Your independent guide to NYC public schools

For a solid recap and stage-setting on the mayoral control debate, see Gail Robinson's 'Issue of the Week' at Gotham Gazette. Opponents of the law spoke out yesterday at City Hall, and it seems likely that the school-control debate will vie with budget conversations in the new year in Albany.Meanwhile, Yoav Gonen highlights declining enrollment in parochial schools, and Javier Fernandez unpacks the free-breakfast stigma in some city schools. (For an awkward bit of class-based 'compare and contrast,' see Susan Dominus on a 12-your-old Fieldston gourmand with a penchant for seafood and prosciutto, and a $25 budget for a solo schoolnight supper.)High school progress reports, released last week, showed big gains in many struggling schools' credit-earning power; for a savvy analyis of credit recovery and its influence on school stats, dig into Eduwonkette's November 13th post. For an assessment of whether the progress reports actually reflect school quality -- always a worthwhile question -- see Jennifer Medina and Robert Gebeloff's analysis in the Times. Parents of next year's kindergarteners, your questions about sibling priority haven't been forgotten: Questions sent to the DOE on Friday were answered on Saturday (thank you, Andy Jacob); clarifications requested in response to those answers went back to DOE on Saturday, and answers should be forthcoming later today, with luck.