School Community

Posters from past student theater performances adorned the walls of Franklin Delano Roosevelt High Schools auditorium, where parents gathered Monday for a meeting on school turnaround.

The city has started running through its closure protocol at dozens of low-performing schools it wants to turn around.

At Brooklyns Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School, Superintendent Aimee Horowitz held a tense meeting with teachers to talk about the closure plan Monday afternoon. Hours later, she defended the plan to about 50 angry and bewildered parents at an early engagement meeting that has for the last two years been the Department of Educations first step in letting schools know they could be closed.

The pattern is set to repeat this week and beyond at dozens of l0w-performing schools that were midway through federally mandated overhaul processes known as transformation and restart until earlier this month, when Mayor Bloomberg announced that the city would instead try to use a different process, turnaround, at the schools. The switch, aimed at letting the city sidestep a state requirement that it negotiate new teacher evaluations with the United Federation of Teachers, would require the schools to be closed and immediately reopened after having at least half of their teachers replaced.

The mass-replacement plan drew fire from parents and students who said FDRs teachers are essential if academic performance is to improve.

I feel tortured, said Abdul Sager, a ninth-grader whose first language is Bengali. If a new teacher comes who doesnt know about my feelings and strategies to learn English, its going to take more time.

Parents found out about Mondays meeting in letters shortly after Bloombergs announcement and through automated telephone calls over the weekend announcing a parent-teacher association meeting with Horowitz, according to Robin Piraino, the mother of a ninth-grader. She said the messages didnt say the meeting would deal with FDRs proposed closure, and some people who attended the meeting were visibly surprised by the news.

Principal Steven Demarco implored families to push back against the citys plan by contacting legislators and elected officials. He also promised that FDR would survive the citys latest efforts to reshape the school.

Weve always been a family, weve always gotten through, he said. Regardless of what were called — transformation, restart, turnaround — we are continuing every day to make progress. That will continue until Im dragged out of here.

Demarcos predecessor was in fact yanked from the school. Starting transformation in 2010 required Roosevelts longtime principal, Geraldine Maione, to be replaced, so the Department of Education appointed Demarco, a 29-veteran of the school, to take her place. Then the city installed Maione at William E. Grady Career and Technical Education High School, another school that was undergoing transformation and could now be closed.

Since 2010, FDR had received millions of dollars in federal School Improvement Grants. Teachers said the funds had financed training sessions and overtime hours for leading after-school English classes for parents, tutoring students, and hosting a new advisory program called freshman and sophomore academies.

Weve invested our support in the English Language Learners, said Jorge Mitey, a Spanish teacher and FDRs union chapter leader, who had passed out large buttons showing Bloombergs face with a red strike-through to people attending the meeting. Theyre coming in on weekends, theyre coming after school. Weve given them more academic rigor to improve.

Forty percent of FDRs 3,400 students are considered English language learners, a data point that teachers said makes it impossible for the school to meet the citys expectations, especially for its four-year graduation rate. Of the students who entered as ninth-graders in 2006, 59 percent graduated four years later, giving FDR a graduation rate just two points below the city average. The school received Bs on its two most recent city progress reports.

Current policies do not reflect research on how students learn languages — many of our hardest-working students at this school are English language learners, said one teacher, who asked not to be named because she is worried about keeping her job. All research shows that it takes five to seven years to become academically proficient in a second language, and that is only if you have literacy in your first language. But many of our students come in with literacy challenges in their first language, Chinese, Spanish.

The meetings are a first step in the citys notification process for school closures. For the last two years, the city has held early engagement hearings at schools it is considering shuttering before finalizing the closure slate. Then the city must hold public hearings at each school slated for closure before the citywide school board, the Panel for Educational Policy, votes on them. The panel has never rejected a city proposal. By law, the city must also issue detailed reports about the closures impact, called Education Impact Statements, at least six months before the start of the school year when the closures would begin — a deadline that is just weeks away.

Other school communities are gearing up to protest the turnaround plan at meetings with superintendents later this week. On Wednesday, teachers at Brooklyns John Dewey High School say they will defend the progress the school has made under the restart model to department officials and ask them to let current teachers stay in the school.