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.