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Bronx school to close despite protests
Mar 13, 2008 3:34 PM
Chapter Leader Brandy Sullivan holds up an enlarged copy of the letter from the State Education Department praising the school.
No sooner had PS 79 in the Bronx been cited for excellence by the state than it got the ax from the city.
Last May, the State Education Department and Board of Regents praised the school as one of 226 “rapidly improving” schools in the whole state and urged the community to celebrate the school’s achievements. PS 79 was also in good standing for meeting federal standards and had demonstrated progress in all areas of its Comprehensive Education Plan (CEP).
Then Tweed decided to phase out the school over three years and replace it with two smaller elementary schools: one for math, science and technology and one for environmental citizenship.
Under the phase-out plan, only children in grades pre-K to 2 will be immediately eligible to participate in innovative programs to be offered by the new schools while the older kids will run out the clock in the old PS 79.
The phase-out was ordered without consultation with staff and parents, according to Chapter Leader Brandy Sullivan, and was made ostensibly because the school had been failing. Despite petitions and pleas by members of the school community, it is apparently a done deal.
On March 4, the PS 79 staff was introduced to the building’s new “project directors.”
Staff stages its Feb. 1 protest.
Staff members say they are angry, alienated and mystified by the grounds on which it was claimed the decision was made.
Several other neighborhood schools that serve families with comparable socio-economic backgrounds got a higher report card grade than PS 79 even though their performance levels were lower.
Under Article 18D of the UFT contract, a minimum of 50 percent of the positions in the new schools are reserved for the most senior qualified applicants from PS 79.
The remaining PS 79 staff will be assigned to the higher grades that will continue in the school until those grades too are absorbed into the new schools. They may then interview for posts there or exercise their options under the Open Market Transfer Plan.
Under the UFT contract, everybody has job security. This and other reassuring facts about contractual protections were explained at meetings held at the school by UFT District 10 Representative Andrew Pallotta, Special Representative Amy Arundell and Paraprofessionals Chapter First Vice Chair Doreen Raftery.
“It makes me much more secure knowing my rights,” said one nonveteran teacher who didn’t want to be identified. “But even though it allays my economic fears it doesn’t cure my lingering doubt about this totally unfair breaking up of our school. We were told on the sly by a DOE official that the only reason this school is closing is that it’s so large,” she added.
PS 79 has around 1,000 students.
Chapter Leader Sullivan noted that the phase-out plan is “educationally unsound. By withdrawing our school’s precious resources it sounds like they want to make the Bronx a borough of haves and have-nots.”
Ironically, this hard-to-staff school in the impoverished Morrisania section of the Bronx consists of people who would like nothing better than to stay there.
Leslie Collier, a technology teacher with 34 years in the system, said, “We’re told there would be no quality review or progress report anymore. It’s like our students no longer matter.”
Fourth-grade teacher Nancy Camacho asked, “An A-plus from the state and an F from the city: whom should we believe?”
Her question has taken on new significance since the DOE announced in late February that it was considering modifications of the contentious school report cards [see story above]. But that might be too late to save PS 79.
Doreen Raftery, first vice chair of the Paraprofessionals Chapter, speaks with paras at the school.
UFT Special Representative for Personnel Amy Arundell (left) answers a question for Nelly Hernandez.
District 10 Representative Andrew Pallotta chats with Wendy Silvora.
