A group of District 3 parents are working toward launching a RussianDual Language Program in a District 3 public elementary school. If you are interested and your child will enter Kindergarten in 2012, 2013, 2014, or 2015, please email contact the District 3 office for more information. Knowledge of Russian is not required.
Category: Public School
Recap of 2011 Education Events
Happy New Year! We are looking forward to a year full of growth and lots of relevant educations information for our fellow parents in 2012. We've been busy working on updating the site with new features to help you with your school search that will be rolled out soon. In the meantime, we'll continue to update our calendar events and education news.
Here is great recap of the best and worst education events of 2011 from Leonie Haimson at NYC Public School Parent.
Anything to add? Let us know in comments below.
Hunter Announces SB5 Cut Score Today
The following message was posted on Hunter's website today:
This year's modified Stanford-Binet V testing for Kindergarten 2012 admissions has concluded. The eligibility score for progression to Round 2 (on-site assessment) has been set at a Sum of Scaled Scores (SSS) of 148.
Letters will be mailed on December 19th informing eligible families of their appointments for Round 2.
Congratulations to everyone going on to the 2nd round!
Chair of Popular Harlem Charter School Steps Down
The Chair of The New York French American Charter School in Harlem resigned last night. The relatively new District 3 school was recently put on probation for violations of it charter and New York Stale law. A new Chair, Fabrice Rouah, was elected to the board. Full story at Gotham School here.
Update on School Bus Strike
After the Mayor's press conference last Friday and Chancellor Walcott's letter home warning of "an immediate system-wide, and in our view, illegal, strike by our bus drivers' union—local 1181—that could impact yellow bus service for more than 152,000 students citywide", parents are left wondering what will happen with school bus transportation.
Leonie Haimson over at NYC Public School Parents blog has an excellent article giving us some background as to how this situation came to be.
Key points:
- at issue is inclusion of employment protection provisions (EPP) in contracts for school bus drivers
- the Doe always maintained that contracts had to have the EPP provision which required the winning bidder to keep the drivers from the incumbent according to seniority. The rationale was that without EPP the union would strike
- In July, however, the city made an about-face, asking Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to veto a bill it had helped develop that would have extended the protections to bus contracts for preschool students who receive special education services
- Mr. Cuomo did just that in September, citing a decision by the State Court of Appeals that including such protections drives up cost and drives away competition
- The protections are part of the contracts, which expire in December 2012, that govern the transportation of about 138,000 students from kindergarten through 12th grade. The new request for proposals that went out on Friday, after the Mayor's press conference, do not include the provision.
According to the New York Times, “Most of the students who would be affected by the strike live in Brooklyn and Queens, some of them outside the city’s public transportation grid. About 102,000 of them are in elementary school; of those, approximately 30,000 have special needs, and some of them require specific travel accommodations, limited travel time and door-to-door service.”
Parents to Improve School Transportation support an EPP in school bus contracts. In their statement, "An Employee Protection Provision is something parents support because we want trained, experienced and decently paid workers handling the youngest children with disabilities. This EPP has been in the K-12 contracts since 1979; it didn't cover pre-K only because pre-K wasn't universal at the time. This summer, both houses in Albany passed a bill to extend EPP to pre-Kindergarten and Early Intervention busing, but Cuomo vetoed it at Bloomberg's request."
Here is a statement from the school bus union ATU Local 1181 President Michael Cordiello.
See complete article here.
Manhattan Borough President Wants to Improve NYC Kindergarten Admission Process
An email on one of my parent listserves a few weeks ago said "Help! Confused about the K admissions process." This is not uncommon feeling at this time of year as many parents are knee deep in the private school applications process. However, many are surprised to hear that, with the exception of Hunter and G&T programs, the public school application process doesn't happen until the beginning of the next year, long after the private school process has ended.
The public elementary admissions timeline for 2012 is:
| January 9, 2012 – March 2, 2012 | Kindergarten Application Period |
| March 19, 2012 – March 23, 2012 | Families Notified About Assignment Offers |
| March 26, 2012 – April 20, 2012 | Offer Acceptance Period |
Recently, Scott Stringer, Manhattan's Borough President, has undertaken an initiative to help simplify the kindergarten admission process, something near and dear to all New York City parents. Nothing casues more anxiety to NYC parents than where to send their child(ren) to kindergarten and how to go about getting in and registering. In a letter to School Chancellor, Dennis Walcott, Mr. Stringer provides suggestions about how to simplify the process for both families and schools. These include adjusting admissions timelines to eliminate waitlists, automating admissions, standardizing applications and offering school directories tailored to each district.
Full story and copy of letter can be found at Gotham Schools, here.
We want to hear your comments. Tell us your suggestions on how to make the process better for all involved below in our comments section.
Possible DOE Immediate School Bus Strike
The NYC Schools Chancellor, Dennis Walcott, sent a letter to parents today alerting them to the strong possibility of an immediate system-wide strike by yellow school bus drivers. Here is the text of the letter:
November 18, 2011
Dear Parent or Guardian,
We are writing to inform you of the strong possibility of an immediate system-wide, and in our view, illegal, strike by our bus drivers' union—local 1181—that could impact yellow bus service for more than 152,000 students citywide.
The New York City Department of Education (DOE) is issuing a bid to secure new yellow bus contracts to transport special education pre-kindergarten and early intervention ( "pre-school") children to their school programs for the 2012-2013 school year. Our current contracts are set to expire at the end of June 2012 and it is imperative that we move forward now to secure a new contract.
The bus drivers' union has told us that if the bid does not include an Employee Protection Provision—a measure which guarantees their workers civil service-type seniority rights in the event that their current employers do not win the new bid—they will go on strike, system-wide. This would result in severe disruptions, or possibly complete discontinuance, of yellow bus service.
In our view, this would be an illegal strike, and it is all the more unconscionable when you consider that New York State's highest Court recently ruled that we may not include an Employee Protection Provision requirement in our bids. Because the union has told us they will strike, we are immediately filing an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board and asking that it seek an injunction in federal court as quickly as possible.
We are deeply concerned about the impact of a strike on our students and families and we want you to be prepared in the event one occurs.
Any information we have about disruptions to bus service will be posted our website at http://schools.nyc.gov. We urge parents and guardians whose children rely on yellow bus service—for pre-K or K-12 service—to regularly check the website for updates. The information will also be provided to the media and to 311.
In the event that a strike occurs, the following protocols will take effect for families of students who currently receive yellow bus service.
For all students who currently receive yellow bus service from a designated school bus stop to school, we will be issuing Metrocards. Metrocards are being made available at schools and should be requested through the school's general office. We have already informed the Transit Authority that it may need to accommodate additional riders. We also ask families to consider alternative means of transportation to school in case of a disruption.
Parents of pre-school and school-age children with IEPs requiring transportation from their home directly to their school, as well as parents of children in grades K-2, may request a Metrocard for the parent or guardian to act as the child's escort to school.
For pre-school and school-age children who have an IEP requiring transportation from their home directly to their school, we are offering reimbursement for actual transportation costs. Parents who drive their children to school will be reimbursed at a rate of 51 cents per mile. Parents who use a taxi or car service to transport their child to school will be reimbursed for the trip upon completion of reimbursement forms that include a receipt for provided services. Requests for reimbursements should be made one week at a time on forms that will be provided in schools' general offices. The forms will ask you to indicate on which school days alternative transportation was taken and whether it was taken for both the morning and afternoon commute. Reimbursement forms as well as receipts should be sent to the Transportation Reimbursement Unit at 44-36 Vernon Blvd, Long Island City, NY 11101.
Field trips using yellow bus service will be cancelled if there is a bus service disruption. After school programs will remain open, but no busing will be provided.
This is a very difficult situation for the school system and we understand that it may be very upsetting to our students and families. Every parent or guardian must evaluate the needs of his or her child in terms of making the best arrangements to transport the child to school. Students who arrive to school late because of disruptions to yellow bus service will be excused for up to 2 hours. Children who are unable to attend school because of disruptions to yellow bus service will be marked absent with an explanation code that will ensure their attendance record is not negatively impacted.
We regret the possibility of what could be a major disturbance in the lives of students and their families. We continue to hope that the bus driver and escort union will not take such unwarranted action in response to what is the proper, legal course of action for the Department of Education to take on behalf of our students and the City taxpayers.
If you have further questions about this matter, please call our Pupil Transportation Hotline at 718-392-8855 or 311.
Sincerely,
Dennis M. Walcott
Chancellor
Parents Weigh In On the NYC Public High School Admissions Process
School admissions in New York City is not for the faint of heart. Gone are the days of just walking to your neighborhood school and signing your child up to attend. Instead, we have school choice, where parents and children get to choose from the many offerings. But sometimes too much choice is not a good thing.
Witness the high school choice admission process. A diagram of the process can be seen in this Gotham Schools article from a year ago.
Parents and students are fed up with the complexity of the process. This Inside Schools article provides suggestions on how to simplify the process and make life easier for parents and students.
What do you think? Are you going through the high school process? Share your thoughts below.
Applying to Schools? Then Come to Our School Information and Networking Night
'Tis the Season...the school application season...and everyone is talking about schools -- at the playground, on anonymous online message boards, at the supermarket-- but are you talking to the right people and are you getting the right information?
- How do you know what the right school is? What do you really need to know about tours, play dates, thank you notes, lottery schools, testing, etc.?
- Financial aid for private schools – is it real?
We have done the research for you and have put together a group of parent experts from the schools that you want to attend, who are ready to share their experiences. Let’s Talk Schools is having a social mixer, to provide parents applying to schools an opportunity to connect with other parents in an informal setting to 'talk schools’ with each other.
Come mix and mingle at our School Information Speed Date Night with parents that will give you the real, unedited scoop on schools and answer your questions live, one-on- one. Our Parent Experts have knowledge of ongoing schools*, experience of successfully completing the application process and they don’t mind talking about schools all night long!
Come join our conversation.
*Schools represented include the following:-
- Fieldston Lower / Dalton / Trevor Day / Riverdale Country /
- Bank Street / Columbia Grammar & Prep / St Hilda’s and St Hughe’s / Spence
- NEST+m / PS 166 G&T / Hunter /PS 180 /Manhattan School for Children / Ascension
- New York French-American Charter School / Upper Westside Success Academy
- Weekday Preschool / Claremont (now MontClare) / Twin Parks Schools – Riverside, Central Park and Park West Montessori
* Final list of schools subject to change
Hunter College Elementary Date Change For Round 2 Kindergarten Admissions
Hunter College Elementary School (HCES) has announced that it has added a second weekend to its kindergarten Round 2 admission dates and has eliminated the two weekdays.
HCES had originally set January 28, 29, 30, 31 as the days that parents should save for Round 2 onsite assessment. Round 2 sessions will now be held on the weekends of January 21/22 and 28/29.
If you have a child that scores high enough on the modified Stanford-Binet V test that HCES uses to screen applicants during Round 1 of the application process, (in recent years the cut off has ranged from 143 to 149) such that the child MAY be invited to Round 2, please take note of this change.
Families with an unchangeable conflict on January 21/22, including scheduled DOE Gifted and Talented (G&T) OLSAT testing, should send an email to HCESAdmit@hccs.hunter.cuny.edu noting the conflict. HCES will not take special requests for appointment times, but will ensure that all qualified children are able to attend a Round 2 assessment session.
Also note, the deadline to apply to HCES is this Friday, November 4, 2011. Hunter is accepting applications from children who are born in 2007 and reside in Manhattan only.
