A state-appointed review team has recommended dramatic changes at seven Buffalo schools that are ranked among the worst in New York.

The most drastic recommendation calls for Lafayette High School to close, then reopen under an education management organization.

Other recommendations include replacing the longtime principal at International School 45 and reassigning one of the assistant principals.

And at Riverside Institute of Technology, the principal should be given a schedule detailing where he needs to be, the team concluded, and a central office administrator should be assigned to keep track of him.

While those recommendations are the most extreme, many of the underlying problems strangling those schools are found in many other Buffalo schools, as well, the team found.

Superintendent James A. Williams has dismissed some of the major recommendations in the reports. While he agrees that Lafayette should be closed and reopened, for instance, he does not want to bring in an outside organization to run it. And he will not replace the principal of International School 45.

Some of Williams' decisions -- such as not replacing the principal at International School 45 -- are likely to bear a financial cost to the district. To qualify for up to $2 million annually per school, for three years, the district must comply with certain federal requirements related to turning around failing schools.

But the superintendent said it's more important to do "what's right for the children" than to "chase after the money."

"The state said if I don't follow their agenda, we will not get the money for those schools," he said.

At the same time, though, Williams acknowledges many of the widespread problems that the Joint Intervention Team found. Many of those problems are not just limited to the seven schools that were reviewed, he said, but plague numerous schools across the city.

"It verified what we already knew," he said. "We knew there were serious teaching and learning problems. We knew there were leadership problems. We knew those things."

Many are blamed

No group escapes blame in the Joint Intervention Team's reports: teachers, students, parents, principals, assistant principals and central office administrators.

The team -- half of whose members Williams selected -- submitted a six- to eight-page report for each school, identifying problems in each building and providing recommendations. While certain situations are specific to particular schools, many common problems emerge, often with the same wording repeated verbatim on several school reports.

In addition to Lafayette, International School 45 and Riverside, Buffalo's other "persistently lowest-achieving" schools, as determined by the state, are: Burgard Vocational High School, Bennett High School, South Park High School and Martin Luther King Jr. Multicultural Institute.

Among the problems the Joint Intervention Team found:

• Teachers were not teaching. "Direct instruction was not observed," the team wrote repeatedly. Many teachers relied on worksheets as the primary method of instruction at the high schools, and the team frequently found students not paying attention, with their heads on their desks, and sometimes with their eyes closed. In some cases, students spent class time listening to books on tape.
• Teachers need more staff development to learn effective ways to teach. But much of the district's staff development is not required, making it more difficult to improve the quality of instruction in Buffalo.
• In some schools, there are not enough textbooks. And in some cases, the books are available, but students are not using them. At more than one school, the team found that English teachers were the only teachers using books that directly related to the state's learning standards.
• The district spends a considerable amount of time testing students throughout the year to track their progress -- but fails to share that data with schools and teachers in a timely way that would enable teachers to use the information to improve their instruction.
• Absenteeism is a problem for staff as well as students. At many schools, "students reported the 'same teachers' are known to be out on certain days of the week and as such, students are often absent or skip classes," the Joint Intervention Team wrote.
• Students get suspended even for minor infractions, because that's the only form of discipline many schools have in place. Once they're suspended, some students are not allowed back to their school. So, many students drop out, rather than starting over at a new school.
• Too few parents are involved at their children's schools.
• The animosity between the teachers union and the district must be overcome.

A district spokeswoman declined a Buffalo News request to interview the principals of the seven schools. The Buffalo News also contacted each principal individually, inviting them to comment for this story, but none responded.

Findings were expected

Williams said many of those findings came as no surprise.

Problems with the quality of teaching result from a lack of decent instruction in colleges and universities, where teachers are trained, he said.

The district already has begun providing more staff development at the seven schools for teachers as well as administrators, Williams said. He called for concessions from the unions to enable the district to require more staff development.

Staff attendance throughout the city is a problem, he said.

"Our teacher attendance is disgraceful. We also need to talk about the number of principals who are absent from these buildings," he said. "If teachers and administrators aren't coming to school, there's a correlation with students not coming to school."

Williams defended the principals at the schools, saying they are required to deal with a challenging group of students. Because of school choice, the best students test into schools such as City Honors.

"Burgard, Riverside, South Park and Bennett get what's left. They get all the challenging kids coming in there," he said. "That's why I think those principals are doing an outstanding job, given the circumstances."

Law required study

Fifty-seven schools in New York, including seven in Buffalo, have been identified by state Education Commissioner David M. Steiner as "persistently lowest-achieving," meaning they are among the worst-performing 5 percent of schools in the state.

State law requires that for the persistently lowest-performing schools, the commissioner of education appoint a Joint Intervention Team, which must include a state Education Department staff member as well as other approved members selected by the district. An "educational expert" is named to lead the group. In Buffalo, Williams asked Donald A. Ogilvie, superintendent of Erie 1 BOCES, to serve in that role.

The other members of Buffalo's team -- selected by the district, and approved by the state -- included Folasade Oladele, Buffalo's deputy superintendent, who was primarily responsible for classroom observations.

The team spent at least two days in each school this spring.

Because the schools are designated as persistently lowest-achieving, they are eligible for $500,000 from the state, and possibly as much as $2 million per year for three years in federal Race to the Top money.

More than a month ago, the Buffalo Public Schools received copies of the preliminary Joint Intervention Team reports. Since then, the state Education Department has vetted and edited the reports.

On Friday, the Buffalo Public Schools received copies of the final reports.

When Williams was reached Monday by The Buffalo News, he said he was on vacation, and had been away from his office when the reports arrived in the district. As of Monday afternoon, he had not yet read the final reports, he said.

The superintendent did, however, respond to many of the key findings in the reports. And he stood by his often-repeated assertions that the problems in public education are rooted in Albany and Washington, D.C. -- and that too many school districts are complying with state and federal guidelines for school reform, just to qualify for additional funding.

"I don't have confidence about what they're doing in New York State in education," Williams said. "Everybody's chasing the money. I think that's the wrong thing to do. We need to change the way we're spending the money."