Students rip plan
BY ELLEN YAN,Newsday, July 9, 2004

Shouting outside Chancellor Joel Klein's Manhattan office yesterday, dozens of students complained about his initiative to create smaller schools within large high school facilities, saying they're already
scrambling for resources.

"If we're going to be sent to summer school for the mistakes he's making, then he's going to go with us," said senior Cheyanne Garcia from Walton High School in the Bronx, where 3,000 students will mix
next year with about 2,000 students in four small schools placed in the building.

The protest was organized by community groups, including Make the Road by Walking, and Sisters and Brothers United.

The small-school initiative is the centerpiece of Klein's plan for fixing overcrowded high schools, which are plagued by low graduation rates, violence and ineffective bureaucracy.

Some large schools, mostly in Brooklyn and the Bronx, are being phased out. With $51 million from the Gates Foundation, 70 new small schools will open this fall, most within existing facilities.

Yesterday, students complained that the public has not been consulted and that seniors have been asked to leave to make way for freshmen at new small schools.

Jhirvoni Wilborne said problems over having six small schools at Evander Childs High School has driven her out. She'll attend 10th grade at a private school, which helped her mother find a sponsor for
her tuition.

"In our school, there are torn books or we don't have any books," Jhirvoni said.

Senior policy adviser Michele Cahill came out to invite all the students and their community organizers for a private talk inside Tweed Courthouse.

As students lined up at metal detectors inside, Cahill told reporters that students were not forced out due to small schools. Education officials recently settled a lawsuit that alleged students with failing grades had been pushed out, partly to boost school scores.

"They have a legal right to remain in school through age 21," Cahill said. "Students are not leaving to make room for small schools. No one has to go."

Cahill said the department is proving its commitment to help students graduate in four years by funneling $6 million to 20 large high schools where small schools are located. Another $8 million will pay
for alternative diplomas and schools to Bronx students who don't have enough credits to graduate.


New York Daily News
Dismember Titans
BY JOE WILLIAMS
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, July 9th, 2004

Some of the city's most famous - and infamous - high schools are on their way out.
Once-proud institutions such as William H. Taft High School in the Bronx and Erasmus Hall HS and Thomas Jefferson HS in Brooklyn are among 13 large schools being phased out to make room for now-trendy theme-based small schools.

"If you look at what has already been done, they are being replaced by schools that are doing a lot better," said Michele Cahill, an aide to Chancellor Joel Klein, who oversees the small-schools effort.

But even Klein has admitted that the ambitious plan will be painful.

The city has created 84 small high schools in the past five years and plans to open 70 more in September, bolstered by a $51million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In Klein's first weeks on the job, in 2002, he announced his goal of opening 200 small high schools over the next several years.

The new schools are not getting new buildings.

They're taking over neighborhood institutions that have educated New Yorkers for generations, such as Springfield Gardens HS in Queens, which next year gets carved into Excelsior Preparatory HS, George Washington Carver HS for the Sciences and Langston Hughes HS for Communication Arts.

And they're replacing some scary spots.

The out list for the 2003-04 and 2004-05 school years includes Taft, where teacher Jonathan Levin met the student who eventually killed him in 1997; Jefferson, where two students were shot point-blank and killed in a 1992 argument over a gold bracelet, and South Bronx HS, which was dubbed Fort Apache High after the 1981 Paul Newman film that depicted violent chaos in one of the city's toughest neighborhoods.

Some remnants of the old schools will stick around.

In many cases, the names of the schools will still hang somewhere on landmark buildings. Small schools housed together in one building also have the option of sharing one sports team, officials said.

Not everyone applauds the changes.

Maritza Gonzalez, a student at Brooklyn's Bushwick HS, joined a protest outside Education Department headquarters at Tweed Courthouse yesterday to complain about the way the changes are being implemented.

"We need programs to help us catch up and graduate before they close down our school," Gonzalez said.