For many parents, the news came in a note tucked into their children’s backpacks: Boston Public Schools officials saying that six schools may be shuttered next year, including two in Dorchester. On the chopping block are Roger Clap Elementary and East Zone Early Learning Center, which city officials labeled as underperforming. Lee Academy, a pilot school on Talbot Ave., is slated to merge with the elementary school in the same building.
Carol Johnson: Carol Johnson “Pretty thorough” analysis

At the Clap, parents are rallying to save the school from closure. “It has its flaws but we are here to change that,” Kenny Jervis, who has a daughter in second grade and a son in kindergarten, told a crowd of 20 parents gathered in the basement of the Harvest St. school.

Hanging on the walls were signs drawn in crayon by third graders: “We love our family at the Roger Clap! Please keep us together.”

Calling the school a “hidden jewel” and a historic landmark as the second oldest school in Boston, the parents have set up a Facebook group and assembled Tuesday night to strategize ahead of a 6 p.m. meeting with Boston Public School officials tonight (Oct. 14) at the Clap. Lee Academy parents are also scheduled to meet tonight with officials from BPS.

The city’s mayorally appointed school committee will hear any potential revisions from Johnson on Oct. 26 at English High in Jamaica Plain, and the committee is expected to vote on the final proposal on Nov. 3.

According to the school department, more than a third of Clap students were in the “warning” or “failure” category for the MCAS English Arts. Half were listed in the same category in math.

Parents say the figures don’t tell the school’s whole story and they argue the test scores are limited to a small subset of students. Twenty-six percent of the students are special needs.

“This school is not a failing school,” said Ian Gold, who has a second grade student there.

Superintendent Carol Johnson said changes could be made to the proposal based on feedback they receive at meetings held across the city. She said she can’t speak for what will sway the school committee.

“For me, the issue is how do we make sure that kids have great school choices and I think that’s what we hear from families all along,” she said. “And not every e-mail I’ve gotten about this is negative. Some people have written to say, ‘I’ve got a kid in a school, I haven’t been happy, I’m glad you’re doing this.’ ”

Pressed on whether any of those came from Dorchester parents, Johnson said she was unsure, adding that many of those comments have come from the Hyde Park schools that could get axed.

“I haven’t heard anybody say, from either Lee or Clap in Dorchester, that ‘your numbers are wrong, we’re doing better than this and let me show you how,’ ” she said. “Now I have heard the Lee say, ‘if you just look how kids are doing in kindergarten and first grade, you’ll see good performance, better performance.’ But they will acknowledge their scores don’t look as good in fourth or fifth grade, and that they have a problem. I mean, I think they acknowledge that.”

Johnson said her team did a “pretty thorough job” in analyzing the data to back her proposal. “I think that if the school committee makes a different decision, it won’t solely be about data, it will be about other aspects of the change that they’re not comfortable with,” she said.

If the school committee signs off on her proposal, the 150 students at the Clap and the 122 students at the East Zone ELC will be given their first preference in their home zone schools, while the Lee Academy, which has 266 students, will be merged with the Joseph Lee Elementary School. Clap students will be able to go to schools within a mile and a half radius of the Clap, including the Everett, the Mather, or the Russell.

The building that currently houses the East Zone ELC was originally the central kitchen for the entire school system. It was never meant to be an early learning center for children, Johnson said.
At the Lee Elementary School, students have been doing better than their pilot school counterparts, prompting school officials to merge the two, Johnson said.

Overall, the proposal to close and merge schools is expected to save between $7.7 million to $8.7 million in fiscal year 2012. But Johnson said the dollar figure was not the main factor behind the proposal. “If we had started this with budget as a driver, we probably would have closed a lot more schools,” she said.

Six schools were closed in the 2008-2009 year, including Dorchester’s Lucy Stone, Quincy E. Dickerman, and Pauline Agassiz Shaw schools.

The 56,000-student school system faces a $60 million shortfall in the next fiscal year, with part of the hole coming from $21 million in stimulus funds drying up. And the system also continues to face competition from charter schools and parochial schools.

The Clap’s parents say they aren’t giving up. In the school’s basement, over the din of a dozen children zooming around the room and digging into boxes of Lego bricks, the parents continued to brainstorm. “We can’t let our children down,” said Jervis.

More information on Johnson’s proposal is available at bostonpublicschools.org/redesign.