Federal Program Blamed For Long Island City High School Scheduling Chaos
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Students at Long Island City High School in Queens have struggled with major changes to their schedules recently, and teachers and administrators say a federal program that provides millions of dollars to fix problems may actually be to blame. NY1’s Lindsey Christ filed the following report.Long Island City High School is getting millions of dollars to improve under a federal program, but now teachers and administrators say it's that effort that spun the school into chaos to begin with.
The Queens high school is one of 33 schools in the city that won federal funding to fix its problems rather than shut down. Each gets up to $2 million a year for three years to make some big changes.
However, as NY1 first reported, the changes at Long Island City have not been good.
"What happened to these kids should never have happened to anyone," said Queens City Councilman Peter Vallone, Jr.
Last week, 120 class sections were cut out of the schedule. Four course offerings were canceled entirely, meaning 900 students attended two months of classes in courses that no longer exist. All 3,500 students were given new class schedules with different teachers.
The school blames the transformation program.
“There were a lot of things that weren't broke that they wanted fixed, and sometimes that causes more problems that really have to be fixed. And it's been a difficult time dealing with people from Washington feeling that they know better than the people on the ground,” said teacher Ken Achiron.
The grant required replacing the school’s longtime principal, who teachers say dealt well with the complicated scheduling, and also called for the school to be divided into smaller "learning communities."
“That was done too quickly. It was too much of an effort to do to a school this large that quickly,” said Vallone.
This school is in its second year of the three-year federal program. Three other schools that just started and got millions may never get that far.
This week, Department of Education officials said they’re considering closing Grace Dodge, Lehman and Washington Irving for poor performance.
Grace Dodge got an F on its annual progress report last week, as did the two other transformation schools the DOE is now considering closing. That's made officials reconsider whether these schools are salvageable after all.
The teachers at Long Island City say "transformation" hasn't turned out to be a positive.