Bennett High School public meeting for a new school and charters begin requests to locate at Buffalo Public Schools

The public meeting of Bennett High School Alumni's proposal for a new high school  will be held on Tuesday, December 2, 2014, at 7pm in the auditorium.

The proposal features various pathways to graduation from a Regents Honors  to career technical education programs. The building trades are the focus of the  CTE programs.

It is important for the community to attend the meeting to learn about the new proposal for Bennett High School since the State Education Department labeled it an "out of time" school facing closure, if it doesn't propose an acceptable education plan to the district by mid December.

And Interim Superintendent Donald A. Ogilvie has appointed a committee  12 to review  and evaluate the turnaround plans for Bennett, East, Lafayette High Schools and MLK  this month.

Also, the school board majority bloc voted Tuesday at  special board meeting to accept requests from local "high" performing charter schools to either co-exist in a district building with another  charter, or with another school in a district building or take over the building.

Interestingly,  a Calvados comment in the BN story on Nov. 26,  cited an August 19, 2014, State Ed  Press Release with a list  Reward Schools.

"NYSED designates high performing public schools as "Reward Schools. "Reward Schools are either schools that have high achievement or schools that have made the most progress in the state and do not have significant gaps in student achievement between subgroups. For 2014-15, the state identified 354 NY public schools for their list. There are 248 charter schools currently approved to operate in New York State as of October 2014. Only seven of these charter schools appear on

NYSED's list of Reward Schools and none are located in WNY."

Tapestry Charter School visited Bennett last summer and has indicated an interest in the Bennett High School building, while Health Sciences Charter School founded in Tonawanda in 2009, until it renovated the old ECC building and moved to this location on Ellicott Street in 2011, has submitted a request to State Education officials in Albany to open an elementary school at the Dr. Martin Luther King building on High Street in order to offer K through 12.

Back in October, the Buffalo Board of Education principally the Majority Bloc voted for a resolution favored by board member Larry Quinn that would allow any Buffalo Public School to become a charter school.