A state Appellate Court has upheld a ruling by a state Supreme Court judge that will keep Jamaica High School off the chopping block. The school, which has played such an important role in the history of southeast Queens, will remain open.
It may well be that Jamaica HS has serious problems that need to be addressed, but what will be accomplished by closing this or any city high school? The city Department of Education and city Schools Chancellor Joel Klein maintain the court blocked the closing based on a minor technicality. That is not the case.
The court ruled the city failed to comply with a 2009 state law that requires the city to issue an impact statement that would discuss the ramifications of closing the school. According to the ruling, the DOE “merely indicates the number of school seats that will be eliminated as a result of the proposed phase-out and states that the seats will be recovered through the phase-in of other new schools or through available seats in existing schools.”
We agree with the United Federation of Teachers, which challenged the closing in court. The impact of closings this school, Beach Channel HS, and the Business, Computer Applications & Entrepreneurship Magnet HS in Cambria Heights goes far beyond the number of seats that will be lost. These boro schools are more than seats and teacher jobs. Their importance and value cannot be judged by a bureaucrat in a cubicle in Lower Manhattan looking at test scores and graduation rates.
Klein will comply with the court’s decision, but is not ruling out closing these schools in the future. In a statement, he said, “we are proceeding with plans to open new schools in the fall and we will continue to work, in accordance with the law, to close schools that are failing our students and replace them with small schools, which have been proven to be more effective.”
The department did not detail the impact because it does not have a clue what the impact would be.
We celebrate the court’s decision. There are problems at the school that need to be addressed, but closing the school is no longer an option.
