Why Is a NYC School Closing?
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Back on February 2, 2008 the NY Post ran a story about how PS 79 in The Bronx was closing its doors because of its “history” of poor performance.
This is troubling to me, as a parent, for two reasons. First, because the school had been commended in late 2007 by the state Education Commissioner for “increasing student achievement” and for “rapidly improving.” The notice announcing the school’s closure came one month later, from the city’s Schools Chancellor. Don’t these two people or offices speak to each other?
The second reason this is troubling is because rather than fix the problem, they just close 
the school?? Certainly if the Schools Chancellor believes this high-poverty elementary school is getting a failing grade, there must be a reason. These children living in these poor areas of the city are still entitled to an education. Why not fix what’s wrong?
Of course, fixing what’s wrong is probably very naive on my part, being that my kids are not in this school and we have never lived in the city or struggled against poverty. And “fixing” things takes money. Obviously, the kids will be eligible to attend other public schools but will that fix the problem of poor performance?
Even if this does help the problem of poor proficiency for these students, some kind of investigation should be done to determine WHY these kids were failing so badly. “With combined 3rd through 5th grade test scores, the school had a 44.1 percent proficiency rate in reading last year, and a 62.1 percent proficiency in math.”
WHY did this happen and HOW can the educators make it better?
And is closing the doors a common answer to schools which don’t perform well? That doesn’t make sense if other schools will get an increase in classroom size or the students will have a longer subway ride. Certainly this adds extra stress to the students, their families, the newly unemployed teachers, and the teachers who will take on these new students.
*Ok, for some reason I can’t find the NY Post story online but found a link to the NY Times story instead. Now I’m even more confused by this story because “the school’s doors aren’t closing.” So…why the hubbub? Does this mean they’re simply cleaning house and bringing in new teachers?? I need to do some more research…
