Three Syracuse city schools, which were once in danger of closing, have been given another chance to survive if they can submit a plan of action by the end of April.

The Syracuse City School District must submit a plan for Fowler High School, Delaware Academy Elementary School and Hughes Elementary School — all considered persistently low-achieving schools by the New York State Education Department — by April 30.

In a March 4 letter to superintendent of schools Sharon Contreras, Ira Schwartz, assistant commissioner of NYSED, said the district has five options: close the schools and relocate the students, phase out the schools to replace them with new ones, create an agreement with an educational partnership organization to run the schools, convert to charter schools or allow the State University of New York, or in Syracuse’s case, Onondaga Community College, to provide education.

On Wednesday, parents, teachers and representatives from the Syracuse Teachers Association will meet to discuss the future of the three schools, said David Cecile, a commissioner on the Syracuse City School District Board of Education.

Though the schools may eventually be phased out, Cecile said he has received mixed feedback from parents and teachers about the changes, adding that there has been little turmoil among the community so far. The real discussion, he said, will begin after the school board issues a vote on the proposed plan.

As it stands, Fowler High School could become a Public Safety High School starting next year, while the plans for Delaware Academy remain unclear, Cecile said. The letter states that Contreras is considering letting a SUNY institution, such as OCC, assume the responsibility of educating students at Delaware Academy.

In the letter, Schwartz indicated that Hughes Elementary School was already being converted into a Latin School. This alternative model will have selective admission and several assessments to make sure students are accelerated and keeping pace with the curriculum, said Maxwell Ruckdeschel, vice president of the school board.

The school would be based off of the Latin School of Chicago, which is an accelerated, tuition-based school that currently serves 66 Chicago neighborhoods, according to its website. The school did not report its average test scores for 2011, but it does have a pupil to teacher ratio of 8-to-1, according to a Chicago Magazine study of the “Top Private Schools in Chicago and the Suburbs.”

Fowler High School has a pupil to teacher ratio of 14-to-6, compared to the New York state average of 12-to-5, according to high-schools.com. Hughes and Delaware have similarly high ratios. The ratios demonstrate why 19 schools in the 30-school SCSD are considered priority schools, NYSED spokeswoman Jeanne Beattie said in an email.

“Those (priority schools) are schools that eventually could be forced to close or change dramatically if they don’t improve,” Beattie said.

In 1989, New York state planned to phase out 100 schools due to poor academic performance, Beattie said. There are currently about 220 schools statewide that are considered priority schools, she said.

Fowler, Hughes and Delaware were all given almost three years and state financial support to improve, but did not show enough progress, Ruckdeschel said.

The disparity stems from a host of issues, and income inequality is a major component. Fowler High School is located in the Southside neighborhood of Syracuse, which has a median household income of $22,901 and “high poverty and unemployment rates,” according to a Syracuse neighborhood study.

Across the U.S., there are severe achievement gaps from district to district. In Syracuse, gaps exist within the district — just two miles down the road from Fowler High School is Westhill High School, which has the highest graduation rates in Central New York, Cecile said.

Fowler has maintained a graduation rate of about 29 percent for the last four to five years.

“In my opinion, the achievement gap has to do with the high poverty level in Syracuse and the Westside of Syracuse in particular,” Cecile said.

In districts ridden with poverty and unemployment, problems at home can leave children to be raised in an “environment that is not conducive for learning,” Cecile said. Many jobs aren’t available for kids in the community around Fowler, so the new schools will need to get students interested in a career to motivate them to finish their high school diploma, Cecile said.

If the district plans to phase out the schools, it will also gradually displace teachers, Cecile said. By next year, the 9th grade teachers will be removed from the school, then the 10th grade teachers, and so on.

Cecile, who also served as principal of Henninger High School for 26 years, said the method of phasing out teachers is ineffective. Three years ago, Henninger, Corcoran High School and Nottingham High School moved several teachers out of its district, but they “haven’t seen a high success rate after that,” Cecile said.

If the district moves more teachers out of schools like Fowler — it has cut more than 1,000 members of its staff in the last 3 to 4 years — the move will only hurt students and the community, Cecile said.

In communities surrounding schools like Fowler, Cecile said, the residents get to know the teachers and the teachers are “very dedicated” to helping their students and the community.

“You’re moving those supports out of the community and it throws a whole new issue in there for some of the kids,” Cecile said. “Some of the families have known these teachers for many years.”

But even if the community wanted to save these schools, it is unlikely that the city could give them more money. Syracuse is in “dire straits,” Cecile said, with the city struggling to repair its roads and water system, so extra funding would have to come from the state.

For now, schools like Fowler, Delaware and Hughes will continue to reflect those “dire straits.”

Said Cecile: “When you look at that, you’ve got to say what’s going on in the community that’s causing that? Is there something that we could do differently?”

Published on April 15, 2014 at 12:51 am

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