After sitting through a PEP (Panel for Educational Policy) vote…

Until tonight I thought my difficulties with the New York City Department of Education were all mine –not being a bureaucrat, disliking forms and standardized tests and all that–  But, after sitting through the vote of the mayor’s Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) I no longer believe that decisions are made in the best interest of the children or even of schools as community institutions.

I heard one of the representatives of the DOE actually say out loud “Our most important issue is space.”

It is all about real estate after all.

And it is about the money that can be made.

The last item on the agenda was about a software program to teach classes in lieu of teachers.

However, if a school’s computers work as well as the microphone used by the man who was proposing the purchase of the new system –The microphone kept cutting in and out with periods of not working at all–  I think the kids are screwed.  (So are the teachers)

A man, who I think was the parent representative on the panel, questioned the wisdom of signing a contract with the vendor to provide this particular software to more schools.  He said his kids attended a school where some software was being tested and his kids, having tried it, came home and told him it didn’t work.

The man promoting the purchase disregarded this.

The parent asked why they needed two years to test the software when his kids knew after two weeks that it was broken.  The process of choosing and purchasing this product was 2 years.

At the same meeting when PS 9 parents asked for the decisions about their school be tabled until they could put together a proposal to make their school a zoned K-8 school for the growing neighborhood full of young families as option to be considered in lieu of closing “failing” MS 571 and inserting the philosophically opposite Brooklyn East Collegiate Charter Middle School to which lottery winners come from all around Brooklyn.  But, those parents were told they had their chance to apply to become a K-8 school 11-months ago at the same time as another neighborhood school, Urban Assembly Arts and Letters had done just that.

The parents countered that it hadn’t occurred to them to put together a proposal to change PS 9 from a K-5 school to a K-8 school because at that time, a year ago, they had a working relationship with the principal and PTA of Middle School 571 already in their building (remember the library building project) and had no idea the DOE was planning to remove that school and replace it with strict and rigid statistics driven charter school at the complete opposite end of the educational spectrum from the community supported neighborhood school with a whole child philosophy until the DOE press release less than three months ago.

My official copy of District #13 middle school choices which lists the Bergen Upper School (aka MS 571) as one of my choices and said nothing about it being a failing school on the chopping block.

At another point in the PEP meeting, someone asked the DOE representative what happened to the children who were stuck attended the failing comprehensive high schools that were being phased out in the Bronx and Queens.  The bureaucrat said that New York City has a choice process for High School enrollment and those student had chosen that school, implying that any gaps in their education were their own fault because through their own free will they  chose to attend a failing school in the process of being phased out of existence.  That was the most offensive thing I heard all night.