Gotham Gazette

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iZone

iZone

  • Requiem For A School That Works

    global tech

    David Baiz, right, with students


    Eight years ago, I had a front-row seat at the birth of a new small school in East Harlem. Global Technology Preparatory was crafted by its founding teachers over Sunday brunches at the home of Jacqueline Pryce-Harvey, who would go on to become the school’s assistant principal.

    Featuring, among other things, a one-to-one laptop program for its poor students and an after-school program—the result of a partnership with Citizens Schools, a Boston-based nonprofit—Global Tech, as it is known, came to be heralded as one of a slew of

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  • In the Age of De Blasio, A Bloomberg Era Small School Reunion

    reunion photo Andrea story1

    reunion photo by Chrystina Russell, former principal of Global Tech


    In July, I found myself back in the East Harlem cafeteria shared by Global Technology Preparatory and P.S. 7. The occasion for my visit was a reunion of Global Tech’s first class of eighth-graders, who were now, four years after their middle-school commencement, graduating from high school.

    I was eager to return and see how the students had fared. I knew from my ongoing contacts with the school and its students that several had endured more

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