Chancellor Carmen Fariña is still full of happy talk about the Renewal progam — Team de Blasio’s bid to fix 86 failed schools rather than close them. But the teachers and students stuck on Renewal campuses disagree.
In an interview with Chalkbeat, Fariña dismissed concerns about staffing these schools, saying, “A lot more teachers apply to teach in Renewal schools than apply to leave Renewal schools.”
That would have to be an awful lot of teachers looking to move in: The Department of Education’s own school-climate survey found that 46 percent of Renewal teachers want to work elsewhere. And only 6 out of 10 would recommend their own school to parents.
Why? Well, according to a Families for Excellent Schools analysis, almost a quarter of Renewal students say they feel unsafe in school. And parents of Renewal kids are twice as likely as other public-school parents to see their school as unsafe.
Nor has an infusion of new “community school” resources helped boost test scores much on Renewal campuses — even with this year’s dumbed-down state exams: They’re still among the very worst schools in the city.
Yet, to date, the only Renewal schools Fariña has been willing to close are those where enrollment has dropped so low, she had no choice.
Why so reluctant to shut down schools that don’t teach? “Kids aren’t supermarket items that you can move around,” Fariña sniffs.
No: They’re children who shouldn’t be stuck at a school that doesn’t work, just because the chancellor’s determined to “really stay the course” in the belief these schools will “see progress over time.”
Fariña and Mayor de Blasio reject the Bloomberg approach to failed schools, namely: Shut them down and open new ones in their place.
Instead, Fariña’s committed to taking years to (maybe) fix the school — leaving the kids to “learn” at a failure factory she’s trying to improve. How is that not worse than treating them like “supermarket items”?