10 Steps to Protect Students During School Phase-Outs
By Ruddie Daley and Judith Defour
We are members of the NYC Coalition for Educational Justice, parents and NYC public school teachers. In the last few years, it has been painful to watch parents and children suffer when neighborhood schools shut down. Teachers who work in struggling schools don’t know when their school might be targeted for closure. As a result, they are always worried about how long their job will last, and often they end up leaving the system.
Many CEJ parents have experienced the negative impacts of school closings first hand. When a school is phased out, it falls apart around the students. Teachers and counselors flee for other jobs, community-based programs relocate, afterschool programs, sports and arts disappear, many students drop out, and the rest become increasingly marginalized in the building that used to be theirs. It is extremely hard for students to succeed in this environment. Furthermore, school phase-out puts an undue burden on surrounding schools, and