-out of the PEP members, all except for Patrick.




For more on these events, see GothamSchools, Times, Post, Daily News, WNYC , Ed Notes and Patrick's own post. (video thanks to Norm Scott.)

The ugly naked face of mayoral control

Tuesday night's marathon session of the Panel for Educational Policy at Brooklyn Tech that lasted till nearly 4 AM was one of the most inspiring and awful events I have ever witnessed.

Inspiring because there were thousands of people there to protest the closing of 19 schools, and hundreds spoke out, for more than eight hours: eloquently, angrily, passionately and intelligently, about why their schools should not be closed and why the administration's blind and reckless policies would hurt our most vulnerable children. These English language learners, special education students, poor and homeless, will likely be excluded from the new small schools and charter schools that will replace their schools, and will undoubtedly be discharged in huge numbers as these schools phase out, never to receive a fair chance at a high school diploma.

Parents, students and teachers cited facts and numbers, personal experience, trenchant analysis and damning evidence of the DOE's malignant neglect and botched statistics.

Though the testimony started at 6 PM and continued until 2:45 AM, it was never boring. Early on, there was even humor from Lisa Donlan and Jane Hirschmann, who put on an inspired puppet show -- excerpts of which are below.

It was inspiring because at long last, Joel Klein got the reception he deserved: booed, jeered, criticized, compared to the Bernie Madoff of educational policy, with his destructive Ponzi scheme of closing schools and shifting around high-needs students; a scheme that will soon collapse, when there is nowhere left for these children to go.

It was awful because nothing that anyone said made any difference in the final vote.

The PEP, which the legislature in their wisdom allowed to continue with its a supermajority of mayoral appointees, was intent on rubberstamping whatever flawed or ridiculous policies put forward by the administration.

Shamefully, there was not a word from the chair, David Chang, or any other mayoral appointee to any of the thousands of people who urged them to think twice. Only the independent members from Manhattan, Bronx, Queens and the Bronx voted no.

When Patrick Sullivan, Manhattan member, asked the mayoral "yes men" if they had anything to say to justify these closings, not one of them felt obligated to explain his or her vote.

This event should never have been allowed to occur in a city and a nation that calls itself a democracy; with all the power in the hands of one man to make the decisions for thousands of other people's children, but this is the ugly naked face of mayoral control.

See also City Panel Backs Closing of 19 Schools (NY Times), Public sentiment has turned against Mayor Bloomberg's dictatorial school reforms (Daily News); The School Closing Marathon (Gotham Gazette); School Vote Scene Report: Joel Klein Called "Racist," (Village Voice); City's reasoning for wanting to close Jamaica HS based on faulty statistics (YourNabe.com); Parents Battle for a Say in Educational Policy (Gabe Pressman, NBC); Panel Decides to Shutter 19 NYC Public Schools (NBC New York) NYC school officials vote to close 19 underperforming schools (7Online.com); Rage as 19 schools get the axe (New York Post); “Attack” on Brooklyn high schools (YourNabe.com.)

Why the school closings cannot be legally approved tonight

The Dept. of Education's summaries and response to public comments on the proposed school closings has now been posted on the Panel for Educational Policy public comment webpage.

They remain hugely inadequate, and do not sufficiently respond to any of the issues highlighted in our critique, as regards the likely effect on class size or overcrowding; nor as regards the fiscal impact of these proposals.

They do reveal that at the public hearings, hundreds spoke in opposition to these proposals, and at most of them, not a single person spoke in support.

One more point. The PEP bylaws, in compliance with the new governance law, say the following:

"Following the public review process, the Secretary shall make available to the
public, including via the Panel’s official internet web site, an assessment of
the public comments concerning the item under consideration prior to 24 hours
before the Panel vote on such item. The Secretary shall conduct such assessment
in accordance with Education Law 2590-g(8)(c). "

Yet none of these summaries were posted on the DOE website until after 10 AM this morning; and by 1:45 PM only half were up.

So unless the Panel for Educational Panel vote occurs after 10 AM tomorrow morning, these proposals cannot legally be approved.

Report on the Columbus HS hearing from a former alum

I went to Christopher Columbus H.S. in the Bronx (my alma mater) Thursday night for the joint hearing that DOE arranged about closing the school and also one of the small schools that share the building, Global Enterprise H.S., (which was started during the Bloomberg-Klein regime.)

The auditorium was packed, and everyone who spoke during the first two hours, while I was there -- the local elected officials, the Bronx Borough President's rep., the head of the community board, administrators, teachers, union reps (teachers and principals unions), students, alums -- everyone was passionate in their defense of the schools, their opposition to the closings, and their criticism of the DOE.

Heartfelt testimony included statistics refuting the DOE's charges that the schools were failing, charts showing graduation rates above the city-wide average, information about successful coping with over-crowding, high percentages of special needs students and new-arrival students who enter not speaking a word of English. The words of praise in the DOE's own recent progress reports were cited as direct contradiction of the words they now use in their closing rationales.

People spoke about how they have not received help and support from the district office or DOE central. It was pointed out that DOE claims of having consulted with the "stakeholders" about this were bogus, because when personnel at Global asked widely who had been consulted, they could find no one who had. Several people suggested that clearing space for charter schools was the likely explanation for this DOE plan. One student, choked up with tears, said that the closing would shut the door to his future.

The building looked to be in great shape, inside and out, with lots of informational and inspirational signs and college posters all over the walls. It was maybe in better shape than when I attended, and since it opened in 1938, it is now well more than twice as old as it was then.

If PEP votes to close these schools after a hearing like this, it will be a chilling example of how an irrational dictatorship rides roughshod over the near-unanimous opinions and desires of practically all aspects of the communities it supposedly serves.

If all the B.P. reps on the PEP, if they each wish to keep their schools open, make common cause for the meeting on the 26th ("Don't vote to close my schools and I won't vote to close yours") and the vote comes out with eight Bloombergs for closing, five Borough Presidents against, it will demonstrate how unfair the make-up of this group is, and ought to result in lawsuits against the closings.

--Richard Barr, parent leader

For some recent articles which deal with the school closings, see: Jamaica and Columbus High School supporters pack hearings (GothamSchools);Hundreds Protest Proposed School Closings (WNYC); Bloomberg School Closings Draw Ire (The Indypendent); Hundreds Rally To Keep Queens School Open (NY1 );Beach Channel supporters lay out their case against closure (GothamSchools);Was Beach Channel set up for failure? (Queens Chronicle ); Parents to have say on DOE plan to close Jamaica HS (YourNabe.com).

Patrick Sullivan commands the stage at the PEP

Check out this video of Manhattan member of the Panel for Educational Policy Patrick Sullivan, fearless and brilliant, at the PEP December 20 meeting in the Bronx.

My favorite clip: when Patrick berates DOE officials for their "lack of fiscal discipline" -- their insistence on spending yet even more millions for yet another wasteful piece of software, a teacher training module that is supposed to be integrated into the $80 million super-computer super-mugging that is ARIS; meanwhile, school budgets are being slashed to the bone.

Hurray for Patrick! We are truly lucky to have him.

Save Columbus High School!

I hope everyone reads Christine Rowland's excellent piece on the unfair and destructive proposal to close Columbus HS at GothamSchools and then joins the Facebook group to Save Columbus.

You can also check out Leo Casey's piece at Edwize about how the DOE's "progress reports" victimize schools with alot of high-needs kids. Then be sure to watch this moving video:





When you are finished, read DOE's totally inadequate "education impact statement" calling for the school's closure, and send in your comments to the DOE. Be sure to email them as well to all the PEP members (their addresses are to the right).

Then come to the PEP meeting where the school's closure will be voted on, along with more than thirty other closings and changes in school utilization, at Brooklyn Tech on Jan. 26, and make your voices heard!

Million dollar ravioli

Amazing piece by Arthur Goldstein, teacher at Francis Lewis HS at Gotham Schools about the last week's Panel for Educational Policy meeting.

Excerpt: So city kids can't have regular teachers. They can't have reasonable class sizes, or even legal ones. They can't have decent classrooms, or adequate gymnasium space. They can't have lunch at a reasonable hour. Still, as a result of this meeting, whenever they do get lunch, city kids will finally get the million-dollar ravioli they deserve.

See also James Eterno's comments at the PEP about what's happened due to budget cuts at Jamaica HS.

Chancellor's Regs and School Changes for Vote at November PEP

Six public notices were released by DOE tonight for votes on the agenda for the November 12th PEP meeting. Three are Chancellor's regulations and three are changes in school configuration / utilization.

Links to all are below and on the PEP web site here It looks like we have a location for the November meeting as well: PS 128 in Queens, located at 69-10 65th Drive, Queens, NY 11379

Text below from the DOE site:

PUBLIC COMMENT

The following regulations have been posted for the 45 day public comment period. The Panel will vote on the regulations listed below at the November 12, 2009 Panel meeting. The meeting will take place at 6:00 PM at PS 128 in Queens, located at 69-10 65th Drive, Queens, NY 11379.

1. Public Notice: C-30 Regulation Governing the Selection, Assignment and Appointment of Principals and Assistant Principals
   
   a. C-30 Regulation Governing the Selection, Assignment and Appointment of Principals and Assistant Principals
   
   
2. Public Notice: C-37 Selection of Community Superintendents
   
   a. C-37 Selection of Community Superintendents
   
   
3. Public Notice: A-190 Regulation on Significant changes in School Utilization
   
   a. A-190 Regulation on Significant Changes in School Utilization
   
   
4. Public Notice: A-501 Regulation on Promotion Standards
   
   a. A-501 Regulation on Promotion Standards

PUBLIC COMMENT

The following educational impact statements have been posted for the 45 day public comment period. The Panel will vote on the statements listed below at the November 12, 2009 Panel meeting. The meeting will take place at 6:00 PM at PS 128 in Queens, located at 69-10 65th Drive, Queens, NY 11379.

1. Public Notice: PS 46M
   
   a. Educational Impact Statement for PS 46M
   
   
2. Public Notice: Greenwich Village Middle School
   
   a. Educational Impact Statement for Greenwich Village Middle School
   
   
3. Public Notice: Mott Hall V (12X242)
   
   a. Educational Impact Statement for Mott Hall V (12X242)

Conflicts of interest abound on new PEP

See the article from today’s Daily News below on the eight mayoral appointments to the Panel for Educational Policy. Out of the four new members, two are former city aides, one owes his current job to Mayor Bloomberg, and three run organizations dependent on city contracts and/or receive financial support from the Mayor himself.

The Mayor will continue to control a super-majority of eight out of the thirteen members, according to the new Padavan/Silver law, and will be able to fire any of them at will. The only change in terms of the board's composition is that Klein can no longer serve as an official member, and the Mayor is now required to select two public school parents among his eight appointees.

The two new parent members announced yesterday are:

Linda Lausell Bryant, head of Inwood House, an organization which currently has a $255,000 contract with the DOE, and has received no-bid DOE contracts in the past. Inwood House has also benefited from hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual donations from Bloomberg’s own pocket via the Carnegie Corporation, from 2003 to the present day, and has received $8.5 million in tax exempt capital financing from the city’s Economic Development Corporation.

The other public school parent appointed to the board is Joe Chen, head of the Brooklyn Downtown Partnership, an organization which has millions of dollars of city contracts, according to the News. According to the Brooklyn Paper, Chen was appointed to his current job by Bloomberg himself – despite the fact that no city employees can serve on the PEP. Chen is also a former top aide to Deputy Mayor Doctoroff and is closely allied with the real estate interests in Brooklyn.

The other new members include Gitte Peng, a documentary film maker who was until recently a top aide to Deputy Mayor Walcott, credited for helping fashion the governance law and helping to found a charter school; and Tomás D. Morales, head of the College of Staten Island, part of CUNY, which is entirely dependent on city funding .

As Dick Dadey of the Citizens Union said, "These appointments continue [the mayor's] past practice of appointing people who ... will not break with the mayor.”

Current PEP members who were re-appointed, all of whom were among the mayor’s strongest supporters on the board, will include:

Philip A. Berry, vice chair of CUNY’s board; Tino Hernandez, former head of the NYC Housing Authority who resigned from NYCHA last year amidst a scandal regarding recurring elevator breakdowns; Richard Menschel of Goldman Sachs, a good friend of the mayor’s, and David Chang, president of Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn, which has received $104 million in tax-exempt financing through EDC. Not one of them has ever voted against the administration.

All the current borough representatives will be re-appointed, including Patrick Sullivan, the Manhattan representative, who up till now has been the only consistently independent voice on the panel. The Brooklyn BP has yet to choose his representative; let’s hope that whoever it will be allowed to serve as a real voice for parents like Patrick.

Along with the evident conflicts of interest, is there continues to be no contact information made available by the DOE for any of the PEP members. The only way for members of the public to reach them is to write a letter c/o the Department of Education. But then, why would the DOE want to make these people accessible to the public?

Previously, no minutes of the PEP meetings were posted since 2007. Now the DOE is beginning to post minutes retroactively and has reached April 2008 – as the new law requires. But these are the most bare bones minutes one could possibly imagine.

Not a single comment from the public is included in the minutes. Also see this record of the PEP meeting on Dec. 17, 2007: “Chancellor Klein and members of the DOE’s Senior Leadership Team walked through questions panel members submitted on a variety of topics. Panel members asked questions and commented throughout the presentation. No action was taken.”

This was actually one of the most interesting of PEP meetings, in which Panel members were for the first and only time allowed to submit questions on DOE policies, (though only three did.) Compare this minimalist account to our description on the parent blog, in which Patrick single-handedly debated critical issues with Chancellor Klein, Linda Wernikoff, Marcia Lyles, Chris Cerf, Kathleen Grimm, and Garth Harris: Jedi vs. the Sith at the December PEP meeting.

The Parent Commission had proposed that all future meetings of the PEP should be webcast and be archived on line. We also proposed that no one who worked for an organization that received substantial contracts from the city or contributions from the mayor himself could serve on the PEP.

Unfortunately, these were among many proposals to improve accountability, transparency and public input that were not adopted.