“The New York City Department of Education had announced the closure [of Jamaica High School]… citing persistent violence and a graduation rate of around fifty percent. Accordingly, the department had begun to ‘co-locate’ four newly created ‘small schools’ in the old building. Advocates argue that small schools can best resolve many of the ills associated with urban education”

 

Reading the article “School Notes” from the New Yorker reminded me of the great disconnect that exists between every level of public schools. Parents are disconnected from teachers and administration. Teachers and administration are disconnected from the bureaucracy that employ them. And the students end up trapped in the middle of it all. This ends up being a particular problem in areas which are low income and high population, which in New York City tends to mean minority neighborhoods.

 

Personally, I didn’t see much evidence of issues of violence or low graduation rates in any of my public school history. I went to elementary school in a predominantly Asian and Caucasian neighborhood, to a school that never really struggled financially which had an average class size of 3o students. My high school was located in the wealthy area of Manhattan Beach, known to be home to most every wealthy Russian Jew in Brooklyn. Classes were quite diverse, and resources so plentiful we were essentially an un-specialized specialized high school. I say this because I was fortunate enough that throughout my public school experience, there averaged about two fights a year and the most trouble anyone really got it was for trying to use their cell phones during exams.

 

There is, however, a school just a few blocks away from my home which experienced an identical situation to that of Jamaica High School. What follows in my writing will be a composite of knowledge I’ve gathered from my father, who went to and graduated this school in the mid 80’s, and from my next-door neighbor Johnny who attended it for two years after 2013. Sheepshead Bay High School lay right at the edge of the Nostrand Projects. It was the zoned school for its and two surrounding zip codes, and anyone who applied to any high school did so to avoid being sent here. The demographic of the school was a microcosm of the projects themselves, the student body consisted of almost entirely impoverished black or Spanish teenagers.

 

When my dad had gone, gang activity and drug use were the norms. There were frequent acts of violence in and around the school, and students would frequently drop out or be locked up for their gang-banging activities. Graduation rates were low, but no one from the city cared because of the neighborhood the school was in.

 

Fast forward to 2013, when the NYC “Department of Education’s Panel for  Educational Policy voted to approve plans to phase out Sheepshead Bay Highschool and introduce four new schools”(wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheepshead_Bay_High_School). The wanton violence and graduation rate of just barely over 50% were finally brought under scrutiny as Bloomberg’s last term was almost up; the institution was shut down, and it its place four new charter schools were erected within the same building. This is the point when my neighbor Johnny began attending one of these. From the disheveled look of him as he came home beaten and robbed at least once a month, it didn’t seem like very much had changed.

 

I ended up going to Sheepshead Bay High School to take one of my SAT exams, and as they brought us to out test taking rooms I was in shock. The only thing separating these new and independent schools were walls of exposed cinderblocks just laid up in the middle of hallways to create some sense of separation.

Each of these charter schools now had significantly more funding from the city, but still had same issues present, only now the school’s main facilities (the gym, cafeteria, auditorium, were split between these neighbors all struggling to get the most use out of them. Johnny could only weather a year and a half here, and after being unable to transfer to any other school, his entire family ended up moving to Florida.