How do we fix our public schools? That’s the question facing New York, and the nation, as U.S. graduation rates fall behind those of other developed countries. WNYC is exploring this in a series called The Big Fix. It’s a collaboration with the Web site GothamSchools.
One of the schools we’re looking at is Chelsea Career and Technical Education High School in Manhattan. Only half its students graduate on time. The school just received a federal grant worth almost a million dollars because the city believes it has the potential to change -- largely because of the progress it's made under its principal.
Brian Rosenbloom is chatting with his students as they arrive for school, calling out names and cheerfully bantering with those who are late.
"It came at 8 o’clock," says one girl, referring to her subway train from Queens. "The girl in front of me was slow. And the door closed!"
Principal Rosenbloom has heard every possible explanation for lateness, and he isn't buying it. "Excuses, excuses, excuses," he sighs. "I’m playing my violin for you, sister."
Fifty-six year old Rosenbloom does this every morning with his students outside Chelsea High, which is actually located in SoHo. Here on Sixth Avenue, south of Spring Street, he spars cheerfully with teens who travel from all over the city to attend this career and technical education school, largely because they want to be in Manhattan. When two girls he calls "Mo and Larry" surprise him by arriving on time, he teases them.
"So we decided today to come early and you want to complain, too?" they ask. "OK, so you want us to come at 8:40?" The Brooklyn native smiles and jokes right back. "I am so proud of the two of you! Awe! I’m all verklempt."
Unless you see the students hanging around outside, it’s easy to overlook Chelsea High. The five-story, 100 year-old building is covered in scaffolding and wedged behind a tiny park with benches where the kids gather before class. Doors open at 8:05 for students taking Advanced Placement courses. When the rest of the school opens at 8:30, Rosenbloom claps his hands and calls out, "Ladies and Gentlemen! Let’s rock and roll!" The students clear the benches and head inside.
When Rosenbloom started at Chelsea in 2008, attendance was less than 75 percent. Students and teachers describe the place as "chaotic," with kids either outside on the benches or inside roaming the halls. Eighteen year-old senior Eddie Rosario remembers it well. "Food fights. Graffiti. It was crazy," he recalls. "And when Rosenbloom came in everything got straightened out."
Today, the school’s approximately 550 students are boisterous but orderly as they travel between classes. Attendance is over 80 percent and Rosenbloom is always watching. He climbs the stairs to check out which student is yelling (he has a good idea), and calls after a pair of boys who appear to be heading in the wrong direction.
Students know Rosenbloom isn’t just keeping track of attendance when he mingles among them. He’s also watching their academics. In his small office at the end of a corridor he keeps a "war board." It's a giant dry erase board where Rosenbloom tracks the progress of his juniors and seniors. Next to each name, in bright-colored ink, he’s written how many Regents exams and credits the student needs to graduate. The right side of the board has about 110 seniors. When they started as ninth graders there were about 200 of them. Some are still juniors or sophomores and dozens dropped out or transferred.
"When I got here...an inordinate, inordinate amount of those kids didn’t pass Regents," he explains. "A huge number of kids had zero to two credits." Students need about ten credits a year to stay on track for graduation and they need to pass a total of five Regents exams. But Rosenbloom says only about 25 percent of these seniors -- who were sophomores when he arrived -- had accumulated 10 credits as freshmen.
Vocational schools like Chelsea once had easier graduation requirements. They’re now called “career and technical education” schools. Chelsea’s students take classes in computer networking or photo-shop and they have to meet the same standards as anyone else, now that the state has phased out the local diploma (which required a lower passing score on the Regents). The students at Chelsea are typical low-income city high school students, mostly Hispanic and black. Many of them arrived with poor reading and writing skills. But Rosenbloom says he found their teachers weren’t supported when he took over as principal two years ago.
"There was no leadership here whatsoever," he says. "And you can’t blame teachers for everything. If there’s limited to no leadership, it became a survival school for them. And as a teacher I worked in a school like that."
Rosenbloom started teaching in the city schools 20 years ago, after previously working in the private sector. He was a special education teacher and a school psychologist before being appointed principal of a junior high in the Bronx the city planned to phase-out. He then started South Bronx Prep and went on to lead a network of schools for the Department of Education. But he longed to get back inside a school and eagerly took the job at Chelsea when the city replaced its previous principal.
Despite his experience as a teacher in a difficult school, however, the union representative at Chelsea says Rosenbloom's blunt, hands-on approach made some enemies. A few teachers retired and others quit. Those who stayed say he gave the place more structure. Last year, more than 80 percent of freshmen got enough credits to move ahead, and most of them also took and passed their Regents exams. That progress convinced the city to name Chelsea one of 11 low-performing high schools worthy of federal school improvement grants, instead of targeting it for a phase-out.
Rosenbloom explained the process at a recent parent meeting. "As a transformation school we’re receiving an enormous, enormous sum of money," he said with help from a Spanish language translator. About 30 parents sat in the small "gymnatorium," an auditorium that's also used as a gym with equipment in back. Parent turnout is often quite low because the families live far away and work. Those who attended were mostly the parents of ninth-graders. They gasped when Rosenbloom told them that Chelsea would be receiving almost $1 million for each of the next three years, at a time when most other schools are cutting their budgets. That's a 25 percent increase in funding.
Rosenbloom is spending almost half the money on extending the school day. Teachers come in half an hour earlier for planning their classes. And they stay for an 8th period four days a week. English teacher Susan Foote used the additional class time recently to have her ninth graders learn punctuation by reading aloud from a grade-school story book, just to practice pausing for commas and periods. She admits she wasn’t thrilled about working the extra periods, which add up to ten-hour days, even though she’s paid for it.
"Well, of course the first thought is ‘oh, it’s more time, I’m tired, I want to go home,’" she concedes. "But this, this gives me a time to get to know them better, it gives me a time to intensify, and it gives us time to talk about things we normally don’t have time for in a full class setting.
The extra classes are also smaller than usual, with about 16 students instead of the usual 27 or 28. This is possible because every teacher and assistant principal was asked to work. Only two declined -- saying it was just too much. The principal says he and his staff worked hard to program the classes so that kids who were behind in certain subjects would get time to catch up. They’re using every available room, including the teachers lounge. In one classroom, students work at computers with a new software program that lets them make up credits.
Seventeen-year old Anthony Ortiz is making up a U.S. History class he failed last year. He says he’s optimistic about graduating on time in June after messing up. "I guess naturally I just wanted to clown around," he acknowledges. "That was the past two years. But now really I’m a senior now, so. There’s one year to finish. I might as well do what I have to do."
But sixteen-year old Courtney Adams and her classmates in honors Chemistry aren’t as happy about staying an extra 45 minutes on most days. "We don’t like it at all. We don’t like it!" she says, with her classmates chiming along. "It’s for our benefit," one boy interjects. "It’s for their benefit," Courtney and another student retort. "I benefit enough in class!"
There’s a lot of planning involved in making the best use of an extra period when the school’s 550 students are at so many different levels. On a recent visit, a teacher gave his students The New York Post to learn who, what, where, when and why. Rosenbloom is using his new grant to bring in two professional development groups that can improve the quality of the teaching. He chose this instead of hiring more "Master Teachers," a new category of teachers who are paid 30 percent more. He hired just one of these experts, a special education teacher who was already on staff and will be training other teachers to work with struggling students in the general classroom setting.
One day this fall, a student was brought to Rosenbloom's office for texting on his cell phone, in violation of school rules. "Are you for real?" Rosenbloom sighed, when he saw who it was. "You’re supposed to be a graduating senior! You’re taking courses that you should have passed last year because you goofed around."
The boy didn't seem at all humbled, though. He refused to turn over the cell phone and blamed his teacher for stopping him from using it. Rosenbloom used his familiar brand of tough-love. "Dude, it doesn’t matter. The rules are the rules." When the student still refused to turn over his phone he was given a three-day suspension.
This is the kind of thing that exasperates the stocky, energetic principal. He believes most of his seniors can graduate in June if they make up their work and follow the rules. Rosenbloom wishes he’d been given more time to plan for the new $959,000 grant because he only learned about it in August. It involves a lot of paperwork and oversight.
"To be honest, I’d rather put my time in with the kids and the staff, then being accountable to somebody for some dollars," he says. "But the dollars are important to get us really at the top level, the top echelon where I want these kids to be. Where I want this school to be after next year. And it will be."
To remind him of that mission, Rosenbloom has the names of 110 seniors on his war board. A hundred and ten students who will have many more opportunities if they leave Chelsea in June with a high school diploma.
Chelsea’s Federal School Improvement Grant: What Does it Buy?
Principal Brian Rosenbloom’s plans for using his $959,000 annual grant have not yet been approved by the city’s Department of Education. Nor has the DOE finalized the goals he’ll need to meet in order to continue receiving the grant for its full three-year duration. However, Rosenbloom says he’s proposed spending the money as follows:
Extra time for all staff: $490,000 (five hours a week for 38 teachers -- at $43 an hour -- plus Saturday classes starting in November)
Master Teacher: $124,000 (a current staffer who will take on extra duties)
Heart of Change: $99,750 (professional development)
Teaching Matters: $68,000 (professional development)
Supplemental books and Regents review books: $17,000
Retreats and professional development conferences for Assistant Principals: $26,000
College enrichment activities: $60,000
Computers, printers, supplies: $55,000
Adobe classroom licenses: $6,000
Extra hours for paraprofessional, school aide, and school secretary: $13,000
Average class size: 27-28
Average class for extra 8th period: 16
This story was produced as part of a partnership between WNYC and GothamSchools.