Is it possible city Schools Chancellor Joel Klein attended the meeting at Brooklyn Technical High School last week, where hundreds of parents protested the city’s plan to closed 19 schools, and not have been moved?
The city’s intentions are good. These schools, including Jamaica High School, have low graduation rates and poor citywide test scores. But Klein’s plan to fix these schools has been rejected by the people it will directly affect.
The plan includes closing the schools, bringing in new administrators and reopening the schools under a different name. It all looks good on paper, but nobody bothered to ask the parents of the children who attend these schools and the teachers who try to teach them what they think. How is that possible? Stats and charts do not tell the whole story.
The parents came last week to protest a vote that would be taken the following day by the city Panel for Educational Policy. The parents expected the panel would be little more than a rubber stamp. Indeed, the panel voted 9-4 in favor of closing all 19 schools.
Each of these schools is part of a community, part of a neighborhood. The number of parents protesting this decision was impressive. Two weeks earlier, 800 people turned out for the hearing on Jamaica High. Of the 107 people who submitted official comments for last week’s meeting, not a single person backed the closing.
The people have spoken, Klein. The schools were created for their children and they do not like your plan. There is still time to reconsider before this plan goes forward. The parents and community activists would like smaller class sizes in the troubled classes. But the mayor made it clear in the January budget plan that there is no money to make that happen.
But if Klein can make an ally of the hundreds of parents who turned out to protest his plan, he might find better ways to address the problems in these 19 schools. No matter what, to go forward in the face of this level of community opposition is wrong. If Klein cannot understand this, the mayor should find someone who can.
