The once proud and prestigious Lehman High School, like many of the large comprehensive high schools including Jamaica, George Washington, and Tilden high schools to name just a few, were flooded with "high needs" students and closed due to poor performance in a deliberate action by the Bloomberg administration. Replacing these once majestic schools were numerous small schools, known as the Bloomberg schools and when the extra financing and exclusions were eliminated, these schools defaulted to having similar academic issues as the large comprehensive high schools they replaced. Just look at the Campus Magnet schools that replaced Andrew Jackson high school. These four small schools are among the worst academically in Queens. See their snapshots, Here, and Here. The other two schools are not listed since they are slated to close due to poor performance this year.
Now we see that the Lehman Campus, that includes six Bloomberg small schools, have the distinction as the fight club. Unfortunately, they're not fighting for better grades but rumbling outside the school. It seems most every day somebody pulls a fire alarm and the six schools empty out onto the street near many commercial stores and start fights. The New York Post wrote an article about it a couple of days ago. and WABC has an article on it Here.
I guess the rumble in the Bronx has been reborn at Lehman Campus in the Bronx. Where's Jackie Chan when you need him? Could they at least have Car 54 which was shot in the Lehman Campus area?
All coordinated with cellphones. That building is a cesspool with a tremendous amount of thugs wandering the hallways all day filming and blaring cRAP. Two of the schools there are good however- Schulerville and Renaissance.
ReplyDeleteLehman HS was once a great school. It was such a good school that I know several families who bought houses in the neighborhood in order to send their kids there. (Bloomberg set up the school for failure and used the statistics from the population he sent in to prove its failure. He then opened up some Bloomberg Franchise schools and changed the population again to prove success statistically. Their grace period with the hand picked population is now gone.) Those families will not send their children there. They send their kids to Catholic schools and they're European Muslims. At least the DOE has increased diversity in Catholic schools- something they successfully achieved long ago. In Bronx public schools, I feel like I'm teaching under Jim Crow laws.
ReplyDeleteMore like THE WANDERERS!. Now that was a great movie!
ReplyDeleteThanks to this loser mayor DeBlasio with his stupid chancellor Farina, and this idiotic cell phone policy, fighting will continue. I'm amused that there are 6 separate schools on the Lehman campus, and therefore (I assume) 6 sets of administrators. All these so called "leaders" and no one can come up with a plan to stop this violence? If I were mayor or chancellor, I'd be mortified that students are mobbing up a decent neighborhood and ruining it for everyone around the Westchester Square area.
ReplyDeleteLehman was the first school I ever took a job interview. The principal's name sounded just like Lehman. He was a tough, old school man, slightly built physically, but took no sh*it from anyone. Anyway enjoying my holiday, second day in a row in teachers lounge, plenty of free food, will cut out early to get to Junior's for some Pastrami to take back to my house in CT Love the ATR business!!
ReplyDeleteLehman HS had a great principal who was at Lehman for 30 years. Somehow Bloomberg removed the Principal Mr. Leder and since then the school has gone down the toilet. Mike Bloomberg has done so much damage to NYC schools that one cannot truly know unless you work in the nyc school system. Never has one man done so much damage. Why did he remove Mr. Leder?? Poison bloomberg. I am not sure who is a worse mayor. Mayor Rahm of Chicago or the former blunder head bloomberg. Watch out bloggers, bloomberg is big on these super pacs throwing money and political candidates so that they can use them like puppets. Before anyone votes, make sure the candidate is not supported by a super pac bloomberg otherwise the candidate will destroy whatever they are in charge of as its it the mission of mike bloomberg to destroy america and have migrant workers rampant thoughout our country.
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ReplyDeleteI worked in a school in the south Bronx that was formerly a big campus but had been subdivided into four separate schools. There were still two years left of the phase out, and each year the new small schools got more and more rooms as the comprehensive high school slowly disappeared. Every summer there would be loads of textbooks, furniture, science equipment - all perfectly good - just thrown out in the trash. I mean loads of stuff, tens of thousands of dollars worth of stuff. To see the old timers who still remained eating in the staff cafeteria. It was all so sad. The small schools were, of course, disasters. The leadership academy principals on each floor were clueless and loved to torture their staffs. (I knew people on each floor.) I got out of there and ended up in another small school in Queens. Teaching is now a drudge activity. We have had three different school administrations in my current small school in eight years. We also had one complete staff turnover. There is no future in education anymore.
ReplyDeleteBesides Common Core, Danielson's, the lousy new contract, leadership academy minions and clueless Farina, the two worst decisions of the DOE are:
ReplyDelete1) Lifting the Cell Phone ban
2) Unblocking Youtube.
This is all Mulgrews fault. This man is a piece of shit. !) does not teach. 2) agrees with everything board of ed says. 3) Has no clue what the workload of a teacher is.
ReplyDelete4) Makes 250000 dollars a year for what. To go to the gym everyday. When is the next union election. Throw this bum out.
to 11:33 am - The great Mister Leder was a piece of work. He once observed a science teacher(who, by the way, was chapter leader)by hiding in a storeroom. The teacher had no idea he was there until he emerged at the end of the lesson. Leder was notorious but probably not as bad as some of the lemons posing as principals these days.
ReplyDeleteBY the way, Leder was one of a trinity of really hard nosed principals. The late Myron Liebrader ran Grover Cleveland like a warden ran a jail. He, at one time, led the city in numbers of grievances filed. Another hard nose was the late Noel Kriftscher who lorded over Seward Park. The school wasn't called "the sewer" for nothing. He wangled his was into being the former BASIS (Brooklyn and Staten Island) superintendent.
ReplyDeleteYet, I heard a story that Myron observed a teacher (unannounced, of course) and thought the lesson was terrible. Now this teacher was tenured and a fixture at Cleveland. Well, Myron heard that the guy's mother was very sick and he was spending a lot of time with her. Myron found this out and told the teacher he would term up the bad observation and do one another time. These guys all had some humanity. Would one of the Leadership Academy geniuses do that?
I'm glad I found this blog and thread. I worked at 1 of the worst smaller schools in Lehman HS, Westchester Square Academy, and you're right, the principals and APs do nothing about the violence but incessantly torture their staff (why, I have no idea). This was the worst experience I had ever had in my whole career of many different types of careers. I had just started teaching, as well as many of the other new teachers, and I'd never witnessed anything like it in all my Teaching Artist days (or student teaching). It was unbearable. The bullying was not so much of kid on kid it was kids on teacher!
ReplyDeleteAnd the principal, Clueless salcedo and her minions would do absolutely NOTHING to any offending student--ever! just blame, blame, and more blame and deny all the teachers' rights, safety, and even wellbeing. I have a kind of interesting background with whom I've worked & am no spring chicken so the kids kept asking me Why are you even here when you've already done x,y & z? I said bc I love teaching! ughhhh, I did (& do) but I DON'T like ineffectual and outright vindictive, exceedingly vengeful administration. Instead of caring about the students' and staff's safety, salcedo concentrates and obsesses on whose teaching career to ruin next...for what? This woman is so small inside I guess she uses this bizarre place of "power" if you can even call it that to exercise her completely misguided authority to torment her subordinates. Meanwhile, the school is in full free-fall chaos and now they have a lawsuit by some parents whose student was attacked with scalding water. It never ends. I am very worried for the students and staff alike who either swagger through the hallways terrorizing others or cower in them avoiding all conflict or atacks.
@7:48. Regarding Myron: Humanity? LOL - The man once observed someone who recently buried a loved one. When the teacher asked, "Myron, how could you do this to me"? The bastard responded, "I want to see how you work under pressure." He was hardly human. I'm 22 years in this system. I started under Liebrador at Cleveland. Heard all his stories from those that where there and survived him. It should be on record that he treated many members of the individuals, he should have been guiding to become better teachers, as absolute trash. He most likely entered into administration because of the combination of his students laughing at him and his inability to keep the interest of a class - what hypocrisy.
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