Students, parents and staff from Public School 256 Benjamin Banneker in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, on Tuesday protested the Department of Education’s recent failing grade for their elementary school.
Jerry Jones, a school aide, gave a speech to approximately 80 protesters just before they marched around the block chanting: “Fix our school! Do not close it!” Students on nearby basketball courts joined the protest; onlookers honked their horns in support.
P.S. 256 is on the city's endangered list of 20 schools that may be closed down. Parents argued that because the school’s budget has been cut by $427,000 in the last three years, it does not have enough resources to provide support for students who need the most help. Their signs said they were “giving the D.O.E. an F in supporting our school.”
“We have lost an art teacher, our reading intervention teacher, a school employee, a kindergarten teacher, our Saturday Academy — how can our school perform well under these circumstances?” said Marquese Paige, whose daughter, Ayame, is in the second grade. He says his son, Ankhier, is doing well in the seventh grade because of his good teachers at P.S. 256.
The school’s building also houses Community Partnership Charter, a middle school that located there last year. Some parents, including Jimmy Dinkins, the vice president of the school’s P.T.A., said they believed that the Department of Education wanted to shut P.S. 256 to expand the charter school.
“They say charter schools are the new ‘it,’ ” Mr. Jones told the crowd. “I don’t even think so. P.S. 256 is the new ‘it.’ ”
But according to New York City’s annual school progress report, P.S. 256 is failing its students. It is one of 32 New York City schools that received an F on its annual school progress report this year.
Last year, it received a C, and in 2009, it received an A. After New York State raised the bar for proficiency on standardized tests last year, the number of students who were proficient in English and math dropped to fewer than half.
“Raising standards without raising support is not going to work,” said Julian Vinocur, an organizer with the Alliance for Quality Education, who helped the P.T.A. plan the protest. “If you ask any parent here, they want their school to be fixed, not closed.”
Mr. Jones said the protest, which was held after school, was just one tactic in a campaign to keep the school open.
“After this we’re going to write, e-mail, call and let them know that this is our school, and we need to be here,” he said. “Our children go here. And we went here. We are holding on to this piece of property. This is ours.”