Parents fight back

Cara Metz

Portia Armstrong, a retired former chapter leader and a member of the Coalition for Educational Justice from Brownsville, introduces rally speakers.

Cara Metz Demitrius Lawrence, the PTA president at PS 161 in Brooklyn, demands the DOE stop displacing children and asks for a chance to turn the school around.

Demanding that the Department of Education “fix, not close, schools,” angry parents, community leaders and political figures representing 15 schools targeted for closure crowded the steps of Tweed on Nov. 22 in a final push to take their schools off the chopping block. For months, parents and students rallied outside their individual schools — schools that almost exclusively serve low-income black and Latino families — before coming together to demand equity and justice for their children. Speaker after speaker pointed to conditions beyond the control of the community or the struggling schools: massive budget cuts over three years that have depleted resources and shut down programs; large concentrations of high-needs students; and the DOE’s ongoing push to co-locate other schools in their buildings. As parent Elizabeth Torres of PS 137 in Manhattan noted, “[Chancellor Dennis] Walcott didn’t want to come to our school, so we’re here.” Citing “the growing chasm between the haves and the have-nots,” Councilwoman Letitia James charged, “The mayor is not the education mayor. He’s only interested in busting unions and privatizing schools.” With new schools trying to move in, parent Derrick Guest from the Frederick Douglass Academy questioned whether the issue is “about funding or politics and against people they think can’t fight back?”