PEP announces school closings despite public protest

Nearly 2,000 students, parents and teachers filled the auditorium of Fort Greene Technical High School in Brooklyn on Thursday, Feb. 3, 2011 to protest school closings by the Panel on Education Policy. In the last week, the panel has decided to close 23 schools it has deemed "failing" based on annual progress reports and graduation rates. (Rachel Ohm/NYU).

NEW YORK- More than 1,000 people walked out after protesting school closings during the Panel on Education Policy meeting Thursday night at Fort Greene Technical High School in Brooklyn. After more than six hours of public testimony, the panel voted to close 13 schools in a decision that followed the closing of 10 schools earlier in the week.

      “Black must go,” the public chanted, expressing their disapproval of Chancellor Cathleen Black, who appeared to be grimacing from her far away seat on stage. Her appointment in November has since faced criticism and lawsuits concerned with her lack of education credentials.


     The crowd held signs and blew whistles, rang bells and crowded the aisles of the auditorium. The mascot from Jamaica High School, a beaver, showed up to lead the crowd of angry parents, teachers and students holding signs that read “Stop Racist School Closings” and “Bolder Faster Change.”


      Listen: Audio clip of protestors at Thursday's Education Policy Panel meeting

     Charm Rhoomes is PTA President and mother of an 11th grader at Jamaica High School, one of the schools that PEP decided to close. In the 2009-2010 school year, Jamaica had a four-year graduation rate of 50 percent, below the citywide average of 63 percent. Rhoomes said she is “totally amazed at the lack of resources being provided to the students at Jamaica high school.” She came to the meeting with a list of 29 classes and programs that have been canceled at Jamaica since last fall. These included the engineering program, which was the reason her son decided to apply to Jamaica, and the Gateway (honors) program. 

     She says her son has studied hard and last fall qualified to take an Advanced Placement math class. On Wednesday he went to class and was informed that the teacher had been sent to another school and the class would no longer be taught at Jamaica. 

     “These students were basically told that after working hard for the last three years, they can’t have this class anymore,” she said. “Why is this happening?”

     Earlier in the week, PEP announced plans to close Metropolitan Corporate Academy in Brooklyn, a school founded in cooperation with investors from Goldman Sachs in 1992. Devonte Escoffery, student body president at Metropolitan Corporate, explained that once a school starts to phase-out enrollment drops. Since resources are allotted based on enrollment, resources decline when a school is in the phase-out process-- even if there are still students there. 

     “The D.O.E. cut off enrollment for eighth graders, so we only have 20 ninth graders,” he said. “The less students we have, the less money. We don’t have a gym, we don’t have an auditorium and our students don’t even have enough room to eat lunch.”


 Listen: Rap performed by students from Metropolitan Corporate Academy to protest closing

     Alan Cole, Jamaica track coach and retired physical education teacher, said that in addition to a lack of resources Jamaica has seen a disproportionately high influx of troubled students in recent years. 

     “In my classes I had students who were truants and who had disciplinary problems,” he said. “Every time I asked them where they lived, it was nowhere near the school.” 


      He said that in one year the school received 36 students from Riker’s Island juvenile detention facility.

     “Stop sending kids who don’t live anywhere near the school,” he said. “We will take our share of undereducated kids but don’t send them all here.” 

     
     In 2009 the panel voted to close 19 schools, including Jamaica, but a New York State court ruled that the decisions were illegal after lawsuits were brought forth by the United Federation of Teachers and the NAACP. The decision meant that the city had to start the process over again and include more pubic input. Speakers are cut off after two minutes and yet PEP meetings now stretch long into the night as parents, teachers and students line up at microphones.  

     “It really pains me to see these schools closing,” said Dmytro Fedkowskyj, Queens representative to the Educational Policy Panel. “There will be close to 2,000 students in these schools in the next three years and we will demand success in these proposed phase-out schools.”