Decision Could Mean End for 115-Year-Old School

DeWitt Clinton High School boasts a deep roster of famous alumni that includes comedians, athletes, authors, judges, politicians, Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winners. But when it came down to it just before 1 a.m. on March 12 inside the cavernous auditorium at Brooklyn Technical High School, a total of five supporters, three teachers and two parents, stuck it out until the bitter end.

That’s when the Panel for Education Policy, which must approve major policy and school changes proposed by the Department of Education, voted 8 to 4 to shrink 115-year-old Clinton to about half the size it was just a few years ago and open up two new small schools inside the building known as the Castle on Mosholu Parkway.

Though Clinton is not new to major changes — it only began accepting girls 30 years ago — most people involved with the school believe this decision will mean the beginning of the end for one of the city’s most storied schools.

“I’m afraid it is,” said Principal Geraldine Ambrosio before leaving the hearing at about 10:30 p.m.

Since 2004, the DOE has shuttered or started to phase out 22 high schools in the Bronx and replaced them with multiple smaller themed schools. It’s only a matter of time, Clinton supporters say, that their school will be among those lost to the small schools movement.

Just 13 years ago, Clinton was named one of the top 100 high schools in the entire country. But since Mayor Bloomberg took over the school system in 2002, Clinton’s performance statistics have seen a steady decline. Last year, the school received an “F” on its school progress report and only graduated about half of its students in four years.

Ambrosio and others said the school’s woes coincided directly with the DOE’s emphasis on creating new, smaller schools. Clinton began seeing more and more “over-the-counter” students — students who didn’t apply to other schools or were kicked out of other schools. Last year, Clinton’s population included 20 percent English Language Learners and 19 percent special education students. Both types of students struggle to graduate on time.

In her testimony at the hearing, Clinton math teacher Kate Martin-Bridge broke down the numbers for the Panel, saying the school suffered from overcrowding and an influx of unprepared students. Just four or five years ago, she said, Clinton was operating at 168 percent capacity. This fall’s freshman class, she said, contained 649 students who didn’t meet state standards on eighth grade tests.

“We will educate anybody,” she said. “It doesn’t matter to the teachers where the kids are, but you use those statistics to beat us.”

DOE officials countered that the schools slated for closure or co-location, like Clinton, were compared to other schools with similar populations and were given ample time and assistance, through the “engagement process,” to improve.

“When it doesn’t work, we have a responsibility to do something about it,” said deputy chancellor Marc Sternburg, who repeatedly talked about his experience opening up a successful small school, Bronx Lab, on the Evander Childs campus.

But when asked if the DOE provided any additional help or resources to help the school improve, Ambrosio said simply, “No.”

English teacher Alan Ettman, Clinton’s chapter leader for the United Federation of Teachers union, said the DOE is supposed to engage with the school through its Network leader, which works with the School Leadership Team. But Ettman said that hasn’t been the case. He doesn’t even know who his Network leader is.

The school community came up with a plan to help turn around Clinton without shrinking its size or adding two new small schools, but it was never seen by anyone at the DOE, Ettman said.
Ettman and others said it’s the students who will lose out when Clinton is forced to cut programs and teachers.

“DeWitt Clinton has a proud tradition,” said Councilman Oliver Koppell who spoke earlier in the evening. “Don’t doom it to failure by putting two new schools in that you don’t even have a plan for.”

As night turned into morning in Brooklyn, Martin-Bridge, Ettman and science teacher Harry Brandt huddled together near the back of the auditorium as if bracing for impact. The Panel has never voted against a DOE proposal and many speakers tried to shame members into voting against the plans. It didn’t do any good.

A few rows over from the three teachers, were parents Abdool Abdool, a parent of a former Clinton student, and Nana Obeng, whose son is a freshman at Clinton.

“They’re all sychophants,” Obeng said as he awaited a decision. “I want to see that it’s true, that they’ve already made up their minds before they got here.”

When the vote came down, all five Clinton supporters quietly got up and left the building.

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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.