In a meeting Monday night marked by several hours of technical problems, there was a clear message to Albany: leave East High School alone. State Education Commissioner John King has ordered that suburban BOCES 1 have some control over East and Lafayette high schools to allow students who want vocational training to get it outside of city schools. That isn't going over well with East alums and current parents and supporters.
The school board has to make some decisions on the program by a special meeting next Wednesday and receive Albany approval by August 12.
Mike Capuana, associate director of career and technical programs for BOCES, says there is no plan to replace city programs.
"The question would be, do students at East High School have access to other programs across the district? Their CNA program, for example. We're not interested in supplanting programs they are already successfully running here at East or Lafayette. This would be offering access to students to additional career and technical education that they may not have access to at East or Lafayette," Capuana says.
BOCES offers 29 vocational programs, far more than the city's diminished programs offer. With school opening in not much more than a month, it hasn't even been decided yet if BOCES will offer its programs in city buildings or in its suburban centers.
Some speakers wanted Johns Hopkins University to be kept in its program to help students and teachers in the two schools. While problems of the two schools are somewhat different, both have low graduation rates, discipline problems, and attendance issues. Schools Superintendent Pamela Brown says those have improved since the Hopkins program has started up.
The president of Lafayette's graduating class, Corey Becker, says Commissioner King shouldn't be allowed to push the mandate.
"Why? Why are we letting a man who has one year of public school teaching experience, a man whose only charter school in Massachusetts failed horribly [and] was one of the worst in Massachusetts, why are we letting him take control of our public school system?," Becker says.
King has said the schools will be closed without major changes. There is a similar meeting Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. at Lafayette High School.
