September 19, 2006--"Roosevelt, Roosevelt--Sis-Boom-Ba!"

Roosevelt, on the Gold Coast of Long Island, came into existence in the 1930s as a town for Negroes who were servants at the large estates of Old Westbury and King and Sands Points. God forbid that they should live in the same jurisdiction as their masters. Even worse, imagine how unacceptable it would have been if their children went to the same school as our children.

Thus things have remained. Actually festered. The minute you pull off the Northern State Parkway at the Roosevelt exit, though you have been driving through some of the most expensive and luxurious real estate in America, it is as though you have been immediately transported south to Tunica County in Mississippi—Black youth are hanging out on street corners in front of abandoned and boarded-up stores. The only viable business appears to be Western Beef Discount. If you then drive to the high school, along streets with similarly burnt-out and boarded-up houses, you will find labs where neither the water nor the gas works so that the students can’t do real science and thus cannot meet the NY State academic requirements; and if you take an even cursory look at student records you would find many fewer than half graduate and almost none go on to college.

While virtually every other high school in the US has a list of illustrious graduates, even if the school is currently in decline, at Roosevelt High they tell you about just three graduates—Julius Erving (Dr J), the basketball great, Eddie Murphy, and surprisingly, since the school is 99 percent Black and Hispanic, Howard Stern.

But when the NY Times writes about Roosevelt High School, even placing the article on its front page, it’s about the football team.

Most recently, the Times reported about an unusual act of sports charity—how one of Roosevelt’s traditional rivals, the white and affluent Cold Spring Harbor team and citizenry, raised $20,000 so that the Roosevelt team would have enough money to get their season started, including last Saturday’s game against Cold Springs Harbor. (See article linked below.)

It was just four years ago that Cold Springs refused to play Roosevelt because there was an off-campus shooting in “downtown” Roosevelt. So wasn’t it nice that the Cold Springs folks, screwing up their courage and generosity, did this for the poor of Roosevelt?

Well, sort of.

I have an insider’s perspective on the situation because four years ago, and until more recently, I worked with an education reform program that was underway in Roosevelt that was designed to help more students graduate, go on to college, and with the help of the scholarships we provided earn college degrees.

I will tell you a little about what happened there as a cautionary tale about why so much of our public education system is failing some of our country’s lowest-income students. Also, why what Cold Springs did was less than truly helpful. Plus how irresponsible the NY Times was and has been in its reporting about Roosevelt.

Things had gotten so bad with the schools in Roosevelt that New York State’s Education Commissioner, Richard Mills, took control of the district and appointed a new superintendent, Ronald Ross and a new school board. When Ross arrived, using his unregulated power, he arbitrarily tossed out the reform program that was already producing measurable results--many more students than in the past were on track to graduate from Roosevelt High School, a dramatically increasing number were taking a college-prep academic program, and the scholarship money for them was already set aside and in the bank waiting for them to enroll in two- and four-year colleges.

Without taking a careful look at the program, Project GRAD, Superintendent Ross declared it ineffective because, and I am not making this up—he said all of this in public, because it had been developed in Houston during Governor George Bush’s time (so it had to be regressive), it had originally been offered to Hispanic students and was thus inappropriate for Roosevelt’s blacks (ignoring the fact that by that time it had as many black as Hispanic students enrolled and was doing as well for Blacks as Hispanics), and since the program was invented by White folks it was thus, by definition, racist. (Ron Ross, by the way is African American.)

Rick Mills stood by and let all this happen even though he had declared the Roosevelt take-over as a personal priority—it was the first school district in NY State history to have been taken over by the Commissioner.

None of this was ever reported in the Times—not the success of Project GRAD, not Ross’ reverse racism, not the outcry from the local parents, community leaders, business community, and local, state, and national political officeholders—all Republicans and Democrats were outraged and supported GRAD’s continuation.

Nor has the Times said a word about what happened as a result of Ross’ “leadership”—the millions of dollars of misspent money (the district is back in the red—up to $6 million this year) nor the return to low student performance. In fact, there has not been one sentence in the NY Times about the rising clamor among the same community and political leadership calling for Ross’ resignation. Commissioner Mills, when pressed last week about the situation by NY Newsday “declined to comment.”

But we did have extensive reports in the Times about the shooting four years ago, the subsequent cancellation of the Roosevelt-Cold Springs Harbor game, and the recent fundraising in support of the Roosevelt football team wound up on the front page. What priorities!

How much better it would have been if the Cold Springs community had raised money to replace the GRAD scholarship money Ross so casually tossed away “for the sake of his students.” How much better it would have been if the Times covered the real story—about the educational malfeasance in Tunica County, Long Island, New York.