The words “middle school’’ strike fear into the heart of otherwise rational parents. It causes some to pack-up and move to the suburbs, afraid that the New York City public school system will fall woefully short of their expectations.Others may declare, “My child needs private school,’’ with all that implies – smaller classes, more individual attention, a wider range of arts, sports and after school activities, the perception – and in some cases the reality – of a more intensive academic program.

I don’t judge or begrudge those choices. It’s just that I’ve come to an entirely different conclusion about what matters most in a middle school, based on a mere year and a half experience as a public middle school parent.

The problem is this: You can’t escape this thing that happens when middle school kids become … middle schoolers, no matter where they end up going or how much it costs.

At some point, your middle schoolers are likely to no longer resemble the compliant, easy-going children you remember. Maybe they have grown five inches in six months. They have a crush for the first time and start acting weird. They have secrets. They rebel. They lie. They become impossible, petulant, annoying, withdrawn and prickly. They act out to impress their friends. They test you, try you and twist you if you let them.

That’s why it’s essential they end up in a building where there is someone they can talk to, someone they trust.

No wonder middle school parents get scared. My only advice to parents looking for middle schools anywhere is to watch how the grown-ups in the building relate to the kids.

During tours, does anyone mention the enormous physical and emotional changes that start taking place during adolescence? If they don’t, you might want to ask.

If you attend an event at the school (highly recommended) watch to see if the kids are interacting with any of the faculty. Or ask kids at a school how they feel about the staff. Is there someone in the building kids talk to: a coach, drama teacher or guidance counselor?

Maybe the principal likes to shoot baskets with the kids or occasionally go out to lunch with them? Does he or she complain about these kids? Does the staff think these half-grown kids are funny? (They are, truly, even though they make you want to cry as often as you want to laugh.)

My son’s middle school, the Clinton School for Artists and Writers, does not have small classes, athletic fields or other amenities typical of private and suburban schools. But everyone from the school aides to the parent coordinator and the principal has a sense of humor and perspective, the ability to roll their eyes at the awkward stages, behavior and sheer height differences that seem to shift daily.

At school events, I’ve noticed swarms of kids hanging around the 7th-grade language arts teacher and the social studies teacher, for example. They look really comfortable, laughing and chatting about everything from music and books to friendship.These are teachers who give plenty of homework and expect a lot. But they also look like they are really enjoying these kids.

And I am so relieved that someone does.

Less than a year after struggling to land a location, Khalil Gibran International Academy could become a vagabond again.

The DOE is hoping to move it to PS 287 in Fort Greene for the fall, even though last summer DOE officials said the Dean Street building where it’s currently housed would be able to handle a second year of growth. But parents at PS 287 say they don’t want Khalil Gibran in the building. The PTA president told the press that the elementary school parents don’t want older kids sharing the space.

What they — and the reporters who have covered this so far — haven’t mentioned is that for the last four years there has been a high school in the PS 287 building. The Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice is moving to a new building in downtown Brooklyn this fall, but since its inception has been located at PS 287. It’s possible that the space-sharing has caused problems. If that’s the case, we should know. And if it’s not the case, parents at PS 287, which according to the DOE is operating at only 42 percent capacity, should come up with a better line for why they don’t want to share their space with a school that clearly needs all the help it can get.

Less than a year after struggling to land a location, Khalil Gibran International Academy could become a vagabond again.

The DOE is hoping to move it to PS 287 in Fort Greene for the fall, even though last summer DOE officials said the Dean Street building where it’s currently housed would be able to handle a second year of growth. But parents at PS 287 say they don’t want Khalil Gibran in the building. The PTA president told the press that the elementary school parents don’t want older kids sharing the space.

What they — and the reporters who have covered this so far — haven’t mentioned is that for the last four years there has been a high school in the PS 287 building. The Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice is moving to a new building in downtown Brooklyn this fall, but since its inception has been located at PS 287. It’s possible that the space-sharing has caused problems. If that’s the case, we should know. And if it’s not the case, parents at PS 287, which according to the DOE is operating at only 42 percent capacity, should come up with a better line for why they don’t want to share their space with a school that clearly needs all the help it can get.

First, the City Council recommends realistic, affordable, broadly supported middle school reforms. Then, after earmarking only $5 million to fund a few of the reforms, the DOE rolls out a punitive policy to retain more 8th graders. The mayor then cuts funds that go to support the very programs it says will prevent retentions. Next, the day after a major press conference by a coalition of parents and advocates upset about the retention policy and the budget cuts, the DOE announces an initiative to “re-brand achievement” using cell phones. And finally, in its press release, the DOE notes that cell phones, include those that promote learning, continue to be prohibited in schools.

Sometimes you just have to laugh.

Dozens of parents, advocates and students representing the Coalition for Educational Justice crowded the foyer of Fashion Industries High School tonight in Manhattan to hold a press conference calling for middle grades reform. The boisterous conference, which featured speakers who included City Council Education Committee Chair Robert Jackson and Brooklyn Borough President (and possible mayoral hopeful) Marty Markowitz, among many others, set the tone for the DOE’s first public hearing on the proposed 8th grade promotion policy, held at the school tonight.

CEJ’s plan for middle grades reform was in the works before last month, when the DOE announced the 8th grade promotion policy, which speakers tonight called “punitive” and “a classic case of blaming the victim.” Once the DOE announced the new policy, which sets formal guidelines for retention of failing 8th graders without making clear how the department will intervene to help struggling students, the CEJ plan became all the more timely. The five-point plan calls for increasing the middle school day by 90 minutes; enhancing the Lead Teacher Program; adding counselors to middle schools; reducing class size; and starting a summer program for 6th graders.

Speakers at the press conference connected the promotion policy with the recent budget cuts. Jaime Estades of the Alliance for Quality Education said, “8th grade retention will do nothing without well-funded programs to implement changes.” Several items on CEJ’s platform have been made impossible by the budget cuts; principals told Insideschools that they are cutting extra time for tutoring, and the Lead Teacher Program is on the chopping block centrally.

After 200 or so CEJ representatives and allies, including dozens of small children apparently bused to the scene by the community group ACORN, filed into the auditorium for the formal presentation, DOE officials presented a stultifying PowerPoint on the promotion policy. With slide titles such as “Why preparing students for high school is critical” and “Students prepared for high school perform better once there” — things no parent in the room needed to be told — the slideshow seemed designed to “smoke parents out,” as one advocate suggested to me.

Indeed, the DOE presented little new information. Students who score at Level 1 on state math or reading tests in 8th grade or who do not pass all four of their “core” courses will be required to attend summer school, and those who do not meet those standards after the summer will not be promoted. The DOE has made special plans for students who have already been retained at least once before 8th grade: if they make a sincere effort to improve their scores and grades during summer school, they’ll be “promoted on appeal with intensive remediation” to high school. The DOE’s presentation also addressed students with special needs — their promotion requirements will be set by their IEPs — and English language learners, who will face progressively onerous requirements the longer they have been in the country. Students who have been in the country more than one year, for example, must pass all core subjects, score a 2 or higher on the state math test, and make gains between January and June on the state ELA exam.

During the public comment portion of the evening, which stretched on for hours as many CEJ members took the microphone, many speakers noted that “no one here tonight is in favor of kids going to high school unprepared” but questioned how the new promotion policy will actually help students.

Advocates for Children Executive Director Kim Sweet said, “The proposed policy fails to offer meaningful help to address the root problems of middle grade failure and provides no assurance whatsoever that struggling students will get the help they need.” Instead, she said, the policy “merely erects one more barrier [struggling students] have to cross in order to continue their education,” already a challenge for the many overage students for whom the DOE lacks programs and services. AFC is a member of CEJ.

Norm Fruchter, director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform’s Community Involvement Program, which has incubated CEJ, asked for evidence that the retention policies in grades 3, 5, and 7 are working and noted that the results of an evaluation of those policies contracted in 2004 were never made public. If those policies work, he asked, “How do 18,000 students not get there?” (The DOE estimates that 18,000 students would be eligible for retention.) He also asked why the DOE is rolling out a policy that all evidence suggests is likely to cause more high school dropouts as students become overage and remain far from graduation. A later speaker called the plan “a dropout strategy.”

Pedro Noguera, an education researcher who has also signed onto CEJ’s plan, was more pointed. He asked, “Is there any research that you know of that supports what you’re doing?” The DOE officials, who hadn’t spoken except to remind speakers of their time limits, did not answer.

There are four more DOE hearings on the promotion policy scheduled for the next two weeks. See the Insideschools calendar for details on dates and locations.

Today is the DOE’s annual lobby day, where DOE representatives as well as parents travel to Albany to push the city’s schools’ agenda in the budget process. Usually, the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council spearheads the effort to get parents up to Albany. But this year, unhappy at the city’s response to budget problems — to pass the cuts along to the schools — CPAC voted not to participate in the DOE’s lobby day, the Daily News recently reported. Instead, it and other parent groups will send their own delegation to Albany March 11. Is anyone planning to go?

Not content operating only 1,466 schools and programs, the DOE is planning to open 52 new schools this fall. Insideschools has already told you about more than half of those — the high schools, for which applications are due tomorrow, and the transfer schools that will serve students who have not been successful in traditional high schools. The vast majority of the new schools will open (with the same students) in the buildings of other schools that are closing or phasing out due to poor performance, although the DOE will be using a handful of new sites in Queens and Staten Island. With names like “Brighter Choice Community School” and “Performance School,” there’s sure to be an option for everyone.

Is the DOE’s next cost-cutting move going to be dismantling District 75, the city’s district for students with the severest disabilities? That’s what parents and the teachers’ union allege in yesterday’s Post. They say the “hush-hush” study being conducted now by the Council of the Great City Schools to identify ways to “improve” the district is a first step toward eliminating it and sending disabled students back to their neighborhood schools.

The DOE says it had no particular agenda in commissioning the study by the non-profit research organization that supports urban school districts. But parents remain suspicious, the Post says, and they may be right to, given past chancellors’ attempts to dismantle the costly district, the DOE’s current preference for CTT classes that include students in both general and special education, and the budget crisis that has left administrators at all levels scrambling to find ways to save money. Either way, those looking out for children with special needs, including Advocates for Children, Insideschools’ parent organization, are sure to keep a careful eye on the situation.

Parents — looking for something to do during this week off? Take a survey about the arts in your school. The Center for Arts Education is surveying parents about their opinions on arts education and the role of art at their schools. By taking the survey, you’ll be helping CAE advocate for better arts programming in the city’s schools — at precisely the time that principals are feeling like they have to cut arts funding.

Parents — looking for something to do during this week off? Take a survey about the arts in your school. The Center for Arts Education is surveying parents about their opinions on arts education and the role of art at their schools. By taking the survey, you’ll be helping CAE advocate for better arts programming in the city’s schools — at precisely the time that principals are feeling like they have to cut arts funding.

If it’s February, it must mean that the DOE is scurrying to find spaces for all of the new schools it plans to open in September. In addition to the 27 high schools and transfer schools opening in the fall, some number of elementary, middle, and charter schools will also open, and they all need space. Many of the city’s schools are officially under capacity, but those schools have been able to make headway in reducing class size and improving performance, and they don’t want to compromise their gains. (Official school capacities assume that classes will have the largest legally permitted number of students.)

This year, in response to complaints in the past, the DOE is giving school communities greater warning before placing new schools inside them. As a result, parents afraid of age-mixing, overcrowding, and other tensions have more information earlier — and they’re just as angry as they were last year. I don’t envy the DOE’s Office of Portfolio Development right now.

Here are a few space-sharing issues I’ve come across this year. I’m sure I’m leaving some out — have you heard of more?

When the DOE announced that it was planning to place a new high school devoted to the film industry in Long Island City’s IS 204, parents and students there protested. It’s still not clear where the school will be located.

In Red Hook, Brooklyn, the DOE would like to house a new charter school in PS 15. The widow of Patrick Daly, the PS 15 principal who was killed in 1993 in gang crossfire while searching for a truant student, says he would have opposed the charter school.

Without any available space in the North Bronx, where it has been open — and housed in trailers — for the last two years, the Young Women’s Leadership School is being moved into IS 162 in the South Bronx.

Kingsborough Early College School, previously located on the community college’s campus, which lacked many amenities, will be moving to the Lafayette building; according to the Daily News, some parents won’t be allowing their kids to move along with the school.

When the principal of PS 21 in Queens received a letter that said the DOE was considering putting another school in the building, parents were angry, saying that sharing space would diminish the quality of their excellent school.

At PS 84 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where last year middle-class parents reported being made to feel unwelcome when they asked for new programs, the DOE proposed creating a new elementary school. Hispanic parents protested, saying the DOE was trying to create a system of “separate but equal” schools in the building. The DOE now says no new school will open in PS 84 this fall.

With no funding for tutoring and after school programs for the rest of the year, some schools must be turning to free labor to provide those important services. I just heard that Learning Leaders, the half-century-old organization that places trained volunteers in schools, is urgently seeking volunteers for the rest of this year, especially those who can work one-on-one with high school students or offer math tutoring. If you’re interested in becoming a Learning Leader, contact Heather Whyte at 212-213-3370 x337.

Arlen Benjamin-Gomez/Insideschools, AFC

This was the scene yesterday at the student-run “Broken Hearts” rally against the budget cuts.
We’ve heard that the kids there were pretty fired up — hopefully they can sustain their energy in the coming weeks, as the Keep the Promises Coalition ramps up its work. And check out our blogger Seth Pearce, who made an appearance in a preview article in yesterday’s Sun; he says LaGuardia’s musical may be on the chopping block for next year.

According to the Daily News, the DOE is spending $32 million — more than three times what it spent last year — to grade standardized tests this year. New state and federal laws require teachers to do the grading, so instead of grading tests after school, teachers in middle and elementary schools are pulled from their classrooms for weeks to grade. This year, it sounds like many principals won’t be able to afford substitutes for those teachers, so non-teachers may have to cover the classes, or students might be dispersed for a short time into other classrooms. Sounds disruptive, right? Good thing all that will happen AFTER the state math test.

Thank you guys for all of the positive feedback, it feels great to know that I have some support!

Wednesday night was the Bronx Science open house, and therefore a good chance to get a feel for what the subway ride was going to be like. From the time that we got into the subway to the time that we got out, it only took (give or take) 45 minutes, which was slightly less than we had heard but still quite a shock (my subway ride to school takes 10 minutes on a slow day!). Transportation is still a major question; the school offers a bus service that would take me door to door, but it’s rather pricey and takes anywhere from an hour to two hours, from what I’ve heard. The alternative would be taking the subway, but I’m not sure if I’m comfortable riding the subway all the way to the Bronx by myself everyday.

Transportation aside, the open house itself very much resembled the tour that we took when we were first considering it; this time, however, the opening speech was much more congratulatory, and reminded us of how special we should feel that we had gotten in. I certainly did feel special, sitting in the huge auditorium that will someday be where I think some of my most complex and intellectual thoughts.

The tour took us into some of the classrooms, and introduced us to students in classes, clubs, and anyone else that happened to be in the building at the time. All of the courses sounded difficult and grueling, but I was instantly intrigued by a lot of the rooms that I walked into just based on the displayed work; one room was housing the robotics team, and they had their fully completed robot sitting out for people to look at.

Overall, I’m extremely excited to start going to Bronx. The possibilities are endless, as long as I keep my mind open and my schedule clear for study time!

One more dispatch from last night, where I was surprised to hear several speakers thinking about the possible long-term economic effects of the budget cuts.

Ziporah Steiner, principal of Maxwell High School, offered a real-world example of what the budget cuts could mean once she cuts all after school programming. “Our students have a choice: they can join the chess club, the drama club, the dance club, or they can join the Crips or the Bloods,” she said, noting that once students have joined a gang, “We cannot reel them back.”

In a statement read by a member of his staff, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz echoed Steiner’s concerns, saying, “I strongly disagree that cutting school budgets is logical, productive, or even, in the long run, economically sound.”

And Liz Phillips, principal of PS 321 in Park Slope, said, “If this is truly a recession, schools will need more money, not less,” because children whose families are affected by the struggling economy will need additional services.

Preserving school budgets sounds great for the short term, but it sounds even better when you take a longer view. Let’s hope lawmakers and the mayor can be made to agree.

Today at 4 p.m., Students Against the DOE Budget Cuts, a new student-organized group that looks like it’s getting support from NYCORE and Time Out From Testing, will be holding a march on Tweed to oppose the budget cuts. Many folks last night said they would be supporting the student protest, and Liz Phillips, principal of Brooklyn’s PS 321, has written to her families encouraging them to go.

As much as I’d like to, I can’t go — can someone who is tell us in the comments what it’s like?

While the response to the budget cuts started quietly and informally, it’s now shaping up to be a loud, organized expression of years of frustration with the way the mayor and chancellor have managed the city’s schools.

At the Borough Hall meeting last night, it was the repeated calls for transparency at the DOE and meaningful inclusion of parent opinion in decision-making that received the most applause.

City Council Member Bill DeBlasio recited a litany of circumstances when the public has found out that “policy decisions have been made that don’t reflect the on-the-ground reality” and when DOE officials “didn’t get approval from anybody” but went ahead with their plans nonetheless, including last year’s school bus fiasco, the cell phone ban, increased testing, and the progress reports.

Describing Time Out From Testing’s six-point plan for how the DOE can save money without hurting students, Martha Foote said the DOE should open its books to the public, creating greater transparency about who works at the DOE and how much they’re paid.

The rest of the plan: eliminate the $80 million contract to create interim assessments; cut ARIS, the $80 million data tracking system the DOE bought from IBM; cut the $16.6 million contract to provide security for ARIS; stop hiring expensive consultants; and stop accepting no-bid contracts.

At a strategy meeting tonight at Brooklyn Borough Hall, City Council member Bill deBlasio emphasized that the recent budget cuts are “huge, reversible, and represent broken promises,” staying on point with the message of the Keep the Promises Coalition, which held an inaugural press conference on Sunday.

DeBlasio noted that the cuts result in real losses, not just symbolic ones, for schools and students; but could be reversed, because the state and city budgets for next year have yet to be approved. “When local entities start to add up … that has a huge impact,” he said, suggesting several steps parents, principals, and community leaders can take to pressure lawmakers to undo the cuts in next year’s budget:

Write to your elected officials and local newspaper, demanding that the state keep its promise to increase operating and building aid to the city and that the mayor restore the city’s school cuts.

Attend the massive rally the Keep the Promises Coalition is planning for March outside City Hall.

Get your PTA, Community Education Council, and Community Board to pass resolutions supporting the Keep the Promises agenda.

Tools for completing these goals were handed out at the meeting tonight; I’ll link to the sample PTA resolution, letter to the editor, and letter to elected officials as soon as they go online. Next, I’ll share other highlights from the meeting.

NYC’s students are taking action.

In response to the city’s and state’s recent education budget cuts, a group called Students Against DOE Budget Cuts has organized a protest on the steps of Tweed Courthouse for tomorrow, Valentine’s Day.

This is no surprise to me. These cuts have sent a shock down the spine of NYC’s student body to larger extent than any education issue since the cell phone ban. Students feel betrayed. We feel as though the state and city are disrespecting us and demeaning our status as learners.

These budget cuts are more of a future-cut than anything else. They show a great lack of concern for the urgent welfare of our city’s students and in doing so forgetting about the future of our city, our state and our society.

The education investment is one for the years to come. It won’t always yield the quickest results but in the long term it is an investment for the future. Through these budget cuts, Spitzer and Bloomberg signaling to NYC students that no, we are not the future.

So now, you’ve got us energized, Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Spitzer. Students are protesting. Facebook groups against the cuts are popping up every day. Petitions are being circulated. At LaGuardia, the Student Government has put together a budget cuts committee to coordinate protest efforts and to examine the school’s budget and make recommendations about how to respond to the cuts.

Do not take our investment in our learning for apathy. When you wrong us we will fight back. Listen.

The head of the American Federation of Teachers, the national teachers’ union, is stepping down this summer, and UFT President Randi Weingarten is the heir apparent to the job; elections will be held in July and she could be headed to Washington, D.C. shortly after that. The Times notes that Weingarten has secured higher teacher salaries and participated in education policy experiments, such as performance pay and charter schools, when many in her union and in teachers’ unions nationally opposed them. Blogging teacher NYC Educator has an entirely different, much less congratulatory list of Weingarten’s accomplishments.

Last month, the Sun took a look at the UFT leaders who might become president after Weingarten leaves.

When $100,000 is yanked out of your school’s budget, every dime that your PTA has raised is more precious than ever. That dime is yours to spend, and no one can take it out of your bank account in the middle of the night. It represents the ability to control your school’s destiny. So whatever fundraising efforts your PTA has planned for spring, remind your parents that the money they raise will be immune from city politics. This year, that will matter more than ever.

Just a reminder that tonight’s the last public hearing about the DOE’s proposed changes to pre-K and kindergarten admission policy. 6:30 p.m., Dewitt Clinton HS, the Bronx. For a refresher on what happened at the Brooklyn and Manhattan hearings, read our earlier coverage. If you can’t make it tonight, you can still email comments to ES_Enrollment@schools.nyc.gov until Feb. 18.

Have the budget cuts moved this major policy change off everyone’s radar? It’s amazing how that manages to happen so often.

Last year at this time, families were still dealing with the fallout from the DOE’s disastrous mid-year bus schedule changes, engineered by the consulting firm Alvarez and Marsal. This year, the busing news is a little bit better – but only a little bit. The Times today follows Bronx Science students on their hour-and-a-half express bus ride from Queens to school. The upside: the bus drops them off right in front of school, and with so many kids on the bus, the tone is conducive to napping or doing homework. The downside: Student Metrocards can’t be used on express buses, so the kids are spending $10 a day to get to school via public transportation, and those who want to stay for after school activities have to opt for the subway home, which can take up to two hours and four connections.

Photo by Philissa Cramer/Insideschools

Everyone who’s anyone in the fight to improve the city’s schools stood on the steps of City Hall this afternoon for a press conference announcing the creation of the “Keep the Promises” Coalition. The coalition of teachers, principals, advocates, elected officials, and community groups, formed during an emergency meeting held Thursday in response to the mayor’s mid-year budget cuts, is calling for state lawmakers as well as the mayor to follow through on their promises to fund the city’s public schools at the level agreed to in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit.

CFE Executive Director Geri Palast explained today how the state agreed to pay $2.35 billion to the city’s schools in four years and how the mayor committed $2.2 billion to match. Now that times are tough in Albany, however, the state reduced the amount it plans to pay the city in the first year of the deal, and the mayor not only reduced schools’ budgets for next year but took money back from them for this year as well, forcing principals to cut after school programs, tutoring, and other services.

“This is ridiculous,” said the UFT’s Randi Weingarten today. “At the drop of the Dow, kids become the last priority again.” The coalition plans to hold a larger rally sometime in the near future.

Great news!! We got our specialized and non-specialized school results back yesterday, and I got into my first-choice specialized high school…

BRONX SCIENCE!!!

I’m really excited and really proud, because I honestly didn’t expect to make it. I was on a bus riding back from a school trip when my mom called with the results, and I could hardly believe what I was hearing when she told me I had been accepted. I guess all of my hard work finally paid off! A whole bunch of kids from my grade also made it in, so if I do end up going there, I’ll have a ton of already-made friends to help me out and ride the subways with me.

On the downside, I didn’t seem to get accepted to my non-specialized school choice (the one in my neighborhood)…

BARD,

which I was a little upset about, considering I really thought that I had nailed that interview. But I suppose there was something about me that they didn’t like, or maybe they just ran out of room. I heard a rumor that there is a second letter that might arrive sometime in March from Bard with the final word (because they get a lot of applicants and don’t always have time to get out the results, or something along those lines), which would tell me once and for all if I have gotten in there, but I’m not holding my breath. Whatever the reason, I’ll be bummed for a little while, but I’m sure I’ll get over it soon enough.

At the same time, I got into Bronx Science (I love the way that looks when I type it out!) and I really have no reason to complain. I accomplished my goal in finding a great school, and I’m mind-numbingly proud that I made it through all this without losing my cool.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed for Izzy — today’s the day that most kids who applied to a specialized high school find out whether they’ve been admitted. (It could take a few days for kids to get their decision letters if their middle school chose to mail them home.) According to the DOE’s press release, which is not yet online, 5,991 students got an admission offer (up by more than 450 from last year, for some reason) to the specialized high schools and/or LaGuardia. Congratulations to all of them!

Since October, we’ve visited more than half a dozen middle schools, compared notes and listed our top five choices in order. We care a lot about education and choice in our family, so we laid out a fairly ambitious schedule of tours, questions and considerations. But we fell down on the job.

I can’t help but think about all the parents in the city who simply did not have time for tours, questions and soul-searching. Or the single parents who had to go it alone.

Some may have simply opted for their zoned school, where admission is guaranteed. We never even visited our zoned school - Baruch - because the location wasn’t right and the size - 1,043 -  seemed daunting.

We never got to Salk, a school high on the list of many of my son’s classmates, simply because the day starts at 8 a.m. and the commute would involve two subway switches. If we couldn’t get there on time for the tour, how would my son manage on a daily basis? (Okay, we slept through the alarm clock that day, truth be told).

We missed the truly beloved East Side Middle on York Avenue, reasoning again that the commute would be too far. We didn’t tour highly regarded Robert Wagner on East 76th for the same reason, along with its overwhelming size - 1,400 students.

Parents who applied for out-of-district or specialized middle schools (with a tryout, like the one my son did for the Professional Performing Arts School) or their own admissions criteria and exam (like the highly competitive NEST+M) had even more extra homework.

Those applying for private schools had additional tours, day long school visits, admissions exams, tutors and letters of recommendation. And with chances slim of snagging a spot in these vaunted institutions, they went through the public process as well.

If it seems a little overwhelming, it is. And this year, we’ve been told our children will likely be interviewed and take admissions tests at their top two choices instead of just their first.

My son came home last night with a list of interview questions he might be asked. He had to describe his strengths and weaknesses as a student and as a person. He is 10. I wasn’t surprised when he told me had trouble falling asleep.

There is a danger these kids will be burned out when it comes to finding a high school and tired of touring. They may, however, be savvy pros by the time they tackle college admissions.

Let’s just hope they have also developed a love of learning about something other than what to look for in a school.

I want to let you know that it’s now easier than ever to comment on this blog — you no longer have to be a registered Google user. Check out the latest news and also the archives, which go back to last June — there’s plenty here that could benefit from your comments!

I’ve been a bit depressed lately. After learning about the new budget cuts, I had to begin talking about how to work around the cuts with my school’s School Leadership Team. It’s a scary situation for principals, teachers, students and just about everyone else in our school communities.

Last Monday, Bloomberg proposed a cut of of $324 million from NYC’s education budget. He claimed that he was doing this as a healthy management exercise. He believes that it will force principals to examine the effectiveness of their programs and cut out the ones that aren’t succeeding. Unfortunately because of the cuts, many principals are being forced to cut programs that work.

This comes on the heels of a cut by Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who said he was giving city schools $100 million less than planned because of the economic problems we have been facing and will continue to face in the coming months.

As much as the Bloomberg-Klein Complex has been proven guilty of some shady motives, I think this decision might make some (albeit terrifying) sense. Combine the Spitzer cuts and the threat of recession and you have yourself a sizable cut.

As I’ve been learning in economics class, recession is somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy and by not admitting that that is the real reason for the cuts, Bloomberg is fighting the recession. Maybe I’m giving him too much credit, but if the man knows anything, it’s money. In addition, his statement about the cuts struck me to be a little phony, like he’s hiding something.

This leads me to believe that an important part of of the edu-activist’s work in the troubling times ahead is to look for solutions that are non-fiscal and maybe even non-political. We need a change in how we look at education issues, as I discussed in my post about the student’s role in society, and how we can further improve relationships between the different constituent groups of our education system.

A good place to start is Queens student Ashu Kapoor’s post on how her biology teacher effectively dealt with preparing students for the Regents. Check it out.

Cross-posted on the NYC Students Blog

Chancellor Klein understands that principals are furious about the mid-year budget cuts. That’s why he emailed them on Monday to tell them how much he wants to help them (through their Integrated Service Centers, of course) and to explain that the city has shielded schools from budget cuts for years and is making cuts now reluctantly and “in such a way that respects principals’ decisions.” He wrote:

More money is always welcome in education. Everyone in our City — from principals to parents to the Mayor and me — always wants to see budgets increase. But we also know that money isn’t everything. Some schools in our City are literally doing more with less. They were shortchanged in the past — but [are now] achieving better results for kids.

No excuses, right? View the whole letter on the Class Size Matters’ yahoo message board.

We just added a dozen more principal responses to our compendium of what schools are cutting as a result of last week’s budget cuts. The most frequent things to go: After school programs, extra tutoring, and per diem personnel. Principals say classes will be more crowded and students who need extra help won’t get it — not quite the “no impact whatsoever” that the mayor promised.

Principals, teachers, and parents aren’t going to take the cuts without a fight. Tonight, parents are getting together in Park Slope to rally against the budget cuts. (6:30 p.m., John Jay building. Map) Tomorrow, UFT President Randi Weingarten and local union leaders are holding an emergency meeting to discuss the cuts. Visit the Insideschools calendar for details on how to RSVP.

The Times reports today from India:

This year, admissions for prekindergarten seats in Delhi begin for children as young as 3, and what school they get into now is widely felt to make or break their educational fate.

And so it was that a businessman, having applied to 15 private schools for his 4-year-old son, rushed to the gates of a prestigious South Delhi academy one morning last week to see if his child’s name had been shortlisted for admissions.

Alas, it had not, and walking back to his car, the fretful father wondered if it would not be better for Indian couples to have a child only after being assured a seat in school. “You have a kid and you don’t have a school to send your kid to!” he cried. “It’s crazy. You can’t sleep at night.”

Charter schools have never sounded like a better idea than they do now — at the same time that regular public schools are being forced to cut essential services like tutoring and counseling, a new charter school is planning to offer unprecedented levels of social support. According to the Sun, Mott Haven Academy Charter School, opening this fall in the Bronx, will offer not only academic instruction but also a full-service welfare agency running tutoring, counseling, and activities for kids.

The Sun reports, “The result, the school’s founders say, could be to revolutionize the way the government tackles poverty, giving the public better results for the same buck.” I’m not sure the situation outlined in the Sun article is quite revolutionary, but it sure does make sense. Poverty, not teachers’ lack of skill or dedication, is the greatest hindrance to student achievement. Greater coordination between city agencies will be necessary
to help kids learn and want to learn — and that’s something that the founders of Mott Haven Academy Charter School seem already to understand.

1. If the DOE is using state test scores to judge students, schools, teachers, and principals, how can it stomach forcing schools to cut extra tutoring (among other programs and services) just six weeks before the state math exam?

2. Assuming that the DOE understands that it’s in the city’s best interests to keep middle-class families here and attending public schools, why is it that the two new enrollment initiatives — for pre-K and kindergarten and gifted and talented programs — are designed to push families into zoned schools they’ve sought to avoid?

The cynic in me already has answers to both of these questions, but I’d love to know what others think.

Today is Super Tuesday — and in an unusual circumstance, New Yorkers will cast their ballots in a presidential race that has not yet been whittled to two opponents. Vote early or late, or on your way to celebrate the Giants’ Super Bowl win, but do make time to vote at your local polling place. Polls will close at 9 p.m.

Schools have never been closed on primary days, so they are open to students today — but some parents are concerned about having a record number of strangers in school buildings, the Times reports. Chancellor Klein says the schools will keep kids safe and notes that schools might use the opportunity to offer a lesson about democracy — a lesson not tested on standardized tests but one, apparently, worth learning nonetheless.

On Friday, Insideschools asked principals to tell us how they’re dealing with the mid-year budget cuts, and our record of their responses is up now. We’ll be continuing to add to this as we principals get in touch with us, so tell your principal to email us now.

Robin Aronow, a consultant who advises parents on school choice, wrote with additional information from last week’s Manhattan pre-K proposal hearing. It sounds like most of the issues raised there are similar to those raised in Brooklyn, which I reported on last week. Parents want more preference for siblings, and they don’t want their kids to be forced to switch schools after pre-K because there will be no automatic admission to kindergarten in the same school; they are especially concerned about kids having to leave dual-language programs, where enrollment shifts are disruptive for both students and the school. (There has never been automatic admission, but many principals have used their discretion to admit out-of-zone pre-K children to their kindergarten.)

One thing Robin heard was very different from what I understood to be the plan. She writes, “As for the uniform kindergarten policy for next year, [DOE officials] are still working out many factors, including whether zoned schools will be part of the uniform application process or remain a separate option.” At the Brooklyn hearing, DOE officials made it crystal clear that zoned schools would be part of the same application process. Has the DOE realized that requiring parents to apply to zoned schools will greatly limit school choice, or did someone misspeak in Manhattan?

Other new information:

• In order to be on the same timeline as other school choice processes, the District 3 kindergarten lottery has been pushed back for this year. Applications will now be available at the beginning of March and notifications of placements will happen in May, around the same time as the Gifted & Talented notifications arrive.

• The DOE has said that community-based organizations will use the same admissions timeline as the DOE, but parents noted that many of the CBO pre-K programs are already filled for next year.

• Above kindergarten, applicants will have to go through the OSEPO and request a Placement Exception Request, the new name for a variance, to attend a school other than their zoned school.

Finally, Robin notes that in some overcrowded zones, being zoned for a particular school is not always a guarantee that you can attend it — so getting into those schools from out of the zone will be almost impossible. She writes, “For anyone planning to move to a new school zone, I strongly encourage you to do this sooner [rather] than later, and no later than the close of school in June prior to the year your child will attend.”

For more on the anxiety parents are starting to feel over the proposed changes, check out Neil deMause’s report in the Village Voice. The pre-K hearing in Queens is tonight; hearings in Staten Island and the Bronx will be next week. Let us know what you hear in your borough.

You must be living under a rock if you haven’t heard about the significant school budget cuts that the DOE made last week. In addition to the $324 million that schools will need to cut from their budgets next year, principals were also lost 1.75 percent of this year’s budget — before they could even stop to think about where to find the money.

As of early last week, the DOE hadn’t actually told principals that they would each have to cut a total of $180 million from their budgets; principals had to learn about the plan from the newspapers. I spoke to a principal on Friday who said she received an email at night informing her that she would have to cut $125,000; when she woke up in the morning, the money was already gone.

While the DOE will be making some cuts centrally, most of the reductions are being passed down to individual schools. The Times reported that the cuts will range from $9,000 to $447,587; for many schools, it’s possible that the cuts will undo the Fair Student Funding gains they might have seen earlier this year.

As the mayor suggested earlier this week, Klein told the Times that principals will “have to tighten some programs.” He suggested that principals might eliminate after-school activities or Saturday tutoring programs. But even if principals were okay with making those cuts, it looks like the losses might go deeper; Steven Satin, principal at Norman Thomas High School, told the Times that he has to cut the equivalent of “six teachers’ salaries for the rest of the term” from his budget. The Daily News reports that schools in Queens have already canceled dance classes, disbanded a class taught by a long-term substitute, and cut tutoring programs. Also on the chopping block centrally: two of the 10 planned citywide standardized tests (NY Times); some ESL teaching positions (NY Times); and the Lead Teacher program (last Monday’s PEP meeting).

Principals disagree with the DOE’s ideas about what ought to be cut, and they’ve been circulating emails with sarcastic (and yet eminently reasonable) suggestions for the DOE. From the Times on Friday:

The principals in their e-mail chain of complaints wondered whether their evaluations would take into account constraints because of budget cuts, and also spoke disparagingly of the city’s contracts with I.B.M., which developed the $80 million computer system, and as one principal put it, “a whole host of other private, for-profit corporations that have entered into our world.”

The DOE considers principals the CEOs of their schools, but it sounds like many principals continue to put their students, not the notion of business efficiency, first. Chancellor Klein is testifying at a legislative budget hearing this morning in Albany. For which philosophy will he advocate?

A 5th-grade boy raised his hand on our last middle school tour and posed a question that took everyone aback. It reminded grown-ups in the room what it must feel like to be 10 or 11 years old, contemplating your educational future.

“Is it easy to make friends at this middle school?’’ the boy wondered.

Kelly McGuire, the energetic principal of Greenwich Village Middle School had already distributed a glossy brochure, articulated his educational philosophy and answered predictable questions about class sizes and whether 6th graders can go out to lunch.

He’d spoken about literacy and math scores. He’d described a small, caring and nurturing community with a commitment to social justice and a “really rigorous approach to academics.”

(Every school we’ve toured has a “really rigorous approach.”)

The 8th-grade students had answered questions about where they want to go to high school and how much homework they have. They complained about what they least like about their school – all those stairs they must climb to get to it

(Every middle school we’ve toured has also been on the top floor of an old building with no elevator.)

No one really knew how to answer the little boy’s question about making friends, although it laid bare a top priority of 5th graders as they prepare to rank their top five middle choices by Feb. 6.

Hint: It’s not a “content-rich program,” an “integrated theme-based curriculum,’’ a “peer mediation/conflict resolution program,” or “collaborative team teaching,’’ to mention a few of the phrases we’ve heard on tours.

For 5th graders, middle school means splitting up from classmates they’ve known for years and finding themselves in an unfamiliar environment.

How, they wonder, will they make new friends?

No principal, parent or student can answer that question for them. No tour guide has the answer.

I’m grateful we have a choice of middle schools, but I strongly wish that 6th graders could remain one more year in their elementary school – the old K-6 configuration that I grew up with and one that is being considered again, as are pre-K-8 schools, like the new one being proposed for Battery Park City. I love the idea.

I’m not sure what is gained by hurtling them into the adolescent world of cell phones, instant messaging, traveling alone and school dances where grinding (if you don’t know what it is, ask any middle schooler) rules. They will face those social pressures far sooner than many parents — and I suspect educators — would like.

My 5th-grade son looked weary but relieved after our last tour, which was probably number 7 or 8 — we slept through one and lost count. Mostly, he wants to go to school with his best buddy or least some of the classmates he’s known since kindergarten. And he’d like to get back to enjoying the rest of elementary school.

That, he told me, was what he was thinking about when the little boy asked his heartfelt question about making friends.

Good news for parents out of a State Supreme Court room in Manhattan yesterday: A judge ruled in favor of East Harlem residents who sued over the city’s secretive agreement last year to give 20 private schools almost exclusive access to the playing fields on Randall’s Island. As opponents of the plan argued, the deal was made illegally because the city circumvented a required competitive bidding process, the judge ruled, voiding the agreement. According to the New York Times, the city must now resubmit the proposal through the Uniform Land Use Review Process, which requires City Council approval. Given the council’s stance on the DOE’s habit of entering into costly no-bid contracts, and the press the Randall’s Island showdown has gotten, the mayor and chancellor will likely have a hard time pushing the proposal through.