New York City's ATRS: Teachers In Limbo

City's Unwanted Teachers Drift Through a Life in LimboUpdated January 17, 2012 7:12am

January 17, 2012 7:12am | By Jon Schuppe, DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

 Charles Pollak, a health teacher in in the 
city's Absent Teacher Reserve, was recently assigned to a day-care center in a Harlem high school. 
(DNAinfo/Jon Schuppe)

MANHATTAN — Hundreds of city teachers show up at schools they've never seen 
before every Monday morning.

The lucky ones get assigned to classrooms, maybe to teach the subject in which they 
were trained. Others do paperwork. And some waste hours doing nothing.

On Thursdays, they get a notice from the Department of Education telling them where  
to report the following week, and the cycle repeats.

This is what the DOE calls the Absent Teacher Reserve, a pool of nomadic educators 
who are paid their full salaries to work as substitutes. Most have been "excessed" by 
budget cuts or school closings and have been unable to find new jobs. Others have 
been liberated from the department’s notorious "rubber room," or have survived “unsatisfactory” ratings, and were deemed fit to keep teaching.

Until recently, the city allowed ATR teachers to remain at a posting for a full school 
term, during which the school principal could decide whether to hire them. That 
changed with the weekly reassignments, which went into effect in October as part of 
a deal with the United Federation of Teachers to avert layoffs.

The department says this is a fairer and more efficient way for the castoffs to find 
new jobs. The regular reshuffling gives them more opportunities to impress more 
potential bosses, officials say. They also have access to job fairs, online job 
announcements and recruitment consultations.

Hundreds of displaced teachers get placed in permanent jobs through this “free 
market” system, the DOE says.

But critics say the city isn’t doing enough to help teachers adrift.

In an audit of the ATR last year, Comptroller John Liu said the city could have spared 
millions of dollars by filling open positions with ATR members instead of hiring new 
teachers.

Many of the teachers who remain stuck in the ATR, especially those with the most experience — and highest salaries — believe the DOE is trying to force them out to 
make way for younger, less expensive, talent. For proof, they cite a comment by 
former Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, who proposed eliminating the ATR because it 
cost the city $100 million.

 Rodney Nightingale, a reading teacher, outside P.S. 87 in 
the Bronx, his 12th school this year as a member of the Absent Teacher Reserve. 
 (DNAinfo/Jon Schuppe)

“That’s money that could be spent on teachers that we desperately want and need,” Klein said in a December 2010 memo to principals.

The teachers feel stuck, and see no way out.

“It’s very stressful. And very frustrating,” said Rodney Nightingale, a licensed reading instructor with 19 years on the job. “It’s frustrating because I consider myself a good 
 teacher, and I enjoy working with kids. This is not what I had in mind when I decided 
to do this for a living.”

Nightingale, 61, was placed in the ATR in 2009, after his position in a mentoring 
program was eliminated. He spent the following year in the pool as a reading-
intervention specialist at a school in the Bronx. The next term, he taught gym. This 
year, he has worked at a dozen different schools in the northern Bronx, filling in for 
whatever staffer happens to be absent.

When a principal compliments him on his work, Nightingale replies, “Then hire me.” 
But the principal usually says there isn’t a spot available, and that his $86,000 salary 
— nearly double the starting salary of a new teacher — is too high.

“I used to like teaching,” Nightingale said. “I still like it when I make a connection. But 
it’s not very satisfying because you know you’re not going to see these kids again.”

Many members of the ATR commiserate on blogs in which they share their stories. 
One of them, NYC ATR, is run by a former member of the pool who recently landed a 
“provisional” job at a school he likes.

“I wish I knew what the point was, because it certainly doesn’t serve the students… 
and it doesn’t benefit the teachers,” said the blogger, who asked to remain anonymous 
out of fear that his new principal would cut him loose. “They are given meaningless assignments, so I don’t see who it’s benefitting.”

Charles Pollak, a health teacher with 27 years in the system, joined the ATR after 
reaching a settlement with the DOE that freed him from a “rubber room,” one of the reassignment centers for teachers under investigation for incompetence or misconduct
 — a system since abandoned.

 

 Teachers on the city's Absent Teacher Reserve flooded a job fair in July 2011. (NYC ATR)

Pollak, 66, earns more than $100,000 bouncing around the city, often doing nothing 
related to his expertise. At one recent stop in Harlem, he spent half his day in a 
day-care center, where students struggling to graduate dropped off their young 
children. The other half of the day he had nothing to do.

“With this economy, you pay me top salary to let me watch babies sleep?” he said. 
“Hello?”

The principal stopped by, and said he was just as frustrated by the system, which 
he described as “a computer pushing people around to drive them crazy.”

Pollak said he had finally decided to ride out the next few months and retire.

Nightingale said his wife wants him to leave immediately, but he has decided to hang 
on a little while longer, when he becomes eligible for a full pension.

“I didn’t plan on retiring,” Nightingale said. “I’d rather not give them the satisfaction, 
but they’re forcing my hand.”

Last Thursday, he returned home from his posting at P.S. 87 in Wakefield and 
checked his email, where he found a note from the DOE's human resources 
department. It ordered him to report the following week to P.S. 89 in Williamsbridge.

Thirteen schools this year, and counting.

Read more: http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20120117/manhattan/life-limbo-with-citys-unwanted-teachers#ixzz2I6FlFvOh

Rotation Beats Long Term Assignment

David Hedges

 LINK
A dear colleague asked me if I found it easier to cope with the professional challenges after I had been assigned to a school for more than a month, instead of for just a week.

No.

Except if that month is September. 

We, as ATRs think that because we are human that we are entitled to respect, but, the students just see us as Subs and therefore as targets for abuse.  And that is what they do to us, pure and simple: abuse.  The abuse comes from the same deprived part of them that has been targeted by the DOE with cold, conscienceless violence.  Children become the abusers of their liberators, their educators, because instead of being nurtured for their imaginations, creativity, and curiosity, they are used as pawns in a boring, data and test driven governmental agency. 

For example, the Aim on the substitute lesson plan I was handed today read, "How can we review for the Regents Exam."  That's it.  Scare tactics.  Scare tactics are forms of abuse.  The premise is that education=exam score.  Like any corporal punishment or violent treatment, children develop a tolerance and they just act violently later, when they can, on the most vulnerable or blameless one they can get away with abusing.  The DOE has engaged in a campaign of fear- teachers are terrified of exam results and almost nobody dares ask interesting questions. 

The abuse is learned, cyclic, and there is no let up, at any moment in the day.  It is shocking.  If I were the parent of a child in just about any class where fear tactics and test data is more highly prized than human imagination and curiosity,  I would wonder where my tax dollars are going, and for what?  What students learn, in a class that is covered by someone who is labeled as a "Substitute" is that it is perfectly acceptable to be rude and even violent to the person who is assigned to watch over their safety.  "Oh, not, not my child," some parents would say, and even at the end of the day, after I have seen sweet, halo bearing children become pack wolves and tear the senior teachers apart, I cannot believe my own memory. 

This is not a complaint about my job- this is a statement about how the child's reaction is a preconditioned set of responses based on policy that dehumanizes their natural interests in life.  Kids are mad as hell and they take it out on the kindly strangers the DOE calls ATRs. 

And, we, the ATRs we are blamed for not being Saviors to a system that has been damned by Lord Bloomberg and Archangel Klein.

Parents, tax payers, citizens, our kids don't deserve to be degraded this way and the system that is supposed to be educating then ought not to be teaching them that fear tactics are an acceptable form of arriving at a civilized society.

And yeah, who are we going to get to do this job, of teaching children?  Only in a bad economy would someone choose this over say, impoverishing the middle class at a job on Wall Street?

NYS Legislators Suddenly Wake Up From Their Coma, Squeek That Mayoral Control Over The DOE Must End

In the article below, we see that New York State legislators woke up from their coma lasting 10 years and are scrambling to save their jobs.

 In my opinion, please dont bother. What we, public school parents/teachers/concerned citizens who are also advocates for due process, fairness, transparency and evidence, need to do is vote out of office the comatose, silent, "pay-to-play" politicians who have secretly greased somebody's palm in order to harm almost a generation of children. We need to stop APPOINTING people for any public office and start with VOTING in our public people - including the Panel For Educational Policy and Community Education Council members - through a general election of all constituents, meaning ALL parents and teachers in the NYC public schools.

Weprin and Montgomery, where have you been? I'm not impressed with your performance.

Betsy Combier

Albany mayor-slayers

Pols trying to end school control by City Hall

• By CARL CAMPANILE
• Last Updated: 3:53 AM, January 14, 2013
• Posted: 12:58 AM, January 14, 2013
• LINK

Just days into the 2013 legislative session, state lawmakers have introduced a measure to undo Mayor Bloomberg’s signature educational achievement: mayoral control of the massive New York City school system, The Post has learned.

Bloomberg has used the sweeping power to implement accountability and innovations — often over fierce opposition from entrenched interests.

These include tightening “social promotion” from grades 3 to 8, adopting a new school grading system, extending the school day for struggling students, and dramatically expanding choice and opportunity through charter schools and other alternative schools.

The bottom line: During Bloomberg’s tenure, the high-school graduation rate has substantially increased, supporters said.

But lawmakers pushing the bill to kill mayoral control counter that Bloomberg and his chancellors have run the schools like autocrats.

“The school system needs to be restructured. There is less community and parental input under mayoral control. There’s got to be a way to give parents more say in their children’s education. They don’t have that now,” said Assemblyman David Weprin (D-Queens), who is sponsoring the measure.

The proposal would strip the mayor of appointing the majority — eight of 13 appointees — to the Panel on Education Policy, which replaced the Board of Education.

Under a reconstituted board, the mayor would have only four appointees. Each of the five borough presidents would have an appointee and the City Council would have four appointees.

And the board, not the mayor, would have the authority to hire the schools chancellor.

The mayoral-control law is not up for renewal until June 30, 2015. But the bill advanced by Weprin and state Sen. Velmanette Montgomery (D-Brooklyn) is an early bid to sway public opinion for what could be a bloody political battle.

Weprin said the United Federation of Teachers — which has resisted some of the reforms — is “very sympathetic to changes” and “happy that there’s a discussion on mayoral control.”

And the effort to scuttle mayoral control comes amid a heated mayoral race this year to replace Bloomberg.

“This measure has failed time and time again, and we are confident it will follow suit this year,” said Bloomberg spokesman Mark Botnick.

ccampanile@nypost.com

NYPOST: Passing the Trash

Steve Brill

• The NYPOST urges the NYC Department of Education to stop changing U to S ratings when they want to get a tenured teacher out of the system so badly that they will "lie" about a teacher's rating, hoping the person will irrevocably resign and pursue working somewhere else with their newly minted "S".
• 
  
• The charged individual will be pressured by his/her NYSUT attorney to take the deal, because he/she "will be terminated at 3020-a". The fact of the matter is, the minute you are charged with anything you are immediately "guilty" and you have now become "trash", both in the minds of the NYC DOE admins as well as in the minds of the UFT/NYSUT Attorneys.[TRUE]
•  
• First, I dont read minds, but I do think long and hard about each and every case I have been asked to review, sit in, or assist in, and I have made hand-written notes (I DO NOT bring a tape recorder) on everything that is said. How does the NYSUT Attorney know that the Respondent they are there to defend will be terminated? Do they make sure of this outcome? [TRUE]
•  
• Second, the U or S rating is virtually meaningless, as there are no facts in observations (Elentuck v Green) and these opinions are simply hearsay. [TRUE] Also, the tenured teacher is already on the "Ineligible/Inquiry List" and wont get hired by anyone anyway. [TRUE]  Oh, and this person will be told never to ask for an open and public hearing, because "reporters from "The POST" will come in, and blotch up the entire hearing" says NYSUT. [FALSE] The modus operandi is to keep the harmful, often rude and ineffective lawyering out of public eyes, and the Respondent teacher can be squashed without any other eyes on the process. [TRUE]
• 
  
• These are some of the truths and bulloney of 3020-a in NYC.
• 
  
• 
  The NYC Office of Labor Relations, with the support of the UFT, has issued to principals a document called
  "Performance Management" on how to get rid of an incompetent teacher. Who is an "incompetent teacher"? Anyone the NYC Department of Education wants to remove from the system because he/she is too senior (makes too much money), is disabled (and therefore cannot be deemed factory-perfect) and/or is other impaired (is a whistleblower, cannot be intimidated, is ethnically challenged - not the 'right' race, etc). 
•  
  
• In the almost 10 years I have taken notes and studied the arbitrators and lawyers who do the 3020-a, I have seen reporters come into an open hearing three times. Once, to the hearing of my dear friend Lucienne, whose teaching skills were recognized by her students and parents as exemplary, and her students all did extraordinarily well. She is beautiful inside and out and she is adored by her students....just not her Principal, Daysi Garcia of PS 65. We walked in the room at 51 Chambers Street to see the DOE's public relations person and Steve Brill sitting inside at the table. I sat down next to Steve, and said hello, and asked him what he was doing there. He told me that he was there to do a story on the rubber room teachers. He stayed 5 minutes, just long enough to greet Arbitrator Jay Siegel, and exchange telephone numbers. 
• 
  
• I watched as Steve told Arbitrator Siegel that he would like to chat with him about this case. Siegel looked very flattered, and said he would be glad to talk with Mr. Brill. It was all very warm and fuzzy. Except this is highly improper.
• 
  
• Steve's article came out in the New Yorker soon after, and he labelled Lucienne as one of NYC's 3 worst teachers. He was paid to do that article in exactly the way he wrote it, some say by Joel Klein himself.
•  
• One school principal has said that Randi Weingarten, of the teachers’ union,“would protect a dead body in the classroom.”
• 
  
• Lucienne was terminated - basically, Daysi Garcia of PS 65 was so powerful that she was allowed to come in, lie about Lucienne, and get her AP to read from the Workshop Model math book for almost 13 full hearing dates. Dennis Da Costa, the DOE Attorney prosecuting the case, screamed, insulted and otherwise showed such extreme infantile behavior that I think Jay Siegel believed there were some serious coping issues going on with Dennis. In my opinion, Dennis Da Costa is never rational. He is now the Deputy hired to work under Naeemah Lamont over at the TPU. Every once in a while if a DOE Attorney needs the arbitrator to be pulled into line, Dennis will come into the hearing and do his yelling/screaming routine. Its quite a show.
• 
  
• How I wish that Lucienne had not been the scapegoat. 
• 
  
• We know alot more now than we did when she went through the process. I would have suggested that she hire a private attorney, even though I like Antonio Cavallero (NYSUT Attorney) as a person. He is still under the umbrella of NYSUT, and subject to the policies which force their attorneys into doing what must be considered weak defenses for their clients. Antonio told me and Lucienne when we went to NYSUT to pick up her papers that her termination was "political". NYSUT just does not have a good track record. Politics and money come before a strong defense of the client? I dont think so.
• 
  
• In any case, I will write the bottom line again (probably not for the last time): employees charged and brought to 3020-a for incompetency are a target of the Department, and the information used to bring the person to the arbitration table may be 100% hearsay, the opinion of the principal/investigator/DOE personnel which has no basis in fact. The arbitrator will not be given a picture of whether or not the Respondent can teach, but that he/she made the department "look" bad - by speaking out about the principal's wrong-doing, not being young, not being white, etc. More often than not, the employee is far from incompetent, and certainly not "trash".
•  
• Betsy Combier
•  
• Passing The Trash
• Last Updated: 10:45 PM, January 12, 2013
• Posted: January 13, 2013
• LINK

Warning to schools outside the five boroughs: Don’t believe teacher records you get from the New York City Department of Education — because they might not be telling you the truth.

As The Post’s Susan Edelman reported, DOE has a secret when it comes to kicking unqualified teachers out of the classroom: It offers to erase their bad marks and send them on their way — if they agree to resign.

And no other district where they might later apply to teach need ever know the truth.

Hmm. There’s a moral dilemma: Entice bad teachers to leave, helping city kids and taxpayers — but, in the process, potentially foist them on other students.

Dan Brinzac

Dennis Wolcott

Truth is, it’s wrong. And it should stop.

In an effort to circumvent the long and onerous system of ridding the system of bad teachers — a system brought to you courtesy of their union — teachers charged with incompetence can strike a tempting deal: Agree to cut the process short and quit, and DOE will change all your “unsatisfactory” ratings to “satisfactory.”

According to an e-mail obtained by The Post, a DOE lawyer promised one teacher that “the department will provide, upon a request, a neutral letter documenting her employment . . . and will convert her U ratings to S ratings.”

And just in case the teacher was too thick to understand the implications of that sweetheart deal, the lawyer assured her that “if she were ever to seek employment outside the DOE, her computer records would show only ‘satisfactory.’”

Future employers would have to discover just how bad she is on their own, in other words.

As for the kids who’d be subjected to subpar educators — well, they’re apparently just collateral damage in DOE’s eyes.

True, DOE is in a fix: If teachers refuse to quit, city schools suffer. And DOE has to look out for its own first.

School brass shouldn’t have to face this choice. In a perfect (i.e., non-union-run) world, they’d be able to easily fire lousy teachers, with no hassles that need to be bypassed. Alas, that’s not the case in this city. So DOE does what it has to do.

But keeping a record of failure hidden from other districts — indeed, providing a deliberately misleading picture of teachers’ competence — amounts to fraud.

Former Chancellor Rudy Crew had a term for it back when the old Board of Education used to shuffle bad principals between schools: “The dance of the lemons,” he called it. It’s a good term — because this is one sour arrangement.

Boys and Girls HS Needs A New Principal

I am not in favor of closing schools. I dont see any benefit to closing down an entire community other than to destroy that community, therefore I dont support the closing of a school, ever. But one of the most contentious policies of the NYC Department of Education is exactly that, to close a school and throw staff, students, community ties, to the wind.

Obviously, Boys and Girls High School has the power and influence to play politics and buy their way into staying open. The school used to have 4,000 students, now has 1200. Principal Bernard Gassaway told me when he was not working for the Department that principals are hired only to destroy a school and get it closed. What did he do when he was given the job as principal? He started suspending students, removing teachers, leaving classrooms without teachers or books, and in general made an already declining level of performance, worse than ever.

New stats say:.Math; 102 students took exam, 19 passed. Global Studies: 322 took exam 25 passed. American History: 165 took exam, 27 passed.
The excuse is that the State changed the format of the exam and did not let schools know. Which is true. The truth is, that these statistics show that they are teaching towards the exam. If there is a deviation, the kids cannot handle it because they are not taught content. This core curriculum is not very good. 

At B&G there were no prep classes for these exams because there were no teachers to teach the subject.The truth is, there are many teachers teaching out of license. No ATRs that are licensed in a subject are brought in and kept. It cannot be that all the ATRs are unqualified. Perhaps they just do not want to pay someone a differential. 

The school is heading to their 4th "F".

What needs to be done is Gassaway must be removed, he has violated the unspoken agreement to protect, and support, members of the B&G student/teacher/parent community. Replace him with someone who is genuinely concerned with the future and the performance of the students. Doesnt the NYC DOE say "Children First"? Stop, Mr. Walcott, from playing chess with the lives of children.

Betsy Combier

Boys and Girls HS: Rated Bottom In NYC, Keeps Bernie Gassaway Anyway

Aiding Boys and Girls High’s survival are powerful political allies

by Geoff Decker and Philissa Cramer, at 12:00 pmLINK

Chancellor Dennis Walcott and City Councilman Al Vann joined Boys and Girls High School Principal Bernard Gassaway to honor the school's boys basketball team for winning the city championships last year.

Among the dozen high schools the city spared from closure this week despite lagging scores, one stands out as lower-performing than almost all of the rest.

It also stands out for having an unusually powerful set of political allies.

Brooklyn’s Boys and Girls High School has poor student performance, an abysmal graduation rate — 38.6 percent last year  — and few applicants.

“If one looks at the data and the metrics by which all principals and schools are graded, it is very apparent that we are all not measured by the same yardstick,” said Geraldine Maione, the principal of William E. Grady Career and Technical High School, a higher-performing school that the city briefly proposed for closure last year.

It’s a fact that Principal Bernard Gassaway has acknowledged. “Statistically, they’ve closed schools that have better stats,” he told community members at an event in June, before the city’s latest round of performance data.

The secret to the school’s survival, people inside and outside the school say, appears to be a tight-knit advisory board of political and community heavyweights from the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn who say they have pulled strings at the school for years.

“There’s no way that Boys and Girls High School as you know it today would still be in existence if it were not for the advisors,” Gassaway said in June. He declined to comment for this story; his comments all come from public appearances and previous interviews with GothamSchools.

The supporters include Regent Lester Young, City Councilman Al Vann, Assemblywoman Annette Robinson, State Sen. Velmanette Montgomery, and Adelaide Sanford, the vice chancellor emeritus of the Board of Regents. Conrad Tillard, a pastor at Nazarene Congregational Church, and Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Chief Executive Officer Colvin Grannum are also members of the advisory board, which meets monthly at the school.

The civic leaders of Bed-Stuy, which has long had one of the city’s most vibrant black communities, say keeping Boys & Girls open is crucial to maintaining the neighborhood’s identity.

“There’s a lot of history here. This is part of who we are as a community and a people,” Vann told GothamSchools last month at a meeting held to weigh the school’s future. “You can’t close that.”

Board members have raised money for the school, including through a private foundation they helped set up this year; coordinated events to bring in the local community; and met with top Department of Education officials to secure funds for a new library. They also said they have influenced the Department of Education’s hiring decisions at the school, and Gassaway has said they encouraged him to seek immunity from being ousted even if the school got worse.

The advisory board’s goal is to restore Boys and Girls High School as the school of choice for students in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The school was nicknamed the “Pride and Joy of Bed-Stuy” during its heyday in the 1990s, when more than 4,000 students crowded into its halls and performance skyrocketed.

Enrollment has fallen at Brooklyn's Boys and Girls High School by nearly 75 percent over the last decade.

But even though the moniker still rolls off many local residents’ tongues, few want to send their children to Boys and Girls. Last year, enrollment was down to 1,470 — and only about 450 students came from five zip codes closest to Bedford-Stuyvesant, according to data provided by the school. This year, only about 1,200 students are enrolled.

The decline began after the retirement of Frank Mickens, a brash but beloved principal who brought order and boosted graduation rates during the 1980’s and 1990’s. Mickens’ tough disciplinary tactics earned him praise, but he also warehoused disruptive students in the school’s auditorium until they dropped out, according to a class-action lawsuit filed by former students that the city settled in 2008. Vann and Young told GothamSchools last year that they were not familiar with the lawsuit.

The advisory board formed in 2007, shortly after Mickens retired and was replaced by a protégé, Spencer Holder, who was later named in the lawsuit.

Members said they were not satisfied with Holder’s leadership in part because he did not solicit input from local leaders the way Mickens had. “His plans were not based on the community,” Jitu Weusi, a longtime community activist and advisory board member, told GothamSchools in May. “He never once came to the community to say look, I want you all to give me some help, some advice.”

The city replaced Holder in 2009 with Gassaway, who had also worked under Mickens. Gassaway had recently retired as superintendent of the city’s alternative schools district, a job he had gotten with Young’s endorsement.

“I weighed in on Gassaway, let them know that we strongly support him,” Vann said of conversations he and other members had with city officials, including then-chancellor Joel Klein, about the school’s leadership. Young declined to comment on what he discussed with city officials in private meetings about the school.

The advisory board directed Gassaway to meet with Klein and ask for sufficient time to turn the school around before being ousted or installing another school in the building — at least three years.

“Klein’s commitment was that he’d give them whatever resources he needed to get the job done,” Vann said.

Gassaway said he also told Klein he would have to make things worse at Boys and Girls before they could get better.

Last year, the school’s 38.6 percent four-year graduation rate was 15 points below the average rate for the nine other high schools the department wants to close this year and 25 points below the city rate. Just 3 percent of students graduated ready for college, compared to 30 percent citywide. And student and staff satisfaction has fallen sharply, according to city surveys.

Department of Education officials say many factors go into the decision to close a school, with academic achievement the most important. Former Chief Schools Officer Eric Nadelstern said one reason the city might hold back on phasing out a comprehensive high school is that it might have trouble finding enough seats in other schools for the hundreds of students who would normally enroll there.

That’s not the case for Boys and Girls. The school’s enrollment has plummeted by 40 percent since Gassaway took over, and the city says at least half of the school’s redbrick building on Fulton Street is going unused.

“Without a doubt, you could fit another school here,” Gassaway, who has been more outspoken than many principals, said last year.

Nadelstern, who has criticized the Department of Education since he left in 2011 but supports its policy of closing low-performing schools, said a school’s historical significance can also keep it off the chopping block. Besides Boys and Girls, the only other school that the department awarded two straight F grades but did not propose closing was DeWitt Clinton High School, which also has a robust alumni association and top-flight sports program.

But Boys and Girls might well have a stronger political edge, Nadelstern said.

“It could just be that Vann and Young and the advisory group got to Dennis [Walcott],” he said. “It could be that simple.”

Department officials did not respond to requests to explain why they decided not to add Boys and Girls to the year’s closure list.

Walcott, the city’s schools chancellor, is among the department officials who have defended the school under Gassaway’s leadership. Gassaway was allowed to remove Boys and Girls from the roster of schools that faced a controversial overhaul strategy known as “turnaround” last year, something principals at other schools tried but failed to do. Deputy Chancellor Marc Sternberg has praised Gassaway’s leadership multiple times. And last year, asked about the school’s low scores, Walcott said the department would stand behind Gassaway as the principal worked to implement a plan to serve the school’s many high-need students.

“Our commitment is to Boys and Girls and making sure that we help them achieve those goals that Bernard set,” Walcott said.

Having strong allies has helped schools evade closure before. Last year, the city withdrew its proposal to shrink Wadleigh Secondary School for the Performing Arts after influential politicians in Harlem sprung to the school’s defense. It also withdrew plans to close and reopen Grover Cleveland High School, which State Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan attended and defended.

And even though Wadleigh and Grover Cleveland stayed open, the city replaced both of their principals. Boys and Girls’ backers said this week that they expect to see Gassaway still at the school next September.

“I’d say he absolutely still has confidence from us,” Vann said.

But Young, the advisory board member, could have to contend with colleagues on the State Board of Regents, who say they do not understand why the city has not applied the same standards universally. ”Everybody should be treated equitably with the same metrics,” said Regent Kathleen Cashin, a former Brooklyn school superintendent.

Outside Boys and Girls this week, students and residents from Bedford-Stuyvesant were split over the school’s quality. But no one denied the significance that the school has to the neighborhood.

“Boys and Girls is synonymous with Bed-Stuy. It’s a landmark. People say, ‘I live this far from Boys and Girls,’” said Damien Brown, a longtime resident. “Generations of people have gone to school here.”

Lisa Jones said she would be happy to send her young child to the school. “It’s an excellent school,” she said. “I have two family members who went there.”

Jahquan Williams, a junior at the school, said academics weren’t up to par for most students but he doubted that the school would be closed. Asked why, Williams said, “Boys and Girls is the pride and joy of Bed-Stuy. That’s a known nickname.”

Additional reporting contributed by Rachel Cromidas and Emma Sokoloff-Rubin