The Department of Education is rolling out plans to open new schools next fall across the city. The DOE announced Tuesday that it will add six schools to the list of Brooklyn schools already slated to open for the 2010/2011 school year. These elementary and middle schools will be located in Districts 17, 20, and 23. Each school will open with early grades and phase-in higher grades over time.

The DOE hopes that these  schools will alleviate growing pressures of overcrowding in these districts. Four of the proposed schools will be in District 20, where elementary school seats are especially in short supply.

For more information on these, and other,  school openings, visit the DOE’s fact sheets for each district. If you have questions concerning new schools, you can contact the Office of Public Affairs at 212-374-2437 or OPA@schools.nyc.gov.

Chants of protest rang through the streets of Fort Greene yesterday afternoon, as thousands of New Yorkers gathered to urge local officials to vote against closing 20 public schools. After two hours of protest and nearly nine hours of public comment, the Panel for Educational Policy approved the phasing-out of 19 of the schools. It will vote on closing the 20th school, Alfred E. Smith Careers and Technical Education High School in Bronx, next month.

“Keep schools open,” the crowd chanted as United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew took the stage at the 4 p.m. rally, his image broadcast on a jumbo screen stretching down Dekalb Avenue along Fort Greene Park for protesters to see. “We cannot continue with an educational policy that says, ‘we will no longer fix schools, we will close schools,’” he said before leading the crowd in a chant of “help not harm.”

When the rally came to a close, community members lined up along South Elliot Place to enter Brooklyn Tech High School’s auditorium for the 6 p.m. meeting of the PEP. The line buzzed with discussion.”Statistically we were just one year on the Schools in need of Improvement list and this is only the second year with our new principal,” said a teacher from Global Enterprise Academy, a school slated for closure. “We didn’t see it coming, we were punched in the head.”A student marching band made its way down the line, drowning out conversation.

The school’s two-story auditorium quickly filled to capacity. As PEP members took their seats on stage, community members remained on their feet, waving banners with slogans such as “keep the public in public education,” while chanting “save our schools.”

The crowd quieted as the panel approved minutes from its previous meeting. The panel chairman then asked Chancellor Joel Klein to provide an update. Boos filled the auditorium. “As I’ve said many times, our first obligation is to our children. The sad reality is that the schools that we present tonight are schools that are not meeting the standards that we need to meet for our children,” said Klein. “It saddens me that there are people here who are unprepared to listen and people who do not listen are typically people who are not concerned about the guideline and only about shouting people down.”

Hundreds of community members were allotted two minutes to speak. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer was one of the first to approach the microphone. “The people who build our schools over generations have been the communities, neighborhoods, parents, students,” he said. “If we agree that [the community] are the stakeholders, how could you possibly be the only ones to decide what schools remain and what schools close?” The panel chairman shut off the microphone at the two-minute limit, launching the crowd into a chant of “let him speak” — a chant that would be repeated throughout the evening.

An hour later, Dr Annie B. Martin, president of the New York branch of the NAACP, stepped to the mic. “To close these 20 schools, the DOE will disrupt the lives of the students, parents, and the very fiber of their communities,” she stated, “These are our public schools. They are a part of our communities.” Dr. Martin’s microphone was also shut off at two minutes. The crowd once again broke into a chant of “let her speak.” A community member later allowed Dr. Martin to finish her statement during his comment period.

Community members expressed concerns regarding the impact of school closure on students, the metrics by which the DOE judges whether a schools is “failing,” the PEP’s lack of teaching experience, and the influence of economic concerns on education policy, among other issues. Community members spoke until 2:45 a.m., when the panel began its vote. The closure of 19 schools was approved.

For more information:

Brouhaha in Brooklyn: Live Blogging the PEP’s school closure vote, Gotham Schools
Education panel axes 19 city public schools, NY1
Themes from the tumult of school closings, New York Times
Education Department panel votes to close 19 failing New York City schools, Daily News

Five students and their parents sued the city this week, claiming that kids have been wrongly handcuffed, assaulted, and arrested by school safety officers employed by the New York City Police Department.

In addition to damages, the class action lawsuit asks the court to order that schools, rather than safety officers, deal with disciplinary issues, and calls for the city to set up a complaint process and impose new disciplinary measures for officers found guilty of misconduct.

Have you experienced incidents where you felt school safety agents acted inappropriately? Or do the officers at your school behave professionally, keeping kids safe? What kinds of disciplinary issues are cropping up in your school, and how are they handled? Are kids cuffed, “perp-walked,” and packed off to the precinct, or are they simply sent to the principal’s office?

Kids, parents, teachers, and administrators: how do you feel about your school’s safety officers? Take our poll at left and share your experiences below.

(If you would like to communicate with a member of the NYCLU, ACLU and Dorsey Whitney legal team about this lawsuit, or share a story about policing in New York City public schools, please click here. You can also contact the NYCLU’s Johanna Miller at jmiller@nyclu.org)

January 21 Update: Red Hook community members gathered before last night’s public hearing at PS 15 to voice their discontent with the extension of PAVE Academy’s co-location within PS 15. They dispute the accuracy of PAVE’s Educational Impact Statement – a document outlining the charter school’s plans for development.

“Expanding PAVE within our school is unfair and detrimental. It does not promote “choice” or “reform,” stated John Battis, a PS 15 parent, at the hearing. “The EIS is a “cut and paste” job void of any meaningful information about the real impact on our community.”

A group of PS 15 parents released an open letter to Chancellor Klein, Mayor Bloomberg, and members of the PEP yesterday arguing that the EIS does not accurately reflect the school’s capacity. “This document simply does not represent the true educational impact of the change in utilization the document supports,” it stated. “Cutting our building in half will set back all of our efforts which have resulted in the only successful public school serving Red Hook.”

PAVE plans to move into a $26 million facility which is not slated for completion until 2015. PS 15 originally agreed to a two-year, co-location agreement with PAVE to end in 2010. The Panel for Educational Policy will vote on an extension of PAVE’s co-location on Jan. 26 at Brooklyn Tech High School at 6 p.m. A second rally is scheduled to begin at 4 p.m., across the street from Brooklyn Tech.

Norm Scott of Education Notes Online captured the views of PS 15 parents and PAVE faculty at the January 19th hearing. (Correction: The video of Spencer Robertson speaking on behalf of PAVE Academy was captured at a September 2009 meeting at PS 15. Thank you to Jim Devor for setting us straight!) :

January 20: As the debate over increasing New York’s charter school cap enters its final hours in Albany, Brooklyn parents are protesting the sharing of public school space with charter schools in Red Hook.

The PAVE Academy charter school opened in the PS 15 building in 2008 with 44 kindergartners and 44 1st-graders. After initial protests, PS 15 agreed to incubate PAVE until 2010 when it was scheduled to relocate to a new building. In December the Department of Education informed PS 15 that PAVE would remain in their building through the 2010/2011 school year because the new building would not be completed until 2015. (This, despite the $20 million allocated for its construction by the DOE and $6 million raised by the school.) (more…)

Gov. David Paterson unveiled a bill Thursday that aims to improve New York’s chances of receiving $700 million in Race to the Top funds.

Since the introduction of the Race to the Top in 2009, states have worked feverishly to conform with its eligibility standards — each hoping to reap a portion of the fund’s $4 billion in competitive grants.

To improve New York’s chances, Paterson’s bill would eliminate the cap on charter schools, allow the State to fund charter development, take student performance into consideration in teacher tenure decisions, and empower the Board of Regents to take control of low-performing schools. (more…)

At 7 a.m.on Tuesday, I and 15 of my fellow students, stood on the steps of Martin Luther King Educational Campus shaking with cold and clutching signs that protested the proposed student MetroCard cuts. All of us have been to several student protests this year, and we know what to expect. They’re always smaller than we want them to be, always loud and impassioned, always inspiring, and rarely well covered by the press.

This one was different: we were standing quietly on the steps behind NYC Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who was holding an outdoor press conference to speak out against the MTA cuts (particularly to student and senior citizen fares). She criticized the MTA for not discussing this proposal with the City Council, and said that she was open to meeting and collaborating with them to find solutions to the budgetary problems.

A few weeks ago the Student Union received an email from Nick Rolf, the community outreach organizer for Christine Quinn’s office asking us to get 15 students to attend the press conference and stand behind Speaker Quinn. This was a rare and much appreciated attempt by the City Council to involve students in their actions. One facebook page later, we were there. (more…)

The United Federation of Teachers, alongside a coalition of parents and community groups, filed a lawsuit today against the New York City Department of Education, claiming that it failed to properly allocate more than $750 million in state funding to improve educational conditions and reduce class sizes.

In 2007, the city accepted $258 million in Contracts for Excellence funds from the state — $158 million of which was allotted specifically to support a five-year class size reduction plan. In April 2008, a report commissioned by the UFT showed that nearly half of the schools that received this funding did not see such reductions, while 34 percent saw class sizes increase.

These findings were supported by a September 2008 report from the New York State Education Department revealing that class size and/or pupil-to-teacher ratio had increased in 54 percent of schools receiving funding, and in 70 schools that received over $20 million in funds. (more…)

As the momentum for yesterday’s student MetroCard protest built up, a heated debate developed on the facebook event page. Because it is the MTA which is proposing the elimination of student MetroCards, the protest was held in front of their headquarters on Madison avenue. But one commenter insisted repeatedly and vehemently that it should be held at City Hall. Another posted an angry, all-caps comment telling them to get their facts straight and insisted that the proposed student MetroCard cut isn’t the fault of City Hall.

The debate left facebook and joined us on the street. About halfway through the protest, one student stood up on a signpost and started yelling for us all to walk to City Hall. Other students yelled back, “it’s not City Hall’s fault!”

A few minutes later, a reporter came up to me and a group of friends and asked “who do you blame for this?” Someone said the MTA, and I agreed. Someone said Bloomberg, and I agreed. Someone said Patterson, and again I agreed.

Naturally it left me thinking: Who’s to blame? (more…)

The State Supreme Court today ruled against the Department of Education’s plan for development and use of the playing fields on Randall’s Island, long used for public school sports. The city, in partnership with the Randall’s Island Sports Foundation, brokered a deal with 20 private schools to upgrade and expand the fields. In exchange for hefty contributions towards the redevelopment project, the private schools would have a 20 year lease for the exclusive use of the majority of the area during school hours. According to the State Supreme court the city’s plan is illegal, and must go through full community and environmental review.

Community groups from East Harlem and South Bronx, park advocates, public schools parents, and Civil Rights Attorney Norman Siegel, returned the case to court after a previous ruling (February 2008) was ignored by the city. According to Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters, who reported on the ruling, “The judge was so angry at the city’s failure to respect the previous court decisino in the case that she ordered the city to pay court costs and attorney fees.” 

Reporting the original case in 2008, The New York Times said, “The ruling means that the Bloomberg administration must essentially start from scratch by submitting its deal with the private schools, which include Buckley, Dalton and Chapin, through the Uniform Land Use Review Process. That process requires major projects to be approved by the City Planning Commission and the City Council, and to be reviewed by the local community board and the borough president. The agreement had been approved by the city’s Franchise and Concession Review Committee, a majority of whose members were appointed by Mr. Bloomberg.”

New Yorkers have a new Commissioner of Education, David Steiner, who now holds broad powers over our kids. The Alliance for Quality Education has posted a video featuring education activists, parents, grandparents, and students expressing their hopes for what the new boss will do for our kids in the new year.

We all want more oversight, accountability, and resources devoted to our kids. Seasoned education advocates, including Geri Palast from the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, state the political case well. But we’d like to hear more from kids, parents, and grandparents, and anyone concerned about our kids who are in the system right now.

What advice do you have for Commissioner Steiner? If you were the boss of New York’s schools in the midst of a recession, what would you do?

Insideschools.org is here to amplify your voice, so post a comment, make a video, this is your chance to speak up and be heard.

And if you can, please donate now so we can continue to bring you the inside scoop on what’s going on inside our schools. Your donation is fully tax-deductible.

At Arts & Letters, we are embarking on a month of preparation for our Quality Review. For those of you who do not know, the Quality Review stands next to the Progress Report Card, those notorious A-F grades that appear in the newspapers. These are the Department of Education’s two most important measures of school success. While the Progress Reports mostly show a snapshot of a school’s progress and performance on state tests, the Quality Review seeks to provide a more holistic view of a school.

In truth, it has taken a while for the DOE to settle on a “rubric” or measure, that encapsulates as well what a “well-developed” school should look like. Nationally, and even locally, departments of education have hesitated to declare the qualities of a good school, but the research is resoundingly clear, and the NYC Department of Education is taking a stand. (more…)

The Department of Education announced yesterday that nine schools have been added to the growing list of New York City schools slated for closure — eight were placed in jeopardy over the past week.

Among the new additions are four large, comprehensive high schools that house 6,000 students collectively: Paul Robeson High School in Brooklyn, Norman Thomas High School in Manhattan, Christopher Columbus High School in the Bronx, and Beach Channel High School in Queens. Three of the schools slated to close — New Day Academy, Global Enterprise Academy, and MS 334 — opened under Chancellor Joel Klein.

Visit GothamSchools for a rundown on the announcements and the DOE’s official press information.

UPDATE 12/9/09: The Department of Education proposed the phase-out of three more high schools, bringing to 22 the number of school closings announced in the past week (closings are subject to public hearings): Alfred E. Smith, a vocational school in the Bronx, the School of Business, Computer Applications and Entrepreneurship, one of four small schools on the troubled Campus Magnet complex in Queens, and the Monroe Academy for Business/Law, in the Bronx.