Please contribute to help the final orphaned class at Christopher Columbus HS

credit: GothamSchools

Here is the somber request by an alumnae of Columbus HS in the Bronx to help students in the last graduating class at that school, being phased out by the DOE, receive college counseling and other basic programs that have been denied them by the powers that be, by donating to a fund at the Partnership for Student Advocacy.  Be sure to watch the heartbreaking video below with interviews of students at phase out schools -- their futures cut loose by the DOE, right under the invitation to their fundraiser.

Christopher Columbus H.S., in the Bronx, my alma mater, opened in 1938, so the school year beginning in a few days is its 75th anniversary year.  Unfortunately, thanks to M. Bloomberg, J. Klein and D. Walcott, the principal significance of this upcoming year for the school is that it will be its last -- despite the almost unanimous statements, opinions and pleas at hearings on the subject from teachers, students, parents, administrators, local elected officials and alums in each of those categories, that the school not be closed and that it deserved to keep going with more assistance from the D.O.E.  To say that this feedback fell on deaf ears is an understatement.  They stopped admitting entering classes after that (3 years ago), so that there is only the current senior class left.

To make matters worse, the D.O.E. has withdrawn services so that these last remaining senior's are not being provided with college help,  enrichment programs and other programs that they should be entitled to, like other high school seniors in the city are.

The program below is, working with the principal, trying to fund raise so that these services can be paid for and provided by outside contractors, so that this senior class will at least get some of what they deserve in their last year, even though interaction with a 9th, 10th and 11th grade won't be part of that.

I realize that many on this list are coping with, or already experienced similar tragedies and travesties at other schools around the city, but if there are Columbus alums/parents on this list who were unaware of this effort to help, or others who might wish to help some kids at a school they have had no connection with, consider getting in touch with the PFSA.

thanks,  Richard Barr

---

From: pfsany@gmail.com
To: info@pfsany.org
Sent: 8/27/2013 10:33:33 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subj: Mary Conway-Spiegel, PFSA & Christopher Columbus HS Invite You To Attend

Partnership For Student Advocacy & Christopher Columbus High School Need your RSVP

September 17, 2013 at 5:30 PM

925 Astor Avenue, Bronx, NY 10469

Please RSVP to pfsany@gmail.com by September 10.

To fund resources and programs for the Last Graduating Class, please make a check out to our fiscal sponsor, Urban Dove, and send it to: 

PFSA

252 W 30th Street #5A
 

New York, NY 10001 

or donate through PayPal at www.pfsany.org/donate 

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).

Richard Barr on NY Post editorial

This past week, the New York Post ran an editorial about the large rally at which elected and appointed officials, representatives of the teachers union, community organizations, and, most of all, students and parents, the actual consumers of the public school system, showed up to voice opposition to yet another top-down, large-scale reorganization of the school system taking place without significant prior consultation with the stakeholders.

Clearly, the feeling is widespread that the current administration, as embodied by the Mayor and the Chancellor, ought to do less imposing and more collaborating.

The Post editorial appeared in print before the event had even taken place, denouncing it in advance as something at which the union was calling the tune and everyone else was a puppet.

The editorial made assertions which were, in equal measures, highly ridiculous and highly insulting to all involved. They included accusations that everyone involved in the rally just wanted to go back to a system of no accountability, in which special interests benefited from contracts, that the Mayor and Chancellor were the only game in town when it came to meaningful school reform, and that they were even the only ones who gave a damn about the kids.

Leaving aside a host of other questions about these assertions -- about how well other recent reorganization moves have worked so far, how they are implemented, whether under the current system contracts are allocated even more perniciously on a no-bid basis to consultants who cut the kids' bus routes, whether those at the rally have legitimate and sincere concerns, whether these reorganizations ought to be discussed before they are announced as final -- let's just focus on the last one.

The Mayor and the Chancellor are the only ones who give a damn about the kids? Not the teachers? And most of all, not the kids' parents?

The Post is, of course, free to present its editorial opinion. Parents, union members and others similarly slighted are also free to express their opinion of that opinion, and might well consider organized "do not buy the Post" campaigns among their colleagues. Depriving the owners of your quarter also deprives them of circulation numbers, which results in lower advertising revenue.

Other unions whose legitimate organizing efforts on their own behalf have been met with similar contempt and derision by the paper's editorialists might well consider the same type of effort. Money talks loudly in this society. And, for those who currently purchase the paper to satisfy some guilty pleasure or other, there are plenty of other media outlets available to fill the bill.

Just a thought.

Richard Barr
Public school parent.