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If you can't make the rally this afternoon at City Hall (and even if you plan to attend), have a look at this parent-organized petition, asking the DOE to reconsider centralized Kindergarten admissions.
Parents of preschoolers, this policy has the potential to directly affect your family's admissions experience.
Even if your kids are past K, consider adding your name. No one should have to go through the confusion that characterized this year's process.
Click here for District 3 kindergarten lottery results.
Next steps: If a school is listed next to your child's lottery number, that's where your child will go in September. Register before school lets out this year on June 26th. You'll need to bring the admissions letter from the DOE, which should be in mailboxes this week. (The list and the link aren't enough.)
If you see your child's been matched to a lottery school but you don't have a letter by June 16th, contact OSEPO, at 212-342-8424.
From the DOE, "All parents will receive their G&T placements later this week," in line with their planned early-June timeline.
Parents concerned that their child's application may not have been received can call OSEPO or their local borough enrollment office to inquire, but expect voicemail and be prepared to follow up.
After a long wait for news from the DOE, it seems that some parents are beginning to hear about pre-K appeals and kindergarten gifted and talented placement. Some are getting good news, others, not so much. But if OSEPO has moved into a more responsive mode, parents can hope that many of the past weeks' nagging questions just might be resolved.
Of course, some of the responses we've heard about raise yet more questions, like the comment from MaruG, who said that a polite, cooperative OSEPO rep gave her a mid-August placement date for g+t kindergarten, because her child's application had gone awry. (We're checking on this one.)
Think of this post as a wide net: If you've had word on admissions or appeals from the DOE or OSEPO, please let us know, especially if you have questions or if, as Bronx Shrink mentioned, information you've gotten verbally from OSEPO (by phone) doesn't square with written communications.
Robin Aronow, a consultant who advises parents on school choice, wrote with additional information from last week's Manhattan pre-K proposal hearing. It sounds like most of the issues raised there are similar to those raised in Brooklyn, which I reported on last week. Parents want more preference for siblings, and they don't want their kids to be forced to switch schools after pre-K because there will be no automatic admission to kindergarten in the same school; they are especially concerned about kids having to leave dual-language programs, where enrollment shifts are disruptive for both students and the school. (There has never been automatic admission, but many principals have used their discretion to admit out-of-zone pre-K children to their kindergarten.)
One thing Robin heard was very different from what I understood to be the plan. She writes, "As for the uniform kindergarten policy for next year, [DOE officials] are still working out many factors, including whether zoned schools will be part of the uniform application process or remain a separate option." At the Brooklyn hearing, DOE officials made it crystal clear that zoned schools would be part of the same application process. Has the DOE realized that requiring parents to apply to zoned schools will greatly limit school choice, or did someone misspeak in Manhattan?
Other new information:
House Bill A03425 was the topic of a recent notice sent out by one of the area listserves. The bill would change the enrollment cut-off birth date for children entering kindergarten in the state of New York.
Currently, children enrolling in kindergarten are expected to begin attending in September of the year they turn five. Thus, any child with a birthday between the first day of school and December 31 will enter kindergarten as a four-year-old. This has raised opposition from some parents and policymakers, who contend that many four-year-olds just aren't mature enough for today's kindergarten. One such policymaker is Assemblyman Robert Barra, who proposed bill A03425 in January.
The bill would change the birth date cutoff from December 31 to September 1, ensuring that all entering kindergarteners would be at least five years old. Anyone whose fifth birthday falls after September 1 would be required to wait until the following year to enroll. Although the stated justification for A03425 says the new cutoff date is "more logical" since it coincides with the start of the school year, the roots of the kindergarten enrollment debate usually lie in disagreements over when children are ready for school.
This debate, covered last Sunday in a thorough New York Times Magazine article, has two parts. The first deals with what the optimal absolute age for kindergarten enrollment-- e.g., whether four-year-olds are mature enough for kindergarten. The second part deals with the relative ages in a single kindergarten class. This is really a separate issue from the cut-off date question; any cutoff date will inherently result in kindergarteners who are up to a year apart. As discussed in the Times article, a key issue in the "relative ages" debate is the issue of "redshirting":The term ["redshirting"], borrowed from sports, describes students held out for a year by their parents so that they will be older, or larger, or more mature, and thus better prepared to handle the increased pressures of kindergarten today.
Although redshirting is legal in New York, the education system in New York City strongly discourages, and sometimes prohibits, the practice. Thus children in New York City kindergartens are not usually more than one year apart, and thus the debate over relative ages is less important. Nevertheless, the debate about what the cut-off date should be is more intense.
Although A03425 seems unlikely to be passed this year (the end of the legislative session is fast-approaching and the bill has been before the Education Committee since January), we encourage you to contact Education Committee Chair Cathy Nolan or your local representative to voice your opinion on the matter. Given this bill's multi-year history and the Board of Regents' interest in mandatory, full-day pre-K (a topic for another blog entry), we think the kindergarten enrollment debate is far from over.
Also, tell us your comments, either below or in the Insideschools forum!
