« Who Rents Here? 'It's Like a Nets Game, Only Yellower!' »
June 18, 2008
Chancellor Joel Klein Discusses Brooklyn Schools
While the city's Department of Education continues to grapple with crisis-level graduation and proficiency rates, Chancellor Joel Klein is finding himself saddled with another problem: growing demand. Thousands of apartments are being added to Brooklyn and more parents are deciding to raise their children here — a positive quality of life indicator, but one that causes overcrowding at schools like P.S. 8 in Brooklyn Heights. Klein told us in an interview (published in full after the jump) that he would add two trailer classrooms to P.S. 8 and "reduce the number of students attending the school from out of the school zone." He also said no new schools, including the middle school DUMBO parents have been asking for, are planned for that district because they aren't needed. "District 13 overall is enrolled below the total district-wide capacity, even taking into account additional planned residential units," he said. In November, the department will reveal its next five-year plan. "We plan to look at the potential need for school construction based on demographic patterns within districts ...Additionally, we will pursue partnerships with developers outside of the Capital Plan to build new schools where it makes geographic, financial, and programmatic sense." On the controversy surrounding Pre-K admissions, he said overall the system has been "a real improvement over the days when parents had to camp outside schools to have a chance at a seat." Nevertheless, he said the process would be improved.
In other areas of Brooklyn like Bed-Stuy and Bushwick, charter schools are giving their district counterparts a run for their money, beating them in competency exams by wide margins. Klein said this is a good thing "because a charter school reaching 100 percent student proficiency in math or English with a challenging population of students forces other educators across the City to acknowledge that outstanding results are achievable." He goes into detail about why he thinks students are performing better at these schools. And finally, Klein busted out some math on potential budget cuts, including a link detailing the potential cut for each city school. Brooklyn Tech could lose the most money citywide — $1.08 million or 4.5 percent of its total budget. Other Brooklyn schools that could receive among the highest percent cut are P.S. 8 in Brooklyn Heights, P.S. 282 in Park Slope and the Urban Assembly academies. The city wants to spread cuts across schools equally, but can't because of state rules that favor the lowest-performing schools.
Brownstoner: The city's new Pre-K enrollment system has been hotly criticized. Parents are upset they now send their application out of state, whereas before they enrolled at the school, and are now finding siblings are separated and their children are being sent to programs far from their district. Did you know these things would happen when you changed the enrollment system?
Chancellor Klein: Because this was a new process two things were inevitable: we made some mistakes and many parents were anxious about the changes. I understand that sending your four-year-old to school is anxiety-producing to begin with. But I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that we made important improvements for the parents of four-year-olds. For the first time, parents enrolling their children in pre-K programs were given information about all the programs available to them and could rank their choices on their applications. And we placed children based on a clear set of priorities. This is a real improvement over the days when parents had to camp outside schools to have a chance at a seat.
We received complaints, though far fewer than one would guess from reading the papers or blogs. Some of the alleged mistakes weren’t actually mistakes: siblings were given the highest priority, for instance, but some pre-K programs were so popular that there were more sibling applicants than available seats. We reviewed thousands of applications by hand and identified about 120 cases where a child wasn’t assigned to the appropriate school. We corrected each of these mistakes.
I should add that while we used a New York City-based vendor (with out-of-state offices) to perform bulk mailing and data entry, all of the matching and placement work was done by our enrollment office. We do not have the ability to process thousands of applications in-house; like other city agencies, we contract with vendors to perform basic services.
Do you think separating Pre-K students from their siblings or sending them to programs farther from their district has an effect on the child's education? Are you considering any new changes to the system?
To be clear, of 20,000 applicants 17,000 were placed in pre-K programs and 15,000 received their first choice. We made errors, and corrected them, on about 120 of 20,000 applications. Any parent who didn't get a placement can enter the second round starting June 23.
We will definitely work to improve the pre-K process.
Parents are complaining the system gives them a lack of control in their child's education. Coupled with their complaints about the poor quality of certain schools and the lottery system, are you concerned they will be turned off to the public education system, and ultimately the city? How would you respond to those concerns?
We want parents to be as involved in the education of their children as possible. And we’re making this happen. We put a parent coordinator in every school to assist parents in resolving school issues. We created a new Family Engagement Office to help with problems that can’t be resolved in the school, to reinvigorate the voices of parents on school leadership teams, and to support organized parent bodies in addressing larger district and system-wide issues. We are reaching out to immigrant families in their own language through Native Language Forums across the city.
When I visit schools or attend public meetings where a lot of your readership lives, in Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope, or Fort Greene, parents tell me how improved the schools have become in recent years. Obviously there’s frustration as well and many of our schools aren’t close to where they should be. But what I’m hearing is that more parents than ever believe that public schools offer viable choices for their children.
Currently there are thousands of new or under construction residential units in District 13, which includes Brooklyn Heights, Downtown Brooklyn, DUMBO and Fort Greene. Yet there are no new public schools planned. How will the department handle this growth?
The current Five-Year Capital Plan, which allocates funding for school construction projects, does not currently include new building construction in district 13 because district 13 overall is enrolled below the total district-wide capacity, even taking into account additional planned residential units. That said, there are some individual district 13 schools whose enrollment is over capacity. In the next Five-Year Plan, which we will put out in November and which begins in July 2009, we plan to look at the potential need for school construction based on demographic patterns within districts and the accessibility of existing schools. This will be a first: we haven’t previously drilled down below the district level. Additionally, we will pursue partnerships with developers outside of the Capital Plan to build new schools where it makes geographic, financial, and programmatic sense. For example, the Beekman School in Lower Manhattan is being built in conjunction with a residential project by Forest City Ratner.
Clarification: Would students at below capacity schools have the option of attending these new schools built within their district, or would districts be somehow further delineated?
The capacity of a student’s current school is not relevant to whether that student is accepted into a school that he or she is eligible for.
Could you give examples of potential partnerships with developers in Brooklyn ? What about Two Trees’ Dock Street project in DUMBO?
We don’t name our partners, in Brooklyn or elsewhere in the city, before we reach agreements.
How long, from planning to enrollment, does it take to complete a new school? Should we get a start on these new schools now, before all the families move in, or wait?
It takes about 18-24 months to build a new school, depending on the scope of work; this doesn’t include identifying a site and designing the building. The timing for construction is established by criteria in the Capital Plan. We don’t “wait” to build until schools are overcrowded, at any rate.
Despite the schools in District 13 operating at 66 percent capacity, parents are complaining the middle school in particular is of poor quality, and are asking that a new one be built. How will you address their concerns?
We recognize that in the current Capital Plan the way we look at overcrowding on a district-wide level may not take into account pockets of overcrowding in certain neighborhoods. In the next Capital Plan, we will take a look more closely at these pockets of overcrowding. A draft of the next plan is scheduled for publication in November.
Opening new schools has been an extremely effective form of improving a neighborhood’s school options. Each year, we accept proposals typically submitted by a range of educators, community members, community non-profit organizations, and other education stakeholders who are interested in opening a new public school, usually in a specific neighborhood.
With so much of the land spoken for in these communities, what types of property does the department envision using for new schools once it's determined they're needed? Why isn’t the city taking this opportunity to claim space in some of the many new buildings under construction, especially if it's being offered, like in DUMBO's Dock Street project?
We do look for alternative ways to build schools because of the challenges around finding appropriate sites for new school construction. For instance, we revived a 1969 initiative created by the State Legislature called the Educational Construction Fund, which allows the DOE to lease property to a developer in exchange for building a new school on the property.
At P.S. 8 in Brooklyn Heights, there are trailers out in the parking lot, enabling the school to keep its Pre-K program, but the elementary portion of the school is still overcrowded. What’s going to happen as that school continues to grow?
There aren’t any trailers at P.S. 8 this year. However, in order to maintain the school’s pre-K program and accommodate growing enrollment, the school will have two trailers containing portable classrooms next school year. We are working with the school to reduce the number of students attending the school from out of the school zone. As always, we will continue to track growth so that we can address the school’s facility needs.
There are also no new schools planned to serve the district that includes Boerum Hill and Gowanus, where 1,000 units are under construction and 700 are in advanced planning. How does the department intend to handle this growth?
Projections for residential buildings around the downtown Brooklyn area, as elsewhere in the city, anticipate fewer than one child per unit, and our current Capital Plan addresses this growth. As new development occurs, we will re-assess and, if need be, update our new school seat projections.
Many charter schools outperform their local districts on standardized tests by wide margins ⎯ Brooklyn Excelsior in Bushwick and Excellence Charter School for Boys in Bed-Stuy by between 15 and 48 percent last year, depending on the tests. Why do you think this is?
Charter schools must meet the same performance standards established for all public schools as well as the goals in their charter. If they don’t, they can be put on probation or shut down. Additionally, families enroll their children in charter schools entirely by choice — in other words, students are never “zoned” to attend a charter school. This means that charter schools must compete with other schools for students and must educate students well in order to continue operating. Charter schools ⎯ like Excelsior and Excellence in Brooklyn, and many others across the City ⎯ are pushing the boundaries of what students can achieve in public school. I believe that charter schools are good for the entire system because a charter school reaching 100 percent student proficiency in math or English with a challenging population of students forces other educators across the City to acknowledge that outstanding results are achievable.
Has the department studied why these schools are performing higher than their district counterparts? If so, what are the findings so far? And is the department implementing any similar solutions?
An informative report about New York City public charter schools was published last year. One significant finding published in the report is that charter school students benefit because charter schools can be flexible in the amount of time that students spend in school. It is intuitive that students who spend more time in school, learn more at school. Working with the United Federation of Teachers ⎯ the NYC teachers’ union ⎯ we increased the school week by 150 minutes in 2006, adding an extended session to the school day. We have also worked with the UFT to create salary differentials based on factors other than seniority, which is historically the only measure taken into consideration when determining teacher salary in district schools. We can now reward teachers who agree to work in our highest need schools and who reach achievement goals with students at these schools. Specifically, we offer teachers a housing stipend of $15,000 if they agree to come to work in New York City schools from another district. We also created a lead teacher position that is remunerated an additional $10,000 annually for experienced teachers who work in high-need schools and mentor their colleagues. Most recently, more than 200 high-need schools agreed to participate in a school-wide performance bonus program, which will reward teachers in schools that meet student achievement goals.
Charter schools are able to make their own decisions around things like the amount of time students spend in school and how teachers are compensated because charter schools operate outside of many rules that district schools are subject to ⎯ including Chancellor’s regulations and labor contracts. In exchange for the ability to manage more freely, charter schools are held rigorously accountable. As I described earlier, charter schools are closed down if their students are not learning. The principle of accountability is at the center of our public school reforms: school leaders must be held accountable for the results they achieve; in order to hold them accountable, they must be empowered to make the critical decisions that affect the school. You can read more about the Children First reforms here.
Which Brooklyn schools would be most affected by the proposed $400 million budget cut? What programs should be cut?
Before getting into specifics about schools, I want to give a little background about the overall education budget for next year. For Fiscal Year 2009 (which applies to the 2008-09 school year), the Department of Education will receive a $664 million budget increase over FY08. This includes $535 million in new state aid and $129 million in new city aid. Unfortunately, we also anticipate $963 million in new expenses, due to increased costs of labor, energy, food, and special education services, among others. This leaves us with a net shortfall of $299 million in school funding.
After careful review, we were able to achieve $200 million in savings from non-school budgets, leaving $99 million remaining to be trimmed from school budgets, but due to restrictions from Albany that burden cannot be shared equitably among schools. The State has provided $242 million in funding under the "Contracts for Excellence," and requires that roughly 75 percent of those funds be spent in only 50 percent of our high-need, low-performing schools. If these restrictions remain intact, some schools will face up to a 6 percent reduction in purchasing power, while others may see their budgets grow by as much as 4 percent. We are asking Albany to give us flexibility over how we can spend $63 million out of that $242 million; if it agrees, the budget cuts will be shared equitably by all schools, with each facing a manageable ⎯ though unpleasant ⎯ 1.4 percent reduction in purchasing power. Pending the outcome of our appeal, we have withheld disbursement of those $63 million in funds.
In mid-May, the DOE released preliminary school budgets. A spreadsheet detailing the impact of those cuts for every school is posted here (see clarification). If the state grants flexibility over the $63 million in withheld funds, schools currently showing budget cuts larger than 1.4 percent will see those cuts reduced to 1.4 percent. If the State denies our request, schools currently showing a 1.4 percent budget reduction will see their budgets grow.
As always, principals make decisions about their budgets in consultation with parents and teachers on their School Leadership Teams. The DOE will provide support and guidance as needed to help principals identify strategic solutions that minimize the impact of cuts on students and classroom learning.
Clarification: City schools collectively face a $99 million budget cut. The state restricts how a portion of its money can be spent to favor the lowest performing schools, so higher performing schools, like Brooklyn Tech, face an even greater budget cut, sometimes up to 6 percent, while the lowest-performing schools would see an overall increase of up to 4 percent. The city is asking for flexibility so each school would have an equal, 1.4 percent cut. That request is currently pending in Albany. The spreadsheet reflects each school's cut without flexibility, except the schools marked with a 1.4 percent cut ⎯ those schools are the ones favored by the state's formula, and could see a budget increase of up to 4 percent.
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.brownstoner.com/mte/mt-tb.cgi/5231
Comments
What the department of education should institute is a salary cap for parents that are allowed to send their kids to public schools. If your family income is over $250 K a year, you should be required to send at least one child to private school and the cap can increase if you have more children. There are way too many wealthy families in Brooklyn sending their kids to public school and overcrowding the sytem.
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 10:23 AM
You are kidding, right? You realize we all pay taxes to fund public schools? Are you suggesting we refund proportionally to those who send children elsewhere? Because then you're talking vouchers which basically take more money out of the budget.
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 10:39 AM
I don't even know where to begin. The DOE bases enrollment projections on the number of bathrooms a unit contains. I guess the DOE doesn't think parents don't raise families in 2 bedroom 1 bath apartments.
If there is plenty of space then why weren't 21 out 120 fifth graders at my kid's Boerum Hill school placed anywhere? This doesn't include the students that were placed at low performing schools and the situation is the same for other district 15 schools. Today, the DOE admitted that there is not enough space to place district 15 CTT/special education students.
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 10:39 AM
10:23
that is the dumbest thing i have ever heard
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 10:42 AM
That is possibly the stupidest thing I've read on this site in a long time
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 10:43 AM
10:39, no I am not kidding. You should pay taxes to help your fellow citizen that either is not as fortunate as you or fell into bad times. It might actually provide good karma for yourself as well, that you are doing a good deed. Greed is not good my friend, eventhough you learned that from Gordon Gekko.
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 10:49 AM
10.49 - they already do pay taxes, way more than you presumably. But you want something from them? Or you want something for free?
basically, you just want what they have, and you're talking about greed?
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 10:52 AM
The issue of not wanting to pay taxes if you don't have kids comes from the perception, probably correct, that the system is broken, run beauracrats that have no interest other than their paycheck and is not likely to get better.
Posted by: daveinbedstuy at June 18, 2008 10:56 AM
Wow.. Leave it to the State to fuck over the crown jewels of the system (Tech and Stuy)...
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 11:03 AM
10.49 - I trust that you are sending all your income above that needed for housing and food to those less fortunate than you. i.e. the 3 billion world citizens living on a dollar a day. If you are keeping that money and spending in it on non-necesseties like internet connections, TV and phones, you should not that your greed will get you nowhere.
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 11:03 AM
Ok, 10:23,
Why stop at schools? The rich should fund their own roads and bridges to reduce the congestion on public roads for the rest of us, their own libraries so they are not hogging our books, their own private parks so there is more room for the rest of us, their own police force and fire department so that those of us less fortunate get faster responses when help is needed, their own subway system (talk about relieving overcrowding), their own private health inspectors for fancy restaurants so that we can get the mice out of Wendy's and our local pizza places faster, and they should be barred from public hospitals.
Of course, if you start reducing the constituencies for these public services and pretty soon the political support won't be there to fund them. All the big political donors will start telling their reps "hey, I am paying for my own private [fill in the blank], why should my taxes fund a public one?" So pick your poison -- sharing an overcrowded school with the children of rich folks or reduced funding and political support for public education.
Posted by: slopefarm at June 18, 2008 11:06 AM
Can we stop talking about 10:23's brainless, reactionary proposal and taxes and start talking about what Klein actually said?
His pre-K comments are untrue, and he skirted the issue of re-zoning. He's not going to add schools in District 15 because of "under capacity" schools in District 13. They are "under capacity" because they suck and no one wants to send their children there. The problem is there are too few QUALITY schools anywhere, and the situation for middle schools is acute.
What is he going to do to increase the number of QUALITY schools in neighborhoods growing far rapidly than his tortoise-like planning process?
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 11:11 AM
so can we finally put to rest the B.S premise that supporting the Dock Street project is de facto support of a new middle school for Dumbo? The connection is an invention of the developer. A puff of smoke. A smoke screen. Clearly, folks, it's not in the cards.
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 11:13 AM
Wait a minute - I didn't realize Brownstoner conducted this interview (thanks Mr. B. but I think parents would prefer Klein to address the concerns of parents instead of conducting interviews and giving testimony in DC). I would hope he would extend the same courtesy to Inside Schools that he did to a real estate blog. I wish you had asked him how much money was spent on the courier service that hand delivered G&T placements throughout the city, how much money has been spent on "consultants" for Europe, why were school administrators told not tell parents their children's middle school placements (letters to parents were delayed and delayed again without explanation), what is the plan for general ed. and special ed. students who were not placed in middle schools. JK needs to get his head out of the sand and realize that our children are more than a test score.
10:39
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 11:14 AM
Guest #1 has posted the most asinine remark I've ever heard. The fact that schools are funded by taxes notwithstanding, one of the reasons the high performing public schools are what they are is because parents contribute a LOT of cultural capital and money. What makes a great school is involvement of parents who have a lot of that cultural capital to invest. Income is a function, but parent education level plays a big part in it, too. Maybe every child from a low socio-economic background can't benefit from that as it stands now, but at least there are some who can. One of the great things about public school is the diversity of cultural and economic backgrounds. OK, there are obviously other points to make here as well as caveats. I know that and I'm not here to write a dissertation.
But I think most pressing and important question is HOW do we make the low performing schools better? It's not just more money. How do we infuse those schools and their children with cultural capital?
Are there any Cultural Venture Capitalists out there??
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 11:18 AM
If anyone would like to engage this topic further on a less absurd level then many of the comments above, take a look at the "Growing Pains" report by Comptroller Thompson's office. I couldn't find a link, but if you do a search on the title, it will come back in the results.
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 11:18 AM
11:18,
The way to improve the schools is to hold a gun to parents heads and force them to send their children to underperforming schools which is what I think the DOE is trying to do. Three years ago MS 88 was the middle school that the DOE was trying to push and I think it is turning around. This year it seems to be the secondary schools housed in the former John Jay HS building were children are greeted with metal detectors on arrival. Parents who have other alternatives will avail themselves of those options if they are unable to change an undesirable placement.
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 11:35 AM
10:23 was the most brilliant troll I've read on this site in a very long time.
I bow at your feat, wise and most worshipful troll.
Posted by: Polemicist at June 18, 2008 11:35 AM
Agree, I love how Chancellor Klein will address questions from a real estate blog, but not parents. The sad part about this is that Mayor Bloomberg appointed him Chancellor with the idea that he would bring some much-needed changes and improvement to the schools. Instead, the schools have improved despite the Chancellor -- mainly because of the hard work and fundraising efforts of the affluent and not-so-affluent middle-class parents who are now using them.
Right now, what I see is a DOE intent on an expensive public relations effort designed to convince people the schools are improving because of their changes. To that end, we see wasteful money spent on quality reviews, letter grades and the like that not only fail to give potential parents any sense of the school, but the DOE themselves ignore. Principals of schools getting bad reviews or grades (whether deserved or not) are simply left to themselves to "improve" them with no guidance or funds. Wow, thanks, Mr. Klein -- that's real accountability.
Furthermore, and much sadder, is that Chancellor Klein continues to keep in place the entrenched bureaucracy in which politically well-connected bureaucrats are given high pay jobs at the DOE -- rewarded because of who they know rather than any kind of merit. Except now they also get high paying jobs at the new "Learning Support Organizations" which have replaced the district offices and offer barely any help to the local schools, but collect high fees from them to pay all the bureaucrats there who do very little work (but of course, are well-connected within the DOE).
The school construction authority remains as corrupt as ever -- somehow it takes hundreds of thousands dollars more to complete a small construction project at a local school than in any other institutional setting.
So, thanks, Joel Klein, for taking money that should be spent on kids' education and using it to pay for high-priced consultants, bureaucrats, and the like, in order to keep in play the false notion that the improvement in the schools has anything to do with the DOE. The schools that are better are better because the parents who send the kids there are working hard together with the overworked principal and teachers to get the kids the best resources possible with limited DOE funds and what the parents can raise. Chancellor Klein calls for accountability for principals, but offers absolutely no accountability for his own highly-paid administrators and consultants. Shame on you, Chancellor.
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 11:43 AM
11:13: You can find the "Growing Pains" report linked in my question... "Currently there are thousands of new or under construction residential units in District 13, which includes Brooklyn Heights, Downtown Brooklyn, DUMBO and Fort Greene. Yet there are no new public schools planned. How will the department handle this growth?"
Sorry that wasn't more clear!
Posted by: sarah ryley at June 18, 2008 12:02 PM
http://www.comptroller.nyc.gov/bureaus/opm/reports/05-09-08_growing_pains.pdf
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 12:07 PM
11:35, I couldn't disagree with you more. You are right that the Board of Ed is trying to force middle-class parents (and other parents who are willing and able to pay attention) into lower-performing schools. This effort will fail. People with means will leave, go to private school, start a private school (what I'm doing), or somehow wiggle their way into a better performing schools. The Board of Ed cannot close all the loopholes.
As a former teacher in the NYC Board of Ed and a present parent, the sine qua non of educational excellence is a stellar principal. A fish rots from the head down, and the converse is true, too. The job of leading a school is overwhelming and often unrewarding. It is paid too little, and not only supported too little but also often deliberately crapped upon by the people paid to "support."
Several crappy schools in my neighborhood were turned around by fabulous principals: PS 58 and PS 8 come to mind. PS 38, with all the potential in the world, languishes under the "leadership" of a pension padder, just waiting for retirement.
The Board of Ed should recruit, compensate, and support excellent principals. The rest will follow.
(And no, I'm not a principal, nor am I related to one.)
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 12:12 PM
100% right, 11:43. Too much is spent on trying to convince the public how great the DOE is doing, and not enough on trying to engage a working dialogue between parents and teachers. Sadly one factor making it difficult is the busing issue. It's that much harder for parents to be actively involved in a school that is well out of the neighborhood. Harder for kids to be involved in good after school programs for the same reason. too much time traveling, too little time to study. Too little time to spend in educational programs. and it's more expensive.
I've always thought that the big mistake we made was busing kids around instead of working to make all neighborhood schools better. Busing was a cheap fix - it wasn't affirmative action. In a way it was really a new type of discrimination because the point wasn't to put time and effort into the schools and neighborhoods that needed it, but to do as little as possible while looking busy. And the result is the problems the school system has today.
Parents today often are both working, often with longer hours, just to make ends meet. They travel, and then they have additional travel time if they want to be involved with the schools their child attends. It's often just a sheer impossibility for a parent to cope with everything and work full time. Neighborhood schools worked so much better overall. Busing and sending kids out of their neighborhoods to school eats up valuable time that could have been better spent in educating them.
And lets not even get into wasteful spending by the city.
Posted by: bxgrl at June 18, 2008 12:14 PM
You make very good points, 12:12, although I'd add that a combination of forcing good parents into lower-performing schools AND a good principal is basically what turned around PS 8 and 58. Most of the involved parents in those school zones had sent their kids to 29, until it became impossible to get variances anymore. But you would not have had the parents come into PS 8 and 58 in large enough numbers without putting a new principal in place that those parents had confidence in as a change agent, and who did, indeed, improve the schools within a very short time. I don't know anything about PS 38, but the DOE has tried for a while to improve PS 32 and clearly the principal hasn't convinced all that many parents in the neighborhood to try the school. Maybe that will change, as more parents simply don't have a choice, but it's certainly taking much longer than other schools which had similar situations but new, dynamic principals leading the way.
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 12:23 PM
And in the Times today:
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/money-for-needy-goes-to-wealthy-schools-report-says/index.html?hp
Posted by: bxgrl at June 18, 2008 12:25 PM
"I wish you had asked him how much money was spent on the courier service that hand delivered G&T placements throughout the city, how much money has been spent on "consultants" for Europe, why were school administrators told not tell parents their children's middle school placements (letters to parents were delayed and delayed again without explanation), what is the plan for general ed. and special ed. students who were not placed in middle schools. JK needs to get his head out of the sand and realize that our children are more than a test score."
Well said. I heard about the hand-delivered courier thing and was like, wtf.
Posted by: Heather at June 18, 2008 1:08 PM
Just to continue beating up on the first poster a bit, there's a school in my neighborhood that attracted a lot of my friends and their kids, from all income levels. These were families with a track record of working hard and giving their all to the schools that their kids attended. None of them are there any more. They were alienated by a defensive and underachieving principal. Some went to private schools, some went to schools in neighboring zones, some even went to schools in Manhattan. And this school, which had the potential to be a great school, is under-enrolled.
When a school in a gentrifying neighborhood is under-enrolled, the DOE should take a long, hard look at the principal. Schools should reflect their communities, and when parents who can send their children elsewhere do, the school and neighborhood suffers.
Posted by: Anonymous at June 18, 2008 1:15 PM
12:23 -
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 1:18 PM
Oops, I accidentally hit "post".
12:23, PS 32 has a new principal as of this year. I don't know if that will change things along with their new gifted program.
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 1:21 PM
The inability of the Board of Ed to show any foresight and planning on how to improve the public school situation in Brooklyn is by far the biggest reason why I will be uprooting my family from the borough I love and relocating to Pelham. Complain all you want about high taxes in Westchester - at the very least you can take great comfort in the fact that your child will receive a solid education. There are just too many variables that lie out of a parent's control when it comes to public education in the city.
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 2:17 PM
2.17 - metal detectors being one of them
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 2:47 PM
Right on, 11:11 and 12:12. Also, why are all the good G&T programs in Manhattan? Why doesn't Brooklyn have a Hunter or Anderson (starting in K) school of its own?
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 3:19 PM
11:11 said:
"He's not going to add schools in District 15 because of "under capacity" schools in District 13. They are "under capacity" because they suck and no one wants to send their children there."
...and they will continue to suck until local parents start sending their kids there, and become involved in the schools, because they have no other choice.
That's how many of those schools in District 15, which D13 parents would rather send their kids to, GOT good. When it became impossible to get a variance into PS 321 and almost impossible to go to a lottery school, parents sent their kids to other D15 schools and improved them.
But too many parents have the mentality that volunteering in schools, working with the PTA, etc., is something for OTHER people to do. You make the school good for me--then I'll send my kid there! I can't do it myself! I'm busier than other people!
D13 schools will get better when D13 parents make them that way, and they'll do that only when they have no other option except private or the burbs.
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 3:32 PM
A few Dist. 13 elementary schools have gotten better, as witness PS 8, where the turnaround started with a new principal and a small group of committed parents, and PS 11, where a similar group of parents stuck around for a few difficult years until the principal was replaced. Even the turnaround at those schools is fragile thanks to the recent round of budget cuts.
With Dist. 13 middle schools it is a different story. There are middle schools in the district, true, but they are for the most part far from the downtown area where much of the development is taking place, i.e. Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, and the PS 8 zone. And those that have achieved moderate success have done so with a traditional educational philosphy that is very far from the things that the middle class parents who have come back to PS 8 and PS 11 are looking for. Are those parents going to send their kids into Bed-Stuy or into the projects to one of these traditional schools, where kids wear uniforms and stay for mandated long school days? Very unlikely.
The Arts and Letters school will benefit, and possibly the Ronald Edmonds school (MS 113). the latter if they can successfully achieve some racial balance. The kids who score high on the tests will go to the citywide gifted schools. Those who can afford it will send their kids to private schools, and those who can't will move.
I don't think the under capacity middle schools will have a sudden influx of middle class kids to raise their test scores unless a group of these middle-class families decide to take over one of these schools, as did happen with PS 11 and with MS 51 and others in Dist. 15. But the geography of Dist. 13, and the placement of schools within the district, makes the prospect much more unlikely--hence the recent agitation for a new middle school downtown and the discussion about the Two Trees proposed development.
Klein is short-sighted about neighborhood schools; middle-class parents won't come back to them unless they see something very positive happening. It has happened with some schools--but at the moment it is happening in spite of the DOE.
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 4:06 PM
We sent our child to a D13 school and after 3 years we are running for the hills (aka Manhattan). The DOE is pathetic and cares nothing for parent involvement despite lots of lip service. As someone who committed enormous time and effort toward improving my neighborhood school, I can say from experience that District 13 is a total backwater and the DOE has no interest in supporting parents who want to make a positive contribution.
Could not agree more with the poster who said it's all about the principal. The DOE is overempowering principals at the expense of parent/community involvement. If you have a lame principal, your school will always suck and it is next to impossible to get bad principals removed at this point.
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 4:11 PM
Sadly, Arts & Letters, the most exciting thing to happen to D13 in a long time, is one of the Urban Assembly schools which will be receiving big cuts...
That is a school the community should rally around to support.
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 4:14 PM
Seats in private schools for the sixth grade are scarce. A lot of the private schools just have two or three openings so a lot of parents apply for fifth grade which seems to have more spots. Parents can hedge their bets by applying to Manhattan schools such as ICE.
Arts and Letters is considered a Region 8 school and it is included in the district 13, 14, 15 and 16 DOE middle school booklets but maybe that will change and it will become a District 13 school.
The whole ranking system is a sham. Parents are asked to rank six schools in order of preference but the reality is is that if choices one or two don't accept your child your other choices will already be filled by families who ranked your 3-6 choices first and second. Middle schools are sent a list of students who ranked the first and second and "interview" those students first thus they are able to fill seats in the first round.
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 4:31 PM
Right on 4:06. I agree with everything you said.
As far as I can tell, the success of PS 8 is partially due to the fact that the school was under subscribed when the new principal came on board - which meant there was an opportunity to hire a lot of young energetic new teachers. It would have been much more difficult to turn the school around if it was already operating at capacity.
Posted by: fexleycb at June 18, 2008 4:36 PM
4:14
My child will be attending Arts and Letters in the Fall and I plan to be involved and donate what I can financially. They have a dynamic principal who understands children and that is why it was my first choice. My other child will be starting Beacon and they are also slated for hefty cuts and I will donate there too but probably not as much.
4:31PM
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 4:44 PM
Joel Klein is a disaster. He thinks his pre-K system, which takes all control out of the hands of the parents and the individual school and assigns the fate of our children to a faceless bureaucracy is an improvement?? Hardly. Spending the night in line sucks, but at least it gives the parents some modicum of control over their child's placement. 11:43 is so right. The obvious thing to spend the money on is more teachers and teaching assistants and paraprofessionals in the classrooms. That alone could change everything.Quality education can only happen when children receive hands on, intimate instruction, rather just becoming another number in a sea of faces.
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 5:22 PM
1:21, thanks for the update -- I didn't know PS 32 had a new principal. Where did the old one go? Knowing Joel Klein's DOE, that principal currently has some even higher paying job somewhere in the DOE bureaucracy.
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 5:38 PM
3:19 -- there's a good reason why all the "good" G & T programs are in Manhattan. Because the philosophy in Brooklyn, especially District 15, was to get rid of the programs because they tended to divide schools. The most coveted elementary schools in District 15 -- 321 and 29, don't have them, but the test scores of the students are still excellent. (29 had a program years back, but the DOE got rid of it - it hasn't hurt the school, and most parents, at least until this year, preferred to stay there rather than use a G&T at another school.)
Right now, G&T programs are located in schools that, for the most part, aren't able to attract the educated middle-class parents who live in that zone. So, instead of making the entire school better, as has happened in schools like PS 8 or 261, they stick in a G&T class and the parents feel good since their kids don't have to associate with the other kids anymore.
There are probably more so-called "gifted" kids in schools like 321, 29, 8, 58, and 261 than in Brooklyn G & T programs. But they are a part of the whole school and get a very different experience of community.
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 5:49 PM
Commentor 12:12 is right on. After a year at PS 38 we fled (This is extremely common.) This school is the perfect example of why Klein's methodology stinks!
The school got an "A" on Klein's much reviled/ballyhooed accountability reports. It improved in test scores (which included G&T scores) just as Klein had hoped, but if you read the report it lists the quality of the school experience as low. Many parents have given great time and effort to improving 38, but are stymied by the principal, a Kleinian accolate who only wants/cares about statistical improvement.
The schools can't improve if the person leading (Klein) the leaders ( principals) has no feeling or method of addressing the child's whole educational experience.
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 5:57 PM
5:49. Right. I chose to send my child to 261, an all-around good school, rather than to 38's G&T program, a pale, isolated island in a sea of dark indifference.
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 6:16 PM
I am another parent who opted to send my child to 261 instead of 29's gifted program because I found 29 too traditional. My kid has done just fine and will be graduating from 51 tomorrow. And I know tons of kids who are 261 graduates who did very well on SHSAT.
5:38 PM if you check the profile for 32 it says where the former principal went. I can't remember off the top of my head where she is now but It sounded like a promotion to me. I think the new principal is more community oriented.
261 did have a gifted program many years ago and then it had three mini schools. Those were disbanded the year I became a 261 parent and I think the school is much better for it and there is a stronger sense of community.
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 6:58 PM
I think there is another issue here too. Yes, a lot of parental involvement is key to turning around a neighborhood school that's not great. But the truth is, by the time there's a quorum of people in the neighborhood who care enough to do that, the neighborhood has almost certainly gotten so expensive that both parents in most families need to work in order to afford to live there. With two working parents (who are more than likely commuting into Manhattan) and more than one kid, how much time do you think those families really have to give to the school? It's unfortunate but the spiraling real estate prices in Brooklyn are contributing to the problem.
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 7:02 PM
Let's remember something about Joel Klein. He has no experience in public education, except for briefly teaching in a Queens school in 1969! That means he doesn't get what really goes into making a school successful. It means that he doesn't get that teachers are the ones that make the difference and that they need to teach in the best possible conditions to make their classrooms work (ie smaller classes rather than dozens of newly minted principals who don't know what they are doing).
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 7:23 PM
7:02 you make the point perfectly - except it wasnt the point you were trying for....
Parent "involvement" in the schools isnt the key - its parents involvement with their KIDS and educating their own kids that turns around the school.
Your right many parents do have to work very hard to afford to live in NYC, and that does mean that they can't be involved with the school very much BUT that doesnt mean they arent involved in educating and molding their children.
All those over-involved parents that people so love to deride here, often also spend the (relatively small amount of) time it takes to teach their children to read, and similar basic skills so they know HOW to learn and then continue to encourage and stress learning throughout their lives.. In fact it is likely this emphasis on education and achievement that allowed those parents to have the high paying careers in the 1st place. So it should be no surprise that they pass this ethic down to their children.
And so when all these achievers live in an area (urban, suburban whatever) and decide to send their kids to a public school - it should be no surprise that the school rapidly improves.
People love all these feel good stories about "parent involvement" and bake sales and Parent/teacher collaboration blah blah blah - but at the end of the day - its just a bureaucracy and what matters most of all is the 'culture' of education and learning that a child is exposed to at HOME.
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 9:24 PM
As long as the DOE is pushing parents to their zoned school, and as long as the school is not accountable to the zone, then we have problems. Klein cannot disengage schools from the zone and then not give families the option to go to an out-of-zone school.
We have a big problem in Fort Greene. PS20 is a fine school but the principal is a tyrant and many students are fleeing. PS11 is not taking students from out-of-zone. Community Roots has a waiting list a mile long. There are no good options, but instead of dumping the principal of PS20 and doing something to engage the community to make PS20 better, the DOE sits on its hands and does nothing. The result is that PS20 has lots of space and few students while parents are dying for quality public education.
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 10:50 PM
9:24pm, much of what you say is true, but you've also just described a typical private school. Many affluent working parents who send kids to private school don't have the time to be involved in the school, and private schools don't necessarily want that kind of school day involvement.
But, things don't quite work that way in public schools since there is simply no time and money for the principals and teachers to do alot of extras. In my kids' school, there's an extensive afterschool program created and run entirely by parents. There's a dual language program started by a parent and a new library designed by a parent with grant money raised by grants written by other parents. Parents have organized an authors program which brings writers to visit individual classes, drumming classes for some grades, and myriad other valuable enrichment programs that happen during the school day. Most, if not all, the parents who did this worked full-time jobs and simply found time somehow to also do this work. If not, they simply donated to the PTA, which used funds raised to pay for other programs like Chess and a Shakespeare in the School program, and buy instruments for a strings program, which also take place during the school day. Without an involved parent body, the typical public school can offer very few "extras". That doesn't mean you can't still get a great academic education from dedicated teachers, but the kinds of things that attract educated middle class parents won't be there. Come to think of it, the parent volunteers also enable the kids to go on field trips which require at least 3 or 4 parents per class per trip. So the difference between a mediocre public school and one that people are clamoring to send their kids to is often the result of dedicated parent involvement, not simply the culture of education the kids are exposed to at home. Although the 2 often go hand in hand.
Posted by: guest at June 18, 2008 11:01 PM
I just read the Comptrollers report and it is an indictment of everything that Joel Klein said about there being available seats in Districts 13 and 15. It is the most incredible read. FINALLY, the truth. Now he just has to listen.
http://www.comptroller.nyc.gov/bureaus/opm/reports/05-09-08_growing_pains.pdf
Posted by: guest at June 19, 2008 4:43 PM
I disagree that there aren't any good schools in district 13. They may not be as "diverse" as downtown schools. But they don't all suck. You have Community Roots Charter, community Partnership charter, PS 11, PS 282, PS 8, Leadership Prep, PS 9 to name a few. They are definitely more elementary school choices than middle school choices. My child goes to the new "arts n Letters" which was the "it" school this year. It's okay, After all the hoopla, I'm not amazed. Next year they promise it will be even better. Educators really have to work on educating middle schoolers. There are many students that come from some of the best district 15 schools, but hormones mixed with new found independence can be a crazy combo. Some over expressive middle schoolers can wreak havoc on an inexperienced staff. Schools should not try to dumb down the proper education that is needed. They need to be embraced in a different way.
Posted by: guest at June 19, 2008 9:56 PM
Has anybody considered The School for International Studies (Court and Baltic) for a local middle school? Good teachers. Good principal.
Posted by: guest at June 20, 2008 7:22 AM
Poster with the ridiculous proposal of mandatory private enrollment/salary cap, I cannot wait to hear if you are one of the $250+ families whom will be unable to "purchase" a seat for your child , when the privates don't have enough to serve all the children they'd like to have.
Posted by: guest at July 2, 2008 11:18 AM
To Heather(poster above )The DoE said courier cost was $5.00 per piece. I'd like to mention that some of us, in less affluent areas, never received a couriered notification and many others were misdelivered, left in entry foyers or lobby floors; Others were mangled underneath doors or found on sidewalks, destroyed by the rain. It's surely one of the lesser complaints, yet stands as another example of the lack of efficacy of that administration. These are the governors of our childrens' school educational environments and they do a poor job as examples for 'thinking on your feet' and positive risk taking.
Posted by: guest at July 2, 2008 11:56 AM
Post a comment
Please be patient while your comment is published. It may take a moment.