Viorel Florescu for New York Daily News
As more than a million students headed back to class on Thursday, Mayor Bloomberg said “it’s indisputable that our schools are heading in the right direction.”
The new school year opened Thursday with 1.1 million city students hitting the books — and Mayor Bloomberg defending his record during the 10 years that he has controlled city public education.
In a morning visit to well-regarded Middle School 327 in the Bronx, Bloomberg blasted as a “disgrace” that he was blocked from shutting down 24 struggling schools last spring.
“These kids are going to go a whole other year of their lives without an education, where they’re never going to catch up, never going to catch up, most of them,” said Bloomberg, opening his last full year as the principal in chief.
“I think it’s indisputable that our schools are heading in the right direction.”
Actually, it’s disputable, said teachers union President Michael Mulgrew, during an opening day visit to Brooklyn.
Mulgrew, who fought off the closing the 24 so-called “turnaround” schools, touted a union-backed approach that calls for more school-based anti-poverty efforts so that poor kids can get the services they need.
“The mayor may not like to hear it,” said Mulgrew, showing off a union health and social services program inside Sunset Park High School.
“There are all sorts of services in this city that could be brought into schools that will help these children.”
At Long Island City High School in Queens, one of the 24 struggling schools, students were hoping to see improvements from last year, when the previous overhaul resulted in chaos and massive scheduling problems.
“I’m just hoping it’s not a big mess again,” said senior Miguel Diaz, 17, of Long Island City. “Last year was ridiculous. . . . I was actually missing some of my honors classes.”
In Brooklyn, Amanda Bonilla-Espinal, 26, got the run-around as she attempted to get her seventh-grade daughter, Danielle, 11, transferred out of Junior High School 50, on the state’s hit list that includes 123 city schools to be overhauled or closed.
“It’s not like she learned anything,” Bonilla-Espinal said. “They were using a third-grade curriculum. She was reading books for third-graders.”
At Aspire Preparatory Middle School in the Bronx — a school the city is closing over its poor record, Michelle Rodriguez, 28, said her daughter Jocelyn Colon, 12, a seventh-grader, was thriving, earning a spot last year on the honor roll
“It’s sad,” she said of the school’s closing. “But my daughter is doing a good job, so they can’t be doing such a bad job with the kids. I don’t have a problem with the school.”
Meanwhile, parents and students faced wrinkles as they tried to put get back to class — buses ran late and students still didn’t know where they were going to attend school.
Jamauri St. Hilaire, 9, of Brooklyn, was not in school Thursday while his mother Tangeel St. Hilaire, 26, of Brooklyn, continued her months-long effort to wrestle with the city bureaucracy and enroll him in a proper school for his special needs.
“I don’t want to keep going back and forth with them because my son is not getting all the attention that he needs,” she said. With Mark Morales,
Clare Trapasso and Corinne Lestch
