Elected officials ask: What happened to the kids who didn’t make it into the new schools? Is “warehousing” of high-needs students at other schools dooming them to fail?

(New York, NY – January 31, 2012) Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, Comptroller John Liu, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and former Comptroller Bill Thompson joined together at City Hall today to demand the Bloomberg Administration release data showing where “lost” high-needs students at closed schools ended up following a report which indicated that those populations are over-represented in closing schools, and under-represented in the new schools that replace them.

The elected officials echoed the criticisms of parents and advocates who say the new statistics in a report by the Coalition for Educational Justice (CEJ) and New York Communities for Change (NYCC) reveal a major flaw in Mayor Bloomberg’s defense of his closing schools policy, and proof that he has failed to improve education quality equitably.

“The only thing more unfair to students than consigning them to a struggling school is consigning them to a struggling school slated for closure. Students left at these schools are given little to no support by this Mayor. It’s time for to this Administration to come clean about the real outcomes these students face,” said Public Advocate Bill de Blasio. “As a public school parent, I don’t want to hear more spin or doctored numbers. Parents deserve the real facts on what is happening to the thousands of high-needs students abandoned by this Administration.”

“We need a public school system that raises up all of the City’s students, not one that leaves behind those most in need of help,” Comptroller John C. Liu said. “Parents, advocates, and electeds have long suspected that the DOE was replacing long-established schools with new schools that have smaller proportions of special needs students and English language learners. We call on the DOE to provide their analysis of where students displaced by closed schools actually end up.”

“Closing a school should be a last resort, not the easy answer to our City’s educational challenges,” said Manhattan Borough President Stringer. “Year after year, the administration’s bankrupt school closure policy unsettles students and communities. Now, Mayor Bloomberg plans to close nearly 60 schools—many of which were opened under his administration. We are here today to send a clear message to Mayor Bloomberg: closing schools isn’t an easy fix, it’s throwing in the towel on the children of New York City.”

“The Department of Education is playing a dangerous shell game with our schools and our children,” said former Comptroller Bill Thompson. “Closing a school is an unfortunate necessity at times but it should be a last resort and we need to have a sound educational plan for those students. That contrasts with the policy of this Administration to close schools without regard and warehouse our most vulnerable students.”

“For more than a decade the Bloomberg Administration has set our neighborhood schools up to fail and locked parents out of the process,” said NYCC Parent Leader Michelle Chapman. “The people paying the price for these policies are the kids with the highest needs, who are conveniently missing from the DOE’s statistics on small schools. I want to know what is happening to these kids.”

“It is not okay that Mayor Bloomberg is shifting our highest needs students around like a shell game,” said Zakiyah Ansari, Advocacy Director for the Alliance for Quality Education. “The Mayor is responsible for the education of all of our children, and must be held accountable for his failed policies because only 13% of African American and Latino students are ready for college after 10 years of his leadership. We demand to know where the Mayor is warehousing our high-needs students, and, more importantly, what he is going to do to fix the problem.”

High-needs students – self-contained special education, over-age and other historically lower-performing students – make up a smaller percentage of student populations at many of the new schools founded by the administration. The elected officials and advocates demanded DOE show data regarding the concentration of populations of these students, also including homeless, pregnant and parenting students, and students coming out of juvenile detention, in closing schools. State Schools Chancellor Meryl Tisch called the shuffling of these students “warehousing” last year in a sharp rebuke of the mayor’s education policies.

Other student populations – particularly low-income students of color – have also not fared well under the Bloomberg Administration. In fact, parents and students have labeled Mayor Bloomberg as “Mayor 13%” for his administration’s failure to prepare 87 percent of black and Latino students for college. Just one-in-four students overall are prepared for college under Bloomberg, and just 39 percent of public high school graduates last year reported they would be attending four-year colleges the following fall.

De Blasio, Liu, Stringer and Thompson were joined by parents and community members organized by the Coalition for Educational Justice, New York Communities for Change and Alliance for Quality Education, and members of Advocates for Children, special education advocacy group Arise Coalition, the Urban Youth Collaborative and Class Size Matters.

Earlier this afternoon, four of the five top-tier mayoral candidates stood on the steps of City Hall to criticize recent school closures. City Comptroller John Liu, former Comptroller Bill Thompson, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio took to the stand to criticize Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s education policies.

The four candidates applauded and supported one another as they spoke, and their messages were largely similar. They all generally indicated the Bloomberg’s administration enjoys closing schools or fails to appreciate the significance of such actions.

“To too many people over at Tweed building, closing schools is a panacea. They think it’ll solve our problems, to close a school” Mr. de Blasio said. “They think it’s a cure-all, but in fact it misses the point.”

“It’s almost gotten to the point where the number of school closures is almost seen as a sign of success or progress,” Mr. Liu stated. “What we’re calling on the Department of Education to do today, is to show us the results. Show the public where the displaced students are going, after their schools — many of which have long, storied histories in New York Cities — have gone.”

“The Department of Education and this administration seem to believe that the goal is to close schools, under the guise of closing failing schools. … Closing a school should be a last resort, not a first resort. And it’s not a badge of success,” Mr. Thompson said. “Stop this dangerous shell game with our children. Stop shuffling them around. ”

Mr. Stringer didn’t directly suggest school closures were a point of pride for the Bloomberg administration, but he did say the Department of Education was taking “the easy way out” with the closures. “It’s very easy to close a school, it doesn’t take real leadership or a whole lot of smarts, you just put a padlock on the door and you throw away the history … of the community,” he said. “It’s a lot harder, and a lot more difficult, to actually create a school that works. We have challenging schools, but we also need a DOE to meet that challenge. And for too long, school closing has been the easy way out.”

Ms. Quinn was the only top-tier mayoral contender not at the event, but a Quinn representative there handed out fliers to the press with her statement on the matter. The press release emphasized the fact that “11 of the 25 schools on the closure list this year are small schools that have opened since 2005.”

Four of the five top Democratic candidates for mayor took to the steps of City Hall Tuesday to criticize the mayor’s school closing policy.

As the city moves to close a record 62 schools this year, the Democrats said Mayor Bloomberg needs to account for what happens to the highest needs kids when a school is closed.

“It’s very easy to close a school. It doesn’t take real leadership,” said Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. “For too long, school closing has been the easy way out.”

“Stop this dangerous shell game with our children. Stop shuffling them around,” said former city Controller Bill Thompson.

Controller John Liu and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio also joined the advocacy group the Coalition for Educational Justice for the press conference Tuesday.

The Democratic primary field, already critical of some Bloomberg-era education reforms, is in competition for support from the mayor’s fiercest critics on education policy, including the powerful teachers union.

Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the current frontrunner in the mayoral contest and a close ally of the mayor’s, did not attend. Instead, she issued a carefully worded statement praising the city’s “small schools movement” while noting that there has been no “magic bullet.”

“To too many people over at the Tweed building, closing a school is a panacea. They think it will solve all our problems,” said Public Advocate Bill de Blasio.

Past reports on the city’s new small schools — including one last week by CEJ — have found that the new, Bloomberg-founded schools serve a less needy population than the shuttered schools they replaced.

Eight failed high schools closed under Bloomberg served more of the highest-need special education students than the small schools that replaced them, CEJ found.

“When a school is closed it has a disproportionate impact on students with special needs,” said city Controller John Liu. “The new schools are not serving the same population.”

Department of Education officials defended their school closing policies, referring to a recent study that showed students randomly selected by lottery for new small schools performed better than students who attended school elsewhere.

“High-needs students deserve better schools, not more excuses, and we refuse to go back on a strategy that improved thousands of lives in neighborhoods long neglected by the system,” said Chief Academic Officer Shael Suransky.

To Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer, the city’s policy of closing schools and replacing them with new ones is akin to the movie “Groundhog Day.”

“We’re going to be back here next month, we’re going to be back here in six months, the kids will not get any smarter, the system will not get any better,” he told a cheering throng of activists on the steps of City Hall Tuesday.

A week before the city’s Panel for Educational Policy is scheduled to vote on plans to close or shrink 25 more schools, Mr. Stringer and three other politicians whose names are frequently mentioned as likely 2013 mayoral contenders joined a handful of education advocates in speaking out against the policy. Each had a quip ready for the assembled media.

“To too many people at the Tweed building, they think closing schools is a panacea,” said the Public Advocate Bill De Blasio.

The former city comptroller and 2009 Democratic mayoral candidate Bill Thompson said, “closing a school should be a last resort, not a first resort.”

“It’s almost gone to the point where the number of school closures is almost seen as a sign of success or progress,” added Comptroller John C. Liu.

City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn noted in a written statement distributed at the rally that 11 of the 25 schools on the closing list this year are small schools that have opened since 2005.

“This reminds us that there is no magic bullet for transforming schools,” Quinn said. “I am also concerned that high-needs students get the education they deserve in this city and look forward to hearing about Chancellor Walcott’s plan to hold schools accountable for enrolling equal amounts of students with high needs.”

The politicians joined representatives from Advocates for Children, Class Size Matters and New York Communities for Change in citing data finding many of the schools that are to be closed, or which are already in the process of phasing out, have disproportionately high percentages of students with special education needs, overage students and others considered at risk.

However, the Department of Education dismisses accusations that these students are being warehoused — a critique made last year by Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch.

City officials insist that they want to close these schools because they are doing a poor job of preparing these students academically, compared to other schools with similar populations.

“Our strategy of replacing large, failing high schools with new small schools has led to historic gains in graduation and college-readiness rates among traditionally underserved communities: black and Hispanic students, as well as students with disabilities,” said the Education Department’s chief academic officer Shael Polakow-Suransky. He was referring to a study of about 100 small schools by the research organization MDRC.

“High-needs students deserve better schools, not more excuses, and we refuse to go back on a strategy that improved thousands of lives in neighborhoods long neglected by the system,” he said.

Arguments like that meant little, however, to Juan Pagan, whose 19-year-old daughter attends Legacy School for Integrated Studies in Manhattan. Approximately 25 percent of the school’s students have disabilities and more than 7 percent are in segregated “self-contained” classes.

Mr. Pagan claims the school has suffered from budget cuts and lost a social worker who helped his daughter. He had choice words for the mayor’s education strategy.

“It’s actually a system that pounces upon our children and uses them as expendable pawns in their game to set schools up to fail, and then to use that as an excuse to shut them down,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Department of Education is scheduled to release data Wednesday tracking students who graduated from schools that were phased out, in compliance with a new City Council law.

For a few moments this afternoon, four of the five leading 2013 mayoral candidates were gathered together on the steps of City Hall.

They were there to protest Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s practice of shutting down failing schools and, according to critics, opening up smaller charter schools in those facilities which cater to more selective student bodies that are, collectively, easier to teach. The result, according to charter-school critics, is a false impression of progress.

At the event were former city comptroller Bill Thompson, who was the 2009 Democratic nominee, current comptroller John Liu, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. Council Speaker Christine Quinn was invited, but did not attend, though she released a supportive statement that was distributed at the event.

Next week, Quinn will deliver her annual State of the City speech. Stringer—who attended today’s event with some of his new campaign hires, like Anson Kaye—will deliver his State of the Borough speech, and Liu is preparing to deliver his own speech about fiscal policy and the city.

A press conference about the city’s school closure policy looked a lot like a campaign stop for four men eyeing 2013 mayoral runs.

Four leading mayoral candidates — Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, Comptroller John Liu, and former comptroller and 2009 mayoral runner-up Bill Thompson — spoke at the event on the steps of City Hall. The press conference was organized by the Coalition for Educational Justice, a nonprofit that has spearheaded protests against many of the 25 closures proposed this year.

Flanked by advocates and parents, the men echoed concerns outlined in a report CEJ released last week about the inclusion of students with special needs in new small schools. (That report responded to a report by an independent research firm that found the schools had increased students’ chances of graduating.) The candidates all said the Bloomberg administration had been too quick to close schools without trying other interventions and had “warehoused” high-needs students in schools that are now facing closure.

They also demanded that the city release details about what happened to students who had not yet graduated when their schools closed — information that is required by law to come out tomorrow.

But they stopped short of explaining how they would do things differently if they became mayor and gained control of the schools. The closest anyone got was Stringer, who took aim at an Achilles’ Heel for Bloomberg: the way the Department of Education engages parents and communities.

Referring to the backlash against school closures, Stringer said, “You can get your point across if you realize that mayoral control gives an opportunity to work with people.”

Absent from the lineup was City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, seen as Bloomberg’s pick to succeed him. She was invited but was not able to attend, according to a CEJ representative. A spokesman from Quinn’s office distributed a press release that praised the city’s small schools but said they were “no magic bullet for transforming schools.”

“I am also concerned that high-needs students get the education they deserve in this city, and look forward to hearing about Chancellor Walcott’s plan to hold schools accountable for enrolling equal amounts of students with high needs,” she said in a statement. Walcott told selective schools earlier this month that they would have to accept more students with disabilities or risk having them enrolled by the department.

The press conference comes a day before the city is required to release data about what happened to students who were enrolled in phase-out schools last year the day the schools closed their doors for good.

Department of Education officials said that information would be released tomorrow in accordance with legal deadline set by the City Council. But in response to the press conference, the department released a snippet of the data to be unveiled tomorrow.

They said 189 students who remained enrolled when 15 schools completed phasing out last year transferred to 90 schools established enough to receive a city progress report. Of those students, 44 percent wound up at a school with an A or B on the city’s progress report and 37 percent transferred to a C-rated school. Nearly 20 percent of the students wound up in a school rated D or F, making it eligible for closure, and 19 students transferred to schools that were already in the process of closing.

Press Release