Staff Feels Growing Pains
Blackboard Muddle In Middle Schools

By MEREDITH KOLODNER

Educators and parents at a Brooklyn community forum last week painted a bleak picture of the segregation, overcrowding and poor learning conditions in their neighborhoods' struggling middle schools.

The Chief-Leader/Eric Weiss PUBLIC INPUT NEEDED': Middle School Task Force Chair Pedro Noguera argued that mayoral control of the schools has resulted in too few avenues for parents to have a say in how the schools are run.

A panel of education experts told members of the City Council's Middle School Task Force that discipline problems, insufficient training and lagging resources, combined with inexperienced Teachers and Principals and high staff turnover rates, had turned the city's middle schools into a sand trap for urban adolescence.

Schools for Poor Suffer

Noting that 50 percent of the city's schools deemed failing by Federal standards are middle schools, educators detailed how children's futures were often determined by their performance during the critical and confusing years before high school. Parents and Teachers asked for a more equitable distribution of resources and argued that current policies were aggravating the gap between rich and poor neighborhood schools.

The Chief-Leader/Eric Weiss 'HYPERACTIVE AND HORMONAL': I.S. 259 6th grade Dean Geof Sorkin said overcrowding in middle schools was making discipline problems more severe.

"In the years characterized by mood swings, authority challenge and the increased need for approval by peers," said Alyce Barr, the Principal of the Brooklyn Secondary School for Collaborative Studies, "we divide students into two groups: those who have already demonstrated academic skills and those who have not. We create schools where some children can achieve and where others will fail."

Ms. Barr argued that New York City schools today are more segregated than they were in the 1960s and that the lack of diversity was harming the learning environment. She called for deliberate integration and poverty caps for each school.

"This system of sorting children begins in 6th grade," she told the crowd, which interrupted her several times with applause. "We call it school choice, and we do it to our children at age 10."

Call for Public's Input

The forum held at John Jay High School in Park Slope drew few participants from the relatively prosperous area. Most of the parents and educators traveled from East New York, Bushwick and Williamsburg to tell the task force, set up by Council Speaker Christine Quinn, what their schools needed. Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein recently agreed to help implement the task force's recommendations in at least 50 schools, as long as they agree with its conclusions.

"Mayoral control should not mean that we have a lack of public input," said task force chair Pedro Noguera, explaining why he was holding a public forum in each borough. "If you don't like what's going on, your only option shouldn't be don't vote for the Mayor. One man should not be able to make all the decisions for one million kids."

Mr. Bloomberg dismantled the Board of Education and the 32 elected community school boards in 2003 after he was granted control of the city school system.

Several speakers focused on the high Teacher turnover rate and lack of middle-school-specific training. Deborah Saldana, who teaches education at St. John's University, noted that Teacher training programs allow prospective Teachers to specialize as elementary or high school Teachers, but that no specific certification program exists for middle schools.

A Love for the Middle

"Middle schools often get Teachers who didn't find placement in elementary or high schools," she said. "We need Teachers who love middle school, and we need pre-service training and professional development to support them."

Gail Gaines, the Principal of Essence Middle School in East New York and a member of the task force, said that staff turnover could be crippling to middle schools struggling to move forward. "Some schools, like those in East New York, have trouble attracting and keeping good Teachers," she said. "Every four or five years, we're educating a new group of Teachers. They're good, they have the ability, but they need experience."

About half of all Teachers leave the city school system after three years or less, and several educators pointed to difficult working conditions as the culprit.

I.S. 259 in Bay Ridge was originally built to hold 800 children, but enrollment is now at 1,400. The 6th grade Dean, Geof Sorkin, said large classes and overcrowding had led to a myriad of discipline problems, which made teaching a serious challenge. "Middle school is defined by the two H's: hyperactivity and hormones," said the former visual arts Teacher. "If you couple that with kids sitting on top of each other, you've got a problem."

Growling Tummy Disorder

The community around P.S. 89 in Cypress Hills has been fighting to get a new school for several years. Kathleen Crucet teaches science in one of the small schools inside the main building which must share a library, computer lab and cafeteria. The children arrive at 8:40 a.m. and because of the shared space, her students don't eat lunch until 1 p.m. "It makes it even harder to get them to pay attention," she said.

Ms. Crucet came to the forum with more than a dozen students, parents and Teachers from her school and said she often works long past the official end of the school day. She likes the small-school atmosphere in which she knows every child and only teaches 60 students total. But she said she wasn't sure how many years she would remain at the school.

"Teachers are not going to want to stay if the conditions are like this," said the 24-year-old instructor. "Kids come with so many issues; there are fights every day. I feel like I'm really old."