As you are aware if you’ve been following the goings on at the Department of Education (DOE), there has recently been yet another reorganization. Remember Region 3? It’s gone. District 26 is practically gone.
The new mantra is All Power to the Principals! Yes, principals have been given unprecedented authority and have been freed from District 26 oversight and mentoring.
One District 26 school was led by a principal who knew how to promote excellence and would settle for nothing less. The school consistently led the District and city in student performance, was a boon to the local real estate market and offered a District magnet/gifted program.
Soon after the first reorganization, this principal chose to retire. Alas, the replacement principal for this high profile school brought relatively little experience in teaching and no experience as a principal to the position.
Two years ago, the school’s fourth graders led the District and the city in their performance on the state math exam. In fact, they scored third in the state.
The former principal used a traditional math text that had worked extremely well for the children. The new principal, entirely on her own, and with no notice even to the School Leadership Team, changed to the math curriculum specifically chosen for the benefit of the poorest performing schools in the city.
It is a so-called “fuzzy” math curriculum that parents find foreign to their understanding of math. It compromises their ability to help their own children.
Well, the 2007 math test results are now out, the first since the curriculum was changed. The numbers are down dramatically. Moreover, the percentage of students achieving the highest level, four, was the lowest of all the years reported by the State Department of Education.
All power to the principals? Are you sure, it is a good thing? Did anyone ask the parents?
Melvyn Meer
Parent, Community Board 11 Education Committee
Bayside
Knights fundraiser
I would like to report that the Knights of Columbus, Queens County Conference in partnership with the Kings County Conference held their annual fundraiser for the New York State Special Olympics. It was held on Saturday, September 8, at the Little League Field on 149th Avenue in South Ozone Park. A softball game was held and Brooklyn councilmembers played their counterparts from Queens. Brooklyn beat Queens 22 to 4. A total of $5,036 was raised which came from the various councils in addition to private donations and sporting goods that were sold.
Frederick R. Bedell Jr.
Vice Chair of membership
Queens County Conference
More trees - less concrete!
Dear Mayor Bloomberg:
Commissioner Adrian Benepe spoke at our meeting of civic presidents from throughout Queens recently. It was an excellent discussion of issues facing our parks. Benepe presented the one-million-tree program to make New York green. We are in total support of your program aesthetically and environmentally.
The irony we raised to Benepe is despite the city doing its part, we now see private owners cutting down trees and paving over large portions of their properties that traditionally would have remained covered with grass or scrubs. The city can only plant grass and trees on the land it owns which frankly is limited as compared to amount of private land in this city.
Vegetation is not only aesthetically pleasing; but it cools the environment, produces oxygen, and provides drainage for rain runoff. The recent flooding experienced in Queens was in part due to excessive runoff into city catch basins. If you were to do a comparison aerial map over ten, five years and today on the loss of porous ground in Queens due to excessive paving, you will see a dangerous trend.
We have urged the Department of City Planning to issue stricter rules on how much of R1, R2, R3, and R4 properties can be paved, but have seen no movement. Some might argue that this is a denial of property rights. We believe the rules should be reasonable. However, this is an environmental health issue affecting the lives of millions of people. The law has long recognized that riparian rights are not absolute; for example, one cannot change the grade of one’s land to flood a neighbor.
We urge you to form a task force consisting of City Planning, Environmental Protection, and Parks to oversee reforms to the Zoning Resolution to complement and ensure your greening of the city. We look forward to working with such a task force to enact responsible land use regulations.
Sean M. Walsh
President Queens Civic Congress
Not a happy parent
As one of the four parent participants in a focus group held at Tweed for researchers from the Broad Foundation, I am disappointed in the fact that New York City received the Broad Foundation prize recently.
This group of parents, handpicked by Martine Guerrier of the Department of Education (DOE), expressed uniform disappointment with the various changes put into place by DOE, the lack of transparency and accountability, and the lack of consideration given the views of parents about what their children really need to succeed.
Clearly, the Broad Foundation did not consider the parents’ views when awarding this prize to the city.
I feel that the DOE is totally dismissive of parents’ views and makes short shrift of our concerns for our children (i.e. – class size reduction, cell phone ban, school bus fiasco, numerous reorganizations of the DOE, et al.)
David M. Quintana
District 27 President’s Council –
Recording Secretary; District 27
Representative to Chancellor’s Parents Advisory Council,
Queens Community Board 10 –
Education Committee and Queens Borough President’s Parents Advisory Council member
Ozone Park
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