Local leaders and parents are spitting mad over the city’s plan to close eight Queens high schools at the end of the school year.
The city put out proposals this week to shutter William Cullen Bryant High School, in Long Island City, and Grover Cleveland High School, in Ridgewood.
Plans to turn around the rest of the institutions on the state’s list of Persistently Lowest Achieving schools by closing them are expected in the next week.
“It’s really infuriating,” said City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer (D-Sunnyside), a Bryant alum. “I don’t see how this improves the lives or futures of the 3,000 kids that are going [there].”
The city plans to open new schools under different names in the fall in the same buildings. Up to half of the teaching staff from the 33 citywide schools targeted for closure would be replaced.
The influential Panel for Educational Policy is slated to vote on the proposals on April 26.
Doreen Lopez, president of Bryant’s Parent Association, said the school just got a new principal — who needs time to turn Bryant around. “It’s wrong what the DOE is doing,” Lopez said. “It affects everybody.”
Brian Gavin, the teachers union rep at Grover Cleveland, called the city plan to shutter the school “smoke and mirrors.”
“The plans for improvement the Department of Education is suggesting, we are already implementing,” he said.
Kathy Carlson, president of Grover’s Parents Association, said the school could lose popular clubs and programs if teachers are removed.
“We have so many dedicated staff members,” she said. “If we wind up losing them, it will harm the school.”
Department of Education officials said the city lost out on significant federal funding when the city and the teachers union failed to quickly come to an agreement on teacher evaluations.
By choosing the turn-around model for the 33 schools in jeopardy, the city can apply for up to $60 million in federal funding, officials said. The model, which requires the schools to replace up to half of their staff, does not require teacher evaluations.
“These proposals represent an opportunity to keep what is working and bring in a new wave of talent that will be able to build on the work that has already been done,” agency spokesman Frank Thomas said in a statement.
But Assemblywoman Aravella Simotas, another Bryant alum, said closing her alma mater is “disruptive and unnecessary.”
“I don’t know how you tell an 11th-grader that next year half of the teachers and the staff who’ve been helping them … will not be there,” said Simotas (D-Astoria).
Other Queens schools up for closure are Flushing High School; Long Island City High School; August Martin High School, in Jamaica; John Adams High School, in Ozone Park; Newtown High School, in Elmhurst; and Richmond Hill High School.
