1,000 rally against school closings

Miller PhotographyUFT President Michael Mulgrew tells ralliers that “our job is to continue to raise consciousness in the communities of New York City and force them to change.” Wielding signs reading “instruction, not destruction” and “we fight for our schools,” more than 1,000 parents, teachers and students protested against the mayor’s policy of mass school closures outside the Feb. 3 Panel for Educational Policy meeting at which the panel voted to close 12 more city public schools.

“It does not matter what happens in there with that puppet panel this evening,” said UFT President Michael Mulgrew from the podium as he gestured toward Brooklyn Technical HS where the panel was set to meet. “Our job is to continue to raise consciousness in the communities of New York City and force the city to change.”

Alluding to a recently revealed internal report for the DOE by the Parthenon Group that warned the DOE not to overload large high schools with special needs students — guidance that the DOE ignored, Mulgrew also accused the DOE of willfully causing the schools now slated for closure to fail.

Also speaking before the crowd, Jamaica HS Chapter Leader James Eterno pinned his school’s “failure” squarely on the DOE, painting a bleak picture of a school starved of resources. When you neglect a school, Eterno said, “there will be problems, but the problems are with management, not with the students, not with the parents and not with the teachers.”

“It’s not our failure,” Eterno said. “It’s Tweed’s failure and City Hall’s failure.”

Students also participated in the rally.

“Students are demoralized,” said Nigel Hill, the student body president at Paul Robeson HS, which the panel voted to close along with nine other schools at its first meeting on Feb. 1. “I don’t know why the DOE is doing this.”

Among the hundreds in the crowd was music teacher Steve Palmore, from closing Beach Channel HS in Far Rockaway, Queens. The 25-year veteran teacher knows firsthand how neglect and co-location can harm students and staff.

Miller PhotographyCarrying signs and lots of pent-up frustration, educators rally with students, parents and community members outside Brooklyn Technical HS before the Feb. 3 Panel for Educational Policy meeting. “They took away my music room,” Palmore said. “Now I'm teaching in a classroom with 50 kids and with three windows that open just three inches. Last spring I brought in two fans to cool the room, and on a hot day it still reached 103 degrees.”

Edna James, a community activist with three grandchildren attending Brooklyn’s endangered MS 571, called the DOE’s actions “horrible” but, like many others in the crowd, considered the panel’s decision to close the schools a fait accompli.

“I don't think anything is going to change; they’re just waiting for the ink to dry,” James said.

Vanecia Wilson, the chapter leader at PS 332, another closing school, described school closings as an injustice against all students and teachers, quoting Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous words: “An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

“When they think they can privatize public space and push us out of our community schools, they’ve got another thing coming,” Wilson said.