Stamford parents blast school-closure 'charade'

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Even Sadder wrote:

Why have we heard nothing about Northeast? It, too, is an elementary school in Stamford. Why has every other school in the city been targeted for some sort of redistricting, but not this one? It's never mentioned in any of the discussions. Hmm ... Could it possibly be because the children of a key BOE member attends this school? So much for a non-political process.

Teacher of the Year wrote:

Did everyone see the front page article in Saturday's (5/10/08) Advocate? A teacher from North East made teacher of the year, very nice story but I have a question. Where are all the "disadvantaged" kids in the class? The picture on the front page shows all "advantaged" students........
Couldn't help but notice and comment.....

What the wrote:

<quoted text>Its an election year. Let us not forget how we are all being treated.

Toquam mom wrote:

parent (referring to post #36), you clearly didn't read my post - or you are willfully ignoring it because you've made up your mind that I am a hateful have-it-all because I support magnet education.
Did you see what I wrote about expanding Toquam 1 & 2 (you know those are districts, right?)? Or what I wrote about wanting children from the west side including in our attendance zone? Did you absorb what I wrote about applying to Toquam because it's more diverse than my district school? You are ready to rail against me no matter what I say. Nonetheless, I can answer some of your questions.
Tell me this: how can I fight to increase my children's district to include more poor children when I don't even know it will be open in 2 years? School closure is just phase 1 of redistricting (well, phase 1B, since Meadow Park was bizarrely phase 1A all by itself).
I am 100% in favor of expanding Toquam's attendance zones. And yes, there currently are two, and yes, they include some of the most destitute parts of the city. But first I want to make sure the school is saved. Had you attended the public hearing on redistricting that was held at Toquam, these are the exact comments you would have heard. With very few exceptions, the audience that night was made up of Toquam parents, because everyone else (except the Meadow Park families) thought they were off the hook.
Don't tell me what I am fighting for. You don't know.
Again - I chose Toquam when race was the criterion for school diversity, and it was a more diverse school than my district school. The Supreme Court's decision is VERY recent. It's going to take time to balance all of the schools according to socioeconomic criteria, not just Toquam.
And again, send more poor children to Toquam. I will embrace them, so will the teachers, so will the administrators, so will the children, so will the other parents.
You are right, there are 4 schools with fewer minorities than Toquam. But what about the schools with a reasonably close student racial compositions? Davenport, Springdale and Stillmeadow are all within a few percentage points of Toquam (Toquam has 57.6% minorities, while the other schools I mentioned range from 58.6% to 65.2%). This puts Toquam in the middle of the pack from a racial composition point of view. Why are all but one of those schools failing?
And yes, there are 2 schools with fewer disadvantaged children. But let's look at some of the schools with slightly higher numbers. Northeast has 2.5% more disadvantaged children. Roxbury has 3% more, and Stillmeadow has 4.4% more. So why are those schools failing?
Toquam has an effective program and curriculum that is succeeding with student bodies that are quite comparable to the schools mentioned above.
Closing an effective program is simply a dumb move. Redistrict it to bring it into balance with socioeconomic criteria? Yes. Close it? No way. I don't support it, and quite frankly you shouldn't either.

Toquam mom wrote:

If you are fighting the good fight against imbalanced magnet schools, then why aren't you rioting in the streets for Westover to close? Oh, wait, I know: you see Toquam as scapegoat and an easy solution because Richard Freedman told you it was a good idea, and because you want to make sure YOUR child isn't inconvenienced in the process.
And then tell me why you want to vacate a building that's in top condition when there is another school in town with millions of dollars in capital costs required to bring it up to code.
Delaying capital expenditures only takes an expensive problem and makes it worse. When it comes time to cough up $10mm+ to fix Rogers, how will we fund it? At the expense of what? Class size? High school athletics? Art teachers? Band? Special education? Teachers' salaries? Pick more than one, because we will have to dig very deep to come up with that kind of money.

Most Certainly wrote:

You hit it right on the button. I heard this 3rd hand so not sure of the full details but at NorthEast they have a full bilingual program, in fact all children in Stamford if they do not speak English are sent there and here's the word on the street but I can't prove is that they have these kids segregated from the rest of the population even for lunch and recess, again not sure if their is truth to this but worth looking into none the same.......
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Save Stark Parent wrote:

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Notice how we haven't heard anything about Roxbury also?? I wouldn't be surprised if some of the BOE kids attend that school also.

Toquam mom wrote:

If you are fighting the good fight against imbalanced magnet schools, then why aren't you rioting in the streets for Westover to close? Oh, wait, I know: you see Toquam as scapegoat and an easy solution because Richard Freedman told you it was a good idea, and because you want to make sure YOUR child isn't inconvenienced in the process.
And then tell me why you want to vacate a building that's in top condition when there is another school in town with millions of dollars in capital costs required to bring it up to code.
Delaying capital expenditures only takes an expensive problem and makes it worse. When it comes time to cough up $10mm+ to fix Rogers, how will we fund it? At the expense of what? Class size? High school athletics? Art teachers? Band? Special education? Teachers' salaries? Pick more than one, because we will have to dig very deep to come up with that kind of money.

Stop this madness wrote:

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Good idea. This is an election year...put redistricting on hold and reverse all resolution to date. A qualified consultant should be advising the board instead of the board picking off east/west polygons.

Publius wrote:

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really care about ALL the kids, not just the ones whose parents complain the loudest .

Stamford parent wrote:

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If they reall care about ALL the kids then they NEED to give them ALL the same playing field!!!

Publius wrote:

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Well, actually they don't all need the same playing field. Some kids need more than others.
But the idea of redistricting in part is to avoid having some schools overloaded with kids who need that extra help, while other schools have few students who need extra help.

Stamford parent wrote:

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I meant in terms of funding and diversity.

Publius wrote:

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The BOE deserves a great deal of credit for attempting to address an issue than has no supporters,

Publius wrote:

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Well, actually they don't all need the same playing field. Some kids need more than others.
But the idea of redistricting in part is to avoid having some schools overloaded with kids who need that extra help, while other schools have few students who need extra help.

Publius wrote:

Almost none of what you wrote is true.
There are many elementary schools with "bilingual" programs. Northeast was the first, but for over ten years there have been others, including Rogers, Murphy, and Roxbury.
The kids are not "segregated" from the other students. In every elementary school, kids sit in lunchroom and go to recess by class.
Under state law, students must be mainstreamed after three years in a separate bilingual progam, and many students exit bilingual before that. Students in a "bilingual" class are often mainstreamed for some classes before they exit.
And, btw, there are two reasons Northeast was not considered for closing. One, it is the largest elementary school, with almost twice the population of the smaller schools. The BOE decided early on that it could not close a large school. Second, Northeast is the only school north of the Merritt, and closing it would leave a very large and spread outpopulation without a school in the area.
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Sunshine Law wrote:

I disagree all American kids need a level playing field. If that means giving free breakfast or food OK, but should they get MORE teachers too. What I have seen is that ELL (at Northeast) get speical teachers seprate from the other 600+ kids. At Newfield we get NO extra money and our (very professinal ELL teacher) is pro rated. But God help the kid who speaks English at home but is not on track, there is NOTHING for him, except the rath of Resposive Classroom!
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Publius wrote:

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That is why the BOE is redistricting: to balance the diversity in each school.

Publius wrote:

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Northeast has a "bilingual" program. That means that students from all over the City are sent to Northeast if their paretns request a bilingual class (under State law, they have a right to do that for the first 30 months of schooling). Those students might also be sent to one of the other schools with a special "bilingual" program, but they would not be sent to Newfield.
So Northeast has "extra" ELL teachers for those classes. BUT, when students are in bilingual classes they are NOT in other classes, so the teachers are not really "extra"; they replace a mainstream teacher.
Having a large population of Spanish speaking students, Northeast also has more ESL teachers (they work on a pull out basis for additional help) than Newfield, but the numbers of students assigned to ESL teachers is roughly proportional in all schools.