Struggle against school closings in New York City
Throughout the month of January and into early February 2010, thousands of students, teachers, parents and community leaders organized against a proposal by New York Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to close 21 schools for "failure." The organizing include a mass protest on the street where New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg lives (east 79th St. just east of Central Park, one of the most expensive residential blocks on earth) and more than a thousand people at the meeting of the New York Board of Education (which under mayoral control is called the PEP, explained below).
Some of the best coverage is now coming out and will be added to this summary as it is available from Substance and other sources. Below are the links for the story from "Democracy Now".
Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor Report
National Edition
Produced by Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg **************************************
Instruction, Not Destruction: Protesting Proposed School Closings
with
Carmen Applewhite, Teacher, Candidate for UFT President, Chancellor, International Assocation of Educators for Peace.
and
James Eterno, Teacher, Jamaica High School, UFT Chapter Chair, Candidate for UFT President
and
William Hargraves, Member Coalition for Public Education, Parent
The Department of Education’s Panel for Education Policy was meeting at Brooklyn Technical High School, and thousands of teachers, parents, students and concerned community members were out on a chilly January evening to protest the D.O.E.’s plan to close at least 19 city schools this year. All 21 of the schools slated to close are in largely Black and Latino areas and overwhelming populated by students of color. We’ll talk with parent and teacher representatives who were chanting “Instruction, not Destruction”, and claim there’s no justifiable reason for closing the schools and even raise the spectre of privatizing the public school system. +++++++++++++++++++++++++ To Download or listen to this 27:54 minute program,
Pacifica Station only can go to Audioport - Menu Option “Weekly Program Section" dated 2-07-10
http://www.audioport.org/index.php?op=program-info&program_id=31027&nav=&
all others go to: http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/39443 or http://www.archive.org/details/ProtestingMassiveSchoolsClosingInNyc
Please email Building Bridges if you are broadcasting our National Edition.
We'd like to have an accurate list of which stations are airing Building Bridges. So please let us know! Email knash@igc.org
Building Bridges is regularly broadcast live over WBAI, 99.5 FM in the N.Y.C Metropolitan area on Mondays from 7-8pm EST and is streamed, archived and pod cast at www.wbai.org . Our website is www.buildingbridgesradio.org Building Bridges National Edition is regularly broadcast over: WMNF HD FM Tampa, Florida
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as well as internet stations:
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========================================= For archived Building Bridges National Programs go to http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/series/Building+Bridges or our website:
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By: kugler
the charter school “is a fake.”
CPS IS DOING THE SAME THING HERE IN CHICAGO. DESTROYING EVERY VOCATIONAL PROGRAM IN THE CITY DEPRIVING CHICAGO STUDENTS THE OPPORTUNITY FOR GOOD PAYING JOBS IN THE TRADES. the person running the voc ed depart now is an MBA from Harvard Business School need i say more.
John Kugler
kuglerjohn@comcast.net
From a vocational standpoint, she said, the charter school “is a fake.” New York City Charter High School for Architecture, Engineering and Construction Industries, despite its name, it has no experience running hands-on vocational programs.
At Bronx Vocational School, Concern Over Plan for Charter
By SHARON OTTERMAN
Published: February 15, 2010
Citing academic failures, the city has proposed closing the construction trade program at Alfred E. Smith Career and Technical Education High School, a 78-year-old vocational school in the South Bronx.
But the school the Department of Education plans to put in place of the program, the 18-month-old New York City Charter High School for Architecture, Engineering and Construction Industries, has had its own issues. Its founder is facing federal charges that he embezzled from a nonprofit company. Thirty percent of the students left after the first year, as did most of the teachers. And despite its name, it has no experience running hands-on vocational programs.
Supporters of Smith, the Bronx’s only high school with state-approved construction trade programs, fear its technical shops will suffer under the charter school’s management and wonder why the city would eliminate an established school only to put an untested school in its place.
continued......
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/nyregion/16smith.html