The Department of Education gave last minute reprieves to two politically-backed schools this morning – just hours before its policy panel is set to approve the closure of two dozen other schools.
Queens’ Grover Cleveland HS – where state Assembly Education Committee Chair Cathy Nolan is an alum – and Bushwick Community HS in Brooklyn – a transfer school that garnered a number of vocal supporters, including City Council Speaker Christine Quinn – will no longer close at the end of the school year, officials announced.
The schools “have demonstrated an ability to continue their improvements without the more comprehensive actions that are clearly needed at 24 other schools,” chancellor Dennis Walcott said in a statement.
The schools had all been told since January that their performance was so poor they would close this summer, have up to half the staff members replaced, and reopen with a new name in the fall.
Much of the data officials cited in keeping the two schools open had been available since the closure plans were first announced.
Education officials said public hearings and site visits in recent weeks also contributed to the reversal.
The mayor-controlled Panel for Educational Policy will likely vote to go ahead with approving closures of the remaining 24 schools this evening, at a meeting on the Prospect Heights Campus in Brooklyn.
This includes a number of schools with graduation rates higher than Grover Cleveland’s, and three schools – John Dewey HS in Brooklyn, and August Martin and Long Island City high schools in Queens – with graduation rates above the citywide average.
The DOE has applied for as much as $2 million in funding per school to support the changes, but education officials have made it clear they would proceed with the dramatic overhauls even if the State Education Department doesn’t approve the grant applications.
That decision is expected in early June, state officials have said.
It’s the first time the city is attempting to use an obscure provision in the teachers’ contract – which governs the hiring process at new schools – to boot teachers from a struggling school.
By closing and opening the schools in one fell swoop, the city will be able to set that hiring process in motion — which only guarantees 50 percent of the current teachers a job at the reincarnated school.
The remainder will have to find jobs elsewhere or join a costly pool of substitute teachers that critics say will cost the city as much as $100 million.
Students at the shuttering schools are guaranteed seats in the schools that replace them.
List of 24 schools on the chopping block
Bronx:
• Herbert H Lehman High School
• Banana Kelly High School
• JHS 22 Jordan L Mott
• IS 339
• MS 391
• Bronx High School of Business
• JHS 80 Mosholu Parkway
• Alfred E Smith Career-Tech High School • Fordham Leadership Academy • JHS 142 John Philip Sousa
Brooklyn:
• John Ericsson Middle School 126
• Automotive High School
• JHS 166 George Gershwin
• John Dewey High School
• Sheepshead Bay High School
Queens:
• Flushing High School
• William Cullen Bryant High School
• Long Island City High School
• Newtown High School
• August Martin High School
• Richmond Hill High School
• John Adams High School
Manhattan:
• Bread and Roses Integrated Arts High School • High School of Graphic Communication Arts
