Lafayette High School Closing

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show...(the opening lines of David Copperfield as written by Charles Dickens;inspired by MTM). Or at least this ACCOUNT will, perhaps, have a reflection on whether I'm going to be the hero in my own life.

I hear the ticking of the clock
I'm lying here the room's pitch dark
I wonder where you are tonight
No answer on the telephone
And the night goes by so very slow
Oh I hope that it won't end though
Alone HEART

The closing of Lafayette High School could present itself~~~as a blessing in disguise. The next Lofts project for Frizlen!?!? This might be the next-shot-in-the-arm for this middle West Side neighborhood. Filtering out the 'soft' element to allow another Annunciation-Lofts type success story to take root!!!! This part of Lafayette Avenue would have property-values escalate significantly. The Resurrection, and the Life!!!!


Re: Lafayette High School Closing

Updated: July 08, 2010, 4:34 PM
By Mary B. Pasciak

NEWS STAFF REPORTER

Persistent, pervasive problems at Lafayette High School will result in its closing next June, Buffalo School Superintendent James A. Williams said Wednesday.

Students currently enrolled at Lafayette will be able to complete the 2010-11 school year there, but no freshmen will be admitted in September, Williams told the Board of Education.

After the Class of 2011 graduates next June, the remaining sophomores and juniors at Lafayette will be reassigned to other high schools in Buffalo. The school’s principal and teachers will be reassigned.

When the Lafayette building reopens in September 2011, it will be in its infancy as a different school, serving seventh through 12th grades, Williams said. For the 2011-12 school year, it will serve only seventh and eighth grades, he said. Then, each year, another grade will be added until the school extends through 12th grade.

Williams said the district plans to begin looking at Lafayette and nearby International School 45 “more as a campus.”

Identified as one of the “persistently lowest-achieving” schools in the state, Lafayette has one of the lowest graduation rates in Buffalo, with only half its students getting a diploma.

A team of educational experts recently evaluated the school and found a great deal of tension in the building between the staff and administrators, as well as strained relationships between adults and students, Williams said.

The team recommended a wholesale change in the school’s staff and administrators. And the superintendent says he is on board. “Sometimes change is needed, and I think change is needed in Lafayette across the board,” Williams said.

International School 45, which currently serves prekindergarten through eighth grade, is currently overcrowded, he said. Its seventh and eighth grades will be moved to Lafayette in 2011, leaving the International School serving students through sixth grade.

The International School also has been identified by the state as among the persistently lowest-achieving. So have five others in Buffalo: Martin Luther King Multicultural Institute, Riverside Institute of Technology, and Bennett, Burgard and South Park high schools.

That designation meant the state required Buffalo to assemble a team of experts — a “joint intervention team” — to visit those schools, review data, observe classrooms and interview administrators, teachers, students and parents. That team then submitted its findings to the state Education Department, along with recommendations on how to turn each school around.

Each school could be eligible for as much as $2 million a year for three years to implement its improvement plan. The state will determine how much money each school will get.

A teachers union survey at Lafayette in November found that teachers see Principal Fatima Morrell as a bully who intimidates and demeans her staff. A second teacher survey this spring yielded similar results.

As part of the restructuring, Morrell will be assigned to another building. The teachers and the staff also will be reassigned. They will have the opportunity to reapply for the new school in the building, Williams said.

And Angelo Coniglio of www.remembertheafl.com FAME, offers the following perspective:

Supporters must act to preserve decades of history.

Buffalo News, Jul 19, 2010 | by Angelo F. Coniglio

The recent mismanagement, and now the announced closing, of Lafayette High School strikes to the core of the alumni of the venerable "Old Plant." Lafayette is the longest-tenured Buffalo high school still in its original building, and is on the National Historic Register.

Its Alumni Association, like no other public school's, has long supported Lafayette, with funding of capital projects such as tree planting, reconstruction of the building's iconic tower and carillon and restoration of its historic Steinway piano. Students at Lafayette have benefited from the association's awards of sports, drill teams and cheerleading uniforms; teaching aids; and thousands of dollars in scholarships.

The alumni wonder: What will become of the projects sponsored by the association, as well as the century's-worth of trophies and awards housed by the school? What will happen to the gymnasium lovingly painted on his own time by a physical education teacher, himself an alumnus of the school?

What will be the fate of the walls of fame, and the plaques that honor noted alumni such as Judge Joseph Mattina, Dr. Pasquale Greco, Fran Stryker, the creator of "The Lone Ranger," famed '40s singing group the Modernaires and Pulitzer-Prize-winning Buffalo News political cartoonist Bruce Shanks? What will become of the original oak paneling that has been preserved and often reused, as it was in creating the modern new library rooms? Where will past and future alumni research its history, if its archives of student newsletters, yearbooks, documents and photographs are no longer preserved?

This is a school whose alumni annually celebrate their ties with a lake cruise by alumni from various years, as well as with numerous reunions for individual class years. The school recently had 1,700 attendees at its 100th anniversary, from seven countries, 35 states and graduating years spanning from 1931 through 2002. That event raised more than $30,000 for the school. To whom will future reunions award their proceeds?

I propose that whatever the final use of Lafayette High School, one or more of the building's rooms be specifically set aside as halls of fame and archive rooms, to house and protect the memorabilia and memory of a school that has been an icon of the neighborhood, and the font of learning for so many of Buffalo's citizens.

These rooms should be managed, maintained and controlled not by the city of Buffalo, nor the Board of Education, both of which have failed to sustain this civic treasure, but by the board of the Lafayette High School Alumni Association.

Angelo F. Coniglio, class of 1954, is past vice president of the Lafayette High School Alumni Association. He lives in Amherst.


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Hickok
Someday the Romance & The Music~~~Will Combine