Richmond Hill High School has a violence problem

From the Daily News:

School safety officials said a video recorded by students at the school on March 10 shows a gang initiation, with a crowd of students pummeling each other on campus.

Cops responded to the school after two girls struck another girl in the face, according to police records for that day.

The victim didn’t report any injuries, but a shaky cell phone video that safety agents provided to the Daily News shows a melee with a mob of students punching each other.

The safety agents union president, Greg Floyd, said scared students gave the video to agents at the school in a cry for help.

“The de Blasio school violence coverup isn’t working,” Floyd said. “Students are afraid of the gangs, guns, knives. They came to us because no one at City Hall is listening.”

Parking signs appear out of nowhere

Dear Crappy,

These signs went up on 3 blocks around Richmond Hill High School in Richmond Hill Queens without notice yesterday afternoon. Previously, you just couldn’t park in front of the school doors on school days. Yesterday, new parking restrictions were posted saying parking was permitted only with Dept of Ed permits during school days from 7 – 4 taking away a lot of the community’s parking. I already had been parking 1 block away from home due to competition for parking from multiple family homes and apartment buildings. Yesterday, disabled son in tow, I parked 2 blocks away (and I was probably the first to spot the signs). Who knows how far away I will have to park the next time? My neighbors and I take the train to work so we need places to park a car for 24 hour stretches and this takes 40-50 of those spots away. How can they do this without notice to the community? It’s a hardship to the community!

I sent this to Ruben Wills aide since the school is within his bounds as is an apartment building nearby. My side of the street across from the apartment was carved off into Karen Koslowitz’s district Eric Ulrich’s also has some of the impacted nearby community.

Did these signs go up elsewhere in Queens, too?

Helen

Kids learning in trailers not counted

From DNA Info:

Richmond Hill High School is so crowded that, at any given time, 375 students are attending classes in temporary trailers next to the school, according to the school's PTA.

But the Department of Education's latest report on school trailers did not list any students in temporary classrooms there. It also didn't count thousands of other students in trailers at dozens of public schools across the city, advocates said in a report released Friday.

The School Construction Authority's 2012 report on trailers listed 7,158 students in the temporary classrooms, which are often criticized by parents and teachers as moldy, leaky and disruptive of students' learning.

But the School Construction Authority's number did not include thousands of students from 47 schools who were in trailers but were not counted because of technicalities, the study found.

For example, at 14 high schools, including Richmond Hill High School, the DOE did not count any students in trailers because the trailers were not used as homerooms, according to the School Construction Authority's explanation of the numbers.

And in 28 elementary schools and three middle schools, no children were counted in the trailers because the temporary classrooms were used for art, music or other special classes, rather than standard academic subjects, the School Construction Authority said.

Richmond Hill High School has some major behavioral issues

From the NY Post:

Richmond Hill HS is suspending more of its students than any other school in New York City.

The Queens secondary school, which has 2,169 students, handed out 492 suspensions as of May 5, according to city records.

That’s more than the 473 school officials doled out all of last year — and there’s still about six weeks left before classes end.

Vishnu Mahadeo, the school’s PTA president, blamed the high punishment rate on overcrowding and “weak leadership.”

“We have a new principal that is trying to bring up a behavior code,” he said. “When you don’t have strong leadership, the kids tend to be a little bit out of control. When you have a strong leadership, things change.”

Parents familiar with the school said overcrowding and disciplinary problems go hand-in-hand.

“When you push kids into overcrowded conditions, many will react in frustration and anger because it shows a school system doesn’t care about them,” said parent advocate Leonia Haimson.

The school’s principal, Neil Ganesh, didn’t return calls. He’s the third person appointed to lead the school in the last three years.

High schools to close and reopen

From the Daily News:

The future of eight large Queens high schools — and the hundreds of educators who work there — are in jeopardy as the city plans to overhaul the struggling institutions.

The schools could lose up to half of their staff and receive a new principal and name this fall after the city and teachers union failed to reach an agreement on teacher evaluations.

The move could help the city get up to $60 million in federal funds.

Kathy Carlson, president of the Parents Association at Grover Cleveland High School, in Ridgewood, blames the school’s poor graduation rate on its large number of students who aren’t fluent in English — and therefore take longer to finish high school.

Other Queens schools facing a turn-around include Flushing High School; Long Island City High School; William Cullen Bryant High School, in Long Island City; John Adams High School, in Ozone Park; Newtown High School, in Elmhurst; and Richmond Hill High School.

Queens: Vibrant, diverse and full of dropouts!

High schools on chopping block to stay open

From the NY Times:

There was a sense of relief at nine low-performing city high schools on Thursday as the city’s Department of Education announced they would not be closed next year. The decisions came after months of uncertainty about the schools’ future.

But with the relief came concern and confusion over what exactly would happen to the schools, which instead will go through a federal process known as the restart model, which has not been tried before in New York City.

Each of the nine schools is eligible to receive up to $6 million over three years to transform its lower-than-average graduation rate into an educational success story. But to qualify for the money, the city has to contract with outside organizations to see if they can do a better job managing the school than the city did.

That raises a host of questions about how much authority these organizations, nonprofit groups that will be called educational partnership organizations, will have to lead the schools.

The schools that were announced on Thursday for restart include Herbert H. Lehman High School in the Bronx; John Dewey High School in Brooklyn; and Richmond Hill High School, John Adams High School and Newtown High School in Queens.