"Public Housing and Public Schools"- Response to Angelica

I wish I could have attended this breakfast because I am currently student teaching at P.S. 34 and many of the students in my class, as well as the school, live in the housing projects that are right near the school. Looking at what was hypothesized, most of it is true of P.S. 34. Almost all of the students are minorities, mainly Hispanic or Black, and qualify for free or reduced lunch yet there is a very good student to teacher ratio. In my class there are only 14 students! However, in terms of the teachers being less educated and experienced, I have found this to be not true in most cases. Many of the teachers in the school are graduates from NYU and are great teachers from my experience. There are many wonderful things going on at P.S. 34, such as Dan and Neil’s whole fair trade chocolate unit last year. I definitely would like to see some sort of community center and/or extra curricular activities created because that is one area that I believe the school is seriously lacking in. I’m not sure about the achievement gap but I would be curious to find out about that. I think it is a serious problem and is one that we need to address in the nation as a whole. I am sure there are many other schools with children that come from public housing that aren’t doing so well and in that case I think building charter schools there might be a good idea, however, I think we need to look more closely at our public schools and see exactly what the problems are and how we can fix them because these students more than any others need a good education.