Showing posts with label Mayoral control. Show all posts

Sunday, May 14, 2023

NYC Mayor Turns Over Public Schools' Gyms To Migrants

What an outrageous act by Mayor Eric Adams: displacing public school kids from their gym time/physical education classes, so that migrants who are entering this country without proper procedures can take valuable spaces in public schools without parents and staff allowed to say "no". We have information that the following schools have been used: elementary schools in Brooklyn. PS 172, PS 189, PS 188.

The move by the city has caused outrage in the Brooklyn neighborhood.

Paul Martinka

See here:

Students and parents protest outside Public School MS 577 at N. 5th and Roebling Sts. Tuesday morning in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/for New York Daily News)

Parents challenge Adams claim housing migrants in NYC public schools won’t affect students as number of schools grows to 20

Bt Cayla Bamberger and Michael Gartland, NY Daily News, May 16, 2023

Mayor Adams claimed Tuesday that his new policy of housing migrants in public school gymnasiums won’t directly impact students s — even as parents protested his latest effort to find ways to shelter the more than 60,000 migrants who’ve come to the city since last year.

“They will not be impacted directly,” Adams said during an interview on 1010 WINS. “They’re not going to be impacted. I’m never going to put our children in harm’s way.”

The Daily News reported Monday that Adams was either housing or attempting to house migrants in seven public schools, but on Tuesday he sketched out a broader plan that could potentially impact 20 or more public schools.

“This is not something we want to do,” Adams said. “What we did was identify 20 standalone gyms — this is not every gym in every school — 20 standalone gyms as one of the potential locations as we have exhausted our hotels and other locations.”

But parents disagree with the mayor’s assessment of how children may be affected.

More than 100 parents and students protested at the building that houses PS 17 and MS 577 Tuesday morning. According to event organizers there, migrants were housed in the building overnight, but cleared out ahead of the demonstration.

The city’s repurposing of the gym at the school is particularly fraught because it just opened in January, after years of parents advocating for it.

“We have a new building that we fought for so our children could have a gym,” said Stacy, whose 10-year-old son receives special education services. “They worked hard to get these activities. They have a carnival next week, and they may not have it now.”

“I don’t want my child to be locked up because he was locked up for two years,” said Melida Rodriguez, a parent and the middle school’s PTA president, referring to the COVID lockdowns. “Now’s the time he’s coming out, socializing with other kids — and then this. It’s not fair.”

The policy comes more than a week after Camille Varlack, Adams’ chief of staff, directed all city agencies to identify city-owned buildings that could be used to house migrants and as the city braces for an even bigger influx of asylum seekers from south of the border with the expiration of Title 42, a federal border policy enacted during the COVID pandemic that permitted for the expulsion of migrants coming into the U.S. from Mexico.

The schools that already have been used to house migrants under Adams’ new policy are PS 188 in Coney Island and PS 17 and MS 577. Other schools being considered include PS 189 in Brownsville and PS 172 in Sunset Park, as well as PS 18, PS 132 and MS 577, all of which are in Williamsburg.
For the second day in a row, a spokesman for Adams refused to make public a full list of the schools that are being considered to house migrants.

“As the mayor has said for months, we are facing an enormous humanitarian crisis, having served more than 65,000 asylum seekers in New York City since last year,” said Adams’ spokesman Fabien Levy. “As Title 42 lifts and we see the numbers of arrivals climb, no option is off the table. We have already opened approximately 150 sites to shelter asylum seekers in New York City.”

Migrants arrive at temporary shelter in Brooklyn elementary school gym

Bernadette Hogan,

Reuven Fenton and

David Propper, NY POST,

May 14, 2023

At least 75 migrants will temporarily stay inside the gym at PS 188 in Coney Island, two NYC councilmen confirmed — with one of the pols calling the temporary site a “puzzling” move by City Hall.

Dozens of migrants will be housed at the gym outside the Brooklyn elementary school with no timetable on how long the building will be used as an emergency site for migrants, City Council members Justin Brannan and Ari Kagan said Sunday evening.

“Unclear how long they will need to stay. This location remains puzzling to me,” Brannan tweeted.

Kagan, a Republican, also said in a tweet there was no “timeframe when this gym would be returned to the Coney Island community.”

The school is currently in Kagan’s district, but following the redistricting of council seats, both pols are fighting for the seat that would cover PS 188.

The migrants’ arrival comes just two days after the principal at PS 188 warned the city to choose the school facility as an emergency, temporary site for migrants.

Several migrant families were supposed to be sent to the stand-alone gym adjacent to the rest of the school building late last week, but the plan was put on hold amid community outrage.

The Big Apple continues to struggle mightily to house and care for the flood of migrants arriving from across the southern border – with many of them bused from border states like Texas. Over the last year, tens of thousands of migrants have reached the city.

Migrants could be seen milling around the Sandra Feldman Gymnasium Sunday night.

Antuan, a 21-year-old migrant from Venezuela, told The Post that officials informed him and others they were only staying at the building until Monday.

“They put us here because they don’t want us out on the streets,” he explained. “They’re processing us, giving us our paperwork and then we leave.”

Antuan, who reached New York on Sunday after eight months in Texas, said all the migrants were given a psychological assessment to determine whether they were dangerous before being sent to the Brooklyn neighborhood.

Brannan said in an interview Sunday that City Hall informed him the migrants began arriving at the school gym Sunday evening.

He questioned why city officials chose the Coney Island neighborhood for a migrant site because the area lacks services for them and public transportation is poor.

“And I think overall just housing folks in a public school setting, a public school gym, is just concerning and I think the location is just puzzling,” Brannan said.

The Democratic lawmaker also criticized how City Hall has communicated to the community about the site.

“I think people in the community are obviously compassionate and understanding but the way you find out about something, that colors everything,” Brannan said.

One neighbor asked why the school was the best place to house migrants.

“Why a school? That’s the part I don’t get. There’s always other options. A lot of the buildings around here, they have fallout shelters that are spacious, and used for emergencies,” a woman on the block told The Post.

School safety agents who work at PS 188 were also concerned about what their role would be with migrants there.

“School Safety Agents are trained to protect children, not migrants. National Guard and federal assistance are needed. We protect City school children. That’s our responsibility. Not migrants,” said Local 237 Teamsters spokesman Hank Sheinkopf in a statement to The Post Sunday.

City Hall press secretary Fabien Levy said the city is opening emergency shelters and respite centers daily, “but we are out of space” in a statement Sunday night. More than 4,200 migrants arrived in the last week with the city receiving hundreds of asylum seekers daily, he added.

NYC Mayor Eric Adams has said repeatedly the city is running out of options with even more migrants expected thanks to the end of Title 42, a Trump-era policy that allowed for the quick expulsion of some border-crossers over COVID-19 concerns.

The policy ended last week.

City Hall has also faced uproar over its plan to bus migrants staying in city shelters to hotels in upstate Rockland and Orange counties. More than 80 migrants – all single men — were shipped to Newburgh hotels in Orange County, last week.

Orange County Executive Steven Neuhaus filed lawsuits Friday to stop the hotels from housing migrants.

Rockland County also took legal to thwart the city’s plan.

More than 140 sites and eight mega-shelters have been opened in the city.

***************************************************************

We are all, I guess, aware that the NYC Department of Education has very little interest in kids getting their gym time, anyway. This is what public education looks like under Mayoral control. Parents and stakeholders in public education in NYC have no voice. That is abominable and must change.

Parents in NYC want to end Mayoral control, and have made that clear for 20 years.

Several years ago I was outraged when I attended and submitted a statement to Assemblyman Michael Benedetto at a hearing on Mayoral control, and before the parent advocates were able to give their speeches for 2 minutes or less Benedetto warned each and every person about to speak that he did not want to hear anything negative about Chancellor Richard Carranza, the person who used to be the lead "VIP" at the NYC Department of Education. But that is exactly what we were there to do, with all that Carranza did not do "right" - for the kids (and see here: Carranza resigns). We wanted him to stop playing politics and cite the reasons why the Chancellor and Mayor should continue to rule the public schools without a valid opposition - a vote on the school board.

In fact, there has not been a day since October 2003 that I have not protested the disenfranchisement of parents and stakeholders of public schools in NYC due to Mayoral control.

In 2019, I wrote an update to my 2007 post on Parentadvocates.org:

Editorial: Mayoral Control Of The NYC Department of Education Must End by Betsy Combier

In this post I copied and pasted the discriminatory argument made by then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg on the reason that the vote needed to be removed from the black and Hispanic parents of NYC:

Michael Cardozo's introduction to his submission which removes the constitutional rights of NYC citizens
Pages index -11
Pages 12-25
Pages 26-41
Pages 42-58
Pages 59-80

I will highlight the claim made in the last paragraph:
"As we have demonstrated above, Chapters 91 and 123 have neither the purpose nor the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race, color or membership in a language group."

My opinion: the City of NY didn't discriminate, but took the Constitutional rights away from everyone who has been given those rights (are citizens over the age of 18). This is a crime. But someone might ask, "Well - what about the Community Education Councils, set up to encourage parental participation in public school education?"

Adams says NYC looking at housing migrants in school gyms

Julia Shapero, Tue, May 16, 2023

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Tuesday that the city is considering housing some migrants in school gyms as it struggles to accommodate those arriving in the city.

Adams told New York 1 that the city is considering about 20 school gyms, each of which are separate from actual school buildings. However, he emphasized that it would be “one of the last places we want to look at.”

“We have an order, almost an order, of where we have to go as the crisis continues,” he said. “This is one of the last places we want to look at. None of us are comfortable with having to take these drastic steps. But I could not have been more clear for the last few months of what we are facing.”

Adams warned last week that New York City would not be able to handle the expected influx of migrants following the end of Title 42. The pandemic-era policy, which allowed U.S. authorities to rapidly expel asylum seekers, expired Thursday.

In the days since the expiration, however, a border surge has not materialized, and in fact border encounters dropped, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Some Republican governors of Southern states have been putting migrants on buses and sending them north in recent months, though, contributing to the influx in New York City.

Adams said Tuesday that the city has received more than 65,000 migrants. Ahead of Title 42’s expiration, the mayor eased the city’s longtime guarantee to provide shelter to all residents and also began busing some migrants to counties in northern New York.

Betsy Combier

betsy@advocatz.com

Editor, ADVOCATZ.com

Editor, ADVOCATZ Blog

Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, NYC Public Voice

Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials

Wednesday, December 16, 2020

NYC School Board, the Panel For Educational Policy, Approves $890 Million For New School Bus Entity Tied To Mayor's Donor Alex Lodde

Politics in education is bad for everyone except the politician and his political donor, who gets the benefits, of course.

The Panel For Educational Policy, the NYC school board, routinely and consistently plays politics with education dollars. They do this to please the politicians who appointed them. At every meeting we have attended, members of the PEP violated State and City laws, rules and regulations.

Since 2003 we at Parentadvocates have complained about mayoral control in New York. We have posted the foundation of this control, which in our minds is racist and autocratic. Here is my comment on the policy statement submitted to the Department of Justice by Mayor Mike Bloomberg's Attorney, Michael Cardozo:

In 2003, parents in the New York City school district were asked to look at the new PEP-CEC structure, and call Mr. Joseph Rich, Chief of the Voting Section, Civil Rights Division, Department of Justice, in Washington DC with any questions or concerns. We saw immediately that the new structure proposed by Bloomberg and Klein violated our 14th Amendment rights and prohibited us, parents, from having any say through voting on what happened in the district, so I called Mr. Rich. He told me, "I'll get back to you" when I asked him how my right to vote for the school board would be preserved. He never did return my call with an answer.

Here is the submission (broken into random sections) by Michael Cardozo, NYC Corporation Counsel, dated Oct. 31, 2003, that violates the Constitutional rights of citizens of New York City from June 30, 2003-4 until June 30, 2009, then renewed several times since. Once in power, an incumbent never wants to give it up:

Michael Cardozo's introduction to his submission which removes the constitutional rights of NYC citizens
Pages index -11
Pages 12-25
Pages 26-41
Pages 42-58
Pages 59-80

What was shocking was that I was the only parent advocate speaking out against this abominable destruction of rights to democracy in NYC.

Mark Treyger

A few months ago I gave a statement to NYC Council Education Committee Chair Mark Treyger on the violation of Special Education Law and Special Education policies by the NYC Department of Education after seeing it first hand because I do Impartial Hearings and 3020-a arbitration for teachers. Never heard a peep from him, and when I saw him a few months later at the NY State hearing on Mayoral Control, I asked him about it. He told me that he had no idea what I was talking about. That's what I mean when I say parents and people concerned with the NYC DOE should have input into policy decisions. We don't.

At the meeting on Mayoral control, I should tell you that Michael Benedetto, Member of the NY State Assembly and in charge of this hearing, is a charlatan, in my opinion. While the hearing went on, Mr. Benedetto warned each speaker that under no circumstances should anyone criticize either the Mayor or the Chancellor.

Huh?

I ignored him, as I hope everyone will, moving forward. Mayoral control must end. Now. And I say to Mr. Benedetto, I'm saddened by your warnings of dire consequences if I criticize the Mayor and the Chancellor, but they must be held accountable for their actions. Thank you for understanding this point.

Read below about the PEP giving $890 million to the new NYC School Bus Umbrella Services, which will now take over Reliant Transportation.

Let's hold the PEP, the Mayor, and the Chancellor accountable for their actions. Then I will give the "A For Accountability Award" “™ to that person and/or Group.

Betsy Combier, betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, ADVOCATZ.com
Editor, ADVOCATZ Blog
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, NYC Public Voice
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials

City approves controversial $890 million school bus deal

Selim Algar, NYPOST, December 15, 2020

The city’s Panel for Education Policy has waved through a controversial $890 million contract for school bus services to be run by a city-owned nonprofit that bailed out a politically-connected operator earlier this year.

City Hall formed NYC School Bus Umbrella Services, Inc. to take over Reliant Transportation and the 900 routes it oversees for kids with special needs.

The arrangement benefits Reliant co-owner Alex Lodde, who gave $100,000 to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s 2014 effort to push for a Democratic majority in the state Senate.

The five-year contract passed Monday night with eight members of the panel voted in favor and five abstaining — an unusually high number for the PEP.

Critics of the deal have highlighted the city’s potential exposure to Reliant’s pension obligations totaling about $142 million.

The Post reported Sunday that drivers will refuse to work for the nonprofit unless it guarantees payment of those liabilities in full.

“Either the nonprofit is on the hook, or we’ll go after Reliant — and we won’t wait five years,” Michael Cordiello, president of ATU Local 1181, which represents Reliant’s 2,000 bus drivers and attendants, told The Post Sunday.

The Department of Education has argued that the takeover will improve services for 10 percent of all student bus riders.

The city will continue to contract with private companies to serve the remaining 90 percent of kids that rely on school buses.

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza defended the arrangement Monday, contending that it gave the DOE more control over busing services.

“If I have to negotiate with third party vendors around our transportation it makes it difficult not for us but for our children and our families to be able to be transported,” he said.

Several members of city parent advisory councils questioned the deal’s price tag and questionable provenance at the meeting — especially amid severe coronavirus budget cuts to school programs.

Lucas Liu, of Community Education Council 3, noted that de Blasio and Carranza will no longer hold their current positions when the final bill lands on the city’s table.

In addition, the nonprofit will protect Reliant’s ownership from any liabilities stemming from a withdrawal from the pension plan, sources said.

A Department of Education contracts officer said Monday he doubted the city would end up on the hook for those costs.

But when pressed, Nicolas Storelli-Castro said there were protections in the contract that would allow the city to pay those sums over extended periods if need be.

Wednesday, May 13, 2020

NYC Chancellor Says He Will Not "Waste A Good Crisis", Then Slashes Fellowships and Scraps Grading in K-8

PS 50 in the Bronx

NYC Chancellor Richard Carranza has been quoted as saying that he never "wastes a good crisis" to get his agenda put into place.

He and his partner-in-crime NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio love this time of turmoil and are gleefully ignoring public opinions criticizing their education overhaul as they scrap grades in K-8, leaving parents and students upset about how graduation to new schools will work, and slashing fellowships. And this is just for starters. What happens next is unknown, but what we and they know for sure is, they - Carranza and de Blasio - are above the law and not beholden to anyone because the behemoth known as the New York City Department of Education is under Mayoral control. The DOE gets more than $34 billion in taxpayer money (fiscal year 2019-2020).

What does "mayoral control" mean? This means we, the general public, have no input. Nothing we say is listened to or matters to the Big Chiefs of the NYC DOE. I testified in front of the NY State Assembly Education Committee when they held a meeting downtown on Mayoral control a few months ago. The Chair of the Committee, Michael Benedetto, pictured above, actually told every public speaker that no criticism of Mayor de Blasio or Richard Carranza would be allowed or heard. He put it out to everyone as a warning.

Jo Anne Simon

I was shocked. I was also greatly saddened by the silence of Jo Anne Simon who was also on the panel with Mr. Benedetto. I have followed her work as an attorney for children with disabilities for many years, but she agreed with Benedetto's threats to the speakers.

I think it is abominable that New York City is under Mayoral control, which means that all the members of our school board - the Panel For Educational Policy ("PEP") - are in place to agree to whatever the Mayor wants. Since 2004, when I started attending the monthly meetings, PEP members openly violate Education Law by closing schools for no reason, voting on spending millions of dollars for programs or products which do not support our kids, etc. I could go on and on, as I have done on this blog and my website Parentadvocates.org.

We have been protesting Mayoral control and the PEP puppets since 2003. Indeed, I wrote the Department of Justice complaining about the proposal sent to the DOJ's Steven Rich clearly removing the right to vote by minorities in NYC who, General Counsel Michael Cardozo wrote, don't vote anyway. You can read my article on the denial of rights and the statement sent to Washington D.C., below:

Editorial: The New York City Department of Education is a Sham and Mike Bloomberg is the Flim-Flam Man (2007)

Michael Cardozo's introduction to his submission which removes the constitutional rights of NYC citizens
Pages index -11
Pages 12-25
Pages 26-41
Pages 42-58
Pages 59-80

Editorial: Mayoral Control Of The NYC Department of Education Must End (2019)

Now that the PEP meetings are on video, you can see Chancellor Richard Carranza's temper tantrums and incompetency yourself.

We parents, educators and concerned citizens need a voice now more than ever in making sure our kids are learning the academic subjects as well as how to deal with life in general. The overhaul of the public school system in New York City that will be put in place in September will sadly not have the input of any of us.

Betsy Combier,
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, ADVOCATZ.com
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, NYC Public Voice
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials

NYC DOE slashes fellowship program cutting hundreds of teaching jobs

Selim Algar, NY POST, May 13, 2020

Richard CarranzaTaidgh Barron/NY Post

Citing the coronavirus, the Department of Education has gutted a fellowship program that would have placed hundreds of teachers into city schools next year, The Post has learned.

A total of 475 accepted applicants were slated to begin training this summer for eventual placement in the fall.

But the program was hacked down to just 75 — and even those surviving participants aren’t guaranteed employment.

“Due to the economic impact of COVID-19, we are actively assessing our hiring needs for next year, and this summer we will have training for a small cohort of fellows in order to fill critical positions in District 75,” said DOE spokeswoman Danielle Filson.

There are roughly 10,000 current city teachers who launched their careers through the program, Filson said.

“It’s shocking,” said a Brooklyn woman who was supposed to start training this summer and is now without any job prospects for next year. “It’s really hard to look forward to a new career and to have this happen. It’s like, now what?”

City Hall plans to cleave the education budget by $827 million to combat pandemic related shortfalls next year.

Critics have blasted the slashing, arguing that too many essential programs are being gashed while other areas — including central administrative costs — are avoiding the blade.

“Cutting a program like this is going to have a direct impact on children,” the spurned applicant said. “These are people who really sought out being teachers in New York City.”

Filson said the DOE is working to plug staffing shortfalls and noted that the number of traditional applications for city teaching posts is still strong.

“This administration has made unprecedented investments in teacher training and leadership programs and we will be prioritizing this cohort’s applications in future programs and offering them early opportunities to enroll,” she added.

De Blasio won’t say Carranza isn’t using coronavirus crisis to overhaul schools

By Julia Marsh and Natalie Musumeci

, NY POST May 7, 2020

Mayor de Blasio affirmed Thursday that the coronavirus pandemic has provided he and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza an opportunity to radically change the city’s public high school admissions policy next year.

Last month, de Blasio announced that the city was scrapping the traditional grading policy for kindergarten through eighth-grade students this year because of the coronavirus crisis. The normal grading, however, remains for high school students.

The pandemic has also resulted in the cancellation of state exams and the removal of attendance as an admissions metric.

Asked about The Post front page Thursday on a survey that found 92 percent of parents are “extremely or very concerned” that the scrapping of the grades this year will provide an opening to push through radical changes on admissions processes, the mayor said, “Many things are going to be re-evaluated as a result of this crisis.”

“We are just not going to bring New York City back to the status quo that was there before,” Hizzoner said.

The mayor continued, “We’re going to try to create a series of changes that bring equity … certainly the screened schools are being re-evaluated.”

De Blasio said only that the school admissions policy “will be addressed soon.”

The mayor was at first evasive when asked by a Post reporter about Carranza telling fellow administrators not to “waste a good crisis” in the pursuit of systemic change in a panel discussion last month.

“I don’t know the specific panel discussion you’re talking about, so I can’t respond to comments I haven’t seen the context of,” the mayor said.

But later, provided with details of the national Association of Latino Supervisors and Superintendents video conference held in mid-April, the mayor added, “The Chancellor was clearly speaking to our ability to address underlying issues as we move forward from this crisis.”

Asked how city seventh-graders will apply for high school next year, the mayor acknowledged changes are afoot behind the scenes.

“We’ve been clear in this administration that we are re-evaluating the admissions process across the board and we’re asking important questions about what is fair and equitable going forward,” he said.

Asked why grading was maintained for high school students and not middle schoolers, whose seventh-grade scores are used to weigh admissions to the city’s high schools when they apply in eighth grade, City Hall spokeswoman Jane Meyer said, “High school grades are on students’ transcripts which are used for college applications, internships and other external uses. There is also a greater independence of learners for high school students, versus lower grades.”

She tellingly added, “We have the ability to adjust the high school admissions process in a way that we can’t for colleges and universities. We will have more to share on admissions processes soon.”

Meanwhile, big-name backers of specialized high school admissions testing — which is based solely on a single citywide standardized test that determines exceptance to an elite eight schools in the city — also blasted potential overhauls of the city’s grading and screening systems.

In a letter to de Blasio and Carranza, members of the Education Equity Campaign — led by cosmetics billionaire Ronald Lauder, former Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons, and activist Kirsten John Foy — pressed for more resources rather than a systemic reboot.

The group called for city leaders to leverage new technology to increase test prep access among other services.

“We cannot waste time and resources on plans that will cause more chaos and turmoil in our school admissions system,” the letter read.

Richard Carranza

Credit: Stefan Jeremiah

DOE could end screening for top NYC schools after coronavirus pandemic

The coronavirus may kill the controversial practice of “screening” students for admittance to NYC’s most coveted middle and high schools, at least temporarily.

With this year’s state math and English exams canceled, a watered-down grading policy enacted, and the tossing of attendance, the key factors for admission to selective schools have been dropped or diminished.

David C. Bloomfield

“This may be the beginning of the end of screening as we know it,” said David Bloomfield, a Brooklyn College and CUNY Grad Center education professor.

The city Department of Education has so far left anxious parents of current 4th and 7th graders — who would normally apply to middle and high schools by early December for the 2021-22 academic year — in the dark about how admissions will be determined.

But schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, who recently told principals to “never waste a good crisis,” is likely to embrace the coronavirus-caused elimination of screens as a way to achieve his diversity agenda.

Carranza has campaigned against the use of a single exam, the SHSAT, to determine admission to eight elite high schools, including Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech, and has declared his disdain for other public schools that select students based on high grades and test scores, along with attendance records.

“We are screening children?” Carranza said at a press conference with Mayor de Blasio in May 2018. “I don’t get that. We’re a public school system in one of the most diverse cities — not in America — but the world.”

Carranza has said he believes screening was started to keep white, middle-class families in the system — to the detriment of many black and brown kids who can’t get into top schools.

“Clearly, the screened schools are an area where some real change is needed,” de Blasio told a parent in 2018. The mayor’s own two kids attended highly selective high schools — Brooklyn Tech and Beacon School in Manhattan.

About a third of 400-plus city high schools have screened students for years, ranking kids by state test scores, grades and attendance as the main factors.

The School Diversity Advisory Group, a panel appointed by de Blasio, recommended in August 2018 that the DOE eliminate gifted programs as well as selective admissions at most schools. Such practices “create segregation by race, class, disability, home language, and academic ability,” it said.

The gifted programs remain intact so far, but the pandemic has virtually wiped out the traditional screens.

After this year’s state ELA and math exams for grades 3-8 were canceled, the DOE announced it would waive attendance as an admission factor due to the COVID-19 shutdown, and switch to remote learning.

On April 28, the DOE unveiled a soft new grading policy, in which elementary and middle school students will be rated as “meeting standards” or “needs improvement.”

Many high-achieving students and their parents oppose the new system.

Seventh-grader Jude Listanowsky, 13, (pictured at left) started a Change.org petition last week asking the mayor to count grades given during the first and second marking periods — before the COVID-19 shutdown — for high school admissions.

The DOE’s relaxed grading policy, he said, “will make not me but all of my classmates feel that the effort we put in our first 7 months of school was for nothing. We will have no motivation to perform our best during this time of COVID, which was something that was keeping us distracted from the emotional pain of missing friends,” Jude wrote.

“With the new change, students with a grade of 98 will have the same grade as ones with a 70 — clearly erasing all need for effort.”

As of Saturday, his petition had gathered 755 signatures.

“What will high schools look at to see whether students should go into their schools? What’s the new criteria for high school acceptance?” asked Christina Muniz, whose son Miguel Mendez, 13, earned a 100 percent-plus average in the first and second marking periods at JHS 104 in Gramercy.

“I worked extremely hard for these grades and high schools should recognize what I have done,” said Miguel, who hopes to attend Bronx HS of Science or Eleanore Roosevelt HS in Manhattan.

Frances Kweller, director of Kweller Prep, a tutoring service to prepare kids for competitive middle and high school entrance exams, said the writing is on the wall: “This pandemic is being used by the mayor as a golden opportunity to eradicate the screening process at top NYC schools.”

A DOE spokeswoman did not respond to questions about screening or admissions.

After coronavirus: Admissions for NYC’s ‘screened’ schools could change, possibly spurring more student diversity

By Christina Veiga May 5, 2020, 11:04am EDT

In Manhattan’s District 2, where getting into a coveted middle or high school is like a competitive sport, hundreds of parents streamed into an emergency virtual meeting last week.

It was the eve before Mayor Bill de Blasio announced schools would toss out traditional grades for students as part of the city’s response to school buildings being shuttered during the coronavirus crisis.

Parent after parent lobbied, ultimately unsuccessfully, for keeping traditional grades intact for elementary and middle schoolers. Without those marks, many wondered, how would their children get accepted into the most selective schools next year?

City and education leaders have yet to answer that question. But it’s clear that applying to “screened” middle and high schools next year promises to be unlike any other. That’s because the city’s response to the coronavirus crisis means the main data points that competitive schools use to admit — and stress out — the city’s 10- and 13-year olds are gone: attendance, state tests, and grades.

What happens next could make the process even more confusing to navigate. Or it could have the surprising consequence of making schools more diverse — if de Blasio and Chancellor Richard Carranza decide to act.

Integration advocates have long lobbied the mayor to tear down or pare back screens, which contribute to the city’s surprising status as home to one of the most segregated school systems in the county. Now, as buildings are closed for about a third of the academic year and more than 1 million city students are forced to learn from their homes, the coronavirus has exacerbated deep inequities across the system.

Pushback to any possible changes is already beginning to emerge, as families who have managed to navigate the city’s admissions maze deftly are upset about the rules changing in the middle of the game.

City leaders have said that new policy regarding admissions is in the works. Sean Corcoran, who has researched screening and segregation in New York City schools, said parents and schools need clear guidance to follow, but that the education department’s next steps should be taken carefully.

“We should be cautious moving forward, and major changes in the way admissions are done could have an impact on the way schools operate,” said Corcoran, an associate professor at Vanderbilt University. “Hopefully, they’ll do it sooner rather than later so parents know what to expect. There’s nothing that makes parents in New York City more anxious than knowing where their kid is going to go to school.”

Next year’s admissions still murky

New York City stands out as having a higher share than anywhere else in the country of schools that use competitive admissions criteria to admit students.

In a typical year, each school sets its own admissions criteria, creating a patchwork of standards and requirements that families and students often struggle to understand. Some may require a minimum grade point average, others can count a single absence against a student’s chance for admissions. Often, schools do not disclose how they weigh applications, making the odds of getting an offer a mystery. Families have a leg up if they have the time to visit open houses, the savvy to guide their children with their applications, and money to pay private consultants to help them decode the process.

Sorting through students can require an immense investment of school leaders’ time — especially now, without data points like test scores that allow for quick distinctions among students. Next year, some schools might decide it’s too much work to figure out new ways to select students, and drop screens all together.

There is precedent for such sweeping admissions changes: Brooklyn’s District 15 recently eliminated competitive admissions standards in favor of a lottery system. Other screened schools across the city have dropped some of their admissions screens as the crush of applications became overwhelming.

On the other hand, schools that are committed to separating students by their academic records could simply double down, creating new entrance criteria. Many of the most coveted schools already use measures beyond attendance, grades, and test scores. Bard High School Early College administers its own entrance tests. Beacon High School requires a portfolio of work.

It’s also possible schools could pivot to use grades accumulated before the shutdown, if those are made available, or test scores from prior school years.

Without a citywide policy in place, the admissions process could become even more confusing and less fair to students, said Corcoran, the Vanderbilt professor.

“If you don’t provide enough structure for screened programs then they will engage in activities that are unequal or perhaps less transparent than what they’ve done in the past — and people have already complained that screens are not transparent,” he said.

One simple solution the city could consider, he said, is requiring schools to share their rubrics publicly. Chalkbeat submitted a public records request in November for school rubrics, and the education department says it needs until June 30th to respond.

What it means for integration

Student activists have been organizing school-wide walkouts, occupied City Hall during council hearings, and have hounded the mayor during public appearances to push for change within the admissions system — to little avail. Now, in the span of a few weeks, the pandemic has forced the potential to usher in reforms.

“It is incredibly frustrating that it took a pandemic,” said Emma Rehac, a high school senior with the youth advocacy group IntegrateNYC. “Now people are looking at all these solutions that we’ve been organizing around. They are always urgent, not just now.”

Diverse schools can boost outcomes for low-income students and those of color — and their white and more affluent peers. Integration efforts have led to lower drop out rates, higher college enrollment, and reduced racial prejudice.

But screened schools tend to enroll disproportionately fewer economically disadvantaged students, or those who are black and Hispanic. Using attendance measures has been shown to screen out those students, who are more likely to suffer from health complications like asthma, or lack permanent housing, and therefore find it hard to be present in school every day. Grades and test scores can reflect that children in segregated schools often don’t have the same opportunities to learn — for example, schools serving mostly low-income students tend to have higher teacher turnover.

The coronavirus has made it more clear than ever what some students are up against: Hundreds of thousands began remote learning without computers or WiFi that would allow them to tune into online classes. Schools had been closed for about seven weeks by the time the city was able to deliver a device to the more than 300,000 students who needed one.

“If they decide to use screens, then they’re not being fair to anyone,” said Lennox Thomas, a high school senior in Brooklyn and member of Teens Take Charge, a youth advocacy group that has pressured the mayor to change admissions standards. “They’re just going to be assessing a students’ access to internet, and that’s obviously not fair because some students can’t afford a computer. Some students don’t have access to WiFi.”

Pushback mounting

Even during a pandemic, the mayor is likely to face pushback if the city radically changes screening practices — especially from middle-class and white parents who often manage to navigate the system well.

Opposition has already bubbled up. A seventh-grader at a competitive school recently launched a petition with more than 1,400 people supporting his call for the city to preserve students’ grades from before schools shut down so they can be used in high school admissions.

“I sacrificed participating in sports at my school in order to do my best in an important year,” he wrote. “This grading policy change will make not [only] me but all of my classmates feel that the effort we put in our first 7 months of school was for nothing.”

Jodie Loverro, a mother of three children in District 2, has one child in fourth-grade and another is in seventh — critical years for admissions. Since applications are due early in fifth- and eighth-grade, schools typically consider the academic records of students from their previous full year in school.

Loverro, who works as a substitute teacher in the district, decided to work part-time this year so she could ensure her fourth-grader made it to school on time everyday — knowing that attendance would play a big role in where she would get accepted to middle school. Her seventh-grade son, meanwhile, put in extra effort this semester to boost his grades above 90%, hoping it would improve his chances for a top high school.

Without knowing what will happen for next year’s admissions, Loverro is thinking about private schools and considering homeschooling. Most of all, she just wants clarity from the education department about what admissions will look like next year.

“It’s confusing. I honestly just feel like this was a lot to throw at people, and they’re already dealing with a lot,” she told Chalkbeat. “You’re putting this in place in an attempt to even the playing field, but you are also hurting the kids that are trying to excel.”

Parents who want to preserve screening often wonder whether schools can serve a broad range of students well and argue that students with top grades should be rewarded with a placement in a coveted school.

“The kids who are high achievers should have a chance to be high achievers. It’s not the most politically correct thing to say, but it’s also true,” said Elissa Stein, a consultant who helps families navigate the application process. “If next year is a lottery and kids end up in schools where they’re not academically prepared, it could make for a very challenging experience.”

It’s up to de Blasio

Whatever happens next year may ultimately be an anomaly rather than result in any structural change, integration advocates believe.

Though the schools chancellor has forcefully questioned the widespread use of screens and heralded the importance of diverse schools, the mayor is ultimately in charge of education department policy. Throughout his tenure, de Blasio has preferred to let individual schools or districts take on their own diversity efforts, avoiding any citywide policy.

The mayor appointed an advisory group that recommended ways to better integrate schools, but he has not acted for eight months on the most controversial proposals — to overhaul gifted programs and eliminate some specific screens.

That was before the coronavirus brought New York City to its knees. Today, schools are meal hubs serving hundreds of thousands of meals to hungry students and their families, as unemployment reaches historic levels. Teachers, while pivoting to online instruction on a dime, have also taken on the roles of social workers and counselors — raising money for their students’ families to help keep roofs over their heads, and attending virtual funerals for those who have lost family members.

All of that could make it hard to argue that now is the time to focus on diversity in schools.

“If there’s any sense that any issue is going to be politically different, I don’t see the desire or the courage from City Hall to really take on those issues,” said Matt Gonzales, who advocates for integration policies at the New York University Metro Center. “I feel pessimistic about what could happen under this administration, but I also know this moment itself calls for decisive and real action.”

Community Education Council District 2 meeting held at PS 340 in 2019.Stefan Jeremiah

NYC parents warring over representation in screened schools debate

by Selim Algar, NY POST, May 15, 2020

City parents are warring over representation in the high stakes debate over screened school admissions.

One faction argues that the Department of Education has given a partisan advocacy group a pivotal role — a claim the agency denies.

The DOE tapped the Education Council Consortium — whose co-chairs oppose screened schools — to conduct a video meeting on the issue Saturday to collect parental opinion.

Helmed by Shino Tanikawa and NeQuan McLean, the ECC is an independent advocacy group comprised of elected Community Education Council members who choose to opt into the organization. CECs are parental advisory boards present in every city district.

The DOE asserted that Saturday’s meeting is only the beginning of their parent engagement process and that critics were overstating its impact on a final decision.

Some parents — particularly those in favor of preserving schools with academics-based admissions — note that the ECC successfully sought an exemption from open meeting laws in January.

Len Silverman, a member of the DOE-recognized Chancellors Parent Advisory Committee of parent association presidents, questioned the arrangement this week.

“We’re the elected parent leaders, we represent parents from each district,” Silverman said during a CPAC meeting with DOE officials Thursday. “The ECC is a private advocacy group and they have no formal role in the DOE.”

Silverman said Saturday’s meeting could confuse city parents as to the basis of their representation.

“It seems like we’re conflating the ECC with CPAC,” he said. “Although the ECC does some great work and I’d like to acknowledge their efforts, there are other groups such as Class Size Matters, PLACE, that also do great work. My question is, what role are private advocacy groups going to have in terms of these decisions that are being made?”

Arguing that it draws members from across the ideological spectrum, McClean staunchly defended the ECC’s role in Saturday’s meeting and its work on matters of equity and school desegregation overall.

“The Education Council Consortium, a collective of elected parent leaders representing all intersections of race, age, nationality, religion, and ability in NYC, will continue to advocate for every child, not merely a select few,” McLean told The Post.

The group, which meets regularly with schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, has more than 200 members from across the city, according to its website.

Tanikawa and McLean, both members of Mayor de Blasio’s School Diversity Advisory Group, have called for the elimination of screened schools, calling them unfair instruments of racial segregation.

They also oppose the specialized high school admissions test and the structure of Gifted and Talented programs.

The ECC’s Twitter account argues in favor of screened school elimination, arguing that they unfairly favor those with resources at the expense of low-income kids black and Hispanic students.

CEC 26 president Adriana Aviles noted this week that the ECC remains a largely unknown entity among parents in her Queens district.

“That’s where some of the frustration is right now,” she said. “The average parent has no idea what the ECC is. Even a lot of CEC members don’t know what it is or what it does. Communities feel that they have not been represented properly in these conversations.”

The presidents of three CECs, Philip Wong, Deborah Alexander and Maud Maron, sent a letter to schools Carranza this week objecting to the DOE’s handling of parent engagement.

All three are members of the ECC but contend that the group is tightly managed and insufficiently transparent.

“We cannot adequately express our deep disappointment in the dishonest and faithless way in which the DOE has decided to pretend to listen to parent communities,” it states. “Many communities were ignored in the formulating of the Grading Policy and now those same communities are being promised engagement in public when the reality is a fake, pre-ordained process, behind closed doors.”

The letter argued that the DOE should hold formal public meetings with individual CECs.

McLean fired back, arguing that their opposition was misplaced given inequities in the school system.

“It is unfortunate that, in a world where reporting has highlighted our city as one of the most segregated school systems in the country, certain people are resorting to aggressive, hostile, cruel personal attacks against those fighting for equity,” McLean said.

A DOE spokeswoman stressed that the ECC will be one of many groups they will engage on the screening issue in the coming weeks and months.

“We are coordinating citywide engagements with parent leaders and the public—there are no secretive policy decisions made with any one group,” said Katie O’Hanlon. “We’re going to hear all parent voices on equal footing, not just the loudest ones, and won’t decide on a policy until we do.”

NYC Rubber Room Reporter and ATR CONNECT