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9486 in the collection
At Bronx Vocational School, Concern Over Plan for Charter
Ohanian Comment:
This is a page 19 story. One can wonder why it isn't headlined on page 1. It is so quintessentially ripe with the elements of Mayor Bloomberg's control of the schools. For some reason, there's no place for reader comment at tne New York Times site.
At the soon-to-be-closed Alfred E. Smith Career and Technical Education High School, students learn trades--like heating and ventilation, plumbing, electrical installation, carpentry and architectural engineering. At the A.E.C.I. charter, teachers say they use the building trades as an academic theme, discussing architecture in global history class and asking students to write essays about opportunities in construction.
A total of 22 technical shops at Alfred E. Smith are scheduled to close. Let them write essays about opportunities in construction!
And look at the qualifications of the mayor's man who is the city's technical education chief:
Gregg B. Betheil: Prior to joining the New York City Department of Education, Mr. Betheil was senior vice president of the National Academy Foundation. Take a look at who's on the board there. Betheil has served as assistant principal of Martin Luther King, Jr. High School in New York City, where he also taught American history and finance. Mr. Betheil is a former member of the South Orange-Maplewood Board of Education in New Jersey. A public high school graduate, he holds a BA in government, law and history from Lafayette College, an MA in social studies education and a MEd in educational administration from Columbia University.
And take a look at the connections here:
Richard Izquierdo Arroyo: The nephew of City Councilwoman Maria del Carmen Arroyo resigned as head of a Bronx charter school she helped fund -- a day after he was charged with embezzlement.
Richard Izquierdo Arroyo -- who's also Assemblywoman Carmen Arroyo's grandson and chief of staff -- notified the city he was resigning as chairman of the board of the South Bronx Charter School for International Culture and the Arts.
His city councilwoman aunt sponsored $1.5 million in taxpayer funds this fiscal year to help build a permanent facility for the school, which is temporarily housed in a public school.
$1.5 million so students can write essays about opportunities in construction.
One can wonder what Richard Izquierdo Arroyo's qualifications were to head a high school--qualifications other than blood, that is.
In Charter Scam in New York City Exposed, Larry Miller notes:
Smith accepts all students who apply. AECI only takes students by lottery.
At Smith, 21% of the students are in a special education program; at AECI, only 9% are.
At Smith, 71% of the students come from such low-income families that they qualify for the federal free lunch program; at AECI, only 47% do.
What happens to the poorest kids, to that huge special education population, to those who need the most help?
Miller also notes that AECI doesn't seem to be able to keep a teaching staff, and he concludes that new City controller John Liu needs to ask tough questions fast. And he needs to follow the money going to charters, because Klein's people are not.
By Sharon Otterman
Citing academic failures, the city has proposed closing the construction trade program at Alfred E. Smith Career and Technical Education High School, a 78-year-old vocational school in the South Bronx.
But the school the Department of Education plans to put in place of the program, the 18-month-old New York City Charter High School for Architecture, Engineering and Construction Industries, has had its own issues. Its founder is facing federal charges that he embezzled from a nonprofit company. Thirty percent of the students left after the first year, as did most of the teachers. And despite its name, it has no experience running hands-on vocational programs.
Supporters of Smith, the Bronx's only high school with state-approved construction trade programs, fear its technical shops will suffer under the charter school's management and wonder why the city would eliminate an established school only to put an untested school in its place.
"What we offer disadvantaged students in the Bronx is a route to the middle class, to job security through a trade," said René Cassanova, Smith's principal. From a vocational standpoint, she said, the charter school "is a fake."
But city officials defend the move, saying that any risk posed by the new school, known as A.E.C.I., has to be weighed against Smith's four-year graduation rate of 46 percent and three consecutive C's on its school report cards.
"I don't think that it's any more of a gamble than the 50 percent of students who have already been washed away and not been served by what's there right now," said Gregg B. Betheil, the executive director of career and technical education for the city. He said that he expected that the charter school would also attain technical endorsements from the state, as Smith now has, which can shorten the amount of time that graduates must spend in apprenticeships before qualifying for full-fledged trade jobs.
The fight over Smith is the latest controversy surrounding city school closings. Last month, the Panel for Educational Policy, which is controlled by the mayor, voted to close 19 schools for poor performance, a move that led to a lawsuit by the teachers' union and a complaint by the N.A.A.C.P. that the concerns of the public were not properly taken into account.
In December, city officials proposed shutting Smith as well. But an outcry from community leaders, students and alumni, as well as from employers and industry representatives who hire from Smith, gave the school a partial reprieve. The city agreed to save and improve the automotive program, which teaches about half of Smith's 1,100 students.
No such stay was extended to Smith's 22 other technical shops -- heating and ventilation, plumbing, electrical installation, carpentry and architectural engineering -- and they will go before the panel for a closure vote on Feb. 24.
But the charter school that will take their place has gotten off to a rocky start. In June, its founder and former chairman, Richard Izquierdo Arroyo, was charged in federal court with embezzling $200,000 from SBCC Management Corporation, a nonprofit company that manages low-income apartments in the Bronx.
He and another SBCC official, Margarita Villegas, were accused of spending the money on luxury goods, including plane tickets for Assemblywoman Carmen E. Arroyo, Mr. Arroyo's grandmother, for whom Mr. Arroyo continues to work as chief of staff, and his aunt, Councilwoman Maria del Carmen Arroyo.
Mr. Arroyo and Ms. Villegas have denied the charges, and Mr. Arroyo has resigned from the A.E.C.I. board. Michael Thomas Duffy, the city's executive director of charter schools, said audits found no theft from the school.
Almost none of the original teachers remain, and 5 of the 15 teachers who were at the school in September have left or have been replaced (two for medical reasons), including one who has filed a grievance claiming he was fired because he supported a unionization drive. The teachers, who work without contracts, pensions, scheduled raises or job security, have overwhelmingly supported forming a union. Their request is headed to arbitration with the State Public Employment Relations Board.
"I love my job, but we need a stronger voice to make sure that we are able to retain good teachers," said Lynn Harrison, an English teacher. But she also said the school was "starting to hit its stride."
Because the school is new, teaching 120 children in each of the 9th and 10th grades, Department of Education officials have no academic data about the school or any evaluations except for one visit that officials made last spring. They called the school's first year difficult and said its vision of success was "not yet firmly established."
"When you are a new school, you are going to see some transition," said Eugene Foley, the school’s latest principal, who started in April after the first principal left midyear. Irma Zardoya, the board chairwoman, said that the principal left for medical reasons.
For now, the two South Bronx schools are strikingly different in their approaches. At Smith, students in safety goggles and coveralls build model houses in a towering construction shop, from the frame to the mahogany furniture. Others wire electrical circuits, install plumbing or design structures with computer software.
While some of its students want to go to college, the goal of many is a union apprenticeship. "I'm more of a hands-on kind of person, and I realized getting into a trade or a skill would be better for me," said Abraham Sepulveda, 17, while taking a break from a plumbing shop.
At A.E.C.I., teachers say they use the building trades as an academic theme, discussing architecture in global history class and asking students to write essays about opportunities in construction. Now in a small, cheery converted day care center on East 140th Street, the school said it planned to offer internships and trade courses as it expanded to include the upper grades, while maintaining its college prep focus.
Some students said they had enrolled at the behest of parents, who liked that they would get more attention at a school with extended hours — 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. — an intensive focus on math and English, and class sizes of 25 or fewer.
"It's a small school; everyone knows each other," said Darryl Kimble, 15, the sophomore class president.
Mr. Betheil, the city's technical education chief, said it was too soon to know which of Smith's trade programs would be revived in the charter school, but "we wouldn't be moving this school into Smith, with its 32 classrooms and 32 technical shops, if we didn't plan to use them," he said. "It is part of what we should be accountable to the community for."
— Sharon Otterman
New York Times
2010-02-16
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/nyregion/16smith.html
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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