Change of DOE's school opening strategy urged

Three days after Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott announced plans to open some 50 new middle schools in the five boroughs — and close others — in the next two years, Sterling Roberson, the UFT’s vice president for career and technical education high schools, urged City Council members on Sept. 23 to press for fundamental change in the Department of Education’s approach to opening new schools.

“There is no question that we need more new schools and more new classrooms,” Roberson said, citing overcrowding and larger class sizes citywide. “But the process for creating new schools has been plagued by lack of transparency, proper planning and community engagement.”

Exacerbating the situation, he said, the DOE has scaled back building new schools and seats, instead opting for “ill-advised co-locations” of new schools in existing school buildings that “have damaged school communities and harmed students.”

Testifying before the Council’s Education Committee on the new school development process, Roberson said that the DOE rarely engaged the community about school openings until decisions and planning were already well underway, “which has led to widespread disenchantment as well as disenfranchisement.”

Untenable co-locations foisted upon buildings, he said, have created “poisonous atmospheres for everyone” and a divide between the “haves” and the “have nots,” while squeezing District 75 sites that have long been co-located in those buildings as well.

Roberson said the problems with the process are compounded by improper planning.

“Just a few weeks ago, our president, Michael Mulgrew, visited the Franklin K. Lane campus, which has been broken up into a group of new schools,” he testified. “Nowhere in the DOE’s planning for these new schools did they take into account how to support or staff the beautiful library there, and so it sits there, closed and locked away.”

As a result of “uprisings by parents and legal action by the UFT, the NAACP and other community partners,” Roberson said, the DOE has finally begun to rethink its process for closing and opening schools.

The State Education Department, he noted, has also announced its intent to make major changes to the city DOE’s school phase-out process, including a requirement that plans for new schools will have to take students’ needs into account and show that other schools won’t be harmed.

Yet, Roberson said, more changes are needed.

Among his recommendations:

• Reform the school admission process to ensure that high-needs students are not concentrated in certain buildings and to accommodate displaced students from a closing school in the new school building;
• Ensure that data being used by the DOE to make decisions on school space allocations, especially the Blue Books, are accurate.
• Rule out co-locating new schools in facilities where overcrowding already exists or where the needs of special education students would be compromised.
• Enact Council bill Intro 155-A, which would require the DOE to report on how each room in every school is utilized, so that planners would know not only about overcrowding but also the many purposes that rooms serve, including services for special needs students.

What’s more, Roberson said, the DOE should be careful only to launch new schools that it can properly support.

“With 14 schools closed last year, half of which were small high schools only recently opened, new schools desperately need support or we’ll continue seeing a revolving door,” Roberson said.