Tenicka Boyd, senior director of organizing at StudentsFirstNY and the mother of a student at PS 321 in Brooklyn, describes the academic life of three New York City public students in the Daily News. Here’s one of the stories.
Gideon Gabbidor’s 19-year-old son is one of the students who has stayed at the chronically failing Boys & Girls; he will graduate this June. Gabbidor heard the mayor promise to turn the school around, but there haven’t been any improvements in his son’s classes over that time.
Instead of the easy busy work he’s gotten, and the inflated grades, Gabbidor wishes his son had been challenged so he would be prepared for life beyond high school. He wants the state to intervene and really fix Boys & Girls High School so kids in his neighborhood can get the academic help they need.
Gabbidor’s story is emblematic of the experience of tens of thousands of students in New York City’s chronically failing schools. De Blasio would rather claim success than admit the real work that needs to be done to give these kids access to opportunity.
De Blasio has spoken of a “rebirth” at the school. But Boys and Girls enrollment has plunged from 940 students in the 2013-14 school year to 370 students now. That means more than half the students have left or been pushed out. That is not the path to the turnaround the mayor promised the community, and it is not a model to improve the hundreds of failing schools around the city.
Note: NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio gave his “State of the City” speech Tuesday night. Conspicuously absent was any mention of proposed strategies to address problems with the K-12 public school system.
