The United Federation of Teachers (UFT) filed a lawsuit to stop the closing of 19 public schools, including Sheepshead Bay High School and three other area schools.
The city announced late last month that Sheepshead Bay High School at 3000 Avenue X, Franklin D. Roosevelt High School at 5800 20th Avenue, John Dewey High School at 50 Avenue X, and William E. Grady Vocational High School at 25 Brighton Fourth Road were on their list of “persistently lowest achieving” high schools. The schools on the list would receive federal funding to close or restructure in one of four models put forth by the Race to the Top program.
Teachers and parents are riled up at the city’s betrayal, as the Department of Education moves to abandon students to charter and private interests, rather than fix public education.
City Councilman Lewis Fidler and Assemblyman Alan Maisel, both of whom attended Tilden High School which closed in 2007, are joining the UFT lawsuit.
“When your proposals can affect the futures of so many, you can’t just go through the motions and ignore the letter and spirit of the law,” Fidler told Courier-Life. “Unfortunately, that’s what has happened here. We’re talking about public education. The Department of Education should be listening to people, investing to fix schools they feel are broken, not abandoning them.”
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Billionaireberg and his lap dog Klein should stop spending the entire budget on these “charter” school and start doing the right thing for all students. Lunch for charter schools cost 5 bucks. Lunch for the rest of the schools is a dollar. They close schools and toss the charters in then have no place for the kids they tossed out. Then they ship these kids to other schools causing an over crowded condition which leads to poor grades causing more closings. This is what happened to all these high schools they want to close.
Apparently schools are no more than the buildings they are housed in. Obviously it is the buildings that is the source of all the “problems' these schools have. Putting charter schools in them must be like performing a exorcism on the evil spirits there.
The system is failing because the Department Of Education isn't especially interested in supporting it, or analyzing its flaws. Charter schools cost the city less, because staff is often non-union. But do they really provide a better environment for education? And what does happen in the long term to poor performing students?