List of schools that will get new management grows to 22

The list of low-performing schools the city plans to improve with a management-change next year grew to 22 today, when officials added 13 schools to the nine they announced yesterday.

This group of schools will begin what’s known as the “restart” improvement plan next fall. The restart plan is one of four programs districts can take on in order to win federal grants aimed at improving the country’s lowest-performing schools. It calls for putting an ailing school under new management.

Though city officials would have liked to use two of the other school improvement plans, they were unable to convince the teachers union to go along. Two of those plans — transformation and turnaround — would have required the union to allow the city to remove principals and teachers at some of these schools.

Under the restart model, the city will pair schools with non-profit education management organizations — a plan that’s less invasive than firing teachers or removing a school’s principal. One major question is whether it’s invasive enough.

Already, every public school in the city belongs to a support network whose job it is to give them instructional and operational guidance. These networks can make recommendations about which teachers should receive tenure, which principal should be selected to fill a vacancy, and who the school should hire for professional development, among other things.

“The value-added here is we’ll now have organizations that have explicitly come to us and expressed interest in turning around specific schools,” said DOE spokesman Jack Zarin-Rosenfeld.

“These schools will basically have an extra partner that’s more heavily focused on them, as opposed to a network, which is more generalized,” he said.

Education management organizations that sign on to partner with schools will have contracts with the city and will be paid with a portion of the federal grant money. City officials would not say how much those contracts will be worth.

Officials also announced today that a total of nine schools that are eligible for the federal improvement grants will not receive them next year. Plans to overhaul these schools, all of which could begin any of the improvement models next year, will be put on hold for another year while the city decides whether to close them or improve them as they are.

Schools that will undergo the restart model:

Washington Irving High School*
Boys & Girls High School
Sheepshead Bay High School
August Martin High School
William Cullen Bryant High School
Bushwick Community High School
Herbert Lehman High School
Banana Kelly High School
Bronx High School of Business
Grace Dodge Career and Technical High School
John Dewey High School
Newtown High School
Grover Cleveland High School
Richmond Hill High School
John Adams High School
I.S. 339
J.H.S. 80 Mosholu Parkway
M.S. 391
John Ericsson Middle School
J.H.S. 22 Jordan L. Mott
I.S. 136 Charles O. Dewey
J.H.S. 166 George Gershwin
*Schools in italics were added to the list today

Schools that will not receive improvement grants next year:

High School of Graphic Communication Arts
Harlem Renaissance High School
W.H. Maxwell Career and Technical High School
Alfred E. Smith Career and Technical High School
Samuel Gompers Career and Technical High School
Jane Addams High School for Academic Careers
Fordham Leadership Academy
J.H.S. 142 John Philip Sousa
J.H.S. 296 The Halsey

*Schools in italics were added to the list today