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FREEDOMWAYS       FOURTH QUARTER 1968

building maintenance is part of the system. A new combined school has been slated to replace the two oldest structures. Yet, in the face of loud protestations about community control and community involvement, new schools have still not been planned and constructed with the involvement of the community and with little involvement of teachers of that area. If the community was not involved, or had to force its way into the process of planning, it goes without saying that active teacher unionists were also not involved. Teachers who for years have questioned how functional certain new items of construction really were, were left outside the process of developing a new school.

within school rooms of the I.S. 201 complex area

While adults may argue the pro and cons of community control versus community stewardship (decentralization) the children and teachers of the schools have been part of a growing educational disaster. The 201 Complex Area should show signs of classroom difficulty because at the first and second line of supervision the district has been virtually stripped of the kind of creative, able, energetic leadership that is needed. Applicants from civil service tests have proven an uninspired lot who mouth platitudes to disguise questionable attitudes or who are interested in the "children" for purposes of research subjects. For the entire District 4, (Harlem) in 1966, 4 out of 10 students (44%) were reading two or more years below grade level. Superficial observation would suggest that since no coordinated organized efforts have been attempted, remedies should not be expected. 

In a community of so-called disadvantaged students and a school population of 2,900 to 3,400 students, there are no health counselors, no classes for visually handicapped children, and but one class for the intellectually gifted-on the intermediate school level. In that vast area there is but one evening adult center. 

Educational experiments in progress are as scarce as hens' teeth-two classes of pre-primary, CRMD (Children with Retarded Mental Development) and the project for the Institute for Developmental Studies. The full complement of students in the five schools in the special programs number less than 400, or fewer than one pupil in seven. Thus, the very children whom all the educators claim they feel "so sorry for" are in fact the ones for whom the educators, of the old order, do so little for. 

The teacher situation is just as bleak as that of their charges and their supervisors. Of the 216 teachers within the five schools, 95 are

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