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City Councilor: Brand-new JP school may only be there for a year
By adamg on Tue, 04/24/2012 - 2:59pm
City Councilor Matt O'Malley (Jamaica Plain and West Roxbury) says a top BPS official is telling the new headmaster and parents at the Margarita Muniz Academy it will only spend a year at the old Agassiz School and then be moved somewhere else.
Another top BPS official, Deputy Superintendent Michael Goar, told O'Malley and other councilors at a budget hearing this afternoon he could not speak to the e-mail, because Assistant Academic Superintendent for High Schools Ligia Noriega-Murphy doesn't work for him and wasn't at the hearing, called to discuss a $21-million BPS request for a loan to pay for all of the capital costs associated with moving a number of schools around over the next few years.
The new Muniz Academy, slated to accept ninth graders for this fall, is scheduled to move into the shuttered school along with the Mission Hill K-8 School, which is making way for Fenway High School, whose space in turn will be used for expanding the Boston Arts Academy.
O'Malley said he is concerned by rumors that because of the one-year stay, none of the roughly $3.5 million in renovations planned for the mold-infested, leaky Agassiz would go to the Muniz Academy. Goar and other school officials, however, said much of the money would go to building-wide improvements, such as new sprinklers.
Goar said that while he had not heard of any plans to move the Muniz Academy after just one year, he did note the explosion in demand for k-1 and k-2 classes citywide this year.
Meanwhile, parents at the Mission Hill school told councilors they don't understand why BPS is ripping the neighborhood's only elementary school out at a time when the mayor is pushing for a return to neighborhood schools.
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Comments
So the...
So the Mission Hill K-8 school will be in JP, not Mission Hill, and Fenway High School will be in Mission Hill, not the Fenway?
Only in the Boston Public Schools would that even remotely make sense.
Well if it helps the Fenway
Well if it helps the Fenway High kids are actually for the most part from Hyde Park. But since that neighborhood no longer has a high school those students have to commute to the Fenway.
BPS School Committee Clown Show
Mayor Menino can't even keep his hand-picked (not elected) crew on the same page.
The biggest single issue behind school performance is ESL and yet BPS focuses on school choice and charters not addressing the issue with under performing schools. Charters on emerge perform no better than public schools on average. Moreover, they do not help improve public schools, instead they take resources from them.
Charter schools ARE public schools
"Moreover, they do not help improve public schools, instead they take resources from them."
This comment is non-sensical. Charter schools ARE public schools (they are publicly funded), and they do not "take" resources from other schools. Parents choose to send their kids to charters (as opposed to being assigned to a school, through the "controlled choice" system currently used to allocate BPS seats), and of course the money to pay for the education expenses follows the child to the school that they attend - as opposed to staying at a school that they DO NOT ATTEND.
It doesn't make any difference whether charters perform "better" or "worse" than other public schools on arbitrary and meaningless standardized tests - what matters is that parents are choosing an option they prefer, rather than being assigned according to a lottery.
This comment is just the standard union line, repeated ad nauseum by BTU members and other ideologues, straight out of the party line enforced by Stutman. C'mon, if you're going to bother to comment, at least make a reasonable argument.
"Charter schools ARE public
"Charter schools ARE public schools (they are publicly funded)"
Really???
So that is why Charter schools can remove students from their schools for a multitude of reasons (special ed, excessive absenteeism/tardiness, poor behavior, ESL status, MCAS performance) and then put these same students back in the real public schools system.
Charter schools follow a different set of rules. They can kick out students who they know will not pass the MCAS exam. This happens every year, where BPS takes on former Charter School students only a few weeks prior to the exam. The failing MCAS score counts against the new BPS school, not the Charter school.
Look closely at the "attrition" rate or graduation rates at charter schools.
Now matter how you want to argue it, Charter schools take public funding, but do not follow the same rules as "public" schools.
Uh-huh.
Hello! I see you've decided to publicly broadcast your ignorance about Massachusetts law governing charter schools! While I and the rest of UHub appreciate the entertainment value afforded by your making shit up out of whole cloth, I can't help but worry that some of my colleagues here might actually mistake your fountain of verbal diarrhea for factual statements.
Your two primary complaints ("charter schools cherry pick students and won't take ESL or special ed students" and "charters kick out students right before MCAS to make their scores look better") are a familiar chorus, anon. I'd be fascinated to hear where they come from, as I've heard some version of these two points from every single anti-charter person I've ever talked to, and they're so specific in their totally-made-up-ness that I have to think there's a central source for them. Like a Fox News for educational reform debate.
Now. My simple response to either count: prove it. Name the offenders. Tell me the name of a single public school who has had in-district kids showed up on March 1st, just in time to fail their MCAS. Find me a couple of students who were turned down from a charter because they were ESL. Give me more than a vague assertion that this is common practice. It's happening everywhere, right? So you should just be able to ask somebody in-district, and they'll tell you a dozen names.
I say this, of course, because both things you have just accused every charter school in the state (and by association, hundreds if not thousands of teaches and administrators) of doing as a routine matter are illegal under state law (check MGL Chapter 71, § 89, (L) & (P) specifically). If you or anyone else parroting this bullshit could prove a word of it, all you'd have to do is write a letter to the DOE, and in the ensuing firestorm, the Globe would publish half a dozen gleeful op-eds about what a pox charters are, the board of directors at the accused school would fire the principal and administration, and the school in question would have its charter revoked. Charter schools are, after all, answerable to the same authorities as public schools are, and are bound by the same state and federal laws.
Of course, you can't prove a word of any of this, because there are no schools in existence that would risk their charters to try to squeeze an extra one or two percentage points on their scores. In fact, you're just making it up as you go along. But don't let that stop you, anon. Keep on preaching that same gospel, and pay no mind to how terribly BPS is failing the city's students.
"Hello! I see you've decided
"Hello! I see you've decided to publicly broadcast your ignorance about Massachusetts law governing charter schools!"
Pot meet kettle.
As a teacher at Brighton High School (BPS) dating back to 2007 every spring there is an influx of students from both MATCH Charter and City on A Hill Charter schools. There may be other charter schools that follow this same practice that I am not aware of because I obviously do not teach all 1300 students.
These very transfer students sit for the ELA and Math MCAS exams in the spring, and then for the science MCAS in June. Their scores are in fact included into our annual report on student performance and recorded as BHS students.
Our AYP (Annual Yearly Progress) is measured according to NCLB using these scores, and the school obviously suffers as a result. Not to say we don't have our hands full with our own student population, but adding these students cast off by Charter schools a few weeks before MCAS exams just seems unfair to everyone involved.
Also, working with teachers in other high schools across the district I know this practice occurs at East Boston High School and Charlestown High School.
So if that is enough proof for you Erik G., there you go.
Next time take a valium before you post.
Yes, that's illegal
Charter schools have to serve ESL kids and kids with disabilities (as long as disabilities are not severe enough that they need a separate classroom).
Mission Hill School
I'm pretty sure that the Mission Hill School is not the only elementary school in Mission Hill - the Tobin is definitely in Mission Hill. However, the Farragut in Brigham Circle closed in 2011 after 100+ years so I can understand the frustration with screwing with another neighborhood school.