Mayor Bloomberg has ignited a firestorm among parents and teachers with his latest move to shut down 19 more low-performing schools - including many of the city's biggest high schools.
The hundreds who filled Brooklyn Technical High SchoolTuesday night to protest a vote on the closings by the mayor's Panel for Educational Policy sent a clear signal: The tide of public sentiment has turned against Bloomberg's dictatorial school reforms.
Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, those parents say, stacked their schools in recent years with huge numbers of special needs kids - especially English language learners and special education students.
Among the big schools to be shuttered are Christopher Columbus in the Bronx, Norman Thomas in Manhattan, Paul Robeson and W.H. Maxwell in Brooklyn and Jamaica High in Queens.
Klein never provided those schools with smaller class sizes and more resources, the parents say.
At a Jan. 7 hearing on Jamaica High, for instance, more than 800 people turned out. Klein aides admitted Tuesday that of 107 people who submitted official comments, not a single person backed the closing.
The chancellor simply ignores local sentiment. He prefers to spend much of his time promoting new charter schools or small public high schools, both of which enroll far fewer percentages of special needs children.
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