Submitted by Joe Bellacero, Oct 12, 2007 18:55

The last 20 years of my career as a NYC teacher of English were spent in Evander Childs High School. My last four years there, I both taught and served as a Teacher/Consultant working with teachers from Evander and several of the small schools. I watched as Evander was systematically destroyed as a viable institution, even as the faculty begged for the kind of changes that could have made it great. I saw the nursing program, run by an excellent teacher, was disbanded so that it would not compete with another nursing program. I saw the building, which could comfortably house 2400 students, become stuffed with 3800. I saw four principals troop through over four years. I saw an excellent head of security moved out of the building. I saw the gradual development of a 40% turnover rate in teachers as the city denied them the support they needed.

The requests we made to have the school population capped, to have viable small learning communities set in place, to allow strong programs like Virtual enterprise to expand and like the nursing program to remain, to increase security to reasonable levels, to keep the Tiger's Inn food service program for special needs students, to allow teacher approved Professional Development programs to come in, to allow for some selectivity in recruiting students, and to increase teacher, student and parent input into policy, were ignored. And gradually morale was crushed and the school finally lived down to its reputation.

Now, to make sure this "bold initiative" which is winning them awards can succeed, they have done everything we asked of them--but somehow they have become their ideas. Amazing transformation!

One of the things we often hears was how terrible the teachers at Evander were, how little they cared, how they were responsible for the state of the school. Many of those teachers, those truly wonderful, talented, caring teachers are in the small schools. I was hired to do workshops in the Bronx Academy of Health Careers, The Bronx High School for Writingt and Communication Arts, the Bronx Aerospace Academy, The technology school (can't remember its name) and the High School of Contemporary Arts. In addition, the principal's of four of the schools were teachers and/or A.P's at Evander, while a fifth one was a teacher at another "failing" school.

Congratulations Mayor Bloomberg.

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