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Thursday, August 29, 2013

NYC Public School Parents: Please contribute to help the final orphaned class at Christopher Columbus HS

NYC Public School Parents: Please contribute to help the final orphaned class at Christopher Columbus HS:

Please contribute to help the final orphaned class at Christopher Columbus HS

credit: GothamSchools
Here is the somber request by an alumnae of Columbus HS in the Bronx to help students in the last graduating class at that school, being phased out by the DOE, receive college counseling and other basic programs that have been denied them by the powers that be, by donating to a fund at thePartnership for Student Advocacy.  Be sure to watch the heartbreaking video below with interviews of students at phase out schools -- their futures cut loose by the DOE, right under the invitation to their fundraiser.

Christopher Columbus H.S., in the Bronx, my alma mater, opened in 1938, so the school year beginning in a few days is its 75th anniversary year.  Unfortunately, thanks to M. Bloomberg, J. Klein and D. Walcott, the principal significance of this upcoming year for the school is that it will be its last -- despite the almost unanimous statements, opinions and pleas at hearings on the subject from teachers, students, parents, administrators, local elected officials and alums in each of those categories, that the school not be closed and that it deserved to keep going with more assistance from the D.O.E.  To say that this feedback fell on deaf ears is an understatement.  They stopped admitting entering classes after that (3 years ago), so that there is only the current senior class left.
To make matters worse, the D.O.E. has withdrawn services so that these last remaining senior's are not being provided with college help,  enrichment programs and other programs that they should be entitled to, like other high school seniors in the city are.
The program below is, working with the principal, trying to fund raise so that these services can be paid for and provided by outside contractors, so that this senior class will at least get some of what they deserve in their last year, even though interaction with a 9th, 10th and 11th grade won't be part of that.
I realize that many on this list are coping with, or already experienced similar tragedies and travesties at other schools around the city, but if there are Columbus alums/parents on this list who were unaware of this effort to help, or others who might wish to help some kids at a school they have had no connection with, consider getting in touch with the PFSA.
thanks,  Richard Barr

From: pfsany@gmail.com
To: info@pfsany.org
Sent: 8/27/2013 10:33:33 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subj: Mary Conway-Spiegel, PFSA & Christopher Columbus HS Invite You To Attend
 
Partnership For Student Advocacy & Christopher Columbus High School Need your RSVP

September 17, 2013 at 5:30 PM
925 Astor Avenue, Bronx, NY 10469

Please RSVP to pfsany@gmail.com by September 10.

To fund resources and programs for the Last Graduating Class, please make a check out to our fiscal sponsor, Urban Dove, and send it to: 
PFSA
252 W 30th Street #5A
 
New York, NY 10001 
or donate through PayPal at www.pfsany.org/donate