Millenium Expansion Approved for John Jay
Last week there was a heated public hearing about the DOE’s proposal to move Manhattan’s elite Millennium School into the John Jay High School building in Park Slope where three low-performing high schools and one middle school currently coexist. At that meeting, critics of the plan asked DOE put more money into the existing schools…
Last week there was a heated public hearing about the DOE’s proposal to move Manhattan’s elite Millennium School into the John Jay High School building in Park Slope where three low-performing high schools and one middle school currently coexist. At that meeting, critics of the plan asked DOE put more money into the existing schools rather than fund a new one. Their pleas fell on deaf ears however, because today the NY Times reports that a Millennium, which has a competitive admissions process, will in fact open its Brooklyn branch next Fall in the school that the neighborhood has “shunned…because of its poor academic performance.” According to The Times, the DOE saw this as an opportunity “to open a high school in a neighborhood where many families found they had to look elsewhere for a top-quality high school.” (77 percent of the families in the area are white while just six percent of the current student body is white.) The article does not mention if the existing schools will receive any extra funding along with the start-up costs allotted to Millennium.
Plenty of Discord Over John Jay Expansion Plan [Brownstoner]
Photo by wallyg
Denton, now metal detectors = no cell phones. Period. No exceptions.
Of course DOE policy is no cell phones but it’s don’t ask-don’t tell. Everyone knows that the great majority of kids at schools without metal detectors have cell phones on them. Just like we hail black cars in Bed-Stuy because there are no yellow cabs here!
My kid went to LaGaurdia HS for the performing arts, one of the least gangsta schools in NYC. They had metal detectors, at least then. She survived.
They also sent home a cell phone ban. I sent a letter to the principal saying I would sue him if they messed with her phone (provided it was not used during the school day). No problem. I guess things have gone downhill since then. Assholes.
Ok, leave the metal detectors and install a breathalyzer on the bike lane!
Well, rf, there seem to be widely conflicting reports as to the safety issues at John Jay. I can tell you that when I worked in East New York, the principal of T. Jefferson refused to allow metal detectors in her school. One day, there was a shoot-out in her hallways because she felt that it sent a bad message to her students. After that, the DOE put metal detectors in.
Sometimes it is better to be safe than sorry.
morralkan, as I understand it, all the schools except the transfer school are reasonably safe. It’s a circular argument–are there no dangers because of the detectors? How would you know if you don’t remove them? Don’t want to remove them because the school is dangerous?
I think the “danger” is overstated. Except for the transfer school, which doesn’t belong in this building anyway.
There is a reason why high schools have metal detectors. Even if the students who will attend this new school are perfect angels, unless the new school sponsors intend to give them a separate entrance and erect concrete walls all over the place, Millennium’s students would still be at risk if the metal detectors were to be removed. After all, what I’m reading is that there are many problem students here and there are constant fights.
I’m not sure if crazypants was responding to my earlier post or to someone else’s earlier post. As to bad feelings on the part of current students, they cannot be dismissed as something they can handle. Obviously the DOE has no intention of upgrading their portion of the building. Sometimes the privileged (of whom I am happily one) sound like Marie Antoinette saying,”Let them eat cake.” A great start for some class warfare.
Re cell phones: when we went to school (unless you are really young!) there were no blogs, and our parents didn’t have cell phones either. My daughter was in Manhattan, in Kindergarten, on 9/11. It was her 4th day of school and I had just gone back to Brooklyn after taking her there. Sorry, but cell phones are an improvement in our lives and our kids deserve the additional safety they bring. Sure, make a zero-tolerance policy–if there is any evidence of said phone, confiscate it. My daughter keeps her phone in the bottom of her backpack and it stays there until she leaves the building.
I know adults who traveled to and from school and activities way-back-when on the subway and on the bus. You know what? They got scared and harrassed. Plus mostly their moms were home, so if they needed to call, all they needed was a dime and a pay phone (which were abundant), and one call did the job. We don’t want to give up the convenience of cell phones; why should our kids? Especially now that there are very few decent zoned schools (most areas of the city don’t even have a zoned school), so most kids have to travel.
New York City is a great place to raise a teen, IMHO. One reason is that it’s possible for teens to get around the city without driving or being driven. It is just so much better with cell phones.
Re Millennium: My daughter went to elementary and middle school in District 2, not far from Millenniumn and in its zone. At least 25 kids from her small middle school went to Millennium last year. There just are not enough seats in the school to accommodate the kids who want to go there, so it’s a zero-sum game–any kid admitted from Brooklyn means one less kid from Manhattan. And it would be a different school if it were twice the size. Sure, everyone wants to send their kid to an established school, but Millennium was a crapshoot in 2002 (?) when it was established, and I think it’s a good thing to replicate it. That’s what they did with Bard, and Bard II is doing just fine after a very short time–their first freshman class are now juniors.
Millennium HS has students from Brooklyn this year (I believe about 35). Not a lot but you cannot say the DOE did not allow any Brooklyn students in. There were also Brooklyn students admitted last year.
Millennium in John Jay, Arts & Letters Elementary in PS 20, charter school in PS 9, expanded Community Roots in PS 67: The DOE is completely ham-fisted–either that or crazy like a fox–with these co-locations that pit race and class against each other.
I wonder if the point is simply to destroy any community identification with its zoned school, so as to make it easier to replace said zoned schools with privately owned, highly profitable charters. And yes, I realize that the high school choice process is not tied to zoned schools. Even so, it’s part of a larger picture of complete disregard for the demographics and community of the relevant school or schools.