Jan. 8, 2010 – Alfred E. Smith High School, Bronx
Smith H.S. rallied 100 people to fight against Bloomberg’s attempt to close this invaluable gateway for many Bronx working class students. Students led the chants and pleaded passionately to save Smith and its many vocational programs that provide lifelong careers. Many 
graduates have earned jobs that service our communities and have even helped build the new Bronx Yankee stadium. In this video , Danny Escobar pours his heart out in the school’s defense. Smith has nurtured him as a family and is giving him carpentry skills that are provided nowhere else.
Click on title to view video.
GEM is mobilizing citywide for a protest at Mayor Bloomberg home on Jan. 21 at 4:30 PM. Get your student, parent, community and teacher organizations to endorse this important rally. Build the pressure to stop school closings. Stop the drive to privatize with charter schools.
Grassroots Education Movement 
I received an email from GEMnyc supporting a protest of school closures. I agree with everything in the email, except for the inclusion of small schools in the statement below:
“The little known secret behind charter schools and small schools is that they steal the highest achieving students from district schools, and turn away ELL, Special Education, and struggling students.”
I work at a small school. Our incoming class of students were all level 1 and 2. We are just as frustrated as other schools regarding the siphoning away of higher level students by selective schools, whether they be charters or others. The issue is not with the size of the school, but the selectivity of the school. Why should some schools be able to select their students and others not?
Please correct this error. It is hard enough to defend the existence of our school without misinformation being propagated by the “good guys.”
Posted by Anonymous | January 10, 2010, 11:34 am