If something is broken – fix it. Sadly, Mayor Bloomberg adheres to a different philosophy when our city’s education system is concerned. The Administration’s default response to struggling schools has been to close them, without first investing enough time and resources into turning them around. And instead of laying out a thoughtful plan for some schools to share facilities in the same building – co-location – the Administration turns a cold shoulder to community input. We need a new approach for our city’s one million students.

There is a time and place to close a troubled school. But that should not be treated as an end goal in itself, nor an accomplishment to boast about. It should be the last resort, when all other options are exhausted. Take the story of Dewitt Clinton High School, which the Department of Education planned to ax after the school received its second consecutive “F” grade for student progress, student performance and school environment in the 2011-2012 progress report. Clinton’s overall score amounted to just 37.2 out of 100, Norwood News reported in a January 15 article. Yet 13 years ago, Clinton was ranked one of the top 100 high schools in the country, according to the same article. After intense public pressure mounted by the students, staff, alumni and community members, the DOE decided that developing a tailored action plan — including but not limited to possible leadership changes, professional development and reduced enrollment — would yield the most favorable outcome for students.

Through efforts like forums and petitions, the Clinton community showed that closing a school isn’t always the best course of action. DOE’s hastiness highlights exactly how flawed the current approach is. Collaborating with community members — and really listening — should serve as a prerequisite for potential school closings. Too many of the schools doomed for closure have not been given the tools to improve, or the time to apply them.

We see the same heavy-handedness in the way the City often shoehorns charter schools into existing public schools, without a well-considered strategy for both institutions to thrive. Co-location can be – and has been — successful in this city. Students at four high schools in the Brandeis Educational Complex, on the Upper West Side, learned beautifully side-by-side — until the DOE squeezed a charter elementary school into the building, despite staunch resistance from the school community. Successful sharing of space and resources can only be carried out through meticulous planning and input from all key stakeholders — students, parents, teachers, administrators, community activists and education advocates. Instead, the DOE has alienated school communities by neglecting their input and depriving them of a venue for meaningful engagement on educational policy.

That’s why, following Mayor Bloomberg’s latest announcement on school closures, I called on the Administration to freeze school closures and co-locations for the rest of the Mayor’s term. Until we can offer a comprehensive, community-driven plan for co-locations and school turnaround, I urge you to join me in pressuring the Mayor to put a one-year moratorium on these divisive tactics. After years of disruption instead of progress, inequity instead of opportunity, haste instead of prudence — enough is enough.

Editor’s note: The opinions in this piece reflect the views of the author and not the Norwood News. This op-ed was originally published in the March 7-20 print edition of the Norwood News.

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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.