Courtesy of Wikipedia
We haven’t been able to confirm it, but GerritsenBeach.net is reporting that Sheepshead Bay High School, John Dewey High School, William E. Grady High School, and FDR High School are set to close by the end of 2010.
We first wrote in November that administrators were considering Sheepshead Bay H.S. (3000 Avenue X) for closure, but at the time the principal denied the claims. Since then, the city’s list of “persistently lowest achieving” high schools swelled from about a dozen to 34, including the addition of the three other southern Brooklyn high schools.
The list of targets was created as part of a proposal for Race to the Top, a federal grant program aimed at encouraging states to be aggressive in fixing or closing their lowest performing schools. New York State stands to gain about $500,000 for every school it reforms using one of the federal government’s four models. New York Times describes them as follows:
They have confusing and similar-sounding names: turnaround, transformation, restart and closure.
The least drastic of the four is the “transformation” model, which requires that the city replace the principal and use a “rigorous and equitable evaluation system” for teachers and other administrators to weed out the poorly performing ones from the good. That model could be used in up to 17, or half, of the schools on the list…
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The other 17 schools would have to follow one of the more aggressive strategies. The “restart” requires the city to hand over management of the school to a charter or other education-management organization. In the “turnaround” model, the school either remains open but replaces at least 50 percent of its staff, or shuts down year by year, in the same way that city schools currently close. In the “closure” model, the school is simply shut down.
The city says it will decide which model to use on a case-by-case basis, and since there haven’t been any official announcements regarding the four southern Brooklyn schools, it’s possible they may just be “reformed.”
Councilman Lew Fidler, who chairs the youth services committee and is a member of the education committee, told Yournabe.com that the changes are a part of a quiet initiative by the Department of Education to shutter large high schools and replace them with smaller public and charter institutions.
“The day they closed Canarsie [High School], I predicted they’d be coming for Sheepshead next,” Fidler told Yournabe.com. “It really has nothing to do with Sheepshead so much as this agenda that DOE has to close the large high schools. They go where they think the political will is weakest. There’s no way they’d be able to get away with closing Midwood, Murrow or Madison so Sheepshead was the next logical choice.”
Fidler is a staunch opponent of charter schools.
“I think that the charter system creates a two-tier system of public schools,” he told Sheepshead Bites in July. “They ought to pay more time and energy in public schools that need to be improved rather than creating a second tier of schools, and the argument that charters perform better than public is based on misleading and distorted facts.”
He explained his reasons for opposing charter schools here.
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What a shame. I am a 1983 SBHS graduate…those were the heydays of Sheepshead and, I must say, some of the best years of my life. Yeah, so I was a geek…AV Squad Captain….
As usual, it's “put the screws to Southern Brooklyn” time.
if they got rid of the students that have zero interest in learning,maybe,just maybe the school can be saved!!!just 10 years ago,when my son was a student(i went there also,class of 69)i was always going down there to ask for help with him not just going to school,but staying there(in the front door out the back).anyway i was not embarassed to ask everyone(teachers, principals and truant officers)for help. i was told that there were at least 400 truant students they had to look into. i told them.”screw” the others. i have a smart kid making stupid choices,please help. to make aloooong story short,(this went on for years) a few months before graduation, the truant officer(whom i had met) showed up at my home to tell me my son was “absent for at least 30 days(not in a row. i made like i was shocked. then proceeded to tell him we had met and that i had pleaded for help,to no avail. he did not graduate on time,however,once in summer school,he was the top student. proving to himself and me how bright he is. where was the help for all those years. i am sure i was one of a few parents who cared. i think the inmates are running the asylum.how sad.
i thought they closed down fdr long ago. anyways, i always wondered why it made sense to the board to choke the schools that have low test scores, have a big percentage of a “minority” student body and that have limited resources, choking to the point where the school can no longer really function. everyone says how great nj public schools are. its because of all the tax dollars that are being poured into them. if at least one of these schools that are set to close had the money given to them the way it is in nj, there seems to be a high possibility that these schools would flourish. also, nobody wants to address that the entire education system needs to be renovated.
What a shame! I graduated in 1963. In those days Sheepshead was a terrific school. Some of my fondest memories and best friends are from those days. I'm still in touch with people I knew then. It would be terrible to close this school. The DOE believes it's easier to run away from problems rather than make a concerted effort to try and fix them. People I graduated with became judges, baseball and basketball stars, politicians, doctors, business owners and many other productive members of society.
I graduated from Sheepshead Bay High School, Class of '65. What have you people done to it? Used to be a great school. Everyone went on to the best that higher education had.
I could give you one opinion on what happened but it wouldn't be politically correct nor would many people be happy at the insinuation so I'll just leave it up to your imagination.
how could they close sheepshead! it is the closest zoo to me!