Success breeds success.
The city’s new support program for struggling schools isn’t just reviving ideas from the 1990s, sources say it’s also borrowing a name from the charter-school sector: “School Success Zone.”
Mayor de Blasio’s political nemesis in the charter sector — former City Council member Eva Moskowitz — runs a 22-school network known as Success Academy.
While schools in her network have been among the highest-performing in the state on some measures, the “School Success Zone” will target teetering schools that would likely have been closed by the prior administration.
Chancellor Carmen Fariña has been outspoken about breaking from ex-Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s policy of closing poor-performing schools.
“She has said flat-out that schools will not close under Mayor de Blasio, schools will not close under her as chancellor,” said one source.
Instead, sources said dozens of struggling schools will get major interventions and extra financial support — including in the initiative modeled after the “chancellor’s district” of the late 1990s.
Department of Education officials said Friday that only two schools have been tapped to enter the “Success Zone” for the coming school year — Boys and Girls HS in Bedford-Stuvyesant and Automotive HS in Williamsburg.
Both schools have been on the city’s list of struggling schools for a number of consecutive years.
Their supports will include flexibility in hiring and firing staff — including through incentives to recruit teachers and supervisors, according to state guidelines.
The schools will also have to schedule extended learning time for their students, the guidelines say.
Sources said Automotive HS has already been assigned a top-level DOE official — deputy chancellor for teaching and learning Phil Weinberg — to serve as its “adopted” handler.
State officials confirmed the city had been given a half-dozen options for improving those two schools — including converting them to charter schools, reorganizing their administrative leadership, or putting them under the control of the state or city public universities.
They said there are dozens of other city schools — including middle and elementary schools — that require some sort of intervention by the DOE.
Sources said these include Flushing, Richmond Hill and Long Island City high schools in Queens, and Murry Bergtraum in Manhattan.
“Some of these schools have nothing but overage and under-credited students,” said one knowledgeable source. They also have high numbers of special-education students and English language learners.
John Elfrank-Dana, a teacher and union chapter leader at Bergtraum HS, said he would welcome additional DOE interventions at the school.
“It would be a genuinely progressive move by de Blasio if [his initiative] includes small class sizes, more resources, and services such as guidance, social work, and training for teachers to deal with these high-need populations and repeated failures by the school administration to move the school forward,” he said.
“It would breathe new life into the school.”