Pre-K spots STILL open, per DOE

Posted by helen at 1:16 PM

The DOE has updated its pre-K registers and says there are half- and full-day spots open at some city schools. Have a look at their updated directory to see what's available; registration begins next Thursday, the 28th and wraps up on the first day of school.

Some parents have written in to say their kids didn't get placements or were offered pre-K seats far from their homes. The frustrations are real (and the time before school is short). Here's hoping that the Pre-K Borough Enrollment staff help resolve open questions — and that the DOE responds to the outspoken demand for seats in good schools by expanding pre-K opportunities.

Pre-K round II news

Posted by helen at 8:46 AM

Families who applied for pre-K seats in the second application round should have news by the end of this week; letters went out by mail yesterday afternoon, according to an email from the DOE's Andy Jacob.

Pre-K round II: News?

Posted by helen at 11:44 AM

A number of parents have been wondering whether others in the city have heard any placement news on their child's round II pre-K application.

DOE said they'd let folks know by now (mid-August), but many don't have news yet. To connect with other pre-K parents, visit our forums, click on the pre-K thread, and join the conversation. And let us know, please, where the news has arrived -- and where it hasn't.

Update: We heard from DOE; they will snail-mail letters to families next week.

Weekly news round-up: politics and product placements

Posted by Lindsey at 11:40 AM

More money woes this week: city funding for pre-K programs run by community groups was cut in half, leading to the overnight evaporation of about 300 seats. Yet Obama accepted the endorsement of the national teachers union (AFT) union, vowing his commitment to "quality, affordable early childhood education for all our children,” and McCain announced his intention to fully fund No Child Left Behind, offer private school vouchers and put tutoring funds directly in the hands of parents. Ambitious plans on all sides, given the current economic climate.

Meanwhile, NYC education bigwigs are going national: Joel Klein is hoping to advise the next president and UFT President Randy Weingarten was elected head of the AFT. She says she's staying in New York for now (and announcing fresh lawsuits on behalf of city teachers) but just might be grooming a successor. Klein, who claims accountability as his hallmark reform, might want to explain why it apparently took a newspaper article to stop the city school bus system from “losing” parent complaints.

Children's health came under fresh scrutiny: A new report confirms what parents have known for eons -- that America’s active kids morph into sedentary teenagers – and documents health risks that have led others to recommend cholesterol meds for kids. And each successive scandal that the Administration for Childrens Services (ACS) faces tragically impacts the city’s most vulnerable citizens.

Too many teens are stuck in middle school , according to a report released by Advocates for Children. While some kids in the Bronx are apathetic about keeping their neighborhood clean, juvenile offenders are helping restore and reopen classic American diners. And the Times celebrated high school theater geekdom at its best, which seems a lot more wholesome than the current crop of product-infused teen novels. But for now, ditch the screen, shut the book, and get out! It's summer.

Pre-K: Round two deadline July 18

Posted by helen at 4:47 PM

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!

Weekly news round-up: science, admissions and rubber rooms

Posted by Lindsey at 12:57 PM

Early round-up this week -- our attempt to get to the news before we get to the grill.

Yesterday, we looked at No Child Left Behind and the second annual Learning Environment Survey results. Even though results were generally positive, three out of four students didn’t take an art class!

Good news for science in Harlem: Millions poured in for middle schools (as first reported on this blog), and hundreds of high school science students found worthwhile (and paid!) summer work in labs. PS 229 in Queens may grow their own environmental scientists – students there are certainly learning how to act green.

Bloomberg’s expensive Leadership Academy will now be added to the taxpayers’ bill, while a lauded principal (not an Academy grad) faces allegations of test score fraud. A few of his teachers might be yanked from the classroom and thrown into the rubber room, but they might not be there that long, according to a new agreement between the UFT and DOE. Is there a rubber room where we can stash daycare providers who have been stealing from the state? Or the students behind anti-Sikh hate crimes?

While the Times lauds a program to help students stay in school, the Daily News publicizes parents’ concerns over older and under-credited students sharing a school building with younger kids. The News also covers public schools that have been closed for good, and the Times showcases the last American high school for would-be Catholic priests.

Guess what? Pre-k admissions was a mess this year, and even paying top-dollar for private school doesn’t guarantee Junior will get into Harvard/Yale/Princeton. But a story about a pre-k program that appears to work wonders and Christoph Niemann’s charming illustrations celebrating his sons’ love of the subway system kick-off the holiday weekend on an aptly joyful note.

Summer wish list: Questions for the DOE

Posted by helen at 12:07 PM

We're hoping to take advantage of summer to ask the DOE questions about some things that confused many readers this year, both to understand what happened and explore what's on deck for 2008-09.

We want to know about middle-school admissions -- the calendar, the process, and how special-needs students can better be included. We want to know about gifted + talented programs -- admissions, lotteries, citywide schools, and qualifying tests. And we want to know how the DOE aims to prevent the pre-K admissions confusion that characterized this year's experience. We also have questions about centralization and how much decision-making power rests with the districts, for both K and middle school.

What do you want to know? Now's the time to write our wish list; with weeks to go before the pre-September ramp-up, we can try to get some answers. Let us hear from you.

Finally! G+T Kindergarten and Pre-K Action

Posted by helen at 5:54 PM

According to the DOE, placement letters for g+t kindergarten are in the mail, at last.

They assert some families will have news today, others, over the next few days.

We've also heard directly from the family of a pre-K sibling who didn't initially get a seat -- but whose case was resolved favorably this afternoon, with a place offered (and accepted!) in their first-choice school. Any others with this experience, let us know.

Please let us know when your news arrives.

Appeals Update from DOE

Posted by helen at 1:22 PM

As plenty of parents can attest, talk has been swirling about pre-K and middle-school appeals, and second round applications for pre-K. Here's the latest:

Appeals for pre-K are due to the DOE by next Friday, June 13. These appeals are meant to address clerical/record-keeping issues, like address changes, name misspellings, etc. These are NOT for parents who wish to appeal their child's exclusion from pre-K.

If you feel your child was wrongly placed or simply excluded from your zoned school, write the DOE's OSEPO office at Tweed pronto, if you haven't already. There is no hard deadline for these letters, but their aim is to resolve all open queries before the round-two pre-K apps begin on June 23d.

To participate in the second round of pre-K admissions, get hold of an application from your borough OSEPO office. Parents seeking sibling priority seats should receive them by mail from the DOE. (Be good enough, readers, to let us know if and when the 2nd round applications arrive -- thanks.) The second round begins on June 23d; there is no deadline yet set for that process, although one will be decided soon (says the DOE) and posted here, of course, and on their site.

Caveat emptor, parents: If you elect to participate in round two and are granted a pre-K seat, you are obliged to accept that seat for your child. In other words, you can't hold on to a first-round placement in hopes of another, somehow better second placement. If your bid's in the ring, you have to accept the outcome. Fair's fair.

On middle schools, elementary schools in districts with appeals processes have, apparently, distributed appeals information. (Help us out again, here, readers: What's in your child's backpack?)

If your 5th-grader applied to a middle school in another district, contact the out-of-district school's guidance counselor for appeals particulars. If you're still unable to resolve your concerns, contact your borough OSEPO office -- be patient, be prepared for some phone tag, but be persistent, too. Remember, not all districts have formal appeals processes. (In this case, fair's not exactly fair.)

Parents in Brooklyn and elsewhere say some of their fifth-graders didn't get any place at all in middle school, or got placed at schools they didn't include on their applications. If this is true for your child, let us know -- getting a sense of the scope of the challenge is the first step.

Hold the Phone!

Posted by helen at 10:44 AM

We just heard from Marty Markowitz' office, who asked us to have parents write rather than telephone with pre-K information. Contact mpthomas@brooklynbp.nyc.gov.

If you do write, be sure to include the following:
Your name, address, and telephone number
Your child's name; if there's a sibling, the sibling's name and OSIS (ID) number. Also, their date/s of birth.
The school your older sibling presently attends, and whether it's in your local school zone or out.

Morning Report

Posted by helen at 8:38 AM

The Pre-K coverage in today's Times brings familiar tales of woe -- siblings bounced, in-zone kids displaced by out-of-zone applicants -- but some semi-encouraging news: it seems that OSEPO might reconsider its plan to standardize next year's kindergarten admissions. Other reports (and our own communication with the DOE) suggest that the DOE will be moving the middle school process earlier in the calendar year next year, to prevent bottlenecks and delays. While it's little salve for this year's slings and arrows, at least there's hope that a) they're listening and b) the process just may improve in its next iteration.

For readers waiting for answers to specific questions, we're still waiting, too. With luck, we'll have responses soon.

Take Action

Posted by helen at 6:47 PM

A few organizations have set up petitions and letter-writing campaigns to attempt to address education issues of concern:

Families of pre-K siblings denied seats at their older-sibling's school, take a few minutes to complete this survey, conducted by Parents for DOE Accountability and Action.

If your child was not placed at your zoned school for pre-K, Marty Markowitz' office wants to hear from you. [NB, the prior link is not working; instead, call 718-802-3762 in the morning for particulars, and we'll try to identify another link.]

To protest budget cuts, Concerned Parents of NYC encourages kids to raise their voices, along with their parents and the wider school community.

Exercise your civic activism: Chime in.

DOE: Rethinking for Next Year?

Posted by helen at 12:03 PM

With the pre-K dust still swirling and hundreds of middle-school families still waiting for official word on where their children have been placed, the citywide admissions process obviously needs rethinking. Politicos like Betsy Gotbaum, Bill deBlasio, Brookyn borough president Marty Markowitz and others are challenging the DOE to review, and redo, applications as needed. (DeBlasio, a public-school parent, is also waiting for middle-school news for his own child.)

The difficulties are undeniable, and the cures uncertain. But while the DOE says they'll work to clarify whatever confused parents this year ahead of next year's applications, they don't (yet) explain how they will address and amend this year's problems. It's increasingly difficult to wait with a degree of patience.

Comments like "it's simply not correct to say that we're running way behind" on middle-school notification, which Andy Jacob wrote to me this morning, sorely test that patience. Earlier this week, he said all letters were to have gone out by Monday June 2. Now, he says, "some of the assignments went out last week. ... Some of them went out earlier this week. All the letters should be out by today." Does that 'should' make you nervous, too?

We are working with the DOE, seeking detailed comment on specific enrollment and admissions questions. We hope for their candor and prompt communication. And for the reader who wondered, where's Chancellor Klein in all this? He's in Washington, DC -- giving a talk this afternoon at the American Enterprise Institute, on the challenges of revitalizing urban schools.

Questions and a Few Answers

Posted by helen at 9:13 PM

Lots of questions waiting for answers from the DOE, but in the meanwhile, here's some feedback on specifics that have come in via comments. (Thanks as ever for posting, and for voicing questions shared by scores of city parents.)

One parent asked about out-of-zone kids getting pre-K seats while her child wasn't seated at their zoned school. You can try to appeal the decision, but chances are, no one will officially tell you how the decision to exclude your child and include another was made. The party line is that no out-of-zone kids were offered seats unless in-zone kids were all covered; this may give you some basis for an appeal, but unfortunately, nothing's certain.

Bronx shrink, I checked the pre-K application again, and checked in with the DOE. The application does stipulate that the older sibling be continuing in elementary school -- but it doesn't say 'boo' about ranking the big-sib's school as a first choice. Waiting for official word back on this, and will report more when it's known.

Dr Monty asked about appealing middle school placement. Last year, a few districts offered appeals (details here); D 15 does, but D 21 and 22 do not. Brutal, I know. Insult to injury, the deadline last year for appeals was May 25th, well ahead of first-round news for most parents this year. Try contacting parent coordinators at the school/s in question to see if any informal process exists. Sometimes a bit of relationship-building can go a long way.

Keep the questions flowing.

Morning Round-Up

Posted by helen at 8:32 AM

Local papers largely skip over the pre-K situation today; there's Sam Freedman's valedictory at the Times -- on to other endeavors -- and a cursory nod at the Post. The Sun previews possible zoning changes, sure to cast fear into the hearts of homeowners and high-rent tenants citywide, while the News fans latent MRSA fears. We've still got pre-K questions, though, and we're still waiting for answers.

Pre-K Application Review: Home Stretch

Posted by helen at 10:06 PM

Incredible as it seems, we've had some follow-up from the DOE on pre-K sibling applications.

The DOE has reviewed "about 9,000 sibling applications by hand, " according to Andy Jacob, and found "issues we might need to address" in about 200, some of which are still under review. Some scenarios are clear, as when one twin was sent to one school and another twin to another school. "That's a mistake on our end, and we will address it," says Jacob. Address matching issues persist, as do some questions about sibling verification (when sibling ID numbers were incomplete on the application, for example). And he says some parents thought the sibling preference pertained even when the older sib was graduating, or when the big-sib's school wasn't listed first -- no dice.

Jacobs' bottom line: "In any of these cases, where we are able to verify a sibling that meets the criteria we set, we will contact the parents directly to work out a suitable placement." Read those tea leaves for a mixed message: A younger sibling will get a pre-K seat, but 'suitable placement' doesn't really guarantee that seat will be at the same school.

It's worth noting that of 20,000 pre-K applications submitted, 17,000 children were offered seats, 15,000 at their first-choice schools. The DOE's count of 200 possible sibling errors works out to 1%, which doesn't sound so extreme in the abstract -- unless and until it's your kid. And it's cold comfort to the 3,000 families whose applications were denied altogether.

Waiting for deadline info on second-round applications; a slight bit of good news is that parents will receive application materials by mail, if they don't want to trek to the OSEPO offices -- but after the ongoing postal misadventures, a little snail-mail wariness is fully understandable.

good night -

Pre-K Questions, No Answers (Yet)

Posted by helen at 5:00 PM

It's hard to imagine how much more time the DOE will require to review the pre-K applications that have caused so much turmoil. But as there's no official word there beyond 'we're working on it and will let parents know,' I don't have news of substance to report.

For those seeking political recourse, Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum will hold a press conference at Tweed tomorrow, Wednesday, at 12:45pm; Council Member Bill DeBlasio of Brooklyn will speak around 1p. (We'll be there, too.)

Questions abound in regard to potentially unclaimed seats -- those offered to families who, for reasons of distance, convenience or sheer frustration with the DOE morass, will make other pre-K choices. Because the process was a citywide effort this year, schools don't have official wait lists, and there is no "trading up," as one poster had hoped, from a spot at a second- or third-choice school if a place at the first-choice school opens. If your child was offered a seat, you can accept or decline -- no wheeling-dealing.

Families of children who have not been offered a seat can participate in a second round of pre-K admissions, which opens (no typo) June 23d, just three days before school lets out for summer. Not all schools will have empty seats, but this is how the seats that aren't spoken for will be filled.

As of this writing, you have to go to an OSEPO borough office to get the paperwork and a directory of schools. Amazingly, the powers that be haven't yet published a deadline for second-round applications -- I'm working on it.

Post your pre-K solutions here

Posted by Philissa at 8:00 AM

Some of the soon-to-be pre-K parents commenting on this blog are working through their anger and frustration about the admissions problems by generating possible solutions for them. If the DOE aims to make things right for the families it shortchanged — and I believe that is the DOE's intention — officials will likely need to think creatively. Perhaps they can use Bronx_Shrink's proposal for inspiration:

I think there may be one way in which a fraction of the wrongfully rejected parents can be appeased. The city offers child care vouchers to low income families. If they are unable to correct this and place kids properly, according to priority, perhaps some families can be offered vouchers to be used in private day cares. Before the tomatoes start flying, I know this will not be the answer for most parents as they carefully chose schools that match their educational values. However, it might be good compensation for some other families to get them through another year of childcare costs.

Do you have a better plan? Post yours. Pie-in-the-sky ideas are welcome, but practical solutions are even more welcome.

Pre-K fix in the works at the DOE: details here

Posted by Philissa at 12:17 PM

I just heard from Andy Jacob at the DOE, who said he had explained many details about the nature of the pre-K admissions problems to reporters at the Times and the Post but that those details hadn't made it into print. The Daily News had a hint of the details, but I didn't see that article earlier this morning -- there, Jacob described problems with sibling verification that may have led some parents not to have received acceptance letters when they should have.

What happened, Jacob told me, was that the DOE's computers compared data for the older sibling claimed on the application with the data parents entered on the application. If the address in the attendance system for the older child didn't match the address as it was entered from the application, the system treated the applicant as a non-sibling. But in some cases, Jacob said, the address-matching excluded children erroneously, sometimes because of a minor difference in the way the addresses were formulated (with a typo in the DOE's attendance system, for example) and sometimes because families have moved since entering the school system.

Currently, OSEPO staff are finishing up looking at every single one of the applications of families who indicated they had a sibling already enrolled, Jacob said. He told me he anticipates that the number of families affected will be a "small minority" of the 9,000 families who indicated that they had a sibling in their school of choice, though the number will be "more than 4 or 5." After the scope of the problem is clear, the DOE will decide how to handle the cases, he said, and families will be notified then if there was a mistake in the way their application was treated. "There are some cases where the problem was on our end. ... When we hear about problems, we solve them," he told me.

Jacob said there may also be families who believe they were erroneously denied a seat who actually completed the application incorrectly, perhaps by listing the school in which the sibling is already enrolled as something other than their first choice. (Sibling priority only works for your first-choice school.)

Jacob advised me that the very best thing parents who believe the address-matching issue may be the root of their rejection should hold tight while the DOE decides how to solve the problem. I know that will be hard to do, but I have faith that the DOE is committed to addressing the issues, even though it might not know yet exactly how to. If you just can't wait, Jacob said the best number to call at OSEPO is 212-374-4948. That's also the number you should call if you have other issues or if you still haven't received a letter -- though we have heard from one father who just received a letter this morning.

As always, we'll keep you posted as we learn more, and please let us know what's happening on your end.

DOE: We will "solve the problems" with as many as 9K pre-K applications

Posted by Philissa at 8:55 AM

Finally, today, the pre-K debacle has made it into the papers — where we learn that the DOE believes all the problems are parents' fault. DOE spokesman Andy Jacob told the Times that the problems appear to have affected only families with siblings already enrolled in a school with a pre-K program. That means, of course, that the problems may be widespread, because those families make up 45 percent of the 20,000 families who applied for pre-K seats.

Jacob told the Times that DOE officials believe the data entry done in Pennsylvania is not the culprit, but that blame more likely rests with parents who made a "simple mistake" when filling out the form. To the Post, he said that "most complaints involved parents who wrongly believed they qualified for priority placement or whose application data contained errors."

Some good news: Jacob told the Times, "We will find a way to solve the problems that do exist." How magnanimous: They may not respect you or believe you're capable of filling out a form, but at least they'll make right when you screw up.

Please let us know when you start getting resolution to your problems — we hope it's soon!