BloomKlein Cabal To Close 35 Schools!!

By SHARON OTTERMAN

If you thought this year was a dramatic one for school closings — with 19 city schools shut in January over the objections of thousands of parents and teachers before being given a temporary reprieve by a court — wait until next year.

Not only does the city say it will try to close all 19 of those schools again, but it will also try to phase out 16 more, continuing its strategy of closing some of the city’s largest high schools and replacing them with small schools or charter schools.

On Friday, the city announced which of 34 schools on a state list of “persistently lowest achieving” schools it would keep open and try to improve — in a process known as transformation – and which it would most likely phase out beginning in the 2011-12 school year.

The 11 schools chosen for transformation can hire two new kinds of teachers — master teachers and turnaround teachers — who will earn up to 30 percent more than their regular salaries for training teachers in addition to their regular duties. Those premiums, and other school improvements, will be financed by $2 million a year in federal stimulus money over the next three years.

Principals at most transformation schools will be removed, according to federal rules that must be followed in order to receive the money, even though teachers will not be dismissed. That brought an angry response from the head of the principals’ union on Friday. (The city is lobbying to save principals who are making improvements. )

“Each school on this list has a different story,” said Ernest Logan, the head of the union, the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators. “Some have B’s on their school report cards; some have principals with strong principal performance reviews. At least one is on the list of Newsweek magazine’s best public schools of the year. All things considered, it makes no sense to suggest removing the principals of these schools while retaining all the teachers.”

The 11 schools selected for transformation are:
Automotive High School
Bread & Roses Integrated Arts High School
Brooklyn School for Global Studies
Chelsea Career and Technical Education High School
Cobble Hill School of American Studies
Flushing High School
Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School
Long Island City High School
Queens Vocational and Technical High School
Unity Center for Urban Technologies
William E. Grady Career and Technical Education High School

The additional 23 schools on the state’s “persistently lowest achieving” list that will most likely be phased out and replaced with new schools are:
August Martin High School
Beach Channel High School
Boys and Girls High School
Christopher Columbus High School
Fordham Leadership Academy for Business and Technology
Grace Dodge Career and Technical Education High School
Grover Cleveland High School
High School of Graphic Communication Arts
Jamaica High School
Jane Addams High School for Academic Careers
John Adams High School
John Dewey High School
John F. Kennedy High School
Metropolitan Corporate Academy
Monroe Academy for Business/Law
Newtown High School
Norman Thomas High School
Paul Robeson High School
Public School 065 Mother Hale Academy
Richmond Hill High School
Sheepshead Bay High School
Washington Irving High School
W.H. Maxwell CTE High School

Additional schools that the city says it will attempt to close again next year, after having been prevented from doing so because of a lawsuit from the N.A.A.C.P. and the teachers’ union this spring:
Frederick Douglass Academy III (middle school)
Global Enterprise High School
Monroe Academy for Business and Law
School for Community Research and Learning
New Day Academy
Academy of Collaborative Education
Kappa II
Academy of Environmental Science High School
Middle School for Academic and Social Excellence
Public School 332
Business, Computer Applications and Entrepreneurship High School
Choir Academy of Harlem High School