Last night the Panel for Educational Policy, which consists of 13 appointed members and Chancellor Cathie Black, voted to locate Millennium Brooklyn High School inside the John Jay High School Complex making it the fourth high school in that large Seventh Avenue building in Park Slope. Prior to the vote there was a four-hour public hearing at Brooklyn Tech. From reports on Park Slope Patch, it sounds like the public hearing, attended by staff, students and other supporters of the schools within the John Jay Complex, was similar to the public hearing at the John Jay Complex last week.
There has been much controversy surrounding the way the Department of Education has handled the proposal to bring Millennium to Park Slope. It was originally presented as a proposal but soon seemed a fait accompli after Lisa Gioe Cord, the principal who has been selected to run Millennium Brooklyn, told her current school that she would be leaving (to start the new school).
At a hearing last week at the John Jay Complex staff and students complained that the John Jay schools were “set up to fail” when they were routinely denied funding for, among other things, improvements to the schools derelict building.
Others cried racism and “separate but unequal” treatment because the new school is set to be funded very generously by the Department of Education, as it is considered a selective school and part of the chancellor’s New School Initiative.
Assemblyman Jim Brennan told the crowd last week: “This proposal is an egregious insult to the existing schools. Don’t blame the demonstrators. Take Millennium and take it off the table right now…Strengthen and build what’s here before you. Before you do anything new, you must help those who are here.”
OPINION: What to many seemed like a fait accompli is now a reality. On the plus side, Millenium Brooklyn could be a “win by association” for the schools now in the complex in terms of much needed improvements (thought it is painfully obvious that this funding would never have happened without Millennium). What has been forgotten in all this is that Millennium Brooklyn has the potential to be an excellent new high school choice for Brooklyn students.
It is time to take a look at the recommendations presented by City Councilmember Brad Lander that he believes will be critical in helping to ease—and possibly heal—the tensions raised by bringing the new school into the building.
- Insure safety with respect for all students by removing the metal detectors for the entire John Jay campus and developing a strong building-wide safety plan.
- Commit to diversity at the John Jay campus by ensuring that the John Jay campus includes an ongoing mix of non-selective and selective options, and that the new school – and all schools there – work to reflect Brooklyn’s diversity, and serve English language learners and students with special needs.
- Provide equitable and adequate resource investments across schools by implementing long-overdue building-wide improvements, and making sure that investments tied to these changes serve all the schools equally.
- Conduct space planning in an equitable, transparent, inclusive manner, in consultation with all the principals.
- Establish a “John Jay Campus Council” to build community among the schools, and partnerships with the broader community to help the schools succeed together, create shared spaces and institutions, fundraise, and connect to resources.
Millennium won’t be “elite” any time soon. I agree “parents of high functioning autistic students have been wanting something exactly like this – a high school program that combines academically challenging work with appropriate services.” I am one such parent. I don’t believe Millennium will a have a “program with academically challenging work with appropriate services.”
http://tinyurl.com/4k5xsbc
In response to to Michele Somerville’s comment above:
“They will study among autistic students whose parents lack the means to advocate for more appropriate and less exploitative settings for their children.”
On the contrary, I think parents of high functioning autistic students have been wanting something exactly like this – a high school program that combines academically challenging work with appropriate services. More appropriate? Location issues aside, this is about as appropriate as could be for kids like my son, who’s in the public school autism program and doing exceedingly well there. I certainly don’t lack the means to advocate for him – that’s why he is where he is. I’m sure the autistic spectrum program was a selling point in getting the new Millennium placed in Brooklyn instead of Manhattan, and if that’s what you mean by “exploitive” I guess it is, but for kids with Aspergers and the like, the benefits of being so exploited far outweigh the negatives. The lousy part of all this is that, while Millennium Brooklyn expands high school options for kids like my son and for Slope yuppies (who I think will be all over it despite concerns over tension between schools and their kids having to “study among autistic kids – oh dear”), it won’t expand good options for kids who get average or below average grades. Personally, this is why I don’t believe we should have selective public schools at all. All public schools should be open to all students, with a mix of selective and non-selective programs at each school so everyone has a real shot at going everywhere. I hope that black and latino students will be strongly encouraged to apply to Brooklyn Millennium in addition to Caucasian and Asian students so it will be more racially balanced than the Manhattan site. I wish more schools were modeled after Murrow and Midwood. Both have selective and non-selective seats and are great schools. Every school needs its fair share of well-off yuppies to advocate and fundraise.
i’m put in mind of a kangaroo court where justice jumps when goosed by an invisible hand. i was at the community meeting held at john jay and heard the comments of principals, students, teachers and citizens suggesting the recently created schools were thoroughly deprived of everything the boe is bestowing on millenium. what these schools did and do have is the kind of commitment from all those who spoke to strive for the very thing millenium promises, and without all the vetting that raises the hackles of we the people.
so ask yourselves who is being served by the boe’s gavage and what do you really want to do about it.
The existing schools include one that is destroying all the others. It is sometimes called the “transfer school”. It consists of bullies and criminals and unmanageable youths. It should be removed from John Jay. A good place to put it would be Rikers Island! These people should not have more rights than the students, current and future, of John Jay.
I’m not sure that progressive-minded white parents will be so quick to enroll their children in “Apartheid HIgh,” which will wind up as the default school for students who are not admitted to Bard, Beacon, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Latin, LaGuardia, Midwood, Murrow, Tech, ICE, Hunter, Nest and Stuy. , Millennium, Bard in Queens, Roosevelt & several others — Hel-LO! (as my children would say). How “elite” can it be?
Students entering Apartheid High will commence thier secondary schooling in a chaotic, tense, racially-charged segregated environment. They will study among autistic students whose parents lack the means to advocate for more appropriate and less exploitative settings for their children.
The DOE had an opportunity to send a positive message and passed on it. They might have tabled this plan until measures to support John Jay schools
could be offered and implemented. They might have put the autism program in a more harmonious setting.
It’s sad news.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michele-somerville/fast-one-at-apartheid-hig_b_809215.html
http://www.bored-o-ed.com
The new school is for ALL high performing kids in Brooklyn. Which means kids that don’t live in Park Slope, as well. Which means it is open to neighborhoods where whites are not the majority, like my own neighborhood. There are a huge number of high-performing children in Brooklyn that are not white. These children will be completely eligible for the new school. So to say it is racisim is ridiculous. If anything,given the number of high-performing children of color in Brooklyn, the new school will probably include more children of color than most other selective high schools.
Also, yes, schools should have ELL students, but not at the expense of the other students. Children in high school should not be held back because others can’t speak English. ELL students should be given intense English classes and brought up to level BEFORE going to a school where the students can work at a high level.
Brooklyn kids are shut out of many of the selective schools in Manhattan. I, for one, am very happy that Brooklyn kids of all races will now have more choice.
And, perhaps the John Jay families should either work harder to improve their own schools. The new school is not taking anything from them.