New York City is blessed and cursed by the most extensive system of school choice in the country. Everyone must apply to high school. Choose carefully. Once you enroll, it’s really hard to transfer. The yearlong application process begins at the end of 7th grade, when children bring home a...
Public school parents are mobilizing against anticipated education budget cuts which would cause teacher layoffs, overcrowding in classrooms, and otherwise adversely affect public schools. The City Council, finished its budget hearings on Monday with an additional call for the Department of...
Gifted & Talented offer letters will be mailed by June 17, according to a letter sent to principals today by the Department of Education. Families who applied online will receive the letter by email; others by regular mail. Notice comes later than last year when letters were sent on June 4...
Schools and parents from 59th Street to the top of Manhattan Island have banded together in SUN, Schools Unite Network, to promote school safety and to reduce and prevent crime among kids. SUN uses the internet as an interactive tool to gather information about crime and other safety issues and...
Letters to families of four-year-olds hoping to gain a slot in a public pre-Kindergarten program will be sent this Friday, June 10, two weeks later than the usual Memorial Day weekend notice, and particularly late for those whose tuition at private nursery school programs was due on June...
What are the specialized high schools? More than 25,000 students take the specialized science high school entrance exam (SSHAT) to vie for 5,000 seats at the specialized high schools, also called the exam schools. The exam is given early on a Saturday morning in October. (There are nine...
My sophomore came home from school the other day and declared that he was sick and tired of working on the same practice paragraphs over and over for the English Regents exam. He was bored of test prep and annoyed by constant conversation about test scores and student performance. And he decided...
“Do you have a child-centered marriage?” someone asked me last week. My initial response was, “I was not aware there was any other kind.” Turns out, most therapists (at least the ones I Googled) say couples have either a child-centered marriage or a parent-centered marriage. It boils down to...
PS 290 on Manhattan's Upper East Side, has 60 families waitlisted for kindergarten next fall. Dozens of children remain on kindergarten waitlists at popular schools around the city, and last week families received letters assigning them to other schools in their districts. At the end of...
The City Council "will do everything in our power to prevent teacher layoffs," Speaker Christine Quinn vowed today after the second of three education budget hearings the Council is holding this spring. She and her fellow council members have identified more than $75 million that could be cut...
Dear Judy, My son has been assigned to a high school he doesn't want to attend. How does the appeals process work? Queens Mom Dear Queens Mom, While the initial high school placements are made by computer, appeals are handled by human beings. If you have not already done so, enlist the help...
The end of the school year is in sight, and the lingering light is already messing with my kids' bedtimes, even before the joyous anarchy of vacation has set in. These past few bright evenings, I’ve had to field protests of “but it’s not time to go to sleep–it’s still day!” And despite my...
Parents of children attending New York’s public elementary schools get countless letters from the Department of Education. Below is a letter folks like us should receive but never will. Dear Parent, Please be advised that, owing to a pesky little thing we call “mismanagement,” the NYC...
Upper West Side parents learned at the District 3 Community Education Council meeting on Wednesday that PS 9 will phase out its popular gifted and talented program and will not admit incoming G&T class of kindergartners next fall. The belated announcement by the Department of Education,...
Lenny Trerotola introduces the high school admissions process to families of middle school students. (Photo by Erica Baum) Next year's high school applicants will learn where they have been accepted more than a month earlier than they have in the past, according the Department of Education,...
Out2Play has built 118 playgrounds (some with dedicated athletic facilities, all with student input) at schools around town since 2005. (Photo courtesy of Out2Play) With layoffs looming, it'd be nice to believe that the hardworking teachers we respect will make do on shoestring budgets- like...
Dear Judy, I have several questions about the G&T testing process. First, the DOE lost the test taken by one of my twins and it took a long time to find it. I checked with the school where it was administered and finally got the information that led to the test being located. Second, I...
The morning of Mothers’ Day, word spread quickly through the neighborhood: a blaze had been set sometime overnight on the playground of PS 29. Outside, a clump of parents and children pressed against the chain link fence, surveying the damage to the jungle gym. “Why would someone do that?” one...
The Department of Education today announced a do-over of this year's elections for community and citywide parent councils, and set a new voting schedule for both the advisory and the official "selector" vote. Chancellor Dennis Walcott acknowledged that this year's elections were mismanaged. “We...
This year's 5th graders will find out on Friday, May 20 where they will be going to middle school next fall. That's according to the newly updated admissions calendaron the Department of Education website. At least one school has already distributed the acceptance news to families. A parent told...
The Daily News reports today that Public Advocate Bill de Blasio launched a "Save our Teachers" website designed to help parents, and concerned citizens, take action against the mayor's proposed budget cuts, which would cause the loss of 6,000 teaching jobs, including more than 4,600 teacher...
UPDATE: May 11: Advocates for Justice, a public interest law firm, issued this clarification statement today regarding the education council elections: May 12th deadline set for resolution of Parent-DOE talks May 11, 2011, New York, NY --- Advocates for Justice , a public interest law firm,...
May 10 is the deadline for families of nearly 8,000 students who qualified or elementary school gifted and talented programs. Some 4,000 incoming kindergartners qualified this year, many more than last year. Five years ago the Department of Education adopted a new set of assessments,...
Q: Our son is a junior, and his college counselor has given him a list of about 10 schools he should consider. Some are a short drive out of NYC, while several are outside the state. I know making campus visits is important, and it's one way for our son to show his interest. But between our...
More than 8,200 8th graders are still sweating out this year's high school admissions process, waiting to hear where they have been acceptedfor September, and it's now time for current 6th and 7th-graders to start thinking about high school admissions. Some questions for families to...
As I battle with my 5-year-old daughter over school lunches, I am reminded of something a friend once said about gardening: “Tending a garden isn’t about growing things,” she told me. “It’s about killing things.” Her point was that nurturing plants was relatively easy: soil, water and sunlight...
Mayor Mike Bloomberg presented his nearly $66 billion final budget today, and confirmed he plans to eliminate 6,000 teaching jobs -- 4,278 through layoffs and about 1500 through attrition. Bloomberg blamed the state for the fiscal woes he said are forcing him to cut the city's teaching staff. ...
It was not quite a coincidence that the Martin Luther King High School Campus, which hosted the citywide Green Schools NYC 2011 last month, also won the Green Cup Challenge energy reduction contest, lowering its energy consumption by more than 35% during the month long quest to go greener. As a...
Families of the nearly 8,000 students who qualified for kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade gifted and talented programs for next fall are busy weighing their options and ranking their choices before applications are due on May 10. The Department of Education posted a list of open houses. ...
The degrees of my good luck are incalculable, in Sinagpore Math or Everyday Math or anything else. I have good health, a wonderful family, and a child who qualified, based on her pre-K test, for a range of "gifted and talented" programs. This lucky circumstance plays out in kooky paths, though,...
Dear Judy I am at sea. We just realized that finances will not allow my daughter to continue at the private school where she is finishing 8th grade. What can we do find a public high school at this late date?. Distressed Dear Distressed, You are entering the great New York City high school...
Every year, thousands of children are not placed at any of their high school choices—usually through no fault of their own. There simply aren’t enough good schools for all the students who want to attend them. If you are one of the students who is not placed, enlist the help of your 8th grade...
As the last glorious day of Spring Break washed over us in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden–a happy mess of pink petals and muddy feet–an e-mail slid silently into my in-box. At home that evening, I saw it: “your child meets the criteria for entry into a New York City Gifted & Talented program.” I...
There are hundreds of other schools in the city from which to choose. You may list up to 12 schools on your application. Some schools, called screened schools, require high grades and good attendance records. Some accept everyone who lives in their attendance zone. Others accept students by...
Four thousand incoming kindergartners qualified for the city's gifted and talented programs this year, the Department of Education reported today, with many more students tested this year than last. Some 14,040 four-year-olds were tested in 2011 as compared to 12,443 last year. After a steady...
Just over 500 parents nominated themselves to fill 325 seats on district and citywide parent councils, with the citywide councils for high school and English Language Learners getting more than 70 candidates each. Several of the 32 district councils only attracted five or six...
Score reports and applications for students who qualified for kindergarten and 1st grade gifted and talented programs were sent yesterday, April 26, by email and regular mail. There is no word yet on how many students tested and how many qualified this year. Families of eligible students must...
Students in grades 3-8 will take the state reading (English Language Arts) exam for three days next week: May 4, 5, and 6. The following week they face three days of math tests: May 11, 12, and 13. For years, the tests were given in January and March, but last year the state decided to give the...
Monday, April 25 update: We asked the DOE for a final count of applicants but it was not available yet, according to a spokesperson. They are waiting to count mail-in applications. Tonight at midnight is the deadline for parents to submit an application to serve on district and citywide...
Chancellor Walcott cooks waffles at PS 10 in Brooklyn. (Photo courtesy of homedecornews.com) Like Dennis Walcott, I have made good on a promise to cook waffles in a public school. And like Walcott, I'm pretty fit. In fact, I also volunteered to teach a little yoga session in the same pre-K...
Dear Judy, If I am waitlisted at my zoned school for kindergarten, does that mean I am guaranteed to get a seat in 1st grade? That’s what my zoned school told me. Hopeful Dear Hopeful. Zoned schools are supposed to take all of the kids in their zone for 1st grade and above. BUT that has not...
Want to learn more about the system of high school choice in New York City? Want to sound off on how the process has worked for your family or offer suggestions on how to improve it? The Center for New York City Affairs and Insideschools.org present a forum "High Stakes Decisions: How NYC's...
I finally came up with solutions to New York’s vexing problems regarding school overcrowding, pitiful educational planning, charter school "co-location" and rampant growth in residential development. It took me all afternoon, but I did it. Like most problems in New York City, these big issues...
By now, you may have heard about the case of the missing PTA dollars at PS 29 (if you haven’t, you can read about it here and here). For a school that relies on parent fundraising to offset harsh budget cuts, paying for everything from teachers' assistants to school supplies, the roughly $100,000...
In March, Community Roots, a sought-after elementary charter school in Fort Greene, won approval to expand and start a middle school next September. On Thursday, faced with opposition to the plan from community members and parents in PS 67 with which it shares a building, the co-principals...
Truck Farm at Bancroft Elementary, Washington DC. Photo by Sarah Bernardi NYC public schools will be on vacation for Earth Day on April 22, but plenty of schools are organizing environmental excitement before or after the break. The teachers who run Educating Tomorrow have been doing their part,...
Sean Keaton, former principal of PS 20 in Fort Greene, was acquitted in a Brooklyn court last week of "menacing in the third degree," a charge stemming from an altercation with a teacher in the principal's office in 2009, Department of Education officials confirmed. But the DOE would not say...
State Education Commissioner David Steiner has given the Department of Education's space planners a case of the jitters. On March 31, Steiner overturned the city’s plan to move Brooklyn East Collegiate Charter School into the building of Brooklyn's PS 9 and phasing-out MS 571 for this coming...
When the city decides to close a low-performing high school, it is usually phased out over a period of four years. That mean no new students are admitted, but the students who are there are supposed to be able to stay until they graduate. Now, a student advocacy group charges that the city has...
Q: My son has a choice of high schools to attend. Doesn't the reputation of a high school -- whether it's well known or not -- have an effect on college admissions? A: True, some high schools have a stronger reputation than others, and there is indeed a certain amount of "name recognition" in...
P-Tech Principal Rashid Davis, shown speaking to prospective students at a fair in February, was at last week's supplementary round fair. If you are one of the 8,000 8th graders who were rejected at all their high school choices, here's our advice: Fill out a new application by April 15, even if...
