Marty Goldens Town Hall was held at the Kings Bay YM-YMHA on Nostrand was again packed with parents opposed to the Hebrew Language Academy Charter School (HLA). Unlike the Marine Park Civic Meeting, this town hall had John White from the Department of Education available to pitch the “proposal” to the community, then to take questions and address comments.
Golden, is behind the community 100% on this issue.
The meeting was rather long, if you stuck around to the end, but it was very productive for the parents to go back and forth with John White. It seemed like this would be good practice for the May 26th hearing.
The proposal as is now the HLA comes in in 2010 to co-exist with IS 278 for “two years”, with Kindergarten and 1st Grades as the grades entering the HLA.
There were some very interesting “gotcha” moments in the video of the Q & A, I will try to highlight them so you don’t have to watch the whole meeting before the Tuesday, May 26th Meeting
The BIG Meeting
You have to come to this meeting to show your opposition.
Department of Education Hearing
May 26th
Marine Park Junior High
6:00 pm get there at 5:30 pm
Next town hall there better be coffee or i’m revolting!
Thanks so much for posting this. I was at the other meeting held that evening and there were few answers to be had there. It seems to me that John White had one answer for just about everything: The parents of the 300 kids who applied to this charter school are entitled to have a choice and the parents of the children who go there are not. He elaborates on this theme by making it sound as if someone had actually requested this choice, rather than it being a long-term goal of Michael Steinhardt’s.
If I show up on May 26 with a petition of 500 names requesting an Italian language school will I then be automatically entitled to it? This administration is incredilbly arrogant and I hope you all remember this on election day.