July 14, 2010. I’m at the Pine Hills Elementary School, where the Albany City School Board will hold this month’s meeting. On the agenda is the possibility of closing Harriet Gibbons High School and merging the 73 9th graders that are scheduled to enroll into HGHS into Albany High School. If this vote takes place, it would effectively end the school that was formed in 1969 as the Street Academy, and renamed in 1992 after one of its original principals. I had been asked by some of the current teachers at HGHS to come and speak at the board meeting.
I arrived early at the meeting. A woman was busy putting nameplates on a set of tables, each nameplate corresponding with the name of a board member. There were also water bottles and little wrapped packages of mints on the table, along with the agenda. She asked who I was. I told her my name and that I was an alum of Harriet Gibbons back in the 1980’s, when it was called Street Academy.
“Oh, you’re the person who wrote that blog, aren’t you?” she asked.
Well, I’ve never been one to hide behind my words… at least if I post, you know it’s from me and not under any anonymous poster.
One by one, I saw several teachers and students and alumni of HGHS show up at the board meeting. Every one of them wanted to do whatever they could to keep the school alive.
I looked over the notes I made, and carefully went over the speech one more time. I would only have three minutes to speak. I needed to make those three minutes count.
The meeting was called to order. I signed my name to a list of public speakers that would be allowed to address the school board prior to discussion of the various topics – one of them being the potential closure of Harriet Gibbons.
My name was called. I went up to the microphone. And it took everything I had to keep my composure. A thousand emotions racing around me like I was the flagman at the Southern 500 at Darlington.
And I spoke. Once chance. Have to make it count.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of the Albany City School Board. My name is Chuck Miller, I’m a resident of Albany, New York, and I graduated from this school back in 1981.
I stand here before you because others could not. Those “others” were the novitiate of the Kenwood Academy of the Sacred Heart and the members of the Albany Urban League, who created an alternative high school for those who had essentially fallen through the cracks of the Albany public school system. They worked together and formed a “storefront university,” a “street academy,” if you will. To give those who had no chance left – a chance. To give them a way out, instead of a handout. I stand here before you today because of what they started.
That school I mentioned joined the Albany City School District in 1974, and by 1992 it became Harriet Gibbons High School, named after school principal Harriet Gibbons, the first woman of color to become principal of an Albany public school and the first woman of color to sit on the very school board that convenes here today. I stand before you today because of what she started.
Despite everything that has ever been thrown at our high school – the school district using us as a “dumping ground” for every incorrigible that they’ve given up on, placing us in buildings so shaky that even Historic Albany Foundation doesn’t want to preserve them, our school has remained true to its mission to help give students a fighting chance. Teachers like Eileen Kawola and Peter Balint and George Mastrangelo, Dorinda Davis and Milton Horne and Bonnie Diefendorf – God rest her soul – Bill Newman and Ahmed Naqi, Lillian Tillman and Gerald Guzik and Anthony Clement and Edward Trant and a hundred other teachers. I stand before you in honor of what they’ve started.
I know, because that school gave me a chance. Without the education I received at Harriet Gibbons High School – valedictorian, Class of 1981, captain of the Answers Please team that demolished Albany Academy in a battle of brains – without Harriet Gibbons High School, I would have faced a bleak future of unemployment, public assistance, destitution and despair. With that education, I attended college, and I currently have a decent job and have achieved success. And my story is the rule rather than the exception. For every year that it operated as a 9th through 12th grade high school, Harriet Gibbons High School has produced successful graduates who have achieved New York State Regents diplomas – the same Regents diplomas that were issued in Albany High School. I stand before you today as one of many who have started.
Instead of closing down Harriet Gibbons, this is the opportunity that the Albany City School District can now exploit – to create a full-fledged alternative high school, a chance to help those in need to succeed. Return Harriet Gibbons to a full 9th through 12th grade high school. Give those teachers a chance to work with students for four years. Give them a chance to become alumni, rather than to become statistics.
Because your current student body is being pulled toward private schools, parochial schools and charter schools. Now more than ever, it is important that public school students be afforded a positive secondary education opportunity. That means Harriet Gibbons High School. High School. Not ninth grade academy – make it a full-fledged high school in a true high school building.
Folding Harriet Gibbons High School into Albany High School is not a solution. That’s just an amputation. And closing the school down completely is not a solution. That’s an assassination. And after 40 years of service, if the Albany City School District lets Harriet Gibbons High School die, then the Albany City School District has no soul.
And I stand before you today – in the hopes that my words will help sway your vote to keep Harriet Gibbons High School operating for years to come. Let it be a start – rather than an end. Thank you.
Applause in the audience. If nothing else, I won over the crowd.
Others took their turn on the microphone. Nikki Holt, who graduated from HGHS in 2004, told the board of how her experience with HGHS helped her to eventually get her master’s degree in social work. Other students and faculty and administrative staff also talked about how they helped students who could not previously be helped.
But then the public forum ended, and the discussion among the school board members began. And from the tenor of the comments, it seemed as if they had already made their minds up. Their comments were full of, “As soon as the students from Harriet Gibbons are moved to Albany High…” and “Once the students are in Albany High…” The hope was drifting away.
And as the heat increased, I thought about what we went through back in the 1980’s in our little school. How the school district basically ignored us until we actually did something they couldn’t ignore. And every year, students from Street Academy and Harriet Gibbons would go to college or to the service or to some other productive avenue of the community.
Then it came time for the vote. It was unanimous. Harriet Gibbons High School would close, effective that night. The decision was irreversible.
After the board meeting concluded, I calmly but emotionally expressed my displeasure regarding the decision to several board members. I was told that they would make sure the students from HGHS would receive a proper education in Albany High, and that they would “hold the feet to the fire” of those who would be accountable.
I’m sorry, but that’s not good enough as far as I’m concerned.
Because from this day forward, my high school is officially closed. A place where I felt safe from the craziness in my world is now gone.
And it hurts. Like a cleated kick in the ribs.
After the meeting, I spoke with Anthony Clement, the principal at Harriet Gibbons. I told him that if it was possible, I’d like to save any of the historic artifacts from the school’s history – to keep it safe from being lost in an Albany City School District storage bin. He said he would make sure to honor my request.
All that school did for me when I was a student, and I couldn’t give it back as an adult. How many times could I have come back and helped some kids, maybe earned a teaching certificate or something. How many times could I have gotten involved in any sort of volunteer work or that. And I never bothered.
I feel like I failed. And the best I could do was a last-minute speech in front of a school board that had already made up its mind. No amount of Answers Please or Black Through the Years or any other school success stories would have been enough.
It still hurts.
And it’s going to hurt for a long time.
Chuck The Writer 
school boards are full of bullies. And Street acad. is not as PC as a “charter schoool”…..
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It’s all political. They wanted to appear ‘open-minded’ to the community so there would be less backlash.
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I was at the meeting last night and you did an amazing job. I must admit, I was there for other reasons. My son’s school is once again on the chopping block to close and the roller coaster has been hard to handle. I commend what you and the others did to get the word out to everyone about the value of Harriet Gibbons. As an alumni of the Albany City School District (K-12), I think the biggest mistake the district made was cutting back the Street Academy from a four year school. It truly is a sad time when big government and Charter School bullies can allow people to forget what public school education is truly about.
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You should have mentioned Trivia Bowl, too…in fact, I can’t believe you didn’t.
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Reading this, I can feel your pain, Chuck. I wish I had an answer. You are a brilliant and kind man, and it’s not the same, but perhaps you could mentor one, or maybe a couple of the displaced students? You have a lot to offer, and could change the life of one child forever!
Politics always gives me a headache.
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I went to Street Academy and graduated in 1980. There were times when teachers or counselors knocked on my door to tell me to please come to school. I appreciated that attention because I was an emancipated minor and there was no one else to look after me. I was given the opportunity to graduate in 1980 even after giving birth to a son in my senior year. I could not have done that if it were not for the patience and care of the teachers and principal Lillian Tillman-Dewitt.
Yes Street Academy has helped many people and there are those like Chuck Miller who arrived with a great deal of potential. The teachers were great, they truly care about the students, but their resources were extremely limited. We have to provide services for those students with learning disabilities or neurological issues that may or may not have been diagnosed. They need to have easier access to professionals who specialize in those areas. Just separating them for society and sticking them in a school in a corner of the city is not the answer. A program like a school within a school will allow struggling students to get help with the areas with which they find difficulty, at the same time they will have a chance to join drama, play sports, or join the band. Many of these things were not options for some student at Street Academy or Harriet Gibbons.
I would like to see improvement in the quality of education at Albany High School as well. With the greatest intentions, success cannot be achieved without correcting the issues causing the students to leave the mainstream in the first place. Clearly the Albany school system is having difficulty stretching a budget that is continually cut. No one wants to see teachers loose their jobs, but the priority is to educate students who struggle to meet requirements for graduation and in many cases have a difficult time fitting in society. Now that a decision has been made, lets work together to ensure that these students make the grade. It is not too late to help, You can still mentor or tutor students. There is always a need for that.
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