Ask the Mayor not to close great public schools and to stop helping charters expand

3/28/18

Yesterday, parents from PS 25 in Brooklyn filed a lawsuit to keep their school from closing. The closure proposal, approved by the Panel on Educational Policy last month, is especially shocking given that PS 25 is the fourth best public elementary school in the city and the second best in Brooklyn according to the DOE’s own analysis, when the need level of its students is taken into account.

If the school is closed, the entire building will be given over to Success Academy charter schools, whose attrition rates are sky high, especially for high need students. Yet at PS 25, an large percentage of students are economically disadvantaged, homeless and/or have disabilities — and yet because of very small classes of 10-18, they outperform similar students by an astonishing 21%. The school also rates extremely high according to all the other methods the DOE uses to evaluate schools, including “Effective School Leadership”, “Trust”, “Collaborative Teachers”, “Rigorous Instruction”, “Strong Family-Community Ties” and “Supportive Environment,” as measured by the Quality review and school survey.

The lawsuit is primarily based on the fact that school was closed without the prior approval of the CEC — which is illegal under state law. A good article about the lawsuit was published in the Bklner. I explain in more detail why the school should be kept open on Diane Ravitch’s blog. As Diane writes, “Did Mayor DeBlasio forget that he campaigned on the promise to support public schools against the voracious expansion of charter schools?”

Please send an email now to Mayor de Blasio and DOE by clicking here, urging them not to close PS 25 and to stop encouraging the expansion of charter schools. Already, charter schools are diverting over $1.8 billion annually from the DOE budget, and are taking up more and more space in our school buildings each year. It is simply unacceptable that a great school like PS 25 could be closed, which would force parents to send their kids to charters or public schools with larger classes and and far less favorable learning environments.