FIGHT THE CITYS PLAN TO TURN THE DEARBORN INTO AN IN-DISTRICT HORACE MANN CHARTER SCHOOL: After several years of planning to upgrade the Dearborn Middle School to a $70.1 million public Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) 6-12 Academy, to be built to serve the children of Roxbury as a walk-to neighborhood school, BPS Superintendent John McDonough and the School Department -- just a month ago, while schools were closed and students, parents and teachers were on vacation -- pulled a bait and switch. They fired (oh, excuse me, promoted) José Duarte, the principal of the school. They plan to move most of the students from the Dearborn -- classified as a level 4 turnaround school -- to the Jeremiah Burke in Dorchester (also classified as a level 4 turnaround school) for three years. The proposed new construction -- the planning for which was hidden from, and basically excluded, the abutters of property surrounding the school, and just about everyone in the neighborhood, for that matter -- will be a huge and disruptive endeavor which is going to involve the razing of the historic building that has housed a Boston public school since it was completed in 1912. And in spite of the extremely steep price tag, and more than a doubling in the number of the prospective student body, there will be no added parking or student recreational land included in the project. A majority of the students who attend the Dearborn are from Cabo Verdean community, and many of them, especially newer immigrants, require bilingual services. In fact, the school houses a Students with Interrupted Formal Education (SIFE) Program, as do several other schools in the BPS, which services those most significantly in need of linguistic services, providing instruction in their first languages. In fact, the City has been under court order to provide these programs, due in part to the racist and xenophobic, but successful Unz referendum passed by the voters of Massachusetts some years back, which eliminated bilingual education from the schools. The School Department plans to transfer the SIFE students from the Dearborn to the SIFE program housed at the Orchard Gardens Pilot School in Roxbury. Unfortunately for the students to be served, however -- according to the legal overseers of the court order -- the program at the Orchard Gardens has not been in compliance with the order, because all of its classes have been taught in English. Meaning, of course, that the Dearborn SIFE students will be cheated out of an equal quality education, and that the School Department may be open to a lawsuit. The kicker to the School Departments betrayal in mid-July, however, was its arbitrary reclassification of the Dearborn 6-12 STEM as an in-district charter school, with the charter, and the new building, given to the Dudley Neighborhood Charter school -- which currently provides services to K1 through First Grade students, which has absolutely NO experience teaching the middle school through high school students who will attend the Dearborn. And because it will be an in-district charter school, even though the planning for the new STEM program was premised on its designation as a Roxbury neighborhood school, its enrollment will ultimately be drawn from the citywide pool of students based on a lottery. The City disingenuously and condescendingly explains that the current Dearborn students (who, of course, will be warehoused at the Burke for the next three years) and their siblings will temporarily be given preference to enroll. Other than the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative -- which sponsors the Dudley Neighborhood Charter School, along with the Boston Plan for Excellence (translate that as Bank of America, IBM, and several other mostly financial and corporate entities) -- all of the other partners who have participated in the planning for the new STEM academy were left in the dark about the change in school status as well: the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, Roxbury Presbyterian Church, and Trinity Church Copley. The vote to approve this foul-smelling scheme of the School Department was originally scheduled to be held at meeting of the Mayors rubber-stamp appointed, unelected, undemocratic School Committee on September 10. Due to community pressure -- especially from the brilliantly outspoken, strong, and committed youth of Cabo Verde Community Unido and their leaders -- the City deigned to push the vote ahead to September 17. It needs to be stopped altogether. At the School Department meeting hosted on August 19 at Roxbury Presbyterian Church, Superintendent McDonough and his underlings admitted -- as they have at previous community-based meetings -- to the citys lack of transparency and failure to communicate with students, parents, and most community organizations. The mantra became, We own that failure, but we cant turn back the clock. Similarly, in the half hour reserved for discussion of the building plans at the end of the meeting on the 19th, BPS Executive Director for Capital and Facilities Management Carleton Jones conceded to, and apologized for, in front of an angry group of neighborhood residents and property owners, the same lack of transparency and failure to communicate. Again the mantra: We own that failure, but we cant turn back the clock. Well, we the people -- the students, parents, workers, homeowners, taxpayers, teachers, and voters of Boston -- CAN turn back the clock, and we SHOULD, and we WILL. parentimperfectct.wordpress/
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 08:22:41 +0000
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