ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE DEATH OF BROOKLYN COMPREHENSIVE

The Department of Education hasn't listed our school in any of its press releases. So here's mine.

For over 17 years, it served as a literal beacon of light for some of New York's most disaffected youth. Now, after having established consistently strong scores on state exams, excellent graduation rates and after having created one of the safest school environments in New York City, the Dept of Education has decided to close the doors of Brooklyn Comprehensive Night High School.

Established as one of the first schools for over-aged and under-credited youth, Brooklyn Comprehensive Night High School has been a safe haven for disadvantaged youth 18-21 years of age. It has provided them with the opportunity to obtain a high school diploma -- not a GED --at night. These students have often attended more than one high school with limited academic achievement. Often they carry enormous adult responsibilities or have experienced profound personal loss. Take Daniel: early in his high school career, he lost one brother to an untimely death and one to prison. Without what he called, "his blueprints to life" he became despondent and the school he attended had poor control over its students, so he began to cut classes and then school altogether. With a failing average, he came to Brooklyn Comprehensive Night High School looking to re-build an academic career. And he did so far beyond his expectations, becoming an honors student who is now a sophomore at Brooklyn College.


For many of the students the school served as a place for them to begin to take pride in their studies and to develop the foundation of skills they never had. Students who came from abusive households, some in foster care, some living on their own, found the small school to be their substitute family. Assisting them in this process required patience and extensive individual attention. The school offered students tutoring before and after school, small classes, a safe and quiet environment and the understanding that they would have some of the time they would need to change. After so many years of academic difficulties, the school did not expect students to become instant successes. Nor did it make that success easy. However, the school's culture took it's cue from it's motto "Ad astra per aspera" --- "To the stars despite the difficulties."

The Dept of Education, in its meeting with staff and administration, acknowledged that there was no academic reason for closing the school. They criticized the school, rather, for its attendance. Simply put, the school does good work but for too few students. As the student population which the school has served comes with a history of little or no academic achievement -- most have averages below 60 -- it is difficult to imagine how the Dept. of Education could expect instant and immediate success. Frequently, students take time to build attendance-- often a student will not pass in his/her first term or even year at the school. Many of our students have experienced personal crises which do not stop just because they have signed up at our school. It may take a term or a year for the school to work with the student to help them to build their skills and try to assist them in stabilizing their lives. And as this population is comprised entirely of students who have poor records, it is inevitable that some of them will need more than the school can give. After all, statistically these are the lowest performing students with the least chance of graduation from any academic program.

Brooklyn Comprehensive, however, had a policy of trying to work with students even if they did not immediately make significant changes. In giving them the time to try to adjust, it risked having attendance records which reflected their absences. In its very premise, the school was betting against what their previous records seemed to indicate. A majority of the students presented undiagnosed learning disabilities and/or had missed significant portions of their schooling --their need for remediation was intensified by years of neglect. Often these students were also extremely intelligent and dedicated to the effort to change their lives -- a dedication which increased as they improved. For Brooklyn Comprehensive, therefore, the students' potential was worth the risk. The efforts of the school were rewarded by a student body which achieved more and more each year. Sadly, the Department of Education is unwilling to see that taking such a risk provides opportunities for students like Daniel to get the time they need to excel beyond what any statistics might have predicted.

The Children of Willy Loman Updated

This is the second draft of a post I will work on for a while, but I'm putting it up in case anyone has any comments along the way.

All my life, I have struggled with Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. The language feels sifted of any ethnic connection, yet it only makes sense to me within the context of being Jewish in Brooklyn in the 1940's. That other cultures have been able to adapt it doesn't take away the feeling for me that to thoroughly understand it, you have to imagine it from my mother's point of view.

Arthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman in 1949, when my mother was nine year's old. One year earlier, she had lost her 38 year old father to a heart attack precipitated by pneumonia and a life working as many hours as possible and filling what remained with whatever it took to become an accountant. On the wall, next to the dinner table was a black and white photograph of an entire generation of Greenbergs who had been recently slaughtered, each one with a story more gruesome of how his/her death took place. One had her baby tossed in the air and shot before her own throat was slit, another starved to death and some of the rest followed the now familiar last walk into a gas chamber. At eight years old, my mother had accompanied her mother to her father's funeral because she was expected by that age to understand death and be ready. For all she knew, the Nazis were still waiting around the corner to grab her by the neck and march her into a pile of bodies. The sense of expectation that your life could be ripped away from you by evil forces -- and that little would stand in their way -- took hold of children in the 1940's the same way it did Miller's Willy Loman. He held onto the idea of being "Well-liked" as his last armament against a city which had gone from being lush with space to one literally closing in on him.

Industry had made it nearly impossible for him to do more than scratch out a living at a job he committed to because it held more practical promise, say, than being a carpenter or a bricklayer at the turn of the century. For that reason, he also dreamed repeatedly of his brother Ben's magificent and seemingly luck-driven landing in riches. The "America" my grandmother knew when she came here in 1922 was a place you called, "charming," "enthusiastic," and "gay," and "full of opportunity." Whether you were 14 year old Benny Goodman playing with major Jazz bands or you sold paper or fur coats, you could put together a living and eventually you could rise in stature enough to have some kind of savings. The 30's took away the opportunity, but not initially, the promise it might be back. Benny Goodman's father never got to see his son perform because he did not want to be seen in shabby clothes (and he was hit by a car and killed early in his son's career.) In that refusal, lay the belief that there would be a time in which he would have the right clothes. I don't know if it was the rise of Hitler or the mercilessness of unchecked capitalism or both which gave Americans, especially new immigrants, their first sense of themselves as corpses.

Perhaps it was this sense that helped The New Deal to be passed and allowed the government to just create jobs in an economy which had been eager for cheap and disposable labor. Some of the audience who heard Willy Loman's famous complaint, "A man is not a piece of fruit!" had memories of a time, place and government which didn't tolerate the abuse Loman railed against. The children, however, grew up with the tension that remained around the frailty of the government created jobs at which their parents worked. This combined with growingly vivid pictures of mass genocide was part of their normal day. For the baby-boomers, things were not the same. Their parents were coming home after a conquest and were eager to make things safe and pleasant and better for their children. A friend told me that the baby boomers were the first group of teenagers to be targetted as a specific market.

My mother found dolls like Ken and Barbie very frivolous. For her, the 60's were not a time to blossom and dream big, but a time to corner a piece of the stock market in male form and to guard your every posession in plastic or moth balls. The many elegant services of silverware remained in the closet. She said they were supposedly for me, but I knew intuititively that no one, not even I would use them. They remained as possible barter for hard times. Though she dyed her hair and she wore the full "Jackie-O" make-up, she could not and cannot to this day smile convincingly. Most of her life was spent with a simple cloth or vinyl hat on her head, a "car coat," and bags and bags of food in her arms, on her hips and stomach. We stored food in our house in permanent fear of the inevitable day of either joblessness or homelessness or what we would now call, "the haters" appearing at our doorstep. "You can't trust anybody," and "Nobody will appreciate you," were two of the mantras in the tiny apartment across from the Belt Parkway, in which we lived.

As though it were expected of her, my mother effectively killed the part of her that wanted joy, improvement, education, sex, physical activity -- any part of young life. At 8 years old, she'd been prepped for the life of Willy Loman. She worked a job in the civil service -- the one place left you couldn't be disposed of when you hit a certain age or lack of production. And she was forced to retire at 55, anyway, because the mindlessness of the job contributed to the overall destruction of her mind that a life without pleasure induced. She had no hope of pleasure, except in prurient gasps -- in cheating. In taking me out of school to go to the theater (it was okay because it would be educational for me, so it wasn't just a joyride.). In looking too closely at the teeth or the legs of someone nearby. She clobbered through her days and her muscles stretched the skin around her broad cheekbones to their limits. No rouge could make her look anything less than a heavyweight boxer, too thick to move quickly enough to win, but strong enough to make people afraid and give her dominion over the tiny space within our apartment which was hers.

IT IS TRUE, AS SHARON PEARCE POINTS OUT, that what my mother (and her generation or her clique within it) could've learned from the baby-boomers' was, simply, to fight back. As a rule, the Lomans expect to be treated fairly for mostly playing by the rules -- or not deviating anymore than anyone else. And they didn't "make waves." Even in the 1970's, my Hebrew school was still teaching us "Don't break away from the group," -- don't be strange, don't protest, don't act up. An entire generation's impulse against this hadn't made an impact on the lower-middle class Jewish community in Brooklyn in which I grew up. I didn't get a full sense of the power of civil disobedience until college when I was taught by professors who had participated within the civil rights movement.

The boomers were asked to do two completely hideous things -- to continue to repress civil rights even as African-Americans laid down their lives for basic freedoms and to fight in Vietnam. And mostly they refused. My unde went for the Loman reasons -- "America is this great country and I thought I should give something back." I don't disparage those reasons. They are the response of grateful immigrants who tried to be everything they thought that this country wanted them to be. I don't know what gave the boomers the power to protest, except for the heinous and un-American nature of what was being asked of them. I guess, also, having not been inundated with WWII and the Holocaust, they didn't have the sense that you can't stop a gigantic hate machine. At least, that's where I get that feeling from. That and my mother's insistence, "you can't fight City Hall." The fervor left from her unqueched passion went into the chaotic raising of me -- the second generation of Lomans. I, too, became a civil servant. I've never expected to travel, own a car or a house. I snatch pleasure in the quick and cheap --- chocolate soy milk, soy pudding, etc. My fervor goes into my cats whose lives are built on simple pleasures, too. My education was carefully planned as Jews didn't let go of that trope within The American Dream publicly. Sure, we knew imbeciles who opened delicatessens and made fortunes, but the pristine nature of the intellect has not yet been fouled by the cruelties of industrialization. Look who beat Willy Loman? Bernard, the nerdy kid next door who went on to defend cases in The Supreme Court. How had he done so? By avoiding the "evil eye" of talking about what you do before you do it. And Miller maintains a belief that academic achievement will help an individual survive in the corporate world, which I don't think people share commonly today.

Never forget, however, how nervous Bernard is for Biff -- he sees the edge of doom coming toward him in the same way that Willy does. But, he never gave up his end of the bargain with Biff, either -- he was always assisting him in the hopes that his athletic efforts would pull him out of high school and safely to a career, after all. I wonder, if when Willy Loman talked about being "well-liked," and not being "a piece of fruit," if there weren't people in the audience who never expected that he would be treated so badly. True, he's not perfect. But, one year earlier Harry Truman had just won the presidency. Describing his campaign, David McCullough writes
No president ever campaigned so hard or so far. Truman was sixty-four years old. Younger men who were with him through it all would describe the time on the train as one of the worst ordeals of their lives. The roadbed was rough and Truman would get the train up to 80 miles an hour at night. The food was awful, the work unrelenting. One of them told me, "It's one thing to work that hard and to stay the course when you think you're going to win, but it's quite another thing when you know you're going to lose." The only reason they were there, they all said, was Harry Truman. For Truman, I think, it was an act of faith--a heroic, memorable American act of faith. The poll takers, the political reporters, the pundits, all the sundry prognosticators, and professional politicians--it didn't matter what they said, what they thought. Only the people decide, Truman was reminding the country. "Here I am, here's what I stand for--here's what I'm going to do if you keep me in the job. You decide." (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/character/essays/truman.html)

The country had just voted, essentially for Willy Loman. All the more reason that Linda Loman is so shocked that the businessworld has shown such disrespect for her husband, when they are even debt free. Why is it, now, it is so hard to feel that same disgust and how did Miller know we would become such traitors to ourselves? It isn't Biff that's right, Bernard that's right -- but in fact, the country agreed with Willy Loman at the time. You rewarded people for steadfastness and you permitted them faults. However terrible a salesman (and I'll take the fifth on arguments that technology would've helped him to be better as some articles say, missing the whole point of the play) Willy had been loyal, mostly hard-working and had trudged down those roads on an act of faith, just like Harry Truman had come to the White House. He deserved better, and though it was clear he wasn't going to get it, I think the audience would've been much more outraged at the end of the play than we usually believe. Maybe they wouldn't have protested or "made waves," but they would've expected more from the people they worked with -- or hoped for more, against their best instincts and fears. Just as people didn't leave New York City for Wyoming at that time, I think no one expected anyone to be put out on the street after long years of service. It wasn't supposed to be done. My grandmother would've been disgusted with the company. My mother would've hoped for better, but not been surprised. I grew up learning that Biff had the right idea and that Loman's tragedy was his own failure to see his own flaws. That never made complete sense to me, I think because I was raised to expect the worst from my mother -- but to know it was "the worst" -- that it was treacherous. If we are supposed to feel horror about Willy then why not stop the play after we find out he cheats on his wife? Why not kill him off there? The horror is to see this Everyman be treated so miserably by his company -- yes, he should've seen it coming, like his children did, but there was no way he could've. Abandoning someone to the streets was unheard of -- there had been a New Deal and even my grandmother's family moved into the new government sponsored housing projects built after World War Two. My mother clinged to hope against hope and she practically made it, small pension and insurance and all. What Willy wanted was NOT unheard of, and it really shouldn't ever be.

On students like those at BCNHS

Note: Brooklyn Comprehensive Night High School had a graduation rate higher than those quoted here and nowhere near the budget of South Brooklyn High School WHICH HAS A VAN TO PICK STUDENTS UP. But, godspeed to the future schools who do the important work described in the article below.

From Time magazine
Thursday, May. 03, 2007
Stopping the ExodusBy Claudia Wallis

Kids who quit school don't just suddenly drop out; it's more of a slow fade.Typically it begins in the ninth grade, if not earlier, often when life hitsa particularly nasty patch and racking up credits in class no longer seemsespecially compelling or plausible. Ernestine Maisonet started fading ineighth grade, when the grandmother who had raised her died. "She was a womanwho worked wonders," murmurs Maisonet, who says she doesn't know her motherand isn't close to her dad. After the death, her family of six siblings fellapart. Maisonet has lived sometimes with an aunt, sometimes with aboyfriend, and sometimes she had no place to go. "I was a good student untilmy grandmother passed away," says the 19-year-old redhead from the Bronx.Though she was enrolled in high school, she earned just three credits in twoyears: "I completely shut down. I didn't do good at all."Tanya Garcia, 19, of Brooklyn also went off track at the end of middleschool. A fire destroyed her family's apartment and left them homeless forfour months. She landed in a large, impersonal high school, and quicklybecame disengaged. "I started getting into drugs--weed, drinking, cocaineand heroin." After two years of mostly cutting class, she had accumulated agrand total of one credit. When she tried to transfer to another school,"the dean pretty much laughed in my face," she says. At 16, she stoppedgoing to school. "I didn't see myself having any kind of future. I would getsome job I hated and just survive."Against all odds, Maisonet and Garcia are slated to graduate in New YorkCity's class of 2007. They are among some 13,000 students who dropped out orwere on the verge of doing so but have been recovered in the public schoolsystem. The city's secret? Finding out who was dropping out and why andoffering a variety of paths--complete with intensive social support andpersonalized instruction- -back to school.Nationally about 1 in 3 high school students quits school. Among black andHispanic students, the rate is closer to 50%. For decades, school districtsobscured the hemorrhaging with sleight of hand--using misleading formulas tocalculate graduation rates and not bothering to track the kids who fellthrough the cracks. Getting a more honest accounting became a top priorityfor the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which was instrumental inpersuading the Governors of all 50 states to agree in 2005 to startmeasuring graduation rates in a fair and consistent way. Ask Melinda Gatesto name the foundation's top achievement in education so far, and shedoesn't hesitate to answer, "Getting the nation to look at graduation ratesin the right way."In 2005, New York used Gates funding to commission the Parthenon Group, aBoston-based consulting firm, to dig deep into its graduation data. Theresulting 64-page report, released last October, enabled the nation'slargest school district to discern how many kids it was losing, which onesand when. Just as important, it showed what was working to salvage high-riskkids like Maisonet and Garcia.New York asked Parthenon to focus on students who were two or more yearsbehind their peers in accumulating credits toward graduation. "We had ahunch that these overage, undercredited kids were the bulk of the dropouts,"says Leah Hamilton, executive director of the city's Office of MultiplePathways to Graduation. That turned out to be more correct than anyone hadimagined: 93% of dropouts had a history of being overage and undercredited.In fact, once students fell into this category, they had just a 19% chanceof finishing high school or getting a graduate equivalency diploma (GED).The groundbreaking study--which is being emulated in Boston, Chicago andPortland, Ore.--was full of surprises. Among them was the sheer size of NewYork's problem: 70,000 students from 16 to 21--more than one-fifth of thecity's high school population-- were two or more years behind their peers inaccumulating the 44 credits needed for graduation. An additional 68,000 hadalready dropped out. All told, New York's 138,000 lost and vulnerable kidsmade up a population larger than the combined public high school enrollmentof Philadelphia, Houston and Boston.Some of the biggest surprises in the midst of this enormous crisis were thesmall bright spots. The study showed that a number of existing programs wereremarkably effective in propelling dead-end students toward a diploma.Transfer schools--small, personalized high schools specially designed forkids who have fallen seriously behind--had a 56% graduation rate, comparedwith 19% for such high-risk kids at ordinary high schools, and some transferschools were graduating nearly 70%. Another program, Young Adult BoroughCenters (YABCs), which operates in the late afternoon and evening forstudents 17 or older, was enabling about 40% of these last-chance studentsto graduate.New York discovered that its most vulnerable ninth-graders- -the weakreaders--were much more likely to stay on track toward graduation at thecity's newer and smaller high schools than at its large conventional ones."A big aha," says Hamilton, "is that a single strategy was not going towork. You need a portfolio of strategies." In the wake of the report, thecity has examined what the best transfer schools, YABCs and GED programswere doing right and is trying to replicate them citywide.It's easy to spot what's going right at South Brooklyn Community High, thetransfer school that Garcia attends. It's obvious the minute the doors open.Waiting in the bright, airy reception area are six advocate-counselors , orACs. Each counsels 25 or so kids, whom they greet individually, often withelaborate, personalized handshakes or fist pounds. These close relationshipsare cemented by daily meetings and twice-weekly group sessions. When any ofthe school's 150 students fail to show up in the morning, the AC makes aphone call to find out why. Freddie Perez, 17, compares this with thecheck-in procedure at the big high school he used to attend: "I'd swipe myID at the beginning of school and then go back out the door," he says.The ACs are not school-district employees; they work for a nonprofitorganization called Good Shepherd Services. Every New York transfer schooland YABC is paired with a community-based organization that focuses on thesocial, emotional and family issues that tend to weigh down these students."We don't have the expertise for these complex challenges," explains schoolschancellor Joel Klein, who heads the New York City Department of Education.The academic staff is also enthusiastic about the partnership. "Teachers canfocus on the best way to educate students," says South Brooklyn's principal,Vanda Belusic-Vollor. "That's huge!"Classes at South Brooklyn have 18 to 25 students, as opposed to as many as34 in the city's large high schools. Students call their teachers by theirfirst name. Because the school runs on a trimester system, kids can rack upcredits more quickly than they could at an ordinary high school--part of theplan to keep them moving briskly toward graduation day. The teachers favor ahands-on approach; there's very little chalk and talk. Perez says he used tohate U.S. history. "In my old school, they'd just give you a page number andtell you to answer questions in the text." At South Brooklyn, he says,"we'll study a court case for a week, and the second week, we act it out.When it's test time, you remember it."Students are pushed toward New York State's demanding Regents diploma, whichmeans passing seven exams, and toward higher education. They mustparticipate in the city's Learning to Work program, which teaches employmentskills, provides college and career counseling, and offers subsidizedinternships. While not everyone loves his or her internship, Garcia was soinspired by her stint at a youth newspaper that she now hopes to studyjournalism in college.Most of the same elements are at work at the YABC in Lehmann High School inthe Bronx, where Maisonet spends her evenings. There are small classes ledby dynamic teachers, a Learning to Work program and close relationships withcounselors from a health and social-services group. The atmosphere here is abit more no-nonsense. The 250 students are all over 17, and many haveweighty daytime responsibilities. "They have kids at home. Some arepregnant. Some are homeless," says assistant principal Martin Smallhorne, anenergetic young administrator who works hard to create a personalizedprogram inside one of the city's larger and less intimate high schools.The clock is ticking for his 310 students. The goal: get them to graduationbefore they hit 21 and age out of the system. YABCS stress efficientscheduling. To attend, students must have spent at least four years in highschool and have accumulated at least 17 credits. "Their transcripts tend tobe a mess," says Michele Cahill, who helped create the Multiple Pathwaysprogram and is now at the Carnegie Corporation. Students might be missingthe second half of algebra and three years of phys ed. "Ordinary highschools are not set up to deal with these kinds of gaps," says Cahill, but agood YABC can sometimes get the job done in a year. New data show that aboutone-quarter of students at YABCS and transfer schools go on to college.Klein plans to greatly expand the number of transfer schools and YABCS overthe remaining 2 1/2 years of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration.Replicating successful programs is always tricky, but in this case there's apeculiar obstacle. Under state- and federal-accountabil ity rules, schoolsfull of students who don't graduate on time are labeled failing. By thatdefinition, YABCS and transfer schools fail no matter how brilliant a jobthey are doing. "It's hard to get partners to invest and hard to attractstrong leaders when the school is labeled failing," says Hamilton.New York will also have to stem the tide of students who fall behind in thefirst place. Ninth grade is a major pitfall. Parthenon found that 78% ofkids who become overage and undercredited had to repeat freshman year. Onekey is improving reading skills in middle school--a challenge nationally.Last year 37% of the city's eighth-graders were proficient in reading, upfrom 30% in 2002 but still a long way from ideal. Another key, Kleinbelieves, is continuing to replace big, impersonal high schools with smallerschools that offer a sense of community and a variety of programs. SaysKlein: "You want to create a really robust set of options."Providing more choices is paying dividends for New York. In the past threeyears, the city has raised its on-time graduation rate from 44% to 50%,though how states measure such figures continues to spur debate. Five- andsix-year graduation rates are also up. "We think it's powerfully importantto increase all these rates," says Klein. "It may take a kid a couple ofyears longer, but if the kid gets the diploma, the economic consequences arehuge."Maisonet is thinking about a job in veterinary care and possibly college,but without all the support she has had at the YABC, it won't be easy tomove on. When Maisonet suffered a late miscarriage in March, Smallhorne senttwo outreach staff members to find her, and she was back in school two weekslater. "I love YABC," she says. "The teachers say, Come on, you have tograduate--we don't want you here no more. But I'm going to cry when Ileave."

Grynberg has a note

Dear Teacher, Friend, Relative, Larry and Bernie,
Wednesday, 18 August 2010 at 08:13

After I came home from last night's Yankees game (they won), I found I couldn't sleep a wink. This happened the night before, too, but I was sure the game would wear me out. It didn't. I got a headache listening to a bunch of wise-guys behind me trying to predict the Yankees team for next year and a bunch of reckless 30 somethings drinking beer and making inside jokes loudly and nearly pissing themselves. On the two hour ride home (the "N" is local after 10pm.) I was able to "blitz out" a little. God bless Mr. Bloomberg. Now I have so many more chances to be mugged and assaulted by homeless people who get on at stations like "City Hall." Why we are stopping in non-residential neighborhoods and going under the fetid tunnel to do it, I don't know. I thought you saved energy when you went directly from point to point, not stopped and started. Fortunately, there were lots of people on my train discussing sales loudly and keeping their children under the age of one up late on the ride home from grandma. The kinds of noises babies can make never cease to amaze me. This one sounded like an electric toothbrush running backwards. My poor mother kept me off the subways until I was 7 so that I might have normal hearing. Alas, it was all for nought.

There doesn't seem to be a week in my life in which there is not some major catastrophe about to befall me or my friends. This summer brought eviction notices (to friends), the threat of jail for missing jury duty too many times (friends), and the tenderhooks which come from caring for a cat who is sensitive to all kinds of stress and who resists by not eating. (Friend's cat. Larry and Bernie eat.) So, even when you jump away to the Church of Overpaid Athletes and surround yourself in the photos and memories of successes which make your parents, uncles -- all of your forebears -- dreamy-eyed, you can't really escape the tension. Then, of course, I forgot that I moved my medication schedule way up, so that it starts at 10pm. Completely impractical, but some of this tension contributed to this foolish decision. So, just as the game ended, the withdrawal started to kick in. The buzzing in the ears. The inability to complete a thought. The rage at my own stupidity. And for some reason, I get very thirsty.

I got a real deal on a huge bottle of water for one dollar.

But, then my friend wanted to explore for a while and my mind was turning into rabbit food, my feet beginning to swell and my back bend toward the ground. For some reason, I think people can see these symptoms, but since I'm already so short, have huge feet and bad posture, I guess it's only a matter of degrees. I had to insist we go home. Then I had to remember which train to take -- which stairs to go up or down on. There were a lot of MTA people in the station telling us what we already knew. I thought I heard the MTA person tell my friend to just go upstairs and take the four. I got confused and angry and my friend, rightly told me to back off. When we finally reached the train, our place in Yankees mythology now torn away from us, the grimness set back in. Medicine had to be got at the pharmacy. Inadequacies of the Vet bothered my friend and this brought back memories of the loss of my first godson-cat. An afternoon in which he was screaming for attention and it was hard to get it. I wasn't there because I was somewhere with Karen. If I'd've been there I could've kicked up a scene. I'm good at that. That was my job. Instead, my friend was trying to bridge the line between Mary Tyler Moore and Taxi Driver that is the Animal Medical Center and my godson cat collapsed in the process. We lost him the next morning.

I went home angry at myself, my friend, at the doctors and ugly with the feeling that I had let down my dearest friend -- and he was. My own cat Fred, I fear I over-reacted to so many times that it had much the same effect. I am much calmer with Larry and Bernie but they are brimming with health and stamina and curiosity. Where and who I will be when they are frail and desperate I don't know. I promise them the world, but I mean the Disney one. The real one is the color of breath on a late night in the subway. A faint grey, tinged with sweat and impropriety. After all, who cares what happens to the 40 or so people on the "N" after 10pm? If you run a train, slowly, through the ghost stops of the workday, clicking into the routines of the homeless, the desperate and the lonely, what kind of protection can you offer the few people coming home from a sale or a baseball game? If that baby were screaming for attention and the parents got out at Court Street, there would be hardly anyone on the street until they reached the small newsstand down Montague. If they called 911, they'd be taken to over-crowded and under-funded Brooklyn Hospital or to the smaller, but no less crowded Long Island College Hospital. Would the baby have collapsed by then?

All of this does not deflect from my role in the death of my godson-cat. No one can handle anyone's failing health alone. I should never have let his mother go alone without me. But I was on my way somewhere with Karen or was I on my way to work? Work at a school closed in directly inverse proportion to the amount of care that the staff put into it -- it was done quickly and silently with barely a trace. The school that replaced it is a land-mine, out of control and dangerous. The first day they opened a girl brought a knife. But the principal is married to someone involved in the creation of Transfer High Schools. So, despite the fact that there is shouting in the halls and souls are collapsing, it will keep going. I'm told a lot of the new schools are in this kind of disrepair. So everyday, some parent goes home on the subways, clammy with the knowledge that he/she was powerless to save his own child.

So, please forgive me. I didn't sleep last night. I would like to have done things today, but I have to try to sleep. On a night in 2007, after four nights of not sleeping too well, I made a very poor judgement call which nearly put my cats and me in jeopardy. I yelled at someone. I tried to cross through that chaotic barrier of unwillingness and resignation to certain death and say something. But, I was rude, and I was tired and I was crying. So I spent a year and three months in the DOE's Rubber Rooms deciding whether or not I was civilized enough to ever work with people again. I did this, knowing full-well that it was illegal to put a person with Aspeger's Syndrome in the Rubber Room on his/her first offense. As a disabled person, I was entitled to the least restrictive environment. But, I was hoping that the many people who were speaking up for me would make the case. At least, in the end, it got me out sooner and helped me negotiate a settlement. Because no successful person in this country has ever lost his/her temper in public. Not George Steinbrenner, not Billy Martin, not Thurmon Munson, not Lou Piniella, not Michael Bloomberg, not Bill or Hillary Clinton, not Ronald Reagan ("tear down that wall" is a polite request), not MacArthur and not Barack Obama. Never. Curt statements about human rights don't count -- they were done in the proper form. You can't have everyone over for beers. So long as you don't shout, don't cry or show emotions, you’re fine. There are no mediators in most places. And what we need most are mediators, especially if we are going to bridge political, social, emotional gaps and reach across the table between the neurotypical and non. They say Einstein probably had Asperger's Syndrome. He was given a lot of room for eccentricity and assisted in bringing his ideas to the world. If that hadn't happened, well, he'd of been the janitor in "Good Will Hunting," if he were so lucky. Probably not with that hair.

What about the founding fathers, the “Give me liberty or give me death," people, the notion of resisting oppression especially when it’s life threatening. “You gotta do what you gotta do.” You can’t run a country with everyone resisting every five minutes. Well, you could, actually, if people would just be open about what their agenda were from the start. Then you’d know either not to take your cats to that Vet or you could stage a more formal protest against decisions made for reasons. Arbitrariness invites secrets and the theories of luck and favor. Someone once told me it was a particular politician’s “time.” Jesse Jackson used to preach sermons about it being “Morning Time” – time for the country to wake up.
The reality is that time is on a 24 hour clock and it’s either time to go to work or it isn’t. There is no particular “time for a change.” There is a necessity for a change. If you tell someone at a job, “it’s time for a change” and walk away, they might just change the music or ignore you and wait for more specific instruction. If you say, “it’s necessary to make a change,” they can immediately ask of what and why? If you believe it’s “necessary,” you’ll be more convincing and more likely to succeed. No one is going to take care of that cat or baby because it’s time to do so – Mussolini ran the trains on schedule and it helped no one, plus, his example has caused most people to go the other way. Time is now, later or yesterday. And it’s in the moment. No need to call attention to it. People make “To do” lists not “To Time” lists. I’m belaboring the point. We create fake measurements of efficiency in this country by doing so in terms of time, which we then say equals money. In that case, we have no control over either. Time is just a way we refer to something out of our hands. The question is: “How well is this country taking care of its people?” That answer comes in how many are living, how they are living and how many are not living. It is reflected in the number of prescriptions for sleeping pills, tranquilizers and sales of alcohol. A generation Martini’d, tranquilized and otherwise drugged itself through the day. My generation has advanced to variations on our parent’s methods, including more intricate and varied drugs as well as Yoga, etc. It’s all not a very efficient way of trying to do one thing: get attention for a sick child, a sick cat or a loved one. We attenuate our feelings so that we can, as politely and non-offensively as possible, ask for what we think is very necessary and some people are gifted at mediating through this, some people are lucky enough to be provided with mediation. For the rest of, there are the hours of lurking in the slow moving train home, blocking out the noise and the knowledge that should anything happen to us, there’d be nothing we could do about it. And you wonder why Ipods sell so well?

Meanwhile cats and babies pass out everywhere.

I will find sleep eventually. I hope there is time later in the week for the things I have promised today. I am genuinely sorry.

The Death of Brooklyn Comprehensive Night High School

My school is closing.

For 14 years our school has been able to meet the needs of some of the most difficult students in Brooklyn. We've had excellent results.

So why are we closing?

We don't serve enough VOLUME.

So, keeping a school open which helps 150 students a year do better than anyone had ever predicted is not worth the Dept of Education's time.

Go figure.

More later. Right now, I'm just furious.

Don't worry about me. They will place all the teachers somewhere else.

But there will be NO NIGHT PROGRAM for the students to transfer to.

And this was done after moving our school to a dangerous neighborhood, forcing our students to be searched every night as they entered the school, forcing the staff to do all sorts of what we now know was MEANINGLESS paperwork.

The worst part is, the kids who succeeded with us did better than they ever expected.

THE PLOT TO KILL SUSAN BOYLE

THE PLOT TO KILL SUSAN BOYLE!
 
I didn't see her Cinderella-like debut the night it happened, but learned about it during a peremptory class trip given to select members of the senior class at one of those large, historic high schools which was subsequently closed in Brooklyn, New York. About 30 members of that school's last graduating class had been volunteered the day before, to teach lessons they had never seen to kindergarten and first-grade children a few blocks away. In six inch heels and oxfords with sharp, pointy toes, our kids arrived somewhere between 8 and 8:30am for this unpaid teaching assignment, chatty, hungry and with no training for what they were about to do. Among the many reasons given for the closing of the school was its poor four year graduation rate, attendance and high rate of lateness. I can't say that even those who met the appointed time limit always hit all the other benchmarks, but you could often find high levels of intellectual and emotional accomplishment on both sides of the finish line. The kids that day were working very hard to do whatever it was they were supposed to be doing at around the time they were supposed to be there – not that I knew what either was, and I had everything but a doctorate.
 
A colleague who had done this for years, was in a suit and tie. All I had been told was that I was going on a trip, so I wore the generic black pants, white shirt, and black sweater purchased from some store which could pass for Old Navy. In a crisp, mandarin jacket which hung beneath her waist, was the woman from “QuestCon”, carrying about 30 lean plastic folders. “Shandeliquia?” “Um...she's not here yet,” said my colleague, as he gave her petite figure so inordinately thorough a review it made me blush. To lighten the mood, he started a conversation  with me. “What do you think of Susan Boyle?” I pulled my body from head to toe as if I were Gumby, to seem as tall, thin and geeky as possible. Sure, I am actually under five feet tall and dumpy. I aimed to camouflage my body shape and turn my impish face upward in an effort to make the teacher and the accompanying vixen feel old. If you broke me open and counted the rings, I had fifteen less than " have- aviator glasses- will -think- he's -ageless"  and ten less than" Ms. Where-Are-My-Unpaid-Slaves-Don't-They-Want-To-Be-Republicans?" It seems that yesterday she had cornered my colleague and made him, literally, grab every nice kid he knew and make them agree to a specific grade they would teach today. On their way to Music or lunch or the bathroom. By some miracle they all arrived and they brought friends who could help. I'm sure they sensed that my colleague was in trouble and that maybe the wench in the bad suit had a gun.
 
“I don't know who Susan Boyle is.”
 
“She's this woman in her 40's who went on Britain's got talent and might win. She's all over YouTube. She's got great courage. I really like her.”
 
“Is she really beautiful?” “No, she looks like—she could be any woman off the street. She's even kind of heavy. But, she's got a lot of spunk. She's funny. I think she's great.” He talks her up to the kids. “Oh yeah, the fat British chick with the amazing voice. I'm rooting for her.” It's a pathetic gesture, but I buy in.
 
We take the bus and get off way too early. The school we've been assigned to was the site of the murder of a little girl last year by a fellow kindergarten student. The principal spoke to us in the hall and now I remember the recordings played on the news. “She's turning blue.”
 
One of my students practices his list of rules on me. They sound fair. If they don't work, his partner, who still barely speaks English, will make lots of funny faces. Also sounds good. They haven't read the lesson yet. We weren't on the bus more than three minutes. I promise to come in and watch, and I do, almost immediately. So does my colleague. It's a relief to see the faculty is pretty casual and their parental instincts come out for our big kids, as well, but it isn't necessary. Within two minutes, it's clear. Our kids walk in, they are MOVIE STARS. Bona-fide real teenagers just like on TV and not related to me. And CUTE! Ten minutes in, and I see what used to be a class clown having the “perhaps when you are grown, you will understand speech” with a teary girl whose hand he is holding. The other girls look on. They are working very hard to suppress the “AHHH!” Our celebrities pull stories they see on the bookshelves which they recognize as good and start reading them. Or they make them up with the class. A lot of the kids talk about what happened last year while they do this.
 
Some of our teenagers have a real gift for this and emerge with their classes for lunch as...CHOO CHOO TRAINS.
The entire First-Grade was lead out by one student who was the front engine. If you broke the train, you had to go back. Each class was linked by another student. We bought our budding “Little Engines that Could” Chinese food. School lunch would've been a very cruel response to their ingenuity. They ate vigorously while their charges continued to eat the plastic food look-a-likes at tables nearby.
 
“YOU DIDN'T USE THE LESSONS.”
 
“Well, no.” “They already know what a penny is, Miss. And they have better books here. Plus, they're still not over the shooting. DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THAT? God, I'm still crying.”
 
“This is a complete failure.”
 
Frank O'Hara once wrote that children know they want their backs broken. I think teenagers know they don't. The default position for less than literate men who feel defensive and teenagers who feel they are being told how to live before they know what life is, is “chair back, foot against another chair, etc.” We had thirty kids in that position instantly.
 
I looked at the colleague who was my senior and said, “Oh, Mr. Rogers?”
 
 
“Yes. Miss, the children our students have worked very hard with today are happier than they were when they came in. Look at them. They're not fighting. They're in their seats. They are smiling and laughing. They came to the cafeteria as a choo-choo train. They all read or created stories which are very good literacy activities. Ask their teachers if they felt this was a meaningful day.”
 
“I will do just that.” With a barely visible swing of her woolen suit, she moved forward. “What does her face look like?” “You know,” answered a student named Paul, “that's a good question.”
 
“If they hadn't been so happy, we wouldn't be deafened by the clicks of her cheap plastic shoes,” I couldn't help noting.
 
When we came back from lunch, I sat in the rectangular, windowless lounge, lulled by the flyswatter-sound of the soda machine. With her jacket slung over her shoulder, our corporate sponsor shifted quietly in. The words came out quickly and she faced the floor. “I'm sorry. The principal is very happy with what your kids are doing. I was totally and utterly misguided.” My hand lifted some cold water from around my can of soda, applying to my face, while pushing my second can toward her. “Please, I have two. You'll dehydrate.” “Thanks.” She looked genuinely surprised. “I heard you talking about Susan Boyle. Isn't she amazing?” “Actually, I'm going to have to go home and watch her on YouTube. I missed it. I dean and teach. When I get home, sometimes I hit the floor like lead, right after I feed the cats.” “Well, there you go,” she said, and she eyed me like a salesgirl who thought she had found just the right shade of blush without knowing that I don't ever wear it. “Oh?” “She loves cats!” “She has a cat she loves so much and she lives with her mom and works in a bakery. That's been her whole life till now. That and her singing lessons. She's 48 years old.” “Jesus, what drudgery.” “She cares about her mom – and you, yourself said you love cats.” “The cats are great. But the bakery and going home to your mother when you are in your 40's. People must make so much fun of her. She must have a thick skin.” “Or, I hope so.”
 
Two years later and the school has come and gone, three small schools sitting in place of one, occupying the same building, only now it is called a campus.  I ask myself, what if someone had done a news report on the work of our students that day, would it have saved the school?  Or would it have won temporary, relatively useless recognition for the students involved, perhaps small checks toward books in their first year of college.  Of course, a good deed is supposed to be it's own reward, but so is academic study -- ideally, you aren't supposed to be weighted by how quickly you learn but by the fact that you keep trying.  I think of those students as part of the same mystery of Susan Boyle's career in this same period.
 
  I've now seen the Youtube video of that very first night and heard the Henry Mancini level productions that Simon Cowell put together of Susan Boyle. The first night is better than Frank Capra, especially because the technicians have clearly directed the show – they had to know she was going to win everyone over. You know they love her. The bells ringing like a boxing match is coming up. She's all adrenaline. The shift of the hips at Simon – “Take a ride on these hips, fella,” she seems to say. How could anyone have ever thought she was slow? Just very nervous and not from a major city. Or, so it seems. Admittedly, I don't watch these talent shows on a regular basis because they make me bilious. There seems something unfair to the millions of singers who braved piano bars a few towns over, found whatever kindred spirits were available, found their ways to a train, plane, bus, to audition after audition and then either luck or a family and some scrawny offspring named Baby June/Biff. Then again, we wouldn't have many talented artists without some of these shows, and talk shows are a kind of venue for new comic talent that aren't really available for other fields. I've “bought in” again to the story, though part of me wonder what of it, is a fix, the way people wonder about Babe Ruth's home runs.
 
Accusations appear and re-appear, especially when acts are put on television like man ubiquitously referred to in the tabloids as “the anti-Susan Boyle” - a man so deluded that he was disappointed to find out that the woman to whom he had dedicated his song about suicide was actually alive and well. He was, however, certain, he was set-up for as the butt of a joke and I'm sure he's right, that he knew that beforehand and that he couldn't have been happier – all the more reason to have had him sent to a hospital and not a green room. You can tell those two, adorable and fairly experienced sound technicians know Susan is going to do well that night and they'd have to be deaf and the world supremely unjust to be wrong. Does she know? And is she so overwhelmed at the end because she didn't believe the world would be just or because she didn't believe the world would have a moment when it wouldn't? What also struck me is all the times that the judges said that the audience was against Boyle from the beginning. THEY weren't against Boyle from the beginning. Amanda seemed charmed, Piers seems to know that this woman has something. Only Simon thinks she might be a nut job. The audience sits back when she talks. She's not talking B.S, she's not ragtag, and she's picked a good song. It feels as if she's already gotten good word of mouth from somewhere. This, “everyone was against you” bit seems phoney. Is it because the judges feel cognitive dissonance, or are they covering for a set-up that maybe even SHE doesn't know about?
 
Every time there's an interview, I buy it. I'm not looking for the deeper side of Susan Boyle. If anything, I'm quite content to accept that she might not be urbane, but I believe she's funny and been through enough to make her credible. Perhaps she may have been discouraged from thinking too much beyond what you need to do to get by because nothing in her life would have improved by doing otherwise. The “Susan Boyle Story” J find on Youtube is a whole seven minutes long. Why isn't there a film? She was was such a big story. Such a big discovery. Is she inflexible? Does no one in her village understand her? Has she opened up to no one. I can't imagine there was an individual in her life who would have understood if she had. One of the hard things about having an extraordinary dream is you often can't explain it to the people sitting next to you. You have to go far away to get recognition in order to be accepted at home.
 
Carole Cadwalladr, who wrote one of the few articles critical of the way Boyle's career has been handled, interviewed neighbors who testified that, "They used to taunt her and call her names and throw eggs at her door. And now they cheer her and ask for her autograph.” Noting that Boyle was Sony's best-selling artist in 2010, she concludes, “Susan Boyle has transformed her life and she's made a lot of money in the process, well in excess of the £4m in royalties she received with great fanfare from Simon Cowell last year on her birthday.” Those who taunt her and now seek out her valuable signature, also try to calculate her portfolio. Cadwalladr even found a priest in Boyle's hometown weighing in. “Father Ryszard Holuka, the local priest (Susan is a devout Catholic), does a quick bit of mental arithmetic when I tell him she's Sony's biggest-selling artist. "What do you think she gets? A penny a record?" He thinks for a moment. "That's a lot of pennies."
 
When I go back to that very first audition, I'm overwhelmed again. The face was actually, for all the awkwardness of the gangly haircut, vital and sensual. An audience of fashionably dressed people were lifted to their feet and their wasn't the least bit of rancor or pity in the ovation. When she walked immediately off the stage, I didn't think it was because Boyle was afraid. I thought it was because she had performed. Her audience had applauded and the natural thing to do was to walk off (come back for the “Brava!”) The three judges were now an intrusion. She'd never say it and she didn't think it, but she felt it. When Cadwalladr approached Boyle for her article, Boyle sounds as if she was much more frightened than she was on that stage. "I can't say anything without their [Syco's] permission. So sorry. Goodbye now. Goodbye.” A close friend, also afraid to be identified, confided that Boyle is afraid that Sony might drop her. That very thing happened to just a few weeks before SYCO signed Boyle to then 18 year old Leon Jackson over issues of things he said to reporters. Reflecting later, Jackson said he would always be, “grateful to The X Factor, but for an 18-year-old who'd never lived away from home it was a brutal introduction to the music industry. 'I had no control over anything,' he says. 'But especially not the music.' I can't believe that this is what Susan Boyle wanted, but Cadwalladr disagrees, adding the viewpoint of Boyle's sister
It is the dream, though. It's what the world wanted for Susan Boyle and what she wanted for herself. We wanted her to triumph against the world and she wanted to be a singer, more than anything. "And she's proved herself to everybody," says her sister, Mary. "She always said, 'Just you wait. I'll show you!' You can see it on her face in the film. I know that face so well. It's, 'Just you wait!'
 
There's no question that Boyle showed the world what she could do. What she didn't get to do was show them more than once. Nor did she get to be herself more than once. Like my students, who left that afternoon, tired, and won no recognition for what they did, nor did they help to erase the perception which people have of young people who can't be exactly on time every day or who might not graduate in the time frame you hope them they do. I don't know what I would do with a child who had watched a friend bleed to death, but my students did. I have a slight feeling Susan Boyle might. Most likely, my colleagues and I would do best to buy everybody lunch and to help the world to better understand why they are reaching the world stage a tad overage.
 
What disappoints me most though, are the Oprah interviews. Of all the people in the world, I expected Oprah to accept someone who might have limitations in one way and a wide birth of understanding in another. Or who might just be able to tell about a hard life, and sing of it. Simple poetry. She comes on like a child who has been coached not to say certain things. Oprah doesn't talk to her for more than five minutes. She sings for maybe ten and it's over. She could have gone with her to her village Gone to the Bakery. Met her mother. Sat with her and the cat. Made a whole show about it. Encouraged someone to make a short film. How many women sit alone in small towns, with beautiful voices, learning difficult music about history, but living the most simple, hardened lives. What does her mother really say to her at home? If there's rancor, what is it? If she's depressed, what's behind it? Why not let her sing something sad --- Introduce her to music she doesn't know? Maybe the truth is, she decided she doesn't want to make albums and that's what they're afraid she'll say. They're afraid she'll say, the real business of music didn't seem like music, that the technicians who appreciated her were the last people she felt comfortable talking with. Or worse, that she couldn't believe that is was SO HARD for people to imagine on that day that it was so unlikely that her voice would be so beautiful. That like kids who show up late and come from a closing school can understand how to calm down children from a few blocks away who have lost a friend, a woman who has a dream can sing beautifully about it at any age.  When my students left the school building that day, they were worn through.  They had given everything, and like Boyle the only immediately appropriate response to their astonishing debut was the applause of their audience (received). Just like Boyle, however, my students were UNPAID for producing a spectacular moment for an organization which was  paid handsomely, this time by the Dept. of Education.  My students, I think, were already jaded enough not to expect recognition, and as they continue their studies at Cornell, Oswego, Hunter and some struggle to stay in school, they probably wonder if those little kids are all right.  Not enough people wonder about them, I think -- had there been, at least, one news story, perhaps, there might have been a "Where are they now?" segment somewhere, if nothing else, to check up on that promising trackstar, Pre-Law student at Cornell (in China as we speak at an economic conference).  The air was full of gasoline and the tartness of flat paint glaring in your eyes and they walked into it with the memory of that day, and they have only that. What about Susan Boyle?  So, now she has viewed things  from the mountain-top and the robber-barons have used her  for their own quests and cons they should help her to discover herown real dreams that aren't lacquered up like the four walls of a coffin to make those who were uncomfortable with her appearance on stage feel better about themselves. I was moved by her voice and her ability to connect immediately with an audience. Everything afterward is just promotion of charity work. It's like hype for a funeral. This time, nobody is turning blue, but somebody is definitely disappearing.
 
Works Cited
1. , Sunday, May 30, 2010Cadwalladr, Carole, “What Happened to the Dream,” The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/may/30/susan-boyle-the-dream

Great Article on BCNHS in NY Teacher

http://www.uft.org/news/teacher/general/big_picture/
Brooklyn Comprehensive Night HS staff feels Tweed missing big picture
by Ron Isaac
Apr 12, 2007 11:18 AM
‘Excellent’ school scheduled
Brooklyn Comprehensive Night HS, for 17 years a beacon of hope for some of New York’s most alienated youth, recently got some bittersweet news from the Department of Education. It won’t be closed at the end of this school year as had been announced; but the ax will fall a year later, in June 2008.
The school, which was lately rated “excellent” on its DOE “Quality Review Report,” emphasizes a core curriculum, has a high Regents passing rate and an enviable percentage of graduating students of those who regularly attend. It is being closed, allegedly, because of poor attendance, not academic failure.
As a result, recruitment has ceased and no new students are being registered.
“The immediate and pressing issue for us right now is trying to get permission to admit additional students,” noted Chapter Leader James Ferentino. “We could do that and still close our doors by June, 2008. Unlike other high schools being phased out, we often keep students for only one semester, or even one quarter, during which time they are able to complete their course requirements. It will be a shame if we were barred from helping any more students graduate and become success stories.”
Staff and students feel that the school is being closed because the DOE fails to see the “big picture.”
Comprehensive night high schools in the city serve more than 140,000 overage — 18-to-21— students who are under-credited but highly motivated. Those at BCNHS continue their studies, although in a relatively inaccessible location in Canarsie, while meeting full-fledged adult responsibilities during the day. Many of them must independently earn a living while caring for their own children, parents or siblings. Making daytime “transfer schools” their only option would amount to abandoning them.
BCNHS operates in the South Shore HS building during hours that the larger school is not in session. This arrangement has helped to free up space for younger students who attend already overcrowded high schools.
In a March 1 visit to the school, UFT President Randi Weingarten pledged “to do everything within our power to ensure that the vital needs of these special students are met without interruption.” 
Joseph Zwerling, who teaches English and technology at the school, noted, “Our success over the years demonstrates beyond a doubt that the night high school model works.”
That seems borne out by a sampling of student testimony.
One recent BCNHS alumna e-mailed some good news to a former teacher and mentor. She is completing her master’s after having earned an undergraduate degree with honors from John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Another student, after having lost one brother to untimely death and another to prison, had drifted away from school, but then returned and was welcomed by BCNHS where he reclaimed what he called his “blueprints to life.”
These are just two of the many students who have taken their cue from BCNHS’s motto: “Ad astra per asper” — “To the stars through difficulties.” But with the DOE’s plans to close the school, getting to the stars may be even more difficult.
As 19-year-old Marco Ponce said, “There are so many kids in this school who finally turned their lives around and now they want to shut it down on them. That’s not right.”

Standing in the rain

As my weekdays are no longer my own, I don't know how much energy I'll have on Sept 2, the fourth anniversary of the death of my friend Karen Hunter. So, I'm putting up this picture in advance and I'm going to spend a lot of today, I'm sure, doing what I've been doing since that day: standing in the rain, alone, which also feels unnatural. Standing alone doesn't make any sense, period.

Karen took this picture in a park across from her office in Brooklyn Heights.