Pre-K: Round two deadline July 18
A second round of pre-K applications is underway for September 2008 placements. Any family may apply, according to the DOE, including those who've not applied before, those who applied earlier but weren't offered seats, and those who chose to decline the first-round offer.
Here's a directory of schools with pre-K openings; more than 450 schools have space in their full- or half-day programs, although the number of actual seats isn't clear. Siblings have first preference provided the older sibling's school is listed first (the cause of much frustration and confusion on the first round, when it wasn't spelled out on the application). After siblings, priority goes to zoned, in-district kids, and then to out-of-district applicants.
The application is here. Mail it to the address in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania (at the bottom of the application) or, if you're of the "better safe than sorry" persuasion, walk it into your local borough placement center by Friday, July 18. Placements will be completed by mid-August.
Good luck!
9 comments:
Is that a list of schools that still have openings? That's quite a long list. I am surprised to see that PS150 in D2 (Tribeca Learning Center) still has openings, considering it is supposed to be a very popular program. Or did the DOE mess up really, really badly in round 1?
Plenty of sought-after schools have openings, according to this list, but as 'openings' could mean one seat or 20, it's hard to suss out why spaces are newly available. Will be interesting to see how many applications DOE receives, and how many kids will be offered pre-K enrollment on this round. Let's hope it's a smoother process than the last round.
The way I understood it, a very popular program could have openings because they did not have a wait list. For example, if a school has three classes and accepted 54 kids in the first round, and then only 50 registered, they would have 4 openings, regardless of how many kids initially applied.
It continues to amaze me that the DOE is allowed to do this the way that they did.
As someone who talks to parents of 3 & 4 year olds all day as part of my I&R work, this process is just plain silly -- and serious (& not in a good way). This is a deliberate act by the DOE to make things harder for parents of small children, some of whom have IEPs, who are of many abilities, languages and cultures to access a voluntary program in public schools and community-based organizations. Parents coming into this system for the 1st time
should get a positive first impression of the early education system -- not yet one more bureaucratic maze.
9:38am - I don't understand. How is this process hard? There are spots open in many pre-K programs and the DOE gives you another chance. I think this is actually great. Am I missing something?
My son was rejected and his older brother goes to the school. I listed it as the first and only school and I had all of the correct info on the form. I was not given an answer as to why this happened and it pisses me off that I had to go through a 2nd round and I still don't know where my child will be in september...I for one am not happy with the DOE
I still did not get 1st round result. But now I just have to do 2nd round for some small luck (maybe).
Many schools say they have no slots, but the directory says that they do. So there is nothing great about this process. Most of the slots are am,pm slots. Not knowing the numbers makes it impossible to choose the school that might have room for my kid. I suspect that the numbers are not in the directory because they don't know themselves.
Sign the petition - hold the DOE accountable.
http://www.gopetition.com/online/20080.html
Post a Comment