Carranza holds town hall in Far Rockaway
BY CARLOTTA MOHAMED
New York City Schools
Chancellor Richard Carranza
answered parents’ questions
Monday night at his first Community
Education Council
District 27 town hall meeting
in Far Rockaway.
Parents and students filled
the auditorium at Goldie Maple
Academy, located at 3-65
Beach 56th St., where they listened
to the Carranza discuss
issues regarding the gifted and
talented program, increased
student performance on standardized
state tests, and developments
of new schools on the
peninsula.
When asked about Mayor
Bill de Blasio’s promise to establish
a gifted and talented
program in Far Rockaway
— and with no word from the
Department of Education on
when that will occur — Carranza
noted that the program
is simply a “myth segregating
students.”
“The gifted and talented
program is faster and more.
In other words, there’s not a
gifted curriculum that’s based
on the brain science of gifted
individuals … instead of giving
them five problems, you give
them 15 problems,” Carranza
said. “People get really upset
when I tell them the truth, but
I’ve got 1.1 million kids and
those are my constituents.”
“I want to be about research
based proven strategies
to give truly intellectually
gifted children what they
need to succeed, not about the
myth that some kids are gifted
and other kids aren’t gifted,”
he added.
In regards to implementing
TIMESLEDGER | QNS.28 COM | JAN. 17-JAN. 23, 2020
a plan of action to help
students in the eastern section
of District 27 to increase
performance on state exams,
Carranza suggested developing
curriculums aligned with
state standards.
“The state of New York decides
what the standards are,”
Carranza said. “What we get to
do as a system is decide what is
the curriculum that we get to
use to teach those standards
— what are they going to read,
what’re they going to use, what
authors, what strategies — and
we have some principals that
are masterful in leading their
school communities in developing
curriculums.”
Furthermore, Carranza
noted, they’re assessing students
and making sure the
curriculum is tight.
“We know where students
are supposed to be, and if
they’re not where they’re supposed
to be, we give the educators
the tools they need to help
them and to bridge that opportunity
gap,” Carranza said.
As the conversation shifted
to large housing and retail development
in the Rockaways
and what initiative Carranza
is presenting to coordinate
schools’ needs with the Department
of City Planning, he
said they’re working on a coordinated
approach on the developments,
number of students
and school seats.
“When you look at overcrowding
that is happening
in Queens and portions of the
Rockaways, it is the most overcrowded
in New York City. In
the $16 billion five-year capital
plan that we just had approved
this past school year, there is
funding for 54,000 new seats
in new schools and almost
half of them are in Rockaway,
Queens,” Carranza said.
Throughout the town hall,
Carranza also touched on issues
such as providing air conditioning
in classrooms, social
emotional learning support
for students, swim safety, and
violence prevention and gang
control.
Reach reporter Carlotta
Mohamed by e-mail at cmohamed@
schnepsmedia.com or
by phone at (718) 260–4526.
NYC Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza (c.) speaks at the Community Education Council District 27
town hall meeting in Far Rockaway. Photo by Carlotta Mohamed/QNS
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