Did you watch the World cup finals? What a game! There really were no losers in that final match. Lionel Messi got his illusive victory for his Argentine fans. Kylian Mbappe got his hat trick with his 3 regular and extra time goals. An irony of the game though, was that the at first disappointing Gonzalo Montiel who gave away the penalty that France used to tied the game in extra time, turned around to score the final winning Penalty kick for Argentina. The winning team brings home a whopping $42 million dollars, and the runner up a not too shabby $30 million. This match, will be talked about for ages. What a game!
Unfortunately for us though, the South East Queens match up between MS 72 Campus and Success Academy, and Springfield Gardens Educational Campus and Success Academy in regards to proposed co-locations at both campuses, is not a game. And, unless the right thing happens when these ill researched proposals go to the Panel for Education Policy for a vote, there will be losers. Big losers with tremendous collateral damage.
Let's look at the facts by location starting with MS 72. I'll save the details of the Springfield High School Campus for a separate post. Though you will see that they are just as incredibly jarring.
MS 72, the name sake of the middle school campus on the Rochdale Village community grounds recently won a 2.5 million dollar prestigious Magnet school grant. They are one of a handful of schools nationwide to be awarded. MS 72 has since rebranded as the Catherine & Count Baisie Magnet School of Multimedia and the Arts, and are actively engaged in development more robust programming funded by the grant. Of course such an award comes with requirements. One of which is the mandated growth of enrollment by 5% annually in the coming years. The school's firecracker Principal Ativia Sandusky saw that as no challenge, as she has been performing her own hat trick steadily improving test scores, attendance and enrollment annually since joining the school a few years ago. In fact, projected enrollment for the coming year is already up over 40%.
Not to be outdone, sister school Redwood Middle School MS 332, also won itself a similar Magnet grant. Redwood's fearless leader Principal Tammy Katan-Brown proudly demonstrated her students current and planned expanded Leadership and Exploration programming during a walkthrough with DOE officials, Parents leaders, elected representatives and community members on Thursday December 15. Redwood, like MS 72 is mandated to grow its enrollment by 5% annually, and under Principal Katan Brown's dynamic leadership it is also on track to exceed that.
Last but not least on the MS 72 campus is the D75 Program site P993 under the empathetic and career focused leadership of Principal Jonathan Lonshein. Like his campus partners, Principal Lonshein has been innovatively creating student leaders within his special education who engage in long term thematic and academic programming towards high school, vocational self sufficiency and success as adults. While many of his scholar have a variety of acute needs ranging from sensory, to physical and emotional support, he has found unique ways to empower them through Art, Music and Business programming to turn instructional support sessions into career stepping stones with skills in retail and other area. Students use art therapy to express themselves then turn their creations into sellable objects such as greeting cards which they retail themselves in the school store, learning math, accounting and customer service skills. P993 also has a well developed inclusion program with MS72 allowing high functioning students who demonstrate readiness to transition to general education to do so in a seamless and well support bridging program.
Based on this on the ground experience at the school, it was alarming to the entire community to learn that the campus was even considered for a new co-location. The immediate questions were,
"Where would they put them?"
"Would lunch which already starts at 10:15 am now start at 8:30 am?"
If this situation did not involve the well being of children, it would have indeed been deemed hilarious.
However, since it does involve our scholars and was quickly determined not to be a joke, it started to beg the question, did someone drop the ball at DOE? The blue book projections listing the campus at less than 50% utilization is severely erroneous. Granted, the old MS72 of the decade ago before the campus reorganization and the revitalization under new leadership, might have been a failing school bleeding enrollment. However, this has not been the case for the past few years. Instead with a sense of reinvigorated pride, the schools have been growing and bursting at seams in some areas with new instructors needing to be hired to split classes that were growing to sometimes 38 students. This does not happen in schools with excess space.
Just as troubling was the admission on DOE's part by personnel involved in the selection of new space for programming, that no one physically visited the building before a proposal was made. Now NYC and DOE have some excellent Architects and plan readers, however, as New Yorkers we also know that things are not always as they seem on paper. The age and deterioration of various areas of a building, lack of up to date plan changes as the NYCDOE school system evolved from the more separate school boards and more could have led to this glaring mismatch of floor plans versus actuality. As a city employee for over 15 years and a former DOE employee, believe me, I get it and I am not casting blame - in this respect. Still, a quick trip preproposal to South East Queens could have saved us from where we are now in this fiasco.
But we are here. And unlike Mbappe's hat trick today, saving some face for France in the World Cup Finals and cementing his name as an MVP of the game, we cannot let our scholars futures come down to a penalty kick off type luck of the draw at a January Panel for Education Policy vote. This is not about Success Academy, as the issue of where to put the new students and staff, would remain had it been any other public or charter school. However, it does not help that Success has a history of being a bad neighbor in shared space. It also does not help the nasty narrative being put out to Success Academy families that alternately the DOE/UFT/Liberal Groups or whatever the flavor of the day of a group to divert attention from the issue at hand does not want them to have seats. No. We are at a Maslow's hierarchy of needs stand off. We are too busy trying to keep a seat for each of our children to worry about preventing them from having theirs.
Likewise, it doesn't help that Success Academy demonstrated bad faith negotiations before the MS72 and Springfield Garden families even knew they were about to be blindsided by horrible proposals. Success Academy, went ahead and not only listed the sites as done deals on their websites before a formal proposal for the locations were even formulated, they also actively enrolled students for the spots. Now as a potential Success Academy parent, I would be appalled to be roped into a Ponzi scheme for education by enrolling for a non existent location. This actions makes it hard to trust that Success Academy would play fair at any hearing, that the needs of our scholars already on location would not be simply bullied aside as collateral damage to achieve Success Academy's aggressive agenda. This is why parents are up in arms. This is why community leaders are up in arms. This is why we need everyone who learns about the travesty to show up and speak at our Joint Public Hearing in protest of this proposed and bullied on us co-location.
See the full information at the link. Register and SPEAK UP! Don't let us lose like France did on a penalty kick.
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