The Department of Education is proposing changes in existing policies, called Chancellor’s Regulations, regarding promotion standards, and the way in which principals and assistant principals are chosen. It is also proposing a new regulation governing procedures for locating or closing schools or changing current building usage. The Panel for Educational Policy will vote on these measures at the Nov.12 meeting at PS 128 in Queens; in the meantime the public is invited to review the proposals and weigh in on them.

The revised state law governing NYC schools renewed mayoral control of the city school system, but modified it in an effort to increase parent input. The law explicitly requires announcement of PEP meeting agendas at least 10 days in advance. In this case, the DOE provided the information more than a month in advance. However, it is not clear how public comments (which are not actually being made public) will make a difference in the proposals or the outcome of the PEP vote. (more…)

Lowering the amount of carbon dioxide your school emits is an important way to fight climate change. The amount of CO2 a school emits is called its “carbon footprint.” Replacing the filter on a heating and cooling system (HVAC) can reduce a school’s carbon footprint. So can letting the sun do its work and turning off lights when there is enough daylight that artificial light is not needed.

These and other ideas for energy management are on the Division of School Facilities’ website called DSF Green.The site also advises schools to set computers and other office equipment to save energy, such as sleeping when idle. Not to mention the energy savings from shutting off equipment like escalators and electric pool heaters when not needed.

Parents can help schools save energy by asking whether energy saving policies are in place, and by pointing out resources, such as DSF Green, where facilities managers can make sure best practices are being followed. (more…)

Should the Panel for Education Policy (PEP) be given final approval over whether charter schools can be sited in buildings with existing schools? I thought that was the intention of the state legislators who passed the law to renew mayoral control in August, but apparently the Department of Education has a different interpretation.

The new mayoral control law tries to increase public input in the system. One change mandates that the DOE post proposed Chancellor’s Regulations for a 45-day public comment period and that the PEP vote on regulations at a public meeting.

On Sept. 26, the DOE issued several proposed regulations; among them is A-190, Significant Changes in School Utilization. Changes in school utilization include decisions to phase out schools, change their location, or move other schools into the building. A-190 seeks to restrict changes considered “significant” and subject to a PEP vote at a public meeting.

A-190 defines the term “affected school” as “the individual instructional organization identified for direct action in the proposal.” It explicitly excludes other schools and programs co-located in that school building. (more…)

Dear Judy,

How many classes are teachers supposed to teach in a day? My daughter’s class was merged with another. Now she is in a cramped room, with no desks, just chairs, and more than 30 kids. I attended curriculum night and when I asked why they went from three classes to two on her grade level, the teachers said the principal decided on it. Teachers are only teaching five periods a day.

Concerned mother

Dear Concerned mother:

It sounds like your daughter’s principal is faced with a familiar situation these days — not enough money to keep class size low. Evidently, the principal found that he could maintain the number of kids allowed in a class according to the teachers’ contract by combining two classes into one. That way, only two teachers, not three, would have to be budgeted. (more…)

 Have a school question for Judy?  Search archives | Contact Judy

Parents, teachers, facilities managers, and students can share ideas and information about schools going green on a new citywide website, Green Schools NYC. Green schools experts can post links, ideas, and information, while people looking for ideas and advice on greening schools can find them on the site, or ask experts for information.

The more users who  join the website, the more useful it will be for both experts and newbies. Already participating on the site are parents and teachers at schools that have worm composting projects (that give kids a science lesson while reducing food waste) and parents at schools who are throwing green-themed fall festivals.

The Links and Resources page contains links to local organizations that provide programs, advice, and curriculum on schools going green, including one where children visit farms and cook meals with freshly picked vegetables. The new site makes it easy to post documents, such as the Back To School Green Schools Supplies memo posted by a mom at PS 334, which can be downloaded and adapted by other schools. (more…)

Students are not the only ones wrangling with mathematics this year. Yesterday, The New York Times reported how principals have cut costs to meet their 5% slimmer school budgets, after the budget cuts announced last spring.

According to the Times, principals across the city made most cuts by eliminating teaching positions and reducing spending on equipment, supplies, and books. For one Brooklyn principal at PS 273, the loss of four teachers bumped class size from 21 students to 29.

Today’s Daily News reports on overcrowding in other city classrooms — including  40 students jammed into  one room at PS 102 in the Bronx. Leonie Haimson, of Class Size Matters, has published a Q&A with details about class size limits, according to the UFT contract: 25 in kindergarten, up to 28 in grades 1-3, and 32 in grades 4-6.  Beyond those numbers, teachers can “grieve” (complain) to the Department of Education. (more…)

In a lively kickoff meeting last week, District 3 parents, Department of Education officials, and others met to see how to help their schools go green. The DOE announced a commitment to cutting schools’ carbon footprints in April when it joined the Green Schools Alliance. Since public schools consume 25% of New York’s municipal energy, greening the schools is the only way to meet the city’s goal of cutting carbon emissions by 30%.

Every school has a “sustainability coordinator” as of spring 2009; most are teachers whose chief role is to involve students in greening efforts. Most of the six schools represented at the meeting were already actively working on going green. Parents talked about the challenges of enforcing recycling and promised to share lists of green school supplies. John T. Shea, the DOE’s chief sustainability officer and head of the Division of School Facilities, came to answer questions. Liza Potter, community partnerships coordinator at the new Urban Assembly School for Green Careers (opening this fall in the Brandeis building) said her students could help produce information for a D3 Green Schools website. (more…)

A group of Upper West Side parents, elected officials and other concerned citizens has been meeting this summer to plan a new, academically challenging high school focused on journalism and writing to open with a 9^th grade class in fall, 2010, in the Brandeis High School building on West 84^th Street. The group, organized by City Councilwoman Gale Brewer, hopes the school will be named in honor of Frank McCourt, a former Stuyvesant High School teacher and author of the bestseller Angela’s Ashes ,who died on Sunday.

The school is still in the planning stages, but the parents, led by Tom Allon, publisher of the West Side Spirit who taught with Frank McCourt at Stuyvesant, hope it will grow to serve between 800 to 1,000 students. That’s small enough to give students a sense of community, but large enough to offer art, drama, several foreign languages, Advanced Placement, special education and services for English Language Learners that are often missing at the new small schools that have been created in recent years. The Department of Education is interviewing prospective “project directors” for the school this summer. The “project director” will be hired part-time in the fall and, if the school is approved by the DOE, will likely be assigned as principal early in 2010. (more…)

(See the bottom of the post for an afternoon update from the DOE)

Upper East Side families zoned for the long-shuttered elementary school PS 151 do not have a zoned school for their children and have instead been permitted to apply for seats at other Upper East Side elementary schools. This year, the process for these families has changed; the Department of Education plans to open a new school for the 151 zone in September.

Where the school will open, however, remains uncertain, say representatives of the DOE and local community leaders. Sites under consideration include an area parochial school, Our Lady of Good Counsel, and the basement classrooms at Wagner, a selective middle school of more than 1,300 students. Andrew Jacob of the DOE says the plan is that a “new school will incubate at a leased site,” but “if we’re unable to lease a site, the kindergarten classes will be located at Wagner in September.”

The area under discussion for the new kindergarten at Wagner includes three basement classrooms and one unisex bathroom (with two stalls) on the basement floor. The rooms are adjacent to the middle school’s music and band room, and their ceiling-height windows are level with the schoolyard. Students at the new kindergarten and the middle school would likely share a single entrance; it’s not known how other spaces, such as the lunchroom, schoolyard, and gym, might be shared.

(more…)

With a snow day to start the week, our poll asking about outdoor play in bitter weather yielded a split response: A plurality of parents said “outside optional” made the most sense, nearly as many said that indoor play or watching a movie was better on winter days. A bunch of hardy souls think kids should play outside, weather notwithstanding, while very, very few — less than 3 percent — said schools should skip recess in lieu of more learning.

This week, we’re curious about charter schools. With a new wave of charters set to open in the fall, wide community concern about the charters’ effect on conventional schools, and a Mayor, Chancellor, and US Education Secretary who have all strongly supported charter schools, what do you think? Let us know.

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.

This afternoon, the DOE announced that 26 schools will take occupancy on 22 new or improved sites in Sept. 2009, including six entirely new school buildings. Part of the Mayor’s $13 billion, 5-year capital plan, these new, expanded and relocated schools will add more than 14,000 seats for New York City students.

Not all of the new spaces have school programs assigned to them yet, but for those that do, schools range from elementary to high schools and include traditional schools and charters. Many are young schools that ‘incubated’ at other school sites and are now ready to move to a permanent location.

Among the brand-new schools are a new selective high school, the Cinema School, slated for the Bronx — and a 1500-seat high school in Sunset Park that is the first large high school to open in the Bloomberg-Klein era. More information, organized by district, can be found here.

Yesterday, the DOE announced the phaseout and eventual closure of Bayard Rustin High School in Chelsea. No new 9th graders will be permitted to enroll in September 2009.

The news landed hard on the school’s new principal and faculty, and it left me wondering about the 8th graders and families who’ve spent the fall visiting high schools and making their choices. It’s not possible to know how many students ranked Rustin first — or second, or third, or 12th. Neither can we know how many hours the school leadership invested in developing and hosting tours, open houses and information sessions for new students — hours that might’ve otherwise been invested in instruction. But it is entirely possible to ask, within the often-repeated mantra of Children First, why this decision was not made — or made public — before the high-school application process closed.

Decisions to close a school are (one can only hope) likely not made in haste. Someone in the DOE’s Office of Portfolio Development had to know this was in the winds a few weeks ago, before the high-school applications were due. Whether there’s an internal communication gap within DOE, and the Office of Enrollment simply didn’t know of the forthcoming decision to close Rustin, or a deliberate separation between enrollment processes and Portfolio, which determines closings and new school openings, it seems like the Children didn’t come First this time at all.

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.”

Last Thursday in District 3, the Department of Education and parents attempted haltingly to hold a conversation about what schools should replace the closing MS44 and PS241. I say “attempted” because parents mostly wanted to vent —about how small gains at those schools were not recognized, and about the challenges the schools faced, like the 35% population of PS 241 students who were both special needs kids and English Language Learners, mostly recent immigrants from Africa. DOE officials John White and Martine Guerrier wanted parents to limit their comments to what they valued about the old schools and what they hoped to see in a new school.

Regarding MS44, speakers emphasized a desire for diversity: the new school should be general ed, serving students from the entire academic spectrum. In fact, several parents expressed the opinion that education in the district overall might improve if all middle schools in the district took a portion of the lowest performing students.

For most of the meeting DOE officials declined to share their own vision of possible schools to replace PS241 and MS44, but by the end of the night, Office of Family Engagement and Advocacy head Martine Guerrier promised to bring to the next meeting a couple of examples of the kinds of schools that DOE thinks might fit in the community, as a basis for discussion.

I met the mother of a second grader at PS241 who was wondering how to get her daughter the best possible education in the face of a closing school. Who did she have to know? What tricks or special favors could be wrangled on her behalf?

Her daughter got top grades on her tests, the mom told me. Sounds like she would be an asset to any school, I said. You don’t need to ask for favors–let the schools you want her to attend know that you have a great student and your family wants to be part of their school community. No need to ask for favors—they should be honored to take her in.

The mom’s face lit up like the Christmas star. “No one ever told me such a positive way of looking at my goals,” she said. With an attitude like that and the will to be her child’s advocate, she was already more than halfway there.

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.

While working with DOE to develop last month’s resolution, District 3 CEC members heard that MS44 was on a list of schools under consideration for closure, but that no final decision had yet been made. Members of the Community Education Council toured the MS44 building just a few weeks ago, to see for themselves whether there was enough space for the Anderson School to share the building with both the Computer School and MS44.

Phasing out and eventually closing MS44 and opening another middle school in its place has no direct bearing on overcrowding in District 3, though it would help if the seats in the school were filled (MS44 was officially listed at 56% capacity in 2007). But should the DOE have told the community sooner, and included the community in its decision? That would have been a positive addition to the District 3 discussions.

I have been advocating to the DOE that they develop a “middle way” of communicating — somewhere between “we do not see a need at this time” and “we made that decision yesterday.” Discussing decisions that are still in process can be messy, to be sure. But if the decision process is sound, more engagement with the community can lead to a more robust DOE, stronger community organizations, and a more positive collaboration between the city and its constituents.

Speaking of strong community organizations, State Assemblymember Danny O’Donnell sent an odd letter last week to a dozen elected officials lambasting the DOE for letting the important topics covered in last month’s resolution be addressed by CEC3, rather than handled solely by DOE fiat. The letter was notable because O’Donnell is one of the few New York City members of the state legislature’s education committee, which is directly in charge of the legislation on mayoral control coming up for renewal next spring. If O’Donnell has a problem with strong community processes, I have a problem with that.

News that the DOE will close three schools arrived with a thud; the schools will close in June, and open, reconfigured (or reimagined entirely) in September. The schools on the present chopping block include CES 90 in the Bronx, MS44 in Manhattan, and PS 225 in Queens, a pre-K-8 school that will split into two schools, elementary and middle, in its next incarnation.

Once again, the DOE’s decision to close public schools combined stealth and executive fiat — the first harbinger was UFT president Randi Weingarten’s email that arrived in journalists’ ‘in’ boxes. Communities will be given a chance to participate in discussions about the new schools, news reports say, but were offered no voice in the decision to close their ailing schools. In particular, the phase-out of MS44 on the Upper West Side came as a blindsided blow, especially to District 3 residents, whose CEC recently approved the DOE’s plan to relocate The Anderson School in the MS44 building. (Can it be possible that DOE didn’t know they would close the school when they proposed the resiting? Can it be possible that DOE knew but didn’t tell the CEC, or the community, of their plans to shutter the ailing school? Does the sun continue to rise in the east?)

Chancellor Joel Klein, speaking to a journalists’ group earlier this fall, reflected on the Bloomberg-Klein era to date with obvious pride in the rate and scale of school change. As for regrets, he said “there are some things we should have done differently. We should have figured out more effective ways to communicate with and engage the city. Things we did were effective, but were misunderstood.”

No misunderstanding today, Chancellor. DOE decides, taxpayers and parents don’t: Score zero for communication and community engagement. And the early holiday cheer is only beginning: Additional school closures are expected to be announced next week.

The Community Education Council of District 3 officially released its resolution to address overcrowding in District 3 today. The buck is now passed to the Department of Education, which ultimately controls what actions will be taken. (DOE cannot redraw zone lines without CEC approval, but all other recommendations in the CEC resolution are up to the DOE to implement.) The DOE is expected to issue a statement soon describing what it plans to do.

The DOE is also fielding an appeals process from residents of the buildings that were newly excluded from the PS199 zone in the last week of the process. The goal of the appeal is to make sure this group of residents get the same chance as other members of the public to respond to the resolution.

Meanwhile, the Community Education Council of District 2 continues to work on overcrowding issues of its own. The DOE issued a Blueprint for District 2 enrollment and capacity last spring. CEC2’s response emphasized concern over whether overcrowding in that district is being adequately addressed in DOE proposals.

No rest for the weary: Members of CEC3 will be present today when Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer’s Task Force on Overcrowding meets to discuss its recently released capital planning report. The D3 CEC has also committed to investigating school space issues above 110th street, starting in 2009. And of course, CEC3, like CECs all over the city, will be the point organization for collecting schools’ comments on capital projects and repairs included in the DOE’s new 5-year capital plan. Reading the capital projects part shouldn’t take too long, as there are no construction projects currently planned for the next five years in District 3. But don’t count on it: There’s always the possibility that things could change.

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.

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.

A week of bad budget and economic news does not bode well for the city’s high schools. The New York Daily News reported that the city’s newly downsized capital plan includes plans for just two new high schools—even though 59% of the city’s high schoolers spend their days in overcrowded buildings.

Parents and kids who are currently searching for high schools can’t help notice how many kids are inside the classrooms we visit. I counted more than 40 on one of my tours this fall, and I noticed just how cramped the room felt.

At one school, I saw at least one or two kids nodding off during a calculus class. The teacher mostly likely couldn’t even see them—or he didn’t want to take away from the rest of his lesson by trying to wake them up.

I know that some high schools have split sessions and that some kids are attending class in trailers. I wonder what it’s like to be a student in an overcrowded high school or to teach in one.

As I was nearly squished and barely able to breathe on my morning commute today, I thought about city kids who travel long distances on jammed subways only to squeeze themselves into crowded classrooms and hallways. There really is such a thing as too much human contact.

Buried in yesterday’s Times, there’s news of an October 16 court decision that implicates the DOE for lack of environmental oversight on a long-beleaguered new school project, planned on a toxic ‘brownfield’ in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the Bronx. With a new school construction budget proposed last week, Class Size Matters‘ Leonie Haimson points out a new and novel line item — nearly $1 billion of the $3.7 budgeted for new construction is to be held back for “potential site specific/environmental code costs.”

Like so many DOE gestures, this one has multiple layers of meaning: First, it’s an acknowledgment that new schools may sit on old manufacturing or industrial sites and that environmental threats are real. That’s real progress. It’s also troubling to think that parents, children, and teachers can’t be assured that new schools will be built on never-toxic sites. And it’s a tacit admission, long due, that DOE must carefully plan for environmental remediation (as well as academic catch-up, once the schools are built). Whether Haimson’s assertion is correct - that the DOE will spend more to clean up the polluted site than they might have spent on another, cleaner site - is hard to know, especially in the current economic abyss. But one can only hope that her concern “that the SCA is planning on building as many schools as possible in [the] future on toxic sites” is wrong, and that DOE planners will work to make sure that dire prediction is, in fact, false.

Late yesterday afternoon, with little fanfare and zero public pronouncement, the DOE released its new capital plan for 2010-2014.

Remarkably lower-key than the splashy launch of the first capital plan, this pared-back version proposes $11 billion for 42 new schools to create 25,000 new seats. Nearly $4 billion is meant for new construction. A significant fraction of the ‘new’ seats are actually holdovers from the prior capital plan; 8,000 seats that were part of that expansive (and expensive) 76-school, 66,000 new-seats plan were never opened.

Construction will focus on already-overcrowded neighborhoods; critics say the plan vastly underestimates the number of seats that will be needed (read more here)and doesn’t solve crowding problems created by high demand at well-regarded schools. City planners say that bitter reality sets its own ground rules: escalating construction costs and economic woes limit what the city and state can do.

By Jennifer Freeman

A recent Daily News editorial dismissed the need for more open discussion of city schools’ capital needs. The editorial blast was aimed at a recent report, A Better Capital Plan (full disclosure: I am a contributing author). The report documented that more school seats were built during the last six years of the Giuliani administration than during Mayor Bloomberg’s entire tenure to date.

The report’s signal offense was to recommend that the DOE honestly and accurately identify in its soon-to-be-released capital plan how much money would be needed to provide small classes for all public school students in New York, rather than minimizing new school construction needs.

The Daily News editorial writers claimed that the report’s authors were out of touch with reality, that they must live in a fairyland the News derisively called “Gliffenglob.” But mentioning a need is not the same as claiming that unlimited money exists to address it. Maybe the editorial writers are in their own fairyland, where the atmosphere’s thick with murky and massaged numbers, and breathing pure reality would be fatal.

Schoolchildren of the city would be better served if the DOE openly identifies true new school construction needs, even if the costs of those projects is large. The fact of a troubled economy offers no shelter; they did not face the size of the need even in economic boom times, when impact fees paid by the developers of new residential buildings might have helped. In the more honest and transparent–more accountable–system advocated by the Better Capital Plan report, at least the public would know what we are up against.

The NYT story that was on line last night made today’s front page, and a reader wrote in to mention Merideth Kolodner’s coverage in the News.

The apparent under-enrollment in G+T classes stands in sharp counterpoint to consistent overcrowding in the city’s schools; read more here, or read the complete report for yourself. The DOE’s much-anticipated new, 5-year capital plan will be presented next month; how the Department plans to address overcrowding and underenrollment (in G+T and in universal preK, where thousands of seats remain open, until tomorrow) will be of primary interest.

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…

by Jennifer Freeman

The City Council hearings on school siting today should be lively. In some districts DOE says it sees a need for new schools but cannot find proper sites, while other districts have potential sites but DOE finds no current need.

For people who seek truth in language, consider the word “current.” DOE officials continue to say that they do not think a new school building is currently needed in District 3. Parents, elected officials, and other District 3 community leaders continue to say they think we do need to build a school, and that the DOE should take advantage of a prime school site in a proposed new development called Riverside South. But what if we are all actually saying the same thing?

Schools generally take about eight to nine years to build. The Office of Student Enrollment, OSEPO, says that it does not plan for children until they register for seats in public schools. So the DOE has built a kind of failure into its model, making it difficult to take advantage of one of the best sources of new school sites–spaces designed as part of multi-use developments, planned BEFORE those developments are built and before school children live there.

In District 3 a few years ago, the developer Extell set aside space for a school in a big new development, but the DOE turned it down. Currently, Extell has set aside a new space for a school in its proposed development known as Riverside South– now a parking lot around 60th St. and West End Ave.

DOE officials have said that if the families moving into all the new District 3 developments have the number of kids predicted by planning experts, the district will need a new school. But a site like Riverside South is not likely to magically reappear when the DOE is ready to play catch-up, in five or ten years. The time to move on the site is now.

When I was a young person just developing political consciousness, I was impressed to learn that when a politician says he “currently” has no plans to do something (seek a new term in office, for example) he could turn around and do it the next day without contradiction. I’m going to be optimistic and hope that what the Department of Education is actually saying, in code, that it really does want to build a new school in Riverside South and is just waiting for the developer to make a financial deal, like the one the DOE announced in District 2 . Perhaps, linguistic differences aside, we are all standing on the same shore and seeing the need for a new school on the horizon.

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.

by Jennifer Freeman

Can you call an activity “planning” if it consists of playing catch-up with old problems (years of chronic underfunding of school construction) while ignoring new ones (massive residential high-rise construction)? The inspiring crowd of parents and elected officials who rallied on the steps of City Hall last Friday to call for “A Better Capital Plan” thought not. Students from P.S. 3 held up signs with messages such as “We are not packing peanuts!”

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer presided over the rally. Elected officials stood up one after another to recognize that the Department of Education urgently needs to improve the way it makes capital plans.Stringer has issued two reports showing that school seats in Manhattan have not kept pace with residential building in the city: In District 3 alone, over 7,000 apartments have been built since 2003, or are currently under construction. Many are multi-bedroom apartments clearly aimed at families with children. Yet not one city dollar has been allocated to the district for new schools.

Last June at a CEC meeting, DOE officials told District 3 parents that there was no population boom: kids in new high rises would fill the void from a loss of population in older buildings. Overall, we were told, the district had shrunk by over 700 children since 2001. But it turns out that figure referred to the number of District 3 children now attending charter schools. Even though these are public schools located in District 3 that use space in District 3 public school buildings, they are not technically considered “in the district.”

In September 2008, the DOE put out figures saying that enrollment in Upper West Side schools (below 110th Street) had risen by 84 children from 2005-06–although enrollment increases posted on schools’ DOE websites added to 166. DOE also used outdated “historical” class size to count potentially free seats if DOE changed enrollment rules, instead of using the smaller “target” class size numbers, as mandated by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) lawsuit.

In recent weeks, the DOE acknowledged that District 3 schools might not be able to absorb all the kids expected once those thousands of new apartments are occupied. But they switched rationales in order to keep arguing against any construction in the new 5-year plan. The new story:

- Other districts are in even worse shape.

- In these tumultuous economic times, the future is even murkier than usual, so it would be imprudent to commit new funds.

In its new 5-year capital plan, due out this November, the DOE should practice planning ahead, not just cleaning up old messes. Planning means making predictions of the near future and acting on them.

The DOE has often said “you can only improve what you can measure.” DOE should measure the need for new school seats without massaging the numbers. A clearer, more accurate picture of school needs would be the first step towards solving the problems of District 3, and other crowded districts as well.

The NY Sun yesterday cited DOE enrollment numbers, concluding that “P.S. 87 on 78th Street would be at 50% capacity if only neighborhood students zoned for the school attended.” The way that this number turns out to be false reveals a lot about the DOE’s preliminary rezoning proposal.

If you kicked out all kids attending the school last year in grades K-5 who didn’t live in the zone, according to DOE data, the school would indeed be at 50% capacity. But DOE analysis misses a basic trend: each year, the percentage of in-zone kids has been rising. While 60 lottery seats were offered in 2007-08, only 35 lottery seats were offered for PS 87 kindergarteners for 2008-09.

Of those 35 seats, at least 16 went to siblings. Several others went to children with special needs who are assigned to PS 87 for CTT (collaborative team teaching) classes and other services. So of 175 kindergarten kids, fewer than a dozen, or about 7 percent, are non-sibling, non-special ed “out of zone” children.

The DOE is implying that it can gain scores of seats at PS 87 by limiting the lottery and expanding the catchment zone. But with fewer out of zone kids entering the school every year, redrawing PS 87’s zone lines won’t be much help in solving district overcrowding (as opposed to building a new school). Last night, parents from most grade schools on the Upper West Side met to discuss the DOE’s preliminary rezoning proposal. While each school community has its own unique circumstances, some unifying themes emerged:

· Parents want sibling preference to be grandfathered in during any transition period;

· Schools with successful G&T or dual language programs want to be able to maintain them;

· Zone lines raised more questions than they solved; parents called on DOE to be more specific about metrics used to estimate the influx of children from new housing.

In the coming days, District 3’s Community Education Council will look carefully at both the numbers and the underlying assumptions of DOE’s proposals. We will scrutinize DOE’s brand-new concept of “Target Zone Utilization,”to determine whether this number, which has no history or alignment with other educational goals, is an appropriate benchmark from which to build a plan.

Personally, I take hope from DOE comments that last week’s initial proposal was just a starting point, a basis for conversation, and that District 3 families will be able to shape a DOE proposal that is based on realistic numbers leading to a real solution to overcrowding in our schools. Maybe I am naive, or masochistic, but I’m really not upset. At least not yet.

Updates: DOE rep Will Havemann said that DOE representatives would, on the CEC’s invitation, come to additional meetings to hear parent and community comment on the rezoning proposal.

The CEC will next meet on October 2, at the JOA Complex (154 West 93d Street), at 6:30 pm. Parents and community members are welcome to attend, but organizers say there will be no opportunity for public comment. -hz

West Side parents famously covet seats at strong local elementary schools; the DOE, well aware of the constant demand, is “floating” two rezoning proposals to address the District 3 crunch, according to Elizabeth Green in today’s New York Sun. (Insideschools’ blogger Jennifer Freeman is quoted in the story; she’ll give us her take on the situation after the CEC meets this evening.)

One strategy would affect nearly a third of neighborhood families, and could place siblings of different ages at different schools. Another posits relocation of two well-regarded schools — the Anderson and Center schools — to allow their currently cramped buildings to accept more local students. As can be imagined, local blogs and street-corners are buzzing: Possible plans to expand the district farther uptown, for example, raise concerns about lottery-driven long commutes.

Any rezoning plans require CEC approval. If you’ve got something to say, now’s the time: The District 3 CEC will meet at 5:30 at the JOA Complex, 154 West 93d St.

Update: See the rezoning proposal here; DOE rep Will Havemann says it’s the “first iteration in a long conversation” — but says a final vote is desired by the end of November, and that kindergarten applications for 2009-10 will be affected by any rezoning plans approved this fall.

Classes in more than half of the city’s schools are growing larger, according to a new report by the New York State Department of Education, despite Contracts for Excellence funding directed at decreasing classes and lowering the student/teacher ratio.

While class sizes dropped in many schools citywide, classes actually grew in 53.9 percent of schools. In addition, the NYSED noted 70 city schools that received $100,000 or more where either class size or the student/teacher ratio increased. The estimated damage? $20 million in wasted funds, according to Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters.

Already-large schools were most challenged by first-year size reduction targets, said NYSED, which criticized DOE reporting and record keeping and urged better compliance in coming years’ efforts. It also asked for stricter accounting of how class-reduction funds were spent and for more stringent review of New York City’s C4E funding. In other words, accountability and transparency; sound familiar?

It was the last week of school, and the big story was the generally higher test scores, although the controversy continues over what the scores actually mean. Chancellor Klein was riding high on the test results, although the teachers slammed his performance in a UFT survey. New Orleans superintendent Paul Vallas, said to be short-listed for an eventual successor, says that New York students might say bye-bye to future summer vacations. Large middle schools are the first in line on the chopping block, however, as Klein suggests that he plans to slice and dice them into smaller schools (reported first here, on our blog). Maybe smaller schools will tone down the 8^th grade graduation frenzy. At best, they’ll avoid serious issues, like apparent negligence in one Brooklyn junior high school.

Another study confirms what what we already know: there is a woeful lack of playgrounds at New York elementary schools. Let’s hope the new grade school in midtown includes outdoor play space.

The Times ended the school year with a summer storm of local and national school stories: career programs seem to work; a segregated retention program is, unsurprisingly, controversial; a NYC Harbor-based high school builds confidence (see their profile for more); an immigrant parent program boosts involvement; and rent assistance keeps helps families in one place, and kids from switching schools. Whew.

The Times also cautions: summer means bad nutrition. Keep healthy and cool!

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

After all of the debate on this blog last week over school admissions and the headaches the process causes, I was wondering whether it is actually getting harder to get into desirable schools in Manhattan than it used to be. The answer appears to be both yes and no.

On the one hand, Districts 2 and 3 are adding population far faster than they are adding school seats. According to a report released last week by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer’s office, in four areas at risk for overcrowding, city officials approved new residential buildings that could add as many as 2,300 children to the neighborhoods’ schools — but added only 143 school seats in those areas. As those buildings get finished and families move in, school admissions pressure can only heat up.

But at the same time, the recent change in G&T admissions policy actually increased the percentage of children in districts 2 and 3 who meet eligibility requirements. As Eduwonkette noted in the comments to an earlier Insideschools blog post last week, she estimates that the percentage of children in District 2 classified as gifted increased this year from 7.1 to 15.2 percent; in District 3: an increase from 13.8 to 22.3 percent. So while the pressure may be on for neighborhood school admission, more families in these areas may have the option to choose a district-wide G&T program.

On one of our earlier posts about the changes to G&T admissions, Insideschools blog reader Crimson Wife commented:

The mess in the NYC G&T programs and the ridiculous competition for private school slots is a major reason why my [husband] accepted a position in one of his firm’s branch offices rather than its Manhattan headquarters.The bureaucrats need to know that the situation is deterring families from living in the city.

What a sad reality — and there is a growing perception that this truly is the reality. Monday’s Times had a column titled “Loving a City, but Hating a School System” about the challenges families face negotiating school admissions run by a DOE that’s “withholding, mercurial and unable to commit.” The column describes how, because the DOE regularly changes admissions rules and timelines, parents devise contingency plans for every admissions scenario. These plans often include moving on short notice within the city or out of it.

Although some might like it, the DOE is under no obligation to create a seat in gifted programs or desirable schools for every middle-class family that seeks one. But the DOE has perfected its ability to make and enforce policies without showing any concern for their affect on individual children and families. This attitude is offensive to everyone. But only some can respond by opting out, and for the system — and the city — to thrive, it needs to attract and retain educated, middle-class families who want to send their kids to the public schools.

All families seem to be asking is that the DOE stick to its own rules, give fair warning when a rule could change, and not penalize those who made plans based on yesterday’s rules. That doesn’t sound like too much to expect.

Confirming rumors floating earlier this week, the DOE has just announced that it will guarantee seats in gifted and talented programs in their entry grades to all children scoring at the 90th percentile or higher on the BSRA and OLSAT. The new G&T policy approved by the Panel for Education Policy earlier this year required children to score at the 95th percentile; the PEP will approve the change at a special meeting tomorrow morning, according to a DOE press release. Eligible children will receive preference at their older siblings’ school.

Letters go home around April 18, giving parents of eligible students a few weeks to rank programs and assess their chances of admission to citywide programs before their preference forms are due May 9.

According to the press release, the DOE is anticipating offering 2,300 seats for the entry grades for the fall, almost as many as currently exist in those grades. The press release also says that the proposed change will almost double the number of students who qualify for gifted programs. I think it’s safe to assume that the DOE decided it wanted to avoid the outcry from families who would have been shut out and from schools that would have lost their gifted programs.

At the same time, it’s clear from the DOE’s press release that even with this change, some districts might not have enough eligible students to field a gifted program. The PEP tomorrow is expected to approve a reduction in the number of students required for a program, from 10 to eight. Still, the DOE notes that “families that live in districts without sufficient numbers of qualified students will be asked to rank programs in nearby districts.”

The change is good news for districts 3 and 22, where schools have been concerned about the prospect of having their gifted programs cut. But it introduces an interesting situation for other districts, such as District 2, where significant numbers of students are expected to qualify but where existing gifted programs are few and far between. This policy revision could hasten a culture change in those districts.

Man, the DOE just can’t keep its mind made up about anything, can it? When DOE officials announced the new policy for admission to gifted and talented programs earlier this year, they were emphatic that research has proven that gifted programs are useful only for students who score in the 95th percentile or above on certain standardized tests. But now the Daily News is reporting that the DOE might be considering children in the 90th percentile and higher.

The Daily News speculates that “officials may be reluctant to exclude large numbers of children” — more than 50,000 kids tested for G&T this spring. If the rumor turns out to be true, I’ll wager that the change was made not because of the number of students who would be excluded with the higher cutoff but because of where those students live. In some districts that haven’t had robust G&T or test prep cultures, too few students might have scored at the 95th percentile or higher to field an entire class. That wouldn’t look too good for the DOE, which explained the policy change as an attempt to create equity across districts.

And perhaps the DOE is responding to the anger of parents and community leaders in districts where the new standard would almost certainly cut down on existing gifted programs, such as District 22 in Brooklyn. Their frustration and anger are nothing, of course, compared to that which the DOE can expect from parents whose kids narrowly missed the cut for G&T, no matter the cutoff ultimately used; letters will go home by the middle of this month, several weeks later than originally planned.

As the mayoral control forums have heralded in an open season against the last five years of New York City school reform, I’ve heard a growing defense of large high schools. Last week at a New School event, Merryl Tisch called on the DOE to “revitalize the concept of large high schools,” noting equity issues in the assignment of students to small schools; increased curricular and extracurricular options generated by a larger student body; and increased bureaucracy of having 1,500 principals citywide. Now, in today’s Post, we see the smiling principal of 4,500-student Francis Lewis High School, where despite the problems caused by overcrowding, students are successful and happy. It’s useful to know that some students prefer having “something for everyone” over small class sizes — although that’s a choice students and schools shouldn’t have to make.

The internet’s abuzz with talk of this week’s New York Times Magazine’s cover story, “Teaching Boys and Girls Separately.” The article describes a growth in single-sex education nationally, fueled by two sets of proponents of single-sex education: neuro(pseudo)scientists, who believe hard-wired differences in the way boys and girls learn make sex-segregated classrooms necessary; and those who want to empower boys and girls to succeed despite societal pressures that inhibit their success.

Those who believe in single-sex education because of its purported biological advantages are more plentiful, at least according to themselves, but in New York City, it’s the second set of single-sex advocates who have opened schools. The Young Women’s Leadership School and its three clones and Excellence Charter School, both of which appeared in the article, offer high academic standards and supportive environments. The tone of the schools may be aided by the lack of gender diversity, but those schools’ success “has at least as much to do with their rigorous academic approach, commitment to high-quality teaching, and shared culture of excellence as it has to do with the fact that they’re single sex,” writes Sara Mead of the Early Ed Watch Blog.

(The city has several other single-sex schools, including Urban Assembly’s all-girls math and science, business, and criminal justice schools for girls and history and citizenship school for boys; the Academy for Business and Community Development, an all-boys school that is adding a high school this fall; and Eagle Academy for Young Men, a successful high school that will see its first clone open in September. I’ve also visited a few schools that have single-sex periods during the day, often for math and science classes.)

Should public schools segregate kids by gender? The article makes it clear that despite proponents’ claims, there isn’t any biological justification for teaching kids separately and differently. And as Dana Goldstein at The American Prospect writes, the neuroscience approach smacks of “stereotyping, heteronormativity, and misogyny.”

But I also agree with Alexander Russo’s tentative claim that that single-sex education “could do some good” and Insideschools blogger Seth’s opinion that some children might feel more comfortable in a single-sex setting. As Sara Mead points out, research has shown that girls can benefit when they have math and science instruction to themselves. And when issues of sexuality and gender identity come up at school, it can be safer for kids to discuss them in a single-sex environment, as in the AP English class at TYWLS the article describes. I’ve been to a number of schools lately that have single-sex advisories for that purpose. But shouldn’t schools also teach young adults how to interact courteously and appropriately with their peers of the opposite gender, even when sex or sexuality is the topic of conversation? That’s an important lesson that single-sex schools are incapable of offering.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When choosing a middle school, what happens after hours is critical in a city where space is scarce and fields are threatened.

Parents mulling middle school options spend a great deal of time comparing math and science programs, class size and school philosophies. They also can’t help noticing the wide disparity of sports and after-school programs and activities

Extras like robotics and rock bands can be big factors for working parents. Who wouldn’t prefer having their kids in fun, structured activities in school instead of hanging out in city parks, unsupervised?

Kids care a lot about these offerings as well. My 5th-grade son is absolutely swayed by the promise of track, soccer and swim teams.

After school sports are even more critical at a time when the few athletic fields available to New York City kids are threatened by politics - as at Randall’s Island - or by development, as at Pier 40, where a huge rally is planned this Sunday at noon to save the fields from development.

So far, no middle school we’ve toured can compete with the offerings at M.A.T. in Chinatown, detailed in a great piece last week in the Downtown Express. The promise of the long-awaited community center that will be available free for all students at IS 289 will also be welcome.

But only M.A.T. offers a climbing wall (a great metaphor for middle schoolers, who literally climb them anyway) along with a surfing club and a tremendous track and field program. John De Matteo, the school’s ambitious athletic director, is building a really impressive program where 65 percent of all students participate in a sport.

To his credit, De Matteo has already met with the principal of Tompkins Square Middle School to explain how M.A.T. can support 16 sports and 38 teams. He plans to meet with other middle school principals to talk about how they can model their programs after M.A.T. as well.

De Matteo is happy to share his insights because he is so convinced that it makes a huge difference in the lives of middle schoolers.

“I believe that being on a structured sports team which teaches children how to work with their teammates, build sportsmanship, build community and character and motivate to improve grades will be one of the most important opportunities for our children to have,” he says.

Any advice M.A.T. can offer middle school principals will be a positive step for all New York City public schools. Space, money and scheduling issues all interfere with the creation of after school programs. Just last week, hundreds of kids and parents crowded into PS 3 in the West Village, pointing out the critical need for more schools in Chelsea and the Village. Kids wondered why luxury condos are cropping up everywhere when schools are not.

There are not enough good public schools in the city. We also need fields, after school programs and sports. Parents are going to have to make a lot of noise to make sure we get them.

In the meantime, let’s offer support and encouragement to the educators and visionaries who are creating, pushing and sharing programs that mean so much to our kids.