Welcome to phaseoutschools.wordpress.com!

Welcome to my blog! This blog is intended to create a forum for students enrolled in schools currently in the process of phasing out to record their thoughts, feelings, and experiences about the phase-out experience. Essentially, I am collecting the oral history documenting the final years of these closing schools.

Phase-out is a process in which a school gradually closes; generally, new smaller schools expand within the school building, gaining a grade a year as the closing school shrinks, losing one grade per year until the final graduating class. In many cases these closing schools have long and storied histories which now are coming to a sad and controversial end.

One of these schools is Jamaica High School in Queens.

Jamaica was initially placed on a closure list in 2009 and, although the Panel for Educational Policy voted in support of the mayor’s closure plan, the courts in March 2010 determined that the law had not been followed and that it and the other 18 schools slated for closure would remain open. At the same time, however, two new schools opened within the building (co-located) to make a total of four schools in Jamaica High School’s building (Queens Collegiate had already been co-located two years earlier; it expanded to include a middle school in 2010). Meanwhile, high school admission letters for the 2010-2011 academic year had been sent to students just prior to the judge’s decision based on the expectation that Jamaica would not be accepting any incoming freshmen; a second admissions letter was subsequently sent to students who had applied to Jamaica explaining that the school was “failing” and that the city wanted to close it, but that the students had the option of choosing to attend Jamaica rather than whatever other school to which they had been admitted. Less than a year after Judge Lobis’s decision kept Jamaica open, Jamaica was again named for closure and in February 2011 the Panel for Educational Policy again voted to close the school. Phase-out began in September 2011 and will culminate with the closure of Jamaica High School with the graduation of the current sophomore class in 2014, unless the UFT/NAACP case currently pending before the courts opposing closure and co-location policies is decided in the school’s favor.

Students in Jamaica describe the school before closure as “welcoming,” but describe a very different school today.

I invite you to share YOUR experiences as a student or teacher in a closing school on this blog, so that others know what your experiences are. Just email me your story at phaseoutschools@gmail.com! Comments can be anonymous but, please, keep them clean!