The Struggle for Community Control and the Long 1968 NYC Teachers Strike:

An Ocean Hill-Brownsville Veteran Remembers Teaching during the Conflict

Thursday, April 4, 2013

6:30 to 8:30 PM

Urban Education Doctoral Program Lounge – Room 4202

Dr. Charles S. Isaacs was a first-year student at the University of Chicago Law School in 1968 when he was recruited to teach mathematics in the NYC public schools.  The school he chose was the soon-to-be- famous J.H.S. 271 in the experimental, community-controlled Ocean Hill-Brownsville demonstration district in Brooklyn. Isaacs worked at the school through the three-month UFT strike, whose central purpose was to end community control. The strike began the day he arrived at 271; he stayed there teaching through 1970. Isaacs has recently completed a memoir of his experiences there, set inside a revisionist history of the conflict over community control, which is currently being considered for publication by several trade and university press publishers.