In the hard scrabble streets that wind through the housing projects of Brooklyn’s Red Hook community, men and women still remember Patrick Daly, fifteen years after he lost his life in the service of their children. Fearless, Daly had sought out a student who had run from his school in distress. In his quest to protect one of his charges, Daly was caught in the crossfire of a gang shoot-out, and his lifeblood stained the center mall of the Red Hook Houses.
Inside PS 15, now named after Daly, an intrepid staff carry on his mission and his work. This is a school which serves a high needs community, with many students living in poverty, many English Language Learners and many Special Education students. By every measure, including the NYC Department of Education’s own [they have received an 'A' on their school progress report every year grades have been given], they meet that challenge successfully. The Patrick F. Daly School is a great school, of the sort that the Mayor and the Chancellor claim, in other contexts, they want every public school to be.
Yet the NYC DoE has embarked on a policy which, the staff and parents of PS 15 say, will lead to the demise of their school. Two years ago, a boutique charter school known as PAVE was “temporarily located” in their building, with a promise that it would leave at the end of the second year. PAVE was founded by Spencer Robertson, the young son of a billionaire friend of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Last year, before I visited the school at the request of the staff, I asked John White, the DoE official in charge of such matters, of the plans for the school building. I was told that PAVE would be gone by the end of this year, and I relayed that information to the staff.
Now that promise has been broken, and the DoE has announced plans for PAVE to stay another five years at PS 15, forcing the Patrick Daly School to cuts its student enrollment and to deny its students services for which it will no longer have room. The Patrick Daly School is caught in the crossfire of the ideological agenda of Chancellor Klein and Mayor Bloomberg.
As Juan Gonzalez points out in today’s Daily News, it is this arbitrary and capricious management of space, in which school is pitted against school and student against student, that convinced the leaders of the New York State legislature that any increase in the cap on the number of charter schools must include checks and balances on the Chancellor’s unfettered power to site schools without regard for the community’s needs or desires.
This Chancellor knows little of what inspired a selfless educator like Patrick Daly, and so he can blithely sign off on policies which would kill the school which carries on Daly’s spirit. Promises to community schools are regularly broken: there is no place for Daly’s spirit in the plans of Tweed. But it will live on in the educators of PS 15 and the Red Hook community.
Which side are you on?
3 Comments:
1 Anonymous
· Jan 20, 2010 at 4:49 pm
I am on PS 15′s side. Why would the NYC Dept of Ed divide a community and stunt a successful AAA school? Doesn’t make sense, does it? Unless the NYC Dept of Ed isn’t truly commited to building up successful public schools, such as PS 15. One could assume that the DOE’s interests lie with charter schools due to the slow dismantling of successful public schools. Sounds crazy, right? Look around. Its happening ALL over the city.
Its a shame that the community of Red Hook is being divided and children segregated. Shouldn’t we put more resources into public schools that are succeeding in impoverished environments? Shouldn’t they serve as a model to other struggling public schools? The DOE needs to get their act together and figure out a better way to find space for charter schools. They’ve created this mess – cheated the children of Red Hook, and turned a community against one another. Now its time for NYC DOE to really solve the problem….but will they?
2 TeacherBK15
· Jan 21, 2010 at 12:00 am
I am on the side of the community, the side of peace, activism, and justice. The DOE and PAVE must hold to their agreement and leave AAA school PS 15 this year. Any less, is the intentional dismantling of a successful community public school.
3 Celso Garcia
· Jan 21, 2010 at 3:06 pm
I am a teacher at M.S. 219 in the Bronx which was once one large Junior High School. In the current state of affairs there are 3 schools in the building. They all serve difficult student in the Morrisania area of the South Bronx which is considered the poorest area in the United States according to the United States census. In light of this fact you would think that the Department of education would pump more resources along with the most experience teachers and administrators that they could find.
Instead staff turnover is high in all three school and the Department of education plans on phasing out FDA III middle school grades. How would this impact the other schools? No one know it seems to be top secret information that no one is willing to give out.
The principals often are at each others throats and could never agree about most of the ways to handle the schools problems.
The gym, the auditorium, and the cafeteria are all shared along with the school safety officers.
Most of the staff do not know each other from one school to the other so cannot collectively discuss the issues within each school especially since the different school have different schedules along with different approaches.
Many times people point fingers at each other and blame each other for the problems within the building. The children are also pitted against each other with often brawls between the schools at dismissal.
Are the students needs being met? Is this Klein’s idea of collaboration?
No one is willing to stand up to the DOE or even the administrators in these buildings because now each school is being micromanaged to the point that teachers rather leave the school at the end of the year instead of putting up with all the lack of professionalism.
Teachers have to work 3 or 4 times harder to carry out their jobs in a effective manner without angering administration because data targets have to be met at all cost.
What about the student social-emotional needs? What about making them the vehicles of change in an area that continuous to lead the country in Asthma rate, crime rate for NYC, STD’s, Child mortality rates and a host of other categories.
Will handing over these schools to private companies work? How about creating a collaborative environment where everyone can speak their mind and improve the schools within to allow teachers to stay for years in the same school. The case of P.S. 15 is sad but I am sure they are not the only ones suffering under mismanagement.