BREAKING NEWS: Friday, May 20, 10AM: PS 241 EVACUATED SECOND DAY IN A ROW
Thursday, May 19, 10pm
PS 241, a school noted in the film, The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman, as a school which has been squeezed in order to provide space for one of Evil Moskowitz's Harlem Success Academies (IV) in which PS 241 students were forced to locate students into sub-level rooms, were evacuated from their school today.
The sub-level classrooms are directly adjacent to the school's boiler room, which staff and parents have complained is a dangerous location. DOE deemed it "unfit" for HSA students, but acceptable for the PS 241 students.
For a second time this school year, fire alarms in the building went off due to smoke emanating from the boiler. The first incident occurred months ago, and was quickly assessed as a"minor incident" and students were sent back inside. Today, ironically on the afternoon of the movie's premier, fire alarms again went off, sending the three schools co-located in the building, off into the streets to wait out the seemingly innocuous warning.
PS 241, Opportunity Charter School and Harlem Success Academy IV students were given the "all-clear" to return to the building only to find within minutes of their return that the first floor was inundated by smoke and a foul, burning odor. The entire school was vacated a second time, only to find themselves left out on the neighboring sidewalks for quite a time. School safety arrived, followed by police cars, and lastly- four firetrucks. After what seemed to be an eternity (especially for young students), staff was informed that the building had high levels of CO2 and was not safe for occupation.
PS 241 has a safety plan and was evacuated to a neighboring school site, PS 185/208, where are students were given a much needed late lunch and bathroom facilities. Upon returning to the "aired-out" building, we learned that while, PS 241 and Opportunity Charter School students had gone to neighboring schools, Harlem Success had chosen to stay in the building.
Most of the HSA classrooms are located in an adjacent wing- with open halls ways around the corner from where the boiler room and billowing smoke were. However- there was a smell of smoke all over the neighborhood and even the neighboring school personnel could smell the smoke lingering on our clothing from exposure while waiting on the sidewalks.
Anon. comment
How will Eva and the DOE explain the safety of this sub-level location now? How will the building custodian/engineer explain why students were brought back into the building when clearly a dangerous situation existed? How can EVA explain her "commitment" to students when they did not evacuate their kids from a building filled with smoke and high levels of CO2 which needed to be aired out before the other schools' students were allowed to return safely?
Is it really "all about the children?" Parents of HSA IV students should be outraged at the irresponsible actions of HSA. They claim to have a brilliant science program? Are they aware that the curriculum teaches this fact??!! They should lose their charter for endangering those children- not to mention the right to have parents entrust them with the lives and education of their children ever again!!! If the parents do nothing- then the community should stand up for them-
ADD ON
We heard about this story last night at the film premiere and talked about it in the bar. HSA allegedly brought their kids back into a school with billowing smoke and toxic levels of CO. Did they bring back everyone or just the kids who scored low on the tests? Maybe they were trying to close the achievement gap through attrition. Or if a child showed drowsiness would they drag the child to the PS 241 side of the building and claim he was a student there?
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