The Daily News editorial board wrote an editorial about Insideschools’ funding plight today:

 ”The single most valuable independent source of information on New York City public schools is about to go out of business forever. Are we nuts? With advocates raising a hue and cry over giving parents a greater voice in the schools, it is simply unbelievable that no one is rallying to save a Web site called Insideschools.org… Parents, teachers, advocates and officials should support the group in connecting with donors who’ll keep this service going as a trusted and independent help for the school community.” 

Are you able to help us out? Please visit our donation page. And if you, or anyone you know, is able to help Insideschools in a “big way,” please contact us. We hope to be able to keep helping parents navigate the school system by providing independent school news and reviews. Thank you for your support during this difficult time for Insideschools. 

Families applying to middle school should have letters by now. Since the middle school admissions process varies widely by district, we are curious how smoothly it has gone across the city. A few of the preliminary reports we have heard have included bureaucratic mess-ups (inaccurate admissions letters, contradictory information from the Department of Education offices and individual schools, special education delays). While the DOE is no stranger to admissions-process-bungles, we are hoping these are isolated cases.

Have you gotten your letter yet?

Last week, we asked you what you would cut from your school’s budget if you had to make the difficult decision to let something, or someone, go. The most respondents, 39 percent, said that they would cut non-teaching staff, such as office workers and school aides. Twenty-two percent said that they would cut afterschool tutoring, remediation, and test prep. Letting go of arts and other specialty teachers was the least popular option, with only seven percent of respondents choosing it. Click here to see the full results.

Under Mayor Bloomberg, every school is graded annually, but this week, we want you to grade the mayor. Since the mayoral control law sunsets on June 30, school governance is being vigorously debated. Many argue that Bloomberg has staked his legacy on education - how do you think he has performed?

Last week, we asked if you had a plan for saving for college. The most respondents (35 percent) said that they would have to rely on scholarships or more moderately priced schools. Another 18 percent said “We’ve saved, but the tumultuous markets have taken a big bite out of our funds.” Almost 30 percent of respondents would like some help with their planning – 14 percent of them feel that they have no extra money to save and 13 percent said that they have tried to put a little aside but need guidance. A small fraction of respondents – 5 percent – will have family help with tuition bills, and 18 percent have been saving and feel that they are on the right track.

This week, we are wondering what you would cut from your child’s school if you were in charge of slimming down the 2009/2010 budget. Some schools will have to cut up to 5 percent of their budget, and principals will have to make some very difficult decisions. As always, we welcome your comments.

Sean Keaton, the controversial principal of PS 20 in the Fort Greene/Clinton Hill neighborhood in Brooklyn, was arrested Thursday after allegedly knocking a kindergarten teacher off a chair, kicking him in the head, and stomping on him. The teacher, Robert Segerra, is the teachers’ union representative at PS 20, and, at the time of the assault, had been in Keaton’s office, discussing the case of a special education teacher who had been accused of using corporal punishment against a student.

“Every time I said I’m not hitting you, I got another hit in the head or another punch in the neck or another scrap or another drag me across the floor,” Segerra told WABC. (For Segerra’s full account of the incident, click here.)

Keaton was charged with misdemeanor assault and reassigned to administrative duties while the investigation is pending, according to the Department of Education.

Keaton has taught at the school since the 1990s and served as principal since 2005, but parents have been sharply divided over his leadership. While test scores have risen, enrollment has declined, and now only 27 percent of eligible kindergarten students in the zone are attending PS 20.

One of the three new citywide gifted and talented programs is scheduled to open as part of PS 20 next fall, which will be under the purview of the PS 20 principal. Parents whose students scored at the 97th percentile or higher on the gifted and talented exam were able to rank the PS 20 program on their forms, which were due on Tuesday. We are following up with the DOE to see if there will be an opportunity for parents to reconsider their choices after new leadership is announced.

The debate over Keaton’s administration turned particularly vehement on the New York Times Local Fort Greene/Clinton Hill blog this spring. Yesterday, the Local described the debate’s racial and class undertones: “The community conversation about him [Keaton] often seemed to break down along class lines, with new-to-the-neighborhood, more affluent parents finding him difficult to work with and working-class parents defending him. There was often a racial component to the debate as well (Mr. Keaton is black).” (more…)

Recently, we sat down with James Merriman, the chief executive of the New York City Center for Charter School Excellence, to talk about the politics and policies of charter schools in New York City.

What is a simple definition of a charter school?

A charter school is a public school and, like all public schools, is tuition-free, non-sectarian, admits all comers, and is publicly funded. It differs from other public schools in how it is governed. A charter school is governed by an independent board of trustees, whereas traditional public schools are governed by an elected board, or in the case of New York City, the mayor. Charter schools are characterized by being free from a lot of burdensome regulations, and they have the autonomy to be able to figure out what works best for their particular student population.

Why do you believe that charter schools are good for public education?Chartering is a governance reform and not a pedagogical reform, so there is nothing about charters that say they are going to be good. But because of their autonomy, they allow great educators to single-mindedly organize themselves around improving student achievement and providing students a first rate education. These educators are able to create a school community that is, to the maximum extent possible, able to serve the students who are enrolled in the school.

And in New York City, we have been incredibly fortunate that the opportunity has drawn, overall, an incredible dedicated group of founders, leaders, and teachers, who accept that their only measure of success is how well their students are doing. For the larger system, these charter schools provide examples of what is possible, and the fact that those examples are outside of the traditional system means necessarily that people are forced to pay attention to them.

You keep mentioning autonomy – which is a buzzword in the Department of Education in general these days. Usually when you hear the word “autonomy,” it is quickly followed by a reference to accountability. Who makes sure that charter school leaders – especially down the road when the founders move on and new leadership takes the helm – are accountable?Accountability isn’t tied to a specific individual – it is tied to a school. As the founders move on, the accountability measures that the authorizers have set up remain in place.

(more…)

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has joined the search for new pre-K locations in Greenwich Village, after news leaked last week that the pre-K classes would be bumped from overcrowded PS 3 and PS 41. An emergency task force has been assembled and, according to an email from Quinn sent this morning, they have been busy scouting locations for the Department of Education. Last Wednesday, Quinn showed up briefly at the protest on the steps of City Hall and spoke with a little boy and several parents. Two days later she met with Chancellor Klein and formed the task force.

The full text of the Speaker’s email, and a second email from task force member Rebecca Daniels, after the jump:

(more…)

Last week, we asked what you thought the Department of Education should do if the swine flu continued to spread. Most voters agreed that the system should keep running, with 36 percent of voters advising that only children and teachers with symptoms should stay out of school and 30 percent of voters suggesting that individual schools with confirmed cases should be closed. Twenty-two percent of voters, however, thought that the whole school system should be shuttered until the threat passed. See the full poll results here.

This week we are wondering about pre-K. After the news leaked that the Department of Education might close pre-K programs at some overcrowded elementary schools, parents began debating whether pre-K in elementary schools is a right, privilege, or drain on elementary school resources. What do you think? Add your comments here.

Solidarity was the buzzword at City Hall Wednesday afternoon, when parents, children, teachers, and elected officials pressed a range of complaints against the Department of Education’s kindergarten admissions policy. They chanted “build more schools” and “hey, hey DOE, G&T is not new seats.”

After learning that their children were assigned to waitlists at PS 3 and PS 41, parents got together at a Community Education Council meeting and formed a group called Kids Shut Out to share contact information, develop strategies, and connect with like-minded parent groups across the city.

Parents like Katie Fleischer, who has two sons on the PS 3/41 waitlist, showed up in force. “You start panicking,” she said. “I have twins. That is $60,000 a year for private school. I literally was in shock when I got that letter. They didn’t even send me a letter for my second son, just my first.”

The DOE’s decision on Tuesday to move the pre-K programs from PS 3 and PS 41 to make room for the kindergarten students was criticized by several of the politicians and parent leaders an attempt to undermine the rally. (more…)

The Department of Education announced on their website that score notifications for applicants to elementary school gifted and talented programs would not be released today, as scheduled, but on Monday instead. Last year, the process was delayed repeatedly and students’ placements were eventually delivered by a courier service. Parents who were closely watching the Department of Education website last night noticed that around 5 p.m. the timeline changed from May 1 notification to notification “shortly”. (more…)

All eighth and ninth graders who applied to high schools should have a placement by today, although they may not all be pleased with their assignment. The 7,455 students who were not matched in the first round of the high school process were asked to re-rank their preferences from a list of schools with available space. They could have listed up to 12 choices, but students and parents complained the options were limited. In the supplementary round, all students were matched with a school, regardless of whether they had ranked it or not.

“Any students who didn’t get a placement in a school that they had ranked were given a place at a school with available seats,” said Andrew Jacob, a spokesperson for the Department of Education. One parent posted that her child was placed at a school she didn’t rank. “The supplementary round is back and my daughter was accepted to a school,” the parent wrote. “The letter should have said “congratulations you have been excepted [sic] to a new school that you have never heard about, does not exist yet and that you did not apply to.”

Students who want to appeal their assignment from either the main admissions round or the supplementary round must meet with their guidance counselor and explain their reason for the appeal before the form is due on May 7, according to Jacobs. Students must list three programs or schools in order of preference.

(more…)

A new report released today says that for the 160,000 students with special needs, educational options and services have not improved much during the past seven years of Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein’s education reforms. Students in self-contained special education settings - classes comprised only of students with special needs - fare the worst, with only a 5 percent high-school graduation rate.  

 The report was released by the ARISE Coalition, an association of 33 different organizations and individuals devoted to New York’s children with special needs.  ARISE was founded by Advocates for Children of New York, Insideschools’ parent organization.

Since the Department of Education is considering reorganizing the special education bureaucracy for the third time since Mayor Bloomberg took control of the system, the specific recommendations for reform included in the report are especially timely. But also of great weigth are the stories along the margins - beside the statistics, recommendations, graphs and charts - of specific families who have struggled to gain the best education for their children. Read the full report - and the poignant stories - here.

Jacob Mnookin stood on the edge of the boardwalk in Coney Island, greeting the families who had come to witness the inaugural lottery for Coney Island Prep, south Brooklyn’s first charter school. Mnookin, the founding principal, still wasn’t sure where he would be holding classes in the fall, so the admissions lottery was taking place in the education room at New York Aquarium, a boxy facility between the iconic Cyclone roller coaster and the beach. Families sat next to giant turtle shells, sea sponges, and mounted fish skeletons, waiting to see if their child’s name would be one of the first 81 names pulled out of a plastic bingo drum, ensuring a place at the new school.

Like all charter schools in New York that receive more applicants than places, Coney Island Prep is required to hold a random lottery, with preference giving to students from the district and siblings of admitted students, to determine who would be offered a seat in the inaugural 5th grade class. The lottery was held on Tuesday, April 7 – referred to as “super Tuesday” by charter operators, since 28 of the 99 charter schools in New York were holding lotteries that evening. (more…)

Yesterday, the City Council members called on state legislators to establish a process by which charter schools are sited in public school buildings. Charter schools, which receive public money but are not managed by the Department of Education, are not entitled to space rent-free in DOE buildings, but Chancellor Klein’s administration has tried to accommodate charters in public school buildings whenever possible. This spring, when the DOE announced that it was closing PS 194 in Harlem and replacing it with a charter, the controversy erupted, a lawsuit was filed, parents screamed at each other in a hearing, the DOE eventually backtracked, and then newspapers blamed the teachers’ union for “condemning” students to failing schools.

At City Hall yesterday, council members questioned many of the players involved (teachers union representatives, parent groups, charter school leaders, Department of Education officials), and introduced a resolution urging state legislators to give communities more of a voice in charter school sitings. DOE officials who testified did not think the resolution was necessary.

Eva Moskowitz, the founder and leader of the charter school network Harlem Success, testified before the committee, which she used to chair when she was a city council member. It was her fourth charter school that had been slated to replace P.S. 194, and her former colleagues on City Council held her responsible for any role she may have played in the ensuing controversy. See a video from the Moskowitz testimony on GothamSchools.

Meanwhile, many of the city charters have been holding their lotteries this week. The number of applicants to charters more than doubled this year to 39,200 from last year’s 18,672. Democracy Prep Charter School, which is also in Harlem, held its lottery last night to pick 100 students out of 1,500 who applied (making the odds “harder than Harvard’s” according to the school). Tonight, at least 27 more charters will hold their lotteries and thousands of families will show up to see if their child’s name is called.

The 7,455 eighth grade students who did not get matched with a high school in the first round are scrambling to research their options and find a good fit. The Department of Education has given middle school counselors a list of schools with available space. Some schools have space for incoming 9th graders, others have 10th-grade spots — and some have both (there’s a key to decode the programs, but no way to discern the numbers of seats still open).

Watch Insideschools today for the 2009 version of this article, with our recommendations for high schools parents and eighth graders might look at again. As always, we welcome your questions, comments and concerns, and we will do our best to answer quickly.

In the latest weekly poll, we asked whether you thought there was too much focus on test preparation at your school. The majority of you said yes, with 33 percent reporting “way too much” test prep and 20 percent responding that while there may be too much test preparation, the system, not the school, is to blame. Another 20 percent of respondents wished their school provided more coaching and feel the students were unprepared for the high stakes exams.

Just 26 percent of the respondents felt that their school hit the right balance, with strong enough academics to negate the need for much test prep.

This week, we wonder whether immigrant parents who don’t speak English are included in your school community. A report just released by Advocates for Children, our parent organization, suggests that many non-English speaking parents don’t feel welcome in the city’s public schools. What have you observed in your school community?

A decade ago, 10,000 New York City children participated in daily after school programs, while today, 140,000 city kids attend “after school” every afternoon. This week, the massive expansion of these programs across the city was celebrated at an event honoring the ten-year anniversary of The After School Corporation (TASC), a non-profit that pairs schools and community groups to offer substantial after-school programs. Philanthropist George Soros, who established TASC with a $125 million donation, was the toast of the event, although a child’s version of Joel Klein (in both his human and superhuman form) got the most laughs during the screening of a short movie about the after school movement in New York.

Watch the adorable clip for a feel-good few minutes (and more statistics).

The people at TASC describe the time between 3 pm and 6 pm as “the danger hours”, and they cite research that shows quality, educational programs that fill the gap between school time and post-work time help students do better during school hours.

With President Obama hoping to double the number of children with access to good after-school programs across the country, New York leads the way with the largest municipally-funded after-school system in the nation. And the images of spandex-clad Joel Klein and Mayor Bloomberg aside, the real heroes of the day are the after-school providers, who’ve made the past decade’s growth in New York City something everyone can celebrate.

Parents bounced from table to table at a Harlem school fair on Saturday, filling up tote bags with pamphlets and eagerly asking about admissions requirements. Harlem has one of the highest concentrations of charter schools of any neighborhood in the country, and yet it seems that the demand for educational options is still strong: thousands of parents waited in the cold in order to gain admission to the fair promoting school choice. More than 50 schools were represented - the majority of which were charter schools, although private, parochial, and local zoned schools also had tables.

The fair, which was organized by the Success Charter School network, succeeded in showing how many parents supported school choice. It was less successful in managing the crowd - families were forced to wait outside for up to an hour before a squadron of police officers allowed them in (”Why the massive police presence?” one mother said. “We came here for our children’s education - it sets the wrong tone.”) Many parents brought their children, and since there were no child-centric activities or distractions offered, by the end of the afternoon, the large City College gym had played host to several (understandable) meltdowns.

Parents continued to move from booth to booth, asking what grade levels each school served and if their child could possibly win a spot in the lottery, while Chancellor Klein shouted into a microphone crediting Mayor Bloomberg with the proliferation of charter schools. Although event organizers tried to shush the crowd, neither the educators nor the parents wanted to stop for politics.

“I am here to find the best school for my daughter,” one parent said, as she approached the Insideschools.org table. “Can you help me?”

Since city students and teachers enjoyed their first snow day in five years, the Department of Education pushed back the first day of the state math test for 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students, from Tuesday to Wednesday. Middle school students will remain on schedule, taking the test on March 10 and 11.

Today was supposed to be the final day for kindergarten applications, but because of the inclement weather, the deadline for parents to visit elementary schools and fill out an application has been extended to Friday, March 6. We can only hope that this extension won’t be a sign of delays to come.

The mayor offered some advice to students who are hoping for a second day off tomorrow: “things can always change,” he said, “but my suggestion is to do your homework.”

Last night, hundreds of parents attended a forum dedicated to overcrowding issues at elementary and middle schools in Chelsea and the Village. The meeting, sponsored by the Community Education Council for District 2 and a series of elected officials, consisted of a speech by DOE official John White, during which he outlined the overcrowding problems and proposed several solutions. His talk was followed by a Q&A session. Some parents used the opportunity to deliver their own 60-second speeches (sometimes veering off-topic). Below are a few of the points White made:

• The proposal to move the School for Writers and Artists out of the over-crowded PS 11 building is “off the table”–for now. Parents wearing buttons and t-shirts protesting the potential move rejoiced.
• The DOE will take a closer look at the state-owned building at 75 Morton Street, which members of the community have lobbied for as a middle school site. White cautioned, however, that they had “serious concerns” about whether the building will be suitable for a school.
• Moving Greenwich Village Middle School out of PS 3 would grant the overcrowded elementary school more space and allow the middle school to expand. The DOE recognizes that GVMS should stay in the Village long-term but doesn’t necessarily have the capital funds to create a new space for it in the short-term. One solution would be to temporarily move it to one of the two new elementary schools being constructed in lower Manhattan before their student populations grow to capacity.
• Quest to Learn, a new 6-12th grade school partnered with the New< School University, may eventually be moved to the Bayard Rustin building but it would need a temporary space for a year or two while Bayard Rustin High School phases out. Parents from the Lab School spoke out strongly against the new school being incubated in the Lab building. White would not say definitively whether the Lab building was being considered.
• White would like the CEC to consider rezoning the neighborhood for PS 3 and PS 41, since the schools’ populations are increasing. For the fall of 2009, he hopes that all the sibling and zoned students who register will be able to attend one of the two popular schools but mentioned that “cluster” rooms (typically rooms used for music, art, and science) may need to be converted to traditional classrooms to accommodate all of the students. Parents were upset at that suggestion.

“We know that some of the best ideas come from where the rubber meets the road,” White said in the beginning of the meeting. “I am here tonight to listen to your feedback.”

There seemed to be no shortage of feedback, but solutions may be harder to find.

Just a few weeks after Mayor Bloomberg warned that 14,000 city DOE workers, including teachers, might be laid off, Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced - at a Brooklyn charter school - that federal funds would be allocated to states in time to avert such layoffs across the country.

“We need to invest this money quickly, thoughtfully and transparently to protect kids, create jobs and drive reforms,”said Duncan. UFT/AFT President Randi Weingarten, principals’ union President Ernest Logan, Chancellor Joel Klein, and Mayor Bloomberg stood nearby, nodding throughout his remarks.

Out of the $100 billion in emergency funding being granted to American schools, New York City schools can expect about $1.9 billion, Duncan said. The City anticipates that approximately $300 million of those funds will be to expand Title 1 funding, $100 million will expand Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) funding, and more than $25 million will be earmarked for educational technology. “This stimulus package saves a generation of kids,” Weingarten said.

The total amount of money being granted by the federal government, broken down by state, is now available online.

“This in once-in-a-lifetime money,” Duncan said. He emphasized that while the majority of funding will likely be used to plug budget short-falls and save teaching jobs, some will also be used for innovation, including $5 billion reserved for grants supporting achievement-gap-closing initiatives at the state or local level.

“We have to keep moving forward,” the Education Secretary stressed. “We can’t take a step back.”

The Secretary also said that he will work to establish common standards across the nation, and he voiced his support for standardized tests as a means of measuring progress. (No direct mention was made of No Child Left Behind [NCLB] President Bush’s signature education policy, which comes up for review, and possible revision, this year.) Mayor Bloomberg then jumped in to heartily agree on the testing point in particular, saying that it was “outrageous” to argue against testing.

The optimistic mood amongst the ed bigwigs outlasted the press conference, when most of the photographers and crews had left. Someone from the school asked Weingarten to take a picture of her sometimes-nemesis/sometimes-friend Klein with a group of students. “Say ‘weekend’!” said Weingarten, alluding to the fact that unlike most city children, the charter school students didn’t get a vacation this week. A few minutes later, Chancellor Klein was behind the camera as several teachers posed with Duncan. “We should get a picture of our Chancellor taking this picture!” one teacher said. Staffers for Duncan, Klein, and Weingarten stood by, looking slightly bemused.

But on her way out the door, it was back to business for Weingarten. “I would like to talk to your teachers,” she said to someone from Explore Charter School, which, like many charter schools, is not part of the teachers union.

In keeping with the positive, polite and largely uncritical spirit of the day, the educator nodded and smiled - congenial but noncommittal - and went back to work.

Four weeks into the new kindergarten application process, parents and officials at some of the city’s 800 elementary schools report a bumpy start. Parents say they are being turned away from schools that are not in their zone, and some schools aren’t following Department of Education guidelines.

The DOE standardized the timeline and admissions rules for the 2009 kindergarten class, granting parents a six-week period to apply to all schools they are interested in, regardless of their school zone. Parents may apply in person to schools by March 2, and schools will extend offers of admissions in mid-March according to a set list of priorities.

“We decided that the best way we could improve the kindergarten process was to set a clear timeline that all schools would use and eliminate some of the stress that came with first-come first-served admissions,” said Andy Jacob, a spokesperson for the DOE.

However, the transition to the new system hasn’t been entirely smooth. “Everyone has a different story,” said one parent from Forest Hills, who, like all other parents Insideschools.org spoke to, did not want to be identified by name. “No one person knows exactly the rules… I have had close to five arguments with different [employees] of the DOE before my little guy is even in the system!”

Getting the word out

The application process officially began on Jan. 12, according to the centralized timetable, but some schools were not ready for applicants. One parent said her zoned school was unaware of the process until she arrived to apply and informed them of the policy change. She waited an hour while they scrambled to come up with a system to deal with applicants.

According to the DOE, parents need to bring only two proofs of residence to apply before March 2, but some schools maintain their own requirements. On Manhattan’s Upper West Side, staff at P.S. 199 told a parent to come after March 2 and to bring three proofs of residence. Parent Coordinator Carmen Russo said that PS 199 was using the information gathered from the monthly school tours to fulfill the application requirement and signing parents up for meetings with documentation afterward. A sign posted outside P.S. 234 in Tribeca states that the school will accept bank and credit card statements as proof of residence but not leases, which is a departure from the DOE’s regulation.

“One person told me that principals have the right to say what they want,” said the mother from Forest Hills. “They rule their own schools without any concern to the DOE.”

Marty Barr, the executive director of elementary school enrollment, said that principals were sent a detailed memo outlining the change in November and given specific direction through web-casts in December. Parents of pre-kindergarten students were sent postcards, and the process is prominently posted on the DOE’s website.

“We expect schools to follow the guidelines that we set,” said DOE Spokesperson Jacob. “To the extent that we can monitor it, we will, but if parents or anyone else brings something to our attention of a school not following the guidelines we set, then we will follow up with the school.”

Apply to as many schools as you want - but will you get in?

The DOE’s memo advises families to apply to “every school they are interested in having their child attend, including their zoned school,” but in reality, administrators at popular schools are dissuading families who don’t live in the zone from applying. “We are a catchment school and only accept students from our catchment,” said the parent coordinator at PS 199, although she added that the school was keeping a record of out-of-zone families who apply.

On the Insideschools.org forum, a mom posted a letter she wrote to Chancellor Joel Klein describing how an elementary school out of her zone initially refused to allow her to apply. When she returned to the school with the DOE’s memo, she said the principal responded, “Oh, yeah, I know about that, but I can tell you now, you will not be going to this school.” Only after insisting was she allowed to submit her son’s information.

The parent of a child with special needs said she thought she had misunderstood the policy after every school she called out of her zone told her that her child had no chance of being accepted.

A Brooklyn mother in District 21 asked the administrative assistant at her zoned school if her child would be accepted. “She told me there is no guarantees,” the parent wrote in an e-mail to Insideschools.org. “If I were to play it safe, I should go to another school and apply there, as well.” She followed the advice and went to a second school. “The office worker at the second school told me that most likely we will get accepted to our zone school and didn’t understand why they were sending people to other schools,” she said. “I don’t know if I should submit the application to the second school because I don’t want to [weigh] them down with paperwork that isn’t necessary.”

Extra work for the schools?

Parents and administrators question whether asking families to apply this early and encouraging them to apply to multiple schools creates unnecessary work for the schools. A mother who lives on the Upper West Side admits that her family is not sure of their plans, and although they applied at their zoned school, they are waiting for admissions decisions from private schools and scores on the gifted and talented test.

At PS 234, the lines of parents trying to apply have stretched down the block each morning, one father reported to Insideschools.org in an e-mail. Since the school has hired extra staff to help with the process through Feb. 6, the school is encouraging parents to apply by the end of this week.

Christina Fuentes, principal of PS 24 in Brooklyn, reports that her staff has established “a nice, orderly process” for parents. She anticipates having room for 120 kindergarteners, and as of Feb. 2, had accepted applications from 86 families, seven of whom don’t live in the school’s zone. But she expects a lot of movement before school opens in September.

“We have a lot of mobility in our community,” she said, especially as the economy has faltered. “This process feels like it is potentially a lot of paperwork for us and a lot of contact with families that may be a moot point because then they are gone by September.”

Parents who are experiencing difficulties in applying for kindergarten can call the central elementary school enrollment office at 212-374-4948.

How do you think the kindergarten process is working? Join the conversation on our forum.

More than 3,000 public school students from all over the city converged at the Harlem Armory this morning to watch the inauguration. The event was hosted by Democracy Prep Charter School (check back soon for their new review), but students from 34 schools spanning all grade levels waved flags, recited the pledge of allegiance, made posters celebrating their schools and the inauguration, viewed the festivities in Washington on three massive screens and cheered robustly for the new President. The mood was festive and celebratory, with even the youngest students eager to speak to the significance of the day.

We asked students from several schools what the inauguration meant to them:

“I am pleased that we have our first African American President and I hope that he makes a change with the economy,” a ninth grade student from the Academy of Social Action said. “It is hard for people to pay for things now.”

“Can a girl be president?” (Yes!) “Then I want to be president!” said a third grade student from the Bronx Academy of Promise.

After spending two hours on a bus from their school in Brooklyn, the first graders from East New York Prep were still excited. “He is going to change the world like Dr. Martin Luther King!” on girl said. “He is like my brother!” another said.

Students from Bronx Lighthouse Charter School wore shirts that said “Be like Obama” on the back. Two boys in the fifth grade said that being like Obama meant being a role model.

“It gives a new beginning for all the people who didn’t have a chance,” a sixth grader (on the left) at Bronx Preparatory Charter School said. “Obama is going to make all our dreams come true.”“I think it is very exciting that we get to see the first black president,” said an eighth grader (on the right).

“America’s changing,” said a sixth grade girl (on the right)from Fredrick Douglas Academy.“Happy day!” said a boy (on the left).

Everyone we spoke with — including more than a few sometimes-tearful teachers — echoed that sentiment: It was indeed a happy day in Harlem.

The students who livened up election season with their infectious and intelligent song, “You can vote however you like,” will be performing their newest song, “Dear Obama” at four inaugural balls tonight. The students, who wrote the songs themselves, admitted that it wasn’t easy. “We couldn’t find anything that rhymed with Ahmadinejad!” one boy told CNN. The kids attend a private school in Atlanta founded by a former Harlem public school teacher Ron Clark.

I will be up in Harlem today at an inauguration event organized by Democracy Prep Charter School. Thousands of students from at least 24 public schools will watch the inauguration together in the Harlem Armory, write postcards to the new president, and enjoy music and dance performances. Pictures and stories from the event to come. Students across the city will be watching the inauguration from their schools and homes. Is your school or family doing anything special to commemorate the inauguration? Send us your stories.

For the first time since the Census Bureau began counting, the steady decline in fiction reading among American adults has reversed. Although just 52 percent of Americans reported having read a novel, short story, poem or play in the previous 12 months, “the proportion of overall literary reading increased among virtually all age groups, ethnic and demographic categories since 2002,” according to a New York Times analysis of the NEA study released today.

Although internet reading was included in the 2008 data, the NEA chairman Dana Gioia credited popular series like Harry Potter and Twilight, community-based reading programs like “The Big Read,”(with participating organizations in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens), and Oprah’s book club with helping spur the reading rise.

Insideschools’ book club may not be as big as Oprah’s and our first book is actually non-fiction, but we still hope that many of you have found time to read Paul Tough’s book about the Harlem Children’s Zone: Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America. The book provides plenty of fodder for discussions about New York City, public schools, and national campaigns to eradicate poverty. When we sit down with Tough, we hope to ask him as many of your questions as possible. Please post questions on the blog comments or email them directly to me, Lindsey, over the next two weeks. If you’re feeling squeezed for time but still want to participate, you can read excerpts of the book in the New York Times Magazine (where Tough is an editor).

For more information on the book and our book club, see the original post.

Apparently neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor hail shall keep potentially-gifted and talented tots from their testing. The Department of Education has announced that despite the foreboding weather forecast (there is a 90 percent chance that 1-3″ of snow will fall over the 5 boroughs tomorrow), “as of now, gifted and talented testing this weekend will proceed as scheduled.” The DOE urges families to leave extra travel time and call 311 for updates.

As students poured out of Bayard Rustin High School for Humanities this afternoon, most of them were discussing the news that principal Nancy Amling had announced during fourth period: the Department of Education is phasing out the large, comprehensive high school beginning this June. No new ninth graders will accepted for September, and the final class will graduate in 2012.

Reactions were mixed - some students said that “the school needed to be closed” and that life as a Bayard Rustin student was “boring. All I do every day is go home and sleep because there are no extracurriculars and no homework that needs to be done.” Other students vigorously defended their school, arguing that they were getting punished for past classes’ graduation rates and defending the principal, who came to the school this September, as a strict leader who should have been given the chance to turn things around.

Many of the teachers walking out of the school looked depressed and walked quickly away from the building. They had been told yesterday afternoon by a tearful Amling, and although several of them admitted that the news didn’t surprise them, they were still upset. The educators who have been at the school for the least amount of time will be the first to let go, they said. “Insideschools?” one young teacher asked. “I am going to be spending a lot of time on your site in the near future.”

The Department of Education cited the school’s low graduation rate, the F on its latest report card, and low student interest in attending the school as factors in the decision, but Bayard Rustin’s recent troubles also include allegations that the former principal tampered with Regents scores and generally unfavorable press-coverage. In the past two months, teachers have anonymously criticized the school leadership on our forum, suggesting that it would take something as dramatic as a student strike to draw attention to the school’s problems.

Students were hardly striking today as they left school, but knots of ninth graders debated whether or not they would stay for the next three years or transfer to another high school, an option reserved for the freshmen, they said. Again, they were divided:

“I am staying! This is my school, and I like it,” one girl said emphatically.

“I’m not staying,” another girl said. “I am going somewhere else. There are going to be too many less people here.”

“Too many less people?” her friend repeated. “Get your grammar right! Now that is why they are closing this school down.”

While thousands of fifth graders will hand in their middle school applications on Friday, approximately 2,000 sixth graders will sit for the Hunter High School admissions exam. A recent Times article showed how seriously some of those students have been preparing for the exam: taking up coffee, reading the dictionary, and spending weekends and holidays at costly Asian-inspired test-prep boot camps. Meanwhile, another section of the venerable newspaper urges parents of 5 year-olds who are sitting for gifted and talented testing to “stay sane.” Sage advise but, as Liz Belkin wrote in a blog entry about the Obama girls first day at a new school, many (otherwise sane) parents still find it hard to drop their children off and then go home, wait, and hope for the best.

Before New Years Eve celebrations begin, we wanted to point out a New York Times story that you may have missed while away from your computers during last week’s holiday rush. The premier high school for the arts in the city (and perhaps nation), Fiorello H. La Guardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, chose to postpone its annual musical due to budget cuts and now may have to cancel the performance altogether. Now this is no ordinary high school musical - the budget is reported to have been somewhere between $45,000 and $70,000 for just three or four performances - and in a school with approximately 2,500 talented students, only a tiny fraction of those who audition are even able to participate. It seems that with all that talent, the show could still go on with fewer bells and whistles and a much smaller price tag. But regardless (and despite far greater tragedies related to school budget cuts), the symbolism of the city’s flagship arts high school struggling to afford its flagship production is worth noting as we enter a new year and contemplate education funding in the 2009 economy.

A story in today’s Times heralded the season of middle school admissions mania, since - according to the newly standardized timeline - the application deadline has been moved up this year to Jan. 9. Parents in the thick of decision-making can search through the thousands of school profiles on Insideschools and find articles and blog posts outlining the process. If you want to talk to other parents also wading through applications, head to our discussion forums. To hear about one family’s experience with the process last year, read all of Liz Willen’s columns called Middle School Muddle. Good luck - there are a lot of excellent middle schools out there!

Some semi-heartening news this week: American students seem to be improving in math, according to the world’s largest survey of math and science achievement, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (Timss). Since the 1990s, Asian countries like Singapore and Japan, have dominated international reviews of math and science skills, which can predict a nation’s future economic and scientific health. But despite noticeable improvements in American math scores this year (U.S. 4th graders outscored 23 other countries and tied with students from the Netherlands, Lithuania, Germany and Denmark), the same 4th grade mathematicians lagged behind students from Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, Kazakhstan, Russia, England and Latvia. And American science performance continues flat, with no improvements since the survey was last published four years ago. Science teachers are unsurprised: No Child Left Behind and local policies emphasize math and English performance, leading to diminishing classroom hours devoted to other subjects. In conversations about school performance in the city, science is rarely mentioned.

The Timss survey took a focused look at how 4th and 8th graders in two American states compared to their international peers. Students from Massachusetts and Minnesota outscored students from almost every other nation on both the science and math assessments, which officials from each state attributed to their respective education reform efforts. But while only students from Singapore and Taiwan topped students from Massachusetts in 8th grade science, the Timss study doesn’t uncover the nuances behind the numbers, like how particular schools, neighborhood, or demographics performed. Researchers from Massachusetts and New York’s own Eduwonkette are careful to remind that achievement gaps still persist, even within the high achieving super-states. Deeper analysis of these results will help drive substantiative conversations on curriculum emphasis, educational values, and performance.

The DOE has announced that they will close (or phase out) more schools this June. Below is the current list, with links to our reviews and the most accurate information we have on what will happen to current students . Controversy over how the decisions were made - and how they were announced - continues to swirl.

Closing schools:

Brooklyn

1. PS/IS 72 (D19) will phase out the upper grades and be replaced by separate elementary and middle schools.
2. PS 27 (D15) In September 2009, the elementary school will be replaced by a new school. The middle school will be phased out. High school students must transfer to other schools to graduate.
3. PS 150 (D23) will be phased out.

Bronx

4. MS 399 (D10) will be phased out.
5. PS 90 (D90) will be replaced by two new elementary schools. In September 2009, the new schools will serve grades K-2.
6. PS 198 (D12) will phase out the upper grades, and in September 2009, students in the lower grades will enroll in a new school in the same location.
7. PS 2 (D9) will phase out the upper grades and, in September 2009, students in the lower grades will enroll in a new school in the same location.

Manhattan

8. MS 44 (D3) will be phased out, and in September 2009, new students will enroll in a new school in the same location.
9. MS 321 (D6) will be phased out.
10. PS 194 (D5) will phase out the upper grades, and in September 2009, students in the lower grades will enroll in a new school in the same location.

Queens

11. PS 225 (D27) will be split into separate elementary and middle schools. In September 2009, the middle school will open with a 6th grade, and the elementary school will open with PK-3.

This week was filled with bad news for schools and students, but on the same day that the DOE announced it would close three schools, nine other city schools were lauded in US News as among the nation’s best. The news magazine also interviewed Chancellor Klein, who has just wrapped up his tour Down Under, sponsored by Australia’s education ministry. The Chancellor had plenty to deal with upon his return: one of his deputy chancellors had to be reminded of the department’s ethics code; Brooklyn residents are concerned that the city will use eminent domain laws to gain property for a new school; and the DOE had apparently advised principals to “keep the [school] surveys away from toxic person(s)” who might rate the schools unfavorably.

The Times editorial board argue that bad teachers need to be “ushered” out of the system, but one school leader can’t praise her teachers enough; Pamela Taranto, the principal of Brooklyn International, who received the highest grade among all the principals in the city on the progress reports, said she will spend some of her hefty bonus on taking her teachers out to dinner. Another city principal, of John F. Kennedy High School in the Bronx, plans to remake his school into a “Digital Academy,” hoping that it will improve the school’s lackluster academic reputation. The settlement of a lawsuit challenging policies at Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn brought by Insideschools’ parent organization, Advocates for Children, grants students who had been pushed out of school options. But many high school dropouts are finding they don’t have as many options anymore as the waiting lists grow for GED and literacy programs. And many of the students at Newcomers High School in Queens gave thanks for the opportunities of immigration while empathizing with the pilgrims’ struggles — a good lesson for all.

Last week, a woman posted a comment on this blog asking us to “move beyond descriptive stats [on the achievement gap] and focus on what makes some kids resilient (both in public and independent/parochial schools) where others fail.” She said that although she had been raised by a single parent in Harlem public housing, she had “beat the odds” and she wanted to know “how can we make our schools, families and communities stronger!”

Her question is a perfect springboard into the first Insideschools’ book club choice, Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America, by Paul Tough. During the next two weeks, we encourage you to read the book, and send in your questions and comments. Then, we’ll interview the author, interspersing our questions with yours. You can find the book in your local library or buy it through our website, where some of the profits will be donated to Insideschools.

Paul Tough, who writes about education for the New York Times Magazine, tackles hefty social science quandaries – like what causes poverty and how it can be alleviated — within the narrative of Geoffrey Canada’s dramatic, ongoing struggle to change the lives of Harlem’s children. Canada, who grew up in the South Bronx, has devoted his professional life to figuring out how to tackle poverty by transforming a neighborhood rather than “saving” a few individuals. Canada’s solution, which has been endorsed by President-elect Barack Obama, is to create what he describes as a “conveyor belt” of interrelated programs and services to carry as many children as possible from conception to college, “contaminating” an entire neighborhood with a higher set of expectations.

After five years of reporting, Tough describes Canada’s venture – the Harlem Children’s Zone – through the stories of the people who work for and are served by the project, which includes two charter schools. Tough also explains the research behind anti-poverty efforts, relating it to the sometimes nail-biting, sometimes heartbreaking, yet surprisingly hopeful story of Canada’s work.

For more information about the book, the author, and the Harlem Children’s Zone, read the New York Times review, the Washington Post Review, visit their website, and look on our facebook page.

Read the book, and join the discussion! And remember to email me your questions for Paul Tough or post them here on the blog.

Good news for teachers this week: most educators who participated in the experimental bonus program last year have elected to continue with the program this year, and the Department of Education agreed to a deal that will encourage principals to hire excessed teachers, despite the budget cuts. Randi Weingarten, head of both the New York teacher’s union and a national teachers’ union, spoke out in support of new tenure requirements and merit-based pay programs. And as other sectors suffer from the economic downtown, teachers maintain relative job-security. Employees of the Department of Education have not been so lucky – layoffs have already begun.

In lawsuit news, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity may go back to the courts if the state cuts more from city schools; a student, whose forehead was apparently bloodied by a school safety officer, filed a suit; and after a judge found that the city had illegally built schools on a toxic site, the city’s lawyers claimed the judge had misunderstood two conflicting state laws.

Some downtown families may be sending their kindergarteners to the DOE headquarters at Tweed Courthouse next year. But despite a developer’s offer, it doesn’t seem the DOE wants a new elementary school at the South Street Seaport.

And all of that time that teenagers spend online? According to a new study – it may be an important part of their 21^st century socialization and education.

Last night, the Community Education Council for District 3 passed a controversial resolution which rezones three large apartment buildings on the Upper West Side from the popular PS 199 to lower-performing PS 191. Residents of these buildings, including one man who has yet to father his first child, spoke out during the public comment portion of the meeting, saying that they had invested in the neighborhood, assuming their children would attend PS 199.

The resolution also recommended that the DOE move the Center School out of the overcrowded PS 199 building. Center School parents, students and administrators staged a protest rally before the meeting and walked out before the vote. A large corps of police officers stood by throughout the evening.

The debate has gotten ugly during the past two weeks, and Center School parents vowed that it wasn’t over last night since the Department of Education makes the final decision on whether or not to move a school. There have been allegations of racism, since Center School has a more diverse student-body than PS 199, but Insideschools blogger and CEC3 member Jennifer Freeman wrote that such accusations are unfounded.

“I am really, really angry,” a seventh grade student from Center School said, as she handed out fliers at the door to the meeting. “Nobody at my school wants to move. I want to spend my last year in middle school in the building I started in.”

The student’s mother, actress Cynthia Nixon has been involved in the protests and remains a vocal defender of the Center School.

Parents from the Computer School who also spoke at the meeting, expressed concern that the resolution to move citywide gifted and talented school Anderson into their building might lead to future overcrowding.

“Are we going to be in the same situation as Center School in a few years?” one parent asked. Officials from the Department of Education told her not to worry; they believe that all of the moves on the table are long-term solutions.

As parents slog through the application process for the city’s gifted and talented programs, today there’s a chance to step back and consider the evolving definition of what ‘gifted’ means. EdWeek.org is hosting a conversation with three leading experts in the field, whose book, The Development of Giftedness and Talent Across the Life Span, will available soon. Submit your questions now, and check back at EdWeek between 4 pm and 5 pm for answers.

Meanwhile, tell us what you think about giftedness: Do you agree with recent developmental theories that it’s not a static, innate condition but a trait that can be nurtured and developed? What about social and emotional intelligence? Giftedness beyond the academic realm?

After my dog Maggie graduated from the Good Dog training program for therapy animals last week, my husband and I were asked to choose her first volunteer project. As we scanned a long list of nursing homes and hospitals that use therapy dogs, we noticed several reading programs at public schools and libraries. I must admit – when I first heard of dogs serving as reading-assistants last year, I dismissed it as a ridiculous, only-in-New-York idea. Unlike a sick child in need of distraction or an elderly person who needs companionship, it did not seem as obvious to me how a furry, slobbery “therapist” might benefit a struggling reader. But last spring, after reading two articles about these canine-led reading programs, I was convinced that the idea had merit.

Studies show that struggling students can overcome their fear of reading aloud when their audience is a non-judgmental pup. The evidence isn’t just anecdotal – the dogs have been proven to lower some young readers’ blood pressure and heart rates. Curling up with a pet helps some students forget that they thought reading was boring or intimidating, and the dogs have led students to choose reading clubs over the more typical popular choices, like basketball or cooking.

Unfortunately, our Maggie’s only free to volunteer on the weekends, so she won’t get to try out the theory. But one of Maggie’s co-graduates, a big, friendly black lab, has already been signed up for the reading program by his owner, who was a reading specialist in the public schools for the past 30 years. Seems that sometimes these “crazy” ideas may be able to offer certain students just what they need to be able to learn.

Education is apparently fifth on President Obama’s list of priorities, which Nicholas Kristof thinks is too low. Chancellor Klein knows people in high places;, will he be the next Secretary of Education? Half of the city high schools that opened in September don’t have enough students, and school psychologists spend so much time doing paperwork that they don’t have enough time to actually talk with kids. And in the wake of a problem-riddled, centralized pre-k process, the DOE has announced that they won’t centralize kindergarten admissions as planned.

Earlier in the week, Governor Patterson sliced and diced the school budgets, angering education advocates, especially since 20 percent of U.S. school districts have already laid-off staff since September. Families have begun to defect from expensive private schools (but not those showcased in a new ‘anthropological’ documentary), and school bus routes will be back on the chopping block come September. Despite all these cuts, the DOE still plans performance bonuses, even though a new report that shows how expensive all of New York’s accountability measures are.

High school progress reports were released this week. The author of a study on the progress reports defended them in the Post, and the Daily News claimed that the high grades this year were a strong defense of mayoral control. The study, however, shows that receiving a low grade doesn’t initiate a significant improvement in a school.

Mayor Bloomberg renamed a school in Harlem in memory of Terence D. Tolbert, the DOE lobbyist and Obama staffer who passed away on Nov. 2. The new capital plan doesn’t do enough, say parents in Riverdale, and parents in Chelsea are worried about overcrowding in a building the DOE proposes turning into a school. Schools sharing one building in the Bronx still don’t have a library, and on Long Island, a Jericho school makes an effort to get Asian parents to participate. The original Blue Man Group has opened a school designed to foster creativity, called Blue School, complete with black lights, plastic tubing, and a “wonder room” with a light-up floor. Hopefully the shrinking economy won’t doom other creative educational experiments.

Tonight’s CEC 3 meeting might include a showdown between parents and administrators from two different schools that share one overcrowded building, wrote Insideschools.org alumna Philissa Cramer on Gothamschools today. A CEC 3 proposal released last week suggested that the Center School, a small, unzoned middle school, move 14 blocks north to alleviate overcrowding in PS 199, a popular zoned elementary school, but parents and administrators at the Center School staunchly oppose the plan. The disagreement has taken a nasty tone, with fliers appearing outside the building calling the principal of Center School “a dictator, ” and Center School families claiming that racism might have motivated some PS 199 parents to push the middle school, which has a more diverse student body, out of the building. See the Gothamschools blog post, last week’s New York Times article or attend the meeting tonight to find out more.

The results are in! And it turns out that a Catholic school in Queens ‘elected’ the winning candidate… again. High school students in the South Bronx had been holding their breath earlier this week to see who would win the presidential election. And on Wednesday, boys at Eagle Academy in Brooklyn were thrilled to learn about the man headed for the Oval Office: it “makes us think that we could accomplish anything when you put your mind to it,” one 11-year-old student explained. Younger students in Harlem were equally impressed; one second-grader said, “I’m so happy I don’t know what to do,” — a sentiment shared by many decades older. Down the street, students at a Harlem middle school shared their enthusiasm.

Several pundits wonder if Barack Obama will tap Chancellor Klein for Education Secretary. New York State’s education commissioner will resign in June after 14 years in the position, and Mayor Bloomberg is expected to fight to retain mayoral control now that he’s won round one in the fight to retain the mayorship. Sad news from Nevada last weekend: Terence Tolbert, a beloved top DOE official, died of a heart attack on Sunday, where he had been managing the state’s Obama campaign.

The Post realized that a high-paying position in the DOE, the director of middle schools, has been vacant for months, and at a time when middle school reform has been given a lot of lip-service. Parents might get more (symbolic?) control if a plan to grant them “advisory votes” in Community Education Council elections gains traction, and the City Council has scheduled hearings into the controversial new gifted and talented admissions process, which has left fewer minorities with coveted spots in the program. The New York Times analyzed the specialized high school admissions process today and found that just like the kindergarten G&T admissions, there is a concerning racial imbalance.

Budget cuts were announced this week, along with a pared-down building agenda – principals are coping with these year’s cuts and already preparing for next year’s tougher budgets. Parents, DOE officials, and advocates battle over re-zoning proposals in District Three, and schools vie for a space in Riverdale that may not even be available next year, as promised. At another school in the Bronx, many children are taught in temporary trailers that have become anything but temporary. Elsewhere in the same borough, a neighborhood is relieved to be getting a much-needed new middle school. Students and teachers in most overcrowded high school buildings, however, will have make do – only two new high school buildings are slated to be built across the city during the next five years.

Beyond reading, writing and arithmetic, health classes are viewed as a vital addition to the pre-school course schedule at one school in the Bronx, and students at one city high school can take skateboarding for credit… now that is an innovative physical education option for the urban teen.

Last night, parents crowded into a hot auditorium at PS 84 for the two Manhattan gifted and talented information sessions. With people sitting side-by-side and back-to-back along both aisles, cramming into the space by all four doorways, and squeezing next to the presenter in front of the stage, many parents grumbled about the set-up of the meeting. Dozens of attendees didn’t fit into the room and ended up talking with each other about the G&T admissions process in the hallway, making it even more difficult for people inside the auditorium to hear.

“I can’t imagine how many fire-code regulations they are breaking right now,” one mother said. “It is a total mess in here.”

Anna Commitante, head of gifted and talented at the DOE, gave the same power-point presentation that hundreds of Brooklyn parents showed up to hear last week. She took some questions last night, although there wasn’t nearly enough time to call on all of the people with their hands in the air. Commitante suggested parents who didn’t get their questions answered could go to the DOE website where she is answering questions this week, but according to the website, yesterday was the last day that she was accepting online questions.

As always, you can post your questions here or in our forum, and we will do our best to find the answers. If you weren’t jostling around in the crowd last night, you can still attend the final information session tonight in Queens, but many parents last night advised that they didn’t learn anything new in the live presentation that they hadn’t been able to learn online. The slides from the presentations should be added to the online resources on the DOE website today - we will update you when they are.

In order to accommodate voting machines and long lines of voters, there was no school today for city students (although teachers and administrators had to show up for professional development). Early indicators suggest that a high turn-out of New York adults had the chance wait for hours inside their local public school with an array of celebrities, politicians and cookies – PTA election bake sales have gotten a lot of attention today.

Some parents struggle to manage work, voting and childcare - would changing election-day to Saturday help? And do you bring your kids to the polls? Do you let them pull the lever? David Sedaris remembers his mother letting him decide for her. Most students at Townsend Harris High School can’t vote, but they had elaborate mock-elections leading up to the election.

An election-day profile of a politician-turned-charter-school-leader (who plans to run someday for the city’s highest elected office), reminds us how closely politics and the schools are intertwined everyday of the year. And finally, a particularly lively choir of middle school students remind us that “you can vote however you like…”

Some spooky Halloween disappearing act (or perhaps a whisper from DOE?) may explain how a piece of investigative reporting vanished into thin air. Another surprise came from the UFT, in support of the Teaching Fellows - the groups haven’t always had the coziest relationship, but now, the union’s defending more than 100 new fellows who have yet to be actually hired by any specific school. And substitute teachers will now have to pass a test before being allowed to take over the classrooms.

One snobby newbie will hopefully never teach again; the courts supported a Bronx principal who fired a teacher for cursing at his students and boasting that his parents didn’t send him “to Cornell so I could take care of a bunch of animals.” Others, thankfully, go above and beyond in their lessons on global warming - a Harlem teacher taught class from Antarctica and a Brooklyn teacher did same, from the Canadian Arctic. Not to be outdone, math teachers study comedy improv solutions to classroom problems. And one struggling artist/author who turned to teaching suddenly hit it big with his latest book - but plans to keep teaching art anyway.

And how much art is being taught in city schools? We may never really know, contends an article that questions the DOE’s latest report. But a new research center to study city schools opened this week… again. So now there are two centers researching what is happening in classrooms and principals’ offices across the city. Maybe they can study the effects of overcrowding and reports that schools in some neighborhoods are less and less diverse. The feds, through No Child Left Behind, announced plans to hold schools accountable for the achievement gap in high school graduation rates, and another report said that parents make a substantial difference in a child’s decision to drop out. A Voice column argues that the actions of school safety officers need to be better regulated, and there may just be an obvious, fair, easy, and inexpensive solution to the issue of military recruitment in city high schools.

Maybe the next generation of investors can learn from the current market-troubles: when CNBC recently reported a bounce in the Dow, cheers broke out in a fifth-grade class in Queens. Parents celebrate more options for autistic students, like a charter school specifically designed for students on the autism spectrum, and a school for social justice finally found a permanent home, delivering on a deathbed promise. Seward Park High School’s rooftop got a hip-hop redesign, organized by the New Design High School, and the students at PS 19 weren’t about to let a state-senate hopeful off easily when he served as principal for a day. As 8th graders consider their high school picks, current Staten Island high school students weigh in on the commute to Manhattan.

We can bet the state certainly won’t increase aid to schools next year, but will they decrease it? With all the talk of cut-backs, the DOE defends spending more than $5 million for courier services. After all, high stakes testing necessitate high security. And some wonder how the job of school district superintendent fits into the new systems in the city. Chancellor Klein said he would look into it.

It looks like the city and the schools might get four more years of Bloomberg and Klein; when push came to shove, the City Council’s Education Committee was proportionally more supportive of the mayor than the Council as a whole.On the other hand, 10 public school teachers filed a law suit on Wednesday arguing that the change breached voters civil rights. And in a second lawsuit, the city was sued after police handcuffed a 10-year-old special education student.

Other high profile school news: The $80 million data-management system the DOE bought hasn’t been working all fall (although a homegrown data-tracking system is thriving in Brooklyn) and well-regarded sociologists continue to question the city’s progress reports, which are due out soon for high schools. Crime may be down, but grand larceny is up in city schools, and a bureaucratic mess between the DOE and the Department of Sanitation is playing out on one truly messy Brooklyn street. Also in Brooklyn, a teen with special needs has been assigned to two schools, neither of which provided her with mandated services.

In good news, a new playground - the first of several to come - opened in Brooklyn thanks to a hefty donation. And New York was highlighted as one of the cities that requires green standards for new school buildings, plans for two of which were unveiled yesterday – and should be built cost-free to the city. And it turns out that 270 classic New York school buildings, some built a century ago and still in use, can be credited to one man.

In light of the DOE’s new policy on military recruitment of high school students, one elderly warrior-for-peace assembled her own army to fight back. A school in the Bronx is trying to harness the popularity of online communication into academic purposes, and the highly selective Hunter College High School has seen its applicant pool decline. Klein shared his philosophies and policies with a packed-house in Bridgeport, Conn., while an opinion piece in the Daily News argued that school’s budgets should be cut but the union is bribing politicians in Albany to keep the money flowing…

Only a few days after the UFT sued the DOE for infringing on teacher’s freedom of speech by forbidding them to wear political buttons on the job, the feds ruled against the union, satisfying Chancellor Klein: “Keeping politics out of the classroom was our primary concern here, and our position has been fully vindicated.” Just to be sure, DOE told one school to take down a poster of Barack Obama. The UFT, in a move that won’t make Mayor Bloomberg happy, announced that they will support preserving term limits. And more potential teachers competing to be in the classroom could, according to reports, be one of the rare positive trends brought about by the financial meltdown.

Focus on special education and special needs students during the presidential debates elicited an angry response from one advocate. A parent in Brooklyn realized that her son may not have been receiving his mandated services - and someone at his school may have tried to cover it up - and an autistic three-year-old was left on an empty school bus for six hours. Sunday’s Times Magazine looks into how schools are teaching autistic teenagers, and New York parents have successfully lobbied for more publicly-funded residential schools, to reduce the flow of students to private boarding schools in other states. But even a high profile lawsuit didn’t seem to get special education students at Fredrick Douglas Academy IV their mandated services, state officials discovered.

While home-schooling rates have risen in the city (more than 2,600 students registered this year, while only 1,600 home schooled in 2001), the Times wrote about parents who have chosen anti-schooling, not to be confused with un-schooling. Research questions the way gifted students are designated, and the DOE may have ignored warnings of overcrowding in Riverdale schools. Classes are now offered in Brooklyn to “help parents help their kids,” and a conference today was supposed to help educators and school safety officers discipline better.

In high school news, a lawsuit on behalf of students who were illegally pushed out of Boys and Girls High School was settled, and the students can now hopefully get their degrees. And as 8th graders consider which high schools to apply to, the DOE released the list of the most popular schools last year: Francis Lewis HS in Flushing, followed by Benjamin N. Cardozo, Midwood, Forest Hills, and Edward Murrow. For students who want a new option, Post reporter Yoav Gonen wrote about new themed charter schools in the city. “These aren’t your older siblings charter schools,” he said. And vocational schools these days aren’t offering your older siblings - or parents - technical education, either; they are much more academic. The way military recruiters gain high school students’ information has also changed - and this new policy is already being protested by the NYCLU.

As the stock market dips and swings, families at city private schools are considering switching to public schools, threatening to flood already-overcrowded schools. Officials in Riverdale, coping with an unexpected influx, have switched students out of their bursting-at-the-seams zoned schools a month into the semester. In Greenwich Village, another prime neighborhood with overcrowded schools, parents are pushing the city to buy a building from the state to accommodate more students.

The economic downturn has trickled into the budget for the Community Education Councils, and Brooklyn parents worry what else budget cuts will affect in the schools. But it seems that the DOE’s central offices just keep growing; despite a hiring freeze, job openings are posted for numerous positions, including Knowledge Management Domain Leader for Leadership & Organizational Management, which comes with a generous $170,000 salary.

Now that the Mayor is pushing for a third term, the debate over mayoral control has become more about Bloomberg and Klein. And at a rally in Queens, one group of parents said no to mayoral control and no to Mayor Bloomberg. At the national level, advocates fret that other issues may have officially relegated education to the back burner in this November’s election.

Bad news for girls in the papers this week: girls in cities play sports less and later than boys, and their math talent is less likely to be identified and encouraged than American boys’ or foreign girls’. And New York girls trying to buck the trend by attending the all-female Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science have obstacles outside the gender battle: a brand new school building in Brooklyn (shared with three other schools) where construction is dangerously incomplete.

Games are more than child’s play, or so it seems from a swath of stories. A computer game that requires solving algebraic equations is in play in 100 city middle schools and a newly-formed institute will study the impact of educational computer games (and develop new ones). A brand- new training center opened in Co-Op city to serve the 3,500 students in the Beat the Streets wrestling program, special needs students in Staten Island practice yoga with their principal, and a petite high school girl in Queens is suiting-up to play in a football game this weekend. Game on.

Bloomberg admitted that when he argues for renewal of mayoral control, he also hopes to continue as Mayor, despite the twice-voted term limits law currently on the books. But Bloomberg’s second major reason for wanting to stay in City Hall – the economic woes of late – has already wreaked havoc on schools’ budgets. Whether the state is doing enough to help continues a hot topic, and Wall Street donations to public education will certainly start drying up soon – meaning less, less, less. Would it be cheaper to allow high school students to take some classes online (and “at 3 a.m. in their pajamas if they desire”)? And a new program is bringing laptops created for students in developing countries to city classrooms at the wonderfully affordable sticker price of $200 each.

The Public Advocate explained her position on mayoral control – again – in the Daily News, and the Times analyzed the data used to compile the controversial school progress reports, demonstrating how manipulating the methodology yields different results for individual schools. City students’ standardized test scores are being used to generate yet another type of report card: teachers’ grades. The DOE doesn’t want teachers to wear political buttons to school; some teachers are now asking whether Klein’s prohibition is un-Constitutional. And the eternal debate over how to best teach English language learners was rehashed and re-argued in the Times this week.

Craving news that everyone can celebrate? Local kids are bucking the stereotype of nicotine-craving urban teens: dramatically fewer New York State teenagers are smoking than teens in the country as a whole. A $9-a-pack pricetag can be plenty persuasive…

If you’ve spent all week wondering whether paying some teachers not to teach improves the over-all quality of instruction, or if you have been too engrossed in the Times Magazine’s annual College Issue to get to the papers, here’s a recap of NYC school news.

First, some some shake-ups in the DOE: Chief equality officer Roland Fryer has resigned to lead the newly minted Educational Innovation Laboratory. Fryer, who is also a Harvard professor, will continue to study the controversial cash-for-performance program that he brought to New York, which is being expanded to include some eighth graders. The city has hired a new person in charge of schools ethics who held the same job for an infamously ethically-challenged former-politician. Christine Quinn, who is most likely running for mayor in ‘09, staunchly defended mayoral control of the schools. She may be facing some steep competition in that mayoral race; both Bloomberg and Klein might throw their hats in, with schools at the center of either potential candidate’s platform.

With all the excessed teacher news, the Sun also wrote about a disturbing trend that the percentage of new teachers who are black is shrinking, rather dramatically. A host of teachers with illegally-large class-sizes have filed grievances with the DOE. And there doesn’t seem to be any space for classes of any size downtown next fall, but when new schools finally do open, parents are relieved that they will have K-8 options. Students and teachers across the city may get two more religious holidays off next year: Eid ul-Fitr and Eid ul-Adha. And a new field-trip option opened in Harlem: a state of the art DNA lab.

City Limits took an in-depth look at universal pre-k issues in the city, and a five-year-old was mistakenly loaded onto a school bus and then kicked out at the end of the line. The big push to get soda out of schools may not have had much of an effect on soda consumption, but an advertising lesson in three California High Schools aims to emphasize the value of drinking milk to students across the country.

Wall Street may be flailing but this week, many city teachers and principals are flush, thanks to bonuses based on the school progress reports. There also still seems to be enough cash left for Village residents to open a new private high school and parents to apply in record-breaking numbers for spaces in Financial District private kindergarten. For some, spending money still looks like a good investimen; as there are more high school seniors in the United States than ever before, lots of families hiring expensive private college counselors to try to get an edge on the competition.

A teacher at the Bronx School of Law and Finance is using the volatile markets to teach economics lessons. Maybe she can explain how class size in more than half of city schools went up despite state aid to lower class size — and the revelation that more teachers are receiving paychecks without being given a teaching assignment.

Despite Bloomberg’s “no social promotion” mandate, fewer students were held back this year. Summer school lessons, however, do not seem to be enough to help most students who failed during the regular school year make up the work and move to the next grade.

Charter schools, many of which received top grades this week, may face serious threats in the future, according one advocate. But for now, New York’s charters hope to get a little more help from the state and a little less regulation.

Some of the school bus problems may be getting sorted out, but the affected students, many of whom have special needs, now have to settle into their school year routines… three weeks late. Several students with ADHD who attended an NYU summer program are adjusting well to school, however, which their parents credit to their structured summer.

Bloomberg responded to the Times editorial last week that suggested mayoral control of the schools might have a few more checks and balances. Naturally, the mayor disagreed. Several top Boston educators who have moved to New York might add to his case.

Education experts square off on Obama’s plan for the nations schools, and The Sun uncovered Klein’s education policy reading list.

While most of the education news this week circled around the Progress Report grades, when the Times discovered that the Chancellor also grades his own staff on how well they host a press conference, press secretary, David Cantor, was inspired to email the Gray Lady their own grade: “Value of the story: F.”