Bloomberg’s Four-Step Strategy To Kill a School

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2012/03/juan-pagan-mayor-bloomberg-you-are.html

Thurs, March 15, 2012

Bloomberg’s Four-Step Strategy To Kill a School

Juan Pagan, parent leader at Legacy HS and a member of the Citywide Council on HS, gave this eloquent speech at March 15 press conference in Foley Square:

It is beyond me how Mayor Bloomberg refers to himself as the “Education Mayor” when his educational reform policy is nothing more than a four-step strategy to kill schools.

Bloomberg’s Four-Step Strategy To Kill a School:

1) ATTACK THE BODY OF OUR SCHOOLS
Devastate schools with years of budget cuts. Overwhelm the most struggling schools disproportionately (like it did to Legacy High School) with large numbers of students with high needs without resources, even as the cutbacks continue. Use flawed and fabricated data to wrongfully justify closing and phasing out schools. Overwhelm teachers with overcrowded classrooms, no resources, and demand optimum results, and then wrongfully punish them for doing their best.

• [At Satellite, a transfer school, we have 100% high needs students. The DOE has used flawed and fabricated data to claim that there are more rooms on our floor than actually exist, and to boost the capacity #s 46% in order to take away 46% for the new school.]

2) CONTAMINATE THE LIFEBLOOD OF OUR SCHOOLS
Teachers are the lifeblood of our schools. Release Teacher Data Reports with flawed and inaccurate data and with a high margin of error, data that was collected experimentally and was abandoned by the DOE, but happily revived by the coercive tactics of Mayor Bloomberg to demoralize educators, pit parents against teachers, create doubt and discord among parents; confusion and fear.

• [At Satellite, the DOE has pitted our community against one school that provides options for youths who are not successful in traditional schools against another school that provides options for youths who are not successful in traditional schools.]

3) ATTACK THE SPIRIT OR THE SOUL OF OUR SCHOOLS
Children are the soul of our schools. Make children feel as if they are the failures; disrupt the stability given by teachers and educators, create an adverse affect on their ability to learn and lead our children to falsely believe that they are the failures, when it is Bloomberg’s educational reform policy that is failing our children.

• [Co-location at Satellite makes students feel like they are returning to their old schools bumping elbows with strangers and school security. It makes Satellite students feel that they will not get the credits they need. It makes Satellite students feel that their voices are not being heard: "One School One Floor!" rings the halls, the streets and the internet, but their voices are not heard.]

4) BLEED OUR SCHOOLS TO DEATH
The final blow is inflicted by the Panel for Educational Policy, like a sword stabbed in the back of our education system, directly into the heart of our schools and then twisted and pulled out by the PEP. Schools closing and being phased out, like watching them bleed to death.

• [Co-location at Satellite has been imposed by an undemocratic and flawed process. We demand an investigation of a flawed system.]

SCHOOLS DIE. And our children ultimately pay the price.

Mayor Bloomberg: You are NOT and shall NOT go down as the “Education Mayor.” You are and SHALL go down as the Executioner of our schools.

Mayor Bloomberg, if you think that you will only have to deal with the UFT, you are wrong. You will answer to the fathers and mothers and parents and guardians of the children of this city. You will answer to us!

Posted by  Leonie Haimson