Occupy Closing Schools

No to Mayoral Dictatorship –
For Teacher-Student-Parent-Workers Control 

Occupy Closing Schools!

By Class Struggle Education Workers/UFT

FEBRUARY 9 – Tonight, parents, students, teachers and supporters will fill Brooklyn Tech HS, as they have repeatedly over the past three years, to express their opposition to the NYC Department of Education (DOE) policy of closing schools. The members of the Panel on Educational Policy (PEP), which is nothing but a rubber stamp for the DOE, sit there while hundreds explain how the kids are being harmed as public education is gutted. And then the puppet panel dutifully votes to close the schools anyway. 

Over 200 students from high schools threatened with closing protested in New York’s Union Square February 1. 

(Photo: Gotham Schools)

This charade has got to stop. We can talk forever at billionaire mayor Bloomberg’s bought-and-paid-for flunkeys and it won’t make a bit of difference. It’s up to working people to shut down the PEP and get rid of mayoral dictatorship of the schools. In order to defeat their assault on public education, we can start by mobilizing to stop them from closing more schools. The courts won’t do it – the DOE just ignores a court order to spend billions to lower class sizes. Instead there are larger classes every year, as elective programs are cut in order to “teach to the test.” 

To stop the wrecking operation, we need to bring parents and working people together with teachers and students for occupying closing schools. Don’t wait until the end of the school year when no one is around. Canvass the community to build “save the school” assemblies and teach-ins. Out of this and upcoming meetings, committees should be formed to fight for teacher-student-parent-worker control of the schools. We must fight to take them out of the hands of the corporate execs, lawyers, hedge fund managers and politicians who are out to destroy public education (and make a tidy profit in the process). 

The DOE has published a list of 25 schools it intends to close this year, and another 33 where it plans to replace half the teachers. It has already shut down more than 100 schools since Bloomberg took over, replacing them with small schools and charter schools that are no better, and in many cases worse, than those that were shuttered. This is a racist policy, with most of the closed schools in African American, Latino and immigrant communities. The mayor’s arbitrary rule is destroying students’ education, putting their future at risk. 

Last week over 200 students from schools slated for closing rallied in Union Square. At a hearing that evening at Legacy HS, dozens of speakers lambasted the DOE’s shutdown plans, not one supported them. Students and teachers presented a detailed statistics report showing that six-year graduation rate had sharply increased, no thanks to the DOE. Overwhelming rejection of the DOE at Samuel Gompers the week before as well. And at Evander Childs campus in the Bronx, schools chancellor Dennis Walcott walked out after students complained of the DOE’s failed education policies.

We’re up against powerful opponents. The mayor thinks he owns the schools. He treats them as just another subsidiary of Bloomberg L.P. No surprise since he bought his reelection for a cool $90 million. Like the 19^th century robber baron Cornelius Vanderbilt, Bloomberg’s attitude is “the public be damned!” And his policy of corporatizing and privatizing public education is shared by the entire ruling class, Democrats and Republicans alike, from Barack Obama on down. 

The only language that capitalist politicians understand is money and power. Bloomberg may have the money, but we have the power of millions of working people who are fed up over the way the Wall Street money men are running the country. After months of demonizing teachers and teachers unions, a poll released yesterday shows that less than a quarter of the public thinks that mayoral control of the schools is a success, and by four-to-one (72% to 18%) they trust the teachers union more than the mayor to protect public schools!

Now we have to transform this support into active participation. Class Struggle Education Workers is putting forward a motion for the United Federation of Teachers to undertake preparations together with labor and community groups for teachers, students, parents and workers to OCCUPY CLOSING SCHOOLS. We need to mobilize other unions as well, such as the powerful TWU Local 100. John Dewey HS, one of the schools slated for “transformation,” is sandwiched between the MTA’s huge Stillwell Ave./Coney Island complex and the Marlboro Houses complex. But to make this a reality, the initiative must also come from the affected communities themselves. Starting tonight.