A Student's View: How Not to Close a School

by Melissa Kissoon

Inside Schools

January 31, 2011

http://insideschools.org/blog/2011/01/31/a-students-view-how-not-to-close-a-school/

I was victim of a high school phase out.  Do you know what
it's like to have four new schools come into your school
building?

The first year after the Department of Education announced
that my school, Franklin K. Lane High School in Brooklyn,
would be closed, we weren't allowed to set foot on the
fourth floor anymore. The next year, the DOE split the rest
of the floors in halves. So, if your classroom was around
the corner, you could no longer just walk over to your room.
You'd have to go upstairs and around and back down stairs to
make it to your class. As a result of this, many students
were late for their classes. Students missed class time and
got in trouble because our school was chopped up and our
building was divided!

The great teachers we once loved either switched to the
other schools in the building or left. There is no longer a
library in the building, because Lane doesn't have enough
money for a library and the other four schools have small
budgets. Students with essays due and no printer or computer
can't print - then they struggle to figure out how to pass
their class.

Almost all the after school activities belong to the other
schools, including the sports and the ROTC. Two of my
friends are in their last year at Lane. One of them is only
taking one academic class. He scored well on his SAT and is
applying to Brown University but there are no Advanced
Placement classes for him to take and he is done with school
every day at noon. My other friend was told last year that
he had enough credits to graduate. He was 16, a junior and
not ready for college. There is a difference between having
enough credits to graduate, getting a rigorous education,
and being prepared for college.

The phase out has failed us all, hundreds of us in Brooklyn
and thousands of us in New York City. I was a cheerleader,
so school pride was important to me. There is no longer
school pride, there is no encouragement, there are no
familiar teachers, there are no resources to help us pass.
All that remains is a push, a push out of the school by any
means possible.

I graduated and I'm in college now, at City Tech. But I look
back at the last four years of my life and I feel robbed of
my high school experience. My school was no longer MY
school; I was basically being kicked out of a school that
made a promise to support me and give me all I need to pass.
If the Department of Education is truly committed to
students, they must include us in decisions about OUR
education.

[Melissa Kissoon is an 18-year-old graduate of Brooklyn's
Franklin K. Lane High School, which will close this year.
The school began to "phase-out" to make way for new small
schools while she was a junior. She is a youth leader with
Future of Tomorrow and the Urban Youth Collaborative. This
blog post was adapted from the EdVox.org website.]

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