Since
Sunday, the NY Post has run an excellent series on DOE’s Renewal
program for struggling schools, describing the stunning lack of services provided
students and instead, millions spent on
consultants, bureaucracy and other unspecified programs Here is Part
I, Part II is here,
here,
here and here,
followed by Part
III and Part
IV.
I
have been watching the Renewal program with special attention, especially since
the DOE has repeatedly promised the state to focus its class size reduction obligations
under the Contract for Excellence law on these schools, but has failed to do so.
In May 2015, I wrote about how the DOE’s insistence in co-locating
charter schools in Renewal school buildings would undermine their progress
– and make it more difficult for them to have sufficient space to reduce class
size or be provided with wrap-around services.
In November 2015 I testified
at City Council hearings about the failure of DOE to reduce class size in these
schools. This fall, I again blogged
about how two of the most persistently struggling Renewal schools in the
Bronx, JHS 162 and IS 117, have been on the city's priority list for class size
reduction since 2007, when the Contract for Excellence law was first passed;
JHS 22 since 2009. Yet neither when Bloomberg was mayor nor now under Bill de Blasio has the DOE ever bothered to cap class sizes in these
three schools at levels that would guarantee their students a better chance to learn.
I have also repeatedly critiqued expensive
Renewal contracts for problematic CBO’s and consultants for professional development ,
including here
and here. One of the most egregious contracts was awarded
retroactively to Scholastic in December 2016, to hold “family
workshops” at Renewal schools -- at a cost of $2,291 per hour.
Now
the DOE has announced its intention to close
six renewal schools and merge six others – a year before the three years
they were promised. Here
are the schools they intend to close, which include JHS 162 and five others:
- J.H.S. 145 Arturo Toscanini, District 9, Bronx
- Leadership Institute, District 9 high school, Bronx
- Monroe Academy for Visual Arts and Design, District 12 high school, Bronx
- M.S. 584, District 16, Brooklyn
- Essence School, District 19 middle school, Brooklyn
- J.H.S. 162 Lola Rodriguez de Tio, District 7, Bronx
Here
is a list
of meetings on the proposed closures at these schools. The Panel on Educational Policy will vote on
the proposals at
its March 22 meeting.
Of
the six schools slated for closure, only JHS
145 in District 9 is a zoned school.
Because JHS 145 is a zoned school, it is not clear to me how the DOE can
close it without a vote of Community Education Council in District 9, which has
not occurred.
A little
history first: In February 2009, then-Chancellor Joel Klein announced he would
close three zoned elementary schools: PS 194 and PS 241 in District 3 and
PS 150 in District 23, and put charters in their place. Eva Moskowitz had
asked
Klein the year before to give her the
two D3 buildings in Harlem for her Success Academy charter chain.
The following month, the NYCLU/UFT sued DOE, on behalf on CEC 3 and CEC 23 as well as parents at these schools, pointing out that the decision to close a zoned school must first be put to a vote of the CEC because it involves changing (or eliminating) zoning lines. Joining as plaintiffs were Randi Weingarten, president of the UFT, and Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum. The legal complaint is posted here. Less than two weeks later, Chancellor Klein dropped his plans to close these schools.
In
2012, then-Deputy Chancellor Marc Sternberg and the office of Portfolio
Planning tried to persuade CECs throughout the city to eliminate their school zoning
lines, presumably so he could close more of them and put charter schools in
their place. I wrote a memo
on this at the time, warning CEC District 6 and others
against allowing DOE to take away the only legally recognized power they had. (See: Article 52-A - § 2590-E Powers and
Duties of Community District Education Council) Only
CEC 7 and CEC 23 agreed to eliminate their zoning lines – but not District
9. (District 1 had removed its zoning
lines years before.)
Sternberg
departed
DOE the next year, at the end of Bloomberg’s last term in office, shortly after announcing 23
proposals to open new charter schools and co-locate new and existing
charter schools in public school buildings.
He left to become
Education Program director at the pro-privatization Walton
Family Foundation, where he has funded many of the charter schools and
pro-charter advocacy organizations in
NYC and throughout the country.
There
are many reasons to challenge the closure of JHS 145 and other Renewal
schools. As early as December
2014, DOE promised to focus its class size reduction efforts according
to the Contract for Excellence law on these schools, writing: “To better align with the Chancellor’s priorities, C4E’s
class size reduction plan will now focus on the 94 schools in the School
Renewal program.”
DOE
repeated that promise in the 2015-16
Contract for Excellence plan and again in the C4E
plan for this school year, while closing several of these schools
without reducing class size. Indeed, there
are still classes as large as 30 at JHS 145 as well as at about 40% of the
Renewal elementary and middle schools, and nearly all the Renewal high
schools.
According
to our analysis, about 40% of the elementary and middle schools and nearly one
third of the high schools in the Renewal program did not decrease schoolwide
average class size one iota between 2014-2016. Only two or 3.5% of the elementary
and middle schools capped class sizes at 20 students per class in
grades K-3 and 23 students or less in grades 4-8, the goals of the city’s
original C4E plan. Only one of the Renewal high schools (Orchard Collegiate
Academy) has capped class sizes at the C4E HS goal of 25 students per class.
I
believe that the refusal of the DOE to follow through on these promises will
doom many of these schools to failure, as
I said to the NY Post .
It is especially unconscionable given the high-needs student population
at the schools on the Renewal list.
According to Marilyn Espada, President of CEC 9, the JHS 145 student
population is composed of 53 percent English Language Learners, 20 percent
students with special needs, and 53 students in temporary housing. Yet there
was no ESL Teacher last year, and only one ESL Teacher for 140 ELL students
this year. There are no bilingual teachers for the 7th and 8th
graders.
In addition, many of the extra services and resources the school
was promised as part of the Renewal program never happened. The health
clinic built for the school has yet to open, and instead of gaining more
space, 17 or 18 classrooms were given
over to a Success Academy charter school
one year into the Renewal process, “scattering
students across 3 floors of a building,” and causing the school to lose its computer
room. There is no
science lab, no textbooks last year, and nearly 14
percent of teachers were teaching subjects last year in which they were not
trained or certified.
The lack of bilingual services is especially disappointing and appears
to violate the
NYSED consent decree signed by Chancellor Farina in November 2014. Here is an excerpt from this consent decree:
NYSED
followed up in 2015 with a Parent
Bill of Rights, which, among other things, states that parents have the right to
have their children “in a Bilingual Education (BE) program when there are
20 or more grade-level students that speak the same home/primary language.” This statement was footnoted with the fact
that in NYC schools, a bilingual program is required for students in grades K-8
if 15 or more grade-level students speak the same language in two contiguous
grades.
JHS
145 is not the only Renewal school deprived of funds and the necessary
support. Check out the NY Post story
describing how another Renewal
school, the Coalition School for Social Change. lacks certified
teachers and copy paper, while the principal redecorated her office and pushed
out struggling students:
The
high school’s classrooms are starved for supplies and qualified teachers, with
unlicensed interns leading one class and the kids in others left to learn from
videos, sources said.
Meanwhile,
the dean who dealt with discipline problems was replaced with a “business
manager” described by staffers as a close friend of the school’s new principal,
Geralda Valcin, who arrived in March 2016.
Rather
than provide the necessary resources and class sizes to this and other Renewal schools,
the DOE has spent millions on more
bureaucracy and consultants, , some with questionable records and backgrounds.
Here,
for example, is the 2007
investigative report from the Special Investigator Richard Condon explaining why he
recommended the firing of Frederick Douglass Academy principal Gregory Hodge, a
recommendation ignored by DOE. This was
apparently the sixth investigation into Hodge’s activities– the fifth was in 2001
and concerned allegations that he had fixed the grades
of basketball players at the school. A
former teacher described Hodge’s leadership style in a harrowing account in the
Indypendent
in 2010:
The worst part of working at FDA was the principal, whose
management style was described by the district United
Federation of Teachers representative as “abrasive.” In
my experience, shouting was the norm, often peppered with derogatory words and
phrases. Neither children nor teachers were spared the kind of verbal abuse one
expects from a drill sergeant, not a school principal. But seeing most of my
colleagues cowed or resigned to it, I rolled along, until he threatened me one
day — saying, “teachers are gonna get their throats cut” — shortly after I and
a couple other teachers had called the city and the state to complain about the
lack of a certified special education teacher for the sixth grade.
Yet in 2015, Hodge was assigned as the “Leadership coach” at two
Bronx Renewal schools. For his services,
DOE is paying $660 per day. One of the
two schools he was assigned to, the Young Scholars Academy, is now being merged
with another school, the North Bronx School of Empowerment for failing to “show
meaningful progress,” according to the DOE.
The
annual cost of the program has risen to $186.5 million this school year, with
total spending through the 2018-2019 year estimated at $754.2 million,
according to the latest figures from the Independent Budget Office. The Department of Education will not say
where all the money goes. The Post has learned that $8.5 million is paid to 72
Office of Renewal Schools “directors” and “instructional coaches.” Since last
school year, another $3.7 million went to “leadership coaches,” including many
retired principals, each making $660 to $1,400 a day.
Given
all the lack of resources and support at JHS 145– from overly large class
sizes, lack of ESL and bilingual teachers, to missing science and computer rooms
and even books, the students at the school have done surprisingly well,
according to this
account by three teachers:
Despite
years of neglect, our students have won the Thurgood Marshall Junior Mock Trial
Competition 8 times, more than any other school in the citywide tournament.
Our
students have won the BronxWRITeS Poetry Slam more than any other school in the
city, recently sharing the stage with Mayor De Blasio and Ambassador Caroline
Kennedy in an exhibition at Goldman Sachs.
Surely,
the students at this school and other Renewal schools deserve a better chance
to excel, by providing them with smaller classes, sufficient bilingual and ESL
teachers, and all the other services and programs that all children need and deserve, but
especially students with such disadvantaged backgrounds – instead of the DOE continuing
to spend millions on an army of overpaid consultants and bureaucrats.
