Juan Pagan, parent leader at Legacy HS and a member of the Citywide Council on HS, gave this eloquent speech at yesterday's press conference in Foley Square:
It is beyond
me how Mayor Bloomberg refers to himself as the “Education Mayor” when his
educational reform policy is nothing more than a four-step strategy to kill
schools.
Bloomberg’s Four-Step
Strategy To Kill a School:
1) ATTACK THE
BODY OF OUR SCHOOLS
Devastate
schools with years of budget cuts. Overwhelm the most struggling schools
disproportionately (like it did to Legacy High School) with large numbers of
students with high needs without resources, even as the cutbacks continue. Use
flawed and fabricated data to wrongfully justify closing and phasing out
schools. Overwhelm teachers with overcrowded classrooms, no resources, and
demand optimum results, and then wrongfully punish them for doing their best.
2)
CONTAMINATE THE LIFEBLOOD OF OUR SCHOOLS
Teachers are
the lifeblood of our schools. Release Teacher Data Reports with flawed and
inaccurate data and with a high margin of error, data that was collected
experimentally and was abandoned by the DOE, but happily revived by the
coercive tactics of Mayor Bloomberg to demoralize educators, pit parents
against teachers, create doubt and discord among parents; confusion and fear.
3) ATTACK THE
SPIRIT OR THE SOUL OF OUR SCHOOLS
Children are
the soul of our schools. Make children feel as if they are the failures;
disrupt the stability given by teachers and educators, create an adverse affect
on their ability to learn and lead our children to falsely believe that they
are the failures, when it is Bloomberg’s educational reform policy that is
failing our children.
4) BLEED OUR
SCHOOLS TO DEATH
The final
blow is inflicted by the Panel for Educational Policy, like a sword stabbed in
the back of our education system, directly into the heart of our schools and then
twisted and pulled out by the PEP. Schools closing and being phased out, like
watching them bleed to death.
SCHOOLS DIE.
And our children ultimately pay the price.
Mayor Bloomberg: You are NOT
and shall NOT go down as the “Education Mayor.” You are and
SHALL go down as the Executioner of our schools.
Mayor
Bloomberg, if you think that you will only have to deal with the UFT, you are wrong. You will
answer to the fathers and mothers and parents and guardians of the children of
this city. You will answer to us!
3 comments:
How else can the education mayor try to show that he is looking out for the children of the city without pretending that he is closing their schools to save their education. Of course we all know he does not close any school, but pretends to reorganize into a number of schools thus giving him an excuse to eliminate the higher paid teachers and provide space for his friends charter schools.What a sham!
Every closing school should continue to rally for their school. If they did, we would have a continuous rally for over 3 months given the schools he has closed in his 10 years as mayor. Closing schools is never a solution. UFT where are you? CSA where are you? Stop cowering and step up to the plate. You have nothing to lose. Our children, parent and communities are losing. State Assembly where are you? Sunset mayoral control and lets create a new governance structure. No more Mayoral Control.
The last remaining functional neighborhood high school in the Bronx is De Witt Clinton. Their "performance ratings" were no better than the other "failing" schools, but the fact that they have the largest alumni association of any high school in the country, which includes some very influential people, is the only reason they've survived so far. Other closed & schools under threat of closing must increase the membership and activism of their alumni associations. With mayoral control, there is no other public input into the fate of the NYC public schools
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