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This week, members of New York City’s Panel for Educational Policy will determine the fate of 25 low performing schools. Joining us now to talk about the debate is WNYC's Beth Fertig and reporter Maura Walz of the independent website GothamSchools.org

Give us an overview if you can, Beth. Aren't many of these schools the same schools the city tried to close last year - before it was blocked by a lawsuit?

Yes - more than half of them were among the 19 schools the city wanted to close last year. The Panel for Educational Policy, which you may recall is controlled by the mayor, voted to close them after an all-night hearing because hundreds of people came out to protest and speak against it. They voted at 4 in the morning. But then the teachers union, some parents and the NAACP filed a lawsuit and won because two courts found the city didn't provide enough community input under state law. So here we are all over again. 
 

And are the closings as controversial this year?

Yes in some places. The new chancellor, Cathiei Black, was booed two weeks ago at another meeting by the Panel for Educational Policy where the plans were mentioned to phase-out the schools. But here's what she told me when I caught up with her at a hearing on the proposal to close a Harlem middle school last week.

BLACK "We're in New York. People have strong opinions. Sometimes they tend to sort of ignore the facts and just have an emotional commitment. So certainly there's been a lot of response. Everyone's got a different point of view."

Maura, you've gone to many of the hearings the city's been holding at the schools that it wants to close.  Some of these schools have really low graduation rates and test scores. Why do people want to keep them?

Right, so GothamSchools has been going to hearings, we've been to hearings at Jamaica, Beach Channel and Columbus. And these are all large high schools that the city tried to close last year, too. At these schools, though, they say that the city's been treating them unfairly. They've said the city's setting them up to fail, instead of closing them they should be giving them more resources to help the disproportionately high number of struggling students that the city's been sending them.

The city says that other schools get really good academic results with similar populations of students. One that they bring up a lot is Truman High School in the Bronx. But last week a report by the Independent Budget Office report confirmed that the schools on the closure list DO serve a disproportionate number of students who are still learning English and receiving special education services. And the number of those students has been increasing at those schools.

Christine Rowland, who's a teacher at Columbus, pointed out that Columbus has twice the percentage of students learning English as Truman - which is the school that the city brings up a lot. At a public hearing on the city's plan to close Columbus she read this letter from one student at Columbus describing what his home was like as a way of illustrating how impoverished and needy her students are.

ROWLAND: "I recently lost a brother and I'm not living in my own home. I'm staying with my grandparents and with member of family. It's been so crowded I haven't been able to do my homework it's just not feasible."

So teacher at these schools say they need more time to work with students like this and they say the city's been shortchanging them in terms of resources.

So what's the city's response to that?

The city says that the schools in New York are funded according to a formula and these schools get the same amount of money per student as every other school does.

How much of this is really a debate about charter schools?  Doesn't the city want to replace some of these schools with charters, Beth?

Yes that is part of the debate, because some of the schools would have charters moving into them. At PS 114 in Canarsie this is a huge issue. The city wants to replace this low scoring elementary school with two new schools, one of which would be a charter. Teachers are really angry about this. Some think Bloomberg wants more charters, which are privately managed, because they don't have to hire unionized teachers. And there's a lot of anger in general at that school because parents and teachers think its principal should have been removed sooner so again they're accusing the city of waiting too long and letting their school fail.

MAURA - Another school that the city is trying to phase-out is MS 571 in Brooklyn. And they want to replace it with a charter school there. And that's actually upset parents at an entirely different school, PS 9 which is the elementary school that shares that building. They think that adding the charter school to that building is going to squeeze their program, which has been really successful and has been growing. And they also are upset that the charter school admits students by lottery, it's not neccesarily going to be open to everyone in the neighborhood. So tensions have been running really high. I was at the hearing at PS 9 and I came across these two parents, a father from PS 9 and a mother from the charter school who were literally fighting in the hallway over this. The dad said that the city should be working with the community at PS 9 to improve the middle school option there and as you'll hear the mother disagreed with that solution.

MAN: "So you go inside and you go fix it. You work with the people. You work with the students. WOMAN: "No, you create - no no - you create an environment that will foster different results."

So as you can hear tensions are running really, really high at some of these schools.

We mentioned that the city wanted to close 19 schools last year, but it was stopped because it didn't provide enough community notification. Is the city doing things differently this year, Maura?

Yes, this year they're making an effort to reach out to a lot of the schools. Before they even announced which schools were going to be closed they started holding meetings with teachers and parents at the schools. The tone of the hearings has been different. Last year city officials would sit sort of passively as people talked. This year they're making an attempt to respond to some of the criticisms they've been getting.

BETH: And also the city originally planned to possibly phase-out 55 schools this year because there were more that were failing according to the state. And then they scaled it back to 25. And they took four of the schools that were on the list last year off. So they're saying look we have listened to you. But I think there continue to be questions about how they come up with these decisions and is there any transparency and that's also aggravated a lot of communities.

Hearings by the Panel on Educational Policy will be held on February 1 and 3 to vote on plans to close and phase-out 25 schools.

On February 1 the panel will vote on:

Metropolitan Corporate Academy HS, Brooklyn

Paul Robeson HS., Brooklyn

School for Community Research and Learning, Bronx

Urban Assembly Academy for History and Citizenship for Young Men, Bronx

New Day Academy, Bronx

Monroe Academy for Business/Law High School, Bronx

Academy of Environmental Science Secondary HS, Manhattan

IS 195, Roberto Clemente, Manhattan

KAPPA II, Manhattan

Academy of Collaborative Education, Manhattan

PS 30, Queens

IS 231 Magnetech 2000, Queens

On February 3 the panel will vote on:

PS 114 Ryder Elementary, Brooklyn

PS 260, Brooklyn

PS 332, Brooklyn

MS 571, Brooklyn

John F. Kennedy HS, Bronx

Frederick Douglass Academy III MS, Bronx

Christopher Columbus HS, Bronx

Global Enterprise HS, Bronx

PS 102, Bronx

Performance Conservatory HS, Bronx

Norman Thomas HS, Manhattan

Beach Channel HS, Queens

Jamaica HS, Queens

For more information, visit the Department of Education's website