School Admissions Changes Causing 'Chaos'
This year the Department of Education changed its admissions process for pre-K’ers, according to the Brooklyn Eagle, and the shift means a lot of parents are grappling with the fact that their kids have been placed in schools far from home. About 3,000 parents, “including those in large swaths of Brownstone Brooklyn,” recently found out…
This year the Department of Education changed its admissions process for pre-K’ers, according to the Brooklyn Eagle, and the shift means a lot of parents are grappling with the fact that their kids have been placed in schools far from home. About 3,000 parents, “including those in large swaths of Brownstone Brooklyn,” recently found out their kids didn’t get into any of the schools they’d put down on application forms. Yesterday Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum and Councilman Bill de Blasio held a press conference to decry the new pre-K placement system, and Gotbaum said the changes “have had some chaotic consequences for parents.” The new admissions process is apparently affecting older kids, too. Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn has been writing about how her child didn’t get in to any middle schools, apparently because of a DOE computer glitch. The blogger is describing the experience as traumatic: “And then [my daughter] heard me talking on the phone to the New York Times. She doesn’t know who I was talking to but she can tell that I am agitated, annoyed, on edge, shakey, not happy and so on.”
Pre-K Snafu Leads Brooklyn Parents To Protest at Tweed [Brooklyn Eagle]
Middle School SNAFU: My Daughter Isn’t On The List [OTBKB]
Photo by Kit & I.
my son and 3 of his classmates in his preschool (grace) class alone were accepted to St Anns for K. And these were the non-sibling/legacy kids.
1:07 – I have no idea how they can get away this. Somehow on Monday I managed to get a name of number of someone whom I assume is with district 15 enrollment and they were waiting for Tweed to email the placement rosters. The person I spoke with told that they would wait all night for the rosters if they had to. From what I understand, once the rosters were received they would be distributed to the individual elementary schools. I followed up with my child’s school and they confirmed that they had the list and I also received a letter from the middle school. But where are our official placement notification letters?
Also, schools have the ELA and perhaps the Math scores but are not releasing them until after DOE holds a press conference. However, if you request them the school has to give them to you.
11:41 (1st one). Best comments of the day.
Love. You.
my son and 3 of his classmates in his preschool (grace) class alone were accepted to St Anns for K. And these were the non-sibling/legacy kids.
George Bush attended private school and the best graduate program for business in the world.
He will go down in history as the worst President in the history of the United States (with the lowest approval rating of anyone before him).
12:13 – you need to learn reading comprehension. where did I insult renters and call them “morons” and “bitter?” Seriously, you need to re-evaluate your public school and SUNY education. I have no problems with renters. I do not rent yet – hence my paycheck to paycheck situation. I have a problem with people that call me entitled because they wrongly assume I took a handout from my parents. And, BTW, I have a moniker, so rather than referring to me by a time stamp, you can address me directly.
“that most kids of parents who can afford private school themselves are so advantaged that they will do well at nearly any school.”
I can only assume that your contact with people in the world has been very limited. In most cases people succeed or fail regardless of the school they went to.
12:54, Thanks for that…How can the DOE get away with this??? Why are they not sending out this crucial information?
Many of the 5th grade kids are extremely stressed about this, BTW. It’s not fair to tell them they will know what school they have been accepted to by early May, yet we still wait a month later.
And where are the realtors and even homeowners without kids on this subject? This whole fiasco tells me that NYC zoned elementary schools are a thing of the past…
12:13 — I’m not 11:33am, but I think you are completely misinterpreting what he/she said. I didn’t see any reference at all to “bitter renters” nor “scum of the earth”. That post was merely reacting to a previous post that said that anyone who owned a brownstone should send their kids to a private school because they were rich and shouldn’t be adding to the overcrowded public schools. I am certain you don’t agree with those kind of sentiments either. 11:33 was pointing out that there are many brownstone owners who bought when prices were low, invested in the public schools to make them better, and were by no means rich enough to simply shell out $20,000+ per year for private, nor should they be encouraged to do so. In fact, my guess would be that someone like 11:33am, who uses the public schools, has many many friends in the neighborhood who rent and the last thing they would do is to belittle them because they rent rather than own.
There is nothing wrong with sending your kid to a private school if that is what’s best for them, but the only way a public school will improve is when a large enough tipping point of families from the neighborhood who are middle class like yourself — whether renters or owners — are willing to take a chance, enroll in the school, and make it better. You posted that attending a public school in a prime neighborhood carries the cachet of private school, but that was not always the case. I enrolled my kid in a public school that’s now considered prestigious, but at the time it was a school that any family with perseverence got a variance out of attending. A little history (and I’m talking only 4 years ago) will show you that schools like PS 8 were avoided like the plague and it was parents willing to take a chance on public schools that meant that school is now a fine school for all kids attending it.
But I do agree with some posters here that one of the best ways a parent can contribute to the neighborhood is to enroll their kids in the public school, if it is at all possible to improve. In a perfect world, a public school that served only the poorest of kids would get huge amounts of money and be a fantastic school. But the reality is that the vast improvement in NYC elementary schools is directly due to the increasing number of middle class parents not opting out of them for private school. Because it’s all too easy for the government to ignore the needs of the poor, but harder when there are also middle class parents involved.
Thanks, Biff Champion, I never got a post of the day compliment before.
signed — 11:46am