Meager Turnout At Recent School Board 18 Meeting
By Skye Holly

In a sparsely attended Community School Board 18 Town Hall meeting on December 17 at P.S./I.S. 66, the ongoing question of "What’s happening in our public schools?" was addressed with a sense of disappointment and frustration by the school board.

The Department of Education plans to rid the public schools of their school boards and replace them with Community District Parent Councils. The plan has been in motion for the past year, and the school boards are fighting it, but the Department of Education insists that the boards will be a thing of the past come February 2004.

Mark Fertig, Secretary/Treasurer of school board, said that Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is shutting down the school board for "fallacious reasons," referring to a NY Times article featured December 1 mentioning that city officials note that less than 5 percent of voters actually participated in the old school board elections. The city feels that the implementation of a new system will be more effective, aiming to increase the level of
parent participation within individual schools. Fertig said he thinks that is poor reasoning when there is only an 11 percent turnout for the City Council elections and yet "the councils aren’t being done away with."

Because many schools in minority areas lack participation in groups like the PTA, questions of bias are a concern, according to board members.

Dr. Andrea Smith, director of the Safe Schools Healthy Student Project shared how beneficial the school boards have been in addressing the needs of students in these communities and have made the Safe Schools program such a success by helping to write letters that have awarded them grants to keep the project running.

Safe Schools has teamed up with community based organizations to provide such services as psychotherapy and crisis counseling for students from violent households and those directly affected by the September 11 terrorist attacks. Several workshops and training have also been provided.

"To be coactive versus reactive" is their aim," Dr. Smith says and hopes that the program’s success which was achieved with the help of the school boards, can continue.

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