Plenty of Discord Over John Jay Expansion Plan
Yesterday the Brooklyn Paper wrote about the proposed expansion of Park Slope’s John Jay High School to include Manhattan’s Millennium School. And last night John Jay students protested the expansion prior to a public hearing with the Department of Ed. The school, which the Brooklyn Paper notes is mainly comprised of minority students outside of…

Yesterday the Brooklyn Paper wrote about the proposed expansion of Park Slope’s John Jay High School to include Manhattan’s Millennium School. And last night John Jay students protested the expansion prior to a public hearing with the Department of Ed. The school, which the Brooklyn Paper notes is mainly comprised of minority students outside of the neighborhood, asked for more resources and funding for the three schools already at John Jay, instead of supporting a new, fourth school (which is a largely white college prep school). Before the public hearing began students were chanting, “How do you spell racist? DOE” and “Integrate don’t segregate.” Parents, faculty, and Assemblyman Jim Brennan stressed the need for more resources, with the idea that improving the existing schools will increase enrollment from within the neighborhood. Student speakers were more blunt. One student called the school’s metal detectors, which John Jay has previously asked the DOE to remove, “a racist ritual” that discourages any Park Slope kid from attending John Jay. Another student thought the consistent lack of funding was a message that “Our school isn’t good enough for Park Slope residents,” while another said, “While Park Slope may enjoy the representation of a desirable place to live and work, that representation has never been expanded to our school.” The policy vote on whether Millennium Brooklyn will move in is scheduled for Wednesday, January 19th.
FSRQ, whereas you, no doubt, are not a loser. Just as Ayn Rand told you when you read the Fountainhead in high school.
There has been a ton of outrage over graduation rates. Where do you think all of this “school reform” — which could also be termed, “massive social experiment that costs a ton of money and no one really has any idea what the outcome will be,” comes from?
Fact: poor kids, whose schools have less money, and whose lives have less advantages, don’t do as well in school. Another interesting fact: giving those same kids less resources, and spending even less money, does not help the situation.
Like Heather, I’m also curious to learn more about the success of these “mini schools” co-existing in one location. Regardless of the size of the student body, isn’t one school united around a common set of goals better than several competing cultures? I’d also love to see the DOE create an “A” team of well-compensated teachers (principal, asst principal, and dept heads) who can undertake a 3-5 yr turnaround of a troubled school.
Of course, none of this addresses the biggest problem. Clearly, if local parents where willing to send their kids to John Jay and get deeply involved with the PTA, things would change quickly. But however devoted to public education people might be, I’ve never met a parent willing to sacrifice THEIR child to this goal. And why should they? See fsrq above. Meanwhile, to further complicate matters, politicians are usually out of office before their constituents can hold them accountable for the lack of a turnaround.
Parents, myself included, are very protective of their children when it comes to school selection. That said, it would behoove those actually making these decisions to go and look at schools, both virtually on DOE and insideschool.org websites and in person. The opinions above do not reflect my experience as a parent of a white child at a predominantly “minority” well-regarded school – PS 261 – or that of my neighbors who have kept their children in our neighborhood schools in Clinton Hill, which are 95% African-American. Also, the charter elementary schools which I investigated were no more white than the neighborhood schools.
” more white parents have to loose their fear of sending their kid to a school where they will be a racial minority.”\
It isnt fear of being a racial minority, it is the ACCURATE fear of sending my kids to a school of LOSERS. Yes lifes losers…if you cant even graduate H.S. you are a complete and utter failure. Your parents are failures, your teachers are failures – everything about you and surrounding you = FAILURE.
It is no surprise to me that many of the teachers/students and parents of current JJ students came out in mass and made a spectacle ONLY when it become possible that a more successful program would be in the same building…where was the outrage, protest and spectacle every year when 30+% of the students were sent out into the world with ZERO prospects (and god knows how many “graduates” really had a proper education)…the answer is there was no outrage, protest or otherwise regarding the utter FAILURE of the school, because clearly a huge % of the parents, teachers and students are themselves losers who have no ability to focus on the real problems/issues.
these protests do seem to devolve into theater. at one of the ps20 meetings, little girls in uniforms were waving signs they obviously did not write, and it seemed cheap and manipulative. but it flows from the way these processes are timed by the DOE, with such a short space between the proposal and the vote. it doesn’t give teachers, parents or students much time to organize a consistent and level-headed approach but instead incentivizes loud voices, veins popping and…well, theater.
i have come to believe that a new charter school should not be opened until that new charter has identified, at its own expense, non-co-located space(s) that will fit every stage of its expansion. i think i still support charter schools, but i am coming to see how they create vast administrative costs that come at the expense of the rest of the system.
“However, before this can be successful in neighborhoods in “Brownstone Brooklyn,” more white parents have to loose their fear of sending their kid to a school where they will be a racial minority.”
Blunt, but fairly accurate. However, I think there is increased interest in sending kids to local schools… but that some of that interest is being waylaid by new charters, expansions of existing charters, lottery schools, etc.
My suggestion on the metal detector issue: put them in all high schools (even private ones, if you can force them), then it won’t be a stigma. With all the violence you hear about these days, seems like if we have them at airports and courts, then schools make sense too.
The DOE totally below it when they created the three middle schools in the John Jay building several years back. They were unsuccessful in attracting any meaningful interest from neighborhood families and as a result the current student population is mainly from outside the neighborhood and comprised largely of kids that couldn’t get into any of the more sought after schools in the district. I think the failure to get kids from the slope initially was due in part to the fact that the middle schools started up with the old John Jay high school still in the building and people didn’t want their 6th grader going to school alongside the “notorius” John Jay high schoolers. After that it became cyclical, since a school comprised largely of kids that couldn’t get into better schools is going to have a hard time attracting the better performing kids. From my experience those schools don’t even try to get neighborhood kids anymore.
I don’t know how germane it is to this discussion, but although the school will be called Millenium II and modeled after the Millenium HS in the financial district, it will be a new school to be headed by the current and founding principal of MS447, Math and Science Exploratory School, formerly Upper Carroll. Like MS447, it will be designed to accommodate students with Autism Spectrum Disorder as well as a general education population. I don’t know why one would assume that its student demographics would mirror those of the Millenium located in Manhattan’s Community School District 2.