One final note before I sign off: even though OSEPO pulled an all-nighter earlier this week trying to nail down the scope of the pre-K admissions problems, it is still planning to mail out long-delayed middle school placement letters right about now. Here’s a space for parents of 5th graders to discuss the results of that process.

G&T folks, you’ll get your placement thread next week. Good luck to all!

In a week filled with budget cut showdowns, botched pre-K admissions letters, and anticipation of middle school and G&T placement decisions, I’m pretty sure I’m just about the last thing on your minds. But that won’t stop me from trying to insert myself there.

At the end of May last year, the Insideschools blog was still just an idea. A year later, its archive contains more than 525 posts(!) ranging from meeting coverage to analysis of articles and reports to help understanding the DOE’s confusing policy changes. In my three years at Insideschools, I’ve enjoyed nothing more than writing this blog and interacting with the parents, teachers, policy wonks, and school officials who read it.

Today is my last day at Insideschools. After today, I’ll be reading this blog, but I won’t be contributing to it. I’m confident that I’m leaving the blog in more-than-capable hands — Helen Zelon, who has contributed coverage of the budget cuts already, will post regularly through the summer, and you’ll soon see some other new names; let Insideschools know if you’d like to be one of them — but still, I will miss it.

When I see you around the city and the Internet, say hello. And until then, know that I am rooting for you all in this crazy, mixed-up school system.

Today’s tragic crane collapse on the Upper East Side, the latest in a series of construction accidents in city that’s experiencing a building boom, took place at the site of the new East Side Middle School, where developers tore down an old public school building to make way for a new condominium building that will also house a public school. The Times is reporting that the cab of a crane fell as many as 20 stories to the ground this morning, killing at least one person.

Groundbreaking for the new ESMS, a popular school currently located on York Avenue between 77th and 78th streets, happened last September. (View photos of the event.) The new, 34-story building, which will house an expanded ESMS as well as 118 condo units, was slated to be completed in 2011; it’s not clear how this accident will affect the timeline but I think we can hope that construction there and elsewhere in the city should not happen until we can be guaranteed it’s happening safely.

Earlier this week, Helen posted about “Chancellor Klein’s no good, very bad morning.” One commenter immediately noted the allusion to the classic children’s book “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day,” by Judith Viorst, saying that she reads the book to her own son Alexander when he’s feeling grumpy. Recently, the Times’ City Room blog ran a long post about the best kids’ books that use New York City as a backdrop, such as “Eloise,” “Harriet the Spy,” and “The Cricket in Times Square.” Readers weighed in with their own suggestions and sent me, at least, running to the library.

As we all work on our summer reading lists, help fellow Insideschools Blog readers out: What books do your kids most enjoy?

Some of the soon-to-be pre-K parents commenting on this blog are working through their anger and frustration about the admissions problems by generating possible solutions for them. If the DOE aims to make things right for the families it shortchanged — and I believe that is the DOE’s intention — officials will likely need to think creatively. Perhaps they can use Bronx_Shrink’s proposal for inspiration:

I think there may be one way in which a fraction of the wrongfully rejected parents can be appeased. The city offers child care vouchers to low income families. If they are unable to correct this and place kids properly, according to priority, perhaps some families can be offered vouchers to be used in private day cares. Before the tomatoes start flying, I know this will not be the answer for most parents as they carefully chose schools that match their educational values. However, it might be good compensation for some other families to get them through another year of childcare costs.

Do you have a better plan? Post yours. Pie-in-the-sky ideas are welcome, but practical solutions are even more welcome.

Earlier this week, Leonie Haimson commented on a post about the budget showdown that “no one believes that $200 million is going to be cut centrally.” During this challenging week, I’ve really tried to give the DOE the benefit of the doubt, but all the evidence certainly does point that way. As Haimson noted over at the NYC Public School Parents blog, the budget the chancellor presented to the City Council on Tuesday reflected a $12 million central cut that will be achieved in large part by putting in place a hiring freeze at the DOE; it also reflected serious inconsistencies and underbudgeting that advocates have been noting since the budget was released several weeks ago.

After Council members and advocates demanded a closer accounting, the chancellor released a more detailed list of how he plans to free up the $200 million. Elizabeth Green at the Sun wrote yesterday that the list says the DOE plans to reduce the number of staff positions by 187 (which strikes me as unlikely to be achieved in one year through attrition), defer the introduction of a new social studies curriculum (testing related to a new science curriculum was also put off earlier this year), and stop paying for some of schools’ computer repair costs. Nearly 15 percent of the central cuts could affect schools directly, Green reported. And now today, the Post notes that “nearly half” of the proposed central cuts were achieved by lowering cost estimates for various products and services — probably by finding someone who can do what’s needed for even lower than the lowest bid, which can’t be good for actually getting the job done well.

My head is spinning. The only way I can see sense being made of the whole situation is if the mayor frees up enough money to eliminate budget cuts for the DOE and its schools.

I just heard from Andy Jacob at the DOE, who said he had explained many details about the nature of the pre-K admissions problems to reporters at the Times and the Post but that those details hadn’t made it into print. The Daily News had a hint of the details, but I didn’t see that article earlier this morning — there, Jacob described problems with sibling verification that may have led some parents not to have received acceptance letters when they should have.

What happened, Jacob told me, was that the DOE’s computers compared data for the older sibling claimed on the application with the data parents entered on the application. If the address in the attendance system for the older child didn’t match the address as it was entered from the application, the system treated the applicant as a non-sibling. But in some cases, Jacob said, the address-matching excluded children erroneously, sometimes because of a minor difference in the way the addresses were formulated (with a typo in the DOE’s attendance system, for example) and sometimes because families have moved since entering the school system.

Currently, OSEPO staff are finishing up looking at every single one of the applications of families who indicated they had a sibling already enrolled, Jacob said. He told me he anticipates that the number of families affected will be a “small minority” of the 9,000 families who indicated that they had a sibling in their school of choice, though the number will be “more than 4 or 5.” After the scope of the problem is clear, the DOE will decide how to handle the cases, he said, and families will be notified then if there was a mistake in the way their application was treated. “There are some cases where the problem was on our end. … When we hear about problems, we solve them,” he told me.

Jacob said there may also be families who believe they were erroneously denied a seat who actually completed the application incorrectly, perhaps by listing the school in which the sibling is already enrolled as something other than their first choice. (Sibling priority only works for your first-choice school.)

Jacob advised me that the very best thing parents who believe the address-matching issue may be the root of their rejection should hold tight while the DOE decides how to solve the problem. I know that will be hard to do, but I have faith that the DOE is committed to addressing the issues, even though it might not know yet exactly how to. If you just can’t wait, Jacob said the best number to call at OSEPO is 212-374-4948. That’s also the number you should call if you have other issues or if you still haven’t received a letter — though we have heard from one father who just received a letter this morning.

As always, we’ll keep you posted as we learn more, and please let us know what’s happening on your end.

Finally, today, the pre-K debacle has made it into the papers — where we learn that the DOE believes all the problems are parents’ fault. DOE spokesman Andy Jacob told the Times that the problems appear to have affected only families with siblings already enrolled in a school with a pre-K program. That means, of course, that the problems may be widespread, because those families make up 45 percent of the 20,000 families who applied for pre-K seats.

Jacob told the Times that DOE officials believe the data entry done in Pennsylvania is not the culprit, but that blame more likely rests with parents who made a “simple mistake” when filling out the form. To the Post, he said that “most complaints involved parents who wrongly believed they qualified for priority placement or whose application data contained errors.”

Some good news: Jacob told the Times, “We will find a way to solve the problems that do exist.” How magnanimous: They may not respect you or believe you’re capable of filling out a form, but at least they’ll make right when you screw up.

Please let us know when you start getting resolution to your problems — we hope it’s soon!

I had sort of thought that the folks who last autumn were talking about bringing a Hebrew-language charter school to New York City would have been dissuaded by the controversy surrounding the Khalil Gibran International Academy, but apparently they were not. Next week, representatives of the Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life plans to submit an application to the DOE and the state Board of Regents to open a charter school as early as 2009, according to a report in the Jewish Daily Forward.

The proposal will be modeled after Ben Gamla Charter in Florida, which ran into some trouble early in this school year because its Hebrew language curriculum contained religious references. Considering that doing damage control for Khalil Gibran proved costly and embarrassing for the DOE and that the controversy continues to this day, it should be interesting to see what kind of reception the Hebrew school’s advocates receive.

Sometime today the DOE put up new information about pre-K on the pre-K enrollment page. It contains a sprinkling of new information but no admission at all of widespread problems with the admissions process. And of course there’s no phone number at all for parents who have questions. (If we happen to find out a number that leads to a helpful, or at least friendly, person, we’ll post it right away — but we’re having about as much luck as you are getting through to OSEPO right now.)

Here’s how to appeal:

Is there an appeals process for pre-K?
There is an appeals process for a child whose address changes or for extenuating circumstances. Families who wish to submit an appeal must do so in writing to ES_Enrollment@schools.nyc.gov no later than June 13, 2008.

If you think your application was hopelessly botched (whether by the data entry dude in Pennsylvania or by OSEPO’s computer matching system), does this satisfy you? I didn’t think so.

This has been a tough month for public school parents and activists in New York City, the kind who fight for better schools, support the ones their children attend and try to convince friends, neighbors and other parents to do the same.

These activists know that simply registering your child and walking away is not an option if you want enhanced art, music and science programs, to name just a few. They volunteer at lunch and at recess and run auctions, bake sales and endless fundraisers to create better programs for all children. And they are pretty sick of all the finger-pointing about whose fault it is when school budgets are cut.

Many of the most ardent public education supporters began battling for better schools in pre-kindergarten, but now they’ve discovered there are no certain spots in such programs — and that even kindergarten in their zoned neighborhood schools cannot be taken for granted due to overcrowding.

They can’t necessarily count on a spot a high-performing middle school either, because of a supply and demand discrepancy that exists when it comes to the best schools — and because some districts and neighborhoods don’t have a lot of appealing choices.

One of the most painful moments came last week, when Chancellor Joel Klein announced he’d have to make cuts as high as 6 percent at some of the most attractive and sought-after places like the Salk School of Science, where some 45 percent of 8th graders receive offers to attend the specialized high schools. Salk faces a cut of $133,762, or 5.25 percent. Klein told reporters that 74 schools would face cuts of more than 5 percent.

Klein is putting all the blame on state government in Albany, maintaining that state rules have restricted the way the city can spend education money, despite the historic lawsuit that was supposed to bring billions of dollars into underfunded schools. He says state officials are not allowing him to use $63 million in state aid to close a $99 million city budget deficit before that budget is due June 30.

Parents aren’t buying it, as the New York Times pointed out last week, nor should they. (The City Council, which must approve the mayor’s budget, isn’t buying it either.) The average New York City public parent activist is too busy looking for decent public schools, fighting to maintain the ones their kids already attend and raising ever more money (like I said, it’s a lot of cupcakes and rummage sales) to get caught in the middle of despicable politics as usual.

Does Klein think he’s going to be a hero if he announces he suddenly won’t have to make such deep cuts after all? Unlikely. Regent Merryl Tisch recently told NY1 News that the “ugly political battle” was creating enormous uncertainty about programs and staffing for next year.

That amounts to angst on top of anxiety. Say you are an activist 5th-grade parent who has long hoped your child would get into an excellent middle school like Salk. Number one, you haven’t heard yet — for some unexplained reason, the middle school process has been delayed this year.

Number two, say you had dreamed of having your middle school graduate go on to say, the prestigious Bronx High School of Science. Looking down the chancellor’s list of budget cuts, you might see the Bronx Science is facing a 5.25 percent cut — amounting to some $825,00 — and no cupcake sale can make up that kind of deficit. For many schools, such cuts could mean the end of concerts, plays, after school clubs, sports, and at places like Stuyvesant, a lighter academic courseload.

Thousands of parents already support New York City public schools, and thousands more would like to. They do not appreciate being political pawns.

Read all of Liz Willen’s Middle School Muddle

The DOE hasn’t commented on the scope of problems with pre-K admissions letters — no matter that one Insideschools blog reader hypothesized that the problems are “HUGE” — but officials are saying they are investigating every complaint they receive. So if you believe your child was mistakenly denied a seat in a pre-K program, contact OSEPO, the central enrollment office, at 212-374-2363.

What’s not clear to me is whether any families have been offered seats at the Brooklyn schools that seem to have been affected. If they have, will the DOE be able to reverse erroneous rejections? Or will all of the seats that should have gone to in-zone siblings already be filled?

Last week, at the same time Chancellor Klein started his “classic divide and conquer” campaign to cut the budgets of high-performing schools, he also announced that he would be cutting $200 million from the DOE’s central budget. We’re starting to get a picture now of what programs and services will go the way of the $200 million. Helen reported that top schools will not receive annual quality reviews and that dozens of jobs will be cut centrally.

Today, we learn that the DOE is jettisoning its plan to screen all kindergarteners for “giftedness” this coming year. The plan has drawn mixed reception since it was announced last year as part of the standardization of G&T admission: anti-testing advocates opposed it as an expansion of the DOE’s already swollen testing program, while others, including some parents who commented on this blog while waiting for their G&T letters, saw it as a way to increase equity by finding gifted kids whose parents might not know to ask for testing.

What else do we know the DOE plans to cut from its central administration? Is the chancellor right that individual schools won’t suffer more because of the cuts there?

Chancellor Joel Klein spent the first part of his day today fielding a barrage of budget questions from City Council members.

In tones ranging from polite skepticism to outright accusation, member after member denounced proposed school budget cuts and Klein’s appeal for state relief by redirecting legally mandated Campaign for Fiscal Equity funding. Council members variously characterized Klein’s plan as a way to exploit middle-class parent concerns; pit high- and low-achieving (and low- and high-economic need) communities in opposition; shortchange English language learners; and start a covert DOE campaign to wrest economic concessions from the teachers union and other labor groups.

In the standing room-only Council Chambers, members struggled to understand Klein’s New Budget Math — $63 million held back by the city against prospective cuts; $99 million needed from the state; $400 million for “no cuts to schools,” according to Klein; and the proposed $428 million city budget cut to education. Speaker Christine Quinn urged Klein and the council to “come up with the number” of dollars cut — and find the money to “get that number down to zero.”

Letitia James of Brooklyn and Melissa Mark-Viverito of Manhattan decried Klein’s proposed redistribution of Contract for Excellence funds as against the intent and the letter of the law. And Oliver Koppell of the Bronx said, “I can’t believe, in a $10 billion budget” — which Education Committee Chair Robert Jackson quickly corrected to $21 billion in a side comment — “you can’t find $63 million. I hate to say this, but I don’t believe you. You’re cutting [funds] to better schools to create an outcry. That’s a bad strategy — that tells parents, ‘we can take it all away.’”

Hearings continue with public comment this afternoon at 4:30 p.m. and resume tomorrow at 1 p.m. with a Keep the Promises Coalition press conference at City Hall.

In keeping with its grand tradition of finding a long weekend during which to mail important letters to parents, the DOE let loose Pre-K admissions decisions at the end of last week. Already, the Insideschools forum is abuzz with discussion of the process. A couple of disappointed parents lament not getting into their top-choice programs or into any program at all.

Other parents describe what we can only hope are problems with the admissions process, the management of which was outsourced to an out-of-state provider. A couple of parents describe receiving rejection letters even though they live in the zone of a school with a large Pre-K program — and who have older children already enrolled in that school! (This year’s new rules, finalized midway through the application process, give siblings preference for admission over all other applicants.) Either there are far, far more zoned siblings applying for Pre-K than anyone could ever have imagined, or else the DOE has some cleaning up to do.

If you applied for Pre-K for the fall, we welcome more information about your letter — and we hope your news was good!

Update: A DOE spokesman wrote to me to clarify concerns about the admissions process being outsourced. Parents mailed their applications to Pennsylvania for data entry, he wrote, but the actual applicant-to-program matches were made in-house at OSEPO.

Were you at the beach on Sunday? (I hope you weren’t sitting around by your computer reading blogs!) If you were, you might have seen an airplane towing the message “Mayor Bloomberg, keep your promises to our schools.” The Keep the Promises Coalition was spreading the word about the budget cuts the schools are facing — cuts that Chancellor Klein recently rejiggered but not relieved. It seems unlikely that the mayor vacations on the city’s public beaches, but I suppose it was worth a shot, especially if the effort prompted city residents to call the coalition’s toll-free number to register complaints about the cuts.

I’d also bet that there weren’t many principals enjoying the beach this weekend — they were likely too busy figuring out what programs and services to cut for next year, since they only received their budgets late on Thursday.

This morning at 9:30, the education and finance committees of the City Council will be looking at the proposed operating budget for the city’s schools. (See the Insideschools calendar for details.) It should be a contentious debate — almost all of the council members have called on the mayor to restore funding to the schools, but he shows no signs of budging. I’m guessing we’ll hear council members offering suggestions of where the DOE could trim its fat, in ways that won’t affect individual schools. We’ll see how productive the debate turns out to be.

Parents have always known they are taking a risk when they put down a deposit at a private school while waiting to hear whether they’ve been accepted at their preferred public schools. But I didn’t know until recently that they can be risking as much as a year’s tuition — which can total as much as $20,000 or more. A story in the Times today describes a family who has been paying all year for a seat at the Little Red Schoolhouse that their daughter doesn’t occupy, because she got into a citywide gifted program in June. By the time they notified Little Red, they had passed the deadline to pull out without having to pay the full year’s tuition. Today on Urban Baby, users are vilifying the family for waiting so long to let LREI know, but earlier this week, readers there were worrying about the same thing happening to them.

Whether private schools would actually plan around the public school schedule if the DOE had a regular schedule is up for speculation, but a spokeswoman for an independent schools organization made a great point when she said in the Times, “Unfortunately, it’s impossible to collaborate on the timing with the public schools when the dates change every year.” Of course, the DOE’s changing schedules are problematic for lots of families, not just those considering private school.

I do question how familiar Susan Dominus, the story’s author, is with the public schools in the Bloomberg-Klein era. She writes, “It would have been nice, from [the parents’] point of view, if Little Red, which ultimately forgave about $6,000 of the $26,000 tuition, ran itself a little bit less like a competitive business; but it would also have helped if New York’s public school system reliably ran itself more like one.” Has she not heard that schools are businesses and their principals are all CEOs?

As Helen noted yesterday, Chancellor Klein seems to have come up with a formula for reallocating school budgets that penalizes large, successful schools — and that’s the story the papers ran with today. Klein appears to have come up with the gambit to rile up middle-class families — and voters — to support his bid to have the state loosen restrictions placed on school funding by the new Contract for Excellence requirement, which was in turn prompted in part by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit. That suit, of course, aimed to equalize funding among schools by giving more money to lower-performing schools with a high proportion of needy students. Klein’s plan does seem to move toward equalization — but by taking away from schools that are less needy. And he plans to heighten class tensions in the process. Thanks, Chancellor Klein!

UPDATE: A reader notes: “There is a rally this afternoon to protest the budget cuts in front of the location where Chancellor Klein is meeting with principals to announce these cuts: The HS of Fashion Industries at 225 W. 24th Street in Manhattan between 7th and 8th Ave at 5 p.m.” I can’t be there, but can someone else who is going fill us in on what happens?

So after a State Supreme Court judge voided the city’s deal to give 20 private schools exclusive rights to the playing fields at Randalls Island, you’d think the city would stop work on the project, right? You’d be wrong. Work has continued unabated for the last four months, and now Curbed reports that the project has “taken a sharp left turn into Bizarro World“: Yesterday, the same judge who voided the deal said the continued construction was just fine.

The bottom line may be that it won’t be legal for the city to take the $45 million promised by the private schools to pay for the playing fields. So as parent advocates and neighborhood activists wanted, the private schools won’t get exclusive use of the fields — but at the same time, someone else will have to foot the bill. And as we know, there’s not exactly millions of dollars sitting around right now earmarked for the benefit of public school children. I’m sure there are plenty of readers who understand the situation better than I do — what should we expect to see when the first playing fields open, perhaps as early as this fall?

It looks like our early-morning high hopes for the schools budget were premature at best: Chancellor Joel Klein held a press conference this afternoon to explain why, despite increased overall funding for schools, predicted expenses still outweigh available funding by a cool $300 million. The DOE has found ways to restore $200 million of the shortfall that it says won’t overtly impact students in the classroom, like less frequent Quality Review reports for strong schools and the paring away of 80+ jobs at the DOE. But that leaves $99 million unfunded.

Millions due to the city from the Campaign for Fiscal Equity settlement — 14 years in the making, or longer than the academic career of most city students — are legally restricted by Albany and targeted to high-need schools, often on the State Education Department’s failing-schools list. Because of these legal obligations, under the current budget, some schools are due to receive more money than others. In practice, this means that some schools could actually see increases in their budgets, while about 400 could experience cuts of 3% or greater, including 68 schools — notably, prized high schools like Stuyvesant, Townsend Harris, and Millennium — could suffer cuts in excess of 5%. For schools with budgets of $10,000,000 — a reasonable ballpark for some of the city’s largest schools — that means a loss of about three-quarters of a million dollars.

Klein’s proposal, which he plans to take to Albany for approval, involves changing the law to spread the budget pain across the city’s schools. He says sharing the burden will mean a far more modest 1.4% budget cut for all schools, and he claims to have the support of the city’s principals. (He will meet with principals tomorrow afternoon to describe his proposal; the actual, individual school budgets won’t be posted until Thursday evening, after the meeting.)

Representatives of the Keep the Promises Coalition were on hand to criticize Klein’s budget revisions. UFT head Randi Weingarten decried Klein’s actions as “the height of chutzpah. The CFE is not to blame for the budget shortfall. He has not gone to the mayor to beg for money. You have a $4 billion surplus [in the city budget] — I have to believe there is money to help the schools. If we are being true to the kids who are always being left behind, the state has to say ‘No, you have to put in what you promised.’” Billy Easton, executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education, stressed that the CFE allocations were about more than money. “It’s about money AND accountability,” said Easton. “He’s passing the buck. The state has delivered on its commitment. The city’s not delivering on theirs.”

Stay tuned. In the interim, we’d love to hear from principals who are facing potential budget challenges and weighing Klein’s “share-the-pain” plan.

Most of the 8th graders at IS 318 in the Bronx boycotted a practice social studies test last week, the Daily News reports. They complain that they’ve been taking tests all year, many of which are simply practice or diagnostic tests ostensibly designed to prepare them for the real thing, instead of spending time learning from their teachers. Their social studies teacher has been removed from the classroom and may lose his job over the affair, even though he and students say he never told them to hand in anti-testing petitions along with their blank tests.

From the answers the students gave to the Daily News reporter, it sounds like they’ve had quality instruction in civics and social studies at IS 318. I’d wager that their tests wouldn’t reflect their nuanced understanding of capitalism, authoritarianism, and children’s (lack of) rights:

“We’ve had a whole bunch of these diagnostic tests all year,” Tatiana Nelson, 13, one of the protest leaders, said Tuesday outside the school. “They don’t even count toward our grades. The school system’s just treating us like test dummies for the companies that make the exams.” …”They’re saying Mr. Avella made us do this,” said Johnny Cruz, 15, another boycott leader. “They don’t think we have brains of our own, like we’re robots. We students wanted to make this statement. The school is oppressing us too much with all these tests.” …

“Now they’ve taken away the teacher we love only a few weeks before our real state exam for social studies,” Tatiana Nelson said. “How does that help us?”

Today’s Sun has a comprehensive overview of where the city’s school budgets now stand — and it’s possible, writes Elizabeth Green, that one reason principals didn’t receive their school budgets last week as scheduled is that the mayor plans to restore some funding to schools. That’s the hope, at least, of principals and school advocates who want to see an upside to a delay that follows a year of financial uncertainty. Advocates have been relentless in pressuring the mayor and chancellor to restore school funding, planning rallies in every borough, airing TV and radio ads, and getting local Community Education Councils to pass resolutions opposing the cuts.

And all but just a few City Council members signed a resolution opposing the budget cuts; the Council must approve the proposed budget before it is adopted. This morning, the council’s education and finance committees are discussing the city’s capital school budget. Next week, the council takes on the operating budget. By then, and as early as this afternoon, we should see the mayor or the chancellor address the financial picture the schools are facing. I predict they’ve gotten the message that it won’t be acceptable for them to tell principals and parents again that budget cuts will have “no impact whatsoever.”

“Did you get the mail yet?” my 5th grader asked yesterday, for about the 300th time in the last month.

I did not like the anxious look on his face, but I understand it. For reasons as of yet unexplained and articulated by anyone at the New York City Department of Education, middle school notifications are coming way later this year. As we forge ahead with graduation and birthday plans, end-of-year publishing parties and arts festival performances, a letter from a middle school is on the way.

Hopefully, the envelope will come from one of our top two choices, made after much discussion on our part, after many visits and careful consideration of everything from the commute to the class sizes. We can’t be quite sure how that middle school arrived at the decision, as each one seems to do something a bit differently when choosing their 6th graders.

We do know all the top schools have way too many first choice applicants and simply can’t take them all.

As the wait stretches on, 5th-grade parents in choice districts throughout the city are all a little anxious. If the news is not what we wanted, we must be nonetheless cheery and optimistic, explaining to our 9- and 10-year-olds that this does not constitute personal rejection and they will be happy wherever they end up. Or, we can choose to appeal the decision and push for one of our top choices nonetheless, prolonging an arduous process even more.

When my older son was going through this process two years ago, he knew by April where he was headed the following year. He was delighted, and promptly forgot about middle school and focused on enjoying the rest of the year with his close friends.

That is what I’m urging my 5th grader to do now. And I am focusing on the rituals of the wonderful elementary school we are about to leave behind, along with moments when my child might still grasp his hand and ask if I’m the one taking him to school or picking him up — a concept that ends instantly for many parents in middle school.

I’m preparing to bake my last batch of birthday cupcakes to bring to his class on the big day, another ritual that disappears in most middle schools. And when I pick up my 7th grader this week, I’m making sure we meet somewhere not even remotely close to his school but in another neighborhood entirely.

NYC Public School Parents is hosting a copy of the DOE’s much-anticipated “Blueprint for District 2 Enrollment and Capacity.” At a recent meeting about overcrowding in District 2, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer said the fact that such a document was on its way was one “sign of progress” in reducing overcrowding in the district’s schools — but I wonder whether he still feels that way, having read what the DOE proposes in the preliminary planning document.

“We know that an appropriate plan for District 2’s elementary schools will require not only new construction but also enrollment adjustments and efficient use of current facilities,” DOE officials write. Contrasted with district residents’ thoughtful identification of existing space that could be used for schools, the proposal is thin on ideas for new construction, describing only the plan, announced recently, to convert part of one Greenwich Village building into a 600-student elementary school and one other new idea for construction, in Kips Bay. (Two elementary schools are already planned to open in Lower Manhattan in 2010, and a middle school expansion project is also underway on the Upper East Side.)

While the DOE says it is planning to add nearly 3,000 new seats in elementary and middle schools in District 2, it also asks for two unpopular commitments from District 2 officials and schools. First, it calls for a reduction in out-of-district enrollment in some of Manhattan’s most popular schools, a reduction that is already underway thanks to the DOE’s own “proactive oversight” of admissions and one that is sure to undermine schools’ efforts to maintain diversity in some of the wealthiest zip codes in the city. The DOE also calls for a rezoning of the entire district to account for new schools and resolve some current sticky issues, such as the zone-sharing between PS 3 and PS 41 in Greenwich Village and the lack of a zoned school for children in the old PS 151 zone on the Upper East Side. And it suggests that 5th graders at overcrowded elementary schools in Lower Manhattan be bused to buildings more than a mile away, an option that is sure to please parents who secured apartments with the neighborhood schools in mind.

The letter is packed with tidbits about what families in District 2 (and beyond) might expect as the DOE continues to centralize admissions procedures. It’s definitely worth a look. And if you’re in District 2, you can respond to your local community board, the Manhattan Borough President’s office, or by taking an online survey about school overcrowding. And if you’re in other parts of the city — perhaps you’re in South Brooklyn, where anti-overcrowding momentum appears to be mounting — you might start thinking now about what the DOE can, and should not, do to relieve overcrowding in your area.

Can you imagine what a $52 million capital improvement could do for the increasingly overcrowded Beach Channel High School? Keep imagining — the $52 million is going to soundproof the building against the noise from nearby JFK airport.

Kids these days spend more and more time inside their utilitarian public school buildings, and as a result they’re alienated from nature and the creativity nature inspires, writes Alison Arieff in a recent Times column. “What if we looked beyond the notion of schools as institutions (like jails, banks, courthouses) and thought about them more as laboratories for creativity, exploration and innovation?” she asks.

Arieff suggests that one way to accomplish this might be by building “green” schools (or renovating existing buildings in environmentally sustainable ways) so that classrooms are integrated with the natural world around them. In New York City, that’s not as easily accomplished as it might be elsewhere, especially given the glacier-like pace of school construction here. But schools in New York could do a lot more to release kids into the “wild” of the city, where rather than explore forests and streams they might explore the world’s very best museums, theaters, and parks.

Parents are reporting that they’ve started hearing back from citywide middle schools. They’ve heard — as have we at Insideschools — that districts will be letting students know where they’ve been accepted by the end of this month. Does anyone have any other information to share? Good luck to all!

In a couple of hours, Chancellor Joel Klein will give the Class Day address at Columbia; he graduated from the school in 1967. Lots of seniors were nonplussed by the choice, Columbia’s student newspaper reported last month. Barnard’s got Klein’s boss, Mayor Bloomberg. But hey, boring speeches mean more time for blowing up beach balls and stealing bases, right?

Mayor Bloomberg has got to be feeling the pressure to restore education funds to the city’s budget. On Wednesday, parents gathered at City Hall to urge City Council members to vote down the proposed budget. This morning, State Assembly leader Sheldon Silver presented the mayor with an assembly resolution asking him to restore school funding. Anti-cut rallies are scheduled for Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx in the next week. (See the Insideschools calendar for details about dates and locations.) And the Keep the Promises Coalition has just launched a new TV spot urging New Yorkers to call 1-800-961-6198 to tell the mayor to fund the schools.
Some kind of changes may be brewing. Patrick Sullivan reported last night on the NYC Public School Parents blog that the DOE has delayed the Panel for Education Policy’s vote on the executive budget, originally scheduled for Monday, saying that it is working on reducing the impact of cuts to schools. Of course, it could be that the DOE needs time to fix serious inconsistencies in the proposed budget — Eduwonkette’s noted one and it’s not hard to find others.

From the minute we dropped our 5th graders off in a sun-dappled elementary school courtyard last September, the search – and the questions – officially began for parents. Would we be able to find a decent New York City public middle school for our 9- and 10-year-olds?

The tours got off to a slow and somewhat confusing start, but one thing became immediately clear as we began to rank our choices one to five: There are far more students who want to get into the most coveted middle schools than there are spots for them.

In recent weeks, a dire picture of the overcrowding lower Manhattan and other areas of the city face and the impact it will have on schools has emerged. The New York Times weighed in, and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer has announced a meeting next week to discuss the implications.

A report Stringer released last month found the city had approved enough new residential buildings to add up to 2,300 new students in K-8 – while increasing total school capacity by only 143 seats.

Overcrowding is a serious problem, and it’s only getting worse as more families choose to stay in the city.

I wish I could tell parents not to worry or stress, and urge them to shun private institutions or moves to the suburbs. The problem is, plenty of us are already staying in the city and fighting for better public schools, just as innovative educators are working hard to make the schools we do have more appealing by attracting grants and specialty programs.

It’s not enough. Supply does not meet demand. The overcrowding in some areas is causing parents to be shut out of kindergarten in some of the most coveted neighborhood schools, as the Times story noted.

Fast-growing immigrant areas in the Bronx, Queens and Upper Manhattan have spent years struggling with overcrowded schools, classrooms and trailers as immigrant populations continue to surge.

Finding a good middle school – and then getting into it – is hard enough now: the best have a long list of children shut out for lack of space.

Without serious attention it may become nearly impossible in years to come.Read all of Liz Willen’s Middle School Muddle

From the Sun comes the news that the Brooklyn Prospect Charter School, which had its application denied last year, is now cleared to open in District 15 in 2009. The school will open with grade 6 and will eventually serve students in grades 6-12. Founders says Brooklyn Prospect will offer the rigorous International Baccalaureate program as part of the school’s mission of giving students “the skills, knowledge, and habits of mind necessary for success in higher education, the workplace, and life in the twenty-first century.” Parents of current 4th graders can contact the school now for more information; as at all charters, admissions will be done by lottery, applications for which will be due in April 2009, and residents of District 15 will have priority for admission.

Eduwonkette’s been taking a close look at the city’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2009 (pdf)— and she reports today that the $8,287,282 slated for the Division of Assessment and Accountability includes $7,789,623 for 18 staff positions, or $432,757 per position. Eduwonkette uses these figures to point to the DOE’s “selective attention to budgeting issues.” But I’d prefer to look on the bright side — the money earmarked for DAA isn’t going up next year. Not getting a raise is like a cut, right?

If you don’t believe already that the economy is tanking, here’s proof: the number of college students applying to join Teach for America increased by 37 percent this year. Nearly 25,000 graduating seniors applied for 3,700 spots, making TFA more selective than all but the most elite colleges — though not as selective as some of New York City’s most highly coveted high schools. Let’s hope the kids who didn’t make the cut — based on grades, essays, and an interview — applied to graduate school as a backup plan. About 500 of those TFA has accepted will make their way to one of the city’s classrooms by this fall, where they will fill high-need positions teaching math, science, and special education, among other subjects.

School officials in Dallas have started giving GPS devices to kids who regularly have trouble making it to school — so they can’t pass off illegitimate excuses when they’re truant. The GPS devices appear to be improving attendance for these students, and one expert notes in the Times article on the subject, “It’s far better than locking a kid up” — not to mention less expensive, despite paying for a full-time case manager to check in on students.

Still, some in Texas have complained about the tracking systems, saying the ankle bracelets used in an earlier iteration of the Dallas experiment, and currently used in a similar program in another Texas city, are reminiscent of slave chains. I, too, am uncomfortable with a program that eases kids to the indignities of being monitored electronically. On the other hand, perhaps if students at Brooklyn’s Boys and Girls High School were part of a program like the one in Dallas, they would make it to school in time for the starting bell, after which, according to the Post, students complain they are sometimes barred from admission. (Boys and Girls is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit over illegal pushouts filed in 2005 by Advocates for Children, Insideschools’ parent organization.)

The DOE has responded to the frustration voiced by parents who had their rising kindergarteners screened for G&T eligibility, only to find that their district programs start in 1st grade. This week, parents of kids who scored at the 90th percentile or higher received a letter saying, “After careful consideration, we are pleased to inform you that your child will not have to retest next year and will be eligible for a first grade seat in G&T program in your distict for the 2009-10 school year.” It’s time to give credit where credit’s due — the DOE listened to parents and responded fairly and appropriately. Queens parents, you were particularly vocal on this subject — are you satisfied with the DOE’s response?

Every year, teenagers and their parents ask us at Insideschools how to find summer jobs. In fact, Judy recently answered a question about what kinds of work a 14-year-old might look for. An internship can often be a meaningful way to spend the summer both learning and working. And if your child is set on landing a paying job for the summer, the city can help.

Until May 16, kids can submit applications for the city’s Summer Youth Employment Program, which places young adults ages 14-21 in positions at community organizations, city agencies, and local businesses. The DOE’s Office of Special Education Initiatives will help teens with disabilities find jobs as well; to apply, complete the regular SYEP application and mail it by May 16 to John McParland, OSESI Placement and Referral Center, 145 Stanton Street, Room 223, New York, NY 10006.

I’ve been tossing around this idea for a while now as I’ve been finishing up the final classes of my senior year. It’s a little out there, so please stay with me till the end.

The test prep culture in our schools is bad and widespread. It detracts from learning. It pervades all of our classes. It impedes good relationships between students and teachers. How do we rid ourselves of this beast? Well, my answer — and I know it is kind of out there — is this: Legitimize it!

What do you mean, Seth? That’s ridiculous! Why would we legitimize something that we want to get rid of?

What I am suggesting here is that we legitimize testing by recognizing that for primary and secondary education students it is important to know how to take a test and how to take it well.

Standardized tests in 4th and 7th grade are sometimes the only way to distinguish among such a large and diverse field of applicants in middle and high school admissions. And the SAT and ACT tests one of the current standards for college admissions (except at a couple of amazing liberal arts schools that have made the SAT optional). And right now, the social divide between people with college educations and those without is growing, and in today’s world, you’re going to have to take some tests in order to get that seemingly magical degree.

Thus, the ability to take a test is quite a valuable one. So why not create a class to teach that skill?

Testing Class, as I will call it, by its very nature would be a process- (instead of content-) based learning class, something we need more of in our schools. It would teach students how to approach many problems and issues. It would also be more helpful in preparing them for standardized tests, by focusing on specific skills rather than today’s tactic of vaguely tying it into other subjects, which just confuses students as to what they’re supposed to be concentrating on. This aspect of the class could also hopefully improve equality by giving students who can’t afford pricey test prep services these helpful skills.

But the most important part of Testing Class will be that it will alleviate the need for test prep in academic subjects. Academic teachers will then be able to focus more on other skills, such as writing, approaching a document, understanding complex conceptual ideas, and taking on creative projects.

Just an idea…

If so, you might want to visit the website of Onderwijs Consumentem Organisatie, or the Education Consumers’ Organization of Amsterdam. Schools are very different in the Netherlands — there, the government supports private and parochial schools — but parents aren’t. There, just as they do here, parents want to find the best schools for their children and help make those schools excellent. For the last two years, representatives of OCO have visited Insideschools to share their experiences running a similar organization, and this year, the two sites created a formal relationship that has been recognized by Amsterdam’s alderman for education. (That’s Insideschools director Pam Wheaton signing on as a partner with OCO’s Han van Gelder in the picture above.) We’ve already gotten several good ideas from the folks at OCO — but we probably won’t be buying Insideschools-branded bikes to ride to school visits!

Happy Mother’s Day to all Insideschools moms!

A new iteration of Urban Baby launched yesterday. At first, the new site had no schools board, but after hours of posts from frustrated parents, NY Schools became an option by which to “filter” all posts — but using that option doesn’t recreate the beloved schools board of Urban Baby past. Naturally, UB users aren’t happy. I’m with the user who says, “Honestly, maybe we should just defect to insideschools.” We’ve got message boards (and, of course, this blog) where parents can talk about schools. And we don’t have any plans to sell out to CNet!

Popular, successful elementary schools are overcrowded because too many families want to attend them. Not really news, is it? It is when kids start getting put on waiting lists at neighborhood schools because the city hasn’t planned for the influx of kids living in new apartment buildings in those neighborhoods.

That’s the story in several school zones in District 2 and elsewhere, according to an article in today’s Times, which focuses largely on downtown Manhattan, where construction and residential conversions have proceeded at a fierce pace in recent years. The discrepancy between school seats and planned construction has been the topic of several recent policy reports – including one issued today by Comptroller William Thompson’s office, titled “Growing Pains: Reform Department of Education Capital Planning to Keep Pace with New York City’s Residential Construction.”

It was also the subject of a hearing last night in Manhattan’s Community Board 2, held at PS 41 in Greenwich Village. I stopped by the meeting, which, in contrast to a meeting in January where parents aired their concerns about overcrowding, focused on concrete steps District 2 residents and elected officials can take to influence the DOE’s capital plan. I’ll have more details about the meeting next week, but here’s the short version of what I learned: it takes serious organization and serious work to get the DOE to commit to building new schools, but investing time and energy can pay off. (Yesterday, the DOE announced that it has finalized plans to create new school just up the street from PS 41 — I’m willing to bet the timing of that announcement had a little something to do with the public meeting on the calendar.)

Mayoral control of schools should allow the mayor to require major developers to fund school creation; since I moved to the city, I’ve been puzzled as to why this is not so. It seems like a total no-brainer, not something that should require policy reports and public hearings and families being locked out of their zoned schools to make happen.

Good news for the subject of Insideschools’ most recent “Ask the College Counselor” column, who was waitlisted by his top three schools: top colleges this year are digging further down onto their waitlists than they have in recent years, which could start a chain reaction that will benefit waitlisted applicants everywhere, the Times reports today.

Do you have a question for the college counselor? Ask her.

It’s not the lack of gym classes in schools — that was earlier this week (and last month). Perhaps it’s the changes to school lunches being made because of rising food prices?

“From such healthy staples as fresh spinach to more haute cuisine like cornmeal-encrusted fish and Cuban roast pork, dishes are getting 86′d from school menus as officials scramble to maintain the same quality with cheaper options,” the Post reported recently about food in the city’s schools.

As we know, of course, canned fruits and vegetables and “imitation” foods like fish sticks and chicken nuggets aren’t at all in the same league as fresh spinach and fish in terms of quality. But they do give kids all the calories they would need if ever they were given the opportunity to use them in a game of kickball or tag. (Or if they were allowed to bike to school; parents in England are stopping their kids from riding to school because of safety concerns. Are parents here, with their fear of “free-range kids,” making similar rules?)

Today Sam Freedman reprises his jeremiad from earlier this year about what happens to schools when large high schools near them begin to phase out. The only thing that’s really different in today’s story is the schools involved: Instead of Beach Channel accommodating students zoned for Far Rockaway, to apparently disastrous results, now its kids who would who have gone to Brooklyn’s Lafayette flooding into the unconventional, highly rated John Dewey High School. Freedman writes:

Faculty members, students and administrators at Dewey say that the students coming from Lafayette are academically deficient, although Education Department statistics show that the current crop of ninth graders performed essentially similarly to previous cohorts on the citywide reading test. Still, the perception at Dewey is that Lafayette students did not choose Dewey for its quality, but landed there by default because they did not qualify for any of the Lafayette building’s mini-schools. With the overcrowding, Dewey students and staff members say, in many periods of the day there are several hundred students with no assigned room, often roaming the halls. A round of budget cuts this year sharply reduced staffing of the “resource centers.” …The nadir for Dewey came in March, when a student — not newly admitted from Lafayette — was spotted by classmates and a teacher handling a gun and the building was put under police lockdown for several hours. Though the weapon was never located and no charges were ever brought against the student, a heightened sense of disruption continues.

Reading between the lines, it seems possible that administrators and students at Dewey are using Lafayette-zoned kids as scapegoats for trouble that’s not always caused by them and that the problem is just as much a school program that is inflexible in the face of crowding pressures as it is the particular kids who have started enrolling.

But the DOE’s response is truly ridiculous: to encourage more overcrowding and a wholesale abandonment of the progressive scheduling that has made Dewey special. Garth Harries told Freedman bringing enrollment down at Dewey is “absolutely a priority” — but implied that the way the DOE plans to execute that goal is by waiting for Lafayette’s small schools to become attractive and large enough to draw more kids.

Even worse, Harries noted, “There are many schools that are over capacity, and more over capacity than Dewey, and they can program their students so everyone has a place to be,” he said. “I would be surprised that a school that has just 118 percent utilization has that many students unprogrammed.” In other words, Dewey isn’t that overcrowded — why can’t it just stuff more kids into its classes? When Insideschools visited in January 2007, school officials told us classes range in size from 28 to 34 students. It doesn’t sound like there’s much wiggle room in classes that large.

One other similarity between Freedman’s story on Beach Channel and this one about Dewey: the sad fact that some at those schools think the pressure they’re under is the DOE’s way to destroy formerly successful large high schools. True or not, how can you teach or learn when that’s what you’re led to believe?

Yesterday, Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum’s office released a report on the state of physical education in the city’s schools, concluding what we already know: schools stink at making sure kids get physical activity. But the facts, at least according to the Public Advocate’s office, are worse than I imagined. Only 4 percent of 3rd graders get gym daily as required by the state; just 31 percent of middle schools give kids enough P.E. time; and more than half of all middle schools have no sports teams at all. Given the scope of its own failure, it’s no wonder the DOE wants to hand off responsibility for fitness to families!

Did you catch the 4,500-word story about Debbie Almontaser in the Times last week? If you did, were you as puzzled as I was about why the story was running now? The initial brouhaha over the Khalil Gibran International Academy appears, finally, to have died down; Almontaser’s lawsuit alleging unfair treatment when she was pressured to resign as principal was rejected; and the school seems to be improving, an observation that’s buried at the end of the Times piece. To me and others I’ve talked to, the piece read like something the paper had been sitting on until Almontaser surprised the author by offering to go on the record. But given that the school has encountered hostility from its new home, PS 287, stirring up controversial issues, particularly ones that by all accounts, including the Times’ own, are now moot, feels like irresponsible journalism to me.

It’s getting easier to be a helicopter parent, according to an article in Sunday’s Times about the rise of online data systems that allow parents to track their kids’ school performance in real time.

Using programs such as ParentConnect and Edline, parents in some school districts can log on to see whether their kids cut class, aced a test, or failed to hand in a homework assignment that day. The programs, which are used in thousands of school districts nationwide, recalculate student averages with each new data point entered, making grade-tracking akin to, as one parent notes in the article, tracking the stock market. School officials say the programs build connections between home and school and allow busy parents to be involved in their kids’ lives.

Many students seem to like the fact that the programs let them monitor their own progress and check their teachers’ work. But they don’t love letting their parents in on their daily lives and decisions. And for good reason — parents in the article admit getting out of hand, checking obsessively and getting too involved in their kids’ schoolwork.

I don’t think any of these programs are being used in New York City schools, at least not to any sizable degree. But the DOE did say two years ago when it first unveiled the plan to require interim assessments multiple times a year that “parents will be able to log into a website that will have up-to-date information about their child and their school.” I don’t think this component of the plan has come to fruition — but in a city where data, not parents and children, come first, perhaps it’s on it’s way.

If a computer program like this existed in your child’s school, would you use it?

Last week, the mayor released the city’s proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year. Calling the numbers describing the city’s fiscal situation “scary,” Mayor Bloomberg preserved the sizable cuts slated for the schools. Education advocates have only until June, when the budget will be finalized, to reverse the cuts — so they have ramped up the intensity of the Keep the Promises Coalition, originally launched in February when the cuts were first announced.

The net amount the public schools are gaining, by Mr. Bloomberg’s tally, does not account for losses the education department faced during this fiscal year and projected losses already tabulated into next year’s budget. …

Comparing the budget first implemented last year to this executive budget, the Department of Education’s net change is a modest gain of about $56 million.

Considering that the cost of many programs grows larger every year — teacher salaries, slated to see a 5% raise this month, are a prime example — that increase will probably not be enough to spare the public schools from having to cut some programs and services.

What programs and services might principals cut? If this year is any guide, next year we can expect to see reductions in tutoring programs, after school activities, supplies purchased, and more.

Are you on Facebook? If so, you can now become a fan of Insideschools!

Searching for schools is fact of life in New York City, one that requires patience, stamina, resilience. At times you need the skills of an investigative reporter, along with the endurance of a long-distance runner.

If you are considering private school, you need many of those qualities as well, along with at least $25,000 grand a year to spend on tuition.

In the city, it’s not unusual for parents spend enormous amounts of time thinking about schools and researching options. The truly obsessed may begin their search preconception, or at least around the time they begin investigating that other great New York obsession: real estate.

I didn’t worry much about schools until a girlfriend turned to me in the playground one day more than 11 years ago to ask if I’d completed the nursery school applications yet.

I remember being shocked, because up to this point I’d been happily preoccupied with first steps, solid food and a full night’s sleep. Turns out I missed the deadlines.

I vowed to be on top of all the options from then on, and managed to find a tremendous public elementary school for my sons that gave out-of-neighborhood variances – a rarity these days at the New York City Department of Education.

Now I find myself waiting to hear about middle school acceptance for my youngest son, who is 10. We’ve spent much of this year taking tours, preparing for tests and interviews, weighing multiple factors and discussing moving on and maintaining elementary school friendships.

I grew up in the kind of suburb where everyone stayed together, from elementary school through high school, for better or for worse. No choice existed. Education barely entered the conversation, much less dominating it as it tends to in the city.

Throughout our second middle school search in three years, we’ve managed to block out the scary search around the bend — high school admissions.

Suddenly, my mailbox is full of upcoming meetings, open houses and Princeton Review tutoring options for high school specialty exams for my 7th-grade son. We’ve missed several already.

A story in The New York Daily News this week contained some startling statistics that snapped me back to the reality check I first experienced in a sun-dappled playground 11 years and some months ago.

Some 7,772 kids did not get into any of their high school choices this year, including one fine student whose angry mother is moving the family to New Jersey, where getting in requires nothing more than showing up to register.

The mother did not sound at all happy about it, though. You are not supposed to drop out of the race before you reach the finish line.

Are there too many obstacles in the way of parents who embrace and support public school and really want to stay in the city?

And so the next search begins.Read all of Liz Willen’s Middle School Muddle