More than 70 Newtown High School students went to the Queens Center Mall on Black Friday, not to shop for the best deals, but to protest the possible closing of their school.
The students walked inside and around the mall holding up “Save Newtown” posters. They handed out more than 4,000 flyers to shoppers, residents and business owners urging them to tell the city’s Department of Education (DOE) not to give up on their school.
To see more scenes from the rally, check out our gallery here
“It is a very good school,” said Newtown H.S. senior Dagmara Cintron, 17, who helped organize the rally. “We have one of the best guitar programs and we have a good architecture program.”
The DOE is considering the future of the school after the New York State Education Department named Newtown H.S. as one of the “Persistently Lowest Achieving” (PLA) schools in the entire state in January.
“We have been on the list for a long time, so the idea that this would happen has been around,” said Melissa Mastrangelo, an English teacher at Newtown H.S. for 12 years.
According to the DOE, Newtown High School made the list again due to its graduation rates, which remained around or below 50 percent for the past six years. In 2010, the school’s four-year graduation rate improved slightly to 57 percent, but it still remained below the 63 percent citywide average.
“It is not fair that they are just looking at the data,” Cintron said.
So far the DOE has no specific plan for Newtown, said DOE spokesperson Jack Zarin-Rosenfeld. But the decision whether the Elmhurst school will stay open or be replaced could come in two weeks. This could mean phasing out the school over time by not accepting new students and opening new smaller schools in the same school building. Another option is to keep the school open, but it could mean replacing the staff, changing the leadership, bringing in mentor teachers at higher salaries or introducing new programs.
Mastrangelo said the problem is Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration is against big schools like Newtown, which has more than 2,900 students.
“It is frustrating because no matter how we improve, it seems it doesn’t matter,” Mastrangelo said. “We have accepted students other schools won’t take.”
Newtown serves a high-need population with 33 percent of students who are English Language Learners (ELL) and 10 percent who require special education services. For this reason, Newtown H.S. Principal John Ficalora said the school needs more resources to help students learn, not for the DOE to close its doors.
“Our students need time to graduate,” Ficalora said. “We need additional programs to help those students.”
But the DOE argued that other schools like the Bronx Aerospace High School, which serve a similar student population, have achieved far better results. At Bronx Aerospace H.S., which is in Newtown’s peer group, 19 percent of students are ELL students and 19 percent are special education students, according to the DOE. Still that school managed to obtain a 94 percent four-year graduation rate in 2009.
“We try to compare schools that have similar populations to other schools” Zarin-Rosenfeld said. “We have to ask ourselves, ‘Can we do better?’”
In order for Newtown to do better, Councilmember Daniel Dromm, who represents Elmhurst, said the State and the City should provide more help.
“They haven’t really given Newtown the time or resources to improve,” said Dromm said.
Zarin-Rosenfeld said the DOE will review the feedback from the school and the community to help in the decision-making process. That’s why Newtown students, teachers and the principal are urging the public to contact the DOE, so they could keep their school open in the fall.
“The school has a very dedicated staff and wants to work with the population we serve,” Ficalora said. “We work with all the students and don’t turn them away.”
To submit your questions, comments and feedback, contact Gentian Falstrom at 212-374-7621 or via e-mail at HS.Proposals@schools.nyc.gov.
