Comments on: Help Save A School From Overcrowding

By: embee

embee — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 10:52:40 +0000

Patrick, while I cannot speak too informatively about the underlying debate, I have to say that the corralling of demonstrators, regardless of their cause, is a frightening trend from the last decade. The corralling, coupled with police, lends an air of criminality and makes what is patently Constitutionally-protected activity seem criminal. There are far too many attacks on our liberties from the current adminstration for me to list fully because my storage space is somewhat limited (that is being facetious).

By: Patrick

Patrick — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 05:46:51 +0000

We should end debate this where our host, Hipster, started it. I’m not a NEST parent but I did visit their protest on Wall Street. I saw a dozen NYPD officers corralling score of “demonstrators”, mostly kids, into those pens normally associated with anti-globalization anarchists. The simple reality is that the parents and students made that school what it is. The donations were the least of it. The Chancellor can, and probably will, crush the NEST and take away their building. But all his socialite cronies and their money cannot will not recreate what the NEST community built.

By: Emily Armstrong

Emily Armstrong — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 13:19:45 +0000

http://www.savethenest.org
has received nearly 170,000 hits in 2.5 months!
What a surprise for the parents of NEST+m wow are trying to save their kids school.

By: Peter

Peter — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 16:28:47 +0000

Parent Lou Gasco writes, “I LOVE NEST! Celenia Cheverez is a MODEL for driven executives and deserves her praise. Sure, she’s tough, but I have never met a CEO (and that is WHAT she is) of a multi-million dollar organization who wasn’t.
-From InsideSchools.Org

We reap what we sow, Lou. The business model of education worked for you until your comments (scroll up) suggested otherwise. Our mayor governs with a CEO’s mentality and our Chancellor is a lawyer, not an educator who does indeed have control of all the districts in the city: Ever since the BOE was centralized to form the DOE- very early on in Bloomberg’s administartion- parents have about as many rights as students in the public schools. That is, unless you want to lodge a formal compalint with your parent coordinator. It’s a top-down, anti-democratic system. By the way, principlas ARE NOT CEOs: No stockholdres, no profits to speak of… The business metaphor in education is overused and cynical. Children are human beings, neither economic quantities nor valuations of labor.

NEST sounds just to the right of Sparta and many of NEST’s parents and former parents seem to agree with that assessment. Go to insideschools.org Search for NEST+m.

By: Emily Armstrong

Emily Armstrong — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 12:26:53 +0000

NEST+m parents are not responsible for the failure of JHS 22 or failed schools citywide. Why let the DOE and, in the past, the BOE, off the hook? NEST+m challenged the culture of failed schools in District One. Our school has the most important of all diversities…economic diversity. The “haves” can support the “have-nots”. Our PTA guarantees that no student is ever shut-out because of family income, even if that’s a $2,220 Senior trip to Europe. Show me another NYC public school where that happens!
We are proud of our diversity and our vibrant school community. The 50% of our school that are “middle class” have as much a right to attend public school as our lower income students do.
The public school system should not be the domaine of just the poor.

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 19:06:55 +0000

The PTA of NEST+m in their spurious lawsuit against the Ross Global Academy have stooped so low as to make the ridiculous charge that “the Charter School will discriminate against Jewish students and employees” because “the Charter School will offer a mandatory Saturday program that will be part of the regular schedule… The Charter School has discriminated against Jews who comprise a large part of the population of New York City and the Lower East Side, in that any Jewish school-age child who observes the Sabbath, will not be able to attend the Charter School.” In their shameless zeal to keep several hundred of some of the neediest children of our city from receiving the excellent education that every child deserves, the parents of NEST+m and their “gifted,” entitled children have sacrificed the ideals of democratic public education on an altar of mendacity and cynicism. If “middle class” parents in a school of 730 students can afford to donate and raise $600,000 since 2001, and have the CHOICE to be driven from the public school system, then good riddance! The students of NEST+m are recieving an excellent education in the civics of exclusion.

By: Betsy Combier

Betsy Combier — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 04:32:52 +0000

The Charter school approval process has changed recently to a process whereby a single reader of a charter school application can approve a new school. This is what happened in the Ross Global Academy case. After the approval of the Ross Global charter school application, Joel Klein found the space…

By: Betsy Combier

Betsy Combier — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 04:22:55 +0000

Joel Klein is a man driven by vindictiveness and revenge toward Celenia Chevere, the Principal of NEST. Celenia personifies a Head of School who says “NO” to mediocrity; “Not here” to fuzzy math and ‘Consciousness of the Brain and Mind’ for science, but says “yes” to continuity, consistency, communication, and commitment. Klein could not care less about children…as he said about the NEST/Ross partnership, “all children will suffer equally”.

By: embee

embee — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 18:41:25 +0000

A note from the moderator:

The above comment was from one who, from what I can tell, wishes to remain anonymous. I will not voluntarily identify anyone who wishes for such anonymity without their consent. Anonymity is as vital as free speech to any democracy.

I take no position on the above comment and am not connected with it. I have made this an open forum and will keep it open without censorship except for outrageous conduct, meaning conduct that would shock the conscience.

I invite all points of view in the interest of fostering discussion.

embee (your moderator)

By: I do NOT agree

I do NOT agree — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 18:27:32 +0000

Lou, you sound as if the current occupants built the school facility with their bare hands? The buidling indeed belongs to the people of this great city. It is not the property of any particular faction. Where was all this passion when the previous occupants, JHS 22, was declared a so-called failing school made up of black and latino kids and closed?