There's news o' plenty to report within the CES network - not all of which is about disturbingly negative disruptions of exemplary small schools in New York City. Unfortunately, before we move onto some of that news, we need to add to the call to save the Julia Richman Education Complex to report on the situation at Brooklyn's El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice, the first public school in New York State created by a community/youth development organization and the first organization authorized by the NYC Board of Education to own its own public school building.

That building is current a cause of tremendous tension between El Puente and NYC. Luis Garden Acosta, the founder, president and CEO of El Puente has posted a letter that describes the crisis in detail; here's the start:

Last Friday (10/06/06) El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice, our celebrated public high school, was ordered out of El Puente immediately. After 13 years of El Puente Academy history in our own El Puente building, the New York City Department of Education (DOE) decreed that no student was allowed to return to it. DOE refused to allow for even one school day in which we could cushion the heartbreak, focus the rage and otherwise attempt a transition respectful of the dignity and values of our community.

This story is in progress, and signs are pointing to a resolution that may respect and sustain El Puente's work. The quick synosis: according to Acosta, the DOE deferred critical maintenance until the building were unusable; at that point, it immediately and disruptively relocated El Puente Academy. Organizers at El Puente went into action, circulating a petion in English and Spanish listing a number of demands. These petitions have thus far collected over 3,000 signatures (does that include yours?).

And, it seems, there's good news to report on El Puente's MySpace blog. The city responded with a 10/31/2006 meeting, an agreement to relocate to the site that the El Puente Academy community prefers and movement toward a permanent site per long-standing El Puente requests. The blog also reports that the Hispanic Federation donated $20,000 to fireproof a boiler in the original facility.

This story is over 13 years in the making, and while it seems that El Puente will continue to thrive with the Board of Education's support, the situation isn't yet resolved. Even if you're not in New York City, this matters to you; El Puente is in the group of small schools that demonstrate that done right, small schools can make a tremendous difference to the lives of young people and their communities. If New York City continues to make a commitment to the sustained success of El Puente, that sends a message to cities and districts everywhere about the value of personalized, equitable, and challenging small schools (a message that, considering the Julia Richman circumstance, NYC itself may need to listen to more attentively).