Warning to parents & CECs considering dezoning and video from Harlem D5 hearing

According to reports, DoE has pushing Community Education Councils at the end of the year and the end of the Bloomberg reign to dezone the following districts: Districts 4, 5, 6 (twice), 7 (unzoned into two large preference zones this year), 12, 13, 14, 16, 17 and 23 (unzoned for MS this year).  What does dezoning mean?  Eliminating the right of any child to attend a school nearby his home and implement a system of “choice” where parents would list preferences and have their child assigned by lottery to any school in the district.

Given parents’ understandable dissatisfaction with their neighborhood schools, considering perpetual budget cuts, rising class sizes, the increased emphasis on test prep, the loss of art, music and afterschool programs, and deteriorating conditions at many schools, such a system might seem at first glance attractive.  But dezoning will do nothing do improve the quality of education.  By forcing kids to attend schools far from home, in fact, dezoning would likely lessen parental involvement, dramatically diminish the ties between schools, local elected officials and the communities in which they sit, and certainly drive up busing costs, which are already at about one billion dollars a year citywide.

Dezoning would also eliminate the sole legal power of the CECs currently have – which is to approve changes in zoning lines – and allow DOE to close any neighborhood public school and put a charter school in its place; something Joel Klein tried to do as Chancellor  until he was blocked by a lawsuit in 2009.  He refused to put his proposals before the CECs in District  , knowing they would turn him down.  Instead he sent a letter to all the parents in the schools he had wanted to close, recommending that they transfer their children to charter schools or other public schools nearby.  Two of the schools he tried to close got “A”s on the school progress reports shortly thereafter.

Here is a memo, adapted from one I wrote earlier in the year for CEC 6.  Please circulate it among interested parents and CEC members.   Below is a video of the hearing last week May 30 at District 5 in Harlem, where principals, teachers and parents spoke out against dezoning, and not one person spoke in favor.