In 19 of 20 NYC public schools set to be closed....homelessness went up 100%

[madfloridian]

Education blogger Susan Ohanian posted this interesting tidbit, quoting the NY Daily News. I agree with her. It angers me, and I wonder what is being accomplished. Her words:

Number of homeless students jumps 100% at 19 of 20 schools on shutdown list

Ohanian Comment: I read something like this and I feel capable of violence, of doing bodily harm to a few dozen Standardistos. One in five students at a school is homeless, so the school is judged a failure and is slated to be shut down. Pray, tell, what problem will such a shutdown solve?

This is definitely not about academics.

Wouldn't you like to see Bloomberg/Klein sitting at a table with some of these kids? Let these power brokers hear what it feels like to have their one beacon of stability shut down.

Here is a comment from the newspaper site:

"It seems that the only ones who think it is a good idea to close our schools are the corporate non-teachers holed up at Tweed. Kleinberg can’t make a coherent argument for closing the schools that the DOE overcrowded and where they unfairly sent large percentages of the most challenged students in the city. Just ask Christine Rowland the heroic English teachers leading the movement to save Columbus HS. The DOE is proving to be a tone deaf dictatorship that is anti-student, anti-teacher and now clearly anti-parent."

Outrages

Here is more from the New York Daily News link to which she refers.

Number of homeless students jumps 100% at 19 of 20 schools on shutdown list

The increase swamped social workers and left principals scrambling for after-school funding to give kids a place to go after classes ended, teachers and administrators say.

At Public School 332 in Bushwick, Brooklyn, there were 95 homeless children enrolled last year - close to one in five students. That's up from just 23 the year before.

"It's not just about academics," said Vanecia Wilson, a science teacher at PS332. "They come in with a lot of stress."

Her school runs an after-school program that serves dinner and provides tutoring. The constant turnover can make it hard for the children to keep up, Wilson said.

The most tragic part of all is that many schools are being hurriedly closed even though they measure up to the accountability standards.

That indicates another agenda. When teachers and students work hard to meet standards...and their school is still closed...something is wrong.

Of the 20 schools chosen for closing:

* Thirteen were found to be Proficient on the Quality Review
* None had an F and eight did not have a D either.
* Three did not have three C’s in a row.

[MadHound]

1. Schools have increasingly taken on the roles of social work, parent, mentor, advocate, on and on

And while these responsibilities pile up, support for public schools continues to drop. And will these precious charter schools take up that sort of slack? Hell no, they're only going to be worried about the bottom line, and helping students out beyond the classroom simply isn't profitable. One more way that an entire generation of children will be lost.

[dflprincess]

2. Too true

And once the public schools are gone, we'll never get them back. After all, educated children grow into educated voters and we can't have that can we? It's far to great a threat to the ruling class.

[CoffeeCat]

3. I can't believe this is happening in our country...

Some of these schools, that have a 100 percent increase in homelessness, are still meeting standards.

I can't even imagine how hard those teachers, students and the principal worked, just to meet those standards.
I bet many of those kids don't have access to books and other resources, as other kids do. I bet many
of them hail from stressful homes. Many of them probably suffer in poverty and probably go to school
hungry.

Yet, they met those standards anyway. But the schools are closing.

I don't get it. What are these kids supposed to do? Will they go to school somewhere else? How will
they get to another school?

This is so, so sad. I can't even believe that this is legal.

[Hannah Bell]

5. There is no "legal" anymore. The rulers ram through what they want,

"by any means necessary".

[madfloridian]

6. Exactly right.

The privatization is being rammed through right now. It's a done deal before many catch on.

[w8liftinglady]

4. to go along with this-Food 4 Kids program in my area

http://www.ntfb.org/au_programs-food-for-kids.cfm

You might see if there is a program in your area.Kids...yes-your neighbors-are going hungry on the weekends and when school is out of session.One story particularly touched me:

"One student came running up to me the next day after receiving the food on Friday and just hugged my legs tightly. As I unpeeled him I asked, what was wrong. He simply responded, “I had the best weekend! I ate all my food and shared some with my little brother. I hid it under my bed and ate it whenever I felt hungry.”

Just when you think YOU have it bad-you find someone who has it worse...in the "land of plenty".

[madfloridian]

7. What a moving story. And sad

There is much more of this than appears on the surface now. I think some teachers don't realize they have homeless in their classes.

Our land of plenty is not so much that anymore.

[madfloridian]

8. Another concern about closing schools...neighborhood deterioration.

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2010/jan/19/good-suggestions/?opinion

"What’s more, important research was presented about the dire effects that closing a neighborhood school has on property values in the school’s area, such as the fleeing of single families, increased number of rentals, less care given to properties by landlords and lower revenue from property tax. Given the proximity of the neighborhoods of both New York and Cordley schools to downtown, the erosion in property values in these neighborhoods caused by schools closing would reverberate for the entire community. As one speaker said, “Downtown is the jewel in Lawrence’s crown,” so destabilizing these neighborhoods could hurt the heart of the city."

[emsimon33]

9. K&R

[sulphurdunn]

10. Municipal water will be next.

When that happens it's game over. I'm the president of a local education association. I can't even get my members to attend school board meetings once a year! Some of them even complain that teachers shouldn't be involved in politics! Jesus! I feel like a Jeremiah or a Casandra, "the voice of one crying in the wilderness". Can there possibly be a more apathetic group of see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil good sheeple than the ones I work for and care about? My father was a longshoreman. They settled their differences with Wall Street using cargo hooks, ax handles and baseball bats. Teachers are just prey animals. Privatization was always just a matter of time. The rank and file in most union and all non-union states will not get radical to save themselves or their students. Bless their hearts.

[madfloridian]

12. I agree about teachers being prey.

For so long they have been urged not to speak up and be activist...in fact if they did their evaluations could be affected.

I saw it happen to one teacher who questioned a principal openly about policy during a faculty meeting. She was marked down her next evaluation.

[sulphurdunn]

13. Yea. I do love these people though.

But DAMN! We're getting our asses handed to us and don't seem to know why. When I mention charter schools I get vapid smiles, blank stares or subtle frowns like maybe I'm one of those "trouble makers". How can that be? Is there something in the water?

[chervilant]

15. hmm...

It's far worse out here in the trenches.

My first administrator forced me to resign. I remember when I first screwed the pooch with her: I used a word she didn't understand. She looked at me like I was a piece of caca she'd just scraped off the sole of her shoe, and every little hair on the back of my neck stood up.

Most of the schools in the district I've just left are marginally equipped. The students are smart enough to know they're not getting the resources the 'richer' schools get. Academic achievement just gets in the way of most students' social lives.

I subbed recently for a teacher who asked her students to name three to five 'important' people in their lives, and then equate those people with animals whose traits most represent them. Far too many of her students did not have three or more 'important' people in their lives--children from single parent homes, or struggling to survive foster placements, have no frame of reference for this type of assignment...

I sometimes struggle with despair. At those times, I have to remind myself to keep a macro-level perspective, and to recognize that we humans are on the hairy verge of a spiritual quantum leap (and I don't mean spiritual as in the organized religion mythos).

[L0oniX]

11. It's an "attack anything that's socialist and an easy target" agenda.

[winyanstaz]

14. Well fine.....

Time to federalize the buildings and make them shelter community centers.
At least there would be a place for people to get in out of the cold.
There would have to be a way to fund the electricity and water and tp....but hey...they have kitchens....rooms...bathrooms...and could make a good start on getting people off the streets.
We could also then bring in private and volunteer community teachers to teach the children as a cluster group for each area...just like our old time school rooms.

[Jefferson23]

16. This is a disgrace, K&R

[FarCenter]

17. Why are there homeless people in the highest cost of living city in the country?

Wouldn't it cost less to house them in Des Moines?

[skyounkin]

18. Reading this makes me want to goddamn cry.....