A tale of two documents: the city’s impact statements evolve
At the heart of the city’s major courtroom loss to the union earlier this year over school closures were 19 short documents — the “educational impact statements” that the city used to make its case for shuttering schools.
Now, the city has given those documents a makeover. But a review of last year’s and this year’s versions of the EIS for one school — Beach Channel High School in Rockaway, Queens — shows that while the reinvented statements are vastly more informative, they still skirt many of the points cited by critics opposed to closing the schools.
When a panel of judges blocked the closures last year, they acknowledged that the law gives city officials little guidance on what to include in the documents but does give them the discretion to close schools they believe
