Our Local School

Thaddeus Stevens

Little Joe turns four next year and we're looking for a decent preschool for him. The elementary school we are zoned for is P.S. 81 Thaddeus Stevens School on DeKalb Avenue. This is the description from Inside Schools:

PS 81 is located in the heart of Bedford Stuyvesant, directly across the street from the Eleanor Roosevelt Houses. Nearly all of the school's students live in these projects or in one of the neighborhood's homeless shelters. While the school is not chaotic, teachers and administrators tend to speak firmly with the children to keep their behavior in check.

The school struggles to deal with the social and academic needs of its students. Many come from difficult home situations, said Principal Cheryl Ault. Still, said Ault, who has been the school's principal since 2003, she is determined to move the school forward. "There's no 'We can do it, but,'" she said. Instead, she said, the school's view is that it can educate the kids "in spite of" the problems they bring from home.

In 2004, the school was placed on the state's list of "Schools In Need of Improvement" for math, and this has put it in a bind. Under the federal No Child Left Behind law, a school on the list is considered failing, so students there are allowed to transfer. But the federal government does not provide additional funding to improve the school until it fails for a second year in a row. "The option they are giving me is that my best children can go, but they don't give us any [resources to improve]," Ault says. "They want the school to fail, and then give extra help."

And extra help would be welcome, according to Ault, who says the school would benefit from smaller class sizes and from more resources, such as books, supplies, and more guidance services. We noticed that kindergartners were reading from ragged-looking books, and the school's computers are outdated. Class sizes of 32 or 33 students in the 5th grade make for very cramped classrooms.

While a number of teachers are succeeding "in spite of" the school's challenges, others are not. We visited some classrooms where lessons were productive. But in others, such as a class where students who were supposed to be doing independent reading were, instead, sitting empty-handed and getting little work done, lessons floundered.

We did see bright spots. We were impressed by the school's art teacher, who incorporates science into his art lessons. On the day of our visit, kindergartners were making picture books that depicted the life cycle of a butterfly. (Unfortunately, not all students receive art instruction.) And all students do take gym, although some gym classes overlap with part of the students' lunch period. The school also benefits from parent volunteers, and an active PTA.

Another plus: Two of the school's teachers have started a guidance group for 5th grade girls called "YESS," an acronym for "Young Elegant Sisters of Substance." The group does volunteer work and focuses on self-esteem and good decision-making for the girls as they head into middle school. "Middle school is a tough transition, and there's a lot of peer pressure on these girls," said a 4th grade teacher who helped found the group.

Struggling students get small-group instruction in a "Read 180" program, which pulls the lowest performing students from their classrooms for 90 minutes at a time.

I'm afraid this hardly sounds promising. And then I found this gem from a U.S. House of Representatives 2007 press release:

NEW STUDY SHOWS SEX OFFENDERS LIVING TOO CLOSE TO OUR KIDS

NEW YORK: Sex offenders across the five boroughs are living too close to our city’s schoolchildren, according to a new comprehensive study released today by Rep. Anthony Weiner(D-Brooklyn & Queens), a member of the subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, and Rep.Edolphus Towns (D-Brooklyn).More than 85% of registered sex offenders in New York City live less than five blocks from schools, and 670 sex offenders live within just two blocks.Some offenders are even closer, permanently residing less than 500 feet away from unwitting parents, educators and children.

The current sex offender registry – maintained by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services – contains the names, addresses and offenses of 2,114 registered sex offenders citywide.Over a two month period, Rep.Weiner’s office analyzed this data, plotting sex offender addresses against school locations in all five boroughs, mapping sex offender density by borough and examining the top zip codes that offenders call home.The result is the most comprehensive assessment of where sex offenders are living in relation to New York City schools.

The study found that Brooklyn is home to the most sex offenders of any borough in New York City, counting 671 offenders among its residents.Of that number, 179 offenders live just two blocks away from schools and more than 90% of sex offenders living in Brooklyn are within a five block walk from a school.

Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx are all home to between 400 to 500 sex offenders each, and at least 145 in each borough are living within a short two block walk from schools.

The school with the most sex offenders at its doorstep is Thaddeus Stevens Elementary School (PS 81) in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Six offenders live just two blocks away including J. Norwood, a “sexually violent” offender. Norwood, who was convicted in 1998 of raping a 10 year old female, lives just 229 feet away from PS 81.Another offender, W. Hodges, lives across the street in an apartment building that overlooks the school’s playground.

Coming from relatively privileged backgrounds, Joseph and I know that although we may not have the funds to send our son to private school, we do have the option to enroll him in a charter school outside our zone. That is, knock on wood, if we get in. But what about all the kids from the projects and shelters who's parents are struggling in the system, trying to make ends meet, and possibly with other problems such as drug or alcohol abuse?

And by sending our kid to another school, does that make us part of the problem? Because it doesn't look like we're part of the solution. And what is the solution anyway?