Chalkbeat

LISTEN: Migrant students navigate a new reality

2024-03-27T10:00:00+00:00

The first episode of P.S. Weekly focuses on one of the biggest education stories in New York City this year: the arrival of thousands of migrant students.

Officials estimate that more than 36,000 migrant students have enrolled in city schools over the past two years.

What challenges are these new students facing? And what are schools doing to support them? This student-reported episode explores these questions through conversations with students, educators, and a journalist who’s been covering the issue.

The first segment features an interview with Chalkbeat reporter Michael Elsen-Rooney, as he explains how schools have been supporting recently arrived students — and what the media has gotten wrong. With the city’s recent policy limiting migrant families to 60 days in shelters, it’s been hard on schools to figure out how to help. Elsen-Rooney said school officials are grappling with questions like: “Can we figure out transportation for them, or do they leave? And then they have to start over at a new school?”

Next, Marisol Martin, a senior at Claremont International High School in the Bronx, talks about her hurdles and triumphs since coming here from Mexico a few years ago. As she’s gotten more involved with her school’s Dream Squad — a program the Education Department started in 2020 to help immigrant students and undocumented youth and is now in more than 60 schools — Martin has felt more a part of the community.

A poster for the Dream Squad at Claremont International High School.

She’s paying it forward, now as a Dream Squad leader herself, and she shares her view on how schools should better help students feel connected to one another.

“What I would tell them is to socialize with other people,” Martin said in Spanish. “When you’re alone, you’re shy, and you don’t want to talk to anyone, you close yourself in your own world, and you don’t know more about what’s happening outside.”

Finally, Sunisa Nuonsy, a former high school teacher of 10 years at International High School at Prospect Heights in Brooklyn, talks about why she became a teacher specifically focused on immigrant students, the challenges she faced, and her advice to other teachers, especially those who are working with migrant students who may have experienced trauma. (Nuonsy is currently a doctoral student in urban education at the CUNY Graduate Center and a project researcher for the CUNY Initiative on Immigration and Education.)

Sunisa Nuonsy

“They can easily shut down and they can easily drop out,” Nuonsy said of migrant students. “So you have a very unique opportunity to be an adult in their life that is welcoming them and affirming them and showing them that they have value and that they should be here.”

P.S. Weekly is available on major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Be sure to drop a review in your app or shoot an email to PSWeekly@chalkbeat.org. Tell us what you learned today or what you’re still wondering. We just might read your comment on a future episode.

P.S. Weekly is a collaboration between Chalkbeat and The Bell. Listen for new episodes Wednesdays this spring.

Read the full episode transcript below

Dorothy: Welcome to P.S. Weekly… the sound of the New York City school system. I’m Dorothy Ha, a senior at Stuyvesant High School– and I’m super excited to be hosting the very first episode of P.S. Weekly. This show is a collaboration between Chalkbeat New York, a leading education news site– and The Bell, a leading provider of audio journalism training to high school students. It’s a pairing as natural as a bacon, egg, and cheese!

Dorothy: Each week this Spring, our team will dig into one issue affecting New York City schools, bringing you a mix of voices and perspectives that you won’t find anywhere else. Along the way, we want to hear from YOU, our lovely listeners– more on that later in the show. Right now… let’s get to it.

Dorothy: For our first episode, we chose what’s been arguably the biggest story in New York City this year.

News Clip: Parents and educators say several Manhattan public schools are overwhelmed with an influx of migrant students. CBS News’ Natalie Duddridge spoke with the Chancellor on his efforts to find solutions.

Dorothy: What challenges are these new migrant students facing? And what are schools doing to support them? We’ll hear experiences directly from students and teachers. But first! We have Mike Elsen-Rooney with us. Mike is a Chalkbeat reporter who’s been covering how schools are responding to thousands of newly arrived migrant students.

Dorothy: Hi Mike! Thanks for joining us.

Mike: Hey, Dorothy. It’s great to be here.

Dorothy: All right. So, Mike, when did the issue that some have called the “migrant crisis” hit your radar?

Mike: So I remember back in Summer 2022, when this was first hitting the headlines. I was watching a meeting, and a superintendent said, “We’re expecting a couple hundred new students to come in.” And I was like, “Whoa, that seems like a lot of kids.” And then here we are about two years later, and it’s a whole lot more than that.

Dorothy: Right, so now it’s 2024. And how many people are we talking about in total now?

Mike: So our best estimate is that about 36,000 new kids have enrolled over the past couple of years.

Dorothy: Wow. That’s a lot of students. So what can you tell us about where these new migrants are living and where they’re going to school?

Mike: Yeah. So where they’re living really depends on where the city has been able to set up shelters. We’ve seen shelters pop up in Long Island City in Queens, and Clinton Hill in Brooklyn, and lots of different parts of the city. And so where kids go to school really depends on two things. Number one is how close it is to their shelters. The second thing is what schools are really good and well-equipped to serve English language learners.

Dorothy: I can imagine that there are a lot of challenges in handling this big increase in migrant students.

Mike: Yeah, it can be really hard just getting tons and tons of new kids with a lot of challenges. And then the thing that’s been really hard recently is that there’s this new policy: families can only stay in shelters for 60 days. After that, they have to reapply, and they may end up in a shelter in a different part of the city. And so schools have to figure out, “Can we keep this kid? Can we figure out transportation for them, or do they leave? And then they have to start over at a new school?”

Dorothy: Recently, you wrote a really interesting story about how this immigration issue is impacting students and how they’re feeling at this moment. And you spoke to folks at Newcomers High School. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Mike: Yeah. So Newcomers High School is this really interesting place in Long Island City, Queens. It’s been around for 30 years, and they’re really good at accepting newcomer kids from around the world and teaching them English and helping them get acclimated to life in the U.S. And so that school is also near a bunch of shelters in Long Island City. And so when I saw a couple of kids from Newcomers High School speaking at a meeting for the Panel for Educational Policy recently, I was really surprised by what they said.

Meeting Clip: Our name stigmatizes us and condemns us to always be patronized and not having a choice because we are “new.” We are marked with the idea that we are here occupying a space that is not ours.

Mike: They said that the name Newcomers High School was, quote, putting a target on their backs.

Dorothy: And so what happened after the testimony?

Mike: After that testimony, they went through the whole process of getting their name changed, and we just actually found out that they got approved to have a new name. And the school is going to be called Atlas.

Dorothy: The situation with their name change kind of makes me think about the portrayal of migrants in the media. You know, not every journalist is as thorough as you are, Mike. So what’s been the broader media narrative?

Mike: So we’ve seen some examples where the media actually has really not captured what’s happening on the ground. And one really good example is, there was an incident recently where the city had set up basically an emergency tent shelter on Floyd Bennett Field at the Southern tip of Brooklyn. And there was a storm coming, and the city decided to evacuate them.

News Anchor 1: Mounting frustrations this afternoon in Brooklyn after the city temporarily placed asylum seekers into the gym of James Madison High School in Midwood.

News Anchor 2: While the move was to provide shelter for them from last night’s storm, but it was meant– it meant that no classes happened at the school today. And parents are really frustrated by all of it.

Mike: The city had them stay there overnight and then got them out early in the morning. But the school’s principal decided, they weren’t going to be able to get it cleaned up in time; let’s switch to remote learning for the day. When this hit the news. It turned into this huge story, especially in a lot of right-wing media. And the narrative was that New York City kids are getting pushed out by migrant families. But when a colleague of mine actually talked to students and parents there, you know, kids were saying, “Look, we sympathize with these families. We didn’t want them to be exposed to any danger of being out in the storm. And it was just a very different set of reactions than what came through if you only read the kind of media firestorm over this. And so, you know, it kind of drove home this point that what the media says doesn’t always reflect the reality on the ground.

Dorothy: Wow, fascinating. And on top of that, immigration has been a big issue in the presidential election so far. I can think of one presidential candidate who has been speaking about it a lot in particular. So how has that impacted New York City?

Mike: So Donald Trump just weighed in on this. He made some claims in a recent interview that New York City kids were getting pushed out by migrant students. And it just is incorrect. And the biggest reason for that is that there are actually a lot of empty seats in New York City schools. We lost enrollment during the pandemic, and so there’s plenty of space and no one’s getting pushed out.

Dorothy: So my last question for you is, for educators, and policymakers, and community members who want to better support these migrant students, what are some of the success stories that you’ve seen?

Mike: So many schools have been finding really creative and empathetic ways to support their new kids. You know, one big example we’ve seen is that a lot of schools have done coat drives because a lot of these newcomer kids have lived in the Southern Hemisphere their whole lives and have never really been through a New York winter. So it’s just those kinds of things at the community level, listening to what these families need and making it happen.

Dorothy: Mike, thank you so much for sitting down and having this conversation with us.

Mike: Thanks so much, Dorothy.

Dorothy: And now, we’re going to take a closer look at what the experience is really like after students arrive here. And how one program is helping them adjust. Our P.S. Weekly reporter Jose Santana has the story.

Marisol: Hola, mi nombre es Marisol Martin. Soy del grado 12, soy senior, mi país es México.

Jose: This is Marisol Martin, an 18-year-old high school senior.

Marisol: The biggest challenge I have is the language. I only knew how to say “thank you.” The teacher back in my country told us “thank you” in English, but beyond that I didn’t know anything.

Jose: She arrived in New York City from Mexico when NYC schools were still remote because of the pandemic.

Marisol: It was very difficult for me to learn; ninth grade was very difficult. The classes were online, and that made it more difficult for me to learn, and I didn’t understand anything. I just used a translator or something like that to see what to do.

Jose: And she’s not the only one who faces these kinds of hurdles. New York City is a city of immigrants, and its schools reflect that. Young people from all over the world come here for a multitude of reasons. Last school year, nearly one in five city students was learning English as a new language. Here’s Governor Kathy Hochul during a press conference last September.

Kathy (News Clip): We have real challenges. They’re coming in from West Africa, South and Central America. So it’s not just assuming that Spanish is going to cover everybody. It doesn’t come close. City officials…

Jose: When high school students like Marisol first arrive in New York City, the school system typically enrolls them in one of about 20 international high schools. These are schools like Newcomers– now called Atlas –that specialize in supporting recent immigrants. Marisol attends Claremont International High School in the Bronx. Nearly all of its students are low-income and English language learners. When Marisol first got there, language wasn’t the only barrier.

Marisol: Another challenge for me was to use technology that was very complicated for me because they gave me an iPad to work with my things. But it was in English, and I didn’t know where to enter, what to do, or where to paste.

Jose: Being in a new country also takes some cultural adjustment.

Marisol: When I arrived here in the United States, I entered Claremont and I kind of didn’t have much connection with the people. Different countries, different cultures.

Jose: But lucky for Marisol– and so many other immigrant students –there was help.

Marisol: Something that has helped me are some groups, like the Dream Squad. When I entered tenth grade, I was on the Dream Team. That also helped me a lot to communicate.

Jose: What is a Dream Squad? To answer that question, come with me to one of their meetings. It’s 12 p.m. on a Tuesday and I’m here at the Dream Squad’s weekly lunchtime meeting in the school’s library. The Dream Squad’s staff director Evelyn Reyes is leading the meeting with about 10 students, who are all seniors. They were discussing plans and ideas to recruit more Dream Squad members by sending emails out, flyers and directly inviting students to their meetings. Evelyn said the program started in 2019 to help immigrant students and undocumented youth.

Evelyn: Our then social worker was working around creating a space where students, regardless of immigration status, could find, you know, that empowerment where their stories were shared.

Jose: Claremont is one of more than two dozen schools around the city with a Dream Squad program. Dream Squads receive support from the non-profit ImmSchools and the DOE’s Division of Multilingual Learners. They provide notebooks, laptops, lanyards, and events for students and staff. But the most important aspect of the program is the community itself– and the knowledge that gets shared. Meeting topics vary from week to week.

Evelyn: So, mental health, we want to talk about also “know your rights.” So that our students are aware of what their rights are as immigrants. We want our students to also know that they have different options when it comes to post-secondary planning, whether that is college, whether that is trade school, whether that is a certificate program. We do try to do our best to share the information that we share with the students inside those meetings, across the school.

Jose: Dream Squad is tackling some big challenges, and it’s not without its difficulties. Language continues to be an issue.

Evelyn: Claremont is a very multilingual school, so we are a very diverse school community. And sometimes, just being able to produce or communicate a lot of the resources on students’ native language, that could be something that can be a little bit challenging.

Jose: But, despite these challenges, Evelyn makes sure to let the students know that–

Evelyn: Your background, your values, your culture, all of that is an asset. Like you have that, value that. So I do want them to feel like their story matters. Like I want them to, to feel like they’re at a community. That they’re welcome not only inside our school community, but also, you know, in this country.

Jose: And how does Dream Squad measure success?

Evelyn: Knowledge is success for me. Like, as long as we’re about to reach our students and we’re able to provide the resources, that they know how to use the resources, that they know how to access those resources. That’s how we measure success.

Jose: After benefiting from the program, Marisol became a Dream Squad leader– for 2 years now –to help other students like her. I ask Marisol how she’s adjusted since arriving in New York 3 years ago.

Jose (in Spanish): After 3 years of being here, how have you adjusted?

Marisol: I think that through time and things around me, I was able to connect more with the things in the United States. And also how the people that I met helped me too, like… like my classmates who are also migrants. So, we talk to each other and tell each other about this and this. I think that was something that helped me a lot to adapt here.

Jose: I ask her what advice she’d give to other students who have just arrived and gone through a similar experience.

Marisol: What I would tell them is to socialize with other people. That’s very good, because having a connection to more people, you can know more things versus when you’re alone, you’re shy and you don’t talk to anyone. You close yourself in your own world, and you don’t know more about what’s happening outside.

Jose: And what can the schools do to make the experience better?

Marisol: I think that giving them guidance, telling them, like, “here you can learn, here you can communicate.” The schools need to have more– like a connection with students, because many of the children don’t know what to do when they arrive the first day. They are very shy, and I think that they should have more priority with them when they immediately arrive.

Jose: There’s no doubt that the increase in new students to the city creates a difficult situation for both the city and the students. But as Marisol suggests, there are things that can be done to make the immigrant student experience better. And it all starts with a supportive community– grassroots efforts like the Dream Squad program that are making schools a safe and welcoming space for all.

Dorothy: Once again, that was Jose Santana, reporting from Claremont International High School. We’re going to take a short break, but when we return… a teacher’s perspective.

Sunisa: Sometimes, students are hopeless. Which I think to a teacher, to see a hopeless student is sad; it’s heartbreaking.

Dorothy: So stay tuned…

Salma: Hey, listeners! We hope you’re enjoying the first episode of P.S. Weekly. We’ve got an assignment for you—follow us on Instagram @bell.voices. And we want to hear from you! Reach out to P.S. Weekly at psweekly@chalkbeat.org with comments, questions, and suggestions. And… if you want more student-created content, listen up!

Student 1: On Our Minds is a podcast about the teenage experience. Made by teens, for teens.

Student 2: There’s a lot on our minds, and talking about it helps.

Student 1: On Our Minds: Season 4 is produced by PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs, in collaboration with KUOW’s RadioActive Youth Media.

Student 2: Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Dorothy: In the last segment, we heard about the immigrant student experience. When it comes to helping these students overcome language barriers and navigate a new environment, that job often falls to… you guessed it… teachers. Our producer Bernie Carmona spoke to one of them.

Bernie: As a child of immigrants, I’ve thought about the experiences of migrant students navigating through school life. But who takes on the responsibility for making sure students are fully prepared for their future? What do teachers go through while navigating classrooms with migrant students? I remember speaking to my older sister, Mariana, who moved from Mexico to South Carolina in 2002 when she was about 5 years old. She didn’t know English when she arrived and struggled to adjust to the new environment. She didn’t feel supported until she came to New York City, where she experienced the diverse culture and language in schools, things she couldn’t access in South Carolina.

Bernie: Her experience made me wonder: how does all of this look from a teacher’s perspective? I spoke to Sunisa Nuonsy, a former high school teacher of 10 years at International High School at Prospect Heights in Brooklyn.

Bernie: Thank you so much for being here, Sunisa.

Sunisa: Thank you so much for having me.

Bernie: Sunisa, why did you choose to become a teacher?

Sunisa: I became a teacher, particularly for immigrant students, because of my own experience. My family came to the U.S. as refugees from Laos. And sadly to say, some of my aunts and uncles, who were adolescents at the time of resettlement here, they were not equitably served in schools, and they dropped out of school. And so I always carried that with me. And when I became an adult, and I was thinking about my career path, I was very much drawn to language and to working with immigrants just because I felt like I could connect with them.

Bernie: Can you tell me a little more about how that experience was like for you?

Sunisa: The first time that I entered the school, I was interviewing as a student teacher, and I saw the students, and the different kinds of clothes they were wearing. Some kids were like, you know, dressed very Western, some kids were wearing more cultured clothes, hearing different languages. I thought it was the coolest place ever because I was like, “Look at these beautiful kids.” They come from everywhere. But we’re in Brooklyn. They’re so fly, they’re so fresh. It’s like where roots are– are like bursting through the ground, you know, because everything is just alive. Like the ways that language comes together, right?

Sunisa: I worked at a school, I would say was mostly Dominican. So every student learned Dominican Spanish, right? Whether you were from Yemen or Guinea, everybody was like, “Que lo que.” And just the way that our students were so open with their cultures and playing with one another’s cultures and really learning with it was just this beautiful hybrid space. And I don’t want to romanticize it, but I just imagine that that’s what our world could really be like is, you know, a place where people feel affirmed in who they are, but also aren’t scared to get to know other people. But we’re trying to make the world better, right? We’re trying to make people freer, more liberated. So I love that space. I love that liminal space.

Bernie: What would you say has been the biggest challenge you face with working with migrant students?

Sunisa: Well, I can say that although I identify as an immigrant myself, it’s such a tough situation to be in, and the larger administration is not aware of that. And they’re expecting you to be this robot that just has to do their job and perform their functions. But a lot of times I’ve seen it impossible to get a student to respond to classwork because they have so many other pressing and urgent issues that are just surrounding their brain and their souls. And that can be challenging to do when you have students who don’t see a pathway to college, they don’t even see a pathway to graduation. So to work with students, try to instill in them some sense of agency and empowerment, you know, even in the smallest ways, I think is really important because sometimes students are hopeless, which I think to a teacher, to see a student hopeless is sad. It’s heartbreaking, right, because you think that you’re there to really guide them to all of these opportunities when those opportunities are inequitably distributed. Like I think about college tuition, right, and financial aid and who can access financial aid and who can’t.

Bernie: What was a difficult moment you encountered?

Sunisa: I had two amazing students who were sisters, and they wanted to go to college. And their dad, culturally, didn’t think that college was for them. And so I had just so many conversations not only with them but with their guardians, with administrators at the schools, with other teachers. And oftentimes, I would just go back to my classroom and cry out of frustration because you could feel like you’re doing all of the hard things that you need to do to support these immigrant students. And there are still things that are just out of your control. So to see these students who had come all this way, had come from this village in Yemen to Brooklyn. And really learn how to believe in themselves and have some empowerment and still not be able to make that one crucial decision about whether they can continue their educations. It’s just, you know, I don’t know, even know how to troubleshoot that.

Bernie: Do you have any advice for teachers that are currently working with migrant students?

Sunisa: My recommendation for all teachers really is to know who your students are. Get to understand their context and their experiences before you label them as anything. Because, especially immigrant students, the ones who have experienced trauma along the way, they can easily shut down and they can easily drop out. So you have a very unique opportunity to be an adult in their life that is welcoming them and affirming them and showing them that they have value and that they should be here.

Bernie: Thank you so much for being a part of this interview, Sunisa.

Sunisa: Thank you so much for having me.

Bernie: I’m Bernie Carmona, reporting for P.S. Weekly.

Dorothy: That’s it for our first episode, but before you go, we have an extra credit assignment for you! Go to chalkbeat.org/newsletters, or click the link in our show notes, to sign up for the Chalkbeat New York morning newsletter. It’s the best way to stay informed on local schools coverage Monday through Friday. And if you really want to impress the teacher, drop a review in your podcast app or shoot an email to psweekly@chalkbeat.org. Tell us what you learned today or what you’re still wondering. We just might read your comment on a future episode.

Dorothy: P.S.: We’re back next Wednesday with an episode on how the national wave of Book Bans is impacting local schools.

Preview Clip: These groups are trying to erode the trust of educators in general by placing doubt in people’s minds about what a teacher is exposing kids to, is really just trying to attack the public school system.

Dorothy: Until then… [with entire cast] class dismissed!

CREDITS

Dorothy: P.S. Weekly is a collaboration between The Bell and Chalkbeat, made possible by generous support from The Pinkerton Foundation, The Summerfield Foundation, FJC, and Hindenburg Systems. This episode was hosted by me, Dorothy Ha. Producers for this episode were Sanaa Stokes, Jose Santana, and Bernie Carmona. With reporting help from Chalkbeat reporters Alex Zimmerman and Mike Elsen-Rooney. Engineering support was provided by Ava Stryker-Robbins. Our marketing lead this week was Santana Roach. Our executive producer for the show is Joann DeLuna. Executive editors are Amy Zimmer and Taylor McGraw.

Additional production and reporting support was provided by Sabrina DuQuesnay, Mira Gordon, and our friends at Chalkbeat. Special thanks to our interns Miriam Galicia and Makenna Turner. Music from Blue Dot Sessions and the jingle you heard at the beginning of this episode was created by the one and only: Erica Huang.

Thanks for tuning in! See you next time!

Correction: The Dream Squad, which started in 2020 is now in 60 schools, up from 25.

NYC schools can now donate cafeteria food to fight hunger and reduce waste. Here’s how.

2024-05-10T19:30:40+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to keep up with NYC’s public schools.

New York City’s Education Department recently launched a program allowing schools to donate unused packaged food to local food pantries, soup kitchens, and shelters — an effort nearly two years in the making.

After a small group of schools piloted a food donation program, officials trained roughly 400 school food managers, supervisors, and directors earlier this year on how to set up their own programs, Chalkbeat has learned.

Every school will have the opportunity to opt into the effort, officials said. The Office of Food and Nutrition Services will help schools set up the procedures and equipment for donating untouched food, while a school’s administration will facilitate the donation to school community members or local pantries.

The program is gearing up at a critical moment, as pandemic-era family benefits dry up and childhood hunger is a growing concern. New York City has seen a 100% increase in the number of visits to food pantries by children and their families from pre-pandemic levels and 1 in 5 children don’t always know where their next meal will come from, according to food rescue group City Harvest.

Meanwhile, Mayor Eric Adams plans to reduce funding by about 56% for an emergency food program that works with about 500 community kitchens and food pantries citywide.

The school-based food donation program was “informed by conversations with several food pantries and best practices from existing school-based food pantries and ad hoc student-led food donation programs,” said Jenna Lyle, an Education Department spokesperson.

Since the program is just getting started, officials do not yet have data on participating schools, but said they plan to track how many opt into it.

Students, advocates, and elected officials have long tried to push the nation’s largest school system — which serves roughly 880,000 meals a day — to come up with a plan to divert food waste from landfills and into the hands of hungry New Yorkers. A Department of Sanitation study found that more than 40,000 tons of trash from New York City’s school buildings can be recycled, composted, or reused.

“There’s so much food being wasted,” said Eila Gandhi, a student at East Side Middle school.

Through the Middle School Leadership Council in Manhattan’s District 2, Elia has been working with Zoya Baulin, another East Side student, and Anya Bravin, from the Clinton School, on advocating for leftover packaged food from schools to go to homeless shelters and other anti-hunger organizations. But they kept hitting roadblocks, finding complicated rules and strict guidelines for donating the food and for shelters accepting the food.

They were happy to hear about the Education Department’s new program and are in touch with their principals about how their schools might participate.

“We feel like it could help so many different groups of people,” Anya said. “It can help people who have food insecurity. It could help schools get rid of this food. It can help homeless shelters to not have to feed so many people from their own money, and it could also help the environment.”

The Education Department’s food service team has been working to reduce excess food or leftovers whenever possible, said Lyle. “We applaud our students who are advocating for their communities and looking to support their local organizations and shelters.”

Rachel Sabella, director of No Kid Hungry New York, was encouraged to hear about the food donation program — especially now. Her advocacy organization recently polled public school families and found that nearly 9 in 10 reported that food prices were rising faster than their incomes.

“We look forward to learning more about this program expansion and the ways it can relieve the difficult choices too many families are forced to make between food, rent, and other necessities,” Sabella said in a statement.

Here’s what schools should know about participating in the program.

What’s the first step a school can take to participate in the program?

A school needs to set up what’s called a “share table,” where students can discard unopened packaged food or whole pieces of fruit from their trays, letting their peers pick up the food if they’d like.

Because of federal school food reimbursement regulations for meals — which are free for all New York City public school students — kids cannot, for instance, just take a cookie or an apple, but instead must take a complete meal with a protein and other food items. Because of that, many kids often end up tossing a lot of untouched food.

Several schools already have share tables set up in their cafeterias as a way to reduce food waste. (Education Department officials said they are in the process of collecting data on which schools have share tables.)

What food items are eligible for donation?

Only food from share tables can be donated.

The food must be non-perishable or unspoiled and must be donated within 36 hours of being served.

Where will the food donations go?

School leaders have two options:

They can donate the food directly to their school community, with school leaders selecting students and families to participate, according to a January presentation given to schools. “[This] enables students and families in need, access to food right in their own schools,” the presentation stated. “This program will help to make balanced, nutritious meals a reality.”
They can partner with an established local community food pantry or program that serves New Yorkers in need. The school can work with an organization to determine the food pick-up or delivery system.

Who will run the program at a school?

Principals must identify a “designee” to oversee the program. The designee can be a school staffer or a school community volunteer, such as a parent or guardian.

Students may volunteer to assist and support the program under that person’s guidance.

How will the food get from a cafeteria to families or organizations?

After each meal, whoever is running the program will evaluate food items left on the cafeteria’s share table. They — or student volunteers— will then place all eligible food items in a designated refrigerator or milk chest.

Each shelf must then be labeled with the date the items were placed there. And at the end of the last meal served (some schools serve breakfast, lunch, and after-school snacks), the person overseeing the program must complete a “daily food donation receipt,” submitted to an assigned kitchen staff member.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

As Chancellor Banks heads to Washington for antisemitism hearing, NYC is on the offensive

2024-05-07T21:09:55+00:00

All eyes will be on New York City schools Chancellor David Banks on Wednesday as he is set to testify before a Republican-led congressional committee about antisemitism in K-12 schools.

It’s the same committee that has skewered college presidents of elite universities— high-profile hearings that led to the resignation of presidents from Harvard and University of Pennsylvania, and marked the start of Columbia University’s encampment.

New York City schools appear to be on the offensive as Banks heads to Washington, D.C., joined by school officials from Maryland’s Montgomery County and Berkeley, California. All three are liberal-leaning districts with sizable Jewish populations that have faced alleged antisemitic incidents since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, and their leaders are likely to face heated questioning from the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Some New York City teachers have made national headlines after being targeted by students with antisemitic speech and other threats. Meanwhile some educators who have expressed pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel sentiments have said they’ve faced harsh discipline from school administrators and have been threatened by parents.

In recent days, Banks has emphasized that the Education Department has assembled an interfaith council and developed curricula on Jewish and Muslim history. This fall, the Education Department will launch a Holocaust teaching guide created in partnership with the Museum of Jewish Heritage. Next spring, city schools are expected to expand its “Hidden Voices” series — which celebrates the stories of diverse people often left of history books — to include Jewish and Muslim Americans.

The city has also held training for middle and high school leaders on how to navigate “difficult conversations” and met with all principals to review the disciplinary code, the city’s anti-bullying program, and crisis de-escalation techniques.

Those efforts have won mixed reactions from principals. One Brooklyn high school leader said he appreciated the “difficult conversations” training.

“We talked a lot about norms and community values, taking an inquiry stance, doing a lot of listening,” said the principal, who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak. But he also wondered whether the training would be effective if it isn’t sustained over time.

“There are just so many competing priorities,” he said. “It just depends on what’s in the public eye at the moment.”

Many teens have complained that they’re hungry for information and critical dialogue on the crisis in the Middle East, but their schools are struggling to respond. Earlier this school year, students and staff from some schools in the nation’s largest school system staged a walkout calling for a ceasefire. More than 34,000 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the Israeli bombardments began after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, according to reports.

Some NYC teachers feel unsafe at their schools

At Origins High School in Brooklyn, a teacher, who is Jewish, alleged that her school was rife with antisemitism, with little response from administrators. After Education Department officials refuted the claims, the teacher, Danielle Kaminsky, filed a federal lawsuit last week claiming that students marched through the campus chanting “F— the Jews,” drawing swastikas on a Jewish student’s property, and exclaiming to a Jewish teacher that they “want to kill all jews.”

Kaminsky has since transferred to another school, according to the New York Post, which reported that she spoke last week at a congressional briefing in advance of Wednesday’s hearing.

“Students and staff deserve to be safe and respected in their school and Origins High School is no different. We will review this lawsuit,” Education Department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer said in a statement.

In another incident that garnered national media attention, a raucous student demonstration erupted at Hillcrest in November after students saw a Jewish teacher’s social media picture with her holding a sign saying “I Stand With Israel.” Karen Marder posted it shortly after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. The students tried to get into her classroom as they called for her to be fired. Marder was elsewhere in the building when that happened, but dealing with the trauma and press coverage around the incident will still take time to heal, she recently wrote in a USA Today piece she penned with American Federation of Teachers head Randi Weingarten.

Although she was given the option to transfer to another school, Marder decided to return to Hillcrest.

“I stayed to use the experience to connect, to listen, learn, debunk misinformation and combat intolerance,” she wrote. “I had to understand what messages they were absorbing and where they were coming from. I had to answer their questions, address their fears and confusions and simply be there.”

On Tuesday, ahead of the hearing, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights sent a letter to school districts around the country reiterating their obligation to protect Jewish and Muslim students from harassment and hostile school environments while also respecting students’ free speech rights. The letter laid out examples and described when political speech might cross the line into attacks targeted at national origin or shared ancestry.

Worries the hearing will focus on ‘viral moments’

Michael Mulgrew, head of New York City’s teachers union, praised the chancellor’s response to the various incidents here, saying any time there’s been an issue, “we have jumped on it very seriously and quickly.”

Ultimately, Mulgurew said, it was up to the adults to step up.

“How do we use this horrendous, horrible situation that’s going on, with all the adults yelling at each other with everything going on in Palestine and in Israel? And how do we try to use this as an educational opportunity to say, we can have a better world,” he said.

Banks told reporters last week he believed that Wednesday’s hearing would focus more on “viral moments and empty soundbites and cheap political talk” than substantive solutions.

“Trying to create gotcha moments is not how you ultimately solve problems that you really, deeply care about,” he said. “I would ask for Congress to figure out a way to bring people together from across the nation to help to solve for this insidious level of hate.”

Erica Meltzer contributed.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

This Brooklyn high school psychology teacher wants her students to channel pessimism into action

2024-04-30T22:47:37+00:00

It might seem odd that a high school psychology teacher would be selected for a National Geographic teacher fellowship in the Arctic, but for Caitlyn Homol, last summer’s “paradigm-shifting experience” inspired her to develop a new interdisciplinary unit.

As the International Baccalaureate, or IB, Teaching and Learning Coordinator and IB Psychology teacher at Brooklyn Prospect High School, Homol is teaming up with her school’s Environmental Systems and Societies course to explore “the relationship between motivation, action, and climate attitudes that culminates in a beach cleanup and reflection.”

While on the 17-day expedition, Homol saw polar bears on land since there wasn’t enough sheet ice for their traditional hunting patterns. She saw marine debris on the shores of islands hundreds of miles north of inhabited towns. She and others started to feel pessimistic “about our collective chances of being able to preserve the sights we were seeing for future generations.”

That led Homol to get involved with visiting scientists from the Rozalia Project as they collected data on microplastics in the waters. She ended up filling in at the last minute for one of Rozalia’s Maine expeditions right as school was starting, helping them meet their 20,000-pound cleanup goal for summer 2023. That experience, she said, “brought me so much hope and energy for what we can do when we work together to do hard things.”

Homol, who has spent four of her nine-year teaching career at Brooklyn Prospect, recently won a national teaching award from the American Psychological Association.

Teaching psychology, Homol believes, gives students a strong background in social science research, and she encourages her students to seek out research opportunities when they go to college.

“I also think this course has so many natural connections with students’ own experiences,” she said. “There’s a unique chance for them to develop new self-knowledge while also expanding their perspectives of other people’s experiences.”

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How and when did you decide to become a teacher?

I attended Ohio State University as a first-generation student who had also been very transient in middle and high school, bouncing between schools up and down the East Coast and the South. I’d been a successful student but missed more than a couple of foundational courses I needed to be successful in my initial declared major, which was biomedical engineering. I was confused and humiliated by the struggles I faced in my chemistry and calculus classes, and after ending up on academic probation my first quarter, I lied to most people about how school was going because I was terrified of letting them down.

As a condition of exiting probation, I chose to take an education psychology course about study strategies at the Dennis Learning Center. It was transformative and helped reduce the fear I felt that I did not belong in college. I ended up working there for three years of undergrad as a learning specialist, where I facilitated workshops and met 1:1 with other students at OSU to interpret research to find meaningful study strategies.

That’s what led me to consider teaching, and Teach for America was an alternative certification program I was familiar with.

What’s your favorite lesson to teach and why?

I deeply appreciate my colleague, Khanh Le, who adapted an exercise she came across in her developmental psych program for our students. It asks students to take a fictional family of seven of different genders and ages and arrange them into hypothetical homes with room counts ranging from 1-7, in arrangements that are both ideal and least ideal.

Our students, who have a variety of cultural backgrounds, are often surprised to find that they have nearly unanimous agreement with each other in their room arrangements. We discuss the findings of the original study, which suggest that some values driving those arrangements are unique to the West and others are universal — and the consensus we have in our own answers is a proof of acculturation, or assimilation to U.S./New York culture. I love this lesson because it ties together research, relatability, and strikes a balance between appreciating difference and finding commonality with others around the world.

Are there particular things that students are seeing or experiencing in their lives related to the course that come up in the classroom?

The first thing that has positively shifted the tone of conversations we have in class is the decreasing stigma of mental health concerns.

At our school, we teach the “Abnormal Psychology” option offered in the IB Psychology course, and students are tremendously open and excited to share their experiences with each other. I would have been so embarrassed to talk about my mental health at that age, but kids are supportive and continue the conversation with questions or their own contributions.

The second development I’ve seen is less positive: I’ve noticed that students carry more pessimism these days. More students feel that nothing matters, and that there is nothing that can be done to improve the circumstances of themselves or their communities. This is a comprehensible reaction to climate developments, the inertia of systems and institutions to change, and an eroding pretense that a college education is a ticket to financial stability. I also think social media algorithms proliferate a lot of cynical (if not outright incorrect) interpretations of psychological and sociological knowledge.

I think as educators of young people, part of our role is to inspire students and to teach pathways to change. Of course, we have a duty to portray the world realistically in our classrooms. Many things are actually dire. But I think we also must take care to invite students to construct generative interpretations and applications of knowledge and research. Otherwise, we are left with the status quo and that pessimistic vision does become our fate.

We also have to let them feel the impact of taking action with others, *doing* things rather than just talking about them. This is tricky for adults too, but my summer experiences underscored how meaningful optimism comes from collective work and creation.

Tell us about your own experience with school and how it affects your work today.

I was incredibly blessed to have consistently caring, effective, and diverse teachers for all 13 years of my public schooling. I especially credit the many Black women who taught me at Arlington Elementary School in Jacksonville, Fla., who saw my potential and imparted to me a sense of duty to make the most of my education.

It has been easy to draw from the example they and my other amazing educators set as I show up for students today. But the thing that has most shaped my overall career trajectory has been the challenges I faced as a student who wanted access to specialized programming.

I happened to find out about the International Baccalaureate program in my district through idle conversation with my school librarian, rather than through my school counselor or district-wide advertisement. I had to submit an application, attend an interview or take a test, and take a bus an hour each way to get to school. Years later, I found myself in rural Alabama: I navigated several hurdles to take online AP classes that were made available upon request through Alabama’s ACCESS plan for distance learning. There were so many hurdles to being able to participate in both programs, and because of it, I have chosen to work at schools that give a broader range of students access to the IB program by default.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received, and how have you put it into practice?

A mentor once told me, “Let someone else tell you no,” when I was debating sending in an application for a job opportunity years ago. For scholarships, school program ideas, jobs, or awards, spending less time being my own gatekeeper has opened up fantastic experiences.

Most recently, I pitched an ambitious idea to the Rozalia Project, which included setting aside spots on a July expedition on their sailboat for a teacher and a recent high school graduate — she said yes! Making this initial ask has also let us start envisioning a recurring beach cleanup program and a full Prospect Schools expedition a couple years out from now. We have other details to work out, but if I had let my own ‘no’ get in the way, I would have never fathomed how excited they would be to develop this partnership.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

A civics roadmap for teens: New online clearinghouse created ‘by youth, for youth’ aims to help

2024-04-12T22:17:31+00:00

Looking to run a voter registration drive at your school? Want to learn how to earn a high school diploma with a “seal of civic readiness,” demonstrating civic skills and knowledge? Trying to find out more about the NYC Mayor’s Office internship program?

Or maybe you want to get a head start on registering for the upcoming election, whether you’re 18 or not. (Those who are 16-17 can now pre-register so they are automatically registered when they turn 18.)

This information and more can be found on the “Youth Civic Hub,” an online portal launched on Friday, designed “by youth, for youth,” to increase youth civic engagement and electoral participation.

Led by the NYC Youth Agenda and Civic Coalition, this one-stop clearinghouse includes a wealth of information, ranging from internships and volunteer opportunities to voter registration tools and an elections portal with scorecards rating candidates on young people’s issues. It will soon have a “power map” explaining the different roles of elected officials, a glossary outlining the language commonly used in civic spaces, and a directory of various local organizations for young people to connect with.

The young people behind the portal are hoping to get it in the hands of New York City teachers, so they can share it with their students and expose them to “high-quality” civic opportunities across the five boroughs.

Creating the hub has been a yearslong project spearheaded by YVote, a teen-focused civic engagement nonprofit that is helping lead the larger NYC Civic Coalition.

“We’re not just helping voters, we’re trying to make the connections — who oversees what,” said Mia Payne, a 2022 graduate of Manhattan’s Talent Unlimited High School, alumnus of YVote, and a youth co-chair on the education transition team for Mayor Eric Adams.

“We just want to connect the dots of the roles and responsibilities [of government officials],” she said. Though young people often “just see whoever’s on the TV,” which is often the mayor or governor, it might make more sense to reach out to their city council member for school community issues, she said.

When Payne joined YVote in her sophomore year of high school, she asked why it was so hard to find out who represents you and what they do and believe. It turned out the organization was already working on solving this problem by building the hub. She believes the work they’re doing can serve as a blueprint for other states.

The portal comes at a pivotal moment, just months before November’s presidential election. In the 2022 midterm elections, just 7.6% of eligible Bronx voters ages 18-29 cast ballots and 15.3% of Queens young people voted, according to CIRCLE, an independent youth civic engagement research organization based at Tufts University. About 18% of Brooklyn voters in this age group cast ballots along with 18.8% in Manhattan and 23.4% in Staten Island. The statewide average, 19.8%, was lower than the national average of 23%.

The nation’s political polarization can turn young people off from wanting to be civically involved, Payne said, but she also believes that the hub can help provide different points of access for young people to feel more empowered.

“There’s a lot of mistrust and misinformation. We want to make this as cross-partisan as possible and straight facts,” Payne said. “The goal of the hub: You may not agree or be proud of your elected officials, but at the end of the day, the power is in the people’s hand. You have the ability to hold them accountable and elect someone else.”

Written in “teen-friendly” language the hub aims to reach young people, especially those in “civic deserts,” where there’s less broadband access and less exposure to election-related news and information.

Through the portal, young people can learn about various opportunities to get involved with communities: You can find out how to volunteer at a farm in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood, apply for an internship at a design museum in Manhattan, or try and land a civics-focused fellowship centered on such issues as criminal justice, voting rights, and media literacy.

“Many youth don’t know of any opportunities besides the ones in their schools, and the hub aims to change that,” said Afsana Rahman, a member of the hub youth working group and senior at the Queens High School for the Sciences at York College. (She became involved in the hub through her work in CUNY’s Intergenerational Change Initiative.)

The hub will be officially unveiled on Monday at the NYC Youth Agenda Policy Party, where young people will also share their policy recommendations for how to make the city more equitable for youth, based on thousands of surveys of teens across the city.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

LISTEN: A New York chapter on banned books

2024-04-03T09:00:00+00:00

This episode of P.S. Weekly takes a look at how a national wave of book bans has been coming ashore in surprising ways in New York City.

EVENT: Register for our virtual event to meet the students behind the new podcast

Between 2021 and 2023, there were nearly 6,000 instances of books being banned across the country, according to PEN America, a group that defends writers and protects free expression. Nearly 60% of these books were young adult books written for school-age kids.

New York City schools have not banned books, but recently got a taste of this controversy when books that touched on themes of Black history, immigration, and transgender identity were discovered in the trash near a Staten Island school, sparking an investigation, according to Gothamist. But educators here had already been embroiled or engaging in the national conversation around book bans in other ways.

This episode’s first segment features a school librarian who in 2022, after using social media to promote LGBTQ books during Pride month, faced an onslaught of vitriol and harassment online.

Librarian Lindsay Klemas poses for a portrait.

Lindsay Klemas, who was the librarian at Forest Hills High School in Queens at the time, said the incident took a toll on her mental health. She worries about the broader implications such attacks could have on educators and public schools.

“A parent has the right to say for their own kid what they can read. It does get murkier as you become a teenager,” said Klemas, who is now the coordinator for all Queens public school libraries. “But I also think that these groups are trying to erode the trust of educators in general, and so I think by placing doubt in people’s minds about what a teacher is exposing kids to is really just trying to attack the public school system.”

The show’s second segment looks at a Queens high school that has created a sophomore English class devoted entirely to books that have been banned elsewhere.

Amy Weidner-LaSala, who teaches the course at the Academy of American Studies, said the books they’re reading can help show students “how we open our minds and accept new things through literature.”

P.S. Weekly is a collaboration between Chalkbeat and The Bell. Listen for new episodes Wednesdays this spring.

Read the full episode transcript below

Sabrina: Hey listeners, save the date! We’ll be having a virtual Zoom event on April 17 from 5-6 p.m.

It’s called Inside P.S Weekly: Meet the students and adults behind the new podcast

Join us on Zoom and learn how the podcast is made, how it can be used as a teaching tool, and how you could potentially have your voice, heard, on the show.

Check out the link in our show notes! Keep listening to hear the rest of this episode!

Tanvir: Welcome to P.S. Weekly… the sound of the New York City school system. PS Weekly is a collaboration between Chalkbeat New York and The Bell.

Tanvir: I’m your host this week, Tanvir Kaur. I’m a senior at Academy of American Studies in Queens.On today’s episode: how the national wave of book bans is showing up in New York City in surprising ways.

But first! A Chalkbeat news bulletin…

NEWSBRIEF

Alex: I’m Alex Zimmerman, a reporter with Chalkbeat. Here’s a quick recap of the past week’s biggest education stories:

City officials are replacing metal detectors at nearly 80 campuses with new ones designed to let students keep their backpacks on instead of sending them through a separate x-ray machine. But the city will still make students take off their backpacks — raising questions about the $3.9 million upgrade.

Roughly 139,000 families applied to Summer Rising, the city’s free summer school program — that’s far more than the number of available seats. The program remains popular, even as Mayor Eric Adams has cut back middle school hours to save money.

And on Monday, April 8, a total solar eclipse is coming to parts of New York State. Several schools are hosting watch parties, as is the New York Hall of Science in Queens.

To stay up to date on local education news throughout the week, go to chalkbeat.org/newsletters and sign up for the New York Daily Roundup.

Tanvir: Last year, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a bill banning books that contain violent, sexual, or sensitive content. Similar bills in other states have affected even more children’s schools and libraries.

Tanvir: Between 2021 and 2023, there were close to six thousand recorded book bans across America. Of these banned books, nearly 60% were young adult genres. Meaning, books written for school-age kids are being targeted.

Tanvir: I had heard about this trend, and it troubled me. I thought–At least, this isn’t happening here… But then…

NEWS CLIP

Reporter 1: An investigation underway this afternoon after some books were thrown out into the trash at a school on Staten Island.

Reporter 2: Now the books are about Black history and the LGBTQ community, and all were found with notes attached to them, critical of both. Eyewitnesses…

Tanvir: The Department of Education is currently investigating the incident in Staten Island — which appears to be an isolated case — but it’s a reminder that NYC is not immune to the national attempts to censor what students read and learn in school.

Today, we speak to a school librarian who used social media to promote LGBTQ+ books during pride month... and then experienced wrath online from parents across the country.

Then: how one Queens school is flipping the narrative on its head… embracing the books that some districts have deemed too dangerous to read through a course entirely devoted to them.

Our PS Weekly producer Salma Baksh has our first story…

Salma: I’m here with my school’s former librarian, Lindsay Klemas. We call her Ms. K. Let me tell you: the students at Forest Hills High School were devastated last year when she left. But we were also happy for her. She’s now the Coordinator for all Queens public school libraries.

Salma: I met Ms. K in my sophomore year. She quickly became my go-to person for basically anything – decision-making, emotional support, and book recs (obviously). Students knew her as empathetic and kind, making the library a true safe space.

Lindsay: I became a librarian in 2010. I started my career at a high school for students with emotional disabilities in the Bronx, and I worked there for about six years. And then I was at Forest Hills High School for a little over seven years.

Salma: What made you want to become a librarian?

Lindsay: I decided to become a librarian because librarians are pathological helpers and we like to give people information, make people feel welcome, and make sure that people can sort of have a third space they can go to.

Salma: What is your definition of librarianship?

Lindsay: A librarian, to me is someone who is able to allow others to see themselves on the shelves. So I think a good librarian is able to have books and resources that all of their patrons want to access, but it’s a place where people can be themselves and also find information or stories that speak to them.

Salma: Have there been any instances, any negatives that have arisen out of the way that you fulfill your definition of what it means to be a librarian?

Lindsay: Yes. In the fall of 2022, I actually became a victim of some online harassment. Um, It happened because our school library Instagram page was discovered by a group of people who didn’t like the books that I featured in a reel that we had made for Pride Month. And so people started to say that the book should be put in the woodchipper, that I should be fired. I was a pedophile. this was in reference to the book that’s called “This book is Gay,” which has received numerous starred reviews from professional reviewers and is considered an important book for teenagers, but is also a very banned and challenged book nationwide.

Salma: So receiving that kind of hate from people that don’t even know you must have been very heavy on you and your mental health. How did you react?

Lindsay: It was definitely heavy on my mental health. I feel like I’m still sort of processing slash. I’ll think to myself, “Did that even happen?” Or there might be conversations about book banning and people say, “Oh, that doesn’t happen in New York City schools.” And you’re like, “Wait, it happened to me.” And then you’re sort of in this situation where you’re deciding, “Do I bring it up and tell what happened? Or is that centering myself in the story when really the story is that kids deserve access to materials?” So I was sort of like, what stories do I turn to or what can I learn from this and how do I move forward? And I felt like there wasn’t really a road map for that. And so it was difficult for sure.

Salma: Have you heard of other incidents of librarians getting this kind of response?

Lindsay: I haven’t heard of any school librarians receiving as much vitriol as I did in my situation, but I know that there are New York City school educators who either feel like they can’t be their true selves at work because of their gender identity or their sexual orientation. There are teachers who have had parents question what they’re teaching, or there may be librarians who or, you know, E.L.A. teachers who sort of self-censor. That would look like saying, well, I don’t want to make waves or become a potential victim to people who are trolling. So I’m going to not teach that book or I’m going to not purchase that book for our school library collection. And so that’s a way that the censorship wars can impact people, subconsciously.

Salma: In this conversation of deciding if a book is appropriate, what role do you think parents play?

Lindsay: I think a parent has the right to say for their own kid what they can read. I think it does get murkier as you become a teenager. But I also think that these groups are trying to erode the trust of educators in general and so by placing doubt in people’s mind about what a teacher is exposing kids to, is really just trying to attack the public school system. And, I think we need to show parents that they can trust the education specialists to decide what is appropriate for their own child.

Salma: Ms. K believes that schools, by giving access to these challenged books, help students figure out who they are.

Lindsay: There are kids right now who might be in a really great school and they might hold it together during the school day. But then at home, they might have to hide their gender identity or their sexual orientation from their families, and they don’t have a safe space at home. And I think it’s just so important for kids to be able to be who they are and to have a space to figure out everything about who they are. And libraries can be that space.

Salma: This is Salma Baksh reporting for PS Weekly.

Tanvir: We’ll be back after a short break…

Sabrina: Hey listeners! We hope you’re enjoying this episode of PS Weekly.

We’ve got an assignment for you– follow us on Instagram @bell.voices. And, we want to hear from you! Reach out to P.S. Weekly at the email address: psweekly@chalkbeat.org with comments, questions, and suggestions.

Tanvir: And we’re back…

Tanvir: While some school districts around the country are banning books they think are inappropriate for students–one class at my school is putting those books on its mandatory reading list. I helped our reporter Shoaa Khan report the story….

Shoaa: Picture this: a stack of books that contain themes of race, LGBTQ identity, and sexual content… that have been banned elsewhere. But in this classroom, 10th graders are cracking them open.

SCENE TAPE of Banned Books Class:

OK folks if we can put our phones and your numbers–if you need your number let me know…

Shoaa: This is sophomore English at the Academy of American Studies. The class centers on banned or challenged books. I had to know more.

Shoaa: Our host Tanvir spoke with Amy Weidner-Lasala who teaches the class.

Shoaa: Ms. Weidner-Lasala’s classroom feels lively, as students stroll into class after the bell. They come in, greeting each other, engaging in small talk, shuffling in their clustered desks until it’s time for Ms. Weidner-Lasala’s instructions.

SCENE TAPE of Banned Books Class :

Ok folks, we’re going to spend today and tomorrow working on an argumentative essay for the regents…

Shoaa: She says It all started with a conversation with the school’s principal Mr. William Bassell

Amy: I think with the current events within the last couple of years, Mr. Bassell thought it would be a really interesting class to offer, and I think at first we were just going to offer it as an elective. But then he decided to sort of open that net a little wider to reach the whole 10th grade.

Amy: There’s a variety of books that we can teach, but I teach Night. I teach the Joy Luck Club. I teach Animal Farm, even though 1984 was also an option, which, you know, more explicit. Again, it’s an older book, but it still deals with that like censorship and banned books-ness, and control. So Orwell, it’s very popular.

Shoaa: If students feel upset about a particular book, they can choose to read a different one. But Ms. Weidner-Lasala says it takes away from the class experience and from participating in interesting group discussions and perspectives.

Amy: I think it opens their minds and lets them see that maybe like even what we think now is like not a big deal can be seen as a big deal to some people. And like how viewpoints and, change historically and how we open our minds and accept new things through literature.

Shoaa: A few years ago, the New York City Department of Education launched a new initiative called “Mosaic” to help expose students to diverse topics, including Black studies, Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies, and LGBTQ experiences.

The DOE sent more than FOUR MILLION books to diversify library shelves at schools across the city. The books found in the trash of the Staten Island school that we heard about earlier were part of Mosaic.

Amy: It’s supposed to show a mosaic of experiences, I guess. So a lot of the books have main characters or authors who are people of color, who are African-American, who are LGBT, you know that fit into sort of like a non-straight white man lens. So it allows students to see different perspectives and read different books that maybe wouldn’t fit in the traditional curriculum.

Shoaa: We asked Ms. Weidner-Lasala why she thinks some adults want to censor what students read.

Amy: I think a lot of times it comes out of fear and the fear of schools taking over values that maybe parents and the community don’t necessarily share, and that wanting to protect kids. I think it comes from a good place a lot of the time. But I think it’s often mis-done.

Shoaa: And how do students feel about the curriculum? Are they enjoying the class?

Drew: I’m Drew Mercado. I’m a sophomore and I currently take Banned Books 10. And I think this class is very interesting because it actually embraces what the government wants to be censored, and I think it’s a very unique experience and it’s a unique way of learning and honestly, I myself and I think the teacher also find the material really fun to learn. Honestly, this is probably one of the classes I look forward to the most. Not only because my friends are here, it’s because, yeah, what I’m going to learn next.

Shoaa: Tanvir also spoke to Tabassum Akter, a sophomore in the Banned Book class.

Tabassum: We read The Lord of the Flies, I think it was really interesting to learn about human nature because it’s something we discuss a lot in the class. It’s reflected in most of the texts that we’ve read, and we’ve done a lot of argumentative essays as well on the subject of morals. So I think something I’ve taken from my classes to always be a good person regardless of the situation.

Tanvir: Has there been anything special about this class compared to other English classes or other classes in general that you have taken?

Tabassum: It makes you think about the world more. Like you have to understand and connect to the world through the books you read. And I think Banned Books helps you do that because these books were books that you weren’t allowed to read at one point, and now we’re allowed to read it. And it’s important to know why they were banned and why they should be read.

Shoaa: So, should books be banned?

Tabassum: No, of course not, because any form of literature should be allowed to be read. Whether it’s bad literature or intense literature, we should be able to analyze it because it was created for a reason.

Shoaa: Books are incredibly important for sharing ideas and perspectives. Learning should include all kinds of viewpoints and stories, not just what people like or dislike. And this course puts these issues front and center, giving students the chance to decide for themselves what to take from these books. The class, according to the course description, “lends itself to complex and thought-provoking conversations about power, freedom, and social and cultural values.”

To me, this course provides something all students deserve: the freedom to explore and express ourselves fully.

Tanvir: Once again, that was Shoaa Khan for a piece we reported together at my high school, the Academy of American Studies.

Tanvir: That’s all for today, but before you go, here’s your extra credit assignment.

We want to hear from you. What’s your favorite book you read in school? It could be a banned book or not — just tell us the title, author, and what it taught you. Email your answers to psweekly@chalkbeat.org. We might give you a shout-out in a future episode.

And P.S. We’re back next Wednesday with an episode about special education, that you don’t want to miss.

Preview clip

Kaiya: I know it’s special education, but they look down on us, like there’s something wrong with us, or like we’re… disgusting.

Tanvir: Until then… class dismissed!

CREDITS:

Tanvir: PS Weekly is a collaboration between The Bell and Chalkbeat, made possible by generous support from The Pinkerton Foundation, The Summerfield Foundation, FJC, and Hindenburg Systems.

This episode was hosted by me, Tanvir Kaur.

Producers for this episode were: Salma Baksh, Shoaa Khan, and Me Tanvir Kaur, with reporting help from Chalkbeat reporters Alex Zimmerman and Mike Elsen Rooney.

Engineering support was provided by Christian Rojas-Linares

Our marketing lead this week was Marcellino Melika

Our executive producer for the show is JoAnn DeLuna

Executive editors include Amy Zimmer AND Taylor McGraw

Additional production and reporting support was provided by Sabrina DuQuesnay, Mira Gordon, and our friends at Chalkbeat.

Special thanks to our interns Miriam Galicia and Makenna Turner and all of our wonderful volunteer mentors.

Music from Blue Dot Sessions and the jingle you heard at the beginning of this episode was created by the one and only: Erica Huang

Thanks for tuning in! See you next time!

EVENT: Meet the students and adults behind P.S. Weekly, a new podcast from Chalkbeat and The Bell

2024-03-29T19:20:17+00:00

Meet the students and adults behind P.S. Weekly, a new podcast from Chalkbeat and the Bell.

Please join us on Wednesday, April 17, from 5-6 p.m., for a virtual event to learn how the show is made, how it can be used as a teaching tool, and how you can potentially have your voice heard on the show.

Come to share ideas and ask us questions. The event is free with an RSVP.

Each week this spring, 11 New York City high school students are exploring the most pressing issues facing the nation’s largest school system and looking at possible solutions to move the conversation forward.

The show will feature the latest education news, reports from the field, and thoughtful one-on-one conversations with students, educators, and experts. Among the topics you’ll hear this season include migrant students, book bans, career readiness, special education, and school food.

What else should we cover? What issues would you like us to feature in future episodes?

If you want to reach us ahead of time to share a topic or ask a question, email us at PSWeekly@chalkbeat.org. We want to hear from you!

And please listen to our first episode here, and subscribe to P.S. Weekly on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.

A push for universal after-school gains traction in Albany

2024-03-27T18:45:53+00:00

A Brooklyn state senator’s push for universal after-school programs is gaining traction among his Albany colleagues.

After Zellnor Myrie’s monthslong effort discussing the importance of expanding after-school programs, the state senate tucked a line into its recent spending proposal: “The Senate is interested in exploring pathways to achieving universal coverage for afterschool programming.”

Though the senate’s proposal — released in advance of finalizing Gov. Kathy Hochul’s budget due April 1 — is largely symbolic and sets no price tag for such a program, the nod is significant. It’s the first time the legislative body included such a reference to universal after-school, according to Myrie, whose office did a deep dive into the archives.

Building on that momentum, Myrie last week introduced legislation directing the state’s Office of Children and Family Services to conduct a feasibility study for a statewide program, looking at how much it might cost to provide year-round after-school programming to every child who wants a seat.

Myrie believes that it’s all the more urgent for the state to step in as New York City is cutting back on some after-school programs, as Chalkbeat recently reported.

“This should be at the top of our agenda if we are in fact serious about public safety, the future of our children, and the health of our communities,” said Myrie, who represents a swath of Brooklyn from Crown Heights and East Flatbush to Park Slope and Windsor Terrace.

As food, housing, and transportation have gone up, paying for child care has become increasingly difficult. In 2022, the city lost an estimated $23 billion from working parents who either left the city or cut back on hours because of child care needs, according to the city’s Economic Development Corporation.

Myrie believes the after-school programs he attended growing up, such as his middle school step team and the Crown Heights Youth Collective, helped put him on his path to college, law school, and now as an elected official in Albany representing the community in which he was born and raised.

“After-school was a lifeline not just for me because of the skills and confidence I was able to acquire, but also for my mom — that I had a safe place to stay,” he said. “I truly credit after-school for keeping me off the streets.”

He also cited data from the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention that violent crimes committed by children ages 7-17 spike between the hours of 3-6 p.m.

Calls for universal after-school in NYC have stalled before

New York City officials said they would review whatever bills come their way on the matter.

“Support from all our government partners in providing services to young people is always welcome,” Mark Zustovich, spokesperson for the Department for Youth and Development, said in a statement.

Creating such a pricey program for the nation’s largest school district has faced hurdles before. After former Mayor Bill de Blasio vastly expanded free after-school programs for middle schoolers a decade ago, aiming to reach all children in grades 6-8 who wanted a seat, New York City Council has tried to expand after-school even further, unsuccessfully introducing legislation in 2018 and again last year.

For its roughly 900 after-school programs — reaching more than half of the city’s 1,600 schools — the city spent about $420 million last fiscal year on “out of school time” programs and is projected to spend $393 million for the upcoming fiscal year, according to public documents. The city was serving about 104,000 students in after-school programs as of October, according to the mayor’s management report.

The city also runs 92 school-based Beacon community centers and 99 Cornerstone programs based at public housing complexes.

Myrie believes that planting the seeds to build the political will for universal after-school could help it follow in the footsteps of New York City’s effort to make prekindergarten available to all 4-year-olds. That ambitious initiative has been a huge boon for families, saving them upwards of $15,000 a year, and the Adams administration’s plan to scale back pre-K for 3-year-olds has faced fierce opposition.

Earlier this month, a group of City Council members urged the governor and other Albany leaders to support universal after-school programming.

“Beyond alleviating the financial burdens facing families, expanding access to afterschool would also generate substantial economic advantages for the city,” City Council member Rita Joseph, who chairs the education committee, and 18 other council members wrote in a March 8 letter. “By enhancing the accessibility of after-school programs, New York could enhance productivity, retaining more adults within the city during their peak working years.”

Universal after-school as an integration tool

Parents on the Community Education Council for District 1 had been pushing for universal after-school in their Lower East Side and East Village schools when they launched a diversity admissions policy before the pandemic to integrate their schools.

“One of the determining factors parents look at for schools is after school,” said Naomi Peña, former president of the parent-led advisory council.

Schools that did not have a high enough concentration of families from low-income households often had after-school programs that charged fees, which was a hurdle for many parents.

“We argued that providing free afterschool would help integrate these schools, and it helps lift the burden off of families,” she said.

Advocating for the plan, however, lost momentum once the pandemic hit.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

After-school cuts catch NYC programs by surprise

2024-03-21T17:00:55+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to keep up with NYC’s public schools.

A group of after-school programs are scrambling to figure out what to do next year, after learning recently their contracts would not be renewed due to Mayor Eric Adams’ budget cuts.

The entire COMPASS Explore program, which offers specialized classes to grades K-12, will be affected. Another program for middle schoolers, the SONYC, or Schools Out NYC, also will lose a number of seats.

The nonprofit organizations running the programs received an email earlier this year from the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development alerting them that their contracts would end on June 30 and would not be renewed.

The cuts, which total nearly $7 million for both programs, came without warning, program directors said.

“We were thinking the agency itself would be hit but not the program itself,” said Derwin Greene, of the Kingsbridge Heights Community Center, which runs a COMPASS Explore program at Bronx Theatre High School.

COMPASS Explore serves grades K-12 and typically focuses on a single subject — such as art, music, STEM, or leadership — to give students time to go deep into a particular passion. Some of the programs are specifically aimed at serving LGBTQ youth or students with disabilities. (COMPASS Explore is smaller and offers more specialized services than regular COMPASS, which stands for Comprehensive After School System of New York City programs.)

Cutting the $2.7 million Explore program could have ripple effects beyond the loss of its nearly 1,900 seats, some organizations fear, potentially hobbling their ability to staff other programs since they often cobble together funding from various contracts to offer a fuller array of services.

Of SONYC’s 50,000 seats, the city is cutting about 1,660 slots to achieve a $4.2 million savings, according to public documents.

The Explore program Greene’s organization runs at Bronx Theatre offers juniors and seniors college counseling services, trips to college campuses, and job readiness training. They also work on social-emotional learning, and have a paid youth council where students earn a stipend for advocacy work. During the school day, they have one-on-one office hours for students who might need extra help.

The organization has a separate COMPASS contract for the work they do at the school with freshmen and sophomores. But having only one contract would not be sufficient to keep them afloat at the school.

“The contracts that we have already aren’t even enough,” Greene said. “We supplement with other funding.”

After-school enrollment is trending upward

City records show that the cuts were supposed to be aimed at underutilized programs — ones that did not meet the participation numbers under their contract. But that’s not what happened, according to a survey from United Neighborhood Houses, an umbrella organization working with settlement houses across the city.

Greene said his Explore program often over enrolls students to guard against teens dropping out, but this year they saw fewer kids leave.

Of the COMPASS Explore programs surveyed, most were meeting their benchmarks. Some SONYC providers said they were not meeting their targets, but several contributing factors complicated the narrative as to why, including delayed licenses and background checks for staff, stagnant contracts limiting their ability to pay competitive wages, and changing demographics of their student communities.

City officials said they prioritized the main COMPASS program over Explore since the latter is offered fewer days a week and that they targeted “lesser used” seats based on available data to minimize the impact on families.

“The city is committed to providing high-quality, engaging, and safe afterschool programming,” DYCD spokesperson Mark Zustovich wrote in an email. “DYCD is working with our COMPASS providers to serve as many young people as possible as the budget process continues in the coming weeks.”

Concerns about taking money out of after-school system

Once these after-school seats are cut they are not redistributed to other parts of the system, and that’s a concern as interest in after-school seats has been increasing, nonprofit providers say.

Participation in both city-run programs increased nearly 3% in the first four months of fiscal year 2024 compared to the year before, according to the mayor’s management report.

“Cutting COMPASS Explore and SONYC is taking money out of the after-school system when every dollar is precious,” said Nora Moran, policy director at United Neighborhood Houses. “They’re taken as a savings out of the system, so the overall pot that DYCD has to work with is smaller.”

That’s especially concerning, she said, as the price per participant is higher because other costs have gone up, such as minimum wage.

Farida Mohammed, a senior at the Orchard Collegiate Academy on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, is one of about 30 high schoolers in a COMPASS Explore program run by Grand Street Settlement, which is focused on college awareness and career exploration, as well as life skills, financial literacy, and study habits.

“It’s very helpful,” the Bronx 17-year-old said. Through the program, she’s learned how to create a resume, use Notion AI to create a daily planner to help her stay on top of assignments, and improve her public speaking skills. “My counselors at school — they don’t teach stuff like that.”

Grand Street Settlement operates another COMPASS Explore program at P.S. 158 in East New York focused on health and wellness for about 75 students, with a mix of instruction on nutritional eating and making sure kids are physically active.

Thanh Bui, Grand Street Settlement’s chief program officer, is especially concerned about the high school program.

“A lot of times, high school kids are dealt the short end of the stick. They don’t have a lot of services,” she said. “High school kids need a lot of life skills. They are also going through a lot of mental health issues.”

Bui’s organization also lost 15 of 50 SONYC seats it operates at a Catholic school, due to outdated enrollment data, she believes.

Her organization will now have to spend “double time” trying to find other sources of money, likely competing with others vying for the same pool of philanthropic dollars.

“Other organizations are going through the same process of trying to find that supplementary funding,” Bui said.

She was, however, holding out hope that the cuts might be restored.

“The mayor did some magical math a couple of months ago and restored some money back to DOE,” she said, referring to the mayor’s recent funding restorations. “Maybe there’s some magical math that’s going to happen soon.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Welcome to P.S. Weekly, a new podcast from Chalkbeat and The Bell: Meet the students behind the mics

2024-03-20T09:00:00+00:00

Get ready to hear the sounds of the New York City school system like never before.

Next week, Chalkbeat and The Bell are launching P.S. Weekly, a student-created podcast exploring the most pressing issues affecting students — and discussing possible solutions.

Episodes will come out Wednesday mornings this spring, starting March 27. Each will tackle a different topic: migrant students, book bans, career readiness, and more. Led by experienced executive producer JoAnn DeLuna, 11 high school interns are the show’s hosts, reporters, producers, and sound engineers. They’re leading its engagement efforts, designing social media posts, and writing episode summaries.

The show teaser is available below. Listeners can subscribe to P.S. Weekly on all major podcast apps, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

For the past 10 years, Chalkbeat has been a leading source of education reporting in the nation’s largest school system. The Bell came on the scene seven years ago, quickly becoming a premier provider of audio journalism internship programs for New York City public high school students from underrepresented backgrounds.

The partnership between the two organizations comes at a crucial time. A 2022 study found that about 1 in 4 New York City public high schools has a student newspaper or news site. For high-poverty schools, only 7% have one. The students who are least supported in the school system are the least likely to have platforms to share their stories.

Through The Bell, the podcast’s high school interns are paired up with Chalkbeat NY’s team of seasoned reporters and editors to create a series that will become a “must-listen” for students, educators, parents, and policymakers. The show will feature the latest education news, reports from the field, and thoughtful one-on-one conversations with students, educators, and experts.

Think of it as your hall pass to issues in the New York City public school system: access and perspectives you won’t get anywhere else.

And we want to hear from you. Tell us what you’d like to hear more about. Drop us a line at PSWeekly@chalkbeat.org.

Meet your new guides:

From left, Salma Baksh, a senior at Forest Hills High School, Bernie Carmona, a junior at The Beacon School, and Dorothy Ha, a senior at Stuyvesant High School.

Salma Baksh, senior

Forest Hills High School, Queens

Salma is the editor-in-chief of the school paper The Beacon; co-founder of Youth Informed, a political discussion club; and co-president of Double Up, a peer mentoring club. When Salma isn’t writing emails, she continues her attempt to build a second brain.

Bernie Carmona, junior

The Beacon School, Manhattan

Bernie is an active member of the Bronx Documentary Center and Google’s Code Next Program, which is centered on computer science. When Bernie isn’t focusing on schoolwork, he’s often practicing the guitar, cooking, or photographing the streets of NYC.

Dorothy Ha, senior

Stuyvesant High School, Manhattan

Dorothy holds leadership roles in her school’s yearbook, theater, poetry club, and art history club. In her free time, Dorothy loves visiting art museums and solving crossword puzzles.

From left, Tanvir Kaur, a senior at Academy of American Studies, Shoaa Khan, a senior at Landmark High School, and Marcellino Melika, a junior at Francis Lewis High School.

Tanvir Kaur, senior

Academy of American Studies, Queens

Tanvir is a student voice writer for The Academy Gazette, an editor and producer for the Bronx Documentary Center, and a member of the NYC Youth Journalism Coalition. Outside of the newsroom, Tanvir is an avid singer of Indian classical music and enjoys playing harmonium and mandolin.

Shoaa Khan, senior

Landmark High School, Manhattan

Shoaa is part of her school’s student government and volleyball team. She enjoys painting, watching movies, and trying new cafes with friends.

Marcellino Melika, junior

Francis Lewis High School, Queens

Marcellino began his journalistic work as a part of his school’s journalism academy. He spends his time on his school’s Science Olympiad team and playing cello in the orchestra. Marcellino also loves to help others through his efforts to give back.

From left, Santana Roach, a senior at Frederick Douglass Academy II, Jose Santana, a senior at Dr. Richard Izquierdo Health & Science Charter School, and Christian Rojas Linares, a senior at University Neighborhood High School.

Santana Roach, senior

Frederick Douglass Academy II, Manhattan

At school, Santana enjoys mentoring his peers, conversing and connecting with others, and striving to tackle intellectual challenges. Santana serves as a role model to many students through the extracurriculars he takes on and values the connections he cultivates with those around him. He also spends his time watching cartoons and talking with his friends and family.

Jose Santana, senior

Dr. Richard Izquierdo Health & Science Charter School, Bronx

Jose serves as the president of his graduating class and leads the podcast/YouTube club in his school. Outside of school, he can usually be found reading a book, playing guitar or saxophone, shooting hoops, or messing around with tech.

Christian Rojas Linares, senior

University Neighborhood High School, Manhattan

Christian enjoys partaking in school events and using specialized AI technology to assist him with his assignments. He likes to listen to podcasts — including Science VS, The Daily, and many more.

From left, Sanaa Stokes, a junior at Professional Performing Arts School, Ava Stryker-Robbins, a senior at The Beacon School and JoAnn DeLuna the executive producer.

Sanaa Stokes, junior

Professional Performing Arts School, Manhattan

At her school where she majors in drama, Sanaa participates in the Black Student Union, Global Glimpse, and is the vice president of the Women Advancement and Liberation Club. When she’s not learning her lines, she enjoys watching rom-com movies.

Ava Stryker-Robbins, senior

The Beacon School, Manhattan

Ava is the co-editor-in-chief of her school’s literary magazine, a reporter for the West Side Rag, and an organizer for the New York Civil Liberties Union’s Teen Activist Project. She’s an alumna of The Bell’s Summer Youth Podcast Academy and the City Limits Accountability Reporting Initiative for Youth, orCLARIFY. Ava also loves to read, play classical guitar, and knit.

JoAnn DeLuna, executive producer

JoAnn is an award-winning bilingual journalist/audio producer and poet originally from Texas. She’s produced and managed podcasts for Sony and OTHERTone (Drapetomaniax: Unshackled History), Pushkin (WorkLife with Adam Grant & Am I Normal? With Mona Chalabi), and NPR (Latino USA, Radio Diaries, KALW). Before switching to audio, JoAnn was a print reporter covering the travel industry from Asia, Europe, and the Americas for more than a decade. She was also a crime and education reporter for newspapers on the US-Mexico border. Her English and Spanish poetry is published in anthologies in California, New York, and Texas.

P.S. Weekly is a collaboration between The Bell and Chalkbeat, made possible by generous support from The Pinkerton Foundation.

Computer science at an arts school: This Bronx teacher combines coding and dance

2024-03-19T20:46:00+00:00

About two years after Maha Hasen started teaching math at a Bronx arts high school, a few students urged her to create a computer science track. So she took it upon herself to learn the subject.

She did a fellowship with Upperline Code, which trains educators committed to expanding access to computer science, and was able to re-introduce AP Computer Science principles at Fordham High School for the Arts. Hasen also launched a coding club where students learned to create websites using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Now in her eighth year at the school where she started her teaching career, Hasen became an assistant principal while still teaching a few courses. Her school now has a four-year computer science track that includes work-based learning experiences through the Education Department’s FutureReadyNYC program.

And Hasen strives to increase the number of girls pursuing computer science, even collaborating with a dance teacher to combine step and coding. Girls make up more than 70% of students at her arts-focused school.

“My students are dedicated, vocal, and innovative changemakers that hope to use their skills in computer science to dismantle the belief that women do not belong in computer science and to truly change their communities for the better using their skills from the class,” said Hasen, who has won several accolades, including a 2023 Big Apple Teaching Award and Cognizant Innovation in Computer Science Award in 2022.

Besides being part of the second wave of schools in the FutureReadyNYC program, Hasen’s school was selected this year to join the city’s Career Readiness & Modern Youth Apprenticeship program. Through that, students can get paid apprenticeships with technology companies and take coursework at New York University in pursuit of an associate degree.

These programs, Hasen said, help “ensure that we go beyond a traditional high school experience.”

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How and when did you decide to become a teacher?

The short answer: I didn’t! As an applied mathematics and philosophy major, I had originally intended to become a Professor of Philosophy.

However, I had volunteered and worked at a number of schools in Washington, D.C., as a tutor, Ethics Bowl coach, site associate, and teacher, and I interned at the Center for Education Reform, so when my advisor recommended that I look into Teach for America, it made a lot of sense!

I was thrilled to join Teach for America and to be placed in the Bronx, as I was born and raised in the Bronx.

However, what is even more important than why I decided to become a teacher is why I decided to stay a teacher.

Of course, the cliché (and true!) answer is that the students are why I stayed, but after years of reflection, I have found that the most important factor to me staying in the profession has been that I have an incredible principal, Michael Johnson Jr., who has truly embodied the meaning of transformational leadership. Only through his leadership have I been able to take the intellectual risks and develop into the educator that I am now.

I believe an often overlooked factor in teacher development is who is actually supporting the development of teachers — and for me, I am fortunate to have a mentor/principal who consistently gives effective feedback and coaching to support my development.

Why did you decide to take the leap and become an assistant principal?

I wanted to take on a more formal role with the science and math department at my school. I love working with teachers and giving them feedback, and through my role as Master Teacher, I was able to work closely with many teachers and support them in their development.

However, I consistently found myself interested in taking on more administrative projects, and my principal had pushed me to pursue the role of assistant principal.

It was very important to me in the transition to continue to teach. As such, I still teach two sections of AP Computer Science Principles, and once a week, I teach an Algebra II Prep class. I believe that being able to teach these classes allows me to leverage my room as a lab classroom and to really practice what I preach to teachers. Overall, I’ve loved the transition!

What’s your favorite lesson to teach and why?

I love facilitating student learning as they complete their final app in AP Computer Science Principles.

While this culminating project leads to a lot of frustration from students, it is incredible to see how students create apps that tie in their identity and serve the purpose of helping their peers.

Additionally, it is incredible to watch as students work their way out of their comfort zones and navigate through the challenges and frustrations of coding to develop their apps by collaborating and using each other as resources.

Last year, students created a song recommendation app, an app to help learn [American Sign Language], and one that helps you learn about African American inventors and scientists.

I saw that you collaborated with a dance teacher on a freshman coding and dance course aimed at girls. Can you tell me more about that class and why you decided to do that?

The whole premise of our STEM From Dance class was to train an AI to recognize dance poses and then use these dance poses to trigger animations that we can code! Students in this class leveraged the use of Google’s Teachable Machines and Scratch to code.

As a performing arts high school, it is important that we continue to look for ways to integrate the arts into the core academic classes. This was an incredible opportunity because it wasn’t just a unit activity — it was an entire class co-taught with our dance teacher that allowed students to explore computer science through dance.

Tell us about your own experience with school and how it affects your work today.

I always loved school, specifically my math classes. In college, I majored in applied mathematics and philosophy, and I think that shaped my teaching career significantly. As a philosophy major, I spent a lot of time asking questions and always focusing on learning more, sharing perspectives, and thinking outside the box.

I’ve aimed to translate that to my classroom and school by challenging the notions of traditional education. Some examples include the flipped classroom that I helped to pilot in the math classrooms in 2017 — where students watch ‘how-to’ videos at home and take assessments and do small group work in class — and the intentionality behind creating a computer science track and partnership with FutureReady.

Of course, as a math major, I am excited by math so it made sense that I started my teaching career as a math teacher! I hope that I have been able to instill that same love of mathematics and share the joy of the discipline with my students.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received, and how have you put it into practice?

Choose to be happy! While working in education is a very challenging job, it is so much easier if you consistently make the choice to be happy.

For me, that means continuing to teach what I am passionate about, assuming the best intentions of others, and prioritizing my health to ensure I am filled with energy each day!

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Drama at NYC performing arts school over loss of its celebrated theater program

2024-03-13T22:17:29+00:00

The curtain is expected to close next month on a long-running acting program at a Manhattan performing arts school serving grades 6-12, due to a funding shortfall, the program’s education and artistic director told parents this week.

But students from the Professional Performing Arts School in Hell’s Kitchen want the show to go on and launched a GoFundMe campaign that raised more than $20,000 in less than 24 hours.

They’re hoping they can tap famous alumni, who include Alicia Keys, Britney Spears, Claire Danes, and Jesse Eisenberg. Already, Jeremy Allen White from “The Bear” shared the GoFundMe on his Instagram account (after texting a teacher there to make sure it was legitimate, a parent said).

For 13 years, the Waterwell drama program has worked with the Professional Performing Arts School, often called PPAS, offering conservatory-style acting classes led by professional actors: High school students take drama for two hours a day, five days a week; for middle school, musical theater classes run 1½ hours each day. (Waterwell’s co-founder is Arian Moayed, from “Successsion.”)

Earlier this week, Waterwell’s education and artistic director, Heather Lanza, emailed PPAS parents and students, letting them know the program would wrap up April 12 and urged families to advocate on the program’s behalf.

She blamed the program’s early departure on citywide budget cuts, but the Education Department disputed that, saying that Waterwell was charging more from the get-go than the school could afford.

“We love the students dearly, and this has been unbelievably painful,” Lanza told Chalkbeat. “We deeply believe in this training model.”

Some of the students stay in the program for seven years and have gone on to Broadway or other professional roles. Whether the students want to be professional actors or not, learning through theater helps them develop into “empathetic human beings” and helps them tap into “the power of storytelling,” Lanza said.

Lanza told Chalkbeat that the organization’s budget was short by $102,000. Based on what the school told her in a meeting last week, she said, the funding shortfall was a product of the overall cuts in the city and were tied to a midyear adjustment to the school’s budget for the current school year. The principal told families this week that the school needed about $80,000 to save the program, parents said.

Education Department officials disputed the claim that budget cuts were to blame for the program’s gap, saying that the program’s work order was above what the school could afford, and this was communicated to Waterwell in December.

The school did lose money because of an enrollment dip. But that cut only amounted to about $20,000, according to a teachers union database. The school’s current roster is about 520 students, according to public data, down about 20 students from the year before.

“A rigorous theater arts program continues to be a priority for PPAS,” Education Department spokeswoman Jenna Lyle said in a statement. “The school will host end of year performances, and dedicated staff will continue to support students in their drama education through the end of standard academic year program, which ends on April 30, while the school sources a new partner for the next academic year.”

The school is committed to ensuring the theater program will remain strong even if Waterwell leaves next month. Teachers are willing to do “double time” and “step in and fill the gap if we can’t raise the money that Waterwell needs,” said Shawn Dell, the school’s PTA president.

“PPAS is one of a kind. It’s a unicorn. There’s nothing like it,” Dell said. “LaGuardia has DOE teachers that are seeking tenure. Our teachers are seeking Broadway. That’s why we love it.”

Students crushed by news, but elated Jeremy Allen White took notice

“This program brings so much joy to a lot of people,” Tennyson Artigliere, the seventh grader who launched the GoFundMe campaign, said on her way to dance class after the school day ended. “It really brings us so much joy to be able to do what we love to do.”

Tennyson launched the campaign after texting with friends in her group chat about how to take action.

They also immediately changed the group chat name from “PPAS peeps” to “S peeps,” saying that the removal of the theater program “took the ‘PPA’ out of PPAS.” Now it was just “the school,” the students joked.

Before the school day had started, she had tagged White, the “Bear” star, on Instagram, and when she got her phone back at the end of the day, she was ecstatic to see that he had shared the GoFundMe link in his Instagram story.

White wrote: “This is where I went to high school. It’s an incredible program with some incredible teachers. Please help IF YOU ARE ABLE. I have donated.”

His support felt meaningful. “These are the people that are going to be the future of entertainment,” Tennyson said of her classmates, “the next celebrities.”

Marcus Artigliere, Tennyson’s dad, felt frustrated that parents learned about the cuts only from the theater program and not the principal, who is in her first year at the school. But he beamed about his daughter’s drive to launch the fundraising campaign.

“As a parent, I’m really proud of her collective action,” said Artigliere, an education professor at Hunter College. “It’s a public school. We shouldn’t have to fundraise … but there is a lot of beauty in being scrappy and seeing how the kids are taking off.”

Current and prospective PPAS families worry about school’s future

David Glick’s daughter travels about 1½ hours from Staten Island to PPAS for this program, he said.

“I don’t have my daughter do a crazy commute to just do academics. She could go 10 minutes away for that,” he said of his seventh grader. “She’s got this amazing voice and is talented. She was thrilled when she got in, but she also has anxiety and ADHD, and it’s been really nice for her to have these small classes.”

The news about the program has also reached prospective PPAS families.

Sarah Muir, a parent of an eighth grader at Louis Armstrong Middle School in Queens, was delighted to learn last week that her son was accepted into PPAS, and the family is weighing it against an offer at the famed LaGuardia performing arts high school.

“It is distressing and concerning to have gone through the lengthy and arduous application process now to find that the school he will be attending may be radically different from the one he applied to,” Muir said. “The school’s core mission and identity as a performing arts school depends on this training.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC sues TikTok, Instagram, and other social media companies over youth mental health crisis

2024-02-14T22:50:31+00:00

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Mayor Eric Adams ratcheted up New York City’s battle against social media companies on Wednesday, joining hundreds of municipalities and school systems across the country that have filed a wave of lawsuits seeking financial compensation and broader changes to the platforms.

The city contends that social media platforms are designed to be addictive, harming young people’s mental health, and serving as venues for bullying. The lawsuit is calling on the companies to change their practices and pay for youth mental health education prevention and treatment services. Officials said the city spends about $100 million a year on youth mental health programs.

The city’s Education Department and the public hospital system are also part of the suit filed in California state court against the companies operating TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube.

“The feature that keeps young people clicking in these dark corners of social media have fueled an alarming rise in online bullying, depression, eating disorders, and suicidal ideation,” Adams said during a briefing on Wednesday. “There is, of course, a great deal of education and positive content out there too. But there is also a 24/7 digital dystopia that even very young children can easily access without parents or caregivers ever being aware of.”

City officials pointed to a series of worrying statistics about youth mental health, including rising rates of suicide attempts. Additionally, the statistics show that in 2021, nearly 38% of high school students felt so hopeless or sad over the previous year that they stopped participating in their usual activities. Still, there is little conclusive evidence linking social media use to mental health problems, though experts have called for more research on the topic.

The burden, however, has been high on the nation’s largest school system, the lawsuit alleges, including hiring additional counselors and social workers, investigating threats made against schools and students over social media, and increasing community-based services such as outpatient therapy and after-school programs. Social media addiction has adversely affected students’ attention spans, their ability to learn, and their behavior, the lawsuit claims, noting that some students have become violent when a teacher tried to take their phones.

Some school leaders have struggled to manage the impact of social media on their campuses. In response to Instagram accounts that allowed students to post anonymous content, a Queens principal threatened to cancel activities and suspend students who followed those accounts, an episode that raised free speech concerns. (The accounts were ultimately taken down.)

The lawsuit claims that the companies borrow “heavily from the behavioral and neurobiological techniques used in slot machines and exploited by the cigarette industry” to keep the attention of young people, who are at a “vulnerable” developmental stage, and to drive advertising revenue.

Last year’s lawsuit against social media companies filed by Seattle’s school district unleashed the current wave of litigation. New York City’s lawsuit appeared to be broadly similar to others filed by local school districts, which some observers say could face tough legal odds.

“Most of these [lawsuits] are as much about legal success as they are about shaping issues and winning in the court of public opinion,” Chris Thomas, a professor at the University of Florida, told EdWeek. “That is part of the strategy around the lawsuits, even if they have tough hills to climb legally.”

Adams has signaled for months that his administration planned to take stronger action against social media companies. Last month, he announced the city would begin to treat social media use as a public health threat, deploying an ad campaign equating major social media platforms with tobacco companies. The city also released an advisory encouraging caregivers to delay giving children a smartphone until age 14 to limit continuous access to social media.

The city vowed to take a series of steps outside of the lawsuit as part of a new “framework for action” including guidance to schools for creating “tech-free zones” and launching a youth advisory council.

City officials have also begun offering free online therapy for teenagers, one of Adams’ biggest mental health initiatives, though some students have struggled to persuade their parents to let them participate. More than 2,000 teens have used the online therapy platform so far, according to a health department spokesperson.

In a response to the city’s lawsuit, Snapchat spokesperson Ashley Adams sought to distance the platform from other social media companies. “Snapchat was intentionally designed to be different from traditional social media,” she wrote, noting the platform does not include a traditional feed “and has no traditional public likes or comments.”

“While we will always have more work to do,” she added, “we feel good about the role Snapchat plays in helping close friends feel connected, happy and prepared as they face the many challenges of adolescence.”

Liza Crenshaw, a spokesperson for Meta, the parent of Instagram and Facebook, said the company has more than 30 tools and features to support teens and their parents. “We want teens to have safe, age-appropriate experiences online,” she said.

Representatives of TikTok and YouTube did not immediately respond for comment.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Most NYC school safety agents are now wearing bulletproof vests. The change is unsettling for some.

2024-02-14T19:30:13+00:00

Most of the school safety agents working in New York City schools have quietly added a new item to their uniforms: bulletproof vests.

A NYPD spokesperson confirmed that about 3,000 of the roughly 4,100 school safety agents across the city are now wearing “bullet resistant” vests since the department began distributing them this school year, with the rest on the way.

The police department is rolling out the vests citywide as a safety measure for the agents amid elevated levels of neighborhood youth gun violence and a spike in guns turning up at city schools in recent years. School safety agents don’t carry guns.

But the arrival of the vests has often come with little warning or explanation to school communities, stirring mixed reactions from families, educators, and school safety agents themselves.

Alex Estes, the president of the Parent Teacher Association at the Neighborhood School in the East Village, was caught off guard when he noticed the safety agent at his son’s school wearing a vest last month.

“You’re not going to find a better-informed parent,” he said of his level of involvement, yet he had no idea about the change.

He worried about how the children at the elementary school where his son is in first grade might respond — or whether the youngest children might understand the change, hear things from older kids about the vests, or even be able to articulate their concerns. The children feel like the school is their home, and many hug their school safety agent, Estes said.

“They see her. They hug her. They care about her. Then all of a sudden … this hug has a bulletproof vest,” he said. “Five-year-olds, 7-year-olds, 8-year-olds aren’t fantastic about reporting what it is that’s making them uncomfortable, and the way this is rolling out is not taking that into account at all.”

An NYPD spokesperson didn’t respond to a question about what the department has done to prepare schools, aside from saying, “NYC Public Schools … have been notified.”

An Education Department spokesperson referred questions to the NYPD.

One Manhattan principal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the school was given “zero warning” that safety agents would be showing up in vests, even though administrators had met with school safety agents just days earlier.

“The first people we see are school safety … to walk in and be greeted by bulletproof vests is alarming for students and staff,” the principal said. “Your immediate thought is, ‘What happened?’”

Some school safety agents feel conflicted about their new apparel

One Manhattan high school safety agent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said she appreciated the extra layer of protection, but worried about the “message” it communicated to students.

“I think we should have had a whole conversation with the schools first to prepare them,” the agent said. Though she believes that “kids can adapt” to the changes, some concerned parents asked whether there was a threat they should know about, the agent said. She feared that wearing a vest made it seem like safety agents weren’t succeeding at their jobs of keeping schools safe.

The plan to outfit school safety agents with vests, first reported last summer by the New York Daily News, follows a pilot program last year, and multiple years of lobbying from the union representing school safety agents. NYPD officials said the pilot program “aided in the safety of our School Safety Agents,” but didn’t provide further details, including where the pilot took place or how they determined its success.

The terms “bulletproof” and “bullet resistant” are often used interchangeably for vests, but some experts have said the former is a misnomer because vests aren’t impervious to all bullets.

No guns have been fired in city schools in decades, but multiple shootings have occurred right outside schools around dismissal time, including one in Williamsburg last February that injured two students and a security guard.

More than 20 guns were confiscated from students at city schools during the 2021-22 school year, a marked increase since before the pandemic. So far this school year, seven guns have been seized at schools, compared to nine during the same period last school year, according to the NYPD.

The distribution of the vests is one of several changes school and police officials have made in response to the concerns about gun violence. Last school year, the NYPD changed the frequency of school safety agents’ radios to connect them more directly to NYPD precincts, and city schools are rolling out door locking and camera systems at all elementary schools this year.

Officials previously indicated that the door locking upgrades would cost around $78 million total. An NYPD spokesperson didn’t respond to a question about the cost of the vests.

One Brooklyn elementary school principal said he appreciated some of those recent safety upgrades. But the transition to bulletproof vests for school safety agents felt extreme.

“I would want her [the School Safety Agent] to be safe in all situations, but it seems like it’s going from zero to a hundred given that the door wasn’t even secured three months ago,” said the principal, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The agent has complained the vest is bulky and uncomfortable to wear all day, and “she doesn’t feel like there’s an active threat to her safety that [the vest] would protect her from.”

Bulletproof vests not supposed to be visible to students

The new vests are supposed to fly under the radar. An NYPD spokesperson said in a statement they are supposed to be “worn underneath the uniform shirt and may never be the outer most garment.”

But school safety agents who spoke to Chalkbeat said that their uniform shirts aren’t tailored to fit over the vests, and that they still haven’t received new shirts. They were wearing their vests outside their uniform shirts, though one was covering it with a sweater, and others wore their uniform-issued jackets over the vests.

The vests, which NYPD officials said are “durable and lightweight,” are supposed to be worn at all times when safety agents are on duty, including when they’re staffing “safe corridors” outside of schools to help students on their commutes.

Many families and educators still haven’t noticed the vests. For those who have, they’ve often come as a surprise.

Some schools are making their own efforts to inform their communities and answer any questions.

After their safety agent got her vest, the Neighborhood School administrators sent a note to families letting them know they would be paying attention to whether children bring up the issue, and they asked parents to encourage their children to talk to trusted adults at the school if they needed to.

Estes, the PTA president, feels frustrated overall with various moves to “harden” schools, believing the focus instead should be on reforming gun laws.

“We want to keep the security officers safe,” Estes said, “but the other problem I have with this is that every time we’re talking about school security measures, we are taking up the slack of the gun laws.”

Alex Zimmerman contributed to this story.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Technical meltdown prevents NYC students from logging onto virtual classes during remote snow day

2024-02-13T23:56:39+00:00

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Teachers and students across New York City were shut out of their virtual classes Tuesday morning, a major glitch as city officials ordered schools to offer remote instruction because of the snowstorm.

The tech problems prevented many — though not all — teachers and students from logging into Zoom, Google Classroom, school email accounts, and even attendance tracking tools.

City officials largely blamed the technical snafu on IBM, which helps manage the login process for the city’s remote learning platforms. During a midday press conference, Chancellor David Banks said IBM was not prepared for the crush of users logging in at once but problems were being ironed out.

More than one million students and staff had successfully signed on, officials said. Still, student attendance fell to 78% down from 87% on Monday, according to preliminary data that does not yet include all schools.

“To say that I am disappointed, frustrated, and angry is an understatement,” Banks said, adding the department would conduct a “full analysis” of what went wrong. “This was a test. I don’t think that we passed this test.”

Tuesday represented the first time the entire school system was expected to go virtual during a snowstorm — a major test of the city’s strategy to switch to remote learning instead of canceling classes due to inclement weather. To give schools and families time to prepare, officials announced nearly a full day in advance their plans to close school buildings. Banks vowed teachers would be ready to deliver live lessons that mirror a traditional school day.

But as students and teachers tried to log on Tuesday morning, many encountered an error message that displayed a digital image of a lone teacher standing on a podium. On some campuses, tech problems derailed much of the morning’s lessons. Other schools didn’t seem to be affected, making the scale of the outage unclear. An IBM spokesperson said Tuesday afternoon the issues had been “largely resolved” and “we regret the inconvenience to students and parents across the city.”

Some parents and educators said the technical difficulties reminded them of the early days of the pandemic. The damage could reverberate, some worry.

One Manhattan elementary school leader who had to cancel morning classes because of the tech problems, said, “The bigger impact is … the intangible piece: the trust, the perception of competence, which was a major issue during COVID.”

Adam Schwartz, a teacher at Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School in Brooklyn, said his second grade daughter’s morning class was disrupted, though she was able to successfully login around 9 a.m.

Schwartz, who teaches English to students who are new to the country, said he was dreading remote instruction on Tuesday, as his students often shy away from participating during in-person classes. But they seemed more comfortable in the virtual environment, regularly chiming in with emojis. His classes weren’t affected by the outage because they started later in the day.

“It was kind of a slight remove from the normal social pressures of school that make it so difficult for kids to communicate,” Schwartz said. “And it allowed me to be a little silly.” Due to back problems, he logged into his classes sprawled on his belly on his kitchen floor. Still, only about half of his students showed up.

Remote learning practice runs didn’t help

City officials had previously conducted practice runs with students and families so the system would be prepared in the event of a remote snow day. But Michael Mulgrew, head of the city’s teachers union, said only smaller groups of students and teachers logged on at once.

“When we did the citywide test in October, we assumed it was a stress test. It turns out that’s not what the DOE did,” he said in an interview.

Some schools weathered the glitches better than others because they’ve held onto their school-specific websites and email accounts despite the Education Department asking them to do otherwise. Because of security concerns, the Education Department has been pushing schools to move to a centrally run domain, which no longer lets schools control the login process. But that central login system failed on Tuesday.

”If we still ran everything through our Gmail, today would have been fine,” one high school principal said.

Despite Banks’ assurance that schools would be ready to offer plenty of live teaching, some students and educators said there was less than usual.

Christian Rojas Linares, a senior at Manhattan’s University Neighborhood High School, said his teachers posted assignments online and, with a couple exceptions, were on hand to help students work through them. But some of his classes felt more like office hours than typical periods of instruction, and in certain cases there were just a handful of students in attendance, he said.

“When it comes to remote learning, you often tend to not get stuff done for the most part,” Rojas Linares said.

Still, he appreciated that the remote atmosphere was less stressful than a regular school day and noted his AP environmental science teacher used class time to help prepare for a test scheduled for Wednesday. “Even though it didn’t feel like a real class, I was still able to get work done,” he said.

Matthew Willie, the school’s principal, said his teachers were well prepared to switch to remote learning and did not contend with major glitches. Willie said he dropped into 15 to 20 virtual classrooms throughout the day and “there was good attendance and direct instruction taking place,” he said.

Willie said Rojas Linares’ experience may be unusual because he’s enrolled in a slew of advanced classes that tend to enroll a smaller number of students. “I really think the day went well for us,” he said.

Decisions about whether to call a snow day are typically contentious and come with tradeoffs, as many families rely on school for meals and may struggle to line up child care. Though some called on the city to cancel classes entirely, there is little room in the school calendar thanks to a growing number of holidays and a state requirement to hold 180 school days.

By afternoon, Brooklyn’s Prospect Park was a mix of slush and snow. Some parents expressed disappointment at the paltry amount of powder covering the ground, but kids were making the most of it, sledding down any hill they could find, sometimes wearing down the snow enough to see patches of mud and grass sticking out.

After an hour of online school, Christine Joyce, mom of a second grader and kindergartener at P.S. 321, made the executive decision to take her kids to the park.

“Zoom this morning was a little rough,” she said, noting that her kids were ultimately able to access their virtual classrooms, but she called it quits shortly after for a real snow day because she wanted her kids to experience some joy in the snow. They spent several hours building snowmen and forts, having snowball fights and sledding.

Kids were out in full force to sled in Brooklyn's Prospect Park even though the snow wasn't deep.

Abby Loomis, a fourth grade teacher at P.S. 414 in Brooklyn, said she appreciated the city’s early decision to pivot to remote instruction.

The vast majority of her students were able to log in, but challenges remained. During a math lesson, her students struggled to input fractions on their keyboards. Some children filled the virtual chat room with messages about wanting to play outside in the snow. And she opted to avoid continuing a social studies unit on slavery, a topic that felt too difficult to discuss in an online format.

Instead, she leaned more heavily on work students could complete on their own, such as editing biographies they’re writing about figures including Taylor Swift and Simone Biles. She devised a fun snow day checklist, including finding hot chocolate and throwing a snowball.

“It should just not be a rigorous rigid day,” Loomis said.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Education Department announced this week’s experiment with remote learning will be brief. Traditional in-person classes will resume Wednesday.

Michael Elsen-Rooney contributed to this story.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Moms for Liberty came to the Upper East Side. Protesters may have outnumbered guests.

2024-01-19T04:14:35+00:00

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Protesters may have outnumbered participants in Moms for Liberty’s Thursday night town hall on the Upper East Side.

The right-wing organization’s event, which according to organizers was sold out, attracted ire from politicians and parent activists across the city. As about 100 people rallied outside toting signs reading “Mom against fascism,” “Queer people have kids too,” and “Read banned books,” many of the speakers on the panel rehashed national issues like the influence of teachers unions, the teaching of anti-racism and “gender ideology,” and school choice.

Several speakers stood before the crowd of about 75 people and took digs at New York City’s class size mandate, its cap on charter schools, and its high spending and low rates of reading proficiency.

Moms for Liberty bills itself as a “parents rights” group. It was founded in Florida in 2021 and quickly made national headlines for its calls to restrict access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth and block LGBTQ-focused books and curriculum, as well as limit lessons about race.

The organization has swiftly made inroads across the country, raising $2.1 million in 2022 from the conservative Heritage Foundation and Republican donors, after raising just $370,000 the year before, according to the Associated Press. The organization has become influential in GOP politics and recently started a chapter in Queens.

It was named an “extremist” group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its divisive tactics and efforts to undermine public education.

The question-and-answer session after the panel turned fiery. Several parents and teachers challenged the panelists on culturally responsive education, their views on transgender children, and what specific curriculum proposals they recommended to boost reading scores.

Moms for Liberty event attracts familiar education names

Moms for Liberty’s town hall in a staunchly blue pocket of the city caused a stir. But for close watchers of local education politics, many of the panelists were likely familiar.

They included Maud Maron, who sits on the Community Education Council, or CEC, for Manhattan’s District 2, and has been sparring for years with other parents.

CECs are largely advisory parent-led boards that approve or reject school zoning proposals and issue resolutions about such topics as admissions and curriculum.

Maron is a co-founder of the group PLACE (Parents Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Learning), which has organized in support of selective admissions at a time when integration advocates had been gaining traction in their efforts to desegregate many schools.

Maron, who recently said in a private chat that transgender children don’t exist, faced a barrage of criticism Wednesday night at the District 2 CEC meeting for her participation in the Thursday panel.

She doubled down on her decision Thursday night, accusing her critics of being “illiberal” and shying away from arguments. She singled out one young woman who recently challenged her stance on transgender children.

“She identified herself as a proud queer woman,” Maron recalled. “Which I think means she’s a straight girl without a boyfriend.” A parent at Thursday’s event subsequently challenged Maron on the comment, calling it “unnecessary and spiteful.”

Charles Love, another District 2 CEC member who spoke on Thursday’s panel, said he hasn’t yet found any evidence that Moms For Liberty is racist or homophobic.

The flier promoting the event listed Maron’s affiliation with the education council, along with Love’s. The city’s conflict of interest rules say council members may only use their titles along with a written disclaimer on materials and a verbal disclaimer that they are speaking in their personal capacity.

Education Department officials said before the event they would follow up with CEC members to remind them of this rule. Love acknowledged he’d been warned and said he agreed not to use his title, but neither he nor Maron offered an actual disclaimer.

Other panelists included Wai Wah Chin, the head of an Asian American parent advocacy group, Natalya Murakhver, an advocate against closing schools during the pandemic, and Mona Davids, who leads a group pushing for more school safety agents and metal detectors.

Some opponents expressed concern that the group was starting to exert influence in city education circles. Abby Stein, a rabbi and transgender advocate, raised the group’s use of a Hitler quote in a newsletter in Indiana. “When you put a quote of Hitler on your newsletter and you’re trying to make your way into New York City, on to education councils, I am terrified,” she said. (The group later apologized for quoting Hitler.)

The conversation did at times center on city-specific issues. When Chin criticized the class size cap, which she said would force the city to hire more teachers of lower quality, several audience members piped up that they were former teachers fired because of the city’s COVID vaccine mandate.

Tiffany Justice, the co-founder of Moms for Liberty and the moderator of the town hall, said she didn’t think education in the city’s public schools could get “much worse.”

Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice opens up the organization's town hall on the Upper East Side on Thursday.

Still, speakers offered few specific prescriptions. One parent asked after the panel what precise curriculum suggestions the panelists had. Maron criticized the city’s long-time reliance on a Teachers College reading curriculum that has largely been discredited. The city is already midway through a two-year effort to move away from that curriculum.

It’s unclear how large Moms for Liberty’s presence actually is in New York City, and event organizers didn’t give specifics about expansion plans.

Several elected officials spoke out before the event, including Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, who called the group a “bunch of hypocrites.”

“You don’t believe in liberty if you ban books,” he said. “If you attack trans kids and the parents of trans kids, that’s not liberty. That’s fascism.”

Jo Macellaro, a trans teacher in a Bronx District 75 program serving students with disabilities, was holding a sign that read: “I’m the trans teacher you’re scared of.”

Macellaro, who uses they/them pronouns, said they were called a “groomer” several times Thursday night. They felt it was important to speak out as Moms for Liberty has made inroads in Queens.

“I think we need to make it very loud and clear they are not welcome here,” Macellaro said.

“[Kids] can see what’s going on. If they can see these people are coming here and spewing their hatred, what message does that send?”

(A Moms for Liberty supporter wearing a “Protect Our Children” sweatshirt did yell at the group’s opponents, “You’re absolutely disgusting, you’re grooming our children.”)

Some protesters tried to convince the event’s venue, the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association, to cancel ahead of time, but the nonprofit concluded it couldn’t do so.

“We are a completely apolitical organization concentrating on cultural performances, and – this particular group clearly does not fit our strong non-political stance,” Joseph Balaz, the organization’s president, wrote in a lengthy statement online explaining his rationale.

He said he planned to personally match the rental fee for the event and donate it to “one of our organizations which actively supports young, future leaders.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

This Queens teacher went from being an accountant to teaching entrepreneurship

2024-01-17T21:38:18+00:00

Lorena Izzo was working as an accountant about 20 years ago when she was assigned to oversee a college intern and realized her true calling: to become a teacher.

She returned to her alma mater, Hofstra University, to get a master’s in math education (on top of her MBA). She landed a job at the Academy of Finance and Enterprise in Long Island City, Queens, and she has remained there for nearly 17 years, teaching entrepreneurship, financial services, and accounting.

“My students create business plans from scratch,” Izzo said, “starting with the research phase and finishing with viable business ideas that are ready to be presented at national competitions in front of potential investors.”

Some teens have even won seed money for their ideas, with one such student marketing a homemade hand cream to local nail salons and another selling napkins and towels that she personalized with embroidery.

In raising the question, “What is the purpose of school?” New York City schools Chancellor David Banks often talks about the importance of ensuring students have real-world workforce experience and are financially literate. Banks visited Izzo’s class on entrepreneurship last year to see her in action and hear from her students about how they’re preparing for their futures, Izzo recounted.

Izzo began teaching entrepreneurship by chance. Soon after she started working at Finance and Enterprise, her principal asked her to join a class for educators held by the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, or NFTE, a nonprofit focused on empowering students to build their own businesses. That experience changed her path — as well as that of many of her students.

The organization provides Izzo with a curriculum and professional development. It offers mentors and coaches to her students, who often go on job-shadowing trips and take career readiness workshops.

Several of Izzo’s students have participated in the organization’s National Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge. Two students recently made regionals for their subscription company for culturally diverse treats, inspired by their own challenges finding authentic Vietnamese and Algerian desserts. Another student who always longed for more help with styling her curly hair created an app that recommends styling products and tips.

“It’s very inspiring to see how they take something they see as a problem, and they come up with their own solution,” Izzo said.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Tell us about your own experience with school and how it affects your work today.

I went into teaching because every day is different. That’s what made me want to come out of accounting. Every day was the same.

I’ve been teaching the entrepreneurship class for over a decade now, but it is different every year because the students are always different. Technology is constantly changing along with styles and trends.

I remember 10 years ago, a student told me they were going to send their product to someone on YouTube. I didn’t see how that was a business plan and gave her a zero. Then I saw that person [from YouTube] on television, and the student explained what an influencer was. She was like, “Did you change my grade?” Yes, I did.

Why did you decide to focus on entrepreneurship education?

I loved the class that first year of teaching it. It’s very different from teaching finance and accounting. When teaching entrepreneurship, you get to really know your students through the businesses they want to start. You get to know what drives them, and you’re part of the whole process of making that happen.

My entrepreneurship class is not just about memorizing facts and dates but applying those skills students are learning in class. They can apply them to anything, even if they’re not going to start a business. Maybe students are going into the medical field and want to become doctors. Regardless of the career choices my students make beyond this class, when they face a problem, they will already be thinking about all the opportunities to come up with a solution. And this will open many doors for them.

What’s your favorite lesson to teach and why?

One of the lessons I absolutely love to teach in my Entrepreneurship 1 class is our LEGO activity because it also touches upon accounting.

It’s a very hands-on activity where the students get to play with LEGOs and create a toy. But they also have to tell us a few things: They need to identify the target market for the toy they created, the cost of the materials, and the labor that will be needed. So it helps them figure out what to do for their own projects while practicing on LEGOs.

I mean who doesn’t like to play with LEGOs? The students have so much fun with this one.

What’s something happening in the community that affects what goes on inside your classroom or your school?

My classroom did see an increase in English-language learners, and with that came the need to adapt our curriculum to several languages including Spanish and French. Google Translate has been a major tool to overcome language barriers. I speak Spanish but not French, for example, so when I can’t translate for students personally, I rely on Google Translate.

But at the end of the day, the lessons of the curriculum are so universal and applicable to everyday things that, even if it takes them a little bit more time, they always learn and have fun in my classroom.

I have a student who is an English learner, and his business is a [bilingual English-Spanish] tutoring company that caters to both languages. So if there’s a language barrier, they will have a tutor who can teach you math and science in that language.

In your more than a decade in the classroom, what changes have you seen in terms of the skills your students need now?

I think that the dynamics of extracurricular activities outside the classroom have changed in the past couple of years because of the COVID-19 pandemic. We used to do a lot of trips where we would visit companies and give students the opportunity to shadow people in the industry, but this has become more challenging as companies aren’t all back in the office.

Our students absolutely love to be able to go out, go to companies, and talk to professionals to see what jobs and careers are out there for them. It’s also the little things that give them quite an impression, like, “Wow, look at their desk.” There was one trip last year where the students got free snacks, and they were like, “You give these out for free?”

It’s these experiences outside the classroom that broaden their horizons on what kind of workplaces to strive for and how to get there. And they can only get that from the people who work there.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received, and how have you put it into practice?

This goes for all teachers, especially those who are still starting out: Always have a plan B for the unexpected.

It’s not just about trying to make things work while they’re working. I faced this issue during my first year of teaching where I had a lesson plan, tested it all out, and the next day the website my entire lesson plan was focused on was taken down. And another teacher told me, “You just didn’t have a plan B.”

Always have a plan B, whatever it may be. The last thing you need is chaos in the classroom.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

$30 million federal grant to create 6 magnet high schools across Manhattan and Bronx

2024-01-12T22:22:23+00:00

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New York City has won $30 million in federal funding to create six magnet high schools across Manhattan and the Bronx, Education Department officials announced Friday.

Over the next five years, the city’s goal is to create an “innovative, theme-based program that provides college access, rigorous instruction, and enrichment activities” at six existing schools in hopes of attracting a more diverse group of students, according to the department’s two grant applications for the U.S. Department of Education’s Magnet Schools Assistance Program.

Three schools in the Bronx — the Laboratory School of Finance and Technology, the High School for Teaching and the Professions, and the Bronx High School for the Visual Arts — will be turned into magnet schools and serve about 1,800 students in grades 6-12. The schools are in districts that span the Eastchester, Kingsbridge, Jerome Park, Van Nest, and Hunts Point neighborhoods of the Bronx.

The three Manhattan schools that will become magnet schools are Esperanza Preparatory Academy, City College Academy of the Arts, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis High School. The goal is to eventually attract about 1,725 students in grades 6-12 to the schools, whose districts span the Upper East Side, Chelsea, East Harlem, Washington Heights, and Inwood.

City officials claim it’s the first time they’ve been awarded such grants for high school.

Both applications say the aim is to reduce “isolation among Hispanic students” by “attracting a more racially diverse population through unique thematic programs which offer early college access coupled with career pathways and a strategic, aggressive, and targeted approach to outreach and recruitment.” At City College Academy of the Arts, for example, 95% of its students are Hispanic, according to public data; at the Laboratory School of Finance and Technology, 81% are.

New York City has previously been awarded federal magnet grants for elementary and middle schools, but the outcomes haven’t always worked out according to plan. Queens parent Amanda Vender wrote about how a federal magnet grant aimed at integrating her son’s Jackson Heights middle school couldn’t contend with various systemic obstacles, including enrollment-related issues capping students who lived outside of its zone.

Sean Corcoran, an education professor at Vanderbilt University who has long studied New York City’s high school admissions, pointed out that as early as 1992, there’s a study that references career magnet high school programs, though it appears the city didn’t call them magnet schools back then.

Regardless, in some ways, many high schools in the city have actually been “magnets” for decades, Corcoran said.

“What differentiates magnet schools nationally is that they are schools of choice and have a specialized curriculum, such as a theme or career focus,” he wrote in an email. “NYC has universal high school choice, and most of its high schools are themed. So, NYC has long been doing what other ‘magnet’ schools around the country were established to do.”

Magnet schools are “diverse by design,” he said, and began to appear in the 1970s and 1980s to curb white flight from large urban school districts.

“The evidence on whether they accomplished this is mixed, but the principle lives on,” he said. “NYC has also been experimenting with diversity in admissions policies which formalize what magnet schools have been doing for years. Taken together, I’m glad to see the city get federal recognition for its efforts to attract and retain a diverse student population in its high schools.”

Nyah Berg, executive director of New York Appleseed, an organization that advocates for integrated schools, said her organization was “generally encouraged” to see more funding devoted to encouraging diversity and desegregation.

“Magnet programming is an imperfect tool, and oftentimes its intention to mitigate the causes of segregation are lost to other goals or lack of strategies to further integrated learning environments,” Berg wrote in an email.

That, she said, is why leadership on the issue remains important.

“Many of my concerns lie in that our current leadership may not take this opportunity to truly couple their support for rigorous instruction and enrichment with the need to desegregate its public schools,” she said.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC teachers union files lawsuit with Staten Island borough president to halt congestion pricing

2024-01-04T19:30:09+00:00

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New York City’s teachers union is trying to halt this spring’s planned implementation of congestion pricing, joining a lawsuit on Thursday with the Staten Island borough president.

The lawsuit claims that the congestion pricing plan — which will toll drivers who enter a swath of Manhattan to help finance public transit improvements — was created in a “rushed and hurried process that violated the comprehensive review requirements that a federal agency must take under federal law.” Seven teachers, who are plaintiffs in the suit, alleged that the “regressive and discriminatory pricing” of the tolls violates their constitutional rights.

Transit advocates blasted the lawsuit, arguing that congestion pricing will improve commutes for school staff and families.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s board voted to approve tolls last month for vehicles entering Manhattan south of 60th Street, including a $15 daily fee on cars between 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays and from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends. (Under the proposed tolling structure, low-income drivers will receive a discount on the congestion charges.)

After a 60-day comment period, including public hearings from Feb. 29 through March 4, the MTA’s board will take a final vote.

“Teachers, firefighters, police officers, EMS workers, sanitation workers and other public sector workers who are essential to the fabric of New York City would be forced to shoulder the burden of the MTA’s latest fundraising gambit,” the lawsuit claims.

The suit, filed in the U.S. Court for the Eastern District of New York, also claims that parts of Staten Island as well as the Bronx will see more pollution as some drivers divert around the congestion zone.

For years, New York City transit and environmental advocates along with elected officials have pushed for a congestion pricing program to reduce gridlock and pollution as well as raise revenue for the MTA. The program is required to raise enough money to finance at least $15 billion in capital projects for public transit.

The program would be the first of its kind in the United States, though other countries have successfully deployed the model.

The environmental review process involved four years of consultation with government agencies, public outreach, and impacts on traffic and air quality detailed in “hundreds of pages of painstaking detail,” said MTA spokesperson John McCarthy.

“If we really want to combat ever-worsening clogged streets we must adequately fund a public transit system that will bring safer and less congested streets, cleaner air, and better transit for the vast majority of students and teachers who take mass transit to school,” McCarthy said in a statement.

Staten Island teachers share concerns about the plan

The plan has long had its share of opponents, including some teachers who drive to work or are based at campuses where locals worry the traffic could increase. Troy McGhie, a plaintiff in the suit and a ninth grade special education teacher at Staten Island’s Curtis High School, worried that increased traffic to the Staten Island ferry will bring more vehicles and air pollution around his school.

Maria Mazier, a Staten Island resident and speech pathologist who drives to the Children’s Workshop School in the East Village, said commuting on public transit would take nearly two hours each day. Because of the $15 fee, she is planning to transfer to a school in Brooklyn, according to the lawsuit. Plaintiff Hannah Choi, another Staten Island resident and third grade teacher at Chelsea’s P.S. 33, said public transit would take her nearly three hours, and she, too, is looking to transfer to a school in Brooklyn or her home borough. About 11,515 of the teachers union’s members live in Staten Island, according to the lawsuit. That represents about 6% of the union’s membership.

Congestion pricing plate readers are installed over Lexington Avenue on December 18, 2023 in New York City. Cars entering Manhattan south of 60th Street during peak periods could be charged a toll of up to 15 dollars per day.

Still, advocates contend that congestion pricing would benefit commuters on Staten Island. The fees would help reduce travel times for those who continue to drive and speed up express buses that run from Staten Island into Manhattan. Plus, the MTA is planning to use some of the revenue from the tolling program to address pollution caused by diverted traffic in other communities.

“The teachers that are die-hards that stick to driving will have shorter commutes,” said Danny Pearlstein, the policy and communications director for Riders Alliance, an advocacy group that supports congestion pricing. “This is a program that will bring in billions of dollars to fix a subway that is used by hundreds of thousands more riders when school is in session.”

Teachers union joins fray late in the game

Transit advocates also pointed out that the teachers union, a powerful political player in Albany, had not previously weighed in on the proposal — including when it was passed in the state’s 2019 budget. Union officials said they were waiting for details about how the plan would be implemented before taking a position.

Policies that make it easier for educators to drive to school have long been controversial. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg reduced the number of parking permits issued to educators, a move that drew a legal challenge, while former Mayor Bill de Blasio reinstated tens of thousands of them.

The availability of free parking may give teachers an extra incentive to drive, though the majority of commuters who travel into Manhattan use public transportation. A 2022 study by the Community Service Society found those who commute to Manhattan by car are more likely to have higher incomes and the new tolls were likely to affect a tiny share of low-income residents.

A spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams said he supports congestion pricing but has also pushed for some exemptions to the plan, including for taxis and school buses.

The union’s lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal challenges against the plan: New Jersey’s Gov. Phil Murphy sued the federal government in the summer over its approval of the plan, and the mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey, filed a lawsuit in November, because of concerns about increased traffic near the George Washington Bridge.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

School calendar check for 2024: Midwinter recess origins, a holiday-heavy April, and more

2023-12-20T01:01:31+00:00

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As New York City schools gear up for the weeklong winter break starting on Monday, some parents are already thinking ahead to days off later this year — and even next winter.

Typically, the new calendar isn’t out until the spring, but after a few years of delayed calendars and loud complaints, the Education Department released its calendars for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 school years early.

So, if you haven’t already marked it: the last day of school this year is Wednesday, June 26, 2024. The first day for the next school year is Thursday, Sept. 5.

Families were pleased to have the calendars for the upcoming years since many start their summer child care searches in January, and knowing the start of the school year is “part of the puzzle,” said Queens mom Tami M. Forman, who ran a nonprofit helping stay-at-home mothers return to work.

“For some families it helps to know for vacation planning,” said Forman, whose daughter is a junior at the Academy of American Studies and whose son attends a special education school with a different calendar. “But for the vast majority of NYC families, it’s really about planning care for the many weeks and days that kids aren’t in school but parents do need to work.”

As we head into the new year, here are some things to note about school breaks in 2024:

Midwinter recess, first spurred by 1970s oil crisis, carries on

As usual, New York City schools will close for the weeklong midwinter recess in February, starting with Presidents Day on Monday, Feb. 19. And as usual, this break can be stressful for families struggling with child care.

Midwinter recess dates back to 1978, when the Board of Education decided to do it as an experiment to save energy, according to a New York Times article from that time (though at least one Brooklyn district defied the order and remained open). To make up for the lost instructional time, schools added some days to the start and end of the academic year.

The February break became codified in 1991 as part of a cost-cutting deal between the city’s Board of Education and the teachers union. The deal deferred paying wages to teachers as a way to avoid thousands of midyear layoffs, according to reports.

From its start, midwinter recess has been a thorn in the side of many families who have to make child care arrangements. Grumbling over the week off was especially loud during the 1993-94 school year, when classes started late because of an asbestos crisis and then remained open during a snow emergency.

April could be lean month for instruction

Don’t expect a lot of instructional time this April. There will nearly be as many days off (10, including Easter weekend) as days in school (13).

Under a new contract between the city and the teachers union, Easter Monday was added to make a four-day weekend, starting Friday, March 29. Spring break was stretched from five days off to seven to correspond to Passover, starting April 22. In between those two breaks, schools will be closed on Wednesday, April 10, for the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr.

But that’s not all: Much of the month for the city’s students in grades 3-8 will be filled with testing and most likely, test prep.

For those taking the state English language arts tests on paper, it will be administered right after Eid, on April 11-12. For those taking computer-based tests — which includes all fifth and eighth graders — the exams are being given April 9-24. (Paper-based tests for math will be May 7-8, and computer-based tests will be administered May 7-17.)

Next December’s calendar has a one-day school week ahead of break

While classrooms this Friday will likely be filled with sugar, movies, and perhaps a fair number of empty seats, the day before next year’s winter break could see even sparser attendance than usual.

Families planning ahead for next year’s holiday will be faced with a conundrum: what to do about Monday, Dec. 23, 2024. Schools will be open that day before closing the rest of the week, from Tuesday, Dec. 24 through Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025. (And fun fact: The Jewish holiday of Hanukkah will overlap precisely with the period from Christmas through New Year’s.)

The past two times in recent years that Dec. 23 fell on a Monday — in 2013 and in 2019 — schools were closed for the entire week, but things have gotten tight as the city has added other holidays to the school calendar (like Diwali, which will be on Friday, Nov. 1) and still needs to meet the required 180-day minimum of instructional time.

For teachers who are looking for alternatives to showing movies just before the break, there’s an array of project-based learning suggestions, such as making video games or a podcast, that John Spencer, an education professor at Portland’s George Fox University and a former middle school teacher, shared on his website.

“This is a chance to make something meaningful — something that your students will remember forever,” he wrote.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

A broken system delays payments to nonprofits working in NYC schools. Kids lose out.

2023-12-15T14:52:25+00:00

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For the bulk of last year, Jahlil Younger barely attended his Bedford-Stuyvesant high school.

The 18-year-old fell in with the wrong crowd and was struggling at his “second chance,” or transfer, school serving over-age and under-credited students that couldn’t make a go of it at other schools.

Things changed in the spring.

During the last few months of the academic year, Brooklyn High School for Leadership and Community Service started offering an after-school program run by Inspiring Minds NYC. The local nonprofit began the program late in the year because of a broken bureaucratic contracting system. But as soon as the program launched, it tapped into Younger’s interests. He took music, cooking, and a class about politics. Younger felt understood by the adults from the organization. He opened up about things that he never felt comfortable sharing before, like his recent decision to donate a kidney to his mom.

Suddenly, he felt like he had a reason to show up.

“I’m not gonna lie: Before this program started, I wasn’t coming to school. I’d be in the school every other day or every two days,” said Younger. “I was hanging out with … people who are gang-affiliated, who just came home from jail and are going back.”

For years, nonprofits like Inspiring Minds have been hurt by the city’s notoriously complicated and lengthy contract and procurement process. Several organizations, however, said things have gotten worse recently. The delays especially hurt businesses owned by women and people of color, like Inspiring Minds, which don’t have deep cash reserves to stay afloat. These are the same organizations that the city is trying to encourage to vie for more Education Department contracts.

Mayor Eric Adams and Comptroller Brad Lander created a joint task force that issued recommendations last year to tackle the contract backlog. But nonprofits have yet to see results. New York state Rep. Stephani Zinerman, of Brooklyn, told Chalkbeat she’s exploring legislation to address “our obligations to pay people in real time.”

According to an Education Department flow chart obtained by Chalkbeat, there’s a 15-step process that can take nine months to a year from when an organization learns it’s won a contract until the contract is registered with the comptroller’s office before payments can be made. But that timeline has stretched out, many organizations say. Contracts have been arriving late to the city’s Panel for Educational Policy, which must approve them before they can be registered for payment, officials in the comptroller’s office said.

If Inspiring Minds had been in place at the start of the year, how much more could the organization have helped Younger, wonders Katrena Perou, its executive director and a former basketball star at Penn State who has lived in Bed-Stuy for 20 years.

She also wonders how much it could have helped Brooklyn Leadership, which is currently in the state’s receivership program, giving the state control over the school until it meets specific benchmarks around its low graduation rates, high dropout rates, and behavioral challenges.

Inspiring Minds leads My Brothers Keeper for 47 Brooklyn high schools, holding monthly gatherings and providing professional development for teachers. Here, Katrena Perou (center) and others are at a field day event at Brooklyn Boys and Girls High School in June 2023.

Some organizations are hurting more than others

Brooklyn Leadership is part of the city’s “community school” program, where nonprofits are embedded on campus to offer an array of services to students, their families, and educators during and after the school day. This full-service model has proven effective in New York City, according to research, and the federal government has ramped up support of such programs across the nation.

Perou’s organization was awarded an annual grant of $377,000 for two years to be the school’s lead community partner. The grant was supposed to take effect in July 2022, but Perou didn’t learn that she won it until March 2023 — nearly a year later. And the money could not be carried over to the following year.

Perou’s organization won grants to work with two other community schools, Manhattan’s Quest to Learn ($237,000 a year) and Brooklyn Collaborative Studies ($220,000 a year), but has not received the funds for more than a year and a half, she said. She finally received an interest-free bridge loan through a city program for nonprofits on Wednesday, which is supposed to help cover up to three months of payroll, rent, and other critical expenses.

And Perou has yet to receive this year’s money for Brooklyn Leadership. She had to turn to a local foundation as a stopgap measure.

Perou worries that organizations like hers, which are often from the communities they want to help, are at a breaking point. Her organization’s reserves are tapped. She’s looked into traditional loans, but high interest rates and other requirements often make things more difficult for many local programs run by women and people of color, she said.

Because of the payment delay, Inspiring Minds is offering fewer services than promised, fewer field trips, less mental health support and tutoring. Families at the schools often don’t even realize that their kids are missing out, she said.

“I’ve always been a big advocate for the organizations from and of the community having a chance to receive community school contracts,” said Perou, who started Inspiring Minds in 2019. “There’s a certain level of connection we can make [with the students] because we’re from the same space.”

She continued, “But the system needs to change so that more BIPOC organizations can compete for these contracts. It’s an equity issue and contradicts the mission of community schools.”

Many programs are struggling. Nearly 115 community schools, including Brooklyn Leadership, are funded through a $45 million pot of federal relief funds. The other two schools that Inspiring Minds won contracts for were through a federal 21st Century Community Learning Centers grant program, which is distributing $15 million to about 78 community schools working with 41 lead community organizations, according to city figures.

The Education Department has been working with community organizations to complete outstanding contract registrations and “disburse funds as quickly as possible,” said spokesperson Jenna Lyle, noting that the state’s notification of 21st Century grant recipients had been delayed, throwing off the timeline.

“Where possible, we have worked to expedite the process,” Lyle said. “We are working to ensure continuity of service despite delays.”

Contract system’s ‘glacial pace’ forces some to close doors

Some organization leaders told Chalkbeat they’ve had to take themselves off of payroll to ensure their employees get paid. One nonprofit leader said her organization bowed out after the first year of the community schools contract because of the payment delays.

“I’d rather walk away than put my company in that situation,” the organization’s head said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Because of the passion we have for the work, we allow certain things to be done. But passion doesn’t pay the bills and keep the lights on.”

The time it takes — from the submission to a request for proposal to contract approval to invoice — is “a glacial process,” said Terrance Winston, the executive director of the Coalition for Community Schools Excellence.

Contract delays have similarly hurt the prekindergarten sector, which is also largely run by women of color.

City officials have tried to make it “more nimble,” Winston said. “It’s just extremely challenging.”

Larger, more established nonprofits tend to be better situated to withstand the delayed payments and can “marshall their networks” for help, he said.

“For smaller organizations — those that more accurately reflect the population they serve — it’s more of a crisis situation.”

Moreover, many nonprofit organizations are dealing with problems on multiple fronts, he said. As they’re fighting to get paid, they’re facing wage increases to keep pace with the market and inflation as well as overhead cost increases. Meanwhile, they’re dealing with children whose issues, related to the trauma and grief from the pandemic, are more complicated than ever.

“Young people are still dealing with lost loved ones, learning loss, and other challenges of developing adolescents,” he said.

Inspiring Minds interns from Research and Service High School surround Katrena Perou, the organization's executive director Student interns provide feedback, support program design, co-plan events, and mentor their peers.

Brooklyn Leadership students see a change in their hallways

Perou estimated that last year’s contract delay for Brooklyn Leadership translated into the school’s community losing about $300,000 that would have gone to extended learning time for students, professional development for teachers on culturally responsive practices, and other services for families.

The program’s delay has real consequences for a school under scrutiny and with such a high-needs population. Many of its students live in temporary housing and many have been involved with the criminal justice system.

“I feel like there would have been less fights, less drama, less chaos,” said Emerald Carrion, 19, who has found a space through the program where she can express her emotions. She felt angrier last year, she said. She would slam doors around the school and hurl epithets at teachers, security guards, and other students.

Younger also said he was “constantly” getting in trouble last year.

“There was so much rage and violence. You could feel the negative energy in the hallways,” he said.

“This year, I’m a better me,” he added, crediting Inspiring Minds with not only transforming himself but the school community. Now, he’s looking forward to screening a documentary about his neighborhood of Brownsville that students filmed during an Inspiring Minds class. It focuses on positive aspects of the area to counter negative stereotypes. The music class he’s taking has also transformed his lyrics from negative to positive.

“I feel like we shouldn’t have had to wait so long,” Younger said.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC’s class size working group delivers recommendations — but some members dissent

2023-12-12T00:54:10+00:00

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After months of deliberation, internal clashes, and comments from nearly 2,000 people, a working group tasked with advising New York City’s public schools on complying with a landmark state law capping class sizes released its final recommendations Monday.

The 55-page report, which had an initial Oct. 31 deadline, includes more than 50 recommendations. Its prominent suggestions include capping enrollment at some overcrowded schools, moving pre-K programs out of district buildings and into community organizations, and offering financial incentives to boost teacher hiring.

The report, which is similar to a draft version released in September, is non-binding. Education Department officials still have final say in how they’ll meet the new legal mandates, which are expected to be phased in over the next five years. But the contentious process of putting the recommendations together illustrates how complicated meeting the new mandates will be.

The caps require K-3 classes to be no larger than 20 students, classes in grades 4-8 to be smaller than 23 students, and high school classes to be capped at 25 students.

Proponents of the law, including a wide array of parents, advocates, legislators, and educators, point to extensive research on the educational benefits of lower class sizes — and argue that the new recommendations give the city a clear roadmap for how to get there.

“Given these actionable proposals — many of them cost-free — the Chancellor no longer has any excuse for delay,” said Leonie Haimson, working group member and executive director of Class Size Matters, in an email. “If the DOE really cares about following the law and the goal of providing all NYC students with a better opportunity to learn, the time for action is now.”

But the law has also prompted fierce pushback from city Education Department leaders, who argue they don’t have the necessary funding to implement it. Parents concerned the law could restrict enrollment at sought-after schools and advocates worried about equity implications have also criticized the law.

Several studies suggest that the highest-poverty schools will benefit less because they are already more likely to have classes under the legal cap.

The working group’s deliberations got so contentious that nine of the working group’s 46 members declined to endorse the final recommendations — and several even authored a dissenting “minority report.” Those dissenters argue that the law itself is deeply flawed.

Dia Bryant, the former executive director of Education Trust-New York and one of the dissenters, said the law and the working group ignored practical concerns and are “very aspirational.”

“Ultimately, I think the implementation under the current conditions … is just bad for kids,” Bryant said.

In response to the report, schools Chancellor David Banks noted the city is currently in compliance with the class size law, but that “the work to remain in compliance will take changes, tradeoffs and additional resources across NYCPS.”

Currently, more than half of the classes across the city’s 1,600 public schools, or more than 73,000 classes, are out of compliance, the working group has said.

Here are some of the working group’s most controversial recommendations.

Cap enrollment at overcrowded NYC schools

Capping enrollment at oversubscribed schools and diverting kids to under-enrolled ones nearby was among the most divisive suggestions.

There are 386 schools across the city currently enrolled above their building’s capacity, the report noted, and in many cases, there are neighboring schools with plenty of room.

But many of the city’s overcrowded schools are also among its most popular and sought-after, meaning any efforts to cap their enrollment are likely to meet fierce opposition.

One way to decide who should get access to limited seats is by prioritizing those who live within a school’s geographic zone, the working group noted. Roughly 17,000 kids at overcrowded schools are attending those schools from out-of-zone, according to the report.

But the authors cautioned that decisions about if and how to cap enrollment should still be made “in harmony with the principles of equity and community cohesion.” For example, they pointed out that some out-of-zone students attend specialized programs like dual-language classes.

Meanwhile, the dissenting minority report argues that enrollment caps are a nonstarter because they would lead to increased travel times for families in overcrowded districts and fewer seats in popular programs.

Instead, the working group’s dissenters want to give parents a role in deciding when schools should be exempt from the law, according to Stephen Stowe, a working group member and co-author of the minority report who is also Community Education Council President in Brooklyn’s District 20. (Currently, under the law, only the chancellor and union officials can weigh in on exemptions).

Moving prekindergarten classrooms out of overcrowded schools

As the city works to fill empty 3-K and pre-K seats amid enrollment declines, the working group’s enrollment committee offered a possible solution: consider relocating 3-K and pre-K seats from schools that are overcapacity to nearby pre-K centers that are under-enrolled.

This could help struggling programs — which get funding from the city based on their enrollment — have “more sustainable budgets,” according to the working group report. The pre-K sector has long complained about the competition it faces from programs in district schools.

With nearly 14,000 empty 3-K classrooms, all 3-year-olds in school-based programs could move to community-based organizations, the report suggested, freeing up as many as 451 classrooms in schools. For pre-K, which serves the city’s 4-year-olds, nearly 17,000 empty seats could accommodate the majority of those in school-based programs, potentially opening up 1,000 elementary school classrooms.

The report did say that some members of the working group worried this solution might inconvenience parents, especially those with older children in public schools. In response, the group urged programs to have flexible drop-off and pick-up times, as well as longer days for families needing after-care.

Merge co-located schools, avoid opening new schools

The creation of small schools gained traction under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, with nearly 470 new schools opening between 2003 and 2010. That has resulted in more administrative overhead and less classroom space, the report stated.

In light of that, the working group suggested merging schools that share buildings, “especially those that have similar or complementary designs, programs, and student populations.”

The working group also advised the city to reconsider the creation of new schools (except for schools in District 75 that serve students with significant disabilities).

“If there is a perceived need or idea for a valuable new program or service, existing underutilized schools should be given the resources and support to provide these new programs or services,” the report stated.

Pay teachers more in schools where hiring is hard

New York City will need to hire at least 17,000 new teachers to meet the class size mandate over the next several years, according to the Independent Budget Office. The Education Department put the figure at somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000.

Some working group members worried that a wave of new teachers could affect the quality of instruction — an issue that researchers have raised — and could dilute the intended impact of smaller classes.

At the same time, in public forums on the law, many teachers spoke out in favor of smaller classes. Some of them said it could improve their working conditions, reduce burnout, and cut down on attrition.

To address concerns around the influx of new teachers, the working group issued various recommendations, including providing teachers with “high-quality, research-based lesson plans” to reduce workload.

The group also wants to analyze whether teachers in non-teaching roles — such as deans, lunchroom supervisors, or grade advisers — could return to the classroom, giving greater oversight to superintendents of these so-called compensatory positions.

The report said such a change “would be a historical shift away from greater principal autonomy and defer control to a more centralized system.”

(Only one member of the working group dissented from this, the report noted.)

The working groups also wants to offer pay differentials to educators in hard-to-staff schools in places like the Bronx, Far Rockaway, and Central Brooklyn, as well as in difficult-to-hire subjects, including special education and bilingual education.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Essays, tests, auditions, frustration, stress: What it’s like to apply to high school in NYC

2023-11-30T21:24:27+00:00

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One mom called it hell. Another felt like she was drowning in information. Some stretched their budgets to pay for test prep and coaches for their children’s art portfolios and auditions.

Welcome to New York City’s high school application process, where parents — often moms — take on what amounts to part-time jobs to help their 13-year-olds find the “right” school.

Families have until Friday to rank their 12 choices from among 700 programs in 400 schools. Despite the vast array of options, families feel like they’re fighting for seats.

In many ways, they are. In talking to more than a dozen families of eighth graders about their admissions journeys, Chalkbeat found a handful of coveted schools repeatedly came up. And admissions data confirms that a small number of high schools are ranked on an outsized number of applications.

The top 15 schools represented about 20% of all the choices that eighth graders picked on their applications in 2021, according to an analysis by Sean Corcoran, associate professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt University.

And this data doesn’t include the eight prestigious specialized high schools, like Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech, that require the Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT, or LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, which requires auditions. Thousands of students apply to those schools through a separate process.

“When people are confronted with an overwhelming amount of information, they want to simplify things as much as possible. You start with the schools that everybody knows, with the best reputation,” said Corcoran, whose research focuses on how to provide information to families to help them expand their choices.

The odds can feel overwhelming. At Manhattan’s Eleanor Roosevelt, there were 37 applicants for every general education seat, according to stats from the MySchools directory. There were 27 applicants per seat at Bard Early College High School in Queens. (This school was the 18th on the popular schools list.)

As with so many things in the public school system, those with time and means often have an advantage, contributing to New York having among the most segregated schools in the nation. Families jockey for limited spots on tours. They go down rabbit holes in Facebook groups to figure out their children’s odds. And a whole cottage industry has developed around the process, including consultants advising on a good fit.

Below are stories from six families from across the city reflecting on the lengths they’ve gone to figure out their school rankings.

“It’s just like the college application process,” said southeast Queens mom Trina Mitchell. “But it’s high school! It’s insane.”

The experienced project manager

Carina Li, left, with her mom, Karen Li.

Karen Li is hedging her bets.

The day after Li’s daughter Carina finished seventh grade, Li enrolled her in an SHSAT prep course. Carina studied all summer and took the prep course until Nov. 8, when the Education Department administered the test in public middle schools across the city.

Carina also took the Test for Admissions into Catholic School, or TACHS, and will sit for Catholic school scholarship exams on Saturday.

Then there’s the application for LaGuardia High School. Carina started planning her visual art portfolio in July and was still working on it four months later. She needed to submit eight pieces (including a still life that she redid three times) and make a video explaining her choices.

Even with help from an artistic aunt, the process is a lot. In fact, it’s all a lot.

Studying for the SHSAT was “terrible,” and the practice tests were “horrible,” said Carina, who lives in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn. The art portfolio was “very demanding.”

“People always think that you have to spend money to pay for SHSAT prep,” said Li, who works in tax reporting. She now realizes that many kids vying for arts schools have to work just as hard as those studying for the SHSAT, plus they’ve been taking pricey arts classes for years. “They dance when they’re in diapers.”

Li said she has felt like her daughter’s “project manager,” reminding her to study, keeping track of due dates, and obtaining transcripts and recommendation letters for Catholic schools.

She has had practice: She went through the high school application process a few years ago with her older daughter, who went to Brooklyn Tech. So Li knew she had to start researching high schools for her younger daughter in seventh grade.

Carina, a competitive swimmer, would also like to go to Brooklyn Tech, especially for its swim team. But the family isn’t pinning its hopes on one school.

On top of it all, Li sees her daughter feeling overwhelmed and tries not to add stress.

“All this will be over by Dec. 2,” Li said.

The community activist

Jason Sosa spent months on SHSAT prep.

Expensive SHSAT courses were out of reach for the Sosa family of Sunset Park, Brooklyn. But they still managed to find creative ways to get their son Jason test prep.

Jovita Sosa recently got a grant that helped fund a six-week summer SHSAT test prep course through the literacy-focused nonprofit she started 10 years ago, Grupo Juego y Lectura. Jason was one of roughly six students who met twice a week for the course.

The Sosa family also received study materials from an acquaintance who got into Stuyvesant after completing the city’s DREAM program, offering free test prep. Sosa was amazed at how much more detailed the study materials were than the free materials the Education Department offers.

“I can’t afford the prep that some other people are getting,” said Sosa, a paraprofessional.

Jason, who attends a Catholic school, had been studying independently about 20 minutes a day this fall using the DREAM workbook. He worked with a high school senior on math for an hour every Saturday and Sunday. He also signed up for a free TACHS test prep program through his school. Though Sosa said she can no longer afford to pay for Catholic school, Jason wanted to take the test in case he got a scholarship.

“I found the SHSAT as expected, challenging, but not out of my grasp,” Jason said. “I feel like I could’ve done a better job with taking more time to understand the questions, but being under pressure blurs your thinking.”

The experience brought out the activist in Sosa.

She wrote to her state senator who had boasted in a constituent email of securing millions of dollars for SHSAT prep, asking for help to make free DREAM workbooks widely available to children who can’t afford test prep.

Sosa is trying to remain grounded.

“I lived it with my oldest child. We stressed him out when he was younger,” she said. “You learn it’s not the end all.”

One family. Two kids. Many art programs.

The Doucette family on a recent trip to Walt Disney World. Zach and Lexie's older brother (standing behind the twins) went to LaGuardia High School.

“It’s hell.”

That’s how Upper East Side mom Caren Doucette describes the application process for her twins.

Lexie — who has ADHD and dyslexia — is looking at visual arts. Zach is interested in performing arts. While there’s some overlap between their schools of interest, Doucette estimates that she devotes at least two hours daily to the process (and more on weekends). She’s researching websites, comparing notes with other parents, sending questions to schools, and attending tours.

“If you don’t sign up in the first 24 hours, you miss a spot,” said Doucette, a tutor with a flexible schedule. “My days are spent on the computer scouring all of this, and my husband will take the kids on evening tours.”

Doucette is especially concerned about whether her daughter, who has specific learning needs, will land at a school that can support her.

Lexie bonded with her visual arts coach, who also has dyslexia. Zach, who enjoys musical theater, had a drama coach and a voice coach, who each charge about $150 an hour. He also completed a free bootcamp in August through the Education Department’s Summer Arts Institute, where he studied with an acting coach.

“It’s a financial commitment,” Doucette said. “It straps us, but we can figure it out.”

Lexie is in “priority group 3,” because of a low grade she got last year in math from an unsupportive teacher, according to her mom, who has complained to their middle school, Wagner. Zach is in “priority group 1,” but didn’t have a high lottery number — a reality she wanted to shield him from.

Lexie and Zach went on all of the school tours as well. Even though it can be hard for her 13-year-olds to focus during the tours, they “get a vibe” being in the schools, Doucette said.

But that means they’ve missed about five days of eighth grade so far. One week they had five tours in three days, and now they’re wrapping up auditions and interviews and writing essays.

“It’s really annoying and unnecessary and stressful and time-consuming and set up awfully,” said Zach. “We have multiple things that cut into our school hours.” He wasn’t excited about the 7 p.m. open houses either.

“It’s annoying,” Lexie agreed.

A mother and daughter navigate language barriers

When Nancy Sagbay enrolled her daughter Jaleen in kindergarten nine years ago, her main priority felt clear.

Sagbay, who emigrated from Ecuador before Jaleen was born, didn’t want her daughter to lose her native tongue. So Jaleen attended P.S./I.S. 218, a dual-language K-8 school near their home in the Highbridge neighborhood of the Bronx.

Nancy Sagbay, left, with her daughter Jaleen Sagbay.

Now Jaleen can read, write, and speak in Spanish and English, and averaged above a 90% in her classes last year, to Sagbay’s great pride.

But as Jaleen turns her sights towards high school, the choices — and the application process — feel a lot more complicated.

“No one is ready for so much information,” said Sagbay, who still struggles with English.

Sagbay works at a barbershop and is constantly asking colleagues and clients for school recommendations and advice, which she relays to her daughter, Jaleen said.

As Jaleen finalized her list, she crossed off some she’d initially been eyeing once she saw their four-year graduation rates on MySchools. The 13-year-old hasn’t been on any school visits, and three of the schools she’s considering — Columbia Secondary, her top choice, Bard High School Early College in Manhattan, and Beacon, which one of her teachers recommended — require essays and other prompts.

With just a week left before the due date, Jaleen still hadn’t started them and was getting “stressed and anxious,” she said. But teachers at her middle school gave her time during the school day this week to work on them.

“I feel like I could do it,” Jaleen said of the selective schools. “I like competition. If there’s competition for it, it must be a good school.”

Sagbay, however, is worried about commuting to Manhattan.

“I didn’t want it because the trains can be dangerous,” she said, “but she wants to explore, to see people outside (her neighborhood).”

For now, they’re compromising: Jaleen is including some schools closer to home on her list.

They’re also compromising on academic focus. Jaleen is interested in art, but her mom has encouraged her to consider schools with a technology focus, since Jaleen is strong in math.

“One way or another,” Jaleen said, “she would … put that pressure on me to do better.”

The fierce parent advocate

Justin Mitchell playing drums for the NY Alliance Drumline.

What if a child’s performance in seventh grade did not reflect their abilities because of a series of extenuating circumstances?

Trina Mitchell demanded answers to that question on behalf of her son Justin.

Despite other public schools reopening after COVID shutdowns, Justin’s charter school in St. Albans, Queens, remained remote during his sixth grade year because of a problem with its roof, Mitchell said. Upon returning in seventh grade, his school lacked sufficient staffing to provide services mandated by his Individualized Education Program.

Mitchell’s letter to the Education Department through MySchools explaining the situation went unanswered until she brought it up again at an October high school admissions forum for families of children with disabilities.

The department agreed to rank Justin based on his GPA from the first semester of eighth grade.

“I didn’t give up,” said Mitchell, who works as a court clerk in Queens.

She was not able to prevail, however, in her quest to get a hard copy of the high school directory. She wanted it to mark up with sticky notes and carry around with her on tours for note-taking, “like a little bible.” She hoped it would help her discover new options.

The Education Department no longer prints hard copies.

Mitchell wished that things were easier, and that her son could just go to a zoned high school, but District 29 no longer has one. Nearby, the campus that housed Andrew Jackson High School — her husband’s alma mater — has been carved up into several small schools.

These schools read like a “country club” to Mitchell, boasting of tennis courts, football and soccer fields, and a track. Digging deeper, Mitchell said she found most students aren’t on grade level.

In general, she was concerned about the overcrowding of many Queens high schools and also was perplexed by all of the specialty programs, like law and STEM. Her son does well in science and is a good writer, but doesn’t have a career path in mind. He’s interested in being on the drumline and football team.

“For your average kid that doesn’t have a clue what they want in life, how do they lock into a program at 12 or 13 years old?” Mitchell asked. “The system is designed to cater to a kid who has it together and knows what they want to do.”

To stay or leave Staten Island?

Miles Curatolo-Boylan, left, and his mother, Lucia Curatolo-Boylan.

In drawing up their list of high schools to rank, Staten Island mom Lucia Curatolo-Boylan and her son Miles have been studying MTA schedules. By ferry or bus, he would commute more than an hour each way if he chooses a high school outside the borough.

Miles, the oldest of four, expressed an early interest in Staten Island Technical High School, a specialized school. But they’re casting a wider net.

They’ve toured schools across the city, including some Miles wasn’t thrilled about. They’ve considered Catholic high schools, too.

His deep love for illustration and drawing cartoons, as well as his interest in engineering, have helped inform the search.

But with some of his choices comes added stress — the anxiety over competition for coveted spots, the pressure of standardized tests and portfolios, as well as the reality of a long commute.

Curatolo-Boylan said she and her husband consider themselves lower-middle class, but still invested in getting Miles a tutor shortly before the SHSAT and TACHS, as well as paying for a few classes to help him strengthen his art portfolio. The standardized tests aren’t something that kids learn to tackle organically in school, she added.

“That’s a really difficult thing to stomach,” said Curatolo-Boylan, a private music teacher and acting and vocal coach who is also president of her local Community Education Council. “Knowing that there are kids that could really use that leg up in our community, especially here in Staten Island, and they’re never going to be able to afford that.”

Curatolo-Boylan said getting into public school here has always been stressful, but the “constant run-around of open house after open house” has been particularly grueling.

“So much of his life would change if he chose the city,” she said, referring to Manhattan.

With such a long commute, she knows he’ll leave early in the morning and return late in the evening. In a sense, this would mean letting go of him earlier than she anticipated, she said.

“It would be so exciting for him, and I would be so excited for him,” she said. “But at the same time, I think my heart might break a little.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Participation in parent conferences has plunged 40%. Is Zoom to blame?

2023-11-09T23:04:04+00:00

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Remote parent-teacher conferences, a holdover from the height of the pandemic, continue to elicit mixed feelings among families and educators alike.

For some parents, these virtual meetings — which were enshrined in the most recent teachers union contract — have been a boon. They can Zoom with teachers during their work day. They no longer need child care to travel to and from schools for the meetings. For those with multiple kids, it can be easier to juggle meetings at different schools.

But just as remote learning exacerbated New York City’s gaping digital divide, these virtual meetings also leave out families with less tech access and those with language barriers. Faced with an array of teachers with different sign-up methods, joining the meetings can feel insurmountable to some.

Schools Chancellor David Banks has repeatedly said parent engagement is among his top priorities. But participation in parent-teacher conferences was down 40% last year compared with the most recent school year before the pandemic hit, according to city data.

One Manhattan middle school principal expressed deep frustration with the remote conferences. The school leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said attendance at the virtual sessions is significantly lower than the in-person conferences before the pandemic.

It’s especially difficult for the school’s growing number of migrant families to participate, as they often don’t have easy access to technology or reliable Wi-Fi at their shelters.

The school’s 10- to 15-minute student-led conferences, where kids show off their work and share plans for improvement, have been tricky to transition virtually.

“There’s something important about physically coming to the school, seeing where your child sits, seeing their work displayed on the bulletin board, and actually having a heart- to-heart conversation,” the principal said. “What we need more than ever is people back in the building and people being a part of the community.”

Education Department officials defended the virtual meetings, saying they “expanded opportunities” for families to meet with teachers.

“We support remote parent/teacher conferences to accommodate guardians who have disabilities and are more comfortable in a controlled environment, guardians who cannot take time away from work, guardians who are caregivers to additional children/family members,” said Education Department spokesperson Chyann Tull.

She added, “Parent/teacher conferences can also occur in person, upon request, at a mutually agreed upon time.”

Many parents, however, were not aware of that provision in the teachers union contract.

Amy Clow, the parent association president at Manhattan's P.S. 51, with her children.

Amy Clow, the parent association president at P.S. 51 in Hell’s Kitchen, echoed that in-person conferences helped build a sense of community.

“Maybe you’d see another family waiting,” she said, “we could actually talk to other parents and get to know them.”

Although she said the school’s teachers have tried to make the virtual conferences work, there are limits to the approach. A recent conference that was scheduled for 10 minutes wound up feeling more like five, given that her kids were at home interrupting her.

“Nothing’s as good as in person,” she said. “We learned that during COVID.”

Brooklyn mom Tamra Dixon also believes she got more out of the in-person meetings.

“By the time you exchange greetings — “Yeah, he’s great” — then they log off before you even get a chance to really talk,” said Dixon, whose fifth grader attends P.S. 282 in Park Slope. “It’s a little more difficult to do that when someone is sitting in front of you, so you have a better chance of getting all your questions answered in person.”

At her recent parent conference, all of her son’s teachers were together on the Zoom, each giving their assessments, which was “not bad,” Dixon said since that meant she didn’t have to log in to various Zooms. Still, one of the teachers kept her camera off and didn’t chime in, leaving the mom feeling confused.

Mike Robles, with his 8-year-old daughter, who attends P94M in Hell's Kitchen.

On the other hand, Manhattan dad Mike Robles said he appreciated the virtual conferences in part because they were set up with each teacher individually instead of conferencing with multiple teachers at once.

The feedback “feels a little bit more specific,” said Robles, whose daughter attends P94M, a school in District 75 that exclusively serves students with disabilities. “They’re not like five in a room [at] the same time.”

Ean Pimentel, a dad at P.S. 51, said the online setup was helpful since two of his children attend schools in different neighborhoods. Plus, he didn’t have to scramble for child care.

“You got to pay somebody to come watch the other kids, so [remote] is easier,” he said.

For Brendan Gillett, a teacher at International High School at Prospect Heights, which serves recently arrived immigrants, getting families to log on isn’t the biggest hurdle. The school makes a big effort to get families to come to the conferences. But the quality of the meetings are different than they were when they were in person, Gillett said.

“They feel shallower than in the past,” Gillett said. “It’s harder to go over documents. Parents will Zoom from their car or work or somewhere so they seem distracted, and generally, I just don’t think it’s as meaningful.”

Most elementary schools held parent-teacher conferences last week. Most middle schools hosted them on Thursday, and high schools have them on Nov. 16.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

NYC high school applications are due next month. Here are 5 tips for navigating the process.

2023-11-03T22:06:46+00:00

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With a month left to go in New York City’s notoriously complex high school admissions process, families are striving to determine which of the city’s more than 700 programs across 400 schools will be a good fit for their students.

Families have until Dec. 1 to submit high school applications in a process that can be daunting for the tens of thousands of eighth grade families applying to public high schools. It can also feel inequitable, with some parents feeling that families who have more time and resources to devote to the process have an upper hand.

The process can take a lot of work. Schools across the city hold open houses, inviting families to tour the facilities and better understand what each institution offers. The city also offers other resources, like virtual admissions events and school fairs. Online resources, like InsideSchools, further help families assess their options.

At one recent city event — a fair held at George Westinghouse Career and Technical Education High School — Brooklyn families browsed dozens of options in their local community, chatting with current students and staff about what makes each school unique.

Mink Chung, a Brooklyn parent and a teacher at P.S. 20, The Clinton Hill School, said the process so far has been both “overwhelming” and “exciting.” For his son, he’s looking for a school with a wide range of programs for students with different interests.

“We don’t know what we’re looking for right now,” he said. “I mean, he’s 12 years old. So it’s a lot to be like, ‘Do you want an engineering school? Do you want a performing arts school?’”

Meanwhile, many schools at the fair highlighted their career and technical education, or CTE, programs, emphasizing to families that their schools could prepare students for a career after high school. Those programs have become increasingly popular, according to school representatives at the event.

For families still considering their options, here’s some additional advice from those who have gone through the process before, as well as those who help guide families through it:

Focus on fit, not names

“Everybody applying to high school is looking for that undiscovered gem,” Pamela Wheaton, an admissions consultant who runs SchoolScoutNYC, told Chalkbeat earlier this year. “Every time I work with parents, I try to make sure that they really explore beyond the ‘it’ schools, the schools that people are talking about.”

While many families know name-brand schools — especially the specialized schools like Stuyvesant or Brooklyn Tech, or some of the city’s selective schools like Beacon or Townsend Harris — there’s a lot more out there.

Admissions experts urge families to cast a broad net and focus on finding the right fit over gravitating toward schools that may already be on their radar.

Some schools, including large, comprehensive ones like Bayside, Francis Lewis, and New Utrecht, have “educational option,” or “ed opt” programs that admit students across academic levels to promote academic diversity. There are “consortium schools,” where students focus on project-based learning instead of Regents exams. The city’s “community schools” provide wraparound social services, often for the entire family, and other schools might have school-based health clinics, while some are dedicated to working with newcomer immigrants or kids who might be over-age and under-credited and have not been successful in other school settings. And there are a range of CTE programs, from ones that focus on health professions to robotics to food.

“Your child does not have to be in the school that gets 40 applicants per seat,” Wheaton said. “There are many other good options, and even if your child is waitlisted at 11 out of the 12 schools on their list, chances are that at the 12th school, they’ll be very, very happy.”

Ask questions at open houses

When touring many schools, it can sometimes become difficult to distinguish between them, said Queens parent leader Deborah Alexander, who went through the process three years ago with her son and is now doing it again with her eighth grade daughter.

She likes to ask students and educators, “What makes your school unique,” as a way that lets them share something that’s likely not in the official presentation. At one school, for instance, a student talked about how they had a teaching assistant program, where students worked for teachers and developed meaningful mentorships.

“It’s those little things that spark something,” Alexander said. “Otherwise these presentations run into each other.”

Other helpful questions include asking about advanced coursework, typical daily assignments, and whether students can leave campus for lunch, she added.

While some families focus on Advanced Placement, or AP courses, many schools offer other options. At some schools, there are International Baccalaureate programs that offer advanced coursework — and many students can enroll in College Now, which allows them to take CUNY courses.

Also, at some small schools that can’t offer a plethora of AP courses, they might participate in an initiative allowing their students to take online courses taught by public school teachers in other parts of the city from the comfort of their own school buildings and with supervision from an on-site staff member.

Stay organized

Elissa Stein, an admissions consultant who runs High School 411, recommends being organized, urging parents to take notes on tours, have a calendar, and save information schools may hand out.

“By the time that you’re done touring and have to revisit things in your minds to rank schools, it will all get mushed together into something you can’t decipher,” she told Chalkbeat earlier this year. “Being organized as you go will help you tremendously.”

Know the commute

Whether a family is willing to take public transit to commute to school, and how far they’re willing to travel, are some of the first questions that Sindy Nuesi, director of the Middle School Student Success Center at the Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation, asks in her work.

“If you don’t feel comfortable with your child going on the train or the bus, then it really limits your options,” she previously told Chalkbeat. “I don’t encourage that necessarily, but I am going to support whatever the family decides.”

Families can also test out the commute to potential schools before applying to better understand what day-to-day travel to and from school would look like.

A 30-minute subway commute with a transfer in Times Square, for example, might feel more stressful for a kid than a one-seat, hour-long bus ride, Alexander said.

“The question isn’t how long is the train ride, but it’s about the ease of the commute,” she said.

Consider starting early

For seventh grade families, the admissions process can also offer an opportunity to learn more about schools ahead of the application cycle next year.

Parents often say the two-month window from when applications open and close is too tight to pack in enough research and open house visits.

Attending open houses or high school fairs, or compiling an early list of schools of interest, can give families more time over the summer to consider programs, test commutes, and think through all their options.

Moreover, seventh grade is a critical year: Selective high schools use seventh graders’ GPAs to determine admissions.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Meet Harry and Lucy, NYC’s tween wheelchair racers

2023-10-27T20:26:12+00:00

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Harry Houng-Lee has his eye on 2030. That’s when the 11-year-old will be old enough to race in the New York City marathon.

Harry’s family would often wake up early and watch the professional wheelchair racers in the marathon so he could see his own possibilities as an athlete.

Just before the pandemic, the Upper East Sider joined the Rising New York Road Runners Wheelchair Training Program, a free year-round program for New York City kids with disabilities ages 6 to 21. In less than four years, Harry has become a decorated racer, winning four gold medals at the 2023 Move United USA Junior Nationals. He set personal records in all five events.

He practices frequently in Central Park, and loves the feeling of the wind in his hair as he whooshes around, clocking in at about 20 mph when going downhill, he estimated.

“I get to go fast,” Harry said. “Wheelchair racing is a cool sport.”

In a city where accessibility is a constant challenge, the Road Runners’ wheelchair training program focuses on removing barriers. Working with the JDJ Foundation, the program provides custom-fitted racing chairs for the children — which cost upwards of $5,000 — and it also covers transportation costs to the weekly practices as well as the races.

For Harry, being part of the group has opened new doors as his confidence in the sport has grown. Besides traveling the country to national competitions, the sixth grader recently joined the track team at East Side Middle School. He is the only wheelchair racer at his school.

Harry felt fortunate that East Side, his local middle school, was fully accessible — and that it had a track team. He wasn’t able to attend his zoned elementary school, P.S. 198, because the multi-story building had no elevator. Instead, he had to travel to the Upper West Side to P.S. 333, The Manhattan School for Children.

Fewer than 1 in 3 New York City public schools are fully accessible to students with physical disabilities, according to a recent report from Advocates for Children, an organization dedicated to helping the city’s most vulnerable students. The group has been pushing for $1.25 billion to address major gaps in building accessibility in the city’s five-year capital plan, which is expected to be released on Nov. 1. (That funding would allow about half of the city’s schools to be fully accessible, according to the report.)

When Harry started at East Side Middle School, he never doubted that he’d join the track team. He’s well aware of “Tatyana’s law,” federal legislation passed a decade ago ensuring equal access to school sports for students with disabilities.

His mom, Jasmine Tay, reached out to the school about Harry joining the team, and said they were very “encouraging.” Still, she told them not to worry about the cross country season in the fall, since the team trains and competes off-road. She suggested that Harry could wait until track season.

But the school’s gym teacher insisted they could make accommodations, taking the more advanced runners on the road in Central Park so Harry could join, Tay said. They also changed the training routes so the team no longer used stairs.

“Harry was so thrilled, and I was so happy with the effort made for inclusion and just the attitude of the coach to make it work — not only changing the route, but also recognizing where Harry would be faster versus slower than the runners and building that into team drills,” Tay said.

“It was proper inclusion,” she said, “and I was surprised it was that easy — sad, I know.”

The joys of being part of a team

In practices, Harry enjoys zipping by his new school teammates on downhills and straightaways, though he’s not as fast uphill.

But he still enjoys spending time with his teammates he’s known for years from the Rising Road Runners wheelchair program, like Lucy Shannon, 12, from Hamilton Heights.

Lucy also learned about the sport when watching the professional wheelchair racers in the New York City marathon. And on Nov. 2, she’ll get a taste of crossing the marathon’s famed finish line in Central Park along with about 1,000 other kids in a 400-meter dash TCS Run with Champions, earning a medal at the end.

Lucy, too, had five first place finishes in Nationals in the summer.

While she enjoys the competition, that’s not the main draw of the program for her.

“It feels inspiring when I’m racing,” said Lucy, who is home-schooled. “I’m meeting so many new friends on my team.”

That team camaraderie is a big part of the program, said Marissa Muñoz, senior vice president of community impact at Rising at New York Road Runners. There are three coaches for the program, which had about 20 kids participating last year.

“I think it’s a pretty rare thing to have this extracurricular for these young athletes,” Muñoz said.

It’s among three programs run by Rising New York Road Runners where their coaches directly work with kids. The organization mainly works with schools where its free curriculum and professional development is used by school coaches who work with about 60,000 kids across the five boroughs.

Many of the kids in the wheelchair racing program, like Harry, stay with the program for years. Muñoz hopes more children will join the program and continue to build bonds.

“We’re just looking forward to continuing to work with them and grow over the years,” she said. “We want to see them reach their goals.”

For Harry, being around his cheering teammates gives him a boost.

“It makes me feel encouraged and happy,” he said.

And after Harry’s first marathon in 2030, he’s angling to go to the Paralympics in 2032, in Brisbane, Australia, where the Aussie-born tween hopes to represent Team Australia.

Correction: The national competition is called Move United Nationals, not Adaptive Sports USA Nationals, as an earlier version of this story stated.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

How running track led this Bronx middle school teacher and coach full circle

2023-10-25T10:00:00+00:00

Running track changed the course of Elías Cruz’s life.

At his Bronx middle school, Cruz joined a track team started by his English teacher. Now a Bronx middle school English teacher himself, Cruz started a running team for his students in the fall of 2021.

He credits his middle school English teacher, Shawanda Weems, who started a track team at P.S./M.S. 15 through the Rising New York Road Runners’ free youth program. Besides its robust youth programming and races that Cruz’s students are training for, the New York Road Runners is renowned for hosting the TCS New York City Marathon; this year, the marathon is scheduled for Nov. 5.

Cruz recounted how he and his friends wanted to become fast runners, so they joined the running group immediately.

“Looking back on that one decision, it changed my life in countless ways,” Cruz said.

Cruz started teaching six years ago at New School for Leadership and the Arts, near where he grew up in University Heights. He became an English teacher, like his first coach, Weems, who continues to offer him mentorship and advice.

Cruz brought the Rising New York Road Runners program to his students about two years ago, when school buildings reopened to all students after the majority of New York City children learned remotely for more than a year.

Worried how the students would transition back to being in person after prolonged isolation, he thought track could be as transformative to his middle schoolers as it was for him.

“The need to develop their social-emotional skills, teamwork, and help them improve their physical and mental health was at the forefront of my thoughts,” he said. “It triggered the memory of middle school track with Ms. Weems.”

As a student on the track team, he bonded with friends outside of the classroom. They began to think about their health and what they were eating, and they formed “lifelong memories” at their track meets, Cruz recounted. His middle school teammates, Cris, Jose, and James, continue to be a “huge” part of his life.

“Till this day,” Cruz said, “we still speak of the many races at Central Park, Washington Heights, the dreaded hills of Van Cortlandt Park, the meets at Icahn, and the bus rides back to school after a day running.”

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

It’s amazing to hear that you still live and teach in the neighborhood where you grew up. How and when did you decide to become a teacher?

During my high school years, my track team would practice Monday through Thursday, and I would write down all our workouts, drills, stretches, and my own personal times in a little notebook. Every Friday I would go back to my middle school and help the younger runners — help them improve with what I learned. I would demonstrate to them how to do new drills, how to improve their form on old drills, and help them improve on their own individual events they wanted to run at their track meets.

Little did I know, I was already forming a culture of teaching within myself.

What’s your favorite lesson to teach and why, whether in the classroom or the field?

During our track practices, I love when we do our buddy runs. For this activity, the upperclassmen must find a buddy in the sixth or seventh grade and run with them for the practice. You can actively see the upperclassmen not only mentor the younger runners but also teach them all the skills I have taught them over years.

What’s something happening in the community that affects what goes on inside your school?

Our school is located in the northwest section of the Bronx. We are able to go outside for runs, have practices in local parks, and walk to some of our track meets at Van Cortlandt Park. Even with all these great benefits, we cannot escape the economic perils that hold back many Bronxites.

Our first year with the Rising New York Road Runner program, we began with a core of around 15 students. The following year, 2022-2023, our numbers ballooned to 40 or so students. After our first month of practice, it was immediately clear that we had a nutrition and running attire issue.

With so many of our student-athletes living severely under the poverty line, it was almost impossible for all of them to go out and purchase running sneakers, something they drastically needed. I still remember one of our returning runners confessing to us that he had to stop running because his feet were in too much pain for him to keep on going any longer.

Thankfully, with the partnership of the New York Road Runners, we were able to gift to our runners and many from our school student population brand new New Balance running sneakers.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received, and how have you put it into practice?

The best advice I’ve ever had is to make anything you do in the classroom or in practice engaging. A student who can’t wait to accomplish a goal is a student who has bought into your program and philosophy.

Have you ever run the NYC marathon?

Next year will be my first-ever marathon. I took a break from running to focus on teaching and just recently began running again. Slowly ramping up my mileage in hopes that in 2024, I cross the finish line of the New York City Marathon.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

After flubbing flood response, NYC education officials send guidance for a drizzle

2023-10-06T17:52:53+00:00

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After New York City’s Education Department flubbed its response to last week’s historic flooding, the agency appears to be on a course correction — and possibly overcompensating for its recent errors.

In advance of about a quarter-inch to an inch of rain expected Friday, officials sent two emails to principals with detailed guidance on how to respond.

“Our expectation is that this rain will not substantially disrupt the regular school day,” a Thursday night email stated, “but we want to be prepared for any potential impact in our most flood prone schools and on afterschool or weekend programming across the city.”

They sent no such information to principals last week before six inches of rain inundated some parts of the city.

Officials sent a second email Friday afternoon with a “brief weather update” for the weekend, and letting principals know they had discretion on how to handle school-based activities since there would be no system-wide decision.

Schools Chancellor David Banks this week admitted there was communication breakdown in how the city handled its response as floodwaters rose. He promised an investigation into what went wrong.

Banks and Mayor Eric Adams mentioned during a storm-related press conference that schools should shelter in place. But that message was never directly communicated to schools, several principals told Chalkbeat.

Banks promised earlier this week: “We can do better, and I think we will certainly be working to do better next time.”

Mayor Eric Adams also posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the city was preparing for heavy rains Friday night and into Saturday.

New Yorkers: periods of heavy rain and potential flooding are forecast late tonight into tomorrow.

We've activated the City's Flash Flood Emergency Plan, proactively staging resources and teams.

You can do your part: https://t.co/bRysa5CObE pic.twitter.com/73nBOjFeiN
— Mayor Eric Adams (@NYCMayor) October 6, 2023

Some principals thought the email sent to school leaders on Thursday night was overkill, much like when a new mayor, after bungling his first blizzard, reacts to a forecast of snow flurries by salting the roads in advance.

Below is the Thursday night letter that went out to principals.

From: Chief Operating Officer <ChiefOperatingOfficer@schools.nyc.gov>

Sent: Thursday, October 5, 2023 11:05 PM

Subject: < Please Read> Weather Update for October 6 and 7

Dear Principals,

We are writing to share some important information regarding the weather over the next two days.

The National Weather Service has reported that New York City will experience two weather systems that will affect the area with periods of heavy rain and potential flash flooding Friday morning through Saturday evening; at this point, roughly 0.25-1 inches of rain is expected.

Our expectation is that this rain will not substantially disrupt the regular school day, but we want to be prepared for any potential impact in our most flood prone schools and on afterschool or weekend programming across the city. Some guidance is below:

Facilities: School buildings that are prone to flooding/power outages have been identified and will be contacted by the Division of School Facilities; Custodial Engineers (CEs) will receive guidance about the management and sustainability of the building should issues arise. Please connect with your Director of School Facilities (DDF) and your CE about the status of your building. If your building experiences flooding, power outages, or other disruptions to the operations, your DDF, CE, or designated member of your school community can reach out to the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) at eoc@schools.nyc.govto report the issue. The EOC will contact NYCPS operations and other partner agencies to rectify the issue.
Transportation: While heavy rain may lead to delays, yellow buses are expected to run as usual. Please work with your transportation coordinators on any yellow bus stop changes or changes to drop off and pick up areas. For the latest updates on public transportation, usehttps://new.MTA.info.
Pickup: In anticipation of parents being delayed due to the weather, encourage your teachers to maintain open lines of communication with parents. Teachers should have emergency contact lists for all of their students. Please designate and assign adult staff to an indoor area where students can wait safely if their parents are late for pick-up.
Afterschool and weekend programming: At this point, we are not making any systemwide decisions about afterschool or weekend programming; decisions about whether programming should continue should be made at the site level. We expect outdoor activities will need to be moved indoors.
Building Response Team/General Response Protocols: As noted above, work with your CE to assess building conditions; if necessary, activate your Building Response Team, and invoke the appropriate General Response Protocol.

Feel free to use this information to communicate with your school communities, and please continue to monitor your email for any updates – if circumstances change, we will follow up with another email update tomorrow. As always, please keep your superintendent informed of challenges or needs your school may face during adverse weather conditions.

The safety and well-being of students and staff is essential during inclement weather. We thank you in advance for being proactive, prepared, and flexible in responding to challenging weather conditions, and for everything you do to support your school communities.

Thank you,

Emma Vadehra

Chief Operating Officer/Deputy Chancellor for Operations and Finance

Danika Rux, Ed.D.

Deputy Chancellor for School Leadership

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Eric Adams ordered NYC schools to shelter in place due to flooding. No one told principals.

2023-10-02T23:40:00+00:00

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As flood waters rose Friday in many parts of New York City, the message seemed clear cut.

“If you are at work or school, shelter in place for now,” said Mayor Eric Adams during a press conference about the storm just before noon that day. Schools Chancellor David Banks repeated that language later in the briefing, explaining “our protocol is in fact to shelter in place.” A social media post at 12:16 p.m. from the Education Department said the same.

Sheltering in place refers to a specific Education Department safety protocol that requires schools to shut their front doors, barring anyone from coming in or out. The procedure is meant to keep schools safe when there’s a danger outside the building.

At 1:56 p.m., a top Education Department official alerted principals that the “shelter in place has been lifted,” according to a copy of the email obtained by Chalkbeat.

There was just one problem: No one directly told schools about the order in the first place.

The email was the first Education Department communication that appeared in principals inboxes all day.

That was when Anna Nelson, an assistant principal at Bronx Latin, learned of the shelter-in-place directive.

But enforcing it would have been complicated. Many parents at her 6-12 school showed up early asking to pick up their children, fearing their commutes would be even harder later in the day due to the record rainfall. That would not have been allowed under a typical shelter-in-place order.

“Parents would have been really upset,” Nelson said. “It would have been wild.”

During previous shelter-in-place situations involving many schools, such as one for several Brooklyn schools after the subway shooting in Sunset Park last year, orders came from the NYPD and borough safety offices contacting schools.

But no such directives arrived Friday, 10 school administrators told Chalkbeat.

Flooding causes chaos in many schools

Many school leaders were dealing with immediate crises. They were helping kids dry off and scrounging up extra clothes for kids who were soaked through, while moving some children out of water-logged classrooms. They were ensuring floors weren’t dangerously slippery and figuring out if they had enough teachers to cover classes. They were communicating with concerned families about pickup and figuring out alternative exit plans for dismissal.

Many were unable to tune into the mayor’s press conference or monitor Education Department messages on X (formerly known as Twitter) during the middle of the school day — and may not even have known to watch for information through these channels.

As a result, none of the administrators who spoke with Chalkbeat actually implemented a shelter-in-place. Many were left on their own to figure out if and how to dismiss students early or let parents come and retrieve kids, with mixed messages swirling from higher-ups.

“It was very confusing honestly,” said one Brooklyn school administrator who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. “I was watching the press conference live and then I heard him say it, but I was like ‘I don’t think he really means we’re going to shelter in, because that’s crazy.’”

Education Department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer reiterated Monday that “guidance during inclement weather events is to take refuge in the school building.” When asked how the Education Department communicated that guidance, he pointed to the mayoral press conference and social media.

The idea of a blanket citywide shelter-in-place order seemed especially confusing to administrators because those directives are usually targeted at specific schools or neighborhoods, administrators said. While some schools with significant flooding outside may have benefited from such an order, it would have been a problem for other schools that needed to let students out early for safety reasons, they said.

Pointing to the need for a shelter in place, Styer said that some schools called parents and guardians to pick up children from school during Friday’s travel warnings, “which put even more members of our community in harm’s way.”

The end-of-day email to principals also suggested that schools should make sure students and staff are familiar with alternate evacuation routes, ensure children have a way to get home given disruptions to public transit, and keep a stock of supplies on hand including flashlights and blankets.

There was scarcely any time to do those things as the official guidance came less than an hour before dismissal, said Nelson, the Bronx administrator.

Though she said her school was largely spared from flooding and most of her students don’t commute long distances to the campus, she remained concerned about the lack of planning from the city.

“It is clear to me that we will have more flood issues like this in the future and the DOE doesn’t have any flood plans in place,” Nelson added.

Flooding near the Lafayette Educational Complex in Gravesend Brooklyn on Fri., Sept. 29, 2023 in New York.

At the Lafayette Educational Complex in Gravesend, Brooklyn, which is in a flood zone, students and staff had to wade through thigh-high waters to get to the schools housed there, said teacher Elizabeth Fortune. The building’s basement and cafeteria flooded, just as they did during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, and she worried the building would face flooding in the future.

“We gave away all our school logo pjs to students and some were stuck in wet clothes or barefoot at school,” Fortune wrote in an email. “Once the waters began to recede, many older students wished to leave, but we were required to hold them until a parent could pick them up. Parents themselves were stranded without any ability to get to the school.”

Communication breakdown sows confusion

A total of 336 city public schools required cleanup over the weekend due to flooding, Styer said. On Friday, city officials said 150 schools were affected.

One school, P.S. 312 in Bergen Beach (originally reported by the Education Department as P.S. 132), had to be evacuated because of a smoking boiler. That school reopened Monday, and the “vast majority” of water issues across city schools were “minor, requiring only mopping,” he said.

To some educators, the botched communication over the shelter-in-place order felt emblematic of larger failures to give schools clear and timely guidance during a crisis. If top city officials misspoke about the shelter-in order, they should have clarified that immediately, said one Manhattan school administrator.

“The lack of communication is what creates people making up their own stories,” said the administrator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “If this isn’t the policy, and someone made a mistake, just own that and keep it pushing.”

Instead, school leaders were left largely on their own to figure out the protocol — and the confusion trickled down to teachers and parents.

Some schools let students out early. Anxious parents showed up to retrieve kids, and some students feared longer-than-normal commutes on public transit.

“A lot of our kids travel an hour each way on a good day,” said the Brooklyn administrator. “We don’t want kids traveling on buses they don’t normally take in the dark.”

Brooklyn dad Geoff Sanoff, who has two children in two different high schools, recounted the widely varied response from his children’s schools.

At Brooklyn Tech, where one son attends, the school emailed families about what they were doing, where families should go to meet their teens, and options for kids to stay in the building as they waited to get picked up. At the smaller Brooklyn high school his other son attends, there was “radio silence,” Sanoff said.

Brooklyn Tech is walkable to their Park Slope home, so the commute home for that son was doable. The other school, however, is accessible by the G train, which was not running. Sanoff’s son at that school, a freshman, wasn’t sure what to do, or where to wait to be picked up since he was not allowed to stay inside the building.

“With no subway, getting home from school turned into a three-hour round trip in a grandparent’s car to pick him up,” Sanoff said, adding that his son waited outside for more than an hour.

Sanoff understands that Brooklyn Tech — which is the nation’s largest high school with nearly 6,000 students — has kids from across the city and needs to be on top of coordinating its communications. His other son’s school, which may serve more kids who live locally, may not have realized that new students who travel further may have needed more help and may not have known who to ask for help, he said.

“It kind of baffles me that nobody said anything to him,” Sanoff said. “I am not angry with them, just frustrated at this situation. At the end of the day, the real question to me is, ‘How is it that each school has been left to fend for itself in a situation like this? Has there been no guidance from on high?’ No thought for school buses to be set aside, nothing from the DOE to help parents and schools know where to go, what to do, or who to reach out to for help.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Torrential downpour floods 150 NYC schools, throws commutes into disarray

2023-09-29T17:36:02+00:00

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Torrential rainfall sowed chaos for many New York City schools Friday morning, flooding 150 school buildings and throwing commutes into disarray for thousands of students and staff.

Mayor Eric Adams announced a shelter-in-place order for schools around noon. An Education Department spokesperson said it would lift with dismissal.

“If you are at work or school, shelter in place for now. Some of our subways are flooded and it is extremely difficult to move around the city,” Adams said at a media briefing on the storm.

The downpour, which dumped 5 inches in some parts of New York City by early Friday morning, affected service on every subway line, delayed dozens of school buses, and prompted both Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul to issue a state of emergency. Friday’s attendance rate of 77% was significantly down from about 90% the day before.

Schools Chancellor David Banks said a total of 150 school buildings took on water Friday morning, and that one school, Brooklyn’s P.S. 312, was forced to evacuate because of a smoking boiler. Another Brooklyn school, I.S. 228 sent out a message asking parents to pick up students early, but Banks said the communication was premature.

The extreme weather led some parents and educators to question whether the city should have canceled in-person classes. Banks reassured families that schools were prepared to handle the storm.

“We have folks in our schools trained annually to prepare for days just like this,” Banks said, noting that schools were activating Building Response Teams in response to flooding. “While this was a tough day in terms of the rain, our kids are not in danger,” he added.

Many parents and educators reported that the rainwater had seeped into school buildings, flooding cafeterias and basements and leaking in through roofs, forcing students to move classrooms. On some campuses, children were soaked on their commutes to school, school staff reported.

“Some schools are being flooded from the basement up, and some are being flooded from the rooftop down,” said Paullette Healy, a parent leader in Brooklyn who said she’d heard from nine schools that experienced flooding. Several classrooms had to evacuate students, she added.

At P.S. 84 in Williamsburg, the school kitchen flooded, “which is a problem for our cafeteria workers and our kids,” said parent Jessamyn Lee. Fortunately, the custodial staff, she said, seemed to be able to “get the water intrusion under control.”

Meanwhile, at one Manhattan high school, rainwater leaking through a faulty roof forced students to move classrooms, complicating efforts to make up testing that had already been postponed because of tech glitches last week, according to a teacher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“My school is doing the best they can,” the teacher wrote. “This is just weather and issues out of our control and I feel for the kids.”

Principals received dismissal guidance shortly before 2 p.m., suggesting they make sure that staff and students were aware of alternate exit routes in case of flooding and that they communicate alternative exits to families. Most schools dismiss between 2:20 p.m. and 2:50 p.m.

Public School Athletic League activities were canceled, and principals could decide whether to hold Saturday programs, according to the email.

Concerns about commutes home from school

Meanwhile, for the hundreds of thousands of students and staff trying to get to school Friday morning, the commute was messy and in some cases harrowing.

“The street leading up to my school is completely flooded,” said Leah Ali, a student at Bard Early College High School in Manhattan. “As cars drive past, water reaches their headlights, and waves of water crash over students trying to make it inside.”

Alan Sun, a senior at The Bronx High School of Science, said the school has been affected by the storm. “The ceilings have been leaking water and the cafeteria is flooded,” he wrote in a text message. “Lunch is now being served in the auditorium.” Sun opted to eat in the hallway instead, as the auditorium was too crowded.

This is the corner of my school’s block.

Cafeteria and basement classrooms are flooded with this water. Families literally have to wade through toxic water to drop off their kids and pick them up.

Why does @NYCMayor never plan for emergencies that affect schools??? https://t.co/trhjCjFrsu
— Sarah Allen (@Mssarahmssarah) September 29, 2023

Morning disruptions on nearly every subway line left many students wondering how they’d safely get home.

“With train service suspensions, track fires, and stations flooded, commuting back home to Queens is a serious concern for me,” Ali had said in the morning.

At dismissal, she was still trying to figure out how to get home since her trains were delayed.

“I might be waiting at the station for a while,” she said. “Unfortunately, my school is a 15-minute walk away from the station, and buses aren’t working at the moment, so I’ll be taking an Uber there.”

Sun, who commutes to Bronx Science by subway, also said he was worried about the trek back to Flushing, Queens, at the end of the day. “I’m hoping the flooding in the subway stations won’t be too bad,” he wrote.

In her guidance to principals sent at the end of the day, Deputy Chancellor of School Leadership Danika Rux wrote, “Please ensure that your students who use public transportation have secured routes home.”

State and transportation officials said that getting the subways back up and running was a top priority, but that MTA buses were in operation and that the agency would deploy extra buses as a backup in case train service wasn’t restored by dismissal time.

The disruptions also affected students traveling by road.

The city’s Office of Pupil Transportation reported roughly 140 weather-related school bus delays as of 1 p.m. Friday afternoon.

Major roadways including FDR Drive were closed Friday morning, adding to concerns about disrupted afternoon commutes.

Banks said that the Education Department dispatched school buses early for the afternoon pickup, so they would be ready by dismissal time. School buses sit high enough off the ground that they are less likely to get stalled by roadway flooding, he said.

Mayor Adams defends NYC’s response

The city’s Education Department first addressed the weather conditions late Thursday night in a series of posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, advising that schools would remain open Friday and suggesting that families and educators leave extra time for their commutes, take major roads, and not enter flooded subway stations.

No systemwide emails had gone out to teachers or parents as of 1 p.m. on Friday.

Several parents and educators said Friday that the city should have closed school buildings on Friday and pivoted to remote learning, similar to snow days, or at the very least improved communication about the risks.

“It’s quite a lapse in safety and concern when our phones send us messages about life threatening flooding and not to travel,” said the Manhattan teacher. “New York City is unprepared for major flooding as a result of climate change and this is more of the same examples we’re seeing.”

Adams defended the decision to keep schools open.

“This was the right call. Our children are safe in schools,” he said. “There is a big inconvenience when you close the schools.”

Climate change fears prompt worries for school infrastructure

The intensity of the flooding caught some parents by surprise. Avery Cole, whose 5-year-old daughter attends P.S. 11, said she wasn’t aware that the weather was going to be so severe until her phone started blaring with emergency alerts after she dropped her child off.

She also received a message from the school pleading for volunteers to help dry and disinfect its ground-floor classrooms “to prevent mold and save as much furniture as possible.”

Cole said she worries that school buildings aren’t prepared for more intense storms and wildfire smoke stoked by climate change.

“These storms are going to be more dramatic and frequent and schools are bearing the brunt of it,” she said.

Rohit Aggarwala, the commissioner of the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, was blunt about the increasing threat of climate change to New York City.

“This changing weather pattern is the result of climate change,” he said, “and the sad reality is our climate is changing faster than our infrastructure can respond.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

COVID guidance for NYC schools: Here’s what you need to know for this year

2023-09-12T18:55:36+00:00

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COVID has not disappeared from New York City, but the map showing the daily number of cases among students and staffers across schools has.

The Education Department scrapped the map on Monday.

Officials confirmed that schools are no longer reporting cases, though they said the Health Department would continue to closely monitor cases among school-aged children.

The map had been updated as recently as Monday morning. Three students and nine staffers had tested positive for Covid on Sept. 10, according to the data posted then. But after a reporter inquired about the data, the map was taken down after two years of daily updates.

The move comes amid an uptick in COVID cases across the five boroughs. The city saw a 25% increase from the previous week in the number of patients hospitalized with COVID, reaching 619 on Tuesday, according to a tracker created by the news site THE CITY using state data. There were about 87 cases per 100,000 people, according to New York City’s daily average of the last seven days from the Health Department.

The Education Department has sent out little information to families this year about COVID protocols in schools, but has guidance available on its website.

The department’s guidance remains consistent with latest recommendations from the city’s Health Department, the state, and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Education Department officials said.

“COVID remains top of mind for many families,” schools Chancellor David Banks told reporters last week. “So we encourage families to stay up-to-date on COVID-19 vaccines. We’re also closely monitoring upticks and ensuring that schools are prepared for an increase in respiratory illnesses in the community.”

Here’s what you need to know about the approach to COVID in schools this year.

What if a student or school staffer tests positive for COVID?

The rules remain the same as last year.

First, if someone tests positive, they should isolate to help prevent spreading the virus to others.

Quarantine should last five days, with the day of the positive test considered Day 0. The student or staffer can return to school on Day 6 if they have no symptoms or the symptoms are improving and they have been fever-free without medication for 24 hours. They must continue to wear a mask indoors until Day 10 following the start of the symptoms or when they tested positive.

The teachers union also has guidance for educators around COVID-related absences.

Do students and staffers still have to mask if they’ve been exposed to someone with COVID?

Yes, according to city guidance. They should wear masks for 10 days when they are not able to separate from others, including at home.

Can I still get an at-home test kit?

Schools will no longer regularly send at-home COVID test kits in students’ backpacks, as they did last year. But they will have kits for those who request them, Education Department officials said.

Many schools might have a stockpile of kits from the past school year. Though the expiration date listed on the box might be past due, it’s possible the tests are still good. You can check the expiration date here by using the lot number on the box. The Food and Drug Administration has extended the expiration dates of a number of test kits, sometimes by up to two years.

Are parent-teacher conferences in person again?

No, under the recent teachers union contract, schools will hold parent-teacher conferences remotely. They may, however, be held in person upon request by parents or caregivers.

Other parent engagement activities, including grade conferences, can also be conducted remotely.

What’s happening with ventilation at schools?

The city is in the midst of its third round of purchasing replacement filters for the air purifiers it bought at the height of the pandemic, Education Department officials said. At that time, each classroom was outfitted with two air purifiers, though questions remain as to whether the city got the best bang for its buck on the purifiers it purchased.

Officials said they have taken multiple steps to improve ventilation in schools, including equipping HVAC systems with MERV-13 filters as well as window air conditioners with MERV-13 filters. They’ve also trained maintenance staff to use anemometers and carbon dioxide readers to check air quality within rooms, and continue to ensure that building ventilation is working as originally designed, they said.

“We have ensured that all ventilation systems are in good working order,” Banks said. “And our custodial engineers are prepared to troubleshoot any ventilation concerns.”

Are COVID vaccines required?

Vaccines are not required, but they are recommended. As of November 2022, 53% of students were fully vaccinated, according to public data.

“Staying up to date with COVID-19 vaccines, along with other proven prevention tools — like masking, testing, and staying home when sick — continue to be our best defense against COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses,” Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan said last month in response to the rise of another new variant.

The FDA approved a new round of COVID boosters this week. Anyone 5 years old and up can receive a single dose of the shot, whether or not they’ve been previously vaccinated. Those under the age of 5 can receive the updated vaccine as well, and have different options depending on whether they get it from Pfizer or Moderna.

Alex Zimmerman contributed.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

First day of school for NYC: Smiles, sweat, and fears of a possible bus strike

2023-09-07T21:54:13+00:00

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Bronx student Avery Collazo began the school year on Thursday with an annual tradition: donning a bright blue T-shirt proudly exclaiming, “First Day of Second Grade.”

“He likes to stand out, to be a little different,” said Avery’s dad, Albert Collazo, who also brought a uniform shirt just in case.

The family joined dozens of others dropping off their children in the P.S. 121 schoolyard as the first day of school for New York City’s nearly 900,000 students brought out an array of emotions.

Some caregivers shed tears as they watched their kids walk inside the school building. Some kids smiled confidently; some shyly. There was also some sweat. High temperatures prompted a National Weather Service heat advisory, and the Education Department directed schools to limit outdoor activities after 10 a.m. Some educators and parents reported broken or non-existent air conditioners while some families were also concerned about overheated students on school buses.

Avery is enrolled in P.S. 121’s “gifted and talented” program, which pulls students from different neighborhoods. His mom, Elida, praised the city’s move to expand such programs, calling it “a great opportunity for a lot of other children.”

From left, Elida Collazo, Avery Collazo and Albert Collazo pose for a portrait on the first day of school at P.S. 121 in the Bronx.

Because the family has to travel outside of their zoned school to bring Avery to the program, they rely on a yellow school bus for transportation. Even though school bus drivers vowed to stay behind the wheel this week, families were still on edge about a possible strike, which could affect an estimated 86,000 students, or more than half of the children who ride yellow school buses.

“We’re definitely hoping no strike happens,” Collazo said.

For P.S. 121 mom Phyllis Moore, the new school year represented a fresh chance to get involved in her daughter’s education following her recovery from a stroke last year.

“I’m ready to be here, to get involved, to be on the school board, to do what I need to do,” said Moore. “We’re excited.”

Her daughter Lanyah, a fourth grader, has been in the school since kindergarten. She was excited to return to school with more age and experience, she said, but the 8-year-old was still nervous to find out who her teacher and classmates would be.

Schools Chancellor David Banks joined Mayor Eric Adams at P.S. 121, in the Bronx’s District 11, which is one of the districts in the first wave of the NYC Reads initiative. In a major shift in how the nation’s largest school system teaches its youngest children how to read, elementary schools in 15 of the city’s 32 local districts must switch to one of three literacy programs this year, with the rest following next year. District 11 selected EL Education, a curriculum that some schools in the area had already implemented.

“What I am going to be laser-focused on is ensuring every single child in the school system is on grade level no later than third grade,” Banks said. “The broader issue is, for even kids who don’t have dyslexia, they can’t read. And that’s because we haven’t taught them properly how to read.”

The push to change literacy instruction comes after years of attempts to improve the city’s middling reading scores — and after a widely used curriculum, which focused heavily on independent reading without enough explicit phonics instruction, was largely discredited.

Outside of P.S. 165 in Brownsville, Brooklyn, most parents said they hadn’t heard about the city’s curriculum mandate. The school, along with every elementary campus in District 23, is required to use a curriculum called Into Reading — by far the most common program that superintendents have mandated.

Sherifa Adams said her 6-year-old daughter Kaydence was already picking up reading skills, and Adams has mixed feelings about the change. “It’s first grade, so she’s already used to something,” said Adams, who learned about the curriculum mandate from a reporter. “I hope that this new reading curriculum only makes it better and not worse for her.”

The school plans to hold a curriculum night next week and will share more information about the new reading program with families then, an Education Department spokesperson said.

The literacy mandate may signal a wider effort to come, Education Department officials noted. The city is already pushing such changes for early education and ninth grade algebra. Some high school superintendents have opted to implement literacy instruction mandates on their own accord.

Students and families on the first day of school on Thursday at P.S. 165 Ida Posner in Brooklyn, NY.

Meanwhile, the city also continues to grapple with how it will accommodate the influx of children from asylum-seeking families. Banks announced Thursday that the city is hoping to address the chronic shortage of bilingual teachers by reducing a bureaucratic hurdle. For educators who are already certified in bilingual education but teach other areas, they will no longer lose tenure by switching subjects, Banks said. The move would affect about 500 teachers.

Despite the ongoing challenges, the first day of school also marked the tremendous progress that many of the newcomers have made since arriving last year.

At I.S. 93 in Ridgewood, Queens, one student who arrived in the country six months ago speaking no English made enough progress to enroll in an honors dual-language class this year. He was part of a team that won a classwide engineering competition Thursday, said his teacher Sara Hobler.

“This sort of thing is why I teach,” Hobler said. “It makes you take a step back for a moment and remember why you go through all the difficult parts of the job — for those looks on those kids’ faces when they realize they’re going to thrive.”

Busing woes, even without a strike

It has become all too common for students to have problems with yellow school buses, particularly on the first day of school. This year was no exception, as union officials continue negotiating with the city over a new contract. There were nearly 1,300 bus delays reported on the Office of Pupil Transportation’s website as of 4 p.m.

Brownsville mom Anika Smith said she received limited information about bus service and had yet to receive pick up and drop off times, even though her second grade son is entitled to transportation because of a disability.

Smith accompanied her son on Thursday to greet his teachers. Though the family lives a few blocks away from school, the mom said ongoing disruptions would be a “catastrophe,” forcing her to scramble to find relatives to help with transportation or rearrange her nursing shifts at a local hospital.

“I’m gonna have to take off a couple of days, switch around my hours,” Smith said. “I lose wages. I could get a write up … the hospital’s already short staffed.”

Outside her son’s school, P.S. 165, a staff member told a small group of families gathered in the schoolyard about the city’s contingency plans, including MetroCards or rideshare services for children with disabilities, those in temporary housing, or children in foster care.

Students and families arrive for the first day of school at P.S. 165 in Brownsville, Brooklyn.

Naomi Peña, a mother of four children with dyslexia and co-founder of a Bronx-based literacy program, said her son’s bus arrived at their home just 10 minutes before his school was scheduled to start. By the time he arrived on campus, he was more than two hours late, meaning he missed his entire morning literacy block, she said.

The late bus – along with her daughter’s class having no working air conditioning – led to a disappointing first day of school, Peña said.

“It’s frustrating because I am just one parent that experiences these things, but it’s part of a larger ecosystem of hundreds of thousands of parents,” she said. “It shouldn’t happen. It shouldn’t. Our kids deserve better, especially on their first day.”

Enrollment, mergers, and navigating the system

Over the past five years, K-12 enrollment has fallen by more than 120,000, which can have big consequences for schools since funding is tied to student headcount.

At Brooklyn’s P.S. 165, for instance, enrollment dipped below 200 students last year — one of a growing share of elementary schools in central Brooklyn and across the city below that threshold. Though small schools can be more expensive for the city to run on a per-student basis, several parents said there are benefits, too.

“With a small school environment, she will get the help that she needs,” said Crystal Salgado, referring to her 6-year-old daughter, Cianna. “The teachers actually know the kids.”

For her part, Cianna was so excited to be back at school that she zoomed past her mother into the schoolyard. She said she was most excited for lunch, preferably pizza.

Crystal Salgado and her 6-year-old daughter, Cianna, arrive for the first day of school at P.S. 165 in Brooklyn. Cianna hoped for a pizza lunch.

Some school communities began to see controversial mergers last school year, like one at Lafayette Academy, which joined with West Side Collaborative.

Despite opposition from both of these small Upper West middle schools, the proposal passed. Morana Mesic, a former PTA president at West Side Collaborative who opposed the merger, said her seventh grade son cried last night as the realization hit that he wouldn’t be returning to the small school that had felt like home. Instead, he’ll be attending West End Secondary School, a much larger 6-12 school on the Upper West Side that he transferred to over the summer.

“He’s going into a whole new environment all over again, so he did have a really emotional reaction,” she said. “He was anxious, frustrated, and scared, saying, ‘I don’t know if I’m gonna be accepted.’”

Just over 30 blocks north, on the Upper West Side campus Lafayette shares with two other schools, families fanned into a crowded street, greeted by welcome signs and an energetic traffic conductor shouting, “Good morning! Good morning! Happy first day!”

Some students matched the excitement as they approached the building.

One Manhattan School for Children student said she couldn’t wait for “math, seeing my friends, writing, and anything I learn.”

Nearby, Jeanelle and Zaki Jarrah, stood next to their eighth-grader Finn. The family is new to the city, having just moved from Flagler Beach, Florida, a few weeks ago.

They said they were looking forward to their son developing closer connections in a smaller school environment. But they didn’t have a clear idea why they picked the Manhattan School for Children.

“We have absolutely no idea what we’re doing,” Jeanelle Jarrah said, laughing. “The school system here is so overwhelming.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Turmoil grips NYC schools office that administers parent-led board elections

2023-08-18T15:08:36+00:00

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Queens parent leader Sherée Gibson worried about turnout even before voting began in this spring’s elections for the city’s Community Education Councils, the 32 parent-led boards that oversee school zones and other policy issues.

New York City public school parents cast ballots through their children’s NYC Schools Accounts, but education officials say a third of the city’s roughly 900,000 students aren’t linked to accounts. Gibson, who worked on the last CEC election and was appointed by the Queens borough president to sit the city’s Panel for Educational Policy, said she voiced her concerns in numerous meetings and conversations.

She wasn’t the only one raising alarms. Staffers and parent leaders pleaded with the Education Department office that administers the elections — Family and Community Empowerment, known as FACE — to roll out publicity campaigns for account sign-ups and voter awareness in the fall ahead of voting, but a plan never got off the ground, according to interviews with parents and campaign workers. One incoming CEC member even stepped down in protest of the election results and lack of outreach, particularly to non-English-speaking and low-income families.

“The outreach wasn’t there,” said that prospective CEC member, Lilah Mejia.

Meanwhile, election workers were diverted from their duties while unanswered emails piled up in a CEC election inbox, according to several contracted workers.

In the end, only about 19,000 votes were cast across the five boroughs, according to Education Department figures. That’s about 2% of the city’s public school families. The city had a similar turnout last election, but that was earlier in the pandemic when many families may have been grappling with greater challenges.

Ultimately, candidates endorsed by the controversial Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, or PLACE — which advocates rolling back recent policies that reduce screened school admissions — made big inroads, winning nearly 40% of the roughly 320 seats on the parent councils and capturing all of the seats up for election on the high school council, one of four citywide boards.

Chalkbeat interviewed more than 20 current and former FACE staffers, election campaign contractors, and parent leaders and reviewed numerous documents and emails that painted a picture of an office gripped by strife, with different factions leveling allegations of favoritism and discrimination. Several employees have filed complaints with various agencies against other staffers. Ultimately, observers say, the administration of the CEC elections may have suffered as a result.

“It was chaos,” said Tommy Sarkar, who worked as a contractor hired as a data analyst on the election.

The issues were so pervasive that two citywide parent groups called on the attorney general and city comptroller to audit FACE’s handling of the elections. According to a letter calling for the audit, the elections “were not carried out with fidelity, integrity, transparency and equity.”

Among other complaints was a lack of outreach to high schools, particularly in the Bronx where parents at only nine out of the borough’s 153 high schools voted for high school representatives on the Citywide Council on High Schools, according to the letter.

The attorney general’s office referred calls to the comptroller’s office, which said it was reviewing the groups’ complaints and assessing next steps.

The issues with the CEC elections have put a spotlight on turmoil within the office in charge of holding them. Some observers blame FACE’s leadership, including executive director Cristina Melendez, who took over in January 2022 after serving as a lead on the education transition team for Mayor Eric Adams. Others say that long-time staffers are causing turmoil, particularly those who have been through the turbulence of four executive directors in four years.

Chalkbeat asked the Education Department to comment on the strife inside FACE and the various complaints related to the office, but officials said they can’t comment on personnel issues or investigations. Melendez did not respond for comment.

Education officials said FACE has initiatives in place to help parents access their NYC Schools Account logins, including training school parent coordinators, giving incentives to districts with the highest number of sign-ups, and ensuring that Family Leadership Coordinators — who also help parent leaders and are based in each of the 45 superintendents’ offices — have tools and training to help parents.

“Family engagement is the cornerstone of a successful school system,” Education Department spokesperson Chyann Tull said in a statement. “We are committed to meeting families where they are and providing the support needed for our students to excel. The Office of Family and Community Empowerment was reorganized to increase transparency, rebuild trust, and deepen partnerships with all families.”

According to parents and staffers, the problems at FACE seem to run deep: The office has had little stability over the past several years, and with each new chancellor comes a new vision for what FACE should look like, causing tension among the staff and consternation among parents.

“Under every administration, you’ve seen different iterations of FACE,” said Brooklyn parent leader NeQuan McLean and president of Bedford-Stuyvesant’s CEC. “All of those administrations looked at parent leaders, parent engagement, and parent empowerment differently.”

He added: “FACE has always been the stepchild of the DOE. Parent engagement has never been a high priority.”

Parents and community members at 2016 Community Education Council meeting in Brooklyn’s District 13, which includes Brooklyn Heights, Prospect Heights, Fort Greene, and Clinton Hill.

Internal strife plagues Family and Community Empowerment office

Over the past few months, infighting at the office has resulted in multiple formal complaints from all sides to various city agencies.

In one case, an employee filed a complaint alleging emotional distress with the Education Department’s Office of Equal Opportunity, according to paperwork obtained by Chalkbeat. The staffer, who said in the complaint that he suffered a panic attack during a meeting with Melendez, alleged that he was being targeted because he previously filed a grievance with his union, DC 37, that promotions were being doled out in violation of civil service rules.

Another complaint was also filed with the Special Commissioner of Investigations office, or SCI, against Melendez alleging that staff members in the FACE office were promoted to jobs in violation of civil service rules, while other employees who had fallen out of favor were targeted and retaliated against, according to people who saw the complaint.

SCI officials said they were aware of the matter, but the office doesn’t confirm or deny the existence of any open or ongoing investigations.

Allies of Melendez, meanwhile, lodged complaints of their own. A parent who worked as a contractor on the election outreach teams filed a complaint against some of the long-time FACE staffers with the Office of Equal Opportunity, alleging mistreatment, according to the complaint shared with Chalkbeat. Another parent contractor also complained about the staffers in emails to Chancellor David Banks and other Education Department officials.

Bronx parent Ilka Rios wrote in a June email to Deputy Chancellor Kenita Lloyd, who oversees FACE, along with Melendez and several others that she was treated poorly by long-time staff. She also claimed that when schools from lower-income areas like the South Bronx’s District 7 asked for presentations before the elections, the consultants were told to send them PowerPoint presentations, but when more affluent areas like Bayside in Queens’ District 26 requested the same presentations, the consultants had to be available.

“They made so many mistakes with that election process,” Rios told Chalkbeat. “They left out so many schools in the Bronx.”

Parents elected to a citywide board representing high school parents were all PLACE members, and more than half of them have children at the city’s specialized high schools — elite schools that require a test for entry and have long been criticized for their low enrollment of Black and Latino students.

Gloria Corsino, another parent leader brought on to work on the elections, filed an Office of Equal Opportunity complaint after a staffer allegedly referred to Corsino “wearing an ankle bracelet” — Corsino doesn’t, and she felt that implied she was a criminal.

Meanwhile, Sarkar, another contractor on the campaign, said he felt discriminated against when a manager urged the consultants to work on Eid, a Muslim holiday that Sarkar celebrates.

“I do not like to come down on anyone but it’s crunch time,” the manager wrote in an email shared with Chalkbeat. Even though the manager wasn’t forcing him to work, Sarkar said it felt like “there would be some kind of repercussion” if he didn’t, so he put in a few hours on the holiday.

Family and Community Empowerment has seen many iterations over the years

The discord in the FACE office comes against the backdrop of concerns that the office — tasked with supporting parent leaders from PTAs on up to CECs — hasn’t been made a priority by education leaders. While parent engagement is one of schools Chancellor David Banks’ “four pillars,” undergirding his vision on “building trust” in city schools, it’s the only one that has no action items under it, many parent leaders pointed out.

The office was created when former Mayor Michael Bloomberg won control over the nation’s largest school system in 2002. At that time, it was called the Office for Family Engagement and Advocacy, and it aimed to improve the relationship between schools and parents.

During the de Blasio administration, the office’s approach shifted. The Education Department merged the office with another one focused on supporting parents in the city’s community school program, which receive wraparound services. FACE held training sessions for parents on such topics as fundraising, collaboration, and governance.

Melendez — who calls herself the “parent whisperer” — is shaking things up again. A former bilingual education teacher in the Bronx and assistant principal, Melendez earned a doctorate in education from the University of Pennsylvania in educational leadership. While there, she wrote a thesis entitled “Dominican parenting across generations” and examined difficulties the city had engaging Black and Latino parents. Prior to that, Melendez was a district supervisor for the city’s controversial renewal initiative aimed to turn around failing schools, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Melendez has been trying to reorganize the office from its borough-based structure into four categories: governance and policy; parent engagement and empowerment; community partnerships; and home-school partnerships, according to presentations shared with Chalkbeat. Some staffers say this is taking away focus from its role in supporting parent governance bodies, particularly the lower-level bodies like PTAs and school leadership teams, or SLTs. Some parent leaders say their governance-related questions have gone unanswered.

But others also welcome changes, hoping they could bring fresh ideas on how to meaningfully engage parents. Gibson, for instance, wants to see FACE involving parents on the city’s new literacy initiative mandating certain curriculums in elementary school. In the meantime, she’s been waiting a year to see the results of the office’s restructuring efforts.

“I think Cristina Melendez is under a lot of pressure to make things happen,” Gibson said. “And others want to stymie it.”

Some parents feel caught in the middle. Mejia, who served since last August as president of the CEC representing Manhattan’s Lower East Side and East Village, had been poised to start her new term as an appointment from the Manhattan borough president, but took her hat out of the ring.

In a conversation with Chalkbeat, Mejia said she was frustrated that FACE gave a NYC School Accounts sign-up presentation to CEC members — who already had accounts — but did not do such presentations more widely to all parents, particularly at schools with low voter participation. She complained about voting hurdles for non-English-speaking families and wondered why the Education Department didn’t distribute paper ballots through schools to help those with less tech literacy or access.

She also felt outraged that two PLACE-endorsed parents from Nest+M, a gifted and talented school located in her district that draws students from across the city, were elected to her CEC. Councils typically don’t include more than one parent from a school. The Education Department, however, upheld the outcome.

“FACE has turned me fully away,” the longtime parent activist said.

Julian Shen-Berro contributed.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

These NYC teens overcame school refusal and made it to graduation

2023-08-02T10:00:00+00:00

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Catherine had watched for years as her once high-achieving son’s relationship with school deteriorated.

Michael’s depression, anxiety, and ADHD made the transition to high school painful. Then the pandemic hit, and he spent his sophomore year at home in pajamas.

When schools fully reopened his junior year, Michael refused to return, and he was later hospitalized for attempting suicide. After that alarming episode, a psychiatrist gave Catherine pointed advice: drive your son to his Queens school every day, even just to see the building, or he may never go back.

“It scared me,” said Catherine.

Despite her son’s resistance, she made Michael get into their beat-up Hyundai Sonata and drive the 2.5 miles past the campus nearly every day for weeks. Eventually, he was able to step inside the school building and attend for longer stretches during summer school, with its less demanding schedule.

Then, remarkably, he returned full time for senior year.

Michael played chess with new friends. He went on the senior trip to a camp in Connecticut. He went to prom. While his attendance wasn’t perfect, he was a full-fledged member of the senior class, a development his mom credits to sticking with therapy and medications and eventually getting the accommodations he needed from his school.

In a moment that once felt next to impossible, Michael got his diploma last month and will head to community college in the fall. (Names in this story have been changed to middle names or pseudonyms to protect students’ privacy.)

Several families like Michael’s who overcame serious aversions to attending class — often referred to as school refusal — and made it to graduation told Chalkbeat they had to be determined and vigilant, navigating school mental health systems that are struggling to address worsening student needs since the pandemic without enough resources or updated guidance to meet this unprecedented moment.

Even before the pandemic, about 2 to 5% of children nationwide avoided school. Now, several social workers told Chalkbeat they are dealing with more extreme cases of school refusal than ever before, fueled in part by an alarming rise in suicidal ideation among city teens and contributing to a chronic absenteeism rate in New York City that hit 41% in the 2021-22 school year.

The consequences of missing so much school can be devastating. One longitudinal study estimated that a quarter of students who were chronically absent — defined as missing at least 10% of days — ultimately dropped out.

Meanwhile, the youth mental health system is bending under the pressure, with a shortage of hospital beds for youth in crisis and waitlists for therapists, especially for Medicaid patients, that are monthslong.

This means families rely on schools even more. But New York City’s school social workers and guidance counselors are often strained, with an average of one social worker per 456 students and one guidance counselor per 277 students, according to an analysis. National guidance recommends one school counselor and one social worker for every 250 students. For children with more extreme needs, the recommended ratio is one social worker to 50 students.

Balancing high caseloads and sometimes multiple schools make it hard to follow time-consuming best practices to treat school refusal, such as individualized transition plans with gradual exposure to school. And schools may miss early warning signs altogether.

Several social workers also told Chalkbeat that they do not have dedicated supervisors to regularly advise them on difficult cases, a common practice in clinical settings that could help prevent burnout, especially for newly minted staffers.

“I always go to a trusted colleague to run through a case during a time of crisis, just to bounce ideas off of,” said Dr. Jessica Chock-Goldman, a social worker at Bard Early College High School in Manhattan and adjunct professor at New York University’s Silver School of Social Work. “If students who are newly out of their masters program, and do not have the training and background in how to properly assess a child for suicidal ideation or any high risk cases, how can we put full trust in this clinician?”

Myka, 17, returned to their Queens home for senior year after spending junior year at a residential therapeutic program in Utah.

Education Department officials confirmed that social workers have no direct supervisors, but said they have access to teams outside of their school in the superintendent and central offices for additional support. Central staffers host office hours with small groups and case conferencing sessions to discuss best practices and challenging cases, officials said, but they declined to provide how often these are held.

Officials also point out that every school has access to a mental health professional — though the fate of 500 social workers hired with federal relief dollars remains a question after that money dries up next year. Schools are focusing on breathing and mindfulness, and the health department plans to roll out teletherapy for high school students this year.

“We’re also working to improve attendance across our school system and ensure that every single student feels safe, seen, and welcomed every day in their school buildings and communities, and engaged in their classroom learning,” education department spokesperson Jenna Lyle said in an email.

In more than a decade working in schools, Chock-Goldman said she’s never seen the level of student need that she has in the past two years, and she’s worried schools are unprepared. “Kids spend more waking hours at school than any other place,” she said. “We’re the ones doing the work.”

Schools lack training to work with intense needs, some say

Michael’s freshman year guidance counselor was “well-intentioned,” but had little training or experience with school refusal, said his mom, a social worker herself. He started to avoid school that first year of high school, months before the pandemic, and exhibited signs that went unnoticed in elementary school.

His family transferred him in the middle of freshman year to a smaller Queens high school with a strong advisory program. Soon after, classes went remote, and Michael’s mental health spiraled. During his junior year, after Michael spent about a week in the hospital, the school social worker tried to connect the family with a day treatment program. Waitlists were too long.

His family considered various out-of-school learning options, such as a hybrid online and in-person model called Fusion and therapeutic boarding school. They also considered Mount Sinai’s Comprehensive Adolescent Rehabilitation and Education Service, known as CARES, which is a therapy-based school serving teens with severe emotional challenges. Because that program is an alternative school in the city’s District 79, kids earn class credits.

But the number of applicants to CARES, which serves about 50 teens, is often nearly as big as the program itself, said Dr. Kelly Mule, a psychologist at CARES and assistant professor of psychiatry at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine.

Michael didn’t want to attend any of these programs. He wanted to return to his Queens high school, but he didn’t know how.

By May of his junior year, as he took classes at home as part of the city’s program for students with medical conditions, Michael was able to walk inside the school building. He could sit with the social worker and work on Google classroom assignments, but he couldn’t make himself walk into the classrooms. He felt too awkward when people asked where he had been, Catherine said.

“Some of the teachers made comments, ‘I don’t even know this kid. Who is this kid?’” she recounted.

At CARES, for instance, teachers are trained on how to respond to kids after prolonged absences and follow their lead on workload, often in partnership with a child’s therapist, Mule said. While time-consuming and not foolproof, these strategies can shorten future absences.

But these best practices are often passed down by more experienced colleagues, she explained. That’s why in clinical settings, staffers with a licensed master of social work, have supervisors they meet with weekly to discuss cases — a resource missing for school social workers. To Mule’s surprise, she has met veteran school social workers who weren’t aware of city-funded programs for youth, such as Children’s Single Point of Access, a centralized system for finding mental health services.

“You can’t expect social workers to sustain their work with no supervision,” Mule said. “They need a seasoned supervisor who can connect them to resources that they have vetted and know work for a specific set of symptoms or needs.”

Mental health approaches can be uneven, even within schools

This past year at Manhattan’s High School for Environmental Studies, 17-year-old Myka was required to attend a guidance counselor’s lecture about suicide prevention and awareness. Myka, who was hospitalized for suicidal ideation in December 2020, the middle of sophomore year, thought making the lecture mandatory was “hilarious” and found the counselor’s delivery cringe-worthy.

Myka, 17, holds a fidget device called an infinity cube in their Queens backyard.

When schools went remote for the pandemic, Myka, who identifies as nonbinary, stopped attending classes online and barely left their room because “it didn’t make sense in my brain to do school at home,” they said. Instead of going back to their Queens high school, they spent several months at a wilderness program in Georgia, and then completed junior year in a residential therapeutic program in Utah.

But come senior year, they felt ready to return to New York City. Though they still suffered from social anxiety, depression, and ADHD symptoms, they had more coping skills and a stronger sense of self-advocacy through therapy and self work. That’s why the counselor’s lecture came as a shock.

“She said that telling someone ‘You’re being selfish’ when they tell you they’ve thought of hurting or seriously harming themselves was an okay way to respond,” Myka said. “It just wasn’t the message that should have been sent, and was a bit of a red flag in my book.”

The school social worker, on the other hand, was a source of comfort, helping figure out which accommodations on their special education plan were needed — and which weren’t. (The school’s principal declined to comment, directing questions to the Education Department.)

Myka didn’t, for instance, need classes with two teachers, a requirement that would have prevented them from taking most of their courses, including their favorite course: AP psychology.

Other accommodations were lifesavers. Myka took breaks during class to walk around or go to the social worker’s office. They were also allowed fidget toys in class, extensions on some assignments, extra time on tests, and specific instructions breaking down big projects into more manageable tasks. And their social worker brokered a meeting with Myka’s English teacher to allow headphones to cancel out class noise, as long as no music was playing.

“I do feel as though I am able to advocate for myself and feel heard, which is something I have received a lot of positive feedback about,” Myka said.

Myka will soon head to a dorm four hours away at SUNY Oneonta, where they plan to study psychology in hopes of becoming a therapist or social worker — inspired by their own experience in mental health treatment centers.

Krystal Folk, 31, a middle school social worker, poses for a portrait in Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn.

Myka’s success story illustrates the difference a great school professional can make, what KIPP charter school social worker Krystal Folk tries to accomplish with her Bronx students.

As a young Black girl growing up in Brooklyn, Folk herself felt like it wasn’t culturally acceptable to get therapy, a mindset she’s trying to change through her own work.

“In our community it’s taken a long time to accept that we need mental health services,” she said. That’s why she considers it extra important that she disclose to her students her own depression and anxiety.

“They say, ‘No Ms. Folk, you’re fine.’ I tell them, ‘I’m clinically diagnosed,’” she said. “I think normalizing that we have feelings and anxieties is important. As corny and cheesy as it sounds, I try to be the person I wish I had at their age.”

Services beyond schools are still needed

For some students, school doesn’t offer the services they need. But after getting help elsewhere, they are driven to return by a passion for learning.

That was the case with Emma, whose mother, Beth, turned to a private therapist for her daughter’s ADHD, extreme anxiety, and suicidal ideation that led to school refusal. Emma attended the famed LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, where there is one social worker for about 900 students, and one counselor for every 200 kids, according to an analysis. The school’s on-site mental health clinic closed during the pandemic, families said. (The school’s acting principal did not respond for comment.)

Beth credits her daughter’s return to school to dialectical behavior therapy, or DBT, which helps patients learn to confront and change unhealthy behaviors. Emma first had access to the “life changing” therapy in her after-care program following hospitalization when she was a sophomore.

But another factor in her recovery was her drive to succeed at LaGuardia and her love of the school’s drama classes, which drew her to school even as dark times returned junior year, when fights with friends on social media followed her into the classroom.

“She considered pulling out of school,” Beth said. “But she didn’t want to give up on LaGuardia. She just put one foot in front of the other.” Being in the drama program remained a big pull: “To be able to spend half of your day working on your art, whatever your art is, the joy of that never diminished,” her mom said.

Emma is now planning to attend college in upstate New York and hopes to become a director or art designer, said Beth.

Echoing other parents of students who suffered from school refusal, Beth said, “We are cautiously optimistic.”

If you or someone you know is considering self-harm, please dial 988 for the National Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC updates 2023-24 school calendar, adding 4 more days off

2023-06-26T16:54:19+00:00

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After many educators complained about certain holidays missing from the 2023-24 school calendar, New York City’s education department is adding four additional days off, officials announced Monday.

The city also shared the calendars for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 school years — after families expressed outrage over calendar delays the past few years.

The extra days for the upcoming school year are:

Monday, April 1, for the day after Easter.
Monday, April 29, and Tuesday, April 30, for the last two days of Passover, which did not fully overlap with spring break this year. (This extends the weeklong break by another two school days.)
Monday, June 17, for Eid al-Adha. (The holiday begins on June 16.)

The changes mean that there will be 178 instructional days for students on the calendar, down from the original 182, though state law requires that school districts remain in session for at least 180 days or risk losing state funding. City education department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer said the city will not violate the 180-day rule because certain days devoted to teacher training will count toward the requirement.

State officials confirmed that up to four conference days, including staff orientation, curriculum development, and parent-teacher conferences, may count toward the 180-day requirement. But a state education department spokesperson said compliance with the mandate would depend on how the city reports the days to the state and couldn’t yet offer a definitive answer.

The long-delayed calendar, released earlier this month, touched off a wave of anger among educators and families of various religious groups. Because Easter and Passover are so far apart this year (since the Jewish holiday follows a lunar calendar), spring break became a scheduling conundrum.

The city initially had a day off for Good Friday but not Easter Monday, sparking some backlash. And though spring break coincided with the start of the eight-day holiday of Passover, it did not include the last two days, spurring a petition that garnered nearly 4,000 signatures. Some also expressed concern that the calendar left out Eid al-Adha, which families observe starting on Sunday but continues into the next day.

The calendar changes, announced on the second-to-last day of the school year, came hours after city officials held a celebration at City Hall to commemorate the passage of a state law that mandates Diwali as an official school holiday.

The holiday will not affect next year’s calendar because Diwali falls on Sunday, Nov. 12. (There is no set date for Diwali each year, as it is governed by the lunar calendar, but it falls in October or November.)

“For over two decades, the South Asian and Indo-Caribbean community has fought for this moment,” state Assembly member Jenifer Rajkumar said during the celebration at City Hall on Monday that included a smattering of state and local officials, including Mayor Eric Adams and schools Chancellor David Banks.

Diwali, known as the “festival of lights,” celebrates the triumph of good over evil and is celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, and some Buddhists.

Lawmakers initially proposed removing Anniversary Day, also known as Brooklyn-Queens Day, a holiday that celebrates the founding of the first Sunday school on Long Island. But some legislators objected to removing that holiday and pushed behind the scenes to keep it.

Rajkumar initially said that the city would not be able to meet the 180-day requirement without finding another holiday to leave off, though city officials say they will be able to add the new holiday without such a change.

The bill has not yet been signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul, but a spokesperson signaled the governor’s support of the holiday and said the legislation is under review.

Banks emphasized that the education department plans to use the new holiday as an opportunity to teach children about Diwali, offering schools sample lesson plans and suggested activities. According to calendars posted Monday, New York City schools will be closed for Diwali on Monday, Oct. 20 in 2025. They will also be closed Friday, Nov. 1 in 2026.

“It’s less about the fact that schools will be closed in recognition of Diwali — it’s more about the fact that minds will be open because of what we are going to teach them,” he said.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

PLACE-endorsed candidates win nearly 40% of seats on NYC’s parent councils

2023-06-17T00:26:37+00:00

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Candidates endorsed by a polarizing group that advocates for screened school admissions won the majority of seats on about half a dozen parent councils this year, according to election results released Friday by the New York City education department.

Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, or PLACE, endorsed 147 candidates across the city for local district council seats, with 115 of them winning their races. The group’s preferred candidates will make up nearly 40% of the Community Education Council members across the five boroughs, according to a Chalkbeat analysis.

Established in 2019, PLACE supports the status quo when it comes to academic screening policies that have resulted in one of the nation’s most segregated school systems. That includes keeping the Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT, and expanding gifted and talented programs. The group generally opposes lottery-based admissions and paring back screened admissions to the city’s middle and high schools.

The Community Education Councils, or CECs, have the power to approve or reject school rezoning plans, pass resolutions about various school-related issues, and work with district superintendents. The 32 councils, which each have 10 elected members and two appointed by the local borough president, hold monthly public meetings.

There are also citywide councils for high school students, English learners, students with disabilities, and those enrolled in the city’s District 75 programs, which serve children with the most challenging disabilities.

This was the second CEC election where voting was open to parents citywide. To many watching races across the city, this year’s elections seemed more divisive than ever, with some candidates localizing culture wars playing out across the nation. CEC 2 winner Maud Maron, who co-founded PLACE and was previously on the District 2 parent council, told THE CITY, “Land acknowledgements don’t teach anybody more math,” referring to lessons about Indigenous people who inhabited land before European colonialism.

With her victory Friday, Maron will again sit on a CEC that represents one of the most affluent swaths of Manhattan.

Some of PLACE’s ideas have found favor with schools Chancellor David Banks, such as expanding gifted and talented seats. The organization had Banks’ ear at the very start of his tenure, appearing on his schedule last March.

Some education advocates have grown concerned about PLACE’s influence, pointing to the views of some of their members, including comparing critical race theory, an academic framework about systemic racism, to Nazi ideology, as reported by THE CITY. Several candidates endorsed by the group backed away from that support during the election season.

PLACE wasn’t alone in endorsing candidates. A group called Parents for Middle School Equity, based in Brooklyn’s District 15 (which includes Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Red Hook, and part of Sunset Park), appears to be ideologically opposed to PLACE. The group’s interest is in preserving the district’s middle school integration plan. But its influence fell far below PLACE’s: Less than a quarter of its endorsed candidates won seats across the city, a Chalkbeat analysis found.

A few districts appeared to be PLACE strongholds: Every person elected to the CEC in Brooklyn’s District 20, which spans Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Borough Park, and part of Sunset Park, was endorsed by PLACE. All of the group’s preferred candidates also won seats on the CECs representing two large Queens districts — nine people in District 26 (which covers northeast Queens, including Bayside) and seven in District 28, where a controversial push to integrate its middle schools from Forest Hills to Jamaica was derailed by the pandemic.

Still, the Equity group’s preferred candidates outnumbered PLACE’s endorsed candidates in a handful of districts, including East Harlem’s District 4, Harlem’s District 5, Williamsburg’s District 14, and District 15.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that District 26 includes northeast Queens, including Bayside.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Black and Latino enrollment in NYC specialized high school integration program still lags

2023-06-14T18:30:00+00:00

A program aimed at bolstering the numbers of Black and Latino students in New York City’s prestigious specialized high schools continues to enroll a majority of Asian American students, according to recently released data.

The Discovery program is for eighth graders from low-income families who score just below the cutoff for the Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT. If they successfully complete coursework during the three- to five-week summer program, it could be their ticket into Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, or one of the other six specialized high schools that require the test as the sole admissions criteria.

For September’s rising ninth graders, after 4,050 test takers received an offer based on their test scores, the city extended offers to 855 students to participate this summer in the Discovery program. (Not everyone who gets invited into the program will accept the offer or end up enrolling at a specialized high school.) Nearly 60%, or 509, of the participants in this year’s Discovery program were Asian American, according to city data. That’s even higher than the share of Asian Americans who got offers to specialized high schools based on the SHSAT, which was about 53%.

Overall, Asian American students make up about 17% of students citywide.

Meanwhile, nearly 12% of the Discovery program seats — or 99 — went to Black students, and 20%, or 172, went to Latino students. That’s higher than the overall percentage of Black and Latino students who got specialized high school offers based on the test, 3% and 6%, respectively.

It’s still not representative of the school system as a whole: Roughly 24% of the city’s students are Black across the city, and 41% are Latino.

The numbers of Black and Latino students admitted to specialized high schools based on the entrance exam remains stubbornly low. This year, Stuyvesant, for instance, accepted just seven Black students based on SHSAT scores. That was a higher number than three other specialized high schools, including Staten Island Tech, which accepted zero Black students based on the test.

Tweaking Discovery program to boost numbers of Black and Latino students

A few years back, as city officials saw that the program helped more white and Asian American students gain admission to eight city high schools, they tweaked the program. In 2020, Mayor Bill de Blasio expanded the program to 20% of seats at specialized high schools, up from 13% the year before. De Blasio also changed eligibility requirements so that students must come from schools where most of their peers are economically disadvantaged.

The share of Black and Latino students in the program, however, is slightly lower than the first year after the program’s expansion. In 2020, nearly 35% of the offers in the Discovery program went to Black and Latino students, which was about 3 percentage points higher than this year’s offers.

That year saw 50% of the offers go to Asian American students, nearly 10 percentage points lower than this year’s offers.

The percent of white students, however, has dropped nearly in half from 14% in 2020 to about 7% this year.

The composition of students in the Discovery program will reflect that of the total SHSAT test-taking pool, education department officials said, since taking the SHSAT is still required for entry into the program.

But there’s still a mismatch between the number of Black and Latino students who took the test and qualified for spots in the Discovery program, according to city data. Of the roughly 27,700 eighth graders who took the SHSAT this school year, nearly 21% were Black and 26% were Latino.

The SHSAT, enshrined by state law in 1971, has long been controversial, with integration advocates blaming it for the low number of Black and Latino students at specialized high schools. That same state law also created the Discovery program for high-performing students from “disadvantaged” families to gain entry to the coveted high schools. But over the years, the program fell by the wayside at some schools, and was not operated consistently. In 2016, for instance, just 120 students received offers to five specialized high schools through the Discovery program. Stuyvesant and Bronx Science had long before stopped participating at that point.

Specialized high schools continue to be a battleground

Many Asian American families have pushed back against efforts to change the admissions process for specialized high schools, and a group of Asian American parents, along with Asian civil rights groups and a parent-teacher association, filed a lawsuit in 2018 against the Discovery program. They claimed that Asian American students would be squeezed out of the specialized high schools and said the program violated their civil rights. A federal judge in September dismissed the case, citing that more Asian American students had been offered seats under the program.

Nyah Berg, of the integration advocacy nonprofit New York Appleseed, was unsurprised that Discovery hadn’t done much to shift the demographics of specialized high school students given that it simply expanded the same system of basing admissions on a single test.

“The Discovery program does what it can, but at the end of the day, it’s a bandaid on a much much larger systemic wound,” she said in an email.

She also said that challenges remain in making Black and Latino students feel welcome at specialized high schools.

For some, it has not been easy to feel a part of the school culture, and that could affect who applies. Students may find themselves “battling systemic racism and microaggressions” at specialized high schools, Berg said.

“It’s not just the admissions process but also what happens once accepted and you are in the school,” Berg said.

There’s not only more work to desegregate the schools, she said, but also to integrate them.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC teachers union and Adams administration reach tentative deal on 5-year contract

2023-06-13T20:12:43+00:00

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New York City reached a deal with the teachers union for a five-year contract that includes annual raises, expands opportunities for virtual learning, and allows some remote work for certain employees, Mayor Eric Adams announced Tuesday.

The tentative deal for the United Federation of Teachers’ 115,000 full-time and 5,000 part-time education department employees includes 3% wage increases for the first three years, followed by a 3.25% increase in the fourth year, and 3.5% in the fifth year. The full contract would cost the city $6.4 billion, city officials said.

Starting salary for new teachers will jump from $61,070 to $72,349 by the end of the contract. In five years, the most experienced teachers will earn $151,271. The deal also proposes to cut in half the amount of time it takes teachers to reach a $100,000 salary — from 15 to eight years.

It also includes annual retention bonuses that will grow to $1,000 in 2026, for as long as an employee is an education department employee, and will be built into the system going forward. It’s the first time the union has negotiated such a payment, said Michael Mulgrew, president of the teachers union, during a press conference announcing the deal.

“We’re saying to all of our titles and every member, whether you’re in the first year or your 25th year, New York City is saying that we appreciate you, we recognize the challenges that you take on every day and you will receive $1,000 every [year] for that,” Mulgrew said. [Mulgrew initially misspoke, and his statement has been clarified.]

The retention bonus is “a good strategy” for keeping teachers, said Melissa Arnold Lyon, assistant professor of politics and policy at the University of Albany, who has been following the UFT’s contract negotiations. Teacher turnover rates in New York City and elsewhere hit an unusual high after last school year, potentially exacerbated by the stresses of the pandemic.

“There are a lot of costs of trying to find and hire new teachers,” Lyon said. “If $1,000 helps you to keep a teacher, at least on the micro level, that’s worth it.”

The agreement is retroactive to Sept. 14, 2022, and runs through Nov. 28, 2027, city officials said. The wage increases follow the pattern of raises set by the February agreement with District Council 37, which includes cafeteria workers, parent coordinators, and crossing guards.

Many teachers expected that their union would follow suit and had expressed concerns given that the previous deals were not keeping pace with inflation, which has moderated somewhat in recent months but reached 6.5% last year. Teachers had complained that their responsibilities have only increased since the pandemic, as they continue to catch up students academically and socially from years of interrupted learning.

A virtual learning program to expand

The contract would expand a pilot remote learning project that allowed small schools to offer virtual courses — such as AP Chemistry — that they otherwise couldn’t because of staffing issues. This year, the program used federal funding to grow, reaching about 1,500 students across 58 schools, with 23 separate online courses outside traditional school hours.

Under the tentative deal, high schools, as well as schools that serve grades 6-12, could offer virtual courses after school and on the weekends starting in the next academic year, union officials said, though nothing would bar schools from creating tutoring programs, too. Those programs would be available to students who volunteer to participate, and would be staffed by volunteer teachers. A quarter of high schools would be allowed to participate next year, growing to all high schools by the 2027-28 school year. High schools must apply to participate, education officials said.

Courses might be offered at individual schools or through the central education department, and high schools must apply to participate, education officials said. Part-time remote teachers can apply to be part of their school-based remote program and work before or after the school day; there will also be full-time, centrally hired teachers for the other program.

Programs could vary, Gendar said. For example, a school could offer evening courses, from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., for students who are missing classes because they’re working day jobs, she said.

Schools could offer non-traditional schedules for students and teachers who want them. If a teacher volunteers to work a virtual program in addition to their regular work day, they will be paid overtime, Gendar said.

During a press conference, schools Chancellor David Banks said the virtual learning agreement gives students more flexibility, noting that some benefited from remote learning during the pandemic.

“Students who were at risk of dropping out were able to continue their coursework on a schedule that works best for them,” Banks said of remote learning during the start of the pandemic. “This expands those types of opportunities across the entire system.”

The contract would also allow some employees, who don’t work directly in schools, to work remotely for up to two days a week. It was not immediately clear which employees that would include.

Another sticking point was over how teachers would get to spend an extra 155 minutes each week after school. The deal would allow them, as they did this year, to do professional development and parent outreach, and it added a new option for teachers to do other classroom work of their choice in that time.

Teachers have mixed feelings

The contract is not yet final. First, the union’s negotiating committee, composed of 500 members, along with its executive board and delegate assembly will decide whether to send the tentative deal to all union members for a vote. Union officials did not immediately provide dates for those votes.

Some teachers took to social media to criticize the deal, but pushing back against it could be an uphill battle. The union cannot easily pull off a work stoppage because a teachers strike would violate New York’s Taylor Law, which imposes significant financial penalties for public sector unions that strike.

Robert Effinger, a union chapter leader at the Bronx High School of Business, said the pay increases surpassed his expectations.

Although some educators hoped that the salary increases would exceed inflation, the union was hemmed in by the pattern set by unions that negotiated contracts earlier this year. But Effinger said he was glad to see the union negotiate a quicker path to higher pay, an issue he hopes will help retain more educators.

“One of the reasons people burn out in education is they feel like they’re doing a lot of labor that is not appropriately compensated,” he said. “Having an accelerated early track is better for keeping people in.”

Still, he said he’s eager to hear more details about other elements of the contract including increased teacher autonomy, a major part of the union’s campaign, which focused on burdensome paperwork requirements educators face.

The union plans to hold a virtual town hall for members on Thursday at 4 p.m.

Alex Zimmerman contributed.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

This Queens math teacher started mentoring Ukrainian educators after Russia’s invasion

2023-06-09T15:45:00+00:00

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High school math teacher Larisa Bukalov came to the U.S. with her family 30 years ago as a refugee from Ukraine, when it was part of the Soviet Union. She was 19 at the time.

In the eyes of many New Yorkers, she was Russian, which was her first language. How she viewed herself, however, changed when Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.

“The words can’t describe the pain and anxiety I experienced when the first tanks started advancing to Kyiv,” said Bukalov, who’s been teaching at Bayside High School in Queens for 25 years. “On that day, my identity changed from Russian emigrant to Ukrainian American.”

Remembering how her own childhood was filled with math competitions that pushed her to feel challenged and engaged, she wrote to the Mathematical Association of America, asking if she could organize the American Mathematics Competition in Ukraine, since that nation’s local and regional competitions had been canceled. To Bukalov’s surprise, the math organization agreed to her plan. Bukalov assumed the role as the association’s liaison to Ukraine.

The organization Tutoring Without Borders helped her advertise the contest and recruit students. She used social media to find kids and teachers and fundraised to pay the competition fees and contest translations. In the end, 196 Ukrainian students signed up, though only 152 competed because of lack of heat and electricity and internet interruptions, Bukalov said. Roughly 30 of the participating students were Ukrainian students who had fled the country and were living abroad, including four living in the U.S. (Bukalov helped get them permission to take the exam in Ukrainian.)

Bukalov, who has taught everything from pre-algebra to multivariable calculus, is being recognized this month by Math for America, receiving the organization’s prestigious Muller Award for Professional Influence in Education for her commitment to developing current and future mathematics teachers through mentoring, writing textbooks, and designing professional learning experiences.

She joined Math for America more than 15 years ago, around the time she considered getting a doctorate in math education. The organization, which builds a community for exceptional math and science teachers, offered her a different solution: to stay in the classroom and practice her craft while mentoring teachers and creating professional development workshops.

Now, Bukalov is trying to start an organization based on the Math for America model in Ukraine. She spoke recently with Chalkbeat.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How and when did you decide to become a teacher?

I was raised by my maternal grandparents who were teachers. You can say that I grew up in a school. By the end of eighth grade, I firmly believed that I wanted to teach math. There were a few reasons for it:

• I entered high school at the end of the Soviet era and Perestroika. My classmates constantly harassed our government and history teacher about her brainwashing and lying to her students for years. Did she really believe in what she was teaching? I did not want to wear her shoes.

• As I learned more advanced mathematics, I loved it more and more. I used to spend hours and sometimes days on a particularly interesting problem until, finally, I would come up with a solution.

• Probably the most important reason was my grandfather. As I got older, I understood that my grandfather was a brilliant mathematician. He also was not just a math teacher in a rural Ukrainian school. He trained teachers, lectured in a local teacher college, wrote articles, and presented at conferences. I wanted to emulate him in everything he did.

Tell us more about your role as the Mathematical Association of America’s liaison to Ukraine.

While working on the contest, I often heard that ‘we have to save the best Ukrainian kids.’ That really bothered me. As an educator, I was thinking about the struggling students. Who is helping them?

Around that time, I saw a picture of a Ukrainian math teacher sitting in a gas station and teaching his class remotely. I wondered how many of my colleagues would do the same. I started working with Ukrainian math teachers. Together with [math education researcher] Daryna Vasilieva, we started a Telegram group for math teachers. [Telegram is a messaging and audio platform similar to WhatsApp.]

We organized workshops supporting Ukrainian school reform, New Ukrainian School, and opened space for teachers to showcase their work, share concerns, and collaboratively plan. Now our dream is to build a community similar to the Math for America model.

A map of teacher locations in the Telegram group that Bukalov helped create. The group is made up of Ukrainian math teachers.

Are there ways the Russian invasion of Ukraine has affected your students here in NYC? Did your students do the math contest with the students from Ukraine?

In the U.S., any student is invited to the first round. In New York City, large non-specialized high schools like Bayside, Cardozo, Francis Lewis, and Midwood sign up to participate in the American mathematics competition. All specialized high schools participate. In the U.S., the top 5% of participants get invited to the next level; 11% of Ukrainian kids received qualifying scores.

My math team students wanted to know how the kids in Ukraine scored relative to them. They compared their solutions and exchanged challenge problems.

During the competition season, my department and school administration were also very supportive. Teachers volunteered to proctor the exams, generously donated money, and frequently just asked how the kids were doing.

This experience also opened a space for my students to share their family histories and talk about struggles their families had as new immigrants. The war in Ukraine became real, not just an item from the list of current events. In math we seldom get an opportunity to talk about democracy, identity, and justice. This year kids were a lot more open.

What’s your favorite lesson to teach and why?

Anything that can be taught using textile or visual experiences, like manipulatives or illustrations. For example, the area model. We first find the area model in the writing of Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, who is considered the father of modern algebra.

This model illustrates operations with numbers and polynomials and helps students to build an intuitive understanding of algebra without memorizing long and meaningless preceders. (I can’t memorize!) Teachers who use this model are building a bridge between basic arithmetics and sophisticated algebraic computations used in advanced mathematics. Their students are more likely to see a big and connected system instead of a disjointed list of steps and procedures. This model also presents an opportunity to discuss non-European origins of modern algebra.

Kids love to know who thought of this stuff!

A stamp issued on Sept. 6, 1983 in the Soviet Union commemorates Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi’s (approximate) 1200th birthday.

Tell us about your own experience with school and how it affects your work today.

Remember that I attended school in the USSR.

I was very lucky to have many outstanding teachers. For example, My first to third grade teacher received the national teaching award. In the early 1980s, she had an overhead projector, used homemade manipulatives, frequently used group work, and took on student teachers.

My Ukrainian language and literature teacher was the most kind and sweet person. I could sit for hours and listen to her speak Ukrainian. It is very melodic. I always loved reading, but after meeting her, I became obsessed with Ukrainian poetry, folk music and dance, and ethnic costumes. My dolls were the best dressed because I used to make outfits for them based on the pictures of historic Ukrainian garments I researched in the library.

What new issues arose at your school or in your classroom during the 2022-23 school year, and how did you address them?

Mental health is still the big one after we came back to school from fully remote instruction. In each of my classes, at least one student was out of school for an extended period of time, more than two weeks, due to mental health illness. This is significantly more compared to pre-COVID. In Bayside, the caseload of each guidance counselor was reduced to 250 students, and additional social workers were hired. Teachers are very alert to changes in students’ moods and attendance. We try our best. Parents often complain to us that they can’t get services for their children outside the school because most of the providers do not take their insurance and only accept out-of-pocket payments.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received, and how have you put it into practice?

After teaching for a few months, I lost my voice. My grandfather, as a teacher trainer, diagnosed my illness: “You are talking too much! Your job is to facilitate the conversation in your classroom, not to talk at your students.” This affected my teaching in two ways. I stopped talking at my students and concentrated more on creating lessons where my students can do most of the thinking and explaining.

Additionally, I learned that when things in the classroom do not work out the way I planned, I need to examine my own teaching practices and see what needs to be changed. Blaming parents, elementary school teachers, or anyone else is not productive. However, reflecting on your own teaching practices is a constructive way to grow professionally.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC’s 2023-24 school calendar is out, and many teachers aren’t happy

2023-06-02T19:12:26+00:00

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The wait is over: New York City’s 2023-24 school calendar is live.

The first day of classes will be Thursday, Sept. 7, according to the calendar posted on Friday. Teachers are expected to report two days before that, education department officials said.

The state requires a minimum of 180 instructional days, but this year’s calendar has 182 days for students since several holidays fall on weekends. Under the teachers union contract, however, the end date remains unchanged. (Next year, the last day of school is Wednesday, June 26.) Because of this, many teachers are complaining about having to work more days than usual.

Families and educators across the five boroughs have been eagerly awaiting news on the calendar, expressing frustration with the delay. Last year’s calendar was released slightly earlier, on May 31.

Before the pandemic, New York City’s school calendar was released in March or April. Other school districts that start after Labor Day approved their calendars in March, including Newark, Philadelphia, and Boston.

*angry mob outside of Tweed returns home* https://t.co/lupNYRE4ey
— Nathaniel Styer (@necs) June 2, 2023

Here are some other calendar quirks to be aware of:

Unlike in some years that are filled with days off in September, the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah falls on a weekend, so the only day off that first month is for the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur on Monday, Sept. 25.
As in this school year, Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 7, is a day off for kids. (The year before that, students were supposed to be learning remotely that day.)
Veterans Day falls on Saturday, Nov. 11, so will not be observed as a school holiday.
There’s been a push to make Diwali a school holiday, but that holiday — observed by Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, and some Buddhists — falls on Sunday, Nov. 12, so it wouldn’t overlap with school regardless. (The state legislature has yet to approve that.)
Winter recess is from Monday, Dec. 25, until Monday, Jan. 1.
Lunar New Year once again falls on a weekend, on Saturday, Feb. 10, so there’s no day off for that holiday.
There will be days off sprinkled through spring for various holidays: Schools will be off for Good Friday on March 29 and for the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr on Wednesday, April 10. Spring break, which coincides with Passover, is from Monday, April 22, to Friday, April 26. Schools are open for last two days of Passover, however, and some educators are worried that those who observe may have to take extra time off. (Education department officials said spring break doesn’t always cover the entire Passover holiday.) Some teachers also were upset about not having off for Holy Thursday and Easter Monday.
Similar to this year, schools will be closed for students on Thursday, June 6, and Friday, June 7 for “Anniversary Day” and “Clerical Day.”
Eid al-Adha falls on Sunday, June 16, so it will not be a day off for schools.

Under New York State law, federal holidays that fall on a Sunday are observed the following Monday, but if they fall on a Saturday, they are not observed on a weekday. When holidays that New York City schools observe but are not federal holidays fall on a weekend — such as Rosh Hashanah, Lunar New Year, and Eid al-Adha — students do not get a day off during the week.

The city is continuing its practice of going remote for snow days, though this year, the lack of snow meant no cancellations.

Teachers union president Michael Mulgrew expressed concern about the calendar in an email to his members, saying that the education department released it without having completed negotiations about how teachers should use extended time during the week. In recent years, they used an extra 155 minutes each week for professional development and family engagement. Without an agreement in place, Mulgrew said, that time will revert back to a prior agreement of using 37.5 minutes on tutoring or small group work after school on Monday through Thursday.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC school admission offers are out. Here’s what the numbers show.

2023-06-02T00:41:43+00:00

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Despite the stress of applying to New York City public schools, more children received offers to their top-choice schools across all grade levels, education department officials said Thursday.

New York City schools have long relied on the practice of sorting and screening many kids, leading to a Hunger Games-like mindset for many families. It has also resulted in one of the nation’s most segregated school systems.

This year’s offer data shows little change in terms of racial and economic diversity compared to last year.

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” said Nyah Berg, of the integration advocacy nonprofit New York Appleseed, who previously expressed concerns that changes to this year’s admissions cycle could lead to less diverse schools. “We have made a lot of progress over the past two years.”

As the pandemic forced many schools to drop or shift their admissions criteria, some schools have become more diverse. Though integration advocates had long been pushing for such changes, it only happened by necessity because attendance could no longer be held against students, and standardized tests were not administered as they typically were. Neither Mayor Eric Adams nor Chancellor David Banks has made integration a top priority.

“If we really want to create and foster diverse schools there’s a lot more to be done than tinkering here and there,” Berg said.

Still, she believed this year’s changes centralizing admissions for high school, in particular, made the process more transparent, and she’s hopeful the city will continue to ditch standardized test scores and attendance in screening applicants.

Here’s a snapshot of what offers looked like for different grades.

Status quo for specialized high schools

Once again, few Black and Latino students were admitted to New York City’s eight prestigious specialized high schools, which accept students based solely on a single admissions test.

Black and Latino students made up nearly 10% of offers for next year’s class, according to education department data released Thursday.

That’s about the same as the previous year and the year before that. Just seven Black students were admitted to Stuyvesant based on the admissions exam — and that number was higher than three other specialized high schools.

Black and Latino students make up about 66% of students citywide.

The small number of Black and Latino students at the city’s specialized high schools has long been the subject of fierce debate, with many blaming the disparity on the reliance of a single test for admissions. (The admissions method is governed by state law.) The Adams administration has made little indication that it plans to change the way students are admitted to these schools, largely considered the Ivy League of New York City high schools.

About 26,000 eighth graders took the Specialized High School Admissions test this year, down about 2,000 from last year, according to city data.

Little change at selective high schools

For admissions to other selective New York City high schools, little changed. The education department created a tiered system for the city’s selective schools — like Beacon, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Townsend Harris — based on seventh grade scores in core subjects. The changes were aimed to simplify the process but also raised the bar for scores needed to qualify for the top group, narrowing the group of kids with priority access to these coveted schools.

Banks stirred up controversy when discussing the shift: “If a young person is working their tail off every single day and they get a 99% average … that should be honored,” he said at the time. “You should not be thrown in a lottery with just everybody.”

There were some concerns that the changes would reverse some of the pandemic-era diversity gains seen when competitive schools could no longer rely as heavily on grades and other screening measures, like state tests scores and attendance. But more than 40 of these schools have programs that set aside a certain percentage of their seats for students from low-income families or in temporary housing, for instance. That meant if there were not enough students with top grades for “group 1” who met the eligibility requirements for a school’s diversity targets, such as a certain percentage of students from low-income families, then those seats went to applicants in the next tier.

Despite these shifts in selection criteria, the offers reveal that little changed in racial and economic demographics compared to last year when an 85 grade point average was the cutoff for the top tier instead of this year’s 90 GPA. Roughly 32% of offers at these schools went to Latino students, followed by 25% to Asian American students, 19% to Black students, and 17% to white students. Roughly 66% of the offers went to students from low-income families.

Overall, of the roughly 73,000 eighth graders across the city receiving offers this year, about 48% percent got into their top choice. That isn’t far from last year, when about 50% got their first choice or the previous year when 46% got their No. 1 pick.

About 75% applicants got into one of their top three choices, up two percentage points from last year.

The city extended offers three months earlier than last year. The goal, city officials said, was to let families know before private school deposit deadlines.

Number of screened programs drops dramatically at middle school

Following two years without selective admissions for New York City middle schools — as the pandemic upended state test scores and other screening criteria — Banks let each district’s superintendent decide whether to reinstate competitive middle school admissions.

Some families lobbied to bring back screens, while others pushed to ditch them, saying it was unfair to sort the city’s 10-year olds based on their academic performance from fourth grade.

After superintendents spent about a month deliberating with their communities, nearly all opted for fewer or the same number of screened middle schools as before the pandemic. Nearly 60 of 478 middle schools ended up reinstating screens for at least some segment of their incoming sixth graders based on their fourth grade marks; 24 of these programs used selective criteria for all incoming sixth graders.

That dramatically reduced the number of kids in screened middle school programs from about 16,510 getting such offers in 2020 to about 5,100 with offers for the coming school year, according to the data.

The breakdown of students by income in screened programs remained fairly steady, with about 60% coming from low-income families. The share of Asian American students jumped to 35%, up from 21% in 2020, likely based on the demographics of which districts opted for screened programs.

Overall, 74% of the city’s fifth graders received an offer for their top choice, and 92% got one of their top three choices.

Kindergarten offers slightly up

City data also reflected a slight increase in kindergarten applicants, with about 1,200 more children applying. Those figures included applications for spots in the city’s coveted “gifted and talented” program, which used teacher evaluations instead of the prepandemic exams to select preschoolers.

About 95% of families saw their children admitted to one of their top three choices this year — up 4% from last year — as more seats were available and as the city said it extended more offers to families interested in schools outside of their zone or district.

This year, applications to the gifted and talented program were included with general kindergarten admission. Officials did not release admissions data for the gifted and talented program Thursday.

In the past, the program has faced criticism for admitting small numbers of Black and Hispanic students.

The application process underwent multiple changes during the pandemic, with Adams and Banks reversing a plan to phase out the program and choosing instead to expand the track by 100 seats in kindergarten last year.

Applications up slightly for 3-K and pre-K

For the city’s youngest students, admissions data showed a slight uptick as the city saw more applicants and more children set to receive 3-K and pre-K offers.

Admissions to 3-K programs rose by 8% this year, as the number of applicants rose to roughly 41,600. That was up from just under 40,000 in 2022.

For families applying, 68% were admitted to their first-choice program, up 5% from 2022.

Nearly 61,000 children received offers to pre-K programs this year — a jump of 3% from the year prior. That came as applications were up more than 3,000 from 2022, though still well below pre-pandemic figures.

Among applicants, 84% were admitted to their first-choice program.

The numbers come as a consulting firm’s report found the city’s early childhood system — including 3K, pre-K, as well as infants and toddlers — currently had roughly 30,000 empty seats — many of which were not in areas where demand is high, according to officials. That meant some parts of the city would see waitlists for spots, while others had thousands of empty seats, officials said.

The city did not release the complete findings of the report Thursday, which it paid the firm Accenture more than $760,000 to conduct. But its prognosis echoes a common criticism from the Adams administration — that the supply and demand of seats have been misaligned in areas across the city.

Officials said that the findings pointed toward a need to look at enrollment projections and available seats within zip codes, redistributing seats to areas with higher demand.

Of the approximately 140,000 seats across the city’s early childhood system, between roughly 119,000 and 127,000 were projected to be filled in 2024-25, according to the report.

“The city is focused on matching seats to parent demand—and that’s not a bad thing—but they should also be working to increase parent demand, particularly among underserved communities where children currently have the least access to quality early education programs,” said Halley Potter, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation. “The Adams administration has not provided the needed investments in outreach, and that, combined with the lagging effects of the pandemic disruption to early childhood settings, is a recipe for inequity.”

The city’s free prekindergarten program has struggled this year, as delayed payments have caused some providers to shutter. Some officials and advocates, including City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, have criticized the administration for its handling of the early education system.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

What happened to the social-emotional screening tool that NYC schools began using last year?

2023-05-25T18:00:00+00:00

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New York City’s education department plans to ditch a controversial social skills assessment for the coming school year, Chalkbeat has learned.

The tool’s proponents believe it’s a missed opportunity to help shift school culture to become more responsive to children’s social-emotional wellbeing, particularly at a time when needs are high.

In many ways, however, the tool’s rollout was doomed from the start.

Officials knew that students would have increased mental health demands when they returned to classrooms last year. They promised to be ready.

It was December 2020, long before the start of the new school year, when officials released a “mental health and wellbeing plan,” highlighting how schools would use a five-minute assessment to quickly identify significant emotional issues. The results would help flag individuals who needed more intensive interventions and support.

About eight months after that announcement, the city approved a 3-year $18 million contract to Aperture, an education technology company that created a platform to administer what’s known as the Devereux Student Strengths Assessment, or DESSA.

A few months later, in October 2021, education department officials shared the assessment tool with teachers, giving them a short runway to figure out how to utilize it.

The backlash against the DESSA was swift. Teachers feared they didn’t know their students well enough and that their responses could be biased. Many revolted against the directive to administer it, asking parents to opt out. Parents from various ends of the political spectrum refused to have their kids assessed. Some had concerns about privacy and data security, others worried about the questions’ overreach and the time it would take teachers away from building relationships with their children.

Many questioned the cost of the tool — though broken down by school, it came to roughly $3,300 a year for each school.

This year, the education department quietly backed off the initiative, making it optional for schools to administer the DESSA. Many educators told Chalkbeat that their schools ditched it. Education department officials declined to disclose how many schools continue to use it, but confirmed that the citywide DESSA program is expected to be discontinued in the coming school year.

“Broad implementation of the screener was only a temporary initiative,” education department spokesperson Jenna Lyle said in an email. “While the screener will no longer be administered city-wide, the practice has helped schools to understand the importance of identifying students who may be in need of additional support and prioritizing wellness among the entire school community.”

Schools can continue to implement social-emotional screening assessments, if they choose to, and the department is available to assist with that process, she said.

For David Adams, the CEO of Urban Assembly, a network of about two dozen schools across the city that have long incorporated the DESSA, the assessment tool is critical, especially at a time when many kids don’t feel like they have a trusted adult on campus.

Of the sixth through 12th graders across the city who responded to last year’s school survey, more than 1 in 5 did not have at least one adult in the school they could confide in.

The criticism from teachers about not knowing their students well enough to fill out the assessments is precisely the reason that it’s needed, Adams said.

“The tool becomes the intervention,” he said. “A teacher who is paying attention to student interactions will be able to fill it out. A teacher who doesn’t know their students, isn’t collaborative with them… that’s where you’re seeing the opportunity.”

Problems with DESSA rollout

The messaging around the initial announcement of the mental health plan laid some of the groundwork for pushback. Educators and parents worried about overstepping boundaries when it came to evaluating kids’ mental health.

The DESSA, however, is not about identifying mental health issues. It aims to gauge social skills such as decision-making, self-awareness, and taking personal responsibility. Among the 40 questions: During the past four weeks, how often did the child keep trying when unsuccessful? Get things done within a timely fashion? Show good judgment? Offer to help somebody?

It also often took more than five minutes for a teacher to fill out the questions for each student. Teachers were expected to fill it out in the fall and spring to track a student’s social-emotional arc over the year. It often felt like one more burden, teachers said.

Moreover, several educators told Chalkbeat they didn’t know how the results were used and didn’t think that schools got more support for counselors if they ended up flagging students who needed more help.

“Vague promises were made about school-level support that might materialize depending on the results of the DESSA screeners,” said Brittany Kaiser, an art teacher at the Earth School, an elementary school in Manhattan’s East Village. “We were, and are, in desperate need of more guidance counselors and social workers, more funding for other support positions, and trainings on trauma-informed teaching, de-escalation strategies, restorative justice implementation, and conflict resolution strategies.”

That support, however, never materialized, she said.

When the tool was made optional this year, Kaiser’s school dropped it.

Overall, fewer Manhattan schools filled out the DESSA than their counterparts in other boroughs, according to fall 2022 data obtained by Chalkbeat. Roughly 67% of Manhattan schools used the tool in the fall, while about 75% in Brooklyn and Queens did. Schools in Staten Island and the Bronx had the highest rates at 84% and 80%, respectively.

New York City schools are trying to focus more on social-emotional learning. The DESSA was supposed to help.

The education department tried to make it easier to administer the DESSA, giving high schools the option of having students fill out the questionnaire themselves, while elementary and middle schools could allow parents to fill out the questions, according to updated guidance sent to principals earlier this year. Officials also told schools they could tap federal relief funding to pay teachers extra for filling out the tool beyond the school day.

Allowing students and parents to fill out the form dilutes the intent, Adams said. He sees the tool as a way to get teachers to pay closer attention to their students through a “strength-based” framework and give educators a common language on how to discuss those skills.

Adams compared the assessment to an approach that a coach uses for athletes, observing and giving suggestions based on those observations. Rather than a screener, Adams views the DESSA as a “feedback tool.”

“The goal is not ultimately about having people rate kids,” he said. “It’s about every kid having social emotional competence and teachers learning to see and give feedback on that. Feedback drives learning.”

Teachers are often giving feedback on social-emotional skills that’s tied up in grades, Adams said. They might, for instance, conflate mastery of a topic with things like deadlines. The tool provides a way to tease that apart and enable a teacher to discuss the importance of responsibility and turning assignments in on time. Rather than simply taking 10 points off on an assignment, for example, it gives the teacher “the language and the clarity” to talk about certain skills a student needs to be successful.

According to Adams, about 47% of a student’s grade is linked to social-emotional competency scores, and the DESSA, he believes, can help schools address issues, such as goal-setting, which affect academic performance.

Using the tool to change teaching and learning

The Urban Assembly network began incorporating the DESSA years ago, after seeing how nonprofit youth development organizations, such as the Children’s Aid Society, were using it to focus on social-emotional outcomes. The network employs 14 social-emotional learning specialists that fan out to schools to assist them with how to use the DESSA. (Meisha Porter, who was chancellor at the time the city selected the DESSA, had been a principal of an Urban Assembly school — after taking over from current Chancellor David Banks.) But the intensive assistance from the Urban Assembly was never scaled across the system, leaving many schools adrift when it came to incorporating the tool.

“If it feels like an add on…it’s not going to be useful,” said Delia Veve, principal of Manhattan’s Urban Assembly Media High School. “If people are doing it out of compliance and begrudgingly, then it’s about checking a box. What does that accomplish?”

The school goes all in on the tool. Before they administer it for their students, the adults at Veve’s school study the skills on the DESSA, to help them reflect on what they mean and how they might show up, the principal explained. Then, each of the roughly 350 students are assessed twice a year by at least two different adults, including the teacher from advisory, to help address possible biases in responses.

“I recognize that’s a heavy lift,” Veve said, “but it does make that data that much more reliable.”

Her school uses results from the DESSA less for identifying individuals who need more dedicated support and more for identifying trends across the grades to change teaching practices.

The school noticed last year that relationship skills were a bigger area of weakness than previously, which was unsurprising given the prolonged isolation during the pandemic and the continued COVID mitigations last year that prevented a lot of group work. So this year, the school bolstered opportunities for kids to work collaboratively.

Rather than view the responses as an issue where students aren’t demonstrating certain competencies, it reveals where the school might not be creating the space to meet their needs.

It helps her see, Veve said, “Is it a reflection of the kid or is it a reflection of the school?”

Need for a holistic approach to help kids

Without a lot of support, however, many schools floundered with the DESSA. One Bronx administrator explained that her school dropped the DESSA because it felt redundant to what they already had in place. The school prides itself on having a robust team for social-emotional support: It has three guidance counselors and two social workers who help lead weekly advisory groups and small group counseling for its roughly 600 students.

The advisory groups, in particular, focus on social-emotional learning and peer relationships, and they provide insights to the counseling team when issues might arise, said the administrator, who requested anonymity. Whether a school offers an advisory period often comes down to carving out space in the schedule and making tradeoffs, the administrator explained. For them, it meant giving up other electives, like robotics.

If her school’s team didn’t have such a strong counseling infrastructure in place, she might have found the DESSA more helpful, she said. She thought it was worthwhile to figure out a way to measure social-emotional learning metrics, she said.

The ways schools have incorporated the DESSA was uneven, with some schools more focused than others on how to use the tool to identify students who need help, said Kevin Dahill-Fuchel, executive director of Counseling in Schools, which provides counseling services at roughly 70 schools across the city.

Yet, while the tool might not give a parent a definitive answer about how their child is doing, Dahill-Fuchel didn’t think it seemed harmful. But there’s not always a clear plan on what should happen next with the data.

“There’s not a robust accountability system,” Dahill-Fuchel said.

Having such a system is important to shift a school’s culture toward a more supportive environment, he said.

“Where we need to get to ultimately,” Dahill-Fuchel said, “is that schools get held accountable for social skill development and emotional wellbeing in the same way they do for academic progress.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC’s 2023-24 school calendar delay frustrates families and educators

2023-05-22T20:15:31+00:00

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Many parents and educators are asking: Why isn’t New York City’s 2023-24 school calendar out yet?

The first day of school is typically the Thursday after Labor Day (which would be Sept. 7). But as families try to plan for the coming year, frustrations are rising without confirmation of opening day or other holidays.

Last year, the education department released the calendar on May 31. Officials declined to answer questions about when they’ll share the new calendar.

“The calendar has been pretty static for years now, so I don’t understand what the hold up is,” said Nelli Stoller, a Brooklyn mom of a fifth grader and a ninth grader. Though families can assume the start of school as well as winter break and mid-winter recess, they can’t be certain, she said, and the hold up could make trips more difficult and expensive to plan.

One thing that’s likely: There will be fewer disruptions at the start of the school year, with the two-day Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah occuring on a weekend. Though the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur will fall on a Monday, Sept. 25. But some questions remain for what spring break in 2024 will look like as Easter falls on March 31, Eid al-Fitr is celebrated on April 10, and Passover begins on April 22.

Before the pandemic, the education department released the calendar much earlier. For the 2018 and 2019 school years, the calendar was posted in April. Prior to that, the calendar had been out in March.

New York City’s start date is among the latest in the nation, but other districts that start after Labor Day approved their calendars in March, including Newark, Philadelphia, and Boston. Chicago’s calendar for next school year, which starts at the end of August, was finalized in February.

.@NYCSchools @NYCMayor @GovKathyHochul @UFT pretty please - we are BEGGING you for the NYC school calendar, so we can plan our lives, and not live in chaos w/everything up in the air. Thank you from every single parent, grandparent and caregiver of a NYC student.
— Diana Preisler (@Diana_Preisler) May 18, 2023

The first day of school is based on the teachers union contract. A new contract is currently being negotiated.

Traditionally, teachers use the two days after Labor Day to plan before welcoming their new students. In many other school districts, teachers start much earlier than their students — and some educators here wish that New York City could follow suit, especially as many elementary schools in 15 districts will have to begin implementing new reading programs.

“If we had all the money in the world, we would be able to pay teachers to come in a week or two earlier than they do right now … and receive the kind of intense literacy training that they’re all craving,” Darlene Cameron, principal of Manhattan’s STAR Academy, said at a Chalkbeat panel on literacy in August. “It can be challenging to have the amount of time that needs to be dedicated to providing that kind of training, and I think administrators could also use that kind of training and support.”

The state requires 180 instructional days. The city is expected to continue its practice of going remote for snow days, though this year, the lack of snow meant no cancellations.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC drafts plan to shrink class sizes, but changes won’t start next school year

2023-05-19T22:43:25+00:00

Many education advocates cheered when Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law last September a five-year plan to reduce class sizes in New York City’s public schools.

For the first year, however, the city’s education department plans to make no changes, according to a draft plan shared with reporters on Friday.

Under that plan — which is supposed to spell out how the city will meet the law’s new requirements — class sizes will remain the same in September. That’s because the education department says that enough of its core classes — an average 39% — for K-12 exceed the requirements in the law for the first year of the plan. (The plan only affects city-run schools, not charters.)

But, for future school years, education department officials are bracing for some big expenses to comply with the law. They estimate it will cost $1.3 billion a year for new teachers when the plan is fully implemented as well as about $30-$35 billion in capital expenditures to construct new spaces or reconfigure old ones.

The education department said it would gather feedback from the public and educators to determine the best way to shrink class sizes by 2028, when state law requires that the entire school system meet the new requirements.

The city teachers union — one of the entities that must approve the plan — blasted the education department’s effort, emphasizing that they will work with the state to ensure the city “fulfills its obligations” of the law.

“Meeting the new class size standards is going to require a real plan — and so far, the DOE hasn’t managed to create one,” said teachers union president Michael Mulgrew in a statement. “This document is missing a strategy for implementation and a targeted proposal for where and when new seats should be built.”

Education department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer responded in a statement that the draft was created after consulting “extensively” with the unions, and they will continue to be able to share feedback.

“The tradeoffs involved in implementation are too important to be made behind closed doors and our entire community must be involved in informing these decisions,” Styer said.

The education department will begin collecting public comment on the plan, which is posted online, in June. Within two weeks of the end of that process, officials must submit the plan to the state education department for approval.

Here are seven things to know:

What are the new class-size caps?

Kindergarten through third grade should have no more than 20 children.

From grades four through eighth, classes should have no more than 23 students, while students in ninth through 12th grades can have up to 25 students.

That’s down from a previous cap of 25 students for kindergarten, and 32 students in the rest of elementary school grades, according to the teachers union contract agreement. Middle and high schools were supposed to be capped previously at 33 and 34 students, respectively, with a 30-student limit in Title 1 middle schools (where at least 60% of students are from low-income families).

What will change next year in terms of class-size reductions?

Nothing. State law requires 20% of the city’s classrooms be in compliance with the new state law each year, reaching 100% by 2028. According to the education department, an average 39% of classes meet the new requirements, meaning they expect to meet the state’s requirements for next school year. This includes elementary school homerooms, where children receive their core instruction, and core subject classes for grades 6-12 — meaning math, science, social studies, and English courses, including gifted and talented, integrated co-teaching, which includes a mix of students with and without disabilities, and accelerated courses.

Ninety-one percent of performing arts and gym courses are in compliance.

In year two, 40% of classes must comply, then 60% and 80% until the final year when all classes are expected to meet the targets (unless they get exemptions).

How will the education department shrink class sizes by 2028?

We don’t know the details yet, but the education department offered some clues in its plan.

From May to October, the education department plans to meet regularly with a working group that it convened this spring to gather feedback on how to meet the law’s new requirements.

Officials wrote that they will identify additional classrooms for space; work with the city’s School Construction Authority on the next capital plan, which lays out building plans for the school system; and would focus on high-poverty schools not meeting requirements, as required by the law.

Starting in November, officials will begin changing policies “and reprioritization of programming” in order to meet the class-size mandates. Officials did not immediately explain what sort of policies or programs would change. But before the law passed, Chancellor David Banks warned that the law could mean a cut in school services or programming because of the cost of creating more classes.

Who will be exempt from the class-size law?

Any exemptions must be approved by the chancellor, as well as the heads of the teachers union and the union representing principals and other administrators. Disagreements will head to arbitration, the law mandates.

Schools might be exempt because of space limitations, but the education department will have to show that they are working to resolve the issue through their capital budget plan. Schools that are overenrolled or ones in which they would face severe economic hardship to comply might get exemptions. (The plan offered no other information on this.) There might be exemptions for schools where they have insufficient numbers of teachers in subjects that are hard to fill, like bilingual math; the teachers union can negotiate higher class sizes for electives and specialty classes if the majority of a school’s staff approves the increase.

Does the law prioritize any particular schools in regards to meeting the new class-size mandates?

The law requires the education department to start with schools with high shares of students living in poverty. In its plan, the education department said that schools with the highest numbers of low-income students are more likely to have smaller class sizes.

Fifty-nine percent of classes meet the new requirements at schools with the most students from low-income families, according to education department data shared in the plan. In contrast, schools with the fewest students living in poverty have just 23% of classes meeting the new requirements.

Where else are schools more — or less — likely to meet the class-size mandates?

Schools with larger classes also hew closely to racial demographics. Roughly 54% of classes already meet the class-size targets at schools with the highest percentage of Black students compared to schools with the highest percentage of Asian and white students, where only about a quarter of classes meet the targets.

Three Brooklyn districts — Ocean Hill/Brownsville’s District 23, Crown Heights’ District 16, and District 18 in Canarsie/East Flatbush had the greatest share of classes at or below the caps, according to the education department data. These three districts have among the highest shares of Black students in the city.

Two Queens districts — Bayside’s District 26 and Flushing’s District 25 — along with Staten Island’s District 31 have the lowest share of classes that meet the targets. District 25 and 26 have the city’s highest share of Asian students, while District 31 has the highest share of white students.

Of the five boroughs, the Bronx might have the easiest time meeting the class-size caps, with 50% of its schools already hitting the targets. Staten Island could have the most challenges, with only 22% of its schools meeting the class size requirements.

Schools that have grades 6-12 or 9-12 are more likely to have smaller class sizes, the figures show, with about 44% of these schools already meeting the new class-size mandates. Only 30% of standalone middle schools meet the targets, followed by K-8 and K-5 schools.

What happens next?

The education department must collect public comments on the plan and then submit it to the state education department for final approval. The teachers and principals unions must also sign off on the plan, which must go into effect in September.

Next month, city officials are holding online public hearings for each borough via Zoom on the following dates, starting at 6 p.m.:

Staten Island: Friday, June 2

Queens: Tuesday, June 6

Brooklyn: Thursday, June 8

Manhattan: Tuesday, June 13

The Bronx: Thursday, June 15

The city will have two weeks to analyze the public comments before submitting its final proposal to the state.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Housing migrants in school gyms: What we know (and don’t) about NYC’s shelter plans

2023-05-16T20:56:16+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to keep up with NYC’s public schools.

Up to 20 New York City public school gymnasiums could be transformed into emergency shelters for asylum seekers, a sudden move that Mayor Eric Adams said Tuesday he was reluctant to make.

“This is one of the last places we want to look at,” the mayor said in an interview on NY1. “None of us are comfortable with having to take these drastic steps.”

Adams contends that the city is running out of space in shelters, hotels, and other emergency accommodations as more than 65,000 asylum seekers have arrived in New York City since last year.

A handful of school gyms, largely in Brooklyn, are already being outfitted with cots, and at least one has already opened its doors to migrants. The plan has drawn concerns about possible disruption to school activities and whether the spaces have adequate access to bathrooms and showers.

Here’s what we know — and don’t know — about the city’s plans to transform schools into emergency shelters:

NYC is gearing up to use school gyms to house migrants, but only detached gyms.

Adams stressed that the city is only considering gymnasiums that are physically separated from the rest of the building, an effort to ease concerns about students coming into contact with adults who have not been vetted with background checks, as school staffers typically are.

Students are “not going to be impacted,” Adams said during a radio appearance on 1010 WINS.

City officials said the police department will be present at those sites around the clock. Still, some parent leaders said ensuring that students and migrants aren’t in contact may require logistical coordination to manage nearby entrances and exits.

So far, the city is gearing up to house migrants at the following schools in Brooklyn, according to parent leaders and news reports: Coney Island’s P.S. 188, Crown Heights’ P.S. 189, Sunset Park’s P.S. 172, and Williamsburg’s P.S. 17, P.S. 18, P.S. 132 and M.S. 577.

City officials did not provide a full list of school gyms under consideration for emergency shelter, nor did they say which buildings are currently housing migrants. The Daily News reported that some migrants were already staying at P.S. 188 over the weekend.

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio implemented a plan in 2017 to build about 75 stand-alone school gyms across the city, since many schools blamed space issues for flouting mandated minutes for gym instruction.

Tensions are rising in some school communities.

At Williamsburg’s P.S. 17, students and parents gathered Tuesday morning to protest the use of the school’s gym to house migrants. Some children held signs reading “We Need Recess!!!” and the crowd chanted, “We support asylum seekers, but not on school grounds.”

Outside PS 17 in Williamsburg, kids chant, “we support asylum seekers but not on school grounds.” pic.twitter.com/35iFNRuxIw
— Gwynne Hogan (@GwynneFitz) May 16, 2023

Tajh Sutton, the parent council president in Brooklyn’s District 14, which includes P.S. 17, said the lack of transparency from the city about their plans helped fuel the backlash. Sutton also contends that Adams has directly stoked anger toward migrants by regularly highlighting the costs associated with connecting them with services and claiming they have “destroyed” the city.

“He’s created the conditions for this vitriol,” she said. The protest at P.S. 17 “made me really sad because I think that parents’ frustration about not being communicated with is valid and parents’ exhaustion about a lack of transparency from the Department of Education is valid. But when you’re allowing that to let you veer into racism and xenophobia, you have to check yourself.”

Still, Sutton said some school communities are trying to be flexible. At P.S. 18, in East Williamsburg, the principal is working to communicate what’s happening with parents, funding alternative spaces for gym class, and tracking down an alternative venue for their graduation, she said. Some members of the community are working with a mutual aid group to provide toiletries to asylum seekers.

“The principal has done a really wonderful job,” Sutton said.

Groups from all corners are calling on the city to reverse course.

The city’s teachers union, local elected officials, the union representing school safety agents, and even immigrant advocates have raised concerns about the city’s plan.

“We don’t agree with utilizing active school buildings as housing for emergency shelter right now because we don’t want to disrupt a school environment,” said Murad Awawdeh, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition.

The union representing school safety agents, who are police department employees, also claimed in a letter to city officials that they were improperly asked to “monitor recently arrived asylum seekers in schools” and contend with “agitated” local residents.

The gym at P.S. 18, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is expected to be used as a shelter for asylum seekers.

It’s not the first time schools have been used as shelters.

Nor is it the first time that families feel like they are being kept in the dark about using schools as shelters.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg opened emergency shelters in 76 public schools for New Yorkers who had no place to go after the storm flooded their homes or residential facilities.

At Brooklyn Tech, the nation’s largest brick-and-mortar high school, more than 200 adults from assisted living facilities in the Rockaways stayed in the school’s cafeteria and other spaces for two weeks while class was in session. The residents shared entrances with the students unlike the city’s current plan where there are separate entrances for the shelter.

“It was a terrible situation for all of these people who were homeless and displaced,” recounted Elissa Stein, a high school admissions consultant, who had a child at Brooklyn Tech at the time. “But the kids were having this experience that wasn’t necessarily safe.”

Residents needed medical services, like blood draws, and families were concerned about medical waste as well as strangers wandering the hallways and stairwells.

The city kept promising that the shelter would wrap up, but the end date kept getting delayed, Stein said.

“It was hard to get answers,” Stein said.

The city has not yet said how long schools will operate as shelters.

The goal is to close the shelters “as soon as possible,” a city hall spokesperson said. Officials did not provide a firm timeline, though, and noted that they have run out of space elsewhere and are seeking federal and state help.

Education officials acknowledge school programming may be affected.

The full scope of how school activities could be disrupted remains unclear.

At Williamsburg’s P.S. 17 and M.S. 577, which share a gym, parents were concerned that kids would lose their gym and also lose outdoor recess and some after-school activities since the gym fronts the playground, according to the New York Post.

City officials said they’re working to select facilities that wouldn’t have a direct effect on programming, but they acknowledged some schools will have to shift their physical education classes to a different venue, including outdoors or in other school spaces.

Under state law, children in elementary school are required to have at least 120 minutes of physical education each week. Middle schoolers must have at least 90 minutes, and high school students are required to have at least 180 minutes for seven semesters.

Officials say the gyms are supposed to house adults, not children.

As the influx of migrants has strained the existing shelter system, Adams last week used an executive order to temporarily suspend some of the city’s rules around guaranteeing the right to shelter, including the requirement to place families in private rooms with bathrooms and kitchens. That could provide a path for the city to house children in school gyms, but a legal aid attorney told THE CITY that state regulations still prohibit children from group shelter settings, and that the city has moved children out of such sites after learning they were there.

A City Hall spokesperson said their “intent” is to only house adults in school gyms.

The city has not explained how habitable the gyms are.

City officials did not share information on what kinds of facilities the gyms offer, such as adult toilets or showers. While high school gyms might have showers, typically elementary and middle schools do not, and all of the schools currently identified as housing asylum seekers are elementary and middle schools.

Jessamyn Lee, an elected parent member of the city’s Panel for Educational Policy, said details have been scarce about whether the city plans to bring in shower or bathroom trailers and how that might work logistically. “Where will those go — are they going in the street? Are they going in school yards? No information has been released,” she said.

Residents around at least two of the schools, Coney Island’s P.S. 188 and Sunset Park’s P.S. 172, filed complaints with the Department of Buildings raising questions about the legality of using the gyms to house people, public records show.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

How to get mental health help in NYC public schools

2023-05-04T09:00:00+00:00

This is part of an ongoing collaborative series between Chalkbeat, THE CITY, and ProPublica investigating learning differences, special education, and other education challenges in city schools.

As the pandemic upended our understanding of education’s role in society, one point became remarkably clear: schools are the first line of defense for student mental health support.

But what isn’t always apparent is what help is available to the city’s nearly 900,000 public school students — and how outcomes can vary depending on the resources schools provide.

Chalkbeat and THE CITY, along with ProPublica, have been examining how public schools are a de facto mental health system for many families. To help explain what services are available school-by-school, we tracked dozens of data points related to mental health resources, and talked to families, educators, and experts about navigating the system.

All of New York City’s roughly 1,600 public schools, at a minimum, have access to a social worker or school-based mental health clinic, officials say, and the city will soon offer teletherapy for high school students.

But many families say getting services can be a battle, especially as mental health needs mount. One in five New York City children ages 3 to 13 had one or more mental, emotional, developmental or behavioral problems in 2021, according to unpublished data from a city health department survey.

“It’s a crisis,” said Brittany Kaiser, an art teacher at Manhattan’s Earth School, who says she and her colleagues need more support as they’ve noticed their pre-K through fifth-graders’ behavioral issues worsening.

That picture seems consistent throughout New York City. More than 1 in 200 New York City children lost a caregiver to COVID, an analysis from the COVID Collaborative found. Many young people are still reeling from prolonged isolation and lost schooling. The threat of gun violence, climate change, racism, and poverty weigh heavily on many kids. On top of that, thousands of children from asylum-seeking families are arriving at city schools with significant needs.

These challenges affect what happens in the classroom — and whether kids show up at all. Chronic absenteeism, when students miss at least 10% of school, remains much higher than pre-pandemic levels. Crippling anxiety leading to school refusal — when kids have an extreme aversion to attending class — seems to be on the upswing, parents say.

“We’re really looking for resources and support,” said Rasheedah Brown-Harris, a leader with the Bronx’s New Settlement Apartments Parent Action Committee whose Healing-Centered Schools Working Group is pushing for school-wide trauma-informed approaches. “We’re all trying to figure it out.”

Here’s what to know about getting your child school-based mental health support.

If you’re looking for school-based counseling, where do you begin?

Start with the people who know your child best, whether that’s a classroom teacher or other trusted adult in the school. Parents can also reach out to a counselor or social worker at the school, an assistant principal or principal, or the parent coordinator. Every school has a counseling plan with contact information on its education department homepage under the “reports” tab.

School staff may also flag children with significant emotional needs — just as when children have academic needs — but it can take time. In such cases, a school might deem a child “at risk” and provide short-term counseling as part of a process called “response to intervention,” or RTI.

Schools, though, don’t get extra funding for at-risk students, and they triage based on need. So getting services can feel like an uphill battle, parents say.

“The process can look very different for different students, and can require significant time, individual attention, and resources, and the fair student funding formula doesn’t take this into account,” said Kaiser.

Often it can come down to whether a counselor or social worker has openings — and many have been working through their lunch periods to meet the increased demand, educators said.

Fourth grade teacher Miriam Sicherman, at the Manhattan’s Children’s Workshop School, was able to get counseling earlier this school year for one of her students who witnessed neighborhood violence. But Sicherman isn’t sure the process would have been as easy a few months later, after her school received nearly 60 children, largely from asylum-seeking families who experienced some form of trauma.

What if a student needs ongoing support?

Receiving temporary, at-risk services could be a first step while a family begins the evaluation process for an Individualized Education Program, or IEP, mandating services, such as counseling.

Children with anxiety, depression, or other mental health challenges could be eligible for an IEP under the “emotional disability” classification. The state recently changed the label of that classification from “emotional disturbance” to reduce the stigma of the classification, which overwhelmingly is assigned to boys of color. Three-quarters of those with the label were boys; nearly half (47%) were Black even though Black students make up less than a quarter of students citywide, according to city data from November 2022.

Anxiety or other mental health issues might also qualify a student for a 504 plan, which under the Americans with Disabilities Act provides accommodations for children with disabilities or impairments that substantially limits a major life activity.

For example, a child with major depression who has trouble getting out of bed might not need an IEP for a special education teacher, but could benefit from a 504 plan with accommodations such as counseling, partial credit, reduced workloads, or movement breaks, explained civil rights attorney Miriam Nunberg.

However, schools don’t get extra funding for students with 504 plans, so they might make families jump through hoops to get them. They often put the onus on families to get outside evaluations to qualify rather than do school-based ones, and they often make families renew 504 plans on an annual basis.

“That’s not supposed to happen,” Nunberg said.

What’s the difference between a guidance counselor and a social worker?

Social workers are trained to provide more intensive student support from a clinical perspective in terms of prevention and treatment than counselors. But at some schools, social workers don’t work directly with children, and instead work on initial IEP evaluations by conducting social histories and classroom observations.

Some guidance counselors support at-risk and students with IEPs in one-on-one or small groups, but they also focus on students’ academic progress, including helping on applications for middle school, high school and college.

“Their objective, fairly universally, is to see that a child progresses through the school,” said Kevin Dahill-Fuchel, executive director of Counseling in Schools, which provides counseling services at roughly 70 schools across the city.

National guidance recommends one counselor and one social worker for every 250 students in a school. When students have more intensive needs, the preferred ratio is 1 to 50.

Systemwide, there are roughly 5,000 social workers and guidance counselors, an increase of 1,000 since 2014, education department officials said. Still, the citywide average is 277 students to one counselor and 456 students to one social worker, according to an analysis of public data.

The role of counselors and social workers can look different school to school, and some of these staffers are part-time, traveling to different schools. That means they might not be around on the day a child has a crisis.

Some social workers say their schools pull them away from counseling.

“I am ordered to fill in the gaps, from wake-up calls to data entry to disciplining students for dress code violations,” one social worker wrote in a Chalkbeat essay. “I’ve had to cancel counseling sessions to stand by metal detectors that children are required to go through, to monitor the hallways, or to ‘watch’ a group of suspended students.”

Are there other school-based resources for mental health services?

Nearly 390 schools have on-site health clinics that often include mental health services that are more robust than schools typically provide.

Another 330 schools have on-site mental health clinics, and the city is developing a $9 million telehealth program for high school students, a model becoming more common across the nation. (The school-based mental health clinics charge fees, but they take health insurance, Medicaid or offer a sliding scale for billing.)

There are also 421 “community schools” that partner with community-based organizations that often offer free counseling or connect students to services. (These counselors don’t factor into the student-to-counselor ratios.)

Very few schools, however, are able to provide long-term therapy, said Dr. Kelly Fradin, a pediatrician who worked in school health in the South Bronx and author of “Advanced Parenting: Advice for Helping Kids Through Diagnoses, Differences, and Mental Health Challenges.”

“What the schools are able to, or what I’d like them to be able to reliably provide, is to triage and bridge children to support…. To help families as partners, and say to the parents, ‘Is your child struggling with their mental health? Would they benefit from more resources?’”

School counselors play crucial roles responding to children in crisis, but also connect them to the right people outside of school, especially if a child is feeling suicidal, having restricted eating or possible anorexia, or experienced a trauma such as the loss of a parent.

But quickly getting outside services is not always feasible, as parents report long waitlists for therapists.

How to figure out if school supports student mental health

Other data points that could indicate how supportive a school environment might include “child in crisis” incidents (when schools call on police officers and EMTs to respond to students in emotional distress), as well as suspensions, which can be found in annual education department reports. In both of these cases, Black students and children with disabilities are disproportionately affected.

Changes to the discipline code during the de Blasio administration have curtailed the use of suspensions. But some educators say they need more training in alternative approaches, like restorative justice, which gives students space to talk through conflicts instead of more punitive discipline.

Some schools have restorative justice coordinators to help shift their culture toward this model. More recently, the city has looked to partnering schools with violence interrupters and mentors through its “project pivot” initiative.

Other factors can affect kids’ emotional wellbeing, like class size, school start times, access to outdoor space and gym, and whether a child is in an appropriate classroom setting, experts say.

“We know that when a child is not in the right learning environment, whether they’re too gifted for the class or struggling to keep up, they have more problems with self regulation and emotional regulation,” said Fradin.

What if you’re not getting the support your child needs?

If a school is refusing to give services mandated on an IEP or making it difficult to get or implement a 504 plan, parents can file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, Nunberg said. Though, she acknowledged that can be a slow process.

Parents can call their district superintendent’s office for help and speak with a student services manager, advised Jenn Choi, who channeled her parent advocacy into Special Support Services, a consulting firm for families of students with disabilities. These staffers help with student registration and transfers as well as act as liaisons between schools and students in hospital, homeschool, or other special situations, among other duties.

Some families have transferred out of schools to find more supportive environments, but the Office of Enrollment does not necessarily make it easy to do that, Choi said.

The education department lists something called a “guidance transfer” for families with concerns that their children are not “progressing or achieving academically or socially.” Parents have to contact the Family Welcome Center for such requests.

Families can also apply to new schools during the regular application season. For example, there might be openings for rising 10th graders at certain high schools as enrollment is often in flux. Additionally, the city runs nearly 60 alternative high schools, known as transfer schools, which focus on students who struggled to succeed at traditional high schools and are at risk of dropping out. They often offer individual support, small classes, and wraparound services to push students to graduation.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

How well does your child’s school support student mental health?

2023-05-04T09:00:00+00:00

Survey says: NYC wants to know how you feel about your child’s school. Really.

2023-04-05T16:12:16+00:00

Are you greeted warmly when you visit your child’s school? Does your child feel safe at school? Is your child’s school kept clean?

These are some of the questions New York City’s education department asks parents on its annual survey.

The responses provide a portrait of a school’s climate and how children are faring beyond test scores. They give school leaders insight on what improvements to make. They’re useful for families researching new schools or advocating for changes at their current ones.

But the surveys’ value relies on participation, and since the pandemic, response rates have plummeted, though are creeping back up. All parents and teachers are invited to fill out the surveys, as well as students in grades 6-12. Last year, the city received 882,500 responses, representing about 53% of students, staffers, and parents. That was down from 66% in 2019, according to education department data.

Officials declined to release preliminary response figures for this year, but they recently extended the survey deadline to April 20 in hopes of getting more input from school community members.

“We need their voices to guide us in how we rebuild trust, ensure our public schools are destinations of choice for high-quality education, and a beacon for families,” schools Chancellor David Banks said in a statement. “We want to hear from everyone.”

The annual survey, now in its 17th year, is a massive undertaking. At one point, the survey was second to only the U.S. Census in size. The city, however, can no longer confirm whether that’s accurate, a spokesperson said.

City officials will share survey results with schools this summer to help plan for the upcoming school year. They will also release the results publicly later in the year.

Here’s what else you need to know about the school surveys:

How can a parent or caregiver fill out a survey?

Families can take the survey online at NYCSchoolSurvey.org, using their child’s nine-digit student identification number. (A child’s school can help families who need support locating the number.) The online survey is available in 10 languages.

Additionally, schools typically send a hard copy of the survey home with kids.

Parents must fill out separate surveys for each child. All responses are confidential. Schools do not see an individual’s responses, rather the results are combined with other families.

Some of the questions changed this year. Why?

The education department updated this year’s survey, streamlining some of the questions to make the process more user-friendly and to better “align” the questions with the department’s priorities, officials said.

Two notable new questions ask families whether they feel their child is progressing in reading and math.

These questions could be helpful to give the education department a sense of how families feel about academic progress before and after a planned roll out of a reading curriculum mandate for elementary school and a high school algebra curriculum, said Laura Zingmond, senior editor at InsideSchools.

Her organization, which posts nuanced reviews of schools across the city, incorporates some of the city’s survey data on its site. Changing the survey from year-to-year can make it harder to compare how things are evolving (or not) at particular schools, Zingmond said. But she understood that new administrations often want to tweak things when they start.

Another new question asks families if they’re satisfied with school meal options — a priority for Mayor Eric Adams, who brought “vegan Fridays” to cafeterias. It also now asks whether parents feel comfortable going to their superintendent with questions. One of the administration’s significant early moves expanded the role of superintendents.

How does the education department use survey responses?

The department relies on the responses for each school’s “quality report” posted online. Schools often urge their families to fill out the surveys, hoping that respondents aren’t just those with the most complaints or even those who are most satisfied — as often happens on review sites.

Schools shouldn’t be “too surprised” about anything on the survey, and parents shouldn’t be waiting until the spring to voice their concerns, Zingmond said.

Typically, however, many of the responses are overwhelmingly positive, with little variation from school-to-school. The questions that tend to have the widest range of viewpoints are the ones that InsideSchools often uses on its website reviews.

More recently, the education department has begun sharing data looking at the experiences of different groups — looking at student surveys broken down by gender, race, language status, or disability — which is helpful in understanding possible inequities within schools, according to a December 2021 report from New York University’s Research Alliance for New York City Schools. Within schools, for instance, Black students reported feeling less trust in their teachers than others, and boys generally reporting slightly lower student-teacher trust than girls.

How can the surveys help schools and families?

Studies suggest that positive school climates are critical to student success and generally make schools more joyful places to work. So, measuring these aspects of a school’s culture provides helpful tools for schools and families.

Perceptions of safety, feelings of belonging, trusting adults in the building, camaraderie among students — these are “super important factors” that create environments where students can “thrive,” said Cheri Fancsali, of NYU’s Research Alliance, which helped the education department on this year’s survey changes.

“Schools are not islands. There’s the larger ecosystem to think about,” she said. “We’re seeing more acknowledgment of these other factors that come into play.”

How can schools and families better use the survey results?

The education department encourages school leadership teams to use the results in drawing up their plans for the coming school year, and provides a guide to help schools have discussions about the data with different members of their community.

Zingmond, of InsideSchools, believes that parent teacher associations should hold at least one meeting a year to go through the surveys.

“It should be a point of pride for us New Yorkers that we really do want input, particularly at this point in time when there are so many municipalities that are filtering information,” said Zingmond. “It’s one of the best ways to inform school leaders, educators, and families what’s working and what’s not working in your school.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC parent coordinators are essential school workers. Many feel undervalued and underpaid.

2023-03-27T10:00:00+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for our free New York newsletter to keep up with NYC’s public schools.

“Family engagement” and “parent empowerment” are not mere buzzwords to Ana Maria Aguilar.

They are her touchstones as parent coordinator at a Brooklyn elementary school, where she sees the faces of her own parents — immigrants from Mexico — reflected in many of the families at drop-off and pickup.

“They come in with such fear. I try to make them feel welcome,” Aguilar said. “As a brown woman, who is also an immigrant, I can relate to their stories.”

That kind of connection drew Aguilar to become parent coordinator at Sunset Park’s P.S. 24 in the fall of 2020, a decision rooted in her desire to give back to her community after losing loved ones to the pandemic. But she found a job remade in many ways by COVID, which caused some parents and students to fear being back in school and ushered in a host of new challenges for staff.

New York City schools created the parent coordinator position 20 years ago as a way to connect families to their children’s schools after then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg assumed control of the nation’s largest school system, abolishing the local school boards that had given parents some direct decision-making power.

The role, which typically varies from school to school, has become more critical — and stressful —during the pandemic. Nearly a dozen parent coordinators described how they became their school’s tech support, public health workers, and family therapists. They doled out devices and got families logged onto school accounts. They communicated with families about COVID-related protocols and quarantines, and were often the ones standing outside of schools each morning taking students’ temperatures and collecting health screeners. They fielded calls from families with concerns about returning to buildings and were the ones reaching out to parents when kids went missing from classrooms for prolonged periods of time.

And many are now charged with helping the thousands of migrant families that have entered the public school system.

Parent coordinator salaries, however, have not kept pace with the job’s demands, staffers say, or with inflation. Starting salaries for parent coordinators two decades ago were between $30,000 and $39,000 a year. That would be about $49,400 to $64,200 in today’s dollars.

New hires for parent coordinators start at $38,235, according to current job postings.

It’s not uncommon for parent coordinators to turn to public assistance or take on additional jobs, several school staffers told Chalkbeat. And unlike teachers, parent coordinators are required to work some weekends and nights, getting comp time rather than extra pay. They also must work summers and during school breaks, where they have to report in person to borough offices.

Ana Maria Aguilar (center), the parent coordinator at P.S. 24 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, helps organize events celebrating families’ culture.

“We’re helping struggling parents, but we’re also struggling parents,” said Aguilar, herself a graduate of Brooklyn public schools and a former parent/teacher association head of her childrens’ school. For the upcoming spring break, she will likely have to take personal days since she doesn’t have child care for her first and fourth graders.

The city recently reached a tentative deal with District Council 37, the union representing parent coordinators, along with other city workers, including school aides, cafeteria workers, and other staffers critical to the day-to-day functioning of schools.

Under the deal, union members will get a one-time $3,000 signing bonus and four years of 3% annual raises, with a 3.25% bump in the fifth year. The deal, which runs retroactive to May 2021, remains below the pace of inflation, which hit 6% last year. But it was higher than Mayor Eric Adams’ proposed 1.25% increase in his preliminary budget.

Members have until the end of the month to vote on the deal, which is largely expected to be ratified. Many parent coordinators, however, remain upset that the contract doesn’t address certain issues like their in-person work requirements during school holidays.

Parent coordinators are helping families process trauma

Though COVID protocols are no longer as time-consuming, parent coordinators are still helping families whose lives have been profoundly impacted by the pandemic over the past few years. They are also on the frontline working with the families of the 14,000 asylum-seeking students who have enrolled this school year, many of whom arrived with few belongings, a lot of trauma, and little English.

Parent coordinators are often part of a school’s team focused on tackling chronic absenteeism, which has become a major problem, with about 40% of children last year missing at least a month of school. And they continue to have other duties, including marketing their schools — which has become more important as enrollment has dropped. They organize school tours and help families with admissions questions, both those interested in coming to their schools as well as those who are graduating.

At the start of this year, before the city lifted vaccination requirements for parents to enter the building, de-escalating tense situations often fell to parent coordinators, said Jonathan Figueroa, who started in the role at P.S. 59 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, two days before the pandemic closed down campuses.

“I do feel like the job has taken on more. I see the burnout is real,” said Figueroa, who hopes to finish his bachelor’s degree and become a social worker. “But for me, it’s about being involved and advocating for my community.”

Aguilar began building routines during the pandemic that have continued to serve her school community this year, as it welcomed an influx of migrant students.

Her Mondays focus on community resources, providing information about food pantries or rent relief. Tuesdays touch on self-care: A recent workshop with New York University’s ParentCorps discussed the importance of helping kids hold onto their roots after coming to a new country. On Fridays, she leads “community walks” to sites such as the large manufacturing and shopping complex at Industry City or the office of their local City Council member. Weekends are for coat and food drives as well as “family fun” activities.

Like Aguilar and Figueroa, Erica Ramos became a parent coordinator during the pandemic, where her ability to listen and her bilingual skills were a great asset. She let parents “release their stress,” and tried to help them manage their fears and frustrations as the various guidance from the education department shifted. With several families still too scared to send their children back, Ramos geared up with masks and face shields to do home visits with counselors.

“I spent hours and hours on the phone listening to parents just terrified,” said Ramos, parent coordinator at Wadleigh Secondary School for the Performing and Visual Arts, a middle and high school in Manhattan’s Morningside Heights. “What was it going to look like? How were we going to keep students socially distanced? And there were all these Catch 22s. We had the windows open, but it was freezing. So parents were calling to complain that their kids were too cold.”

She continues to help families in whatever way they need. Amid growing concerns about an uptick in marijuana use across city schools, she recently held a family workshop on drug use organized with her school’s substance abuse prevention counselor. She’s become the point person for a school-based pantry, ordering the food and reaching out to families to let them know about it.

Erica Ramos, the parent coordinator at Wadleigh Secondary School for the Performing and Visual Arts.

Her full-time job as parent coordinator isn’t enough for Ramos, a single mom who lives in Bushwick, to pay her bills. Her paycheck every two weeks of $1,500 covers her $1,900 a month rent in Brooklyn, but leaves little left for food and other necessities. Ramos recently reapplied for food stamps, but missed an enrollment call from the program. The process of starting over feels too daunting, she said. She also works at a restaurant on Thursdays nights and for Sunday brunch. On Friday evenings or Saturday mornings, she cleans houses.

She’s been eyeing other positions in the education department because her current one, she said, is “illogical” in terms of how much they get paid for the work and time they put in compared to other school staffers.

“Why am I working full time for the city of New York, and I can’t afford to live in the city of New York?” Ramos asked.

A wave of parent coordinator job openings on horizon

For some parent coordinators, the role is a stepping stone, while they finish degrees or get other higher-paying school secretarial jobs. For some, it’s a second career, which gives them a cushion of savings. But many have been doing the job for the long haul, and as the position reaches its second decade, schools are bracing for a wave of retirements.

As part of last June’s agreement in Albany to extend mayoral control over the city’s school system for another two years, the state tweaked the hiring process for parent coordinators, requiring that each district’s parent advisory boards, known as Community Education Councils, approve each new parent coordinator.

Rosa Diaz, president of District 4’s Community Education Council in East Harlem, said the change has been fruitful in building relationships with the new parent coordinators.

“I see it as another opportunity to work together,” Diaz said, explaining that they tell the new hires, “If you need any support, reach out to us.”

Sara Sloves was a teacher at a Harlem charter school before becoming the parent coordinator at the Upper West Side’s Computer School in 2007. The job took on a different “energy” during the pandemic, she said, as families eagerly awaited her weekly newsletters with updates on the city’s evolving COVID guidelines. She started hosting meetups at local parks to help them feel connected to the school. She still sets up time on Fridays to meet families at local coffee shops, but more recently has begun to host breakfasts again at school.

“You need to have a kind and understanding soul at the end of the day,” Sloves said. “You have to be able to connect with people and want to do that.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Teachers buck Mulgrew, petition for referendum vote on Medicare Advantage

2023-03-21T16:03:26+00:00

This story was originally published on March 21 by THE CITY.

Retired city workers fighting a planned shift to a cost-cutting Medicare Advantage health care plan have new allies: current city teachers and other public school employees who are bucking their own union president, Michael Mulgrew.

On Sunday, opposition groups within the United Federation of Teachers, including teachers currently on the city’s payroll, came together to launch a petition to force a referendum vote on any changes to health care plans for retirees or any union members.

It’s the first time current city workers are challenging union leadership over the controversial switch to a privately run Medicare Advantage plan, which is slated to be managed by Aetna. Mulgrew played a key role in negotiating the health plan change and is now facing a member revolt.

The petition also tees up a battle over a change in the works for current employees’ health care, which will replace the insurer GHI with a new provider yet to be named.

“We call for a membership-wide vote for any significant changes to active and/or retired members’ healthcare. These include any significant changes of our healthcare carriers, limits to our choice of healthcare carriers, or institutions of or raises to premiums, deductibles or copayments, etc.,” reads the petition by UFT activist group Educators of NYC.

“UFT members must be provided full disclosure of the wording for such proposed changes, prior to the membership wide vote.”

The petitioners would have to gather around 19,000 signatures – or 10% of members, including retirees – in order to trigger the referendum vote, according to the union’s constitution.

The UFT, the city’s second-largest municipal union, is in the midst of bargaining with the administration of Mayor Eric Adams over terms of its contracts.

Last month Adams reached a five-year deal with District Council 37, the city’s largest union, that includes a proposed 16.21% raise retroactive to May 2021, when the current deal expired, along with a one-time $3,000 bonus. As the city’s largest union, the deal with DC37 sets the pattern that other public-sector unions with pending contracts, including the UFT, must follow.

Mulgrew was the key vote within the Municipal Labor Committee, the consortium of public-sector unions, to approve the controversial Medicare Advantage plan earlier this month. City retirees, former public school employees among them, have indicated that they intend to sue to block the deal.

The UFT did not make Mulgrew available for comment on this story, and he did not respond to phone calls seeking comment.

“The UFT is a representative democracy. UFT members, both active and retired, elect UFT leadership, who in turn are part of the city Municipal Labor Committee,” said UFT spokesperson Alison Gendar in a statement. “The MLC is the entity that negotiates healthcare for active and retired city employees.”

‘Illogical and duplicitous’

The retiree health care switch was first brokered in deals beginning in 2014 between major municipal workers’ unions and former Mayor Bill de Blasio, agreeing to fund raises through health care savings. The shift to Medicare Advantage is expected to save city taxpayers $600 million a year.

Retirees have expressed concerns that coverage may fall short of the care they have been accustomed to under their current Medicare with Medigap plan. A federal investigation last year determined that Medicare Advantage plans often deny needed care that is supposed to be covered.

Advantage plans have been found to submit inflated bills that over-diagnose their patients, a practice known as “upcharging” that federal auditors said crossed the line into fraud. The number of large employers that offer Medicare Advantage plans to retirees has doubled since 2017, the New York Times reported.

Groups representing retired city workers sued in an attempt to stop the switch, leading a judge to bar the city from charging a proposed $191 monthly premium to retirees who sought to stay on their existing Medicare plan. The City Council has since declined to pick up a bill pressed by Mayor Eric Adams that would have allowed retirees to keep their existing care for a fee.

As city employees impatiently waited for raises this winter, the Municipal Labor Committee quietly renewed talks with Aetna, aiming to broker a Medicare Advantage deal with the private insurer.

Mulgrew is also a chair of the MLC, the consortium of 102 public-sector unions that votes on key decisions affecting city government workers. Due to the committee’s weighted-voting structure, where each union gets one vote per 250 members, the UFT plays an outsize role in swaying decisions.

One teacher and union opposition organizer was steamed when Mulgrew boasted in a Feb. 28 interview with Gotham Gazette’s Max Politics podcast that he would make no further health care concessions in a new contract — but meanwhile continues to advocate for a health plan switch, whose effects will be felt far into the future.

“For Mulgrew to say that savings are not mandatory and then to plow ahead with a very controversial Medicare Advantage plan that we all know is predicated on mandatory savings, and sold as so, is illogical and duplicitous,” Daniel Alicea, a public school teacher and lead organizer of Educators of NYC, the activist opposition group of UFT members that published the petition, said at the time.

In a meeting with the union’s Retired Teachers Chapter healthcare committee on March 2, Mulgrew underscored his and the union’s role in championing the health-care switch.

“First and foremost, our union has taken the lead now in terms of the negotiation with Aetna, and you guys are directing us on the issues,” he said in an audio recording of that March 2 meeting obtained by THE CITY.

At a follow-up meeting with the UFT retiree chapter on March 6, members led a chant of “Let us vote,” according to several people who attended the meeting.

Gendar, the UFT spokesperson, defended the health care switch in a statement to THE CITY.

“As part of the MLC, the UFT played a major role in negotiating with Aetna to create a unique Medicare Advantage program designed to meet our retirees’ needs for a high-quality, premium-free health plan,” she said. “The unions, particularly the UFT, demanded and won ongoing oversight to ensure Aetna fulfills its responsibilities. The unions will be aggressive in seeing that retirees’ needs are met.”

‘Vote no’ campaign

Active members of District Council 37 are in the midst of voting to ratify their union’s tentative agreement with the Adams administration, and must return their ballots before the end of the month. They are widely expected to approve the deal.

The UFT is expected to reach a deal next, and is already in the midst of bargaining with City Hall.

Rank and file United Federation of Teachers members are having conversations about launching a “vote no” campaign on a pending tentative contract agreement in protest of the Medicare Advantage switch, THE CITY reported this month.

Those conversations are limited to non-retirees, who can vote on labor deals, which retirees cannot.

Meanwhile conversations about the Medicare Advantage plan continue. On Monday, Aetna hosted a “mock retiree meeting” for union officials so that fund directors and others “can become familiar with the approach to be taken at upcoming retiree information sessions,” according to a March 9 memo in Municipal Labor Committee letterhead obtained by THE CITY. Representatives from City Hall will also attend, the memo, sent by Nespoli, noted.

And on Tuesday, the Office of Labor Relations will host a phone-in only public contract hearing about the Aetna proposal.

This Bronx art teacher shows students how to harness social media to build job skills

2023-03-14T12:05:00+00:00

Metropolitan Soundview High School had no art program when Cheriece White took a job there 10 years ago.

So she created her own.

The art and technology teacher initially designed a curriculum around digital storytelling and then transformed it into a multimedia art curriculum that included iMovie, storyboarding, illustration, children’s books, and front-end web design. The students gravitated to the web design part, wanting to know more about designing websites for their own business ideas. That prompted White to shift again, developing a curriculum on social media design and content creation.

“With how social media, graphic design, and technology are growing into every aspect of normal living, it is super important to have students practice these skills for their own benefit,” she said. “They are going to engage in social media and technology anyway, so why not teach them how to make money from it through design?”

White not only sees visual arts and graphic art as “great emotional outlets for kids this age to express themselves in a healthier and positive way.” She also wants her art course to provide a “tangible” way for them to become young entrepreneurs.

She wants her students to be college- and career-ready, as well as “small business ready.”

She’s hopeful that it’s working. Former students have gone on to create a cupcake company, a dog-walking business, a baseball clinic, and an Etsy digital download business. A group of current students who already have their own clothing brand recently told her how their social media following increased significantly after applying some techniques they learned in class.

White was the Bronx’s grand prize winner of the 2022 FLAG Award for Teaching Excellence, which honors educators who inspire creativity and passion. For winning the prestigious award, White’s school received $10,000, which she used to buy easels, paint, brushes, canvases, pallets, and markers for her monthly “paint and snack sessions” with students. She ordered some technology, including software licenses and Apple Pencils for drawing digital illustrations.

She also received $25,000 in unrestricted funds. White, who had a baby shortly after winning the award, used some of the prize money to invest in her son’s 529 college savings account and also plans to use some of it to further her own education in the growing field that she’s trailblazing.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How and when did you decide to become a teacher?

My little brother, 12 at the time, is the one that changed my career path [from media marketing] to what it is today. He asked me why I looked so sad. I told him all I wanted to do was graphic art and prove how important it was to learn these skills with how the use of computers was growing. But it was 2009, companies were closing, and there were no jobs. He said then why don’t you become an art teacher?

I explained that the type of art that I wanted to teach was not offered. He said, at 12, “Well, why don’t you become the teacher you never had and create the type of art you want to teach? Prove them wrong and show them the world needs your art.” I went back to school, received my master’s in K-12 art education, and started my hunt for a school that believed in my vision and would give me a chance to execute the curriculum that I wanted to build.

How do you fuse art and technology, and why? Why do you think these skills are so important for students to learn right now?

In my class, it’s important to introduce the foundations of visual arts, like elements of design, principles of design, and color theory, with graphic design platforms that lead to content creation to launch small businesses. Students are extremely engaged with social media but don’t know how powerful of a tool it can be if used to represent a brand or service.

While learning about color theory, students learn about color psychology and how that affects marketing design. While learning composition and layout, they are practicing their mathematic skills by measuring margins, bleeds, and pixel-to-inches conversions. While designing a logo, students also practice project-based learning and design thinking. The combinations are endless, and the result is a student that is well-rounded in all aspects of visual art, technology, and marketing design.

What’s your favorite lesson to teach and why?

My favorite project-based lesson that I love to teach is logo design and branding. Students find a way to impress me by creating these beautiful logos that would match their target audience. Seeing all these beautiful portfolios come together for different businesses that they can actually do in real life just warms my heart.

I also recently coupled with a STEM teacher to make a STEAM unit and do a Shark Tank lesson together. This is a lot of fun because the students then take all of their designs from my art class and their inventions from their STEM class and start to pitch judges, like our principals and guidance counselors. The students take the challenge head-on and produce amazing interactive slide decks. This year, the winners will receive an iPad.

What’s something happening in the community that affects what goes on inside your classroom or your school?

I teach in a very low-income area, and many students definitely have the burden of that on their shoulders. When it comes to having the correct finances for things for school or school trips, some students just can’t participate because they don’t have the funds. Also, there is a lot of violence outside of our walls that we like to shield them from or show them that there’s a better outlet to release your anger or stress.

Some students have to work jobs in order to provide for their families, and certain students still may be in shelters but are embarrassed to let us know that they may need some help. And some students may not have enough money for their next meal, so they stay after school so they can have the free lunch and after-school lunch for dinner. This truly breaks my heart and is one of the main motivators in why I started my curriculum: To show them that they could start a business without any money and pull themselves out of a situation as long as they have the skills necessary to do so.

Cheriece White, on far right (in gray shirt), stands with the cheerleading squad she co-founded, the James Monroe Eagles.

Tell us briefly about the cheerleading squad you helped found and how they got to go to Nationals.

I and two other coaches started the first-ever cheerleading team at James Monroe Campus. We called ourselves the James Monroe Eagles. This was by far the proudest moment in my career as an educator. Our team was spectacular and won first place in our division at regionals. This won us a bid to go to Nationals at Disney World in Orlando.

However, the cost to participate was way too much for our kids’ families. So I put together a video of our kids asking for help to go, made a GoFundMe for them, and within 72 hours, we raised over $30,000! New York City news outlets came to wish us luck, and we invited the community to wish us farewell and good luck. Some students had never been on a plane before, let alone to Walt Disney World. To see the kids be in shock looking at a palm tree or feeling the warmth in February in a tropical climate brought tears to all of our eyes. We won seventh in the nation, but that whole experience made all of us feel like we were in the first place.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Mental health safety net for youth: Adams outlines vision to catch kids in crisis

2023-03-02T22:07:21+00:00

If you or someone you know is considering self-harm, please dial 988 for the national Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

As New York City continues to grapple with youth mental health challenges, Mayor Eric Adams laid out a sweeping vision on Thursday to help schools better recognize student mental health needs and create a safety net for kids in crisis.

The needs are high: About a fifth of children ages 3 to 13 had one or more mental, emotional, developmental or behavioral problems in 2021, according to health department data provided in the mayor’s new plan, called Care, Community, Action: A Mental Health Plan for New York City.

Rates of suicidal ideation jumped to nearly 16% from about 12% over the past decade, with more than 9% of the city’s high school students reporting they attempted suicide over the course of 2021.

“We’ve all seen the isolation and trauma that children have experienced over the past several years, along with the results: disappearing into screens, behavioral issues, and even suicide,” Adams said while revealing the plan.

Addressing the mental health needs of young people and their families was one of the three major focal points of Adams’ blueprint. The plan calls for several things, including opening more school-based mental health clinics, creating suicide prevention trainings for educators, and assessing the impacts of social media as possible “toxic exposure.”

Though most of the ideas lacked details in terms of timeline and cost, the mayor did add a price tag of $12 million for a previously announced telehealth hotline for high school students, which the city says will be the largest of its kind in the nation.

City officials said they will track certain data points to determine whether the plan is working, including the number of contacts made by or on behalf of youth through NYC Well (the city’s free, confidential support, crisis intervention, and information and referral service), and the percent of young people reporting feelings of sadness and hopelessness.

Here are four highlights from the plan that relates to youth and schools:

City taps telehealth to fill treatment gaps

The mayor initially announced in January that the city would launch a telehealth program for high schoolers, though has not said when the program will launch and how students can access it.

Officials said Thursday they are still working out details.

“Telehealth can improve access to care for young people and their families who cannot easily get around or meet the strict time or expenses of traveling to in-person appointments, especially when mental health provider locations might be far away from the child’s home,” the mayor’s plan stated. “In addition, many youth feel more comfortable using technology to connect, and technology offers new ways to stay connected outside of traditional therapy sessions.”

Other cities are leaning on telehealth for young people, as well, including Los Angeles.

Experts previously shared cautious optimism with Chalkbeat about the plan when Adams first announced it, while also raising questions about how it would work, including whether school staff will be monitoring sessions and get involved if a student’s needs are more serious.

School-based mental health clinics to expand

As of the 2020-21 school year, 162 schools had on-site mental health clinics, while another 238 had health clinics that offered some mental health services, according to a 2022 report from New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

The mayor’s plan calls on expanding mental health clinics that exist inside of school buildings through a partnership with the city’s education department, health department, the state’s Office of Mental Health and community providers.

Asked how many more clinics the city wants to open and an estimated cost, a health department spokesperson said these “are active and ongoing discussions.”

Creating school-based mental health clinics, however, can be complicated, said Kevin Dahill-Fuchel, executive director of Counseling in Schools, which partners with schools to offer counseling services. It involves getting approvals from the state, finding space inside of schools that would be eligible for such clinics, and setting up a financial structure to get reimbursed by Medicaid for the services, he said.

An easier lift, he suggested, might be to get more community organizations like his to offer services in schools. Those groups often operate with grants, thus cutting out complicated funding issues.

A push to train school staffers on suicide prevention

Adams wants schools staff to be trained on suicide prevention so that they can “respond appropriately to the needs of students,” the plan said.

Dahill-Fuchel praised such training, noting they could potentially help more students realize they need help.

“I think one of the things that is really gonna be useful is this idea of a public health approach to suicide prevention, which at its core really means demystifying it,” Dahill-Fuchel said. “It tends to be a word that, around children, people don’t like to use and that becomes part of the problem.”

City officials also plan to launch a program, called “Caring Transitions,” that would focus on preventing youth ages 5-17 in the Queens and Bronx who have been to the hospital for a suicide attempt from re-entering. Teams would be responsible for connecting these young people to follow-up services in their neighborhoods as well as “additional supports” for up to three months after they leave the hospital.

The plan also says it will launch a suicide prevention pilot program for young people of color ages 5 to 24. The goal is to bolster interventions that more effectively meet the needs of Black, Asian American, and Latino youth who face suicide-related risk “that includes or is intensified by racial inequities,” the plan said. The plan did not specify what those interventions might look like.

An attempt to address cyberbullying

Concerned with social media’s impact on youth mental health, the Adams administration plans to create a task force to study the issue and develop a public health approach to reduce exposure to harmful online content.

The plan noted that “there are few rules or regulations” on how social media companies interact with young people.

“We’re also going to examine the potential risks of social media to our children’s mental health and work to make sure tech companies are required to keep online spaces safe for our kids,” Adams said during his speech.

The group would include youth and families, according to the plan. It didn’t specify when the group would launch.

Federal officials have called for more rigorous research on how social media impacts youth mental health. In a 2021 advisory released by the U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, officials note that while several studies have linked worsening mental health to online platforms, other researchers have argued that there is no clear relation between the two.

Seattle Public Schools recently filed a lawsuit against leading social media companies, alleging that students and schools were harmed by worsened mental health that stemmed from social media.

The surgeon general’s advisory also called for technology companies to make sure they were fostering “safe digital environments” for their youngest users.

Some of the pressure seems to be working: Tik Tok announced earlier this week it will set the default screen time limit to 60 minutes for users under 18, though kids can continue using the app with a passcode.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC principals to meet weekly with NYPD in latest effort to address rash of youth violence

2023-02-15T00:02:36+00:00

To address the growing problem of youth violence, principals from New York City’s 1,600 public schools will soon begin having virtual meetings each week with their local police precinct commanders, education department officials said Tuesday.

Schools Chancellor David Banks has been raising the alarm about the recent spate of killings and shootings involving young people, calling it a “state of emergency” that requires more intervention.

Many of the recent incidents have taken place right outside of schools, after dismissal — a critical time of day when students from multiple schools often spill out into small areas and conflicts can bubble up. The weekly meetings, which Banks announced on a call with school leaders Tuesday morning, are meant to bring together school leaders with the NYPD to discuss safe passage programs, how the police can support schools at after-school events, or how to respond when incidents occur, among other topics, according to an education department spokesperson.

“We’re not having cops running into schools to do some hostile takeover,” Banks said earlier this week on WBAI’s City Watch, discussing the new NYPD initiative. “What we are saying is that 30 minutes or so after school as kids are transitioning from the school building into the neighborhood, we need all hands on deck.”

Banks encouraged school leaders to swap cell phone numbers with their NYPD liaisons, according to principals who were on the call. An NYPD spokesperson said the precinct commanding officer or executive officer will meet weekly with principals to discuss “issues of note,” but declined to share more details.

One principal, who spoke anonymously, applauded the effort to increase and standardize communication between NYPD and schools, but added that there were few “specific details” about how the city planned to keep kids safe. Banks also floated the idea of bringing in parents to help monitor dismissal, a proposal the principal called “highly unlikely. Parents are working, and it’s not parents’ job.”

City officials have made other attempts to respond to the crisis, including a $9 million initiative called “project pivot,” which is sending violence interrupters and other mentors to 138 schools across the city. Banks said that initiative has just gotten underway about a month and a half ago, and is tapping “credible messengers” from the community to work with kids.

The city also recently said it was expanding its number of youth coordination officers — a teen-focused NYPD initiative started under the de Blasio administration — from 350 officers to more than 460, according to reports.

Meanwhile, the number of school safety agents — unarmed NYPD officers stationed full time in schools — decreased by 22%, from around 5,300 in June 2020 to roughly 4,130 last August, according to the state comptroller. Banks has said he wants to reverse that downward trend.

“There’s no one answer,” Banks said. “It takes all of us ensuring that the safety of all of our children is paramount to everything we’re trying to do. You can’t teach them if they’re afraid of being shot every day.”

Scores of public school students have been killed or injured by teen violence this year. Last year, 153 kids were shot in the city, up from 72 in 2017, according to recent NYPD testimony at the City Council.

Just last week, there were two separate shootings in Williamsburg where students were injured outside of school hours.

Seventeen-year-old Nyheem Wright, a student at Coney Island’s Liberation Diploma Plus High School, was fatally stabbed in January shortly after dismissal during a fight, and a 13-year-old has been charged in the murder. The night before, Josue Lopez-Ortega, 15, was fatally shot in the head when leaving the Police Athletic League’s South Bronx Center. Also last month, Bronx 16-year-old Jeremy Eusebio was stabbed and critically injured, allegedly in a feud over a girl, after he got out of his high school, the International School for Liberal Arts.

At the start of the school year, 15-year-old Unique Smith, a student at the Brooklyn Laboratory Charter Schools, was fatally shot after his first day of school in a nearby Downtown Brooklyn park. Violence in that area spurred the local city councilperson to arrange for students to meet regularly with local police.

“This has been a very bad situation. It breaks my heart as I see this happening every day,” Banks said Sunday on WBAI.

City schools have also been dealing with a surge of students showing up with weapons —often for self-protection on their commutes. The number of weapons and other “dangerous items” found on students at school, which can include pepper spray and tasers, more than doubled in the first months of this school year compared to last school year, according to NYPD numbers.

“We have not had a serious uptick of violence in our schools… Our schools are the safe havens,” Banks said. “But what we have had is a major uptick in weapons that have been brought to schools, and when we talk to young people across the city, they’re bringing these weapons, not to do harm to their classmates in school but to protect themselves from what’s going on in the streets after school is over.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

NYC schools want to boost enrollment. It might prove a major challenge.

2023-02-09T05:01:00+00:00

New York City schools Chancellor David Banks wants to win students back.

The nation’s largest school district has hemorrhaged students since the start of the pandemic, with enrollment down about 11% to 813,000 students in grades K-12 since then.

Earlier this week, Banks even tweeted: “Increasing enrollment and boosting opportunity for all of our students is our North Star.”

But such an effort might not be so simple, according to a new analysis by The Associated Press, Stanford University’s Big Local News project, and Stanford education professor Thomas Dee.

Across 21 states, about 230,000 of the students who left the public school rolls from 2019 to 2021 cannot be explained by rising private school or homeschool enrollment or population changes, according to the analysis. A quarter of those children — roughly 60,000 — were in New York.

These students could have fallen off school rosters for various reasons, Dee noted, such as being homeschooled without registering with the state or skipping kindergarten. Other students might have disengaged during remote learning or amid mental health struggles.

But there could be other factors that complicate the chancellor’s goals of rebuilding enrollment. Besides a declining birth rate, immigration to New York City has slowed, and families are leaving New York for places like New Jersey and Florida — often in search of cheaper housing. Together, demographic change could account for at least 40% of New York state’s public school enrollment decline, according to the analysis.

“There’s growing evidence for how much domestic migration happened during the pandemic,” Dee said. That likely reflects “underlying structural factors,” he said, “such as the enduring nature of work-from-home arrangements that have allowed people to relocate, as well as the push-pressure from things like rising housing costs.”

He added, “On some level, that reduction in public school enrollment wasn’t just a flight for public schools. It was a flight from these communities.”

Enrollment losses mount in NYC

New York City school enrollment has been declining every year since 2016, due in part to declining birth rates.

Between the 2018-19 and the 2019-20 school years, for example, the city saw enrollment fall by 5,000 students. But the decline has accelerated. Three years later, there are 99,000 fewer kids in the city’s district schools, even as additional classrooms for 3-year-olds have been added to the system, according to preliminary education department enrollment data from October.

Where did they go? The picture is not entirely clear. During this time, the number of homeschooled students in New York state has gone up, though it still represents comparatively few children. The number of private school students statewide, however, dropped.

At the same time, the school-age population statewide fell by more than 60,000 children, according to census estimates.

After accounting for the non-public school increase and the population loss, that leaves just over 59,000 students whose exit from the state’s public schools isn’t explained. At least in theory, those students are missing.

But the census estimates used for the analysis have shortcomings, especially when it comes to counting children. The New York state census estimates, in particular, have been known to be off-base compared to the official 10-year estimates. Dee’s analysis notes that the enrollment data and census data are collected over different time periods, which could understate the role of population change.

Demographic experts warned against using a specific number for the state’s students missing from school rosters.

“The population estimates may not be the best basis for comparison in this case,” said Steven Romalewski, director of the CUNY Mapping Service at the CUNY Graduate Center’s Center for Urban Research. “You may be able to generally determine the direction of the gap,” he added, but cautioned against “calculating seemingly precise population counts representing the ‘gap.’”

Because of these limitations, Dee ran a similar analysis for pre-pandemic years in New York, which found a much smaller number of unaccounted-for students, pointing to something “out of the ordinary” during the pandemic, he said.

“Over the pandemic, we’ve seen this historically unprecedented exodus from public schools,” Dee said.

City officials said they have accounted for students who left the system, sharing a breakdown earlier this school year detailing the numbers of children who went to different parts of the state, the country, or left the U.S., as well as those who dropped out or transferred to charter or private schools.

“Like districts and schools across the county, our enrollment has been impacted by fluctuations resulting from the pandemic as well as long-term trends in birth rates,” Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg previously said in a statement.

The enrollment drop has real world consequences for schools. As students leave the system, the city is bracing for a dramatically smaller budget once COVID relief dollars dry up since schools funds are based on enrollment.

Grappling with students who left, and who are frequently absent

Banks, in prepared remarks for Wednesday’s Albany budget hearing, acknowledged that families left New York City public schools for various reasons, and he showed optimism for winning some back.

“The answer to declining enrollment is clear: we have to give our students and families the opportunities and experiences they want in the classroom,” he said, “and we must do a better job of showing them how our schools are giving students the skills and knowledge that will drive success in their lives after school.”

He added: “My administration is focused on rebuilding trust with our families and bringing families back to our schools.”

To that end, the city continues to open new schools. Two that include remote learning opened this year, along with a school focused on robotics. A school focused on design and social justice is expected to open next year. But it also remains to be seen whether the city will soon propose a rash of school closures or mergers. There are a couple of proposed mergers on upcoming agendas for the city’s Panel for Educational Policy.

David Bloomfield, a professor of educational leadership, law and policy at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, cautioned about using the big-picture “rough” data to make “finely tuned” policy decisions that affect individual students.

“It doesn’t get to the granular level of individual kids’ needs,” he said. “We know they’re not missing in a real sense. They’re just not on anyone’s radar. It’s the radar screens’ fault, not the kids’ fault.”

He compared the issue to the debate around learning loss, saying it’s “valid and important” to research the phenomenon, but that there are also so many variables and unknowns that are difficult to parse out.

“I think it’s much less important for the macro than the micro: For a given kid who’s not in school, it’s much more important,” he said.

Bloomfield remained more concerned about the larger number of New York City students who are chronically absent and might be enrolled but “alienated” from their schools. More than 30% of students this year are on track to have missed more than 18 days, or about a month, of school, city officials have said.

“The other piece is the in-school situation,” Bloomfield said, “The kids who can be found but are not being served.”

Correction: Due to an update to one state’s enrollment figures, this story has been corrected to change the estimated number of missing students in all states from 240,000 to 230,000.

This article is based on data collected by The Associated Press and Stanford University’s Big Local News project. Data was compiled by Sharon Lurye of the AP, Thomas Dee of Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, and Justin Mayo of Big Local News.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Brooklyn principal leaves middle school after teacher complaints mount

2023-01-26T21:36:40+00:00

An embattled Brooklyn middle school principal is leaving his post following months of tensions with teachers.

M.S. 51’s Neal Singh will be replaced on Feb. 1 by Pui-Lam (Jack) Chan, who will serve as acting interim principal as the school embarks on the formal hiring process, according to a letter District 15 Superintendent Rafael Alvarez sent on Thursday to parents. Singh will be joining the superintendent’s team.

Singh took over Park Slope’s M.S. 51 in August 2020, after the previous principal of 14 years abruptly retired before an especially challenging new school year. His first task: To figure out all of the complicated COVID-related city guidance around reopening the campus, while also managing remote students and staff. At the same time, the school was learning to adapt to teaching a student body with a wider range of academic needs following a major admissions change across District 15 in 2019.

M.S. 51, like other schools across the city, also has been grappling with higher needs in general, both academically and socially, because of the pandemic-related isolation and school disruptions.

Singh’s leadership style clashed with many of the teachers, as Chalkbeat previously reported.

By March 2021, a group of frustrated educators had compiled their complaints in a three-page document, charging Singh with “gross mismanagement of our school” and describing extensive concerns about safety, lack of communication, “capricious and arbitrary decision-making,” and interference with union activities, according to a copy of the document obtained by Chalkbeat. Two-thirds cast their ballots in favor of the no-confidence vote in the principal.

A few months later, the United Federation of Teachers filed a grievance on behalf of 41 staffers alleging a pattern of harassment and intimidation of union members. It was the largest so-called union animus grievance in UFT history, union officials said. Many teachers have since left their positions at the school, several educators told Chalkbeat.

Singh did not respond to requests for comment.

“We thank Mr. Singh for his unwavering dedication and service to the school and community, and we wish him the best in his new position supporting schools across the entire district,” Alvarez wrote in his letter to parents.

According to City Council member Shahana Shanif, Singh (who is Indo-Caribbean) stepped down after a “coordinated campaign of racist harassment,” a statement she posted on Twitter said.

“As one of the few principals of color in District 15, Principal Singh broke so many barriers in our community and was a proud leader in the fight to desegregate our racially divided school system,” she wrote.

Principal Singh served our school community with distinction and dedication. I am deeply saddened to see him leave MS 51 and even more disturbed by the racist smear campaign run against him. Our community deserves better. My full statement 👇 pic.twitter.com/kHf1YEU924
— Council Member Shahana Hanif (@CMShahanaHanif) January 25, 2023

Singh had been an assistant principal at Brooklyn High School of the Arts, and before that an environmental science teacher at LaGuardia High School, where in 2012 he won a prestigious Sloan Award for excellence in teaching.

District 15’s middle school diversity plan, heralded as a model by many integration advocates, has changed the demographics at many schools, including M.S. 51, a sought-after choice known as one of the district’s “big three” middle schools with a competitive application process before the district moved to an all-lottery system. Last year, more than half of M.S. 51’s students came from low-income families, up from nearly a third the year before the admissions change, according to public data.

Chan has more than 20 years of experience at New Utrecht High School, in Brooklyn’s District 21, where he has been an assistant principal since 2009, according to the letter from Alvarez. While there, Chan oversaw social-emotional learning and adult education programs, and as president of the Social Studies Supervisors Association has extensive connections with New York City’s community organizations.

“Mr. Chan is also a trained coach,” Alvarez wrote, “and he has leveraged his skills as an empathic listener to intentionally build trusting and supportive relationships in the school environment.”

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Neal Singh was once an environmental science teacher.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Tell us: How has your relationship to school changed since the pandemic started?

2023-01-25T21:45:59+00:00

To say it’s been a long three years feels like an understatement. Much has changed for many New Yorkers since the COVID pandemic started, particularly when it comes to their relationship to school and education.

Where does that leave parents, students, and educators? What kind of support do families and schools need?

It’s still a trying time for many New York City schools.

The nation’s largest school system continues to lose students, resulting in budget cuts. But in many cases, having fewer teachers meant they had to do more with less, often with class sizes ballooning. Compared to the year before, elementary and middle school classes increased this year, according to city data. And the privately run but publicly funded prekindergarten centers that are the backbone of the city’s free pre-K program for 3- and 4-year-olds has been rife with funding and other problems.

Meanwhile students are still healing from prolonged isolation, but are once again going on field trips and are back in their classrooms — except when they don’t show up, as chronic absenteeism rates remain high, and educators have seen an increasing number of students who feel like school is optional, in a way.

Some children are trying to self-medicate with marijuana, experts have said, and schools are reporting an uptick in student marijuana use, particularly in younger grades. On top of social emotional needs, many students still need academic help. The city has also been grappling with how to better serve a rising number of homeless students, particularly from migrant families sent here on buses from Texas.

Please fill out our brief survey to let us know how things have changed for you:

NYC pauses Success Academy space-sharing plans in Queens and Bronx schools

2023-01-23T22:56:22+00:00

Success Academy, New York City’s largest charter school network, is on an expansion tear, recently winning approval to move into buildings shared with other schools in Far Rockaway, Queens as well as in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.

But mounting community resistance has halted three other proposals — in districts 28 and 29 in Queens and the Bronx’s District 11— which the department of education quietly pulled from the Panel for Educational Policy’s agenda before Tuesday’s scheduled vote.

The decision came “after hearing from community members throughout this entire process that the proposals would create significant challenges for the new schools and the existing co-located schools,” schools Chancellor David Banks said in a statement on Monday. “Being responsive to families, staff, and community input is a core pillar of this administration, and we welcome all voices to take part in these discussions.”

Under state law, charter schools are entitled to receive space from the education department or rental assistance. Banks said the city will continue to work with Success Academy to help them find “suitable” facilities for their new schools.

Roughly 1,100 New York City schools, or 66%, share campuses with other schools. About 10% of those are charters, according to data from the New York City Charter School Center.

Fears that Success Academy’s move could slow a turnaround effort

One of the Success Academy proposals would have opened an elementary school in a building in southeast Queens shared by two middle schools and a District 75 program, serving children with disabilities who need intensive support.

Principals at the two middle schools, M.S. 332 and M.S. 72, after sleepless nights of grant-writing last spring, had won a federal magnet grant in October sending nearly $2.5 million to each of their schools over five years. When they learned of the proposed Success Academy co-location, they feared they might not be able to meet the goals of their project, which was among 19 proposals across the country receiving windfalls.

As part of the grant, the two District 28 schools promised to beef up the rigor of their academic offerings. M.S. 72, also known as the Catherine & Count Basie Middle School, plans to integrate multimedia and performing arts. M.S. 332, known as the Redwood Middle School, will focus on leadership and STEM.

(From left) Queens principals Ativia Sandusky of M.S. 72 and Tammy Katan-Brown of M.S. 332 at the education department’s Lower Manhattan headquarters celebrating their federal magnet grant.

The schools must also increase enrollment about 5% each year over the grant’s duration. And now they must do that while meeting the new demands of a state law mandating smaller classes.

The education department had said there was room to spare in the building, despite objections from the schools and many in the community. According to education department projections based on its “Blue Book,” the building would only be operating at 70% to 79% of its capacity once the Success Academy elementary school is at full enrollment.

But Adriana Alicea, president of District 28’s President’s Council, toured the school, as did local elected officials, and saw little empty space. The District 75 students have gym class in the building’s locker room, and lunch for the three schools is spread over seven periods.

“We can’t force additional students into a building where there’s no space and then condemn New York City schools for failing,” Alicea said. “There’s no space for the children to succeed. There’s no space for them to grow.”

M.S. 72 Principal Ativia Sandusky took over the school in 2019, at the same time Tammy Katan-Brown took over the helm at M.S. 332. Both schools had long suffered from disinvestment, declining enrollment, and poor performance.

The two principals had worked together in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, with Katan-Brown sending many of her elementary school students to Sandusky’s middle school. They both moved to the Queens schools with an explicit goal of turning their reputations around from schools where police made frequent visits, they said.

They immediately got to work, overhauling the culture at the schools, getting $200,000 to upgrade their auditorium, and making other changes. Sandusky’s school, which had been on a 2019 state list of “struggling schools,” won $175,000 for a hydroponics lab, added five new science labs, formed a partnership with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and watched her enrollment grow from 224 students when she started to 289, she said.

“We’ve done so much work here,” Sandusky said. “Now people are coming knocking on the door, wanting to put their children here.”

Both schools have seen state test scores increase from 2019 to 2022. M.S. 72, for instance, saw its English scores jump from about 25% of students passing to nearly 41%. At M.S. 332, only about 22% of students passed the English exams in 2019. Last year, about 42% did.

“The whole narrative of this community has changed since we’ve been principals,” Katan-Brown said. Her school had 214 children last year. This year, there are 257, according to public data.

Eva Moskowitz, Success Academy’s founder and CEO issued a statement after this story initially published, saying, “Thousands of families whose children are in desperate need of better educational options have applied to these schools. We will not let the Adams Administration abandon them.”

Its four Queens elementary schools in Districts 27 and 29 get 20 applications for every open seat, Success Academy spokesperson Ann Powell said. In the Bronx’s District 11, more than 500 families “commute significant distances” to attend other Success Academies; the building eyed for the co-location in the district has more than 900 empty seats according to the Blue Book, Powell said.

Communities fight to get their voices heard

At the Richard R. Green campus, home to the North Bronx School of Empowerment and M.S. 113, educators and families worried that plans to move Success into the building’s first floor could deprive the existing middle schools from using their recently renovated dance room, music room, tech lab, and library – all on that floor. The schools didn’t have enough staff to monitor the stairways during periods to ensure the middle schoolers’ can get safely from the second floor.

As Theresa Roberts, president of the community education council in District 11, fought the city’s proposal, she had worried that parents’ voices wouldn’t be taken into consideration. And when parents are not invited “to the table,” she said, it takes a toll on the “health and emotional wellbeing of everybody here.”

Leonie Haimson, of the parent advocacy group Class Size Matters, said the educational impact statement the city creates for co-location proposals are problematic because they do not consider the new smaller class size mandates. Additionally, she said, they don’t measure whether students will lose access to their music rooms or science labs, and they don’t account for dedicated space needed to provide services for children with disabilities.

“That’s one of the reasons you see so many kids getting OT and PT and speech therapy in hallways and closets,” said Haimson, who recently toured the Bronx school.

She was heartened by the city’s decision to pull the proposals.

“I hope this decision indicates a sea-change in DOE policies and that charter school co-locations will no longer be contemplated,” Haimson said.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

New York’s PE teacher of the year has a big YouTube following for kid fitness videos

2023-01-17T15:01:00+00:00

The short YouTube videos of kid-focused exercise routines and games that Thomas Gelardi would film in his basement after his family went to sleep took off after COVID hit. Within a year, his channel, PhysEdZone, had more than 10,000 subscribers.

Today, Gelardi, who teaches physical education at P.S. 173 in Fresh Meadows, Queens, has more than 20,000 subscribers, and his videos have been viewed more than 4.5 million times.

The inspiration for PhysEdZone came one pre-pandemic day when a school bake sale being held in the gym forced Gelardi to teach in a classroom. The room had a smartboard, so Gelardi searched the internet for follow-along dance videos. Watching the glee on his students’ faces pushed Gelardi to film his own easy-to-follow dance or fitness videos using his iPad and tripod.

“I thought, how fun would it be to dance along with your PE teacher? Just like that the PhysEdZone YouTube channel was created,” said Gelardi, a 16-year veteran teacher who recently won the New York State Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance 2022 PE teacher of the year award. “As I played the videos, students got a kick out of seeing me on the screen, they were laughing, smiling, and exercising at the same time. It was incredible and motivating.”

He already had about 25 videos on his channel when the pandemic closed schools. He had planned to assign them to students as homework and share them with his colleagues looking for brain breaks for their students. Then COVID hit, and he saw the videos as a way to help his students — and others — find fun ways to stay physically active while learning from home full time.

He knew that many kids wouldn’t have a lot of space or equipment, so he designed challenges to be easily accessible. His goal was to keep kids moving at a time when so many children were more sedentary.

The percentage of obese Americans between the ages of 2 and 19 jumped during the pandemic to 22%, up from 19% before the pandemic, according to a study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looking at data from 2018 through 2020.

“I am genuinely concerned about the amount of exercise and movement children are getting in general,” Gelardi said. “Only a very small number of children get the recommended 60 minutes of moderate or vigorous aerobic activity daily.”

But, he added, “When students see that you love teaching, it’s contagious, and their love for learning grows. Something as simple as exercising with my students, excites them to exercise more.”

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How and when did you decide to become a teacher?

I was studying exercise science at Manhattan College, playing soccer for their team, while working at a children’s gymnastics studio on the side, running classes and hosting parties. During my time at the gymnastics studio, parents complimented me on how much fun their child had in my class, how their child looks forward to coming and seeing me every week, and how much their child was learning.

As much as it honored me to hear this, I knew this had a lot to do with the fact that I am a big kid at heart. Children feed off my playful energy. I have been told on several occasions that children gravitate toward me when I am around.

So upon graduation, being the typical confused college graduate, I spoke to my Manhattan College career counselor Dr. Shawn Ladda. We discussed my job at the time, and that is when the lightbulb went off, and Dr. Ladda said elementary physical education! You can combine your passion and your talent for your career!

Tell me more about the inspiration for your YouTube channel and how it became so popular.

I decided to share these videos with other social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to offer new activities to fellow teachers who were in the same boat, trying to navigate this new norm of [remote] teaching.

Since we needed to bring PE to our students’ homes, I knew they may not have the equipment and space that we have in our schools. Some may have a basketball and not a soccer ball or some may have a big living room while others may have a small one. So with this in mind, I brainstormed and created standards based on at-home “PE minute-to-win-it” challenges using homemade equipment and using my basement space to show how these activities can be performed in small spaces. In doing so, this made the activities accessible to all.

Each challenge combines cardiovascular fitness exercises with gross motor skill development. As I began to share these videos on my channel, PE teachers from across the country were using them for their students. I went from just teaching my students at PS 173 to teaching children around the world.

What’s your most popular video and why do you think it resonated with so many people?

My most popular video is a Fitness/Dance workout to the Kidz Pop song called “Dance Monkey” with over 286,000 views. My students love the song. We worked together to create the dance steps and exercise movements.

When I shared the video with my students, they kept asking to replay it again over and over. Having them collaborate with me on it, I think, gives them a special connection to the song and video. Being that they loved it so much, I knew it was going to be a hit when I shared it with the world. The key is to keep the movements simple and dance with a ton of energy and enthusiasm.

I also saw that you’re on TikTok. What’s your experience on that platform been like?

After seeing how I was able to assist fellow PE teachers during COVID on YouTube, I found that I can use TikTok to inspire future PE professionals as well as first-year PE teachers.

Due to the pandemic, many young professionals didn’t receive in-person student teaching [and] mentoring experiences because everything was virtual. There is a big void that I felt I could help fill. On TikTok, I share an abundance of information — from PE games, PE hacks, to advice on time and behavior management.

The most important part of each video is my delivery of the content. I explain and demonstrate each activity as if I were teaching it to my students. In doing so, teachers can understand how to explain and demo it to their own classes.

Are you concerned about the amount of exercise and movement your students get?

I know for myself and fellow PE teachers, when we ask students what they are doing after school, the most common answers are: going on the computer, doing homework, watching TV, and playing video games. Sports and exercise come last on their priority list, which makes teaching them the importance of physical activity a challenge. It is a challenge that I am up for.

I love exposing my students to as many different physical activities as I can in a school year. The more exposure, the more chance there is that a student can find passion in something. That passion can drive my students into a lifetime of healthy habits like eating right and exercise.

What’s something happening in the community that affects what goes on inside your classroom?

COVID is still affecting my community and school. Many students are either out on quarantine or still participating in PE class with a mask on. Creating my YouTube channel with at-home challenges and dance/fitness workouts has been very helpful in getting my students to exercise at home and mask-free!

Tell us about your own experience with school and how it affects your work today.

It was the teachers that treated me with kindness, compassion, and respect that I remembered. The ones who made learning enjoyable and fun.

When students see that you love teaching, love their company, and are having fun, it’s contagious, and their love for learning grows. Teachers are role models. My students want to be like me, and I take pride in that. I often ride my bike to school wearing my safety helmet to motivate students to do the same. It is a great position to be in.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

College funds for NYC’s kindergartners: How to get and give seed money for higher education

2022-12-22T19:11:39+00:00

In January, all New York City’s public school kindergartners will receive a seed investment of $100 in their city-sponsored college savings accounts.

It’s the second year that 5-year-olds citywide will automatically get the NYC Scholarship Accounts — a giant experiment aiming to help thousands of families who historically have faced steep barriers to postsecondary education.

The push has some research to back it up: In addition to the tangible benefits the money itself brings, the act of opening a college account for a young person has intangible benefits of motivating kids to focus on educational achievement and getting to college.

“The research suggests: Just having a small-dollar account, you’re three times more likely to go to college and four times more likely to graduate,” said Debra-Ellen Glickstein, founding executive director of NYC Kids RISE, a nonprofit that manages the Save for College program in partnership with the city’s education department.

And children who attend college tend to earn higher salaries and are less likely to be unemployed, research shows. This has exacerbated the racial wealth gap: A typical Black or Latino family has a net worth only about a tenth of a typical white family’s, according to Brookings. Addressing these disparities has propelled a big push for publicly funded college saving programs across the nation. Roughly 1.2 million children participate in more than 120 programs across dozens of states, according to a Prosperity Now analysis of 2021 data.

The centerpiece of New York City’s program focuses on making the college-bound effort a communal one, by creating grassroots-led “scholarship” opportunities for children to earn more money in their accounts in various ways, including through civic associations, PTAs, local businesses, or philanthropies. For example, two churches in Long Island City and Astoria organized a “Concert for College,” a Black History Month gospel concert to raise money for the accounts of students at eight schools in their neighborhoods, many of whom live in public housing. About 1,000 people attended the concert, which raised $18.86 for more than 1,000 kindergarten and first graders, according to Glickstein. The churches are planning the concert again for February.

“At its essence, it’s a decentralized wealth-building platform for New York City neighborhoods,” Glickstein said. For her, it’s been powerful to see the efforts like the concert chip away at the barriers to college for families who have historically lacked access “not because it’s an act of charity but because it’s a collective responsibility.”

Here’s what else you need to know about the program:

When did the program start?

NYC Kids Rise piloted the program with support from the Gray Foundation in 2017 in Queens’ District 30 — which includes Long Island City, Astoria, East Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, Corona and Woodside. Last year was the first time the program expanded to all public school kindergartners. The program expanded from about 3,000 kids to more than 74,000.

Who is eligible?

All New York City kindergarten students in district and charter schools will automatically be enrolled in the program as of January. To activate their accounts, they should visit the NYC Kids Rise website and click an “activate account” button. Once a family activates the account, they earn another $25 as a reward.

If families don’t want to participate, they can opt out. About 97% of the city’s first graders, who started with the program last year, are participating in it, Glickstein said.

To activate the account, families will need an email address plus their child’s date of birth, ZIP code, and the nine-digit number used to activate their child’s MySchools account. All families can be part of the program regardless of income or immigration status. (No social security numbers or credit card numbers are needed.) Instructions are provided in nine other languages.

“This was very much designed on purpose to maximize inclusivity and ease,” Glickstein said.

How does the account work?

The money is invested in the state’s 529 plan, a college-savings account that accrues interest over time — the compound interest is earned on the original balance plus on the interest earned over time, which is why it’s important to start the investment early.

The money can only be used for higher education purposes, including college, trade schools, and online degree programs. It can be used for tuition, some room-and-board costs, and textbooks.

If a student does not claim the funds within 20 years after completing kindergarten, the money goes back to NYC Kids Rise to be used for other scholarships in the program, the organization explained.

How can you get more money in the account?

Money can only be put in the account through NYC Kids Rise, but families will have opportunities to earn rewards over time, starting with the $25 they get upon activating the account. If a family opens their own 529 college savings account and links that tax-deferred account to their NYC scholarship account, they can earn another $25. Kids Rise offers step-by-step instructions for opening a 529, including how-to videos in several languages to help families. (The organization continues to advocate for the state’s 529 online application and materials be translated in the nine languages most used by city families since language access remains a barrier to get an account.)

When families deposit at least $5 in their own accounts, NYC Kids Rise will add another $25 to the scholarship account. Once a child is in first grade, the program will match up to $100 of a family’s investment into their own account.

With the seed and reward money, plus community scholarships, NYC Kids Rise estimates that an account of an average kindergartner might have about $3,000 for college and career training by the time that child graduates high school.

Who can contribute to the scholarships?

Individuals as well as organizations can help support the scholarship program through the NYC Kids Rise donations page. Donations will be pooled with others to support future community scholarships across the five boroughs.

The program is hopeful to see communities get creative with targeted campaigns to support kids’ educational futures. So far, the program has seen 21 community scholarships, including the concert organized by the two Queens churches.

NYC Kids Rise Chief of Finance Murray Abeles at his alma mater in Queens, P.S. 69, in June 2019 talking with kindergartners, who received about $50 in their accounts through Community Scholarship money from Seamless.

Another effort led by the Astoria Houses Resident Association raised $1,000 for every kindergarten, first, second, and third grader in its public housing complex who attended one of the school’s in the program’s pilot program. A group of Brooklyn parents who recently sent their kids off to college banded together through a donor-advised fund to support children at P.S. 92 in Corona Queens, awarding $60.48 to nearly 250 first and second graders from the pilot program.

Most recently, 1,200 first graders in East Flatbush and Canarsie, Brooklyn, received $1,000 in their NYC Scholarship Accounts thanks to a $1.2 million donation from Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Greenwood Initiative and Brooklyn Community Foundation’s Donor-Advised Funds. (Bloomberg Philanthropies is a Chalkbeat donor.) This initiative selected Brooklyn’s District 18 because its neighborhoods are at least 86% Black, the largest proportion across the city.

NYC Kids Rise helps groups interested in creating community scholarships for specific groups of students (for more info reach out to communityscholarships@nyckidsrise.org), and the organization deposits the donations into the student accounts.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC schools shift COVID response: No more ‘Situation Room’ or family letters about positive cases

2022-12-20T22:00:47+00:00

New York City’s education department will “permanently close” the command center that collects reports of positive COVID cases among students and school staff, according to an email sent to principals on Tuesday.

Along with the Dec. 23 closure of the “Situation Room,” families will no longer receive the automatically generated email notifications about cases in their school communities, and schools will no longer have to send letters about positive cases, said the note in the weekly digest to principals.

“You will no longer be required to inform members of your school community of individual COVID-19 cases by letter,” the email said.

The change comes as COVID cases are on the rise, with a masked Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday holding his first COVID briefing in months. Flanked by the city’s top health officials, Adams warned of the “extremely challenging” moment the city is facing with the uptick of COVID, flu, and RSV.

Closing the Situation Room might not have much of a practical effect on how schools respond to COVID cases. Not having to send the letters is a “reprieve,” said one middle school administrator.

Schools should continue to report coronavirus cases to a “return to school” online form, and parents and staffers will still be able to see their schools’ positive cases by visiting the city’s daily COVID case map, according to the note. And officials said that the operations would continue but as part of the education department’s “emergency operations center.”

Schools saw 1,956 cases reported among students and staffers on Monday, the highest single-day total this school year, according to cumulative data from Parents for Responsive Equitable Safe Schools. Schools citywide have seen 54,596 cases this school year, nearly triple the number at the same time last year when there were 19,667 reported cases.

As cases have increased, attendance has declined. About 15% of kids missed school on Monday, according to city data.

The city initially launched the Situation Room as a rapid response team to help schools with contact tracing and making classroom or school closure decisions when campuses reopened in the fall of 2020. The inter-agency collaboration between the education and health departments was riddled with problems, including delayed response times and confusing guidance.

But as schools no longer do contact tracing nor close classrooms in response to positive cases, the Situation Room’s role has become less critical.

“The safety and well-being of our students, staff and school communities has been and continues to be, our top priority,” education department spokesperson Jenna Lyle said in a statement. “Principals and school leaders will now be supported by the NYC Public Schools’ 24/7/365 Emergency Operations Center and continue to receive support and guidance from their borough health director for all COVID related matters.”

Students and staff must isolate for five days after testing positive for COVID. They can return to school on the sixth day if they have no symptoms, but must remain masked until Day 10.

Education department officials are recommending everyone wear face coverings indoors as the “tripledemic” of COVID, flu, and RSV have hit the city’s schools.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

As COVID, flu, and RSV cases spike, NYC school officials recommend masking indoors

2022-12-13T22:27:05+00:00

With the triple whammy of flu, RSV, and COVID cases converging in New York City, education department officials are recommending that students and staff wear masks inside school buildings, according to a message they sent families on Tuesday.

“We strongly encourage every student and staff member to wear a well-fitting mask indoors,” the message said.

The recommendation comes after the city’s health department issued an advisory last week encouraging mask-wearing in schools, child care facilities, and other indoor settings, including stores, offices, and on public transportation. State Health Commissioner Mary Bassett and state Education Commissioner Betty Rosa also sent a letter last week to all New York school districts recommending mask-wearing as the “triple-demic” strains local hospitals.

School attendance has been down in recent weeks. This Monday and last Monday attendance citywide reached about 85%, according to education department data. The only Mondays with lower attendance were Halloween and the day after Thanksgiving.

With the uptick in COVID along with RSV and flu cases, the city’s drug stores are running out of medicine like Tylenol for children, according to reports.

On Monday, 1,858 students and staffers reported testing positive for coronavirus, bringing this school year’s total to 48,265 reported cases, according to public data. That’s nearly three times the number of cases reported at the same time last year, when schools had 15,083 cases, according to public data compiled by Parents for Responsive Equitable Safe Schools.

In terms of the flu, New York state has seen about 44,000 cases this season, the majority of which are from New York City, according to state data as of Dec. 3. That represented 41,550 more cases than the same time the year before. And rates of RSV, which can cause breathing trouble for young children, in particular, have nearly doubled since October, according to reports.

School officials are not implementing a mask mandate, and many students and educators might be reluctant to cover their faces again nearly three years into the coronavirus pandemic. The city lifted mask mandates lifted at K-12 schools last March and in June for preschools.

Mask-wearing has become a lightning rod across the country, with many parents pushing back against the value of face coverings, saying that wearing them has brought other negative consequences, including harming students’ mental health and language development.

Though much of scientific literature on mask mandates remains limited, a recently published study linked masks to significantly reducing the number of COVID cases in schools. The paper examined school districts in the greater Boston area that lifted mask mandates versus those that did not.

In Boston’s public schools, for instance, students remained masked, and despite having old buildings with poor ventilation, crowded classrooms, and children from at-risk communities, they had lower rates of COVID than peers at newer schools in nearby districts, the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found.

Teaching while masked is a challenge, many educators have said, forcing them to consider various tradeoffs.

Yvette Andino, a bilingual school counselor in Queens, previously told Chalkbeat that when working with kids on emotions, it was tricky to show facial expressions when masked.

“There are some emotions I couldn’t show with my mask, like anger and sadness or the surprised feeling or shocked feeling,” said Andino. “You kind of form your mouth like an ‘O,’ like ‘oh, shoot’ or ‘oh, man.’ That was really hard for them to learn.”

It took many of her students three times as long as usual to learn how to recognize and understand certain emotions, she said. But eventually, they got there.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC’s middle and high school application deadline extended after website crashes

2022-12-01T17:45:51+00:00

After New York City’s middle and high school applications portal crashed the night before the Dec. 1 deadline, the education department extended the deadline to Dec. 5, officials said Thursday.

Many parents of fifth and eighth graders across the five boroughs, already stressed out by the application process, felt frustrated to see that MySchools was inoperable — though for those familiar with the system, it came as no surprise. The application portal has been riddled with glitches since launching in the 2018-19 school year and routinely crashes under the weight of families rushing to get their applications in by the deadline.

The first year the city made the switch to MySchools — students previously submitted their applications through guidance counseling departments or at family welcome centers — the application deadline was pushed back nearly two weeks. The following year it was pushed back four days.

The site’s issues affect the amount of faith that families have in the school system, some parents said.

“This is the kind of thing that further diminishes trust in the DOE with parents,” Jessica Simmons, a parent of a fifth grader and a member of the Community Education Council in Brooklyn’s District 13, wrote in an email to Chalkbeat.

She described a scene of disgruntled parents venting on social networks on the eve before the application due date. At about 10 p.m., she recalled, the site said it was down for “scheduled maintenance,” which touched off even more anger.

“Would they schedule maintenance the night of submission?” Simmons wrote. “Probably not, but clearly the site couldn’t handle the traffic.”

Quipped another person on Twitter, “Taylor Swift tickets were easier!!” than submitting an application.

Though MySchools has been a consistent problem, this week’s glitches compounded an application season full of “significant changes and untold unknowns” that have brought on additional stress, said Elissa Stein, who runs the High School 411 service to help families navigate admissions.

“Families have spent this last-minute application submission stretch dealing with MySchools technical issues, system crashes, information missing from high school applications, and then a last-minute reprieve the day applications are due,” Stein said. “There has got to be a better way.”

Schools Chancellor David Banks said parents wouldn’t be “penalized” for the problem.

“Websites crash from time to time,” he said at an unrelated press conference on Thursday, “but folks are going to get the time that they need to make the application for their child.”

After admissions criteria were upended the past two years by the pandemic, the city made some changes for this year’s application season. The education department charged the superintendents of each of its 32 local districts to decide whether to bring back selective middle school admissions. In the end, fewer districts brought screened schools. There are now 59 of 478 middle schools selecting at least some segment of next year’s incoming sixth graders based on their fourth grade marks. That’s down from 196 middle schools that used some academic screening for the 2020-21 school year.

For high school, the city aimed to streamline the process for applying to screened schools by grouping this year’s eighth graders into tiers based on their seventh grade averages in core subjects. “Group 1,” for instance, included students with final seventh grade course grades with an average of at least 94.33 for the citywide threshold, or students in the top 15% of their school, with an average of at least 90. (Here’s an explainer with application tips.)

There are also more than 40 high school programs participating in the city’s “Diversity in Admissions” program, setting aside a certain percentage of their seats for students from low-income families or in temporary housing, for instance. If students from Group 1 who meet those admissions criteria don’t fill all the available seats set aside for them, those seats will then go to “Diversity in Admissions” applicants in the next group, education officials said.

The process is similar for seats set aside for students with disabilities, of whom roughly 3% to 5% are expected to qualify for Group 1, according to the education department’s website. Schools are supposed to enroll a number of students with disabilities that match their borough’s percentage. Across the city, about 20% of children are classified with disabilities.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

‘School Colors’ bonus episode event: Join us to hear more about a derailed integration plan in Queens

2022-11-30T18:34:31+00:00

A few months before the pandemic hit, New York City’s education department began an uphill battle to integrate middle schools in Queens, one of the most diverse corners of the nation.

The backlash was swift — even before a plan was created. Families expressed outrage across District 28, where a north-south divide along race and class shaped schools in these Queens neighborhoods for generations.

Season 2 of the “School Colors” podcast offers a clear-eyed and nuanced look at the district’s “Mason-Dixon Line” separating Forest Hills on one end and Jamaica at the other and how the history of housing patterns laid a foundation making it difficult to build a bridge.

No middle school integration plan ever came to fruition. When COVID hit, the education department’s planning process for integrating District 28 fell by the wayside.

What could happen next? What should happen next?

Be part of the conversation on Dec. 15 at Queens Public Library when Chalkbeat and THE CITY are hosting a live podcast event with School Colors creators Mark Winston Griffith and Max Freedman, featuring schools Chancellor David Banks as a special guest.

Though COVID cut short the city’s initiative to bring families together to discuss the problems and possible solutions, Winston Griffith and Freedman filled that role, in a way, bringing to the fore the voices on all sides of the debate.

If you haven’t listened to Season 2 of School Colors, now’s your chance to binge-listen to it on the podcast’s website.

It’s also your chance to send in questions to podcast creators Winston Griffith and Freedman about what they learned in talking with more than 120 people and collecting more than 200 hours of tape to make this season’s nine episodes. And if you have questions about it for Banks, please let us know, too.

Though the process for integrating District 28 middle schools rose and fell before Banks was at the helm of the nation’s largest school system, the chancellor has a personal connection to the area, having attended Hillcrest High School in the early 1970s, after an integration fight sparked there.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Computer science classes have an equity issue. Some NYC educators are trying to change that.

2022-11-21T20:00:00+00:00

Computer science teacher Shanua Newton-Rodriguez is hoping to lead by example.

A woman of color who grew up in the Bronx, she wants to see more students who look like her learning Java, Python, web design, or other coding skills.

But for many students in the nation’s largest school system — particularly girls, Black students, and Latinos — by the time they get to high school, it’s too late. Many get turned off before they make it to the high-level courses Newton-Rodriguez teaches at the Bronx Academy for Software Engineering, or BASE.

In the various computer science classes she leads this year, the number of girls ranges from just one to four. (Nearly 90% of the students at tech-heavy career technical education school are boys, Newton-Rodriguez said.)

“Some students don’t see themselves as programmers. They won’t take the first steps,” Newton-Rodriguez said. “It’s still taking some time, even for the adults, to validate computer science. It’s still seen as an elective.”

Despite New York City’s 10-year plan to bring “computer science to all” students by 2025, equity remains a big issue, according to a recent report from New York University’s Research Alliance analyzing the program through the 2020-21 school year.

Just 17% of schools were meeting the equity goals of reaching girls, Latinos, and Black students under CS4All, as the initiative is called. Schools that made bigger strides in building up computer science courses enrolled lower percentages of Black and Latino students on average, the report said, finding “persistent inequities” in access to computer science within and across schools. (Some schools saw a bit of a backslide in their computer science offerings most likely due to the pandemic stretching schools thin, but overall the city saw improvements toward equity goals, the report noted.)

“It’s not just about getting more seats in more classrooms. It’s also about representation,” said Cheri Fancsali, the report’s author and deputy director of NYU’s Research Alliance.

To shift the culture in computer science classrooms, Fancsali said, educators not only need to emphasize the value of the subject, but also need to show how computer science can be a “tool for solving problems and issues in your own community and for social justice.” That also requires educators to think more “holistically” about computer science and embed it across disciplines, she said.

Teacher training has remained a roadblock. While the CS4All initiative aims to reach 5,000 teachers through a two-week summer professional development session, more substantive courses have been sparse.

New York City is trying to address this through a program called “Computer Integrated Teacher Education” to help train more than 1,000 New York City teachers to integrate computing across subjects. The $14 million initiative, announced Monday, is funded through a public/private partnership with the education department, CUNY, Google, Robin Hood, and Gotham Gives, and is believed to be the largest effort of its kind in the nation, city officials said. The funding will cover scholarships for at least 800 teachers enrolling in the program as well as enable CUNY to design new courses.

“We are focused on an ambitious goal to provide our students with a clear pathway to and preparation for a rewarding career and long-term economic security,” schools Chancellor David Banks said in a statement.

Shanua Newton-Rodriguez accepting her Sloan Award for Excellence in Teaching Science and Mathematics in April 2022.

Teaching culturally responsive computer science

For her part, Newton-Rodriguez — who last year was recognized with the Fund for the City of New York’s prestigious Sloan Award for Excellence in Teaching Science and Mathematics – is doing what she can to get more students from underrepresented groups engaged in computer science.

She talks about possible career pathways, or even ways to make pocket money, explaining that students in her user experience/user interface design class can make posters for their local pizza shops or religious organizations and charge $500 to $1,000 for their services. She embeds culturally responsive lessons in her classes, talking about “what happens if they are not there” contributing to top companies. For instance, she discusses how in the early days of Tesla, the camera technology used by the self-driving cars were not picking up pedestrians with darker skin tones, she said.

“It’s trying to convince them why they are needed,” said Newton-Rodriguez, who worked as a graphic designer before becoming a public school teacher 17 years ago.

She sees the possibilities of cross-discipline collaborations: For instance, a social studies lesson on Harriet Tubman could discuss what she could have done for the underground railroad if she had information technology, and what kind of problems that tech could have brought as well. But when she suggests giving computer science—related professional development to her colleagues, they push back, saying they have other topics to cover in those sessions, she said. And because it’s not a core subject, she can’t get a co-teacher to help her with students with disabilities, making it harder to differentiate and help students whose math skills need help.

She and other educators said that computer science training has to start when children are younger to give students a stronger foundation. Research has found that exposing young children to computational thinking is crucial to building future success in tech fields — and shaping early attitudes toward careers in technology — but a 2020 Center for Urban Future study looking at nonprofits running after-school and in-school programs, however, found relatively few of them focused on grades K–5.

Computer science teachers need peer support

While Newton-Rodriguez has helped her school build up its computer science program, including the Advanced Placement courses in the subject that she teaches, she also found a supportive community of computer science educators through Math For America, a nonprofit focused on connecting the city’s accomplished math and science teachers. Joel Bianchi, a computer science teacher at Energy Tech High School in Queens, said meeting colleagues through Math for America has been “life-giving,” since he had previously felt like he was on “an island” working on the subject matter.

New York State only created a license for computer science education a few years ago, Bianchi said, but there have been few pathways to get it. He’s in one of them, with about 60 other educators: a three-year-old free program through CUNY’s Hunter College for middle and high school teachers with other licenses to get a certificate for the subject.

Bianchi — another winner of last year’s Sloan Awards for Excellence in Teaching Science and Mathematics — created and taught a new AP Computer Science A course when he moved to Energy Tech in 2019. (AP Computer Science A focuses on Java and coding, while AP Computer Science Principles focuses on broader computing concepts.) The first year he taught the course, Bianchi had 10 girls and 10 boys, and the school received the College Board AP Computer Science Female Diversity Award.

But since the pandemic, the demographics have changed. This year, his course initially enrolled six girls. Three have since dropped it. (His school is also more than 80% male.)

“Almost every year I’ve had issues with really high performing girls feeling overwhelmed. And at the same exact moment, several underperforming boys feel completely confident,” Bianchi said. “I struggle with it … What are the things as a teacher I can control?”

He worries that female students hear messages that “subconsciously perpetuate the stereotype” that the course is too hard and technical, and he worries those messages start from a young age.

He noticed that boys tend to speak over the girls in mixed gender groups, so he groups girls together. But the girls continue to struggle with feeling like they belong, and once one left this year, it was a domino effect. He tried to get ahead of it. When the students struggled, he had them go over and correct their tests, giving them a chance to learn from their mistakes and bump up their grades. (He even shared an article with his class last year about why girls excel in the classroom but boys excel in the workforce.)

“There’s a feeling in this particular class: It’s hard, it’s different from what you’re used to,” Bianchi said. “You’re gonna hit a wall. You’re gonna fail. And that’s OK.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

For this Brooklyn teacher, climate education can inspire students to help their communities

2022-11-11T23:23:14+00:00

Sarah Slack’s career as an award-winning eighth grade science teacher was sparked by a story about misinformation.

A student asked her friend, a New York City elementary school teacher, how Pluto blew up. Her friend, confused, dug around a bit, and discovered that his school’s science teacher, having heard on the news that Pluto was no longer a planet, told her students it had exploded. (Pluto is now considered a “dwarf planet” rather than a major planet; it didn’t, for the record, explode.)

“I thought, ‘Kids deserve access to better science information than that!’ And here I am,” said Slack, now in her 14th year in New York City public schools and a recent recipient of the prestigious Math for America Muller Award, in recognition of her influence on the profession.

Slack became a teacher through the New York City Teaching Fellows program after running a nature center in southern Massachusetts, and she has always kept climate education at the forefront of her work.

She’s on the city’s Climate Education Leadership Team, meeting regularly with a group of colleagues from across the school system dedicated to improving climate change education. (They are organizing “climate teach-ins” with guest speakers, hands-on activities, and field trips.) As a member of the Climate and Resilience Education Task Force, she joins other educators and members from local and national nonprofits to discuss teacher support as well as education policy changes at the state level.

For the past six years, Slack has been at I.S. 223 in Borough Park, Brooklyn. There, she’s tapped available resources as well as her own research experiences — including work she’s done in Antarctica and with NASA — to create a climate-focused STEM curriculum. The students do hands-on investigations, looking at temperature variation around the school and proposing changes to bolster resilience in the face of extreme heat events.

“What I’ve begun to see with my students is that, instead of making them feel they have to save the world, I can help them see how to save their own communities,” Slack said.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What’s your favorite lesson to teach and why?

I always thought I would most enjoy teaching lessons connected to environmental issues, but I have developed a secret (and now I guess quite public) love for physics lessons.

It started when I borrowed a pair of ill-fitting rollerblades from my roommate, wobbled on them in the front of my class, and then asked a kid to chuck a heavy backpack at me. When I managed to catch it without falling, kids watched me slowly roll backwards and we were able to discuss Newton’s second law, conservation of momentum, and friction.

Students then design and conduct their own experiments that demonstrate one of Newton’s laws. It is collaborative, interactive, occasionally dangerous, and so much fun for both me and the kids. I love to watch them engaging in the work of scientists and engineers and learning from the process as much as from the end result of their experiment.

NASA! Antarctica! Amazing!! How did these research trips shape what you bring to the classroom?

One of my favorite parts about being a teacher is that there are so many opportunities to grow in both my practice and my knowledge of science, and I am constantly seeking out ways to bring new ideas, new energy, new skills, new joy into my classroom.

Being part of Math for America is one of those ways — I took a workshop led by Alexandra Horowitz, author of “Inside of a Dog,” and ended up using her research on dog cognition to inspire a lesson on genetics and heredity based on dog breed characteristics. I was able to bring my own two rescue mutts into the classroom and challenge students to make predictions about their breed composition.

I was fortunate to have the chance to work on a research team at NASA as part of the Climate Change Research Initiative. This provided me with access to cutting-edge climate science, subject matter experts, and support to design lessons that incorporate NASA resources into our classroom activities. I have often struggled with ways to make data more interesting to my students, and making that connection to NASA research provides a little bit of a hook to get them engaged.

Certainly, one of the coolest things (both literally and figuratively) that I’ve done was participate in a PolarTREC program that allowed me to spend two months on an icebreaker off the southwest coast of Antarctica as part of an expedition investigating factors affecting the melt rate of the Thwaites Glacier. I loved being a member of a team of scientists exploring such a remote part of the world, and devising ways to incorporate my experiences into my teaching.

I’m curious to hear about your students’ sense of agency when it comes to climate and the environment. It’s pretty grim to think about the direction our planet is heading. Do they also have hope that things will change and that they can be change agents?

I show students a visualization of month-to-month carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere from 2002 to the present (NASA’s Climate Time Machine) and use the data to color in three world maps: one that represents carbon dioxide levels in April of 2003; one that shows the data from April 2013; and lastly, a prediction of what atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will look like in April 2023, a challenge which created a spike in demand for red colored pencils in my classroom.

After showing this visualization to one class, a student with a stricken look on her face said with heartbreaking despair, “But Miss, what are we going to do?” Great question, and one that requires a much deeper exploration of the topic than just covering the basic facts of global warming causes and effects. How can we teach about this monumentally consequential topic without simultaneously instilling a sense of helplessness in the face of imminent disaster?

My classes have spent a lot of time this year measuring the temperature of different surfaces around our school — cement, pavement, dirt, and grass. Their data shows that pavement can be as much as 40 degrees hotter than grass on warm sunny days and close to 30 hotter than cement. This has triggered intense indignation about the paved school yard vs the adjacent cement administrator’s parking lot.

But following the whining and without prompting, my students began to think of solutions. What if we painted the pavement? What if we planted some trees? What if we replaced the asphalt with grass? Any or all of those things might make our community a little more resilient as extreme heat days increase in frequency in the coming years.

This recent NY Times article about the dearth of climate education in middle school made me think of your work and whether you feel like you have enough time and support to teach about climate change.

The article struck close to home. I’ve long been disappointed in the focus that the NGSS [Next Generation Science Standards] pays to climate science. I think there are a few things that could be done:

Changing the NGSS seems unrealistic, but finding ways to encourage the curriculum writers to build more lessons around climate change science doesn’t seem like an impossible solution.
Making sure that people don’t view climate education as exclusively a science teacher’s purview. There are plenty of ways to talk about climate in math, ELA, and social studies classes. Even art and music and drama teachers can find ways to connect their lessons to the climate crisis.
Increase the role of Sustainability Coordinators in schools and provide them with time in their schedules to support other teachers in improving the quality of climate education. If I had a few periods a week where I was able to push into other classrooms to help to lead a lesson or work on resource development, I could reach a much larger audience.

Even if we aren’t explicitly teaching our students about climate, we can help them develop the scientific thinking skills to critically assess the ways in which our planet is changing and recognize that climate deniers are not basing their claims on any real science.

My favorite Neil deGrasse Tyson quote is: “The good thing about science is that it is true whether or not you believe in it.”

Hurricane Sandy 10 years later: Educators and parents reflect on how the storm shaped them

2022-10-27T14:30:00+00:00

Hurricane Sandy blew into New York City late on Oct. 29, 2012, when the city’s hundreds of school buildings were empty of students and staff.

In the days that followed, the physical toll of the storm on the city’s schools became clear. Some 200 schools were damaged, from flooded auditoriums to a lack of heat and more severe structural issues. When schools reopened a week later, 65 relocated and shared space in other buildings while repairs were underway.

But the storm’s impact stretched beyond infrastructure. As the 10th anniversary of the storm approaches, Chalkbeat talked to educators and others in schools about the storm’s other lasting legacies — from strengthening bonds to creating community to striving to improve safety.

A teacher rebuilds her house and her spirits

When Hurricane Sandy struck Midland Beach, teacher Fiorella Raimondi’s one-story ranch home was slammed by 10-foot-tall waves and her street was turned into a river.

“I couldn’t find my block. I couldn’t find my house. I couldn’t even see it,” Raimondi said of the moment she returned from the safety of a friend’s house the next day. “Everything that I ever owned in my life was totally destroyed.”

Fiorella Raimondi, with her daughter, in front of the Richmondtown home they moved to after leaving the flood-prone Midland Beach.

She turned for support to her neighbors and longtime friends — but also the colleagues from her school, P.S. 20, which is about six miles away in Staten Island.

Members of the United Federation of Teachers brought tools and ladders to help rebuild. Strangers gave time and money. She had a new house about eight months later, but she ultimately sold her home to the state, which wanted to reclaim the flood-prone area for wetlands. She now lives in Richmondtown, in a home she loves.

“When it first happened, of course, you’re upset and you’re devastated and you don’t know how you’re going to move on,” Raimondi said. “But it made me the person I am today. It made me be more compassionate and made me help more and give more. And it made my daughter that way, too.”

During the pandemic, Raimondi faced more setbacks, including losing her sister to COVID in April 2020. But she also found ways to give back to her community at P.S. 20, whose students are nearly all from low-income families. For instance, when she taught remotely during the 2020-21 school year, she hand-delivered 50 books to each of her 22 students to help them build home libraries. Now, as her school is getting a handful of children from Venezuelan families seeking asylum, Raimondi is helping efforts to support these children not only academically but also with food and clothing.

“I think people get so wrapped up, they forget to be patient and kind,” Raimondi said.

A swim instructor creates a school-based water safety program

Even before Hurricane Sandy killed 43 New Yorkers, Shawn Slevin was dedicated to preventing drowning through affordable swimming lessons, including at the Far Rockaway High School campus and several others across Brooklyn and Queens.

But the tragedy prompted her to expand her effort beyond swimming to larger issues of water safety. And since then, 27 city schools have adopted her four- to eight-week “Know Before You Go” water safety program. The video-based curriculum from her nonprofit Strong Swim Foundation includes a social justice component that looks at the alarming rates at which people of color drown compared to their white peers.

“Water safety is not just about learning to swim,” Slevin wrote in an email. “It is about understanding water in our daily lives from inside our homes (where for children under the age of 5, drowning is a leading cause of death); to everywhere we meet it outdoors (swimming pools, ponds, lakes, streams, rivers and oceans); across all the seasons, and including ‘wild’ or extreme weather.”

Slevin ticked off examples of more recent storms than Sandy that have inflicted a lot of damage, including Hurricane Ida, which set a new record for the most rainfall to fall within an hour in Central Park. Many of the 13 New York City residents who died during Ida’s flooding were trapped and drowned in the basements in Woodside, Queens, near Slevin’s home.

Slevin is also continuing her mission to teach more people how to swim — but that’s getting harder as her nonprofit, like others, are strained financially from prolonged pool closures during the pandemic. Pre-pandemic, Slevin’s program taught more than 10,000 youth and adults, giving more than $1 million in free lessons to families in need. She hasn’t been able to offer as many free lessons nowadays, she said, especially since a city program allowing nonprofits free use of school pools has dried up.

“There are not enough multi-use swimming pools in NYC to support 8.5 million people. Period. New York City is an aquatics desert,” she said. “We need an infrastructure that supports the teaching of New York City citizens water safety knowledge and swimming skills. We are a city of water, after all.”

A parent becomes a community leader

Lilah Mejia (center) works with community activist Power Malu (left) to address childhood hunger by placing community refrigerators in local schools, including P.S. 020 Anna Silver and P.S. 034 Franklin D. Roosevelt, that they stock with fresh produce.

Longtime Lower East Sider and mom of six Lilah Mejia traces a direct line from helping her neighbors recover after Sandy to her current role as the president of her district’s parent volunteer-led community education council, or CEC.

Sandy knocked out power to much of her neighborhood, forcing her and her kids to walk up 19 stories to get to their apartment. This unsustainable trek prompted them to stay in the Bronx for about a month and miss two weeks at their respective schools in lower Manhattan. Upon returning, Mejia joined so many of her neighbors who rolled up their sleeves to feed each other, provide each other with information, or help in other ways.

Because Mejia had worked as a family advocate for those in child protective services, she knew about social entitlement programs such as food stamps, which came in handy as federal money was funneled to neighborhoods affected by Sandy. She eventually got a job with a community organizing group, Good Old Lower East Side, known as GOLES, to bolster its disaster recovery and preparedness initiatives. Through that she helped coordinate the meetings for the LESReady coalition, helping fight for the East Side Coastal Resiliency project designed to protect waterfront neighborhoods from devastating storm surge and regular tidal flooding. (The $1.45 billion project that would replace the current East River Park, taking chunks of open space out of commission for stretches of time, has been a lightning rod in the community.)

“We fight so many other things here — food insecurity, housing insecurity. Now we’re fighting weather,” Mejia recounted. “We never spoke about climate resiliency. That was a new term for us.”

The Sandy-related work she did “opened” her eyes, she said, and she no longer can look away. She started attending District 1’s community education council meetings in 2016 and became a member in 2018, after a previous attempt was unsuccessful. This year is her first at the council’s helm.

“I’m really involved,” Mejia said. “I’m an activist now.”

A teacher reflects on family connections

Jackie Peters, 69, was a librarian at P.S. 3 in the West Village when Sandy struck. Her lasting memory is one of resilience, of schools and staff supporting each other. United Federation of Teachers members knit scarves and mittens and collected other cold weather gear for fellow staff who lost homes or suffered other losses. Schools left untouched by the storm stuffed backpacks and donated supplies to schools that were displaced.

When classes resumed, Peters talked to her students about the experience — and what they said surprised her. She knew her students had lost power for long stretches.

“I wanted to know how they felt about that. I thought they were going to tell me like horrible stories, ‘Oh we had nothing to do!’” recalled Peters, who retired in 2014. “Surprisingly, many of them said that it wasn’t that bad, we got a chance to really talk to our parents and do things and play games.”

As they spoke, Peters thought, “I can’t believe they are saying that!”

Carrie Melago contributed.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Applying to NYC high school? Here’s what you need to know.

2022-10-20T19:34:12+00:00

It’s not an easy time to be an eighth grader in New York City.

Across the five boroughs, 12- and 13-year-olds are in the midst of high school admissions season with newly changed rules that sort kids into different “groups” based on their grades from last year.

New York City has more than 400 public high schools with 700 programs. Roughly 120 of these use “screens,” such as grades, essays or exams. Twenty-five high schools require auditions. Eight base admissions solely on the Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT. Given this landscape, New York City is home to more schools that screen students based on academic performance than other large school districts nationwide.

Schools Chancellor David Banks defended the city’s system of stratifying students when he announced changes to this year’s admissions process, saying, “if a young person is working their tail off every single day and they get a 99% average … that should be honored … you should not be thrown in a lottery with just everybody.”

The system concentrates lower-performing students on the same campuses and contributes to the city’s status as one of the most racially segregated school systems in the country. This year’s admissions process will likely reverse some of the pandemic-era diversity gains when competitive schools couldn’t rely as heavily on grades and other screening measures.

The changes for many families, especially those who may now be shut out of selective schools, has brought a wave of anxiety as they begin the process of ranking up to 12 choices on their applications.

“Anxiety is extra high because, once again, there are changes to the application process,” said Mahalia Watson, founder of the Let’s Talk Schools online parent guide. “I tell everyone to be sure to choose 12 schools that they would be OK attending and chances are more than likely that they will be fine. I don’t agree that the specialized high school or a few select screened schools are the only good options available … Focus on selecting a school that is a good fit for your student and not whether it’s a ‘good school’ or not.”

Other advice she gives parents: “Don’t try to outsmart the matching system. Only select schools that you would attend if an offer of admission is given.”

What else you need to know:

What are the important deadlines?

Applications are due by Dec. 1, and you can apply online through your child’s MySchools account.

Submitting your application early doesn’t give you any advantage, but many experts advise against waiting until the last minute.

“Start early. Don’t wait until the last minute to select schools,” Watson said. “There are so many that it can get overwhelming so the more time you can devote to the process, the less difficult or confusing it will be.”

Eighth grade families should have received a letter from the education department with a code to create a MySchools account, if they didn’t already have one. (Students not currently enrolled in New York City public schools can visit the education department’s website with instructions for new students.)

Offers are expected in early March.

What about the specialized high schools?

There’s a separate process for eight specialized high schools that require a test for admission, like Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech. You must register for the SHSAT — again, though MySchools — by Nov. 4. Eighth graders attending the city’s public middle schools will take the exam at their respective schools on Nov. 17. Other students — at charter schools, private schools, home-schooled or at public schools with grades 6-12 — will take the exam at specific locations on Nov. 19, Nov. 20, or Dec. 11.

Last year, roughly 28,000 students took the test, and about 4,000 received offers. Basing admission on a single test has long been controversial because of the dearth of Black and Latino students who score high enough to get seats: Just 9% of the offers based on the test went to Black and Latino students despite making up about 66% of students citywide.

The specialized schools also enroll relatively few English language learners or students with disabilities. Children with testing accommodations giving them double time — which could be more than 6 hours — should talk to their schools about the possibility of multi-day testing, suggested Jenn Choi, who runs Special Support Services, which advises parents of students with disabilities.

Another specialized high school, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, uses auditions or portfolios for entry instead of the SHSAT, and requires a separate application via MySchools. There’s a common application for the 25 schools that require auditions, which means, for example, if you apply to three dance programs, you only need to send in one dance audition. A student’s lottery number will break a tie if students have the same rank, education department officials said.

Offers to these schools are given at the same time as other schools in early March.

How should you research schools?

After logging into your MySchools account, you can search for schools and research their information pages, which should include any tours (virtual or in person) as well as additional admissions requirements or selective criteria. Other helpful resources include InsideSchools, which offers write ups based on school visits along with other helpful data points, including results of school surveys on questions like bullying and safety.

“Make sure you are finding schools that are good fits for your child in terms of academics, rigor, interests, and teaching styles,” said Elissa Stein, a consultant who runs the HS 411 subscription service. “Consider quality of life issues like commute, start time, out[side] lunch, extracurriculars, and freshman support.”

After viewing so many options they might start to blend together, so it’s important to take notes, Stein suggested. Also, she advises families to involve their eighth graders in the process, “whether it’s doing post-touring recaps, having them research in MySchools, or spending time talking through options.”

Additionally, double check that your child is eligible for the programs and schools you’re considering, she said.

Watson advises families to visit as many schools as possible through virtual and in-person tours, and she was excited for the open house calendar on MySchools.

“In addition to visiting, the best way to find out information about a school is to speak to parents and/or students already enrolled,” Watson added.

What’s up with the new grouping process?

The city recently announced that this year’s eighth grade students will get priority to screened schools based on their seventh grade scores for coursework in core subjects. (State test scores are not factored in.) Students are grouped as follows:

Group 1: Those with final seventh grade course grades with an average of at least 94.33 qualify for the citywide threshold, as do students who are in the top 15% of their school, with an average of at least 90.
Group 2: Those with an average of at least a 90.25 average qualify for the citywide threshold (if they’re not in Group 1), as do those in the top 30% of their school with an average of at least 80.
Group 3: Those with an 83.5 average qualify for the citywide threshold, along with those in the top 50% of their school with an average of at least 75.
Group 4: Those with a 76.75 average qualify for the citywide threshold, along with those with seventh grade course grades in the top 70% of their school with an average at least 65.
All others will be in Group 5.

Applicants can find out which group they fall into through their MySchools profile. (Click on “edit profile” above your child’s name and scroll down to find the admissions group.)

If there are more applicants in Group 1 than available seats, students from that group will be selected by a lottery using the random number linked to each person’s application, according to education department officials. If seats are not all taken by Group 1 applicants, students from Group 2 are considered in the same way, and so on.

About 20 of the city’s selective high schools, including Beacon and Bard Early College high schools, require students to complete essays, school-based exams, or other assessments.

What about schools that are part of the city’s Diversity in Admissions program?

More than 40 high school programs set aside a certain percentage of their seats for students from low-income families or in temporary housing, for instance.

If students from Group 1 who meet those admissions criteria don’t fill all the available seats set aside for them, those seats will then go to “Diversity in Admissions” applicants in the next group, education officials said. For instance, Frank McCourt High School, Beacon, and Millennium Brooklyn High Schools give priority to students eligible for free or reduced price lunch for 66% of their seats.

What about students with disabilities?

When it comes to the enrollment process, students with disabilities who have individualized education programs, or IEPs, are considered in a separate pool if they have a special education service — either a special class, special education teacher support services, or SETSS, or integrated co-teaching, or ICT — for 20% of their week.

But not all high schools are inclusive when it comes to students with disabilities, said Choi, of Special Support Services, who trains parents how to research a school’s special education culture.

Like many parts of the city’s school system, for children with disabilities the onus falls on the family to figure things out.

“If you think about how fast a family can find out which schools have golf teams in New York City, it’s literally less than a minute,” Choi said. “We have to call to find out what ‘partial accessibility’ even means. That’s another fifty phone calls.”

Families should ask, for instance, how a school flags when a student is not making appropriate progress and what happens next? Is there a conference or tutoring?

“Is the student’s entire curriculum on Google classroom? With reminders, reading material, worksheets, due dates, assignment information, and powerpoints?” she asked. “For many students with disabilities, it’s an essential accessibility need and for others, it’s just a desired good practice.”

What does your random number mean?

This year, for the first time the city is sharing students’ lottery numbers in their MySchools account profile. These hexadecimal random numbers may be hard to decipher — though that hasn’t stopped some from trying. For schools that have various admissions priorities, these numbers act as “tie breakers,” Joyce Szuflita, who runs NY Schools Help, explained on her blog. Someone with a lower random number in Group 1 still would be ranked higher than someone in Group 2 with a “good” lottery number, she explained.

Szuflita advises families to look at an array of schools, and understand your odds based on admissions priority to specific groups of applicants before others, such as to students who live in a specific borough, or continuing middle schoolers in a 6-12 grade school, or for Diversity in Admissions students, or students with certain grades for screened schools.

“Make a robust list of different kinds of schools, with different sizes, with different admission criteria, with different [applicant to seat] ratios, with different priorities,” she wrote. “The random numbers are a factor, but they are not your fate. Then rank your list in true preference order.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC overhauls high school admissions, leaves middle school changes up in air

2022-09-29T17:15:16+00:00

In a major shift for high school admissions, eighth graders from across the five boroughs with course grades in the top 15% of their class last year will have priority in scoring seats at some of New York City’s most selective high schools, Chancellor David Banks said Thursday.

Middle schools, meanwhile, will once again be allowed to screen students based on grades and other metrics for the first time since before the pandemic, Banks added.

The move marks a departure from the past few years when the pandemic upended many of the selective admissions criteria, forcing changes to admissions that helped move the needle on integrating one of the most segregated school systems in the nation. Integration advocates said those changes increased the share of Black, Latino and low-income students admitted to some of the city’s most selective schools. According to limited data from the education department, the changes increased the proportion of Black and Latino students at several high-demand schools.

Banks said the revamped admissions process, which immediately sowed confusion among families, aims to strike a balance between “increasing access to communities who have historically been locked out of screened schools,” while also “rewarding those who work hard academically and make it to the top of their middle school class.”

The high school change applies to roughly 100 schools that have in the past used selective admissions criteria such as grades, test scores, and attendance. It does not apply to about 20 of the most coveted selective schools — like Beacon High School and Bard Early College — that have their own assessments like essays or school-based tests.

For middle school admissions, the city will allow each district’s superintendent to work with the community to decide what, if any, selective admissions criteria to use in screening applications.

“We are not eliminating screens,” said Banks. “The previous administration sought to take these opportunities away. I have heard overwhelmingly across the city, parents have asked us to increase opportunity, not take it away.”

For high schools, the new plan represents a big change from last year’s policy, under which students needed at least an 85 grade point average to be in the top tier for selective schools — and roughly 60% of eighth graders qualified, said Sarah Kleinhandler, the head of enrollment for the education department. With this year’s changes requiring at least a 90 average, roughly 20% are expected to have priority.

“If a young person is working their tail off every single day and they get a 99% average … that should be honored,” Banks said. “I don’t want to de-incentivize hard work. … I think it’s really important that if you’re working hard and making the grade, you should not be thrown in a lottery with just everybody.”

For middle schools, screens could be coming back after they were paused altogether for the past two years. Middle school applications open on Oct. 26, giving superintendents a short timeline to work with communities on creating changes and then explaining those changes to families.

High school applications open Oct. 12. Applications for middle and high school are due Dec. 1. High school offers are expected to be shared in early March, while middle school offers are expected in April.

The city’s selective schools are separate from the eight specialized schools that require the Specialized High School Admissions Test. Admissions for those schools remain unchanged. Registration for the test opens Oct. 6. The exam will be given to eighth graders in their middle schools on Nov. 17, as well as the weekend of Nov. 19.

For performing arts schools, auditions will remain virtual.

A closer look at the high school changes

At the high school level, former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration eliminated a special geographic priority for students in Manhattan’s District 2, and shifted screened admissions rules last year to reduce the importance of the very top grades.

This year, eighth graders at the top of their class last year — or in the top 15% citywide — must also have scored an average of at least 90 in their seventh grade core subjects to have priority to the selective high schools, according to the new admissions criteria.

Students will qualify for the top tier if they score in the top 15% of their individual school, or in the top 15% of all city eighth graders – whichever cutoff is lower. That means at some high-performing middle schools with lots of students with high grades, more than 15% of students will qualify.

The DOE didn’t immediately say how many overall seats are available in screened high schools or how many students are expected to qualify for top tier admissions priority this year.

If there are more top applicants than seats at a screened school, applicants will be selected based on a lottery, Kleinhandler said.

In another significant change to high school admissions criteria, screened programs will no longer consider state standardized test scores when selecting students.

Banks said he believes the state exams “can be flawed in terms of admissions criteria” and that grades are a better predictor of how students will fare in screened high schools.

It wasn’t immediately clear how the changes to high school admissions rules would impact long-running efforts to increase the number of Black, Latino, and other underrepresented students at selective high schools.

Education department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer said the agency is projecting that the changes will increase the racial and socioeconomic diversity of students admitted to screened schools compared to before the pandemic, but not compared to last year, when a wider range of students got first priority to screened schools.

The DOE didn’t immediately provide those specific projections.

The high school changes drew qualified praise and criticism from both supporters and opponents of admissions screens.

Nyah Berg, the executive director of New York Appleseed, a group that has pushed to eliminate screens, applauded the DOE for “standardizing the selection criteria” and making the admissions process more “transparent.” But she said she’s not satisfied with reforms she views as the “bare minimum” and that “will undoubtedly result in less diverse schools.”

John Liu, a state senator from Queens who was critical of de Blasio’s pandemic admissions reforms, praised the decision to “narrow” the group of students receiving admissions priority compared to last year, but said it “remains unclear if the administration’s efforts … fosters true educational achievement and equity.”

Parents of current eighth graders, meanwhile, were scrambling to figure out what the changes mean for their kids.

Gwen Leifer, the parent of an eighth-grader at Stephen Halsey Junior High School in Forest Hills, Queens, said this year’s system is an “improvement” over last year’s. “You couldn’t plan, couldn’t strategize how to rank things,” last year, she said. “I think this lets people make more rational choices.” Leifer, whose son is interested in arts schools, said she also appreciates that auditions will remain virtual.

Schools that were already participating in “diversity in admissions” programs that allow them to set aside a portion of seats for underrepresented students will be allowed to continue with those initiatives, Kleinhandler said.

Additionally, the city plans to open three new schools in September 2024 focused on “accelerated learning” in low-income communities of color — in the South Bronx, Ocean Hill-Brownsville, and Southeast Queens — giving students from these neighborhoods geographic priority so they don’t have to travel long distances for such programs.

Middle school changes a work in progress

While some families lobbied to restore selective admissions criteria for middle school, integration advocates had pushed to eliminate them, saying it is unfair to sort fifth graders based on their academic performance from fourth grade.

Superintendents are expected to work with their communities to determine whether to use selective middle school admissions criteria. If they choose to do so, students would be ranked on their fourth grade scores. Still, city officials said they would limit the number of schools using academic screens.

When asked which specific types of admissions criteria middle schools could use, and whether attendance could be a factor, Kleinhandler said, “we would entertain everything that’s brought to the table.”

Banks added, “This is a community decision that will be led by the community when it comes to middle school admissions.”

Superintendents are supposed to make decisions about any new middle school screens before applications open on Oct. 26, giving them under a month.

New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who was a city councilperson representing Brooklyn’s District 15 when it passed a middle school diversity plan eliminating screened schools in favor of a lottery-based system, said he was relieved that plan will remain in place. The district’s community education council already passed a resolution in support of keeping it.

But Lander was disappointed the initiative would not be replicated citywide.

“Unfortunately, today’s announcement walks back the commitment to move forward across the city toward that vision — despite local law that requires more districts to engage in diversity planning,” Lander said in a statement. “Restoring middle-school screens will reinforce segregation in our schools. It elevates the notion that some children deserve ‘good schools’ while the vast majority do not.”

Sheree Gibson, Queens Borough President Donovan Richards’ appointee to the city’s Panel for Educational Policy, said she’s worried whether the superintendents can meaningfully survey parents and communicate their decisions under such a tight timeline.

“Are you going to truly represent what your community wants to do or are you just going to represent some of the louder voices in your community?” she asked.

As NYC school board meetings return in person, will parent voices dwindle?

2022-09-27T17:25:59+00:00

For many New York City parents, the move during the pandemic to virtual school board meetings meant they could attend without having to scramble for child care or figure out transportation.

Now, participating in these meetings could once again become difficult, and that could have important consequences in terms of whose voices get heard when the city makes policy decisions.

After extending New York’s COVID state of emergency several times, Gov. Kathy Hochul allowed it to expire earlier this month, putting an end to virtual public meetings governed by the Open Meetings Law. The city, however, extended its local state of emergency through Oct. 22, giving boards some more time to figure out next steps.

Meetings covered under the state’s Open Meetings Law can go hybrid, but it could get complicated.

A board can pass a resolution or change their bylaws allowing for individual members to attend virtually due to illness, disability, caregiving responsibilities, or any other “significant or unexpected factor or event.” But a quorum of board members must still be present in person.

Several public bodies governed by the state’s Open Meetings Law have passed resolutions to hold hybrid meetings, though many have not, and some parent advocates worry that will prevent many families from being able to show up. With unvaccinated parents still barred from schools, in-person-only meetings might mean they can no longer participate. Hybrid meetings, on the other hand, can require tech equipment and expertise that some of these volunteer bodies might not have. And for many school board members — most of whom are caretakers — who will get to dial in and who will have to show up?

“You could be cooking dinner for your kid and participating in a meeting at the same time,” said Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, a member of the city’s Panel for Educational Policy, or PEP, of online meetings.

PEP, CECs, SLTs ...

The rule applies to the PEP, a largely mayoral appointed board that only approves (or rejects) contracts, and also provides one of the few spaces for families and advocates to publicly express their views on issues from school closures to disciplinary changes. The panel, which is required to livestream their meetings, has yet to vote on whether to allow hybrid member participation or whether they will take public comment via teleconference.(PEP meetings have lasted well past midnight both virtually and in person.)

The Open Meetings Law also affects charter school boards, school leadership teams (each schools’ joint educator-parent committee that makes instructional and other decisions), and the 36 parent-led Community Education Councils, which are largely advisory but also have the power to shape school zone boundaries.

These education councils, known as CECs, add “a layer of democracy,” and “to the extent that members use their platform, it’s an extra set of eyes that represent the views of parents,” one former member told Chalkbeat. They have also become the forum for heated debates over changing admissions policies in attempts to integrate one of the country’s most segregated school systems, with a recent election push from both sides of the aisle to get their preferred candidates on the councils.

So far, nine of the 36 parent councils have sent resolutions to the education department to approve hybrid meetings, according to school officials.

The open meetings rule does not apply to parent-teacher association meetings. Those bodies can choose to have in-person, virtual or hybrid meetings, according to regulations the PEP passed in November. (And while many board meetings are returning to in person, parent-teacher conferences at schools will be remote this year.)

Many online CEC meetings have not only been helpful for parents, Salas-Ramirez said, but educators also found it easier to attend meetings, allowing more collaboration between parents and teachers, said Salas-Ramirez, a former president of the education council in East Harlem’s District 4. Since their meetings moved online, anywhere from 60 to 250 people attended, she estimated.

“In person, I kid you not, it’s five people,” she said. “Before, half of the parents didn’t even know what a CEC does. They didn’t know what a PEP does.”

‘A big undertaking’

The Citywide Council on Special Education, the advisory group representing families who have children with disabilities, voted to hold hybrid meetings in the hope that it will allow their community continued access to its meetings, said member Paullette Healy.

“Our families experience a multitude of challenges of having children with disabilities and/or being disabled themselves,” she said. “Because we are citywide, we have an added challenge of traveling to all five boroughs ... That has always posed an immense challenge with acquiring enough members to make quorum, and we did not reach many of our community by doing it in this fashion.”

The council plans to hold its first hybrid meeting of the year on Sept. 29 at the education department’s Lower Manhattan headquarters, but Healy is concerned the group may run into some technical difficulties.

They had issues trying to broadcast from the 19th-century building before and without “proper technology,” the issues may continue. Healy worries that other parent councils might run into similar challenges given the lack of support from the education department in terms of providing the technology or equipment needed for hybrid meetings, she said.

“Many of us use our own personal equipment or are forced to use our minuscule budget to purchase,” Healy said. “We have discussed this with the DOE on many occasions to no avail.”

Many of schools still lack reliable Wi-Fi, and CECs — typically their administrative assistants — have to bring a slew of equipment, including laptops, microphones, hotspots, and headphones, to the school hosting the meeting and back to their district office.

“It’s a big undertaking,” Healy said.

Education department officials said they typically provide technical assistance to CECs for their town halls with the chancellor and are exploring future tech assistance based on need and resources.

In Bedford Stuyvesant’s District 16, Community Education Council President NeQuan McLean would like for his members to offer hybrid meetings — he even pushed Albany for the option — but for now, they don’t feel like they have the capacity to do so.

“This situation has caught us in a tight predicament,” McLean said.

His CEC is among several that lack an administrative assistant — “because the salaries are so low,” he said — which means all of the work to set up meetings and create various documents in the required timeframe fall on him and other parent volunteers.

Loss of flexibility

Holding in-person meetings is easier than offering hybrid ones, McLean said. You can simply hand out documents without also making a slideshow. You don’t have to monitor online comments, or choose which of the six members out of 11 have to show up in person. Also when meetings are online, they tend to run longer, which could be a problem for the in-person members who might need to travel home late at night.

Yet, McLean worries that being only in-person will hinder participation, and he’s still hoping to go hybrid at some point. His CEC, too, saw upwards of 100 people at remote meetings compared to about 25 for past in-person meetings.

But the cost to do it well is beyond their meager budget.

“The proper way to do it: you need a camera that shows the dais, you have microphones for people to speak into and then feed that in,” McLean said. “We need at least $25,000 to buy the proper equipment.”

For charter schools, which hold regular board meetings, the New York Charter Schools Association has spread the word to make sure schools were aware of the new requirements and ready to implement them, its executive director Yomika Bennett said.

The emergency pandemic meeting rules allowing more flexibility resulted in much greater engagement and participation for the public, Bennett echoed.

“We are disappointed by the loss of that flexibility in the law and the layers of new rules boards have to navigate,” she wrote in an email. “That said, we are grateful that the law preserves a video conferencing option. We will see what the ultimate impact of changes is and will seek any amendments to the law if needed.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

3 Bronx charters named National Blue Ribbon Schools

2022-09-19T21:08:53+00:00

Only three New York City public schools made this year’s list of National Blue Ribbon Schools, and all were charter schools located in the Bronx, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s picks released Friday.

The Bronx’s Icahn Charter School 2, New Visions Charter High School for Advanced Math & Science II, and South Bronx Classical Charter III were among 297 schools across the country winning the honor. All three were recognized for their overall academic performance, and are low-income schools serving a majority of Black and Latino students. (Schools also make the list for showing progress in closing achievement gaps among different groups of students.)

State education officials can submit up to 19 schools for the honor, according to a spokesperson from the U.S. Department of Education. Yet, New York state saw 20 winners this year, none of which were schools run by the city’s education department.

State education officials could not immediately provide the list of schools they submitted for consideration.

It was the first time since 2005 that no schools run by the city’s education department were on the list. Last year, of the seven Blue Ribbon public schools from New York City, six were district schools and one was a charter (Icahn Charter School 3).

Though the award comes with no financial boost, it comes with bragging rights.

“Blue Ribbon Schools have gone above and beyond to keep students healthy and safe while meeting their academic, social, emotional, and mental health needs,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement. “These schools show what is possible to make an enduring, positive difference in students’ lives.”

Icahn Charter School 2 won praise for its focus on project-based learning, according to the federal education department’s website. All of its students, from kindergarten to eighth grade, participate in three in-depth projects each year, culminating in an event in the school’s gym, similar to a science fair, where students present their work. The school provides continued professional development for teachers on the model, and gets families on board starting in September, holding open houses and workshops to explain what project-based learning is all about and how families can support their children throughout the year.

South Bronx Classical III is following one of its sister schools in its small network that was named a Blue Ribbon School in 2020. The network’s curriculum includes Latin, debate, art, music, and fitness, and its schools use targeted small group work to help struggling students. Teachers receive weekly support, according to the federal education department website, and students have “frequent opportunities to reflect on behavior choices, debate about ways to handle situations, and build socio-emotional skills to handle adversity.”

New Visions Charter High School for Advanced Math and Science II prides itself on getting to know each of its students through its school support teams for each grade, consisting of an assistant principal, school counselor, social worker, dean, and attendance coordinator. The teams meet weekly to discuss academic or social-emotional concerns, as well as figuring out next steps in contacting students or their families to check on overall wellness, the U.S. education website said. On top of that, the teams meet monthly with teachers to discuss progress and concerns.

“From the moment our students walk through the door, they are welcomed by numerous staff members, seen as individuals, and supported by dedicated grade level teams that promote their personal, academic, and socio-emotional growth,” the high school’s principal Sandy Manessis said in a statement.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Tensions high as NYC soon starts middle and high school admissions season

2022-09-14T22:03:56+00:00

Tensions are rising ahead of an anticipated announcement about whether New York City middle and high schools will fully bring back selective admissions for the first time since the pandemic.

Removing test scores, attendance, and other “screens” from the selection process helped move the needle on desegregating the nation’s largest public school system, integration advocates said.

But families who support selective admissions thought the changes — sparked by pandemic-related learning disruptions — unfairly cost their children their top school choices.

Schools Chancellor David Banks is expected to unveil selection criteria next week, an education department spokesperson said, offering no other details. The Adams administration has not highlighted school integration as a priority. Instead, the mayor has embraced screened programs that have long been segregated by race, class, and academic performance: He expanded “gifted and talented” programs and signaled a desire to open more specialized high schools.

Families across the five boroughs are already mounting letter-writing campaigns and petitions for and against schools that use screens in sorting the city’s 10- and 13-year-olds into sixth and ninth grade. Some parent councils are calling for the removal of selective admissions, while others are calling for the opposite.

“We expect nothing less than the permanent elimination of middle school screens,” said Nyah Berg, executive director of New York Appleseed, which advocates for removing screened admissions at middle and high schools. “It was unjustifiable before the pandemic, and it’s just as unjustifiable now to measure a child as young as 9-years-old’s educational attainment, and to judge them by that for access to public middle school.”

PLACE NYC, a group that has pushed to preserve strict admissions screens to public middle and high schools, is circulating a petition that calls for removing lottery admissions, arguing that “academically advanced students need programs that meet their needs.”

Black and Latino students, as well as those from low-income families, with disabilities, or who are learning English as a new language are less likely to meet admissions requirements for selective schools, leaving such schools unrepresentative of the school system as a whole.

Research has found that diverse schools can lead to a slew of academic and social benefits for students, including better test scores, an increased likelihood of attending college, boosting leadership skills and confidence, and combating racial bias or stereotypes, according to The Century Foundation.

A temporary change?

For this year’s incoming sixth graders, city officials paused screens for the second year in a row, instead admitting students through a lottery system.

After the city removed middle school screens the year before, its 50 most selective school programs offered an average of 48% of its seats to students from low-income families, up from 41% the previous year, according to education department data. The department has not shared demographic information on offer data for this school year.

Three-quarters of middle school applicants this year received offers to their first choice, an increase of four percentage points from 2021, according to department data. Ninety-one percent landed a spot in one of their top three choices, up three percentage points from 2021.

About a quarter of the city’s 400 high schools use screens to admit students. Ahead of this year, the city centralized the admissions process and eliminated the use of attendance and state test scores, but still allowed some selective schools to keep their own screens, including their own admissions exams, interviews, and essays. (Admissions to the city’s specialized high schools remained separate and unchanged.) About half of roughly 74,000 high school applicants got their first choice, up four percentage points from the previous year. Three-quarters of all applicants were placed at one of their top three choices, up two percentage points from the previous year.

The department didn’t release data for all high schools, but highlighted notable demographic shifts at some of the city’s most coveted high schools. Nearly a quarter of admissions at Townsend Harris High School went to Black and Latino students, up from 16% the previous year. And at Millennium Brooklyn High School, Black and Latino students received 43% of offers, an increase of 23 percentage points. (Those schools participate in the city’s Diversity in Admissions program, which allows them to give preference to underrepresented students.)

Debates heat up at parent councils

Brooklyn’s District 15 — which encompasses wealthy neighborhoods like Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens along with working-class ones such as Sunset Park and Red Hook — is often viewed as a test case for dropping middle school screens. For the past four years its diversity plan admitted students to middle schools through a lottery system, prioritizing 52% of seats for low-income students, those living in temporary housing, and English learners.

In the plan’s first year, Black and Latino enrollment jumped at some schools that were largely white, while white enrollment increased, albeit at smaller rates, at overwhelmingly Black and Latino schools.

The local parent council, in partnership with New York Appleseed, drafted a resolution calling to permanently remove middle school screens. The resolution also calls for the city to keep recent changes to high school admissions instead of introducing more stringent requirements or changes. (Nathaniel Styer, an education department spokesperson, said officials are not considering dismantling District 15’s diversity plan.)

A discussion on Tuesday about District 15’s resolution laid bare some of the historic arguments for and against screened admissions that will likely surface when the city announces its plans.

Most people spoke in support of the district’s diversity plan and unscreened schools, recounting tales of stressed children who felt pressured as early as first grade to maintain perfect attendance to get into the middle school of their choice. One parent noted that her child, who was part of the inaugural sixth grade class chosen by lottery, attended a more racially diverse middle school than elementary school. Her daughter grew “academically, socially, emotionally,” and even became involved with a youth integration advocacy group.

“Families are much more relaxed and confident about the process once we explain how it works, how the lottery works, what their options are,” Amy Sumner, parent coordinator at the Brooklyn New School, said at the District 15 parent council meeting. “It’s removed so much of the tension and anxiety that the families go through every year.”

In arguing for screens, parent council member Vincent Lu argued that enrollment “dropped tremendously” in District 15 because of admissions changes.

“Families vote with their feet,” Lu said.

However, District 15’s enrollment changes are similar to citywide trends.

District 15’s enrollment last year in traditional public schools was about 88% of its pre-pandemic numbers. That’s in line with the citywide average of 89%, according to data from the Independent Budget Office. (The data excludes preschool for 3-year-olds or alternative programs, such as programs for overage and under-credited students).

As enrollment has dropped in public schools across the nation, there is little evidence showing that admissions changes pushed families to leave district schools. Since the onset of the pandemic, the largest enrollment declines across the city have not been in middle or high school grades, but rather in prekindergarten for 4-year-olds, followed by second grade, kindergarten and third grade.

But other districts, such as Brooklyn’s District 20 and Manhattan’s District 2, are also citing enrollment in their resolutions in support of reinstating screened admissions, based on what they’ve heard from families. Manhattan’s affluent District 2, in fact, has about 91% of its pre-pandemic enrollment, while that figure is 90% for District 20, according to IBO data, both slightly higher than the citywide average.

That district’s parent council has not yet met to discuss the resolution.

“D2 students face these unequitable and demoralizing admissions results despite demonstrating excellent academic proficiency via grades and state test scores that consistently outperform state-wide,” the resolution said.

Though middle and high school applications were delayed the past few years, previously they were due in December.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

It’s back-to-school for NYC. Here’s what we’re watching this year.

2022-09-08T10:00:00+00:00

Larger classes. Fewer opportunities for music and art. Not enough counselors to address students’ emotional toll. Too much time learning on computers even when in the classroom.

These are some of the concerns on the minds of educators and parents as New York City students return on Thursday, marking the first full year with Mayor Eric Adams and Chancellor David Banks helming the nation’s largest school district.

Many educators and families are heading into the year frustrated by the back-and-forth over budget cuts, with the majority of schools’ budgets slashed this year, forcing schools to cut staffers and other programs even as the city still has more than $1 billion in relief funds to spend this year.

Many are also looking forward to going on class trips once again. They’re hopeful that a renewed focus on literacy will help more children learn to read. And they’re looking forward to the new year with fewer disruptions than the previous COVID-dominated three years.

But some educators are already starting off the year feeling burned out after trying to teach through the pandemic.

“This year is expected to feel more like a ‘normal’ school year. Yet I don’t think teachers are ready, emotionally,” said kindergarten teacher Jeffrey Catano of P.S. 280 in Queens. “I love my job and come to work everyday with a smile, yet I feel undervalued by my city and the [education department] as a whole.”

Here’s what we’ll be watching this year:

Who will show up?

New York City’s public school enrollment in kindergarten through 12th grade (excluding charters) declined 9.5% since the pandemic began, and officials are expecting 30,000 fewer K-12 students this fall compared to last year.

The schools with the greatest losses are those serving the city’s most and least affluent, a previous Chalkbeat analysis found. Schools with the greatest share of affluent families saw the greatest drop in enrollment, followed by schools serving the highest numbers of low-income families. Meanwhile, the city is also seeing an influx of thousands of asylum seekers, who may need intensive support.

On top of monitoring the larger enrollment trends, we will be looking at day-to-day attendance. Last year, chronic absenteeism was high, likely for a lot of reasons, including COVID-related quarantines (whether for children who tested positive or because of classmates in the first half of the school year), work-related obligations, or mental health reasons.

What’s happening with the budget?

With funding tied to enrollment, and rosters dropping, Adams shrank the amount of money sent to most schools this year, touching off a political firestorm.

Many educators are concerned about having fewer teachers, larger classes, and less enrichment. Because of budget cuts, Shakira Provasoli is moving from teaching science to leading a second grade class at the Manhattan School for Children.

“I don’t mind, and I love second grade, but it does affect the academic growth of the students at my school in terms of science,” she said.

The budget, however, is not a done deal, with a lawsuit challenging the budget approval process due back in appeals court on Sept. 29. (The city pushed back on a lower court’s decision to redo the education department’s budget.)

If schools end up getting money after the start of the year, the question remains: How will they be able to use it? School leaders who spoke to Chalkbeat said they would welcome more money, especially to hire staff, but doing that after the year begins can be tricky.

Additionally, the administration is fighting Albany legislation that would phase in class size caps through 2027, fearing it will cost too much to implement. Though Gov. Kathy Hochul hasn’t signed it yet, she has signaled her support.

How will schools address academic needs?

Budget cuts forced many New York City schools to let go of educators, but the academic needs remain high, especially for the lowest performing students. Math and reading scores for 9-year-olds from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, whose test is known as “the nation’s report card,” plummeted. It remains to be seen how the city will address this. (Scores for New York City students are expected in October.)

Hiring more staff, having high-dosage tutoring, and strong after-school programs are among the strategies the federal government hopes districts will spend stimulus money on.

Already, however, the city is scaling back its academic recovery program for students with disabilities, many of whom struggled significantly with remote learning. Last school year, city schools were responsible for providing additional support after school or on Saturdays to all students with individualized education programs, or IEPs. The program was slow to get off the ground, however, hitting roadblocks on recruiting educators as well as signing up families. The majority of eligible students did not participate. This year, the city is putting more of the onus on families to advocate for additional support for their children with disabilities.

Manhattan mom Lisa Brassell moved her first grader, who is on the autism spectrum, from his traditional public school to a charter this year due to the lack of support for students with disabilities.

“My son really hated school last year because the teachers didn’t provide proper supports,” she said. “I hope his new school is able to help him like school again.”

How will schools address mental health?

“Students are emotionally fragile,” Provasoli, from the Manhattan School for Children, said.

Last year, the city implemented a social skills screening tool as one way to address mental health needs. The questionnaire, which is expected to be used again, is meant to assess students’ decision-making skills, self-awareness, and taking personal responsibility, for instance. Many educators said they didn’t feel equipped to assess students on these skills, but some schools that have been using them for years — and have had a lot of support around using the data — have been able to use the assessments to shift their schools’ culture.

The city has roughly 5,000 social workers and guidance counselors for its nearly 900,000 students, with at least one social worker or clinician from a school-based mental health clinic in every school. But many educators say their schools need more mental health resources.

“We have excellent counselors that have been at our school for many years. Yet there are only two for 700 students and much of their time is (rightly) taken by IEP mandates,” said Tom Griffith, a sixth grade teacher at Brooklyn Collaborative Studies, a middle and high school.

The school is fortunate to have three “invaluable” counselor interns and an administration focused on empathy-building, he said. It’s still not enough.

“We need more money for more support in this area,” he said. “The pandemic continues to weigh heavily on our whole community. The students are anxious, staff is dealing with personal trauma, and COVID lurks in the background still.”

How will COVID impact schools this year?

Schools are ditching most of the city’s COVID mitigations this year. Say goodbye to the daily health screeners and onsite PCR testing. Continue to expect take-home rapid tests. Masking and quarantines were already dropped last year. One thing that remains, however, are COVID vaccine requirements for staff and visitors, as well as students participating in sports or extracurriculars.

The city is continuing to report COVID cases in communities. On Tuesday, for instance, 148 cases were reported among students and staffers. (Students at many charters have already returned.)

Beth Kopelowitz, who works with students in various classes as an English as a new language teacher at Brooklyn’s P.S. 215, said she still doesn’t feel safe because of the coronavirus.

“I will probably still wear a mask in the classrooms,” she said.

What about literacy and other instructional changes in the classroom?

Adams is pushing to overhaul literacy instruction in New York City schools, calling for more phonics in the early grades and implementing screening tools for students up to 10th grade to catch students with print-based challenges. Whether educators have enough support and training to implement the changes successfully remains to be seen, especially as some educators said their schools have cut reading specialists because of budget cuts.

The Adams administration also created its first virtual schools this year, opening them up only for ninth grade students to start. Adams and Banks have put their weight behind some other initiatives, including expanding career and technical education programs and adding “gifted and talented” seats, signaling less interest in tackling integration in one of the nation’s most segregated districts.

Meanwhile, Adams and Banks have spent a lot of their time and political capital on reorganizing the education department bureaucracy, requiring district superintendents to reapply for their jobs in a process that attracted some backlash. In the latest game of musical chairs, the city is moving about 1,000 staffers from central and borough offices to district offices.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC: What’s the No. 1 thing you’d like your school to provide this year?

2022-09-01T18:25:44+00:00

New York City public schools plan to welcome back roughly 900,000 students next week, marking the start of yet another critical year.

Many children continue to feel the academic and emotional toll from prolonged classroom closures and interruptions during the coronavirus pandemic. And the nation’s largest school system as a whole is continuing to grapple with declining enrollment, though it is also seeing an influx of thousands of asylum seekers, who may need intensive support.

Chalkbeat wants to hear from students, parents, and educators: What are you looking forward to this year? Are you concerned about the city’s budget cuts affecting your school? Do you think your school is offering enough mental health support?

This summer’s battle over school funding cuts, along with an ongoing lawsuit challenging the education department’s budget process, made planning more complicated for many principals — though perhaps not as difficult as the previous two years when they had to reconfigure so much of what teaching and learning looked like because of COVID guidance. Schools will drop most of the city’s COVID mitigations this year, ditching the daily health screeners and onsite PCR testing, along with previously dropped layers such as masking and quarantines.

The city is still planning to spend more than $1 billion in stimulus funding this year, but it remains to be seen how much of that will go directly to help students with tutoring programs or other ways to catch them up academically and socially. The education department already said it plans to scale back special education recovery services this fall.

In response to the plummeting math and reading scores — especially for the lowest performing students — from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, whose test is known as “the nation’s report card,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said that schools should use their federal aid “even more effectively and expeditiously.” He cited strategies like high-dosage tutoring, after-school programs, and hiring more staff.

Meanwhile, budget cuts forced many New York City schools to excess educators, sending them to find positions elsewhere in the system.

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NYC brings camp to the classroom in Summer Rising

2022-08-18T21:05:57+00:00

Summer Rising, New York City’s massive effort to rebrand summer school as something fun and educational, has a lesson for the regular school year: Children really like outdoor and hands-on activities.

One 7-year-old’s favorite thing was a trip to a bouncy house, while another loved having a barbecue. One 10-year-old was excited to learn how to jump rope for double Dutch; another enjoyed playing hide-and-seek, running through the hallways, ducking into classrooms. Painting, drawing, and bracelet-making were high on the list, according to students at several Summer Rising sites in Brooklyn. (Though bracelet-making also had its detractors.) Playing games on computers or classroom smartboards also got top marks.

The city offered 110,000 spots for elementary and middle school students in its $350 million Summer Rising program, up from last year’s 98,000. Propped up by federal dollars, it is the second year in a row that New York City offered the program free to any student, not just those who needed academic help.

Last summer, the program, which combines academics and enrichments, was seen as a crucial bridge into the new school year for students who had been out of classrooms for prolonged periods due to the pandemic. This summer, seats were snatched up days after applications opened. Education department officials said they are working with the Adams administration and City Council in hopes of continuing the program. Educators see it as an important defense against “summer slide,” when students regress academically during the break.

Nationwide, summer programs were bolstered through the Biden administration’s federal relief funds, setting aside $122 billion to school districts through the 2024-25 school year to help with reopening campuses and aiding academic recovery. An analysis from Future Ed estimated that districts will spend more than $6 billion of that money on summer and after-school programs.

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona visits P.S. 7 in Queens on Aug. 16.

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, who visited P.S. 7 in Queens this week to see Summer Rising in action, lauded the program as a way to continue to help children reacclimate to the classroom.

“They’re ready for the school year. They’re full of confidence,” he said of the students in the program. “They have more social skills.”

He also touted how schools were working with community-based organizations, with teachers mainly responsible for the academic portion in the morning, and staffers from community organizations leading the afternoon activities such as trips, art activities, and backyard games.

‘We’re better prepared’

Lovanna Abbott, a site director for the Coalition For Hispanic Family Services, which partnered with P.S. 7, said her team focused on the arts and literacy this summer through its theme, “Around the World in 34 days.” The children have been learning about different cultures and countries, channeling their newfound knowledge into artwork posted around the school.

“They had their own little passports, so they can see where they’ve gone and what they’ve learned about,” Abbott said.

Compared to last summer’s rocky rollout, she felt that things went more smoothly this year though others reported some initial snafus.

“We’re better prepared. The teachers have more support,” Abbott said. “We know what we need to get for the students.”

In response to feedback from families, this year’s enrollment systems prioritized students in temporary housing and students with disabilities, officials said. More than 11,000 students in temporary housing and over 32,000 students with disabilities signed up for the program.

But for some of these students, who required transportation, issues remained. The education department provided yellow school buses for students with disabilities and children living in shelters, but buses were not available after 3 p.m. even though enrichment programming runs until 6 p.m., and only until Aug. 12, before this week’s enrichment-only days.

The city provided prepaid ride-sharing services for the home trip after the enrichment program, but parents had to accompany their children. Though the city covered the roundtrip for parents, it could still be a struggle for them time-wise. As of last week, Summer Rising families took roughly 7,000 prepaid rides, officials said.

“Students living in shelter and students with disabilities who rely on bus service shouldn’t have to leave the program hours earlier than their peers,” said Randi Levine, from Advocates for Children.

Parents reported some other bumps. Janet Agard, who on Thursday morning dropped off her 6-year-old granddaughter, at P.S. 235 in East Flatbush, said some trips were canceled because of lack of busing, and one swim trip was nixed because the pool had no lifeguards.

But overall, many families were elated to send their children to the free program.

“I really sincerely feel like kids lose a lot over the summer,” said Brooklyn mom Jamie Braden. “And teachers spend time just trying to get them back up to speed. So kids who have been academically motivated during the summer, either maintain what they had or gain a little, and nothing is lost, which I feel is really important.”

Kids sound off

Amirah Young, 7, who is entering second grade next month at P.S. 81 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, was a bit nervous to attend the program. Now, she can rattle off her summer’s highlights: getting wet at the park down the street, making the bracelet now on her wrist, drawing, watching a movie, and having an ice cream party.

“I feel excited, happy and brave,” she said, “because at the beginning I was scared, but I started to get braver.”

Mia Mitchell, 10, attended Summer Rising at P.S. 282 in Park Slope.

Mia Mitchell, a 10–year-old going into sixth grade, lucked out by having her same teacher from the past year for summer school at P.S. 282 in Brooklyn’s Park Slope. In the morning, she and her peers would start off writing in their journals before doing reading and math. Then they would continue learning outside before lunch before doing other outdoor activities like double Dutch.

Her least favorite thing was having to go back inside for rain or other reasons.

“I liked being outside,” she said.

Seven-year-old Zayd Olivera, a rising third grader at P.S. 235, liked that Summer Rising had no homework and was happiest when visiting a bouncy house with the program.

But Zayd admitted he would rather be spending his days playing the popular video game Fortnite.

“I don’t like school in general,” Zayd said.

Six-year-old Christian Garrison attended Summer Rising at P.S. 81.

Other students seemed ready for the school year to start on Sept. 8. Six-year-old Christian Garrison said he was feeling “good” about entering second grade at P.S. 81 after making some headway on beginner books.

“Then, I can learn how to read,” Garrison said.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

The Harbor School, NYC’s only school accessible by boat, to double in size

2022-08-16T22:02:10+00:00

New York City is largely a collection of islands, but just one high school is only accessible by boat: Urban Assembly New York Harbor School.

The school opened 20 years ago landlocked in Bushwick, and in 2010 moved to Governors Island, a 172-acre teardrop-shaped parcel that’s about an eight-minute ferry ride from Lower Manhattan. Now the Harbor School will be doubling its footprint on Governors Island, expanding from two to four buildings, city officials announced Tuesday.

The move will add classrooms and other new facilities, including a competition-sized pool, gymnasium, and lab space to support the school’s maritime and environmental curriculum that is rooted in career and technical education, or CTE, with seven tracks such as aquaculture, marine biology research, vessel operations, and professional diving. The school also partners with the Billion Oyster Project, which aims at restoring the city’s harbor with the mollusks that used to be plentiful before the 1900s.

“For many New Yorkers, Governors Island is a place to get away over the weekend. And for so many others, it is a place to learn about our world or prepare our city for the threats of climate change,” Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement. “This project will give our young people the best of all worlds: a holistic, high-quality education, brand new facilities to help students learn, and access to one of our city’s gems where nature truly is the classroom.”

City officials did not provide a price tag for the project and did not yet have a time line.

The expansion project includes the renovation of Building 555, a designated landmark originally constructed in 1938 as family housing by the United States Army. The other will be a new building, the first new construction located within a development zone on the island since its transfer from federal to local control in 2003.

The new building will be part of a bigger Center for Climate Solutions that the Trust for Governors Island is creating to expand learning and training opportunities for students on Governors Island as part of an initiative to position New York City as a global leader on responding to the climate crisis. The trust is currently in the process of finding an educational and research institution to anchor the center, whose mission supports Adams’ economic recovery blueprint.

Looking to ease waitlist

“We’re doing something that’s unique, and we’re doing it well and in a place that is accessible for students from all five boroughs,” said Jeffrey Chetirko, who has been the school’s principal since 2015.

He is hopeful that the school, an unscreened school that is part of Manhattan’s District 2, will be able to go from its roughly 520 students to nearly 900 with the expansion.

“My waitlist is ridiculous,” said Chetirko, who gets daily phone calls from families to see if there are open seats.

The Harbor School boasts committed educators who teach skills that are not often found in New York City high schools — or anywhere. Rob Markuske, a former national park ranger, oversees the school’s Marine Affairs and Policy program. Mauricio Gonzalez, the school’s work-based learning coordinator, holds an annual science symposium matching students with mentors from all over the world studying creatures living on the sea floor bottom, doing GIS studies on environmental impacts, and more. Lenny Speregen, a former movie stunt man, leads the school’s dive instruction program, the only such program in the nation.

But the students have had to travel to its former home in Bushwick to use the pool for diving lessons. Chetirko is excited that a new swimming pool would not only help its students, but he sees it as a potential resource for the city, with lessons for students from across the city after school and on weekends. He envisions it as a training ground for future lifeguards in a city chronically understaffed with such workers.

The Harbor School is one of the more diverse schools in one of the nation’s most segregated school systems, and has been part of the city’s “diversity in admissions’’ program since 2018, with 70% of this year’s seats for incoming freshmen reserved for students from low-income families. After noticing a greater number of applicants from affluent families who had second houses and boats, Chetirko wanted to ensure the school stayed true to its roots of working with students who long had little access or experience with the waterfront.

In addition to its racial diversity (41% Latino, 26% white, 17% Black, and 7% Asian), more than a quarter of its students have disabilities.

Ferry commute woes

Getting to the school can be a challenge for some students. The ferry from Manhattan is free, but the ferry from Brooklyn is not. It will cost $4 starting Sept. 12, up from $2.75, although the fare will drop to $1.35 for low-income residents.

For the school’s students from Red Hook, the commute would be about 4 minutes by boat across Buttermilk Channel instead of the 80-minute commute by train into Manhattan to take the ferry from there. Plus, Red Hook’s new maritime middle school is opening this year, and the Harbor School hopes its graduates will eventually choose to attend the Harbor School.

“We shouldn’t have to spend money we don’t have just to get to school on time,” recent graduate Gabriella McCalpin said in a statement last spring as part of the school’s “Free the Ferries” campaign. “Our focus should be on learning – not stressing over how we’re going to get to show up for class.”

The school’s attendance rate was still relatively high at more than 92%, Chetirko said, but the roundabout commutes for some students mean they can’t participate in after-school programs. Students are pushing for the city to give free ferry rides to those who qualify for free MetroCards.

In response to questions about the campaign, education department officials simply pointed to the free ferries from Manhattan.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

This Brooklyn teacher is making theater more accessible to students with all abilities

2022-08-15T18:36:34+00:00

A serendipitous subway ride about 20 years ago led Michael Pantone from his acting career to teaching theater at a Brooklyn public school serving children with disabilities.

On the No. 2 train, Pantone had run into an actor friend as she headed to direct an after-school theater program for middle school students. She invited Pantone, who was between acting gigs, to check it out. He went the next day and ended up assisting her. That led to them co-directing a summer student theater program. Then, the private school that housed the program offered Pantone a full-time position teaching theater.

For the past eight years, Pantone has taught theater at District 75’s P721K, the Roy Campanella Occupational Training Center, where he splits his time between working with high school students with multiple disabilities and K–2 students with autism. He often leads workshops for other teachers and teaching artists working in general education settings, as well as in District 75, a group of specialized schools serving students with the most significant disabilities. Pantone, who holds master’s degrees in theater education and special education, was among 20 teachers recognized by the city’s education department in this year’s Big Apple Apple awards given to outstanding educators.

Each year, after Pantone works with his students on performance skills, he also helps them turn their ideas into fully realized theater pieces.

“When devising an original scene, some students can easily verbalize ideas, preferences, and concerns. For many, however, this is not their preferred method of communication; instead, they communicate with their bodies, eyes, gestures, behaviors, and communication devices,” Pantone said. “For me, it’s fascinating to be constantly reminded how the communication of wants and needs can be so easily conveyed if one is open to receiving them.”

Chalkbeat talked with Pantone about his creative approaches to teaching theater to students with disabilities and his efforts to make arts education more accessible and inclusive.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

When you moved into teaching, did you know you wanted to work with students with disabilities?

I did not know I wanted to work with students with disabilities at first, but to be honest, the students that required me to dream up ways to best serve them, were becoming my ‘favorite’ students to work with. I was creatively challenged, and these young people were so willing to learn and grateful to be included in the ensemble. I came to learn many of these students did indeed have IEPs [Individualized Learning Programs].

When I was able to provide supports, such as clear step-by-step directions, modified choreography, adapted lines in the script, etc., wonderful things started to happen. Disruptive behaviors dissipated, casts became more supportive of one another and performed as true ensembles.

I cannot see myself working in any other community today.

Can you tell us a bit more about some of the different approaches you use with your high school students and your early elementary school students?

My high school students with multiple disabilities and my elementary students with autism are perhaps some of our students with the most severe and profound disabilities. With these students, I am left with wonderful opportunities to figure out how to tell and act out stories with students with limited or no mobility and those who are mostly nonverbal.

With students with multiple disabilities, the work we do often involves choice-making. We do this through the use of assistive communication devices, motion detection technology, and peer-to-peer interaction (i.e. an ambulatory student assisting a wheelchair user in their performing efforts).

Many of my elementary students with autism have the desire for social interaction but may lack the skills to engage appropriately or can be overwhelmed by it. So, social interaction and awareness are at the core of our curriculum. We work to understand one another by exploring non-verbal communication, body language, facial expression, all which are foundational theater skills.

You also spend a lot of time teaching teachers. How do you try to inspire them to incorporate more inclusive practices?

I present on inclusive practices for not only special education theater teachers, but also for general education theater teachers who are finding more and more students with IEPs in their classrooms.

I try to demystify any misconceptions they may have about working with students with disabilities by being frank about what disability is and the many ways it can look and feel.

I am big on the expression, ‘accept all offers’ and theater teachers have heard me speak on this over and over again in the workshops I lead. Accepting all offers simply means to remove any preconceived ideas of what an outcome should look like and accept the response offered by students as right and just even if you, the teacher, can’t make sense of it at the moment. Their offerings are authentic and spontaneous and our job as the ‘professionals’ is to figure out how the offerings fit into the big picture; again, super creative work!

Tell us about your own experience with school and how it affects your work today.

Interestingly, I do not remember very much about my early school life, which I chalk up to be because I wasn’t having fun. I do, however, remember every show or performance I did dating back to kindergarten because for me, that was fun, meaningful, and magical! This is where I learned and how I learned best.

Now, I seek the fun element in every lesson I create in the hope students will have experiences where they are making meaning of themselves, how they fit in the world, and how to secure their places within it.

As you prepare for the coming school year, what are you most looking forward to?

We are super excited about getting our students back on buses and subways to explore the arts in New York City after not being able to due to COVID.

Partnering with outside arts organizations provides additional exposure that we may not be able to provide with our in-house offerings. For example, many of our students have never attended a live theatrical production, visited a museum, or gone to a dance or music concert. These partnerships make that happen and in many instances create opportunities for our students to engage most effectively by offering autism-friendly performances, which include sensory exploration and modified technical effects such as loud sound, bright lights, etc.

What’s one thing you’ve read that has made you a better educator?

“Lost At School” by Ross W. Greene is a book that I have read and reread and reread. In fact, I try to read it yearly.

In it, Greene explores challenging student behaviors and simply defines these as ‘unsolved problems.’ The unsolved problems become the collaborative task to solve between staff and student. Greene provides multiple strategies to assist, but most importantly, he shows us how we can ‘flip the script’ on our reactions to challenging behaviors and to be more understanding of them because they are the result of ‘unsolved problems.’

This book has made me a much better educator and overall human.

You have a busy job, and this is a stressful time. How do you take care of yourself when you’re not at work?

I exercise! When I get home from work, I almost immediately do a 30-45 minute workout in my home gym (Peloton and Tonal enthusiast here!). These minutes to myself allow me to shake off the day, get some good endorphins going, and are the best gift I can give my family as I really try to be home when I get home from work.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC wants to change the way students learn to read. Here’s how.

2022-08-12T19:48:06+00:00

Mayor Eric Adams has made literacy a priority, promising to overhaul reading instruction in New York City schools.

Educators agree it’s a critical moment. Even before the pandemic, fewer than half of students in grades 3-8 were reading on grade level, according to state tests. Now, interrupted learning has only heightened concerns that students have been knocked off track.

To preview some of the initiatives expected this coming year, Chalkbeat on Aug. 10 convened a group steeped in New York City’s literacy push from various perspectives — a top education department official, an academic expert, a principal, a teacher, and a parent of children with dyslexia. (See below for the video of the event.)

Carolyne Quintana, the education department’s deputy chancellor for teaching and learning, shared some insights around the city’s push to incorporate more phonics in K-2 classrooms across the five boroughs, along with more training for teachers. Some smaller scale initiatives: Two new elementary school programs will target children with reading challenges including dyslexia, and about 160 elementary and middle schools will receive extra training on literacy strategies and different types of interventions for struggling readers.

A list of resources from Chalkbeat’s NYC literacy event

Panelists and attendees during our Aug. 10 event on literacy changes coming to New York City schools submitted resources for parents and students who want to better understand how to teach children to read. We collected them for you here:

NYS Collective Impact: Public Comments about Literacy, a collection of NYS public comments in support of students who are struggling to learn to read. People can add comments to the list by contacting dyslexiarochester@gmail.com.
Reading Ready, a program to help first grade elementary students learn to read and professional development training for teachers and other school staff. Created by Katherine Pace Miles, associate professor at Brooklyn College, CUNY.
Read Write Inc. Phonics, free tutorial films for parents to help their children learn to read at home. It was created by Ruth Miskin Training, an organization dedicated to teaching reading.
Ofsted Reading by Six: How the best schools do it, an example of how other English-speaking countries support early readers – from the United Kingdom’s Office for Standards in Education.
Savvas Learning Company, provides resources, curriculums, and digital learning solutions for K-12 students and teachers.
Savvas Learning myView Literacy/mi Vision Lectura, a literacy program that provides tools for reading instruction for English and Spanish early-readers.
Savvas Learning Foundational Reading, literacy curriculum for students K-2 that focuses on phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, and other concepts. Savvas Learning Company provides resources, curriculums, and digital learning solutions for K-12 students and teachers.
Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Sciences of Reading Into the Balanced Literacy Classroom by Jan Burkins, a resource guide for reading instruction for K-2 students, specifically regarding high-frequency words, reading comprehension, and phonemic awareness. It was written by Jan Burkins, a former elementary school teacher and literacy coach.
Learning without Tears, dedicated to providing training, free webinars, and resources about reading instruction for teachers and parents.
Amplify, an education company that provides resources and curriculums for K-12 teachers for literacy instruction as well as other school subjects.
Science of Reading: Making the Shift, an online book that provides a checklist of key instructional practices based on the science of reading.
Science of Reading: A Primer Part One and Science of Reading: A Primer Part Two, breaks down reading instruction practices based on the science of reading.

In terms of the big picture, one goal is to increase awareness of reading challenges among educators so they “understand what the different and varying needs of students with reading challenges may be,” Quintana said.

To that end, the education department is providing all K-12 teachers with a two-hour training from Made by Dyslexia, and will have literacy coaches in K-12, unlike previously, where coaches were provided for K-2 classrooms. (At the same time, however, the city is shrinking the number of literacy coaches from 500 to 200.)

A lot of this work, however, takes time, and questions remain about the many struggling readers who may not have challenges as severe as dyslexia, or might be in older grades, which the new phonics push won’t reach.

Katie Pace Miles, an associate professor at Brooklyn College, CUNY, offered a possible solution: scaling up tutoring programs with teachers-in-training.

This past year CUNY trained 650 students from the university system’s education schools in “evidence- and research-based programs” and placed them in schools where they worked one-on-one with first and second graders, explained Miles, who is the academic advisor for Reading Rescue and the creator of Reading Ready, both of which are reading intervention programs.

“These are readers who may not be individuals with dyslexia,” she said. “Some of them may be. We’ll know more once we do this tutoring work, and we have evidence from assessments.”

Scaling up such a program is crucial, she said.

“That’s one really important thing that we need to do because the urgency is immediate. It’s right now for the students coming out of the pandemic. We can’t wait for a school to get going with the phonics curriculum,” Miles said. “These students need the interventions straight away.”

If money were no object, here are other ideas the panelists believe would help most when it comes to reading instruction:

“If we had all the money in the world, we would be able to pay teachers to come in a week or two earlier than they do right now … and receive the kind of intense literacy training that they’re all craving,” said Darlene Cameron, principal of Manhattan’s STAR Academy. “It can be challenging to have the amount of time that needs to be dedicated to providing that kind of training, and I think administrators could also use that kind of training and support.”
Naomi Peña, a parent who is part of the Literacy Academy Collective launching a program at the Bronx’s P.S. 161 geared toward students with dyslexia, wants to include parents in deeper ways.

“How do we incorporate them because right now the model is a little bit of shaming the parents, saying, ‘Are you reading to your child? You’re not reading enough,’” Peña said. “So it’s also changing the modality of how we interact with parents, not putting shame on them, but understanding that we’re in this together, and we want to lift your child up and also support you.”

Deeper training is something that many teachers long for, said Mercedes Valentin-Davila, a kindergarten and dual language teacher at Brooklyn’s P.S. 24, who recently overhauled her literacy instruction by incorporating more phonics.

“We want to learn. We want to be trained,” she said. “But it’s not just train us for a week, and then throw us in there, and that’s it. There has to be a partnership between the professionals, the researchers, the scientists.”

She wants to see a community formed around literacy that includes those experts along with teachers, administrators, and parents.

“I feel like there’s always this separation, and I feel like if we had all the money in the world, we would be not just trained, but we would form a real community,” she said. “Literacy is equity, and that means that we all need to work together.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Elena Johnson is a community listening and engagement intern at Chalkbeat.

NYC school budget cuts can move forward for now, appeals court says

2022-08-10T01:04:31+00:00

The education department can move forward with budget cuts after an appeals court temporarily blocked a lower court’s ruling that invalidated the budget process.

The appellate court’s order Tuesday brings whiplash to back-to-school planning for the fall. Four days prior, a lower court judge ruled that the city needed to redo the education department budget, which includes cuts for nearly 75% of schools. Now that order has been paused — at least until the case is back in court on Aug. 29, a little more than a week before the first day of school.

A spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams applauded the decision allowing the city to move forward with its current budget.

“As Mayor Adams said this morning, schools will open, on time, in September and will have the resources they need to ensure our students thrive next month,” City Hall spokesperson Amaris Cockfield said in a statement. “We will continue to defend the city’s budget process.”

The Aug. 5 ruling in favor of two teachers and two parents who filed a lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court last month said that the city violated state law when it approved the education department’s budget for this fiscal year.

The ruling called on Adams and the City Council to reconsider how to fund schools this year, and until that happens, it meant the school system should be funded at the same levels as last year. Last year’s budget was about $1 billion more than this fiscal year’s $31 billion budget, largely due to a boost from federal stimulus relief.

The city and the education department filed their appeal earlier on Tuesday claiming that the Aug. 5 decision by Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Lyle Frank “plunges [the education department] into chaos at the worst possible time and causes irreparable harm,” and “throws a wrench” into planning for September “that may reverberate throughout the school year.”

The appeal not only pushes back on the lower court’s finding that a procedural error was made, it also said it was an “entirely unprecedented remedy of imposing a record-high and expired budget on DOE.” City lawyers argued that the lower court’s ruling could require the education department to spend “at levels that would likely exhaust the funding allocated to it well before the end of the school year.”

Laura Barbieri, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, emphasized that the appeals court issued an “automatic stay” and had not yet ruled on the substance of the case.

“We are disappointed that the city asked for a hearing date at the end of August, rather than immediately,” Barbieri wrote in a statement posted on Twitter.

“This will further delay the ‘chaos’ that the city repeatedly cited in its brief, and prevent principals, teachers, and parents from knowing what their school budgets will look like until the appeal is heard on August 29.” The automatic stay “is not appealable,” Barbieri wrote in a text message.

For now, the legal back-and-forth does not appear to have caused any dramatic changes in school operations, aside from a very short freeze on school spending that was quickly lifted. Still, the sudden reversals about whether the city can move forward with cuts threatens to sow uncertainty about school budgets less than a month before the first day of school.

The lawsuit focuses on the budget approval process, with the lower court finding that schools Chancellor David Banks had violated the law by using an “emergency declaration” to circumvent a vote on it by the Panel for Educational Policy, a largely mayoral appointed board that approves spending and contracts.

But the larger issue that touched off the lawsuit was Adams’ $215 million cuts to schools. That number has been a moving target. The cuts were closer to $373 million, according to City Council and city Comptroller Brad Lander, who has said the city has enough stimulus funding leftover from last year to cover the cuts.

City Hall argues that school budgets need to be reduced to account for enrollment declines that have accelerated during the pandemic. The previous administration used federal funding to keep school budgets steady even if they lost students and the administration contends that cuts are necessary to avoid even steeper cuts in two years when federal funding runs dry.

But many parents, advocates, and educators counter that the stimulus funding was designed to avert further disruptions to learning and that it doesn’t make sense to kneecap schools at a time when children have deep academic and emotional scars.

It’s possible that the city will ultimately restore some school funding even if officials are not forced to do so by the courts. City Hall has reportedly been negotiating with the City Council over restoring funding, but those talks have not yielded a deal.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Judge orders redo for NYC schools budget

2022-08-05T19:11:22+00:00

A Manhattan judge ruled Friday to throw out the New York City education department’s budget and allow the City Council and Mayor Eric Adams to reconsider how to fund schools this year.

Judge Lyle Frank ruled in favor of two teachers and two parents who filed a lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court last month, claiming that the city violated state law when it approved the education department’s budget for this fiscal year.

The extraordinary ruling means that until the City Council revisits the budget, New York City must fund the school system at the same levels it did last fiscal year, which could mean at least a temporary boost in funding for most city schools. As many advocates, educators and union leaders celebrated the ruling, the city filed a notice to appeal hours after the judge published his decision.

“Obviously there are many, many court cases that have a huge impact on the city budget, but to implicate the process and require a redo or a do-over seems unprecedented,” said David Bloomfield, a professor of education, law, and public policy at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center.

Like several of his predecessors, schools Chancellor David Banks had used an “emergency declaration” to circumvent a vote on it by the Panel for Education Policy, a largely mayoral appointed board that approves spending and contracts.

“What was most in question was whether the Emergency Declaration put forth by the Schools Chancellor on May 31 was a valid exercise of the Chancellor’s powers,” Frank wrote in his three-page decision. “The Court finds that it was not.”

Though the lawsuit focused on the budget approval process, the push to take action was prompted by Adams’ $215 million cuts to schools, which he said were necessary because of declining enrollment. City Comptroller Brad Lander, who estimated the cuts were closer to $370 million, has said the city has enough stimulus funding leftover from last year to cover the cuts.

City Council has also determined that the overall cut is closer to $365 million, based on data they received from the education department, according to new council analysis obtained by Chalkbeat.

The education department budget last year was roughly $32 billion, about $1 billion greater than this year, largely propped up by federal stimulus dollars that are now drying up.

The judge’s decision only affects the education department’s portion of the budget, and does not make recommendations on how much funding should have gone to schools this year. However, budget experts said altering the education department’s budget could result in changes to other parts of the city’s overall financial plan.

Frank also said that his ruling should not prevent the allocation of additional funds from sources such as the federal government going to schools, nor should it prevent the implementation of the dyslexia program the education department is creating. (The education department had argued that funding for such programs would be held up because of the lawsuit.)

“Students, teachers, and parents need finalized budgets to ensure they are on track for a smooth opening next month,” City Hall spokesperson Amaris Cockfield said in a statement. “We are disappointed in the judge’s ruling, and will be taking immediate steps to appeal.”

Principals may find it helpful to receive a boost of funding now, as many may still be hiring and planning out classes. However, funding levels could potentially change again after city lawmakers reconsider the budget.

More school aid likely

Adams had planned to phase in the cuts over two years, using some stimulus dollars to soften the blow, and argues that cuts are necessary now in order to avoid even sharper slashes if enrollment continues to fall. However, many educators and advocates have questioned the precision of the city’s enrollment projections, and have argued that schools still need all possible dollars as students continue to recover from the pandemic.

The City Council overwhelmingly approved the budget in June, but many council members apologized for their vote after public outcry over the school cuts. It’s likely that the majority of council members will push to reverse the cuts. Forty-one of the city’s 51 council members have called on the mayor to use stimulus funding to restore the cuts.

While saying that school budgets should be restored, Council Speaker Adrienne Adams criticized the education department for lacking “transparency and accountability” over how much money was actually cut.

City Council is considering legal actions “to ensure DOE permanently restores school budgets, is accountable to the public, and completely transparent about all relevant budget information and detailed accounting of the status of its remaining federal stimulus funds,” Adams continued.

But it remains to be seen how much money they’ll push for or where those dollars will come from — given that the city is legally required to have a balanced budget. The ruling offered no timeline for when or how the city needs to redo the education budget.

While the judge’s order said the city must return to expenses and “spending levels” from last fiscal year, there’s no specific language on how the city should do that.

City officials, who are appealing, did not comment on how they would comply with the order.

The city’s overall financial plan could suddenly be out of balance, said Andrew Rein, president of the fiscal watchdog, Citizens Budget Commission.

Additionally, depending on the city’s interpretation, officials could distribute funding the same way as they did last year. That would send increases to more than three-quarters of the city’s roughly 1,600 public schools and cuts for the rest, according to an analysis from Lander.

Or the city could do something different, such as spend the same amount of money from last year but distribute it differently.

“I don’t think the wording in the order is clear enough for us to understand that,” said Ana Champeny, vice president of research for the Citizens Budget commission.

Many schools, in the meantime, have spent the summer excessing staff and cutting back certain programs as they dealt with smaller budgets.

Nina Demos, principal of P.S. 503 in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, said she would welcome more funding, but it’s late in the summer to drastically alter how she would spend money without more certainty.

Her school saw 20% less funding for hiring staff and building classes, according to a Chalkbeat analysis. Demos may get money back in the winter because she’s already enrolled 40 more students than the city projected.

Between declining enrollment and lack of funding for hiring new staff, she’s cut three classes from her school. For now, she’s put several clubs, such as dance, and after-school programs on hold until she’s sure she has the money to operate them.

The news of the judge’s ruling and lack of clarity over what happens next, she said, means that “nothing is certain,” including whether her school might get more money before the school year starts in about a month.

“Then you get a windfall of money, and it’s like, well how to spend it now?” she said. “You could get it in January when the spending deadline is March.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

5 school-based health clinics shuttered due to SUNY Downstate budget woes

2022-08-03T21:59:56+00:00

Five school-based health clinics serving 10 schools in Brooklyn closed last month because of budget constraints, according to a letter from operator SUNY Downstate.

Now, families are rallying to try and save the facilities.

City officials were “disappointed” with SUNY Downstate’s move to close the clinics on July 1, but said they will ensure the five campuses have school nurses in September. Families remain worried about the gap in health care for their community. More than 8,500 have signed on to a campaign calling for SUNY Downstate to keep the clinics open at least until a partnership with another hospital can be established.

The clinics provide a higher level of care than a traditional school nurse. Their pediatric nurse practitioners and physician assistants can administer medication and write prescriptions. They provide immunizations, blood tests, and other preventive or urgent care that children typically receive at a pediatrician’s office.

The clinics also offer adolescent health education and contraception, as well as testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases — helpful services for teens who might not want to discuss such issues with a family doctor. They also offer mental health care and drug abuse treatment.

The services are offered for free regardless of insurance status, and for many parents who can’t take off from work for medical visits, they are a lifeline for their children’s health care.

“These clinics are exactly like having a doctor’s office in your school building,” said Reyhan Mehran, whose daughter attends Brooklyn Collaborative, a middle and high school which shares its Carroll Gardens building and clinic with the the Brooklyn New School. “There’s so much need for these services right now after all that kids in this city have been through with the pandemic. Having these clinics in our public schools has always been invaluable, but right now they are even more so.”

Scill Chan, the principal of Brooklyn Collaborative, and Diane Castelucci, of Brooklyn New School, called their clinic an “essential part” of their school communities.

“The abrupt closure of the clinics that have served thousands of young people in our schools is shocking, and we need to work together to find the essential funding to keep these vital services open,” the principals said in a statement.

Officials from SUNY Downstate said they have been working with state and local partners to “ensure a smooth transition” from the medical center operating the clinics.

“Due to the expansion of health coverage and other supports, the same level of care will be available in the community to all children,” according to a statement from SUNY Downstate.

A group of eight nurse practitioners, social workers and other health professionals who had staffed the clinics wrote a letter to the superintendents and principals condemning the closures, pointing a finger at SUNY Downstate for mismanagement and warning about a potential void of care for students.

“The abrupt announcement of the closure is shocking, irresponsible, and wrong, abandoning chances for problem solving and leaving our communities with a huge deficit in care,” they wrote.

SUNY Downstate declined to comment further on the financial strain leading to the closures.

The medical center took over four of the clinics more than a decade ago from the now-defunct Long Island College Hospital, or LICH, after parents advocated to keep the clinics open. Those four clinics were on the chopping block in 2017, due to state budget cuts, but were saved after public outcry.

Across the five boroughs, students at nearly 390 schools have access to on-campus clinics run by various health care organizations. They have been shown to reduce absences and lower the likelihood of hospital visits. The city has leaned on the model for its community schools, which offer wrap-around services for students in low-income neighborhoods.

The school-based health clinic became her daughter’s “second home away from our home,” said Cherlece Acosta, pictured here with her daughter. “The nurse there was on top of it. She genuinely cared.”

They also help children manage chronic conditions like diabetes and asthma, which is why Cherlece Acosta was relentless in trying to get her daughter — who has both conditions — into Park Slope’s M.S. 51.

Acosta’s daughter, who graduated from the middle school this year, made frequent trips to the school’s health clinic, one of the five that SUNY Downstate closed. Sometimes her daughter might need help for an insulin pump failure, or if her blood sugar got too low she could become disoriented, the mom said.

P.S. 38 mom Jelena Vojvodic, a parent of a third grader with a severe peanut allergy, felt like she had peace of mind with the on-site clinic run by SUNY Downstate. The clinic’s nurse helped raise awareness at the school for food allergies, as well as COVID, she said.

Sarah Thomas, whose children attend the Brooklyn New School, said the school-based clinic has been a big help for her son’s “emotional issues.” Its therapist and nurse have helped calm him down when needed.

“We’re in the middle of a mental health crisis,” Thomas said. “If anything, there should be more money to get the help children need.”

She was also able to get her son’s routine checkups done at the clinic, which allowed her to avoid long wait times at her pediatrician’s office.

Officials from the city’s health and education departments, did not say whether another operator would take over the clinics, but said in a statement: “For the time being, the city will place school nurses in each of the buildings affected starting in September to ensure families are connected to care.”

New York City schools have long faced a school nurse shortage. There were 579 vacancies for permanent school nurses as of June, according to figures from the United Federation of Teachers, the city’s teachers union.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC slated to get 3,000 new child care seats this fall, Hochul says

2022-07-25T22:07:14+00:00

New York City is expected to see nearly 3,000 new child care slots start opening this fall in areas considered “deserts” for such programs, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Monday.

The state issued $70 million in grants to get new centers off the ground for this first round and are promising more to come, using money from federal COVID relief dollars. Of that money, nearly $17 million is going to 70 child care centers in New York City.

The grants are expected to help new child care providers in certain areas build programs by covering start-up and personnel costs, as well as with recruitment, training, and supporting staff in accessing COVID-19 vaccines, state officials said.

“Child care deserts” were defined as census tracts that have three or more children younger than 5 for each available child care slot, or no available child care slots. More than half of New York City is considered a child care desert, Hochul said.

Discussing her own experience as a young mom of having to leave her job due to lack of affordable child care, Hochul said the issue is personal for her.

“This really becomes not only an economic problem for families. It’s an economic problem for society,” she said at a press conference about the grant, held at the YM&YWHA of Washington Heights & Inwood. “The women are the ones having to stay home.”

Many have yet to return, she added.

There are roughly 1 million fewer women in the nation’s workforce compared to pre-pandemic numbers, according to a U.S. Chamber of Commerce report from April. Many left due to extreme burnout and lack of child care, the analysis found. Nearly 60% of parents were unable to find child care as tens of thousands of programs shuttered, and more than a quarter of parents couldn’t afford existing programs, the commerce chamber found in a December 2020 study.

In terms of tackling affordability, Hochul previously announced an increase to the income threshold for families eligible for subsidized child care to $83,250 for a family of four, up from about $55,500. That takes effect in August and is part of a larger $7 billion investment in the child care industry over four years.

Tara Gardner, executive director of the Day Care Council of New York, which represents about 200 privately run but publicly funded day care providers, said that change “will lift a major burden for many families.”

But Gardner said there’s still a need for more infant and toddler care as well as care beyond 3 p.m. and summer months.

Hochul acknowledged the dearth of options for nontraditional hours for many workers, such as medical staffers, restaurant workers, hotel cleaners, and bus drivers.

Of the 12,000 new slots opening over the next few months, 592 will be for infants and toddlers, while 500 will be for nontraditional hours, meaning between 7 p.m. until 6 a.m. as well as on major holidays like Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

New providers choosing to address those needs get a bonus award on top of their base grant.

“The child care workers are the essential workers for the essential workers,” Hochul said.

Nora Moran, director of policy at United Neighborhood Houses, an umbrella organization for many subsidized child care centers, said child care deserts have long been an issue, and this is the first time in her memory that the state was explicitly targeting these areas through its procurement process.

“It’s important to make sure families have options when it comes to accessing child care,” Moran said. “For too long families who live in deserts had limited choices and had to travel outside of their neighborhoods to access care.”

She was curious to see whether areas like Elmhurst and Corona in Queens, where many more families will be eligible for subsidized care under the new income requirements, will also get new centers.

The state is still in the process of working with the grant winners on licensing them so does not yet have a final list of new centers.

About 1,700 applicants vied for this first round of grants. The next round earmarks $30 million in federal grant funding to help existing programs in child care deserts expand their offering for day care centers as well as school-age child care programs, with incentives for those working with infants and toddlers, children with disabilities, and programs that have nontraditional hours.

Applications for that round are open through Aug. 4, according to the state.

For another application round due by Nov. 30, the state has earmarked another $343 million in federal funds to help stabilize the industry.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Here’s how to get free summer meals at NYC schools, pools, and parks

2022-07-19T22:41:12+00:00

New York City’s education department recently served its millionth free summer meal to young people across the five boroughs.

The vast majority of those meals were served during the school day to children attending Summer Rising, the city’s free program that mixes academics and enrichment for elementary and middle school students. Only about 16% were takeaway meals, according to city officials.

Advocates are still trying to get the word out about the program’s free breakfast and lunch. Anyone 18 years old or younger, whether or not they attend public school, can get meals at more than 300 city sites.

Before the start of the pandemic, 1 in 5 children in the city were hungry. Now it’s 1 in 4, according to anti-hunger nonprofit City Harvest. Advocates are concerned the problem will get worse. Skyrocketing rents, grocery prices, and energy costs are squeezing many New York City families just as some safety net programs, such as child tax credits and the eviction moratorium, have ended.

The state has distributed what may be the last installment of Coronavirus Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer or P-EBT funds, allocating this June $375 in food benefits per public school student to make up for school meals lost last summer, whether they attended summer school or not.

Nearly two-thirds of public school parents have found it harder to afford food and groceries, according to a recent poll from the No Kid Hungry campaign at the nonprofit Share Our Strength. The campaign created a site to help families find free meals.

“Summer is the hungriest time of year for kids in New York – but it doesn’t have to be,” Rachel Sabella, No Kid Hungry New York’s director, said in a statement. “Free summer meals are a lifeline to families and kids.”

Providing free meals to students is also a major education issue, and is crucial in boosting academic outcomes, researchers have found. Children who are hungry are more likely to repeat a grade in elementary school, have language or other delays, and exhibit more social and behavioral problems, according to the nonprofit Feeding America.

Where do I find free school meals this summer?

The 300 summer meal sites include schools, community pool centers, and parks, including food trucks at three parks (Sara D. Roosevelt Park in Manhattan’s Chinatown, Holcombe Rucker Park in Harlem, and Rufus King Playground in Jamaica Queens).

You can text “NYC Food” or “NYC COMIDA” to 304-304, and No Kid Hungry will respond with your nearest locations. You can also call 311 for nearby meal sites.

The education department’s website also has a list of locations.

When are the meals available?

The program runs through Sept. 2.

Breakfast is served from 8-9:15 a.m.

Lunch is served from 11 a.m.-1:15 p.m.

Who is eligible for meals?

All children 18 and under can get the meals whether they attend public school or not. No reservation, documentation, or ID is required. (Adults must be accompanied by a young person to pick up meals.)

You must remain on-site to eat hot meals, but can take pre-packaged cold meals to go.

Prior to the pandemic, only children could eat free summer meals, and they had to do so at their pick-up locations because of federal guidelines. That shifted during the past two summers when the city began allowing any child or adult to pick up meals and eat them off-site thanks to pandemic-related waivers.

This summer, only young people once again are eligible for the summer meals. But Congress passed the Keep Kids Fed Act at the end of last month, extending pandemic-era waivers allowing school districts to offer young people grab-and-go summer meals.

While some districts may have found it difficult to pivot to the grab-and-go meals after the last-minute waivers were granted, the New York City education department’s Office of Food and Nutrition Services was able to make tweaks, for instance, by allowing students flexibility with to-go meals.

“We were well prepared,” said Christopher Tricarico, the office’s executive director.

Still, only about 160,000 of the to-go meals have been distributed so far this summer, according to officials.

How are the meals funded?

The meals are funded through the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

What’s on the menu?

For hot meals, similar to the school year, Mondays are meatless and Fridays are vegan. There are also daily cold offerings such as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, cheese sandwiches, and hummus. The education department has a menu here.

No artificial colors, flavors, or preservatives are used. No fried food is served.

Twenty-two sites offer halal food, and the city posted a list of five sites on Tuesday offering kosher meals.

What happens to uneaten meals?

Waste is kept to a minimum since cafeteria staffers do batch cooking that factors in the ebb and flow of students, Tricarico said.

Last summer, the city donated unused meals to food pantries, he said. At a City Council hearing last month, he mentioned a forthcoming pilot this school year to divert unused food to pantries. Elected officials raised concerns that students sometimes just want one thing from the cafeteria, such as an apple or carrots, but they have to take a full meal regardless because of federal reimbursement rules, so much of that food ends up in the trash.

Who prepares the meals?

The city’s school cafeteria workforce dipped this year, especially after the COVID vaccine mandate took effect. Tricarico noted that there were 500 vacancies, but that the city was holding frequent job fairs.

Another issue is the lack of cooling and ventilation, with kitchen temperatures reaching 130 degrees, according to last month’s City Council testimony from Donald Nesbit from District Council 37 AFSCME, the union representing 9,000 school food workers.

This summer, cafeterias got a boost from the city’s Summer Youth Employment Program, which provides jobs to youth, ages 14-21, in various industries. About 100 young people got jobs making summer meals, Tricarico said.

“We are providing them with training,” he said. He hopes the experience provides a career pathway into school food services.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC expands support for transgender students as other states pull back

2022-06-23T19:53:20+00:00

The Trevor Project offers 24/7 LGBTQ mental health support toll-free at 866-488-7386. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline has trained crisis counselors available at 800-273-8255 or by texting 741741.

For Julie LaMendola, the 45-minute morning commute from Bushwick, Brooklyn, to drop off her 5-year-old at a school in Manhattan’s East Village, plus the 30-minute solo trip back, is exhausting, but worth it.

At the Neighborhood School — a small and progressive public school with some staffers and students who are transgender — educators start as early as kindergarten incorporating age-appropriate ways to discuss gender identity and preferred pronouns, parents and educators there said. LaMendola, whose partner is transgender, feels fortunate to have found a school that is helping her child develop into a kind and thoughtful human who doesn’t feel “weird” for being part of a queer family.

“They feel like they can ask questions and be who they are,” LaMendola said. “I think there’s less bullying when each of them is honored as a person, as an individual.”

While other parts of the country have seen a wave of new restrictions over teaching about gender identity, the nation’s largest school system has taken the opposite approach, adding an array of programs to support trangender and nonbinary students.

But like most things within the nation’s largest school district, what happens across the city’s 1,600 schools often varies school to school and even classroom to classroom.

The city’s education department offers an LGBTQ+ curriculum to supplement existing history lessons, and it provides ongoing professional development opportunities for school staff, among other support for LGBTQ students, officials said. There are Gender and Sexuality Alliance clubs at all grade levels that provide spaces for students to freely speak about their gender identities. The department also provided direct funding to roughly 200 schools this year to establish identity-based electives.

“We are proud to support and accept all of our young people,” education department spokesperson Suzan Sumer said in an email. “All NYC public schools are encouraged to provide resources and programs in support of LGBTQ+, non-binary and transgender students, staff, and community members.”

New York City began putting guidance in place for transgender students nearly a decade ago, and continues to update and expand it, education officials said. The city and state’s approach stands in stark contrast now to places like Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law in March prohibiting lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade, and more than a dozen states that are considering similar proposals, part of a recent upswing in anti-LGBTQ legislation led by Republicans nationwide. In Texas, a court paved the way last month for the child welfare agency to investigate parents for abuse if they provide gender-affirming care.

In New York, on the other hand, state guidance says that schools can determine whether to share a student’s gender identity with their family based on the student’s safety.

And while New York has protections in place, anti-transgender backlash still touches city schools, according to officials who worry about threats made to schools that incorporate gender identity discussions into the classroom.

A sign hanging in a fifth grade classroom at STAR Academy in the East Village, which like the nearby Neighborhood School, has an LGBTQ-affirming approach.

‘How do we get the resources?’

The number of youth ages 13-17 who identify as transgender has nearly doubled over the past several years nationwide, according to a report released this month from the Williams Institute, a research center housed at the University of California, Los Angeles law school. (The new report looked at government health surveys from 2017 to 2020 and did not include data for children younger than 13.)

Nearly 1 in 5 people who identify as transgender nationwide — or roughly 300,000 — are ages 13-17, with New York having the highest numbers, the June report found. About 3% of youth in New York are transgender.

Gregory Payton, a professor of psychology at Columbia University’s Teachers College and a clinical psychologist specializing in mental health for LGBTQ youth, said he noticed a marked increase in the number of gender noncomforming, gender nonbinary, or transgender youth in the past few years in part, he thinks, because parents and society have become more accepting.

But still, he said “enormous stigma” remains. Few educators have been trained specifically on gender identity, and many may, “consciously or unconsciously, view their students through a gender lens and then knowingly or unknowingly gender their students,” Payton said.

Though demographic and mental health data remain limited, the LGBTQ suicide prevention nonprofit Trevor Project recently surveyed an estimated 34,000 LGBTQ youth ages 13-24 across the nation, finding that nearly 20% of transgender and nonbinary youth attempted suicide in the past year, with higher rates for youth of color compared to their white peers. For LGBTQ youth who live in an accepting community, people reported significantly lower rates of suicide attempts, the survey found.

Consistent with the research, Payton is seeing alongside the rise in gender nonconforming, gender nonbinary, and transgender youth, an uptick in anxiety, depression, and stress. He worries there aren’t enough clinicians trained to work with such young people.

“Our field is really unprepared for this,” Payton said of the psychology community. That could have a spillover effect onto schools that are also grappling with how to best support students.

“It’s remarkable how much a student’s experience can vary based on the teacher or principal … It’s not that the schools don’t want to do something or don’t care. As with everything in education, it’s: ‘How do we get the resources?’” he said. “Everyone is trying to scale up for this and develop more competency around it. But of course in that process you’re going to have students who don’t get the support they need.”

‘He didn’t feel safe there’

For Jean, a mom on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, her child was already aware that he was a “different kind of he” at the age of 3, she said. She communicated this with his teachers at P.S. 290, but never felt her first grader’s school fully supported him. (For privacy reasons, the mom asked to use her middle name.)

Students from P.S. 290, a National Blue Ribbon school, recently participated in a local showcase sharing how their learning supported their ability to address issues of racism, sexism, and homophobia, according to education department officials. Yet, Jean felt like the school dismissed or ignored her son’s needs as a transgender person.

This year’s initial class assignment — the story of the child’s first name — may have seemed innocuous, but the project was upsetting for a child who changed his name, Jean said. Another child in the class also knew her son when he used his deadname, or what some transgender people call the name they were given at birth. Jean felt the school did not use that as a teaching moment.

“My child could have transformed the school for the better,” Jean said. “Instead he didn’t feel safe there.”

Her son, who also has a learning disability, had struggled with school refusal since starting at the school in 2018 for pre-kindergarten. He missed a number of days and had to repeat kindergarten. The mom agreed with the move, hoping to give her son a fresh start.

Jean’s relationship with the school grew increasingly fraught over the years, and in February of this year, the school reported her for educational neglect. A caseworker from the Administration for Children’s Services closed the case as soon as she helped Jean get her child a therapist, after having been wait-listed for months. The mom pulled her first grader from the class in March to home-school him.

“It’s not an ideal situation, but I don’t feel like I have a choice,” she said of home-schooling her child. “With a learning disability on top of being trans, knowing that a child is a little bit different — yet they kept looking into my home for the problem. My child didn’t want to be in that school. What were they doing to make my child want to be there?”

Jean filed a complaint last week with the U.S. Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights for alleged discrimination on the basis of sex, disability, and retaliation. P.S. 290’s principal did not respond to questions.

The education department said the school follows citywide guidelines that say “schools must be proactive in creating a culture and practices that respect and value all students and foster understanding of gender identity and expression within the school community.”

‘Let’s figure it out together’

Jean’s experience felt dramatically different from the kindergarten classroom where LaMendola sends her daughter.

The East Village’s STAR Academy, like the Neighborhood School, uses teddy bears as part of its social-emotional curriculum.

During the first week of school, each child at the Neighborhood School received a teddy bear, a comfort object to follow the children through each grade that is part of a social-emotional approach created by a Bank Street College professor and author Lesley Koplow. As an early community-building activity, the teacher asked the children to give their bears names and ages, and in creating her own take on the project, she also asked for the bears’ pronouns. Students could choose from an array: girl, boy, both boy and girl, neither boy or girl, something else, or not share anything at all. The students were also asked to give the same information for themselves.

Bushwick mom Julie LaMendola (right) with her partner and their 5-year-old.

For LaMendola, it felt like a safe way for children to express their identities and, she hoped, helps her daughter feel accepted. Her daughter uses she/they pronouns.

Dianne Pannullo, a 21-year veteran Neighborhood School teacher who leads LaMendola’s daughter’s class, had been incorporating teddy bears into her joint kindergarten/first grade class for a while, but only added the pronouns two years ago. She was inspired by a colleague who disclosed they were nonbinary and changed their name while working at the school. The colleague shared their experiences about growing up and not identifying as a girl or boy, and how important it was for colleagues and friends to use their new name.

“They brought a lot of knowledge to us,” Pannullo said about incorporating gender identity into the lesson with the bears. “We’re doing it and learning and changing it as we go.”

The school also has a bi-monthly LGBTQ support group called the Rainbow Coalition. Some teachers felt it was important to address gender identity in elementary school after they talked to adults who said they already knew their identity in kindergarten or first grade, Pannullo said.

“Kids are so clear. When you have a transgender kid, they are not confused by who they are,” she said.

Sometimes schools stay away from teaching about gender identity because they perceive it as too controversial, but Payton, the psychologist, believes that schools are already talking about gender identity — even if they don’t know it.

“We just talk about it in ways that are stereotypical, and if internalized, to a great extent it can cause a lot of distress,” he said. “Parents don’t fully grasp how much competency or fluency or awareness of gender their kids have at a young age.”

LaMendola understands why some families might struggle with it.

“Some adults are like, ‘I don’t get it, they’re so young.’ This is the exact time you should talk to your kid. It’s about honoring your child and letting them know you’re there for your child whatever they are,” LaMendola said. “I think parents don’t like it because it makes you have to talk about things you don’t know how to explain. But that’s all of life. Let’s figure it out together.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

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Trading ‘Please focus’ for ‘How are you?’: A listening strategy that’s helping some teachers improve the classroom experience

2022-06-14T14:15:35+00:00

To her relief, Elissa Levy’s ninth graders remembered how to make friends when they returned this September to East Harlem’s High School for Climate Justice.

But after spending prolonged time out of the classroom during the pandemic, they seem to have forgotten how to “do” other parts of school, the physics teacher said.

Many are about four or five years behind academically, as opposed to the past when her students were about two to three years behind. Some have been cutting class, hiding in bathrooms and stairwells during the day. Those who show up have been spending class time dancing to TikTok videos, doodling on furniture, and generally acting out.

Levy is trying everything in her toolkit to help them feel engaged in coursework again. One thing that’s helped is a practice known as cogenerative dialogues, or cogens, for short, in which teachers hold formal conversations with groups of students with an explicit goal: to create a plan of action aimed at improving learning and classroom community.

“Your whole life, school is a given. Even if you don’t like it, you have to do it. But then it disappears for 1.5 years,” Levy said. “So when it comes back, you have less patience for it.”

Popularized by Christopher Emdin in his 2016 New York Times best-selling book “For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood…and the Rest of Y’all Too,” cogens can vary from teacher to teacher, but the practice often hinges on shifting the power dynamic. It creates space for students to critique what is or isn’t working in the classroom, and for teachers to incorporate that feedback into their instruction.

Christopher Emdin helped popularize cogenerative dialogues.

School leaders in New York City and across the nation have been reaching out “more than ever before” about cogens, said Emdin, a professor at the University of Southern California and Scholar/Griot in Residence at Manhattan’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

Emdin previously had featured cogens prominently in his work, but saw less traction, with school leaders often saying they had to focus more on standardized tests. However, more schools now are taking a closer look at the practice as districts elevate social-emotional learning as a way to address the startlingly high student mental health and academic needs exacerbated by the pandemic.

“We tell teachers all the time it’s important to build relationships with kids,” Emdin told Chalkbeat. “Teachers say, ‘How?’ What the cogens allow you to do — it gives you a way to invite different students in. It gives a set of practical tools to get to a big idea.”

In a cogen, no voice is more important than any other, and everyone gets equal turns to talk, Emdin explained. The practice gives students a chance to vent, as well as teachers, and in doing so, it helps the teachers develop more care for their students and vice versa.

1) Cogenerative dialogues. You cant just start teaching. Begin with a conversation with your children about what they want to learn and how they want to learn it. Imposing a random curriculum does not work #HipHopEd
— Christopher Emdin (@chrisemdin) March 18, 2020

Giving students a say — “in a world where they’ve been robbed of agency and power and they’re just passively receiving information” — can be transformative, he believes. “It gives the opportunity to meet those emotional and psychological needs while delivering the content.”

More importantly, it’s not costly to implement.

“You don’t have to buy a new curriculum or iPads,” said Emdin. “I love giving professional development, but there’s no better PD you can get than from a cogen. That is probably the most essential piece: the experts are your students.”

‘Cogens build empathy’

For Levy, holding cogens has enabled her to better understand the everyday realities of her students and how those shape their experience in the classroom, so if they’re not handing in assignments, she feels better equipped to respond.

“Cogens build empathy,” said Levy. “The first thing you say isn’t, ‘Please focus.’ It’s: ‘How are you?’ It might be that you need a break or guidance, or are confused or maybe other things are just more important to you right now.”

She, too, has seen the practice gain traction as educators grapple with this particularly rough time for many students across the nation. Levy recently co-facilitated a four-part workshop with Bronx algebra teacher Brian Palacios for Math for America, a nonprofit focused on building community among the city’s accomplished math and science teachers. Both learned the practice from Emdin’s book but have never talked with the professor, calling him the “Beyonce” of the education world. Levy’s also discussed cogens with some national groups, including the Underrepresentation Curriculum, STEP UP (APS Physics), and RedesignU.

Manhattan physics teacher Elissa Levy said that holding cogens has helped her reach her students in this trying year.

Levy, who switched to education from corporate America five years ago through the New York City Teaching Fellows program, quickly adapted to the classroom, becoming an instructional coach and winning a prestigious early career fellowship from Math For America. She began using the practice three years ago, as part of a schoolwide initiative. That didn’t last, but Levy stuck with the practice and is doing cogens in various forms about once a month.

During some cogens, for example, Levy will order Domino’s pizza for a small group of students, some she knows well, some who are less involved. They’ll talk about life and what gets them out of bed in the morning. She’ll listen to their experiences, and together, they agree on how to improve class moving forward.

After one fall cogen, Levy and her students agreed to begin class with an 8-minute “chill time,” in which she allowed her students to hang out and be on their phones. A big part of allowing them to do that was because they didn’t seem to have the stamina for back-to-back 45-minute classes. She hoped the shift would lead to more sustained engagement for the rest of the class.

It didn’t necessarily pan out that way, but that practice had its benefits. It allowed her to spend one-on-one time with students at the start of class and help deepen her relationships with many students, she explained. While cogens haven’t erased this year’s challenges, she still feels like they’ve helped her be more responsive to her students’ needs.

“I think my students need group therapy more than they need my physics class most days. It’s a way of approaching that space that teachers are not prepared for — it’s not something we trained for,” Levy said, explaining how she’s often needed to be more like a social worker this year. “Cogens are a small thing I’m doing that makes things maybe just a little better. I understand how little their coursework seems to matter in their lives right now because of the weight of life.”

‘It lit up my instruction’

For Palacios, an algebra teacher at the Bronx Center for Science and Mathematics who blogs about his weekly cogens, the practice has been a game changer.

He had read Emdin’s book several years ago but wasn’t ready to put it into practice until re-reading it last summer and trying cogens when his students were learning remotely.

“It was a bright thing that came out of a dark time. It lit up my instruction,” Palacios said.

Bronx math teacher Brian Palacios said that cogenerative dialogues have “fueled” him this year.

With his students, he devised this year’s homework policy, tutoring schedules, and several lessons. He used cogens to help him shape a math project about farming loans incorporating compounding interest that brought social justice into his class by focusing on the systemic racism of the farming industry.

After kicking off the project and debriefing with his students, he saw that they were less engaged in the activity than he thought they would be. He realized the lessons weren’t reaching them not because of what they said, but because of what they didn’t say, he explained. Seeing their mood and lack of enthusiasm, he had a “breakthrough” and pivoted: Instead of following fictional farmers of color, he had the students assume the role of farmers while he pretended to be the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture.

The role-playing aspect sparked more “joy,” and helped them both understand the math and the inequitable treatment of the farmers of color, he explained.

For Palacios, the feedback he gets from his students has been more helpful in transforming his instruction than other kinds of professional development in which he’s participated. It’s important to have a space away from the “teacher world” where it’s just educators talking to each other and instead to create a place that invites students to the table and then “actually” listen, he believes.

“When I collaborate with teachers, that’s valuable,” Palacios said. “But the cogen allows me to tap into the students. It helps me see how I can adjust and be more responsive. It’s kept me solution-oriented. It’s fueled me.”

His advice to other teachers: “Just listen to students. They’ll give you what they need.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Proposal would help NY students who miss or fail Regents earn diplomas

2022-06-13T21:09:20+00:00

State education officials are planning to ease graduation requirements for students scheduled to graduate this month who faced schooling disruptions due to COVID or other medical reasons.

A proposal from the State Board of Regents — expected to be approved Tuesday — would allow students who passed their course this year but failed or missed the corresponding Regents exam due to illness, injury or quarantine to request a “special determination” to graduate with a “local” diploma instead of a Regents diploma.

Typically, only students with disabilities who have individualized learning plans have been eligible for the state’s less-rigorous local diploma. Of last year’s graduates, roughly 870, or just 1% of students, earned a local diploma, according to state data.

The change is one more way the board is continuing to grapple with how to hold schools and students accountable for this year’s coursework while also recognizing the continued impact of the pandemic on teaching and learning. For the first half of the year, New York City schools were quarantining thousands of children when positive cases arose in their classrooms. Even after that policy changed, many students and teachers tested positive for coronavirus, leading to high absenteeism rates for both.

Nearly 240,000 COVID cases have been reported among New York City students and staffers this school year, according to public data as of June 12. Additionally, families have reported that rates of anxiety have gone up, keeping some children out of schools. Mental health-related issues may also be affecting seniors as they sit for Regents exams, as they affected students in lower grades facing state English and math tests earlier this spring. (Regents exams are being administered from June 15 to June 24.)

The move comes on the heels of last month’s vote to allow students to more easily appeal failing scores on Regents exams taken this spring or through the end of next school year. Earlier this year, amid the first wave of the omicron surge, the board canceled the January Regents exams. (The latest proposal is for students who are not able to appeal their scores.)

In allaying possible concerns from parents about how the recent Regents policy changes might affect college admissions, New York education Commissioner Betty Rosa noted that most states don’t have exit exams for diplomas. New York is one of about a dozen states that administers high school exit exams.

Rosa said during a Board of Regents meeting on Monday that teachers are “constantly” assessing student coursework throughout the year, and “you often hear teachers say, you invalidate all that work that’s been done by assuming that this one test has a higher profile.”

This is the third school year that the pandemic prompted state education officials to change policies around the Regents exams. They canceled the exams in the 2019-2020 school year, after the pandemic first hit, and last year, students were not required to pass exams to graduate as most Regents, except those required under federal law (Algebra I, English, living environment, and earth science), were canceled.

Conversations about rethinking the role of the Regents exams, however, pre-date the pandemic. The state is launching a pilot program looking at new ways to earn diplomas. Officials have also approved previous efforts to create more pathways to graduation and plan to keep those conversations going.

“In a lot of ways, what has emerged because of the pandemic is really late news. We, prior to the pandemic, were down this road of graduation measures,” said state Chancellor Lester Young Jr. “The most important thing we can do as a board is to get this right.”

Juliet Eisenstein, a staff attorney with Advocates For Children’s Postsecondary Readiness Project, was hopeful that the board would continue to look at moving away from requiring students to pass exams in order to graduate as most other states have done.

“This proposed amendment is a step towards recognizing that the Regents exams present a barrier to diplomas for many students who are otherwise ready to graduate high school,” she said.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC families impatient for school calendar, budget, high school offers

2022-05-23T20:25:56+00:00

There are 21 days left of school this year — excluding four upcoming school holidays — and many families and educators are fuming that the city has left them without answers to some important questions to help them plan for next year.

First, the education department has yet to release its calendar for the upcoming school year, which pre-pandemic was shared in March or April and last year was released in May.

On top of that, schools don’t have their budgets yet for next year, which is also later than usual. A recent school board vote on the funding formula last month delayed that process, but now that the Panel for Educational Policy, or PEP, ended up approving the formula this month, education department officials said the budgets and the calendar should be out soon.

“After last week’s PEP vote, we’re working on getting both of these to schools as soon as possible,” education department spokesman Nathaniel Styer said in an email.

The city also has yet to send out high school offers, leaving tens of thousands of families in the dark about where their children will attend school next year. Education department officials said they expect to share them in June. (Middle school offers were just released last week.)

This is much later than typical, but then again, the application process was delayed as the city tweaked admissions criteria. Typically, applications are due in December, but this year they were due in March, after the education department extended the initial February deadline. (And the city’s promise of a streamlined process ended up leaving many families more confused.)

Do you think I would have better luck at trapeze than I have been at getting the 2022-2023 @NYCSchools calendar?
— Meredith Berger (@meredith_berger) May 23, 2022

Of course, the first day of school is months away, but not knowing when and where to show up next year is disconcerting to many families. Some need time to plan for child care, and in a city of renters, some might move to be located closer to their high schooler’s school, parents told Chalkbeat.

Traditionally, the first day of school is the Thursday after Labor Day, based on the contract with the city’s teachers union, which gives educators two planning days before students arrive. Last year was an outlier when schools started later than usual — a week after Labor Day — because of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

The education department has typically given families several months to plan for the upcoming year. For the 2018 and 2019 school years, the calendar was posted in April. Prior to that, the calendar had been out in March. The past two pandemic years strayed as there were many moving pieces. In 2020, opening day was delayed at the last minute. Last year’s calendar was considered late too, but it was out by the first week of May.

The unpredictability of the calendar has been a burden for some families. This year’s last day of school, for instance, was a head scratcher since it’s a Monday. (PSA to families about June 27: Unlike in years’ past, it is a full day, not a half day.)

Memo to @NYCSchools & @DOEChancellor - Today would be a great day to release the calendar for the upcoming school year... pic.twitter.com/RmLGPpOSvF
— Brian Gibbons (@BrianUFT) May 23, 2022

Many observers believe the city should be doing everything it can to get students to show up next year, given this year’s dismal attendance and rising concerns about school refusal, which is when children have an extreme aversion to attending school, usually related to anxiety and depression.

By year’s end, 37% of the students in kindergarten through 12th grade are expected to be considered chronically absent, education department officials estimate. That means they will have missed 10%, or about 18 days, of the school year. That is significantly higher than in 2018-19, the year before the pandemic, when it reached 26%.

One way the city hopes to address chronic absenteeism is by launching two new full-time virtual schools for the fall. Such a program could be a boon for students who are working and might need non-traditional school hours. It also might appeal to families who continue to have health and safety concerns about coronavirus or whose children have medical needs that make them more vulnerable to COVID or other illnesses. The city’s current program for children who are homebound or in hospitals because of medical issues only offers an hour a day of live instruction for elementary and middle schools and two hours in high school. Those numbers are expected to increase slightly by fall 2023 because of a new state requirement.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

‘I’m lucky if I can get him out of bed’: NYC families struggle with school refusal

2022-05-17T19:28:49+00:00

Every morning raises a stressful question for Lori: Will her son go to school?

Most days, the answer is no.

Her eighth grader, Scott, has not attended school for a full day or entire week since mid-January.

“He said he hates math, he hates school, and doesn’t want to go,” said Lori, a single mom from Staten Island who asked to use middle names for privacy reasons. “There are mornings where he would get dressed and go, but not get out of the car. Sometimes he doesn’t leave the house.”

The school year at I.S. 7 started smoothly for Scott, who is on the autism spectrum. His teachers heaped praise on him, and he seemed to be making friends, Lori said. But by November, he had been sick several times, and he missed half the month.

He never got back on track.

Many children have days where they dread school or try to get out of going at some point in their academic career. But Lori’s son and other children like him are suffering from an extreme aversion to being in the classroom that clinicians call school refusal.

Studies estimate about 1 to 5% of children nationwide exhibited signs of school refusal before the pandemic. Experts, parents, and educators told Chalkbeat they believe coronavirus shutdowns worsened the problem. Many children learned outside of school buildings for an extended period of time, while instances of anxiety and depression — disorders often associated with school refusal — skyrocketed.

Post-pandemic statistics for school refusal aren’t available, and it can be hard to untangle whether mental health issues are impacting attendance since they can manifest in physical symptoms like stomach aches. But observers wonder if post-pandemic school refusal is contributing to the city’s soaring absenteeism rates. Education department officials estimate that by year’s end, 37% of the students in kindergarten through 12th grade could be considered chronically absent, defined as missing at least 10% of the school year. That is significantly higher than in 2018-19, the year before the pandemic, when it reached 26%.

An increase in school refusal following campus closures stands to reason, since experts say the problem can be triggered by absences, illnesses, or major transitions like starting a new school. COVID rates continue to be high in New York City, leading to prolonged periods away from school for ill students as well as students exposed to the virus by classmates (though quarantine rules have been relaxed in recent months). And remote learning led to a longer-than-normal feeling of transition for students who enrolled in new schools but spent limited amounts of time there.

Students refusing to attend school can drain and frustrate educators and parents alike. Without any official city guidance on how to approach refusal, the response from school administrators ranges from deep partnership with families to little or no involvement. Parents, meanwhile, can find the problem emotionally and financially taxing, interfering with their work and leading to expensive therapy bills.

After Queens mom Jenn Choi saw one of her own sons this year struggling with school refusal, the consultant for families of students with disabilities surveyed other parents experiencing similar situations.

Schools and families need more guidance beyond the patchwork of strategies being used now, according to Jenn Choi, a Queens mom whose child has avoided school this year. She also runs Special Support Services, a consulting firm for families of students with disabilities, and recently surveyed 140 families experiencing school refusal, finding that most of their children— some 57% — had not avoided school prior to the pandemic.

Under education department policy, if a student is out 10 or more consecutive days, interventions such as home visits should be triggered. But many of those surveyed said their children have been refusing school intermittently.

Only 14% of respondents reported that an attendance teacher called or visited the home. Roughly 11% of the families said their children’s school took no action.

“The response has not been consistent,” Choi said. “There needs to be some protocol or threshold. If the student goes to the nurse’s office five times in one week, we need to do something.”

Education department officials say that schools closely monitor attendance trends, identify reasons for a student’s absence, and offer interventions such as mentors and social-emotional support for students at risk of chronic absenteeism.

“While school aversion is just one of many reasons why a student might be absent, we are taking extra steps to ensure that this does not become a contributor to chronic absenteeism,” said education department spokesperson Nicole Brownstein. “We are offering targeted interventions for students who are identified as being at risk for school aversion-related chronic absenteeism through guidance counselors, social workers, attendance teachers, and staff.”

A gradual approach

Even though Amanda Abry worked hand-in-hand with her son’s middle school to help him return to the classroom, the Brooklyn mom ended up using 12 weeks of family medical to make that happen.

Returning to Charles O. Dewey Middle School in the fall of 2021 was overwhelming for her seventh grader. Last year, he attended school only a couple days a week, if at all, because of the hybrid schedule and COVID-related closures. Additionally, he switched to taking two subways every day from Cobble Hill to the Sunset Park school, a departure from the yellow bus service he was entitled to as a sixth grader.

The school made efforts to cut transitions for students, allowing them to remain in one room throughout the day, with the teachers pushing in instead of kids changing rooms between periods. Still, by October, Abry’s son started missing one or two days a week.

By November he stopped going entirely, saying he was getting stomach aches. The therapist at Dewey’s school-based health clinic was only accessible when Abry’s son was in the building. A therapist from the school was willing to do virtual sessions, but the seventh grader refused the offer. By December, he was able to start seeing a cognitive behavior therapist in private practice, and his mom and dad got parent coaching.

The school followed the gold standard of what’s recommended in easing a student back. He was allowed to enter just the lobby. Then he worked up to attending half days. Finally, after nearly three months, he was able to go to his dreaded science class and attend five days a week.

This approach is in line with advice from Dr. Stephanie Ruggiero, a psychologist in the ADHD and Behavior Disorders Center at the Child Mind Institute, who said schools should work with families on a plan that gradually exposes the child to being back, slowly building their tolerance over time.

A school might allow the child to attend one or few classes before working up to a full day. Schools should create tailored plans based on a child’s needs, she said, and since missed assignments can be another source of anxiety, parents should discuss whether schools can give extensions or excuses for certain coursework.

There’s no official guidance on how schools should handle school refusal, and parents have seen widely varied responses.

‘Embarrassed about how far behind he is’

Sally traces her seventh grade son’s school refusal back to starting middle school in the pandemic and other personal struggles. He was tired for months after getting COVID in November 2020, and he began exhibiting signs of depression after his older sister’s suicide attempts. (The mom asked to use a family nickname as she works to improve her relationship with her son’s school.)

“He is very embarrassed about how far behind he is. Unfortunately, more days out leads to more school refusal, and it is very hard to get kids like this re-engaged.”

This year, her son has missed too many days for his mom to count. Since January, he has made it twice a week, at most, and those days were not necessarily full days. In April, as he was starting to get momentum in returning, another bout with COVID interfered, and then a few weeks later, he was hit with another illness. When he was in school, her son got into altercations with peers. After a STEM class became challenging, the teachers offered her son catch-up help at lunch, but his mom didn’t want him to lose the socialization time after a year away from other kids. They suggested that her son had “cabin fever,” making her feel they were dismissive.

“He is very embarrassed about how far behind he is,” she said. “Unfortunately, more days out leads to more school refusal, and it is very hard to get kids like this re-engaged.”

The 800-seat school brought in a counselor this fall dedicated to mental health, the mom said. But it wasn’t enough, and the school hired another recently. That new counselor is arranging for her son to do some of his work in her office because he was having panic attacks when entering classrooms, Sally said.

The approach has started working. In the past few weeks, he’s gone into the building three times, sometimes spending much of the day in the counselor’s office.

“There are days when I’m lucky if I can get him out of bed. Is it fair they have to be de facto counselors?” Sally said of teachers. “No, but you’re sending them into a war zone without armor. They don’t know how to recognize suicidal ideation, anxiety, and depression.”

Getting back in the building as quickly as possible

Unlike Sally, whose son did not exhibit signs of school refusal before the pandemic, Lori’s son, Scott, began avoiding school a few months before coronavirus shuttered school buildings. He had just started sixth grade at I.S. 7, which declined to comment for this article, after spending elementary school in a gifted and talented program where he was essentially with the same children since kindergarten.

At the new school, Lori’s son experienced bullying, she said, and an incident during recess ended in her son and another student getting in-house suspension.

After that, it became more common that Scott visited the nurse for stomach aches and asked to go home. Then the stomach ache complaints started first thing in the morning, to avoid going to school altogether.

The problem, however, receded and his anxiety lessened when school buildings closed, and he remained fully remote the next year due to health concerns.

When children stop attending school and see their anxiety melt away, it can be harder to get them back into the building, according to Ruggiero, the psychologist.

“The more you are avoiding something, if you are overwhelmed with fear, you get that temporary relief from avoiding it,” she said. “The avoidance makes it go away. But the problem is, we lose our ability and confidence to cope by not facing it.”

It’s critical to get children back into the school building as quickly as possible, even for a few minutes a day, experts say, advising parents to take away things that make being home appealing, like video games.

In Lori’s case, the school devised a plan in March. An attendance specialist arrived at their house in the morning, drove behind Lori’s car to school, and then escorted Scott inside the building. That worked for about a week before Scott said he could go into the building on his own. After a day or two, the middle schooler was back home.

Earlier this month — and nearly five months after Scott stopped attending regularly — the school created a new plan to initially allow him to attend just science and social studies, which are led by his favorite teachers. They offered to change his math class, the course that has been his biggest hurdle.

Dr. Chelsey Rosen, a former school psychologist, believes schools could benefit from deeper work on behavioral management strategies.

Dr. Chelsey Rosen, a therapist at the Manhattan Psychology Group, is a former school psychologist and understands that schools can often be stretched thin, making it difficult for them to come up with personalized plans for students.

Though schools have talked about implementing more social-emotional learning this year, Rosen worries they haven’t had enough training on deeper work, such as behavior management. Additionally, schools might not have the wherewithal to tailor a plan to gradually reintroduce a student back into the classroom, which often relies on a dedicated staffer to be the point person supporting that child.

“I do feel like schools are trying in many ways,” she said. “They’ll throw in social-emotional learning, but they’ll just do a 10-minute thing on mindfulness — not that mindfulness isn’t good — but they’re just checking a box.”

For Abry, the Brooklyn mom whose son stopped attending seventh grade, there are still tough moments, and Abry herself gets drained by the strain of coaxing her son back into school each day. But she feels like her son is on the other side of the mountain.

“It’s wonderful to see him blooming again,” Abry said. “It’s been nice seeing him re-engage with the world.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

In a seismic shift, NYC to mandate elementary schools use phonics-based curriculum

2022-05-12T22:09:41+00:00

This is part of an ongoing collaborative series between Chalkbeat and THE CITY investigating learning differences, special education, and other education challenges in city schools.

New York City will require all elementary schools to adopt a phonics-based reading program in the coming school year — a potentially seismic shift in how tens of thousands of public school students are taught to read.

The announcement came as part of a wider $7.4 million plan by Mayor Eric Adams to identify and support students with dyslexia or other reading challenges, including screening students from kindergarten through high school and creating targeted programs at 160 of the city’s 1,600 schools.

“We’re going to start using a proven, phonics-based literacy curriculum that’s proven to help children read,” Adams said at a press conference at Harlem’s P.S. 125. “This is our opportunity to really move the needle on something that has been impactful for our children for a long time.”

City officials said teachers will be required to implement one of the education department’s recommended phonics-based curricula for kindergarten through second grade as part of the initiative. This shift is a major change in approach, as the department traditionally defers to principals on curriculum choice, with widely varying results.

Thursday’s announcement represents a significant victory for parents — some of whom wept at the press conference — who have long been frustrated with the city’s inability to educate many struggling readers. Some families have sought outside evaluations, which can run thousands of dollars, and sued the city for private school tuition reimbursements, a process that often requires significant time and resources.

Parents Jeannine Kiely, Ruth Genn, Emily Hellstrom, Akeela Azcuy (left to right) were part of a push to launch new programs for students with dyslexia.

City officials are now vowing to better equip educators across the nation’s largest school system to serve students with reading challenges. They plan to launch programs specifically geared toward students with dyslexia at two elementary schools and provide deeper support for students at 80 additional elementary schools and 80 middle schools.

The efforts are intended to help address one of the city’s most entrenched problems: Just over half of students in grades 3-8 are not proficient readers, according to state tests. Profound learning disruptions caused by the pandemic have only amplified concerns that students have been knocked off track.

Adams often speaks about his own struggles with dyslexia and promised on the campaign trail to make it a priority. He framed the announcement Thursday as a “first-of-its-kind” effort and even as a bulwark against incarceration.

“Dyslexia holds back too many children in school, but most importantly in life,” Adams said. “Dyslexia is not a disadvantage. It’s just a different way of learning. And all the children need — they need the tools to know how to comprehend information.”

‘Watching our children’s suffering’

Adams shared his personal story of how his peers would tape a sign on his chair that read “dumb student,” which made him want to avoid school. And, indeed, some of his friends dropped out because of their learning struggles, he said.

But with his mother’s support, Adams pushed ahead, and he acknowledged the emotional toll on parents forced to advocate for their children and fight with public schools unable to provide the proper support.

Two groups of parents have been working on creating programs for students with dyslexia and other reading-based challenges. Literacy Academy Collective in P.S. 161 in the Bronx and Lab School for Family Literacy in P.S. 125 in Manhattan will both offer specialized programs for students with dyslexia and other language-based learning disabilities. The DOE will immediately move to build programs at additional schools with the goal of having at least one school offering specialized instruction in each borough by fall 2023.

Some experts estimate that 10% to 20% of children have some form of dyslexia, while others put the figure much lower. Regardless, many literacy experts argue that systematic reading instruction emphasizing phonics is beneficial for all students who may struggle with reading, regardless of whether they have a specific diagnosis.

Naomi Peña, a mother of four children with dyslexia and one of the forces behind the program set to open in the Bronx, talked about how “watching our children’s suffering” inspired her to team up with five other moms to create the new endeavor.

“I was desperate to find support,” she said, fighting back tears. “My only option was costly tutoring programs because my children’s learning styles could not be met in the classroom.”

City officials are promising to reach other students by ramping up efforts to train all teachers on how to identify and support students with dyslexia. By April 2023, teachers in all subjects will participate in a two-hour introductory training created by Made By Dyslexia. Educators will also have more opportunities to be trained in evidence-based phonics programs, including Wilson and Orton-Gillingham. Additionally, all grades will have access to literacy coaches in targeted schools, officials said, though it was not clear how many.

“Literacy cannot be a skill that is relegated to a class, and we must support educators in every subject area to become allies in the work of making sure that every child can read,” said schools Chancellor David Banks.

Return to phonics

Banks has consistently said he wants a heavier focus on phonics. In March, he made waves by arguing a popular Teachers College reading curriculum that was previously embraced by the education department “has not worked.”

The city will offer a few options for schools to choose from such as the PAF Reading Program, Ready for Reading, and Fundations. The phonics program will need to be paired with a comprehensive literacy program, officials said.

Students at P.S. 236 in the Bronx participate in a phonics lesson.

This effort is separate from a previously announced initiative to create a universal culturally responsive curriculum known as Mosaic, which will focus more narrowly on middle schools and be available by fall 2023.

During the Bloomberg administration, then-Chancellor Joel Klein pushed schools to use a reading approach known as “balanced literacy,” which has increasingly come under fire for failing to emphasize systematic instruction on the relationships between sounds and letters. Twenty years later, that model remains entrenched in many schools.

The city does not centrally track what curricula schools employ, but officials believe that roughly 200 of the city’s 700 elementary schools do not currently use phonics-based instruction, according to a Department of Education spokesperson. They also believe that dozens, or even hundreds more, are not implementing phonics as effectively as they should, despite a growing consensus among experts that explicitly teaching the relationships between sounds and letters is crucial.

Changing a literacy curriculum is no easy process and can be challenging without buy-in from educators and solid training. The education department pledged to provide ongoing professional development throughout next year to help with the shift.

For the screening, children will be assessed on literacy three times a year, and those who continue to struggle will have access to a more targeted screening for dyslexia, Banks explained. The city will continue using a tool called Acadience Reading, the latest iteration of an assessment known as Dibels (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills), which was implemented this year for kindergarten through second grade.

City officials did not immediately say how they will measure the initiative’s effectiveness.

The plans “could have a transformative impact if implemented well,” said Kim Sweet, of Advocates for Children, which has spent decades fighting for low-income students who are struggling with reading and are unable to be supported in public schools.

Her organization looked forward to “digging into the details” and working with the education department so that “all children learn to read, no matter where they go to school,” she said in a statement.

The city is also creating a task force on dyslexia, and Adams said he is working with Public Advocate Jumaane Williams to push for dyslexia screening in jails across New York state.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

How to help struggling students? NYC’s Comfort Dog Program might unleash some answers

2022-05-05T22:15:42+00:00

Literacy coach Meredith Loftus sometimes has a special helper for her phonics lessons with struggling readers at P.S. 70 in the South Bronx.

Chip, a 1.5-year-old shih-poo (poodle/Shih Tzu mix), joined her on Thursday, as she worked with a small group of third graders as they sounded out words with digraphs, two letters that sound like one, such as “wh,” “sh,” “ch,” and “th.”

Chip used his nose to toss a large die with a word on each side, and it landed on “shoulder.” Then a student read the word and instructed Chip to pick a bucket with the corresponding digraph.

Getting students excited about being pulled out of their regular classroom to work on phonics can be a struggle — particularly this year, when pandemic-related learning disruptions have left some kids lagging several years behind. But having the dogs helps make it more fun, said Kirsten Kinsella, P.S. 70’s former assistant principal, who now leads the New York City education department’s Comfort Dog Program.

“They explain the sounds to Chip. They’re learning it with the dog,” Kinsella explained. “It builds confidence and communication.”

Chip is one of five dogs who regularly works with P.S. 70 students on literacy, math, yoga, and social-emotional skills. When he’s not at the school, he and the other four dogs live with Kinsella, who has continued to use the school as her home base and lab site. She Zooms with educators at the city’s other 52 schools with dogs in the program to see how things are going and to troubleshoot. P.S. 70 is also where she certifies dogs before they head to their respective schools.

A third grader at P.S. 70 reads “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” to a dog named Mushu.

Kinsella gets inquiries from educators “every day” about the program and said over 500 schools want to participate.

This kind of targeted literacy intervention puts the Comfort Dog Program at the forefront of how schools can incorporate the therapeutic animals, Kinsella believes. Such activities are also more engaging for the dogs than simply being petted all day. (“I’m like the UFT for the dogs,” Kinsella joked, comparing her role to the teachers union’s in ensuring the pups have good work conditions.)

Though dogs have been in some New York City public schools since 2016 as a way to bolster emotional well-being, their roles in the classroom have been evolving, and training them — along with training their humans — is an ongoing process. Interest in the program has been especially high this school year, as student mental health needs have become dire across the nation; in October 2021, theAmerican Academy of Pediatrics declared a national emergency about the issue.

Hundreds of schools want dogs

The program expands and contracts based on various factors, and Kinsella expects to certify six new dogs before the school year ends. While she’s hopeful the program will grow, it’s a major undertaking to train the dogs and their humans. An education department pilot program this year is sending a school professional, who is also a dog trainer and animal-assisted intervention specialist, into various schools with her dog to work with teachers for part of the day.

To be part of the program, an educator with a dog at least a year old must participate in a six-hour training program through the Good Dog Foundation.. Schools can allocate up to $1,000 from their budgets to help defray costs, Kinsella said, but the educator is a volunteer, providing room and board for the pet.

The training focuses on how to work with students who might be scared of dogs or how to desensitize dogs to school-specific distractions like the school bell, fire alarms and PA announcements.

But going through the training does not automatically guarantee acceptance into the program, as other factors might come into play in terms of how the dog responds to being in a school environment. The dogs must also exhibit a love for greeting strangers without hesitation and cannot exhibit any aggression. And their handlers have to become skilled at reading their dogs’ stress signals, Kinsella said.

A dog named Aurora helps third graders from P.S. 70 when they’re doing yoga.

A little help from a friend on social-emotional learning

The comfort dogs have been especially helpful this year as children had to reacclimate to being back in the classroom around other children and adults, Kinsella said. For some students who have been reluctant to show up to school, they now start their day feeding the dogs, a calming transition before school work.

“Through the dogs and working with them and seeing that bond, we just see the students grow,” she said.

She pointed to the transformation of Ian, a third grader who was having trouble remaining in class this year. Now he helps train the dogs.

“They make me feel more excited to be here,” Ian said. “They’re my best friends.”

He’s already planning to be a dog trainer when he grows up, he said.

Kinsella worked with Ian and three other students on some social-emotional skills in a quiet fifth-floor classroom — where the dogs usually stay, so that children who are allergic to dogs don’t encounter them elsewhere.

She started out by asking the children how they felt, and said that Chip felt “ner-cited,” which was a made-up word for nervous and excited, Kinsella told the children.

Kirsten Kinsella, who oversees the city’s Comfort Dog Program, asks Chip, her shih-poo, to wave goodbye.

A third grader named Izzy said he also felt nervous because there were more people than usual watching the group. But he said he also felt grateful because “a lot of people don’t get chances” to spend time with dogs in school.

Izzy then led the group in a short, guided meditation with deep-breathing exercises.

When he finished, the four students and two dogs in the room all seemed more at ease.

“When we change the energy in the room, we change the energy for the dogs and ourselves,” Kinsella said.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

What to know about the hottest ticket in NYC, Summer Rising

2022-05-04T19:35:27+00:00

Just one week after New York City opened up applications for Summer Rising, its ambitious program that melds academics and camp-like activities, most elementary school sites have already filled up.

Of 267 schools offering K-5 programs, fewer than 30 still had openings, according to the education department’s enrollment portal as of Monday afternoon.

This is only the second time that the city has opened its revamped summer program to all students, not just those who are struggling with coursework. Mornings will focus on academics led by education department teachers. The afternoons will offer enrichment such as field trips, art activities, and outdoor games run by community organizations.

The $350 million program offers 110,000 seats for elementary and middle school students in charter schools or traditional public schools. The city serves about 682,000 children in those grades, according to state data. The seats are first-come, first-served, with no waitlists. (Separately, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently donated $50 million for charter schools to run their own programs.)

Education department officials were excited to see the “immense interest” in this year’s summer program, but because of staffing constraints are not planning to add more seats.

“In order to maintain student safety, we are unable to add seats to Summer Rising sites at this time,” education department spokesperson Jenna Lyle said in a statement.

Additionally, the program gives priority to students in temporary housing and those with disabilities who are mandated to attend school year-round. Schools are also holding spaces for students who are required to attend for academic purposes.

High schools will offer separate programs for students needing to retake courses, and the city is offering 100,000 slots for young people ages 14-21 in its summer jobs program.

Here’s what families should know about Summer Rising:

What are the dates and hours?

The seven-week elementary school program runs from July 5 through Aug. 19 and is being offered at 267 schools across the city.

The six-week program for middle school runs from July 5 through Aug. 12, with nearly 230 schools offering seats for grades 6-8, with some of those campuses also offering K-5 seats.

Both programs run until 6 p.m.

Can my children attend their own school for Summer Rising? If not, what are other options?

Not all schools are hosting Summer Rising programs in their buildings, but all schools are affiliated with a school that is. Your child’s school is supposed to provide you with the name of the building that is partnering with your child’s school. Most seats, however, have already been snatched up, so options are limited.

Unlike last year, the new enrollment portal will only let families sign up for one program per child rather than allow multiple applications. You’ll know immediately if a site is booked since it won’t appear on the drop-down screen when you go to the enrollment page. (The list of participating schools can be found here.)

Last summer, the program got off to a rocky start, with glitches in the online signup portal and unregistered children showing up at sites, which resulted in students sitting in auditoriums for the first few days at some schools as enrollment issues were sorted out.

What if my child has special needs? What kind of accommodations will there be?

The city is aiming to improve on last summer’s performance, when some community-based organizations lacked staff like paraprofessionals to support certain students.

The city has increased training for people from organizations running enrichment programs. The city also will allow time during the summer for those staffers to learn from teachers how to support students with disabilities. City officials also promised more information soon about how they will better support students needing paraprofessional or nursing support to fully participate in both academic and enrichment programs.

“There’s been a more intentional push to include students with disabilities. If this was a normal time, it would be fine, but staffing overall is a big concern,” said Nora Moran of United Neighborhood Houses, an umbrella organization for community-based organizations. “Providers have had a hard time staffing their school-year after-school programs this year; they want to serve this population but need the right staffing and resources to do so.”

At 80 sites, the city is co-locating programs for students in District 75, which serves those with the most significant needs, with programs serving typically developing students. The program for students with disabilities ends at 2:30 p.m., and then those students may join afternoon enrichment programs. Staffers from afternoon programs will be in the classroom with special education teachers in the morning, to learn how to support students.

My child gets bused to school. Will Summer Rising offer busing?

Transportation was a major issue last summer for children who rely on busing during the school year, including those with disabilities or students in temporary housing. Some students who rode the bus in the morning had no bus ride home in the afternoon. The city eventually offered to pick up the tab for car services, but advocates stressed that many working families don’t have time to use the services, which require a caregiver to accompany a student.

“For many parents, it is not possible to transport their child with significant disabilities to and from their school,” said Randi Levine, from Advocates for Children. “We know many students with disabilities last year were unable to participate in the Summer Rising afternoon activities due to lack of bus service.”

City officials said that they will offer busing to eligible students through 3 p.m, and are working on options for children staying until 6 p.m.

“Unfortunately, operational constraints make wide-scale busing at 6 p.m. a significant challenge,” the education department’s website says.

Officials are exploring prepaid rideshare or taxi service, including vehicles that are wheelchair accessible.

Alex Zimmerman contributed reporting.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Correction: This story initially said Summer Rising would cost $101 million, per a city press release. Officials later clarified that the city budget is allocating that amount to it, but another $249 million is being paid by stimulus funding and tax levy dollars.

NY state math tests fall during Ramadan, a fasting period, upsetting Muslim families

2022-04-27T22:20:40+00:00

For observant Muslims, the holy month of Ramadan is filled with fasting, prayer, and community. This year’s holiday overlapped with the state math tests administered to New York’s third- through eighth-graders from April 26-28, upsetting some families whose children are fasting from before sunrise to sunset.

They don’t want to see a repeat next year, when the state testing period will again likely fall during Ramadan.

At least one Queens principal told her Muslim students they could take makeup tests after several of them became “quite concerned about having to take exams at this time,” recounted state Rep. Zohran Mamdani of Astoria. But Mamdani is incensed that it falls on individual school leaders to figure out how best to support their students who are fasting.

“This should be a clear part of state policy to ensure these exams do not overlap with Ramadan,” said Mamdani, who migrated to New York from Uganda when he was 7 and is only the third Muslim elected to the state Assembly.

The dates of Ramadan, which celebrates the period when it’s believed the Quran was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad, shift annually based on the Islamic lunar calendar. This year, it began on April 1 and will end on May 2, culminating in Eid al-Fitr, the “festival of breaking fast,” which became a New York City public school holiday in 2015.

Next year, Ramadan will start 10 days earlier, lasting from March 22 until April 21. That time frame could again overlap with state English or math tests, some families worry.

About 1 in 10 of the city’s students identified as Muslim at the time there was the push to get Eid on the school calendar.

Not eating from dawn to dusk could take a toll on academic performance, according to experts. Research has found that skipping breakfast is associated with decreased cognitive performance, affecting alertness, attention, problem-solving and memory, according to the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion’s Division of Population Health.

State education department officials said they try to avoid overlap with dates of religious observance as much as possible. While they make allowances for Eid al-Fitr, they don’t have the flexibility to address the entire month of Ramadan, officials explained.

They also said they seek input on draft testing schedules from school administrators at least one year in advance of posting the schedules.

Religious observance is an acceptable reason for missing the exams, state officials added, noting that students can take tests on makeup days.

Schools are administering makeup tests from April 28 to May 9, and parents can request a makeup test after Eid, starting on May 3, city education officials said.

Brooklyn mom and doctor Meryem Bencheikh-Ellis questioned the fairness and equity of such a policy.

“For retakes, do you think the conditions are going to be the same? Everything is done for all the kids that day by the school. The kids are prepped for that day,” she said. “You’re going to extract kids from their classes for a retake. You’re not going to have the exact conditions. I’m a scientist. That’s not the same experiment. For me, that’s not equity.”

Many parents are also frustrated that having their kids do makeups means they will miss out on further instructional days, and that the makeup days set their children apart because of their religious observance.

Though Bencheikh-Ellis and her older children are fasting during Ramadan, she believes that her sixth grade daughter is too young to do so. But Bencheikh-Ellis knows other families whose young children are not eating from 4:30 a.m. until 8 p.m., while some children might be fasting for half the day. Bencheikh-Ellis worries about them taking tests on empty stomachs. (Some families might allow their children to eat for a test and have them “give it back” by fasting another time before Ramadan next year, she explained.)

“I find it infuriating,” she said. “It’s really thoughtless, or they don’t have enough people at the table to tell them, ‘Please, let’s be considerate.’ A retake day is not enough. Planning accordingly from the start is the thing that’s needed.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

‘Books opened up worlds for me’: This Harlem teacher shares her love of literature and how she’s promoting diverse authors

2022-04-25T21:38:59+00:00

Growing up in the Bronx, books provided an escape for Fatuma Hydara, who, as the eldest daughter in a Muslim family of West African immigrants, shouldered many household responsibilities.

Because of her love of books, she decided at a young age to pursue a career as a librarian, in book publishing, or as a teacher. After a summer internship at HarperCollins showed her that cubicle life wasn’t for her, she opted to become a teacher. She’s been in the classroom for the past eight years.

Hydara teaches English to eighth graders at Harlem’s Neighborhood Charter School, where her background has helped her connect with students and parents who are also Muslim and West African. Some of those families, her own included, have connections to the Bronx neighborhood where New York City recently saw one of its deadliest fires in decades.

Hydara’s background also inspired her to start her own virtual book store, Tuma’s Books and Things, where each month she curates a selection of books from authors who identify as Black, indigenous, persons of color and/or queer.

“My mission is to ensure that ALL identities can find stories that reflect and honor who they are, while allowing others to learn about people who might be different from them,” Hydara said.

She also sits on the Council of Educators for RetroReports, a journalism nonprofit that creates classroom-friendly videos aimed at connecting history to current affairs. She is one of 20 educators from across the nation in the organization’s inaugural council, tasked with helping create lessons to accompany the videos.

Hydara spoke with Chalkbeat about being a bibliophile, the importance of having teachers who look like her, and how this school year has been more challenging than any other.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Tell us more about your love of books and how that inspired you to create your own virtual book shop.

Growing up, I had a limited and sheltered childhood. As the oldest daughter of West African immigrants, I had a lot of responsibilities in the home — caring for my siblings, doing chores, and helping my parents navigate America as a translator. I didn’t get to have a lot of experiences or explore different places. But books opened up worlds for me instead.

As much as I loved reading and books, I never encountered characters like me — Black, Muslim, First Generation, West African girls. And I didn’t even realize it as a problem until I got older and read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Reading my first African writer felt like coming home after years of being away.

Does your school serve students from the West African region your family comes from? I’m wondering how important you think it is for those students to see you in your role as a teacher.

Yes, there are West African students, and that is a major part of what I enjoy about working at this school. I think it’s definitely important as I am able to connect to those students on a personal level. They share information about their family lives that they don’t with other teachers. I am able to communicate with their families in ways that they value and understand. I knew my presence made a difference when on the first day of Ramadan, a student I do NOT teach came into my classroom, asked if I was fasting, said ‘me too’ when I replied affirmatively and asked for a fist bump.

Did anyone at your school — or even yourself — have any connections to the community or the victims of the tragic fire in the Bronx? We had heard that it has been hard on that tight-knit community, largely of Muslims from Gambia and other West African countries.

Yes, I used to live in another building owned by the same corporation that is only a few blocks away. My parents still live there. I have lots of friends who lived in the building and a close friend who lost her sister. Many of my friends and I came together during those first few horrible days to support as much as we could. It was astounding how much money the community was able to raise and all of the supplies we gathered to take care of our own.

Have you found this year to be more difficult than previous ones given the prolonged time that students were out of the physical classroom? Are you seeing anything different with your students?

This year has definitely been different. Many students are used to (and prefer) the looser routines from home. While my school had a solid online program, there were many students who did not log on Zoom or [do so] on time. They logged off early for chores or to run errands. They simply didn’t complete work. Given the extenuating [circumstances], we passed all students, but it instilled bad habits and a concerning mindset in students.

Most students started the year believing they didn’t need to work for their grades. They didn’t value putting in hard work. Students’ attention spans offline and without tech have become shorter than ever. Reading and writing stamina is lower than I’ve ever experienced in my career.

Tell us about a favorite lesson to teach. Where did the idea come from?

One lesson I love is my intro to Macbeth by Shakespeare. I set the scene by closing the blinds and finding thunder/lightning sounds on YouTube. And I read the lines of the three witches with the sound effects. It immerses students immediately in understanding mood, and in later scenes, they have a deeper understanding of why Macbeth should be cautious of the witches.

What’s something happening in the community that affects what goes on inside your class?

My school is located in Harlem on a very high-traffic street with a police precinct located in the subway. I think my students are affected by the same things many urban NYC kids are — poverty, drug use, homelessness, mental health, etc. Many of the families we work with were impacted by the pandemic and its financial constraints. Nearly 100% of our students qualify for free lunch.

What part of your job is most difficult?

What I struggle with most is balancing work and life. The long school day of a charter school drains me, and I’m often too tired for much else when I get home. I would also love to continue learning and enhancing my craft but attending outside [professional development sessions] is a schedule nightmare due to lack of coverage.

What was the biggest misconception that you initially brought to teaching?

I thought schools were well-oiled running machines, but there are lots of moving parts in terms of roles. If one part isn’t doing its job, others have to overcompensate, or it begins to unravel. I realized quickly that teachers are the backbone of the educational system, but our role is often devalued and our voices silenced.

What’s the best advice you’ve received about teaching?

You can’t do everything, and you can’t help everyone. Many things are literally beyond your capacity as an educator. As one teacher in a long line that a child will have, you can only do your best and then pass the torch.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

This award-winning Bronx math teacher developed a curriculum on gerrymandering

2022-04-22T11:00:00+00:00

In certain high school educator circles in New York City and beyond, Kate Belin is a rock star.

The veteran math teacher has won numerous accolades for her work with students and her mentorship of teachers, including most recently the 2021 Math for America (MƒA) Muller Award for Professional Influence in Education.

Belin (who uses they/she pronouns) has not only spent her entire 17-year teaching career at the Bronx’s Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School, but they also have taught at City College of New York, Bard College, and the Bard Prison Initiative. In addition, she is a national teacher trainer for the Algebra Project and is working to amplify teacher voices.

Belin has developed a curriculum that includes a course on the ever-relevant topic of gerrymandering — diving into how boundaries of electoral districts are drawn to favor certain political interests — that is used at Fannie Lou and other New York City “consortium” schools. Those schools, which Chancellor David Banks has repeatedly said he’d like to replicate, focus more on hands-on learning and performance-based assessments than Regents exams. (To graduate, students at consortium schools only have to pass the English Regents while having other projects or portfolios to complete to show their mastery of skills.)

“Without a doubt, my greatest professional impact comes from the work I do with my students at Fannie Lou,” Belin said. “But I do have an agenda. I want to see a national shift in how we teach math, what math is, and who has access to it. Everyone should have access to high-quality math instruction. And math should be understood as something that is relevant, intuitive, all around us, and not as something that is accessible only to some.”

Belin spoke recently with Chalkbeat about the mathematics of gerrymandering, how she knew she wanted to work at Fannie Lou, and why she sees teaching as inherently political.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Was there a moment when you decided to become a teacher?

I was a math major at Bard College. It was 2004, my senior year, and I had spent four years falling in love with math but ignoring the question of what I was going to do with it. During that year, Bard announced they would be starting a Master of Arts in Teaching program the following year. It would be a 12-month intensive program, and their vision was that pre-service teachers would be scholars of both education and the discipline they taught. I knew pretty quickly that I wanted to apply.

I learned in college that mathematics was about creativity, patterns, problem-solving, and many more things that aren’t necessarily taught in K-12 school. There are so many students who hate mathematics because standardized testing shows them that it is about memorization, rote procedures, and getting a correct answer. The master’s program at Bard College gave me hope that it was possible to bring more real mathematics into schools and that more students might fall in love with it, too.

But looking back even further, my Aunt Mary was a high school history teacher, and I’d probably known that I wanted to be a teacher subconsciously for much longer, even though I went to college with dreams of being a photographer.

I saw that you’ve led MƒA workshops on developing project-based curriculum in geometry, functions, and gerrymandering. How did you start incorporating gerrymandering into your lessons?

We kicked off the new semester in February with gerrymandering.

In 2017, the Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group, or MGGG, was formed at Tufts University and led by Moon Duchin. That summer, they offered a workshop about the mathematics of gerrymandering that was open to the public. Interest was so overwhelming that they ended up having satellite conferences throughout the country later that year. There was an option to apply for an educator track following the conference, and Math for America supported the resources for me and a few other teachers to attend.

The conference and materials were so wonderful that Math for America ended up bringing a professor from MGGG to teach a mini-course at [its conference] the following year. Since then, there has been a growing group of teachers at MƒA continuing to lead professional development workshops for other teachers and using the materials in our own classrooms.

Why is it so important to teach about gerrymandering? This feels especially relevant in terms of what’s happening in NY right now!

I’m on a two-year curricular loop, so this is the third time I’ve taught it, and in each of the years 2018, 2020, and now 2022, it has felt “especially relevant.” The first time I taught gerrymandering was 2018. There was huge interest coming off the 2016 presidential election and dealing with the Republican gerrymanders. This was the year [2018] that the Democrats “took back the House,” and AOC along with a number of other progressive Democrats won. Then in 2020, it was especially relevant because of the Census. And now in 2022, we are seeing the new redistricting maps and anticipating the 2022 midterm elections. It absolutely is an especially relevant topic and will likely continue to be.

It’s also just a pretty cool coincidence that I always end up teaching it in the spring of every even-numbered year, and all 435 seats are always up for reelection those same years.

At Fannie Lou, how do you get to know your students?

Prioritizing it. At the beginning of the year, I try to design activities that explicitly help us get to know each other. I try to make these activities as fun and interactive as possible. We also have many structures built into Fannie Lou that make this possible. For example, we loop with our students for two years. So the same team of teachers will work with the same cohort of students for both 11th and 12th grades.

In addition to teaching math, I am also an advisor to a group of about 20 students. Advisory meets daily and is also part of the same two-year loop.

What are you doing differently this year after the prolonged stretch of remote learning and social isolation?

This connects completely to the [previous] question. I love my advisory this year more than any other, but I think that is because it was what we missed the most in remote learning. We spent at least the first month, if not more, playing games, bonding, learning each other’s names. I was more explicit about this with the students this year.

I’ve also noticed that students were much more resistant to using computers in class. It makes total sense now, but I was surprised by how serious some students were about wanting to do activities with physical materials. During remote learning, I guess I had in my mind that much of the digital literacy that they learned would seamlessly transfer into the school year. But they wanted to be interacting through conversations or paper much more.

In the MƒA award announcement, you said: “This award also recognizes the work of the entire Fannie Lou community which has always understood that teaching is political.” It sounds like you have an inspiring school community. Can you tell us more about how your school has shaped your work and about how teaching is political?

When I visited the school in 2005, I walked in and instantly knew that this place felt great. When I met the (former) principal Nancy Mann, I knew I wanted to work for her. Rather than seeing myself as a math teacher, my job is teaching students to want to know math.

The structures that I mentioned above (advisory, block scheduling, and much more) are themselves political. “School,” or what we think of as school in the traditional sense, has failed (intentionally) so many of our students. Schools should be intentionally designed from the ground up to meet the needs of the community it serves. In “Teaching to Transgress,” bell hooks talks about how education is freedom. Schools are not politically neutral and are, in fact, deeply rooted in the antiracist struggle.

You also talked about the importance of collaboration with your students, working together and mobilizing youth for positive change. Do you have any anecdotes about specific projects your students have worked on that you’re particularly proud of?

There have been a ton of initiatives led by students at our school. In my first year here, NYC schools were doing Principal for a Day, and we got Mitchell Modell (CEO of a sporting goods chain). After talking with the students, he decided that he wanted to work with the students over a longer period of time. Together, they decided that a class at Fannie Lou would spend the semester designing a boot.

The annual Peace Block Party is another great example. In 2010, after a spring break where many of our students lost friends and loved ones due to violence, the students wanted to create an event that promoted peace. The event has grown bigger each year, it is now an institution of the school each spring, and it has even continued virtually during the pandemic.

This Q&A is celebrating your accomplishments, and I don’t want to detract from that, but if you are open to answering this, I’m curious to hear how your school community is doing after the stabbing incident in October. This year has been so hard on many kids and educators, and we’ve seen incidents spiking in schools across the city. How do you in your role as a math teacher support your students who are going through so much?

I’d prefer not to discuss the stabbing.

Being away from our community in the physical school building had tremendous impacts; that’s why it is important that the structures at our school, such as advisory, looping, using essential questions, and writing across the curriculum assist us in building relationships with each other and putting students ideas at the front of their learning in all content areas.

What’s the best advice you’ve received or given about teaching?

A lot of it has been really practical, like don’t keep your house keys attached to your school keys because you’ll end up locked out of your house when you lose your keys at school (and you WILL lose your school keys). Call your principal if you get arrested. Stuff like that.

But then there’s the deeper stuff – have a sense of humor, demand academic success, believe in the abilities of your students. I keep in mind this quote from Maya Angelou: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Some NYC schools see more families opt out of state tests amid rising anxiety

2022-04-19T11:00:00+00:00

Rosa Diaz gave her fifth grade daughter a choice ahead of last month’s English state test: Did she feel ready to take it, or did she want to sit it out?

“I believe in you,” the East Harlem mom recalled telling her daughter. “I know you can do everything you want to do, but I want you to tell me if you feel prepared.”

The 10-year-old, who is on the autism spectrum, told her mom she felt ready. Her school, P.S. 171 Patrick Henry, had done a fair amount of test prep.

But after the first day of testing, the girl came home exhausted, Diaz recounted. She immediately took a shower and went right to bed without eating. The same thing happened the second day. Things were worse for some of her peers, Diaz said, with some children staying after school for hours trying to finish the exam.

Now, with state math tests approaching on April 26 and 27, Diaz has made the choice herself. She’ll have her child sit out. And several other parents at her school are doing the same, Diaz said.

This year marks the first time, as far as Diaz is aware, that any parents at P.S. 171 have opted their children out of testing (not counting last year’s one-time opt-in policy). Some other schools in the neighborhood are also seeing their first families opting out, according to parents and school leaders. The small, but growing numbers are notable since the opt-out movement has typically been more popular in white, affluent suburbs than in New York City. P.S. 171’s students are predominantly Black and Latino.

“Parents don’t know what it is to opt out, especially if they speak another language,” said Diaz, a parent leader on District 4’s Community Education Council who has been telling other Spanish-speaking parents about their rights to opt out and figuring out ways to communicate with families who speak various African languages.

The state typically doesn’t report opt-out numbers until the exam results are shared at the end of the summer, city officials said. But Diaz’s experience suggests concerns around student anxiety and academic challenges after prolonged learning disruptions may be spurring more families to say no to testing.

On top of the state tests, students have been taking other assessments throughout the year in English and math as part of the city’s academic recovery plan. The aim of the assessments, city officials said, was to understand where there might be learning gaps. Federal officials declined to cancel last year’s state tests for similar reasons: They hoped to understand how students have fared academically during the pandemic.

National testing data shows dismal results, with progress stalled especially for younger students. Black, Latino, and low-income students were hardest hit. But experts have also questioned the value of the recent data from New York state exams, because last year’s unusually low participation rate makes it hard to draw comparisons.

New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks recently decried the amount of time schools spend on test prep for standardized exams, saying schools have become like “testing mills” at the expense of the arts and other courses that engage students, as well as social emotional learning.

The tests, however, are mandated by the federal government, and schools with low scores can find themselves on state lists of schools needing more oversight.

U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a former Bronx middle school principal who was a vocal supporter of opting out of the state tests, said he’s drafting legislation to remove the federal requirement that states administer standardized tests. He would rather let states choose alternatives such as testing just once in elementary, middle and high school. He also wants to delink the standardized tests from Title I funding.

“Why are we spending so much time on testing? It doesn’t get us to our goal of 100% literacy and ending the achievement gap,” Bowman said. “There are more complex challenges, like climate change, racial injustice, inequality. We need to prepare children for that world.”

Kemala Karmen, a parent activist with the grassroots group NYC Opt Out, lamented how much time children were spending taking tests this year, between the state tests and the English and math assessments the city requires schools to administer three times a year.

Karmen said many educators have told her they have not gotten the results of these assessments or have had little training to interpret them to change their practice. The state English and math test results are not released until after the school year is over.

“Even if you think learning loss is a real thing, how is taking time out for tests going to help?” Karmen said.

She also said that she’s heard more reports from families about schools pressuring their children to sit for the tests, erroneously saying they needed the results because of COVID-related learning loss.

Some districts are more open to opting out

Some New York City schools and districts are more supportive of letting parents opt their children out. In East Harlem’s District 4, a previous superintendent tried to quash discussions of opting out of the state tests, said parent leader Kaliris Salas-Ramirez. But the current superintendent supported discussions on the topic. And Salas-Ramirez — who is not only the president of District 4’s Community Education Council but was also recently appointed by the Manhattan borough president to serve on the citywide Panel for Educational Policy — has helped raise awareness in her district.

“The last two years we have had conversations at our [Community Education Council] meetings, and the superintendent has encouraged principals to engage the parent community,” Salas-Ramirez said.

At Central Park East I, where her son attends, roughly 65% of students opted out, Salas-Ramirez said. In some years, as many as 80% of children declined the test, but the numbers went down after the school landed on a state Comprehensive Support and Improvement Schools list.

At the Neighborhood School, a small school in the East Village where nearly 75% of students are Latino or white, about 94% of children opted out of the tests, according to Peter Liem, a dad of a fifth grader who led the charge organizing families around opting out. That was up from an average of 80% in recent years, Liem said.

The school does not do test prep, Liem said, so he gave his daughter some samples to see how she felt about taking the exam given her anxiety around testing. He decided to opt her out because she didn’t feel ready. Other parents followed suit.

“There’s safety in numbers,” Liem said.

He acknowledged that some parents still worried about whether not taking the test would affect middle school admissions. (This year and last, admissions were lottery-based, but the city has not yet said whether it will allow schools in the future to screen students based on test scores or other measures.)

Stressed before the test, nervous afterward

For some children anxious about taking the English exam, things didn’t turn out to be as stressful as anticipated.

Before this month’s English tests, Heather Osterman-Davis’ fifth grade son, Owen, wrote a note to Banks and the education department about the effect of the test prep on mental health. Osterman-Davis posted the note on Twitter.

“Too much test prep makes it bad for your mental health,” Owen wrote. “We have done test prep straight for the last few weeks, only with breaks on the weekend. Its impact on me has made me very depressed.”

In the end, Owen took the English test and found it “easier” than he anticipated and “way more relaxing than test prep was,” his mom recounted.

Now he’s waiting for his results, which aren’t likely to come until the end of summer at the earliest.

“It was still kind of stressful, but I think I did good on it,” he said. “But I hate that I have to wait so long for the grades, because that makes me nervous, too.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Shelter-in-place order for some Brooklyn schools after Sunset Park subway shooting

2022-04-12T17:04:27+00:00

Numerous Brooklyn schools were under shelter-in-place orders following the shooting in a Sunset Park subway station Tuesday as the gunman remained at large.

Education department officials said all schools “in the area” were subject to the shelter order out of an abundance of caution. They did not disclose how many schools were impacted, but several schools emailed parents saying all schools in District 15 were sheltering. By mid-afternoon, the order was lifted at the majority of schools.

Officials said that the shelter-in-place order remained in effect until dismissal at the following schools: PS 24, Sunset Park High School, PS 371, Little Brooklyn Pre-K Center on 25th Street, and Little Brooklyn Pre-K Center on 25th Street. MTA shuttle buses will be available for students, and parents were encouraged to contact school administrators for more specific information.

Parents can expect additional police presence at the schools, as the education department said school safety officers and the NYPD “will provide extra support for a safe transition home.”

“We’re praying for all New Yorkers who were injured or affected by today’s attack,” Mayor Eric Adams said in a virtual address. He is isolating at Gracie Mansion after testing positive for COVID.

No students or staff were able to enter or exit schools after the incident around 8:30 a.m. in which a gunman, in a gas mask and orange construction vest, threw smoke bombs on a crowded N train and opened fire, shooting 10 people and injuring at least six others, according to fire department officials. The incident happened at the platform of the 36th Street subway station in Sunset Park, which is located in Brooklyn’s District 15 school district, which also spans Red Hook, Park Slope, Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill.

“We are working closely with NYPD and school leadership to ensure that every school has the supports they need as we work to ensure the safety of our school communities. We will share updates as they become available,” Chancellor David C. Banks said in a statement.

It was unclear how long the shelter-in-place would be in effect or how dismissal would be impacted. The shooting occurred within blocks of several schools, including Sunset Park High School.

Some Brooklyn schools emailed parents to reassure them. “All students are safely within the school building and it is business as usual with all classes continuing as scheduled,” read an email to parents at the Boerum Hill School for International Studies.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

NYC Chancellor David Banks: Schools have become like ‘testing mills’

2022-03-28T17:48:27+00:00

An annual rite of passage for New York’s third through eighth graders is back — state testing season.

As the English exam is set to be administered Tuesday and Wednesday in its usual form for the first time in two years, the test prep culture that has taken over some schools has a new high-profile critic: New York City Chancellor David Banks.

Banks, whose term began in January, is worried that some schools have become “testing mills” and that student engagement has suffered as a result, he said during a recent radio interview.

“Under this chancellorship, I am going to use this bully pulpit to talk about the fact that tests are important, but that we are really doing our kids a disservice,” Banks said on WBAI’s “Driving Forces last month. “There’s a reason why so many of our kids disengage and drop out because we’ve just made our schools like testing mills.”

Because educators and principals are concerned about being measured by how well their students perform on the exams, they often let subjects that aren’t on the tests — such as art, music, theater and other enrichment that children enjoy — fall by the wayside, Banks said.

“I think we have given up making sure that our kids have a fully comprehensive learning experience because we’ve been so focused on standardized tests,” he said.

Instead of focusing on test prep and standardized testing, Banks said he is interested in expanding the use of performance-based assessments in which students do portfolios or hands-on projects to demonstrate mastery of certain concepts and skills. Some New York City schools already embrace this model, including about three dozen “consortium” schools.

Banks also believes that the test-prep focus takes time away from other important work that schools should be doing with students in terms of “developing empathy towards one another.”

Some school leaders posit that test prep and the other subjects such as the arts can go hand-in-hand.

Laurie Midgette, founding principal of the Cultural Arts Academy Charter school in Brownsville, Brooklyn, spent last week preparing her students for the state exams, while balancing those exercises with visual and performing arts, she said. During test preparation for mathematics, for example, the school celebrated World Maths Day, where students competed against peers from across the globe in 20 one-minute challenges. For Midgette, this enabled the students to focus on math concepts, such as fractions that involved drawing in fourth grade, while also participating in “fun, yet rigorous activities.”

But even though the testing is moving forward as usual, the lives of many of her students remain upended, she acknowledged.

“The reality is that we are still experiencing a pandemic and we recognize that our scholars and families are facing many different circumstances due to the pandemic,” Midgette said. “Our school considers our scholars’ social-emotional needs as the highest priority during the pandemic, especially in this stage of recovery.”

That said, she agreed with Banks “that at the end of the day, that all students — whether in public, independent, private and charter schools — they succeed when we create student-centered and highly engaging school environments where they are excited about learning, not for the purpose of passing a test, but for the curiosity of life.”

While many curricula guide educators through particular learning approaches, she said that few offer adaptations allowing teachers to use alternative assessments like project-based learning.

Echoing Banks, she said, “Standardized testing should not be the only way to measure learning and what happens in classrooms and schools; it should be one of many ways.”

The question is whether Banks will stand up to Albany on behalf of schools whose children don’t perform well on the tests, said one Manhattan elementary school principal, who requested anonymity. In previous years, test performance could land schools on a state list for needing improvement — which could then subject those schools to more scrutiny and standardized testing.

In the past, this principal would have likely spent much of the day doing test prep in the weeks leading up to the tests, but this year did not want to sacrifice social emotional learning or arts education, in large part thanks to stimulus funding dedicated to the arts. For some of her students, this is their first meaningful exposure to the arts.

“The outcome of the tests is going to be what it is,” the principal said. “I don’t think these tests should be used against any school. We know it’s been harder for kids to catch up. The reality is that we have kids who are two to three years behind.”

From September through January, the principal noted, COVID cases were still shutting down many classrooms in the school, leading to inconsistent instruction. The school is hoping to catch kids up through small group work and one-on-one tutoring, but it will take time, the principal said.

Perhaps because of concerns about children’s academics and social emotional state, a growing number of parents opted their children out of this year’s test, said the principal. Previously all of the school’s children sat for the test. This year several families requested their children skip it.

The state tests were canceled in the spring of 2020 when schools first closed because of the coronavirus pandemic. Last school year, the tests were given, but only if families signed up their children. This differed from the typical default in which students take them unless their families opted out.

Last spring’s tests were only offered on-campus, and with more than half of New York City children learning from home full time, just one in five students across the five boroughs sat for them.

Not only will it be the first time third graders to take state tests, but due to the pandemic issues, it also may be the first time for many of the city’s fourth and fifth graders.

The lack of historical testing data for student performance could make it challenging for the tests to measure how schools are doing.

Grades 3-8 math tests will be given in late April. Fourth- and eighth-grade science exams will be administered in late May through early June. Though Regents exams were canceled in January due to the omicron surge, they are expected to be administered in June and August.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

To address pandemic’s emotional toll, NYC is paying parents to lead peer workshops on mental health and wellness

2022-03-16T21:34:45+00:00

Crystal Rodriguez is on a mission.

As one of nearly 650 “Family Healing Ambassadors” tapped by New York City schools at the end of last school year, the 31-year-old Bronx mom is trying to help families wade through the pandemic’s emotional fallout. In the process, she is also embarking on her own path of self-healing.

Ambassadors were selected at schools in areas hit hardest by the coronavirus — largely low-income communities of color — and were awarded a $500 stipend to participate in trauma-related training sessions over the summer and then present their own workshop to their school communities by December. Several ambassadors said that talking with other parents about their feelings and struggles has often not been widely embraced in their communities, leaving many to feel alone and isolated.

This program is trying, in a small way, to change that.

Ambassadors were tasked with creating at least one workshop focused on bolstering emotional well-being. Several ambassadors took the role even farther.

One started “Walk with me Wednesdays” to encourage parents to connect while getting some exercise. Another translated materials from English into Spanish for her school’s social worker. Even though Rodriguez’s “term” is up, she is working on her third workshop, in which she’s been sharing what she’s learned and opening up about her own struggles raising her five children, the first of whom was born when she was 16.

“Mental health has always been a taboo in our community,” Rodriguez said during her January presentation to the small virtual group from P.S. 146 in the South Bronx’s Morrisania neighborhood.

“In my family it’s: ‘What happens at home, stays at home.’ ‘If you get therapy, you’re crazy.’ You can’t speak about your feelings. ’Just man up,’” she said. “It shouldn’t be that way.”

Many advocates are hopeful that the initiative’s peer-to-peer approach can help normalize mental health and wellness in Black, Latino, and immigrant communities. These groups are not only experiencing pain, grief, and financial stress from the pandemic, but also other deep-rooted personal or systemic traumas related to neglect or abuse, hunger and housing instability, racism, and over-policing.

Rodriguez is an ambassador for P.S. 146, a school in the South Bronx’s Morrisania neighborhood.

Students in the Bronx, which long has had one of the nation’s highest poverty rates, are among the most likely to experience childhood trauma and its harmful effects on learning, advocates say. The situation is even more dire now: A study by the United Hospital Fund found that between March and July 2020, of the roughly 4,200 New York children who lost a parent or caregiver to COVID, 57% were in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens, with the burden falling disproportionately on Black and Latino children.

“You can talk about learning loss all you want. Children are not going to thrive if they are hungry, and if they are suffering trauma,” said Rasheedah Brown-Harris, a leader with the Bronx’s New Settlement Apartments Parent Action Committee, who has long worked with other parents to transform how schools approach childhood trauma.

Brown-Harris is also a staff member in the education unit of Bronx Legal Services New York where she is part of the Healing-Centered Schools Working Group, formed by a coalition of parents, advocates, and educators. Though the group is not getting paid by the education department, it volunteered to support some of the parent ambassadors while it continues to push for deeper change in Bronx schools in addressing trauma.

“It’s a transformation in how we see ourselves, how we support mental health and how we sustain it for our family and for our school community,” Brown-Harris said.

Emergency room visits jump for children

Children in her community are suffering, Rodriguez said. Their tempers are flaring. Fights have become more frequent. A growing number of children, including her own daughter, seem to be talking about suicidal thoughts and landing in the emergency rooms of local hospitals, she said. This mirrors a trend across the nation where emergency visits jumped 31% for children ages 12 to 17 between February and March 2021 compared to the same period the year before, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The increase for girls in that age group was even higher — 51%.

COVID brought illness, and remote learning brought stress to her family, Rodriguez shared during her presentation. She had a newborn, sleepless nights, and separation from the baby’s father. Other losses mounted. A friend died by suicide on Christmas Eve in 2020; another was murdered about a month later. Over the summer, the family’s foundation began to crumble further, when one of her daughters ended up in the emergency psychiatric ward of a hospital after expressing suicidal thoughts to her doctor.

“I felt like I failed my children,” Rodriguez said through tears, as other participants in the meeting typed affirmations in the Google hangout chat, such as, “You got this,” and sent her virtual hugs.

But she also celebrated what she considered a breakthrough, and credited the work she’s done through the ambassador program with inspiring it: She and her children have started therapy.

And, while the process isn’t easy, and her relationship with some of her children is still strained, she acknowledged, Rodriguez feels like she’s standing on more solid ground.

During her presentation, Rodriguez outlined some common signs of trauma in children, ranging from regressions like thumb-sucking and bed-wetting for younger children to unexplained pains and aches in older ones or increased anger and anxiety. She provided practical and accessible tips for families to support their children as they work through their feelings and walked participants through a 2-minute guided meditation. She talked about the importance of using words of affirmation, and praising children’s efforts instead of focusing on the negative.

“A lot of times, unintentionally,” Rodriguez said, “we become our children’s first bullies.”

She dispensed positive rather than punitive parenting advice to the small group — covering topics such as establishing bedtime routines, how to help kids break homework into smaller chunks to make it feel less overwhelming, and focusing on breathing as a way to calm both parents and kids.

“These kids went through a lot. The parents went through a lot. Everyone is witnessing trauma,” Rodriguez told Chalkbeat. “Healing is about accepting that we have to face things we may want to bury in our subconscious. It’s time to open the luggage, unpack, take out what doesn’t fit.”

Rodriguez credits her role in the ambassador program with inspiring her to start therapy with her family. “When I got into it I didn’t really know what the position was,” she said of being an ambassador. “It helped me start the healing process at home with my children.”

‘Healing begins at home’

The ambassador program is designed to add support for families to existing mental health services in and outside of school. In New York City schools, there was one counselor for every 325 students last school year, according to the most recent available public data. That’s better than the recommended ratio of one to 500, but with the needs much higher this year, many educators say it’s still not enough.

More generally, the city’s mental health system — as well as the nation’s — is overburdened. President Joe Biden in his State of the Union address this month called to increase providers, and the White House also recognized the need for expanding peer support.

“We must dramatically expand the supply, diversity, and cultural competency of our mental health and substance use disorder workforce – from psychiatrists to psychologists, peers to paraprofessionals — and increase both opportunity and incentive for them to practice in areas of highest need,” the White House said in a statement earlier this month.

New York City’s education department had identified 1,000 schools to select parent healing ambassadors last school year, but only 800 parents or caregivers applied. Roughly 650 of the ambassadors completed the program and engaged with more than 4,000 family and community workshops, education department officials said.

As a result, there’s still money remaining from the $1.35 million grant from the Robin Hood Relief Fund in partnership with the Fund for Public Schools to support trauma-responsive work in schools.

For the second half of the school year, the city is making some tweaks. At 20 schools, it’s piloting a program where ambassadors are part of a “healing-centered” team, working with school staff on planning “healing-centered” events with a budget of $2,500. Additionally, ambassadors in certain neighborhoods who completed their first stint can apply for 92 “district” ambassador roles where they can continue working on a larger scale on community-building activities, sharing mental health resources, and more, according to education department officials.

“Healing begins at home,” said education department spokesperson Suzan Sumer. “We are committed to providing our schools with the supports they need to center student wellbeing as we emerge from this pandemic, and we know parents and caregivers are an integral part of this effort.”

For the summer training sessions, the Bronx Healing-Centered Schools Working Group helped bring in two of the presenters: Chicago’s TREP (Trauma Responsive Educational Practices) Project, and Shawn Ginwright, a San Francisco State University professor of education in the Africana studies department who runs the Flourish Agenda.

The Bronx group also hopes it will get the chance to move ahead with its longer term vision, starting small but going deep with a few schools. They want to create “transformation teams,” to rethink a school’s culture from the types of books children read (ensuring, for example, enough books that center Black characters) to the type of lighting in the building (replacing harsh lights with warmer, more welcoming colors). They talked about creating career paths to encourage more educators from their communities, and looked at models like Schenectady, where the school district removed police officers from schools and replaced them with “cultural brokers” — respected community members, often elders, who intervene when student conflicts arise.

“We don’t know the long-term effects of this pandemic. We won’t know,” Brown-Harris said. “But we do know that we have to slow down, and we all need to reconnect in a way that we have not done in our public school system ever.”

Rodriguez wears her ambassador position with pride, giving more to her school community than the one workshop that was required.

Programs were individualized to the school

The role of the parent healing ambassadors has differed from school to school based on the ambassador as well as the level of support from the school administration. Some focused on self-care, while others directed their efforts on how parents and teachers can collaborate more to recognize trauma. Some parent ambassadors tried to participate in all PTA meetings. Some struggled to get much air time. Some also struggled to get a critical mass of families to participate.

Many parents have felt more comfortable reaching out to the Bronx group rather than the education department, said Shannon O’Neill Fonseca, an organizer with the Parent Action Committee, who has witnessed several of the ambassadors climbing out of their own depression as they’ve connected with their peers.

“They feel seen, they feel heard, and they feel supported,” O’Neill Fonseca said. “They recognized, when I’m in community, we can collectively heal.”

Wanda Jackson, the parent healing ambassador for P.S. 73, where her granddaughter attends kindergarten, has held two workshops for the school’s staff while she plans how to best reach parents. She said that parents at the school have not been participating in school events lately.

“They won’t Zoom. They don’t trust anyone anymore,” said Jackson, a retired parent coordinator. “But me teaching parents to stand up and fight for themselves is one way things can improve.”

Jackson, however, wished that the role came with more than a $500 stipend given the amount of time she is putting into the job. Some ambassadors have been using their own money to provide incentives for families, like small giveaways with gift cards, O’Neill Fonseca noted.

Ysaura Tavarez, the parent healing ambassador for P.S. 204 in Morris Heights, started slowly, introducing a few stress-relieving or mediation activities at PTA meetings. She worked with a mental health specialist on a workshop about burnout and did one on wellness. She also partnered with a school social worker, helping her translate materials from English to Spanish, and has tried to just be present for families, many of whom — like in Rodriguez’s community — are resistant to getting mental health support.

“I’m just allowing the parents to get to know me, for them to see my face more often, asking me questions, offering a safe place for them to just talk about what’s going on and the challenges they’re facing,”said the mom of four, who works as a wedding coordinator and couples coach. “Some of them do feel more comfortable talking to another parent, especially in their own language.”

Parents have opened up to her at the playground or at the McDonalds across the street from the school. They share their concerns with Tavarez about the COVID vaccine, job loss, and balancing the return to work with possible COVID quarantines.

Rodriguez shares a tender moment with one of her daughters. The mom of five has been working on improving her relationships with her children.

The program helped Tavarez process her own experience, losing relatives to the coronavirus and losing her personal space last year when her children were learning remotely.

For Rodriguez, being part of the program has been transformative. She recently started a new job at a nonprofit focused on teaching financial literacy in schools, and she’s starting to open up more about long-standing issues related to her own depression and anxiety, recounting how she once took her mother’s pills when she was in high school.

Participating in the summer’s training sessions with the other ambassadors helped her feel less alone, she said. By starting therapy, she feels hopeful about beginning to “break that generational curse,” of how trauma is handed down in families.

“The biggest tip for helping our children heal through traumas is healing our own first,” Rodriguez said.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC brings back Summer Rising, offering academics and enrichment for all students

2022-03-11T16:27:30+00:00

Get ready for Summer Rising 2.0: New York City is bringing back last year’s summer school model, with academics in the morning and enrichment in the afternoon. Once again, it will be open to all students.

Mayor Eric Adams pledged to expand the program to 110,000 elementary and middle school students, up from last summer’s 98,000, making it the largest program of its kind, he said Friday. For high school students, the city is expanding its Summer Youth Employment program, aiming to provide jobs and internships for about 100,000 New Yorkers ages 14-24.

“So many parents are struggling in the summer months. When we put their children in a safe space, they can go on with their lives,” Adams said at a press conference in the Bronx. “It’s about improving and helping families, and childcare should not be one of their issues.”

This year’s free summer program for K-8 students will run from 8 a.m. through 3 p.m., with the option to extend the day until 6 p.m. For elementary school children, the program is from July 5 through Aug. 19, while it ends Aug. 12 for middle schoolers. Students will spend their morning with licensed teachers, while staffers from community based organizations will lead afternoon activities such as sports and field trips.

For high school students, programs are expected to run for a half day from July 5 through Aug. 12. The opportunities provided and daily schedule will vary by school, according to the education department. In addition to work opportunities, high school students will be able to make up previously failed classes as well as participate in college prep courses.

Enrollment is expected to begin in April. City officials did not immediately say how many school sites will host programs this year, or how families will be assigned to them.

For students with disabilities, the city is promising to provide the additional support they may need, including paraprofessionals. Last summer, many families had concerns about the city’s ability to provide such accommodations.

Busing was another challenge for those students, and for children living in homeless shelters. Transportation was only provided for the academic portion of the day, meaning students couldn’t participate in the afternoon field trips, social activities, and other enrichment opportunities. Officials eventually offered to reimburse families for taxi services, but that didn’t remove all the barriers. Parents had to lay out the money up front and the arrangement required an adult to travel back and forth with their child.

Officials are still working out a transportation plan for this year, but Adams recognized it’s an issue that needs attention.

“What is the point of having a great program, if children who are really in need are not having access to them,” Adams asked. “We have to make sure that transportation is there.”

Adams is also hopeful that the program will teach children life skills like breathing exercises, how to shake someone’s hand properly and how to separate lights and darks when doing laundry. He said he’s excited for children to visit museums and explore beyond their neighborhoods, hoping that it prevents some children from the “summer slide,” which is when students regress academically during the break.

“Why do our children have to be isolated to the one square mile that they’re born in?” he asked. “The city is our classroom.”

It remains to be seen whether educators will jump at the chance to work during the summer, just as some schools are having trouble attracting teachers to sign up for after-school tutoring this year — where schools have stimulus money to pay overtime to help catch students up. Last year, some schools had trouble enlisting teachers, who were burned out from a grueling year of working through the pandemic. Community organizations, which run afternoon programming, have similarly struggled to attract staff, partly because of the relatively low pay offered.

Last year’s program had some snafus at the start with miscommunications between schools and families about being accepted into the program, and an open-ended enrollment policy that made it hard for schools to know how many students would show up on any given day.

Correction: This article initially stated the end date for the middle school summer program was Aug. 19. It’s Aug. 12.

Christina Veiga is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on school diversity and preschool. Contact Christina at cveiga@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Home schooling nearly doubled in NYC since pandemic’s start

2022-02-18T00:22:19+00:00

Mirroring trends across the nation, the number of children being home-schooled has dramatically increased in New York City.

This school year, roughly 14,800 children across the five boroughs have opted to learn outside of school walls, according to internal education department data obtained by Chalkbeat. That number jumped by nearly 7,000 — or 88% — since the pandemic hit with the biggest gain occurring this school year, as more than 4,000 new students registered to home-school.

The largest increases were in districts with higher shares of low-income students, a Chalkbeat analysis found.

The reasons families decide to educate their children at home vary. For some parents, the pandemic may have pushed them out of the workforce or into remote jobs where they found themselves with the time and desire to educate their children after getting a taste of it during remote learning.

This school year, roughly 14,800 children across the five boroughs have opted to learn outside of school walls, according to internal education department data obtained by Chalkbeat.

Some may have been unhappy with what they saw when their children were in online classes last year, and families of color, in particular, may have been upset witnessing firsthand curriculum that wasn’t culturally responsive. For others, it was a trust issue: They felt their children were safer at home because of COVID fears or other school-related violence.

Bushwick mom Shalonda Curtis-Hackett started out this school year keeping her three children home as a form of protest, striking along with other families who wanted a remote learning option in New York City amid the ongoing public health crisis.

On top of COVID, Curtis-Hackett has long been skeptical of her children’s public-school education, concerned about anti-Blackness and bias she saw in the teaching and curriculum. She officially notified the city’s education department in November of her plans to home-school her children.

Now, she’s deep in the process of “unschooling” her children, following their interests instead of a prescribed curriculum. She’s plugging into a growing movement of Black home-schoolers on Instagram, sharing tips and resources with other parents.

“Our kids are harmed in public school,” Curtis-Hackett said. “Because we’re unschooling, we play a lot of games. I let them play video games. We put together a puzzle globe, and we spin and pick a place to research.”

Yes, her fifth grader is playing a lot of Minecraft, Curtis-Hackett said, but she’s also reading more. Her second grader is playing a lot of board games, and he’s learning math in the process. Both of those children and her ninth grader have recently started learning instruments — one is doing piano, another is studying guitar, and the other is playing the flute.

Students in grades K-5 moved into home schooling at the highest rates, jumping 119% on average since the 2019-2020 school year, a Chalkbeat analysis found.

Home-schooling is hard for many families to pull off, and it still remains relatively rare, accounting for roughly 1.5% of students, city education department officials said. But the increase may explain part of the enrollment decline among the city’s traditional public schools.

Students in grades K-5 moved into home schooling at the highest rates, jumping 119% on average since the 2019-2020 school year, a Chalkbeat analysis of the data since the 2019-20 school year found. Middle school saw a 74% increase in home-schoolers, while high school home-schoolers increased by 64%.

There is also evidence that low-income families may have opted to homeschool at higher rates. The number of home-schooled students in the six highest poverty districts increased about 119%, on average, while home-schooling students in the six lowest poverty districts increased about 79% over the past two years.

“The past two years have been challenging for school communities across the nation, and families made the best decisions suited to their unique needs and circumstances,” education department spokesperson Sarah Casasnovas said. “As New York City recovers from the impacts of the pandemic, families are returning to classrooms. Chancellor Banks is committed to engaging with families and working to restore trust in New York City schools.”

COVID-era home schooling

Home schooling has grown in popularity across the country during the pandemic. The number of Florida students enrolled in home education jumped by 35% in the year after the pandemic started. In Virginia, there was a 56% jump in home schooling, though the numbers fell somewhat this school year. And in Michigan, researchers found students left public schools for home-schooling arrangements at significantly higher rates when the pandemic hit.

There are no official national counts of families who home-school. A Census survey found that home school rates roughly doubled in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, with an even more dramatic jump among Black families, though some analysts believe those figures are overstated.

The 88% increase in home schooling in New York City is consistent with large increases in other parts of the country, said Andrew Bacher-Hicks, an assistant professor at Boston University who has studied home-schooling trends during the pandemic. He noted that public school districts that offered in-person learning in the fall of 2020, such as New York City, tended to see larger increases in families choosing to home-school. Schools that did not offer in-person schooling tended to see more parents leave for private schools.

“The leave to home schooling might be related to health concerns,” Bacher-Hicks said. (New York City did not offer a virtual option this school year, which coincided with a larger increase in home schooling.) But “no matter what modality was offered, some subset of households and parents and families are going to be unhappy with the public offering.”

Bacher-Hicks added that Black and low-income families tended to opt for home schooling at higher rates. New York City education department officials declined repeated requests to share demographic data of home-schooled students and did not return a public records request for that information.

Historically, home schooling has generally been considered a “white phenomenon,” said James Dwyer, a professor at William and Mary Law School and co-author of “Homeschooling: The History and Philosophy of a Controversial Practice.”

In the 1960s, home schooling was driven by left-wing concerns “about the authoritarian nature of public schooling” and skepticism toward the state. In the 1970s and 1980s, growth in home schooling was driven by evangelical Christians who were wary of secularization, desegregation, and liberal values in public education, Dwyer said.

The pandemic may have prompted a more diverse group of parents to try home schooling, Dwyer said, a claim backed up by the census figures and anecdotal reporting.

Khadijah Z. Ali-Coleman, co-editor of the book “Homeschooling Black Children in the U.S,” said the pandemic gave some parents a clearer sense of what their children are taught or how they’re treated — and some Black families didn’t like what they were seeing.

“You have this whole experience culturally — whether it’s the lack of cultural competency within the school or cultural relevance — to also some of the punitive responses to their children,” said Ali-Coleman. “It definitely led parents to realize and be more empowered that [homeschooling] is something they could do when things went virtual.”

District-level data obtained by Chalkbeat showed that the numbers of home-schooled students increased across the board since the 2019-2020 school year, but more than doubled in nine of the city’s 32 districts as well as District 75, which serves students with disabilities who need intensive support.

The top three districts with the largest percentage increase were all in Brooklyn: Bushwick’s District 32, District 13 (spanning Bedford-Stuyvesant, Prospect Heights, Fort Greene and Brooklyn Heights), and District 21, which includes Coney Island and Brighton Beach.

Curtis-Hackett, the Bushwick mom, said there were several reasons she decided to home-school her children this year. Some had been brewing for a while.

Curtis-Hackett struggled last year with her children’s elementary school. She wanted the school to teach more explicitly about the tenets of the Black Lives Matter movement and Black history, more broadly, as well as to include LGBTQ-affirming resources.

During online schooling, when she overheard her daughter’s then-fourth grade teacher talking about Susan B. Anthony, Curtis-Hackett piped up asking why Black women weren’t included. The teacher said, ‘If you know so much, why don’t you teach?’ Curtis-Hackett recounted. So Curtis-Hackett, who is Black, made a cameo, telling the class about Sojourner Truth, a former slave, abolitionist, and women’s rights activist.

“My kids are getting the same education I got, just with fancier books and technology. You might change ‘slavery’ to ‘enslaved.’ But there’s still a whole entire unit that says ‘European exploration’ written on the front page of the book,” said Curtis-Hackett, a doula and makeup artist. “To me that’s violence, I couldn’t take that chance for my children to not be recognized and seen in school.”

Whether most families who began home-schooling during the pandemic stick with it is an open question. Dwyer, the William and Mary professor, noted that home schooling can be resource-intensive for families, and some are likely to send their children back to traditional schools for extracurricular activities and other social opportunities that can be harder to replicate in a home-school environment.

“The reasons people have always had for sending their children to school every day still exist,” Dwyer said. “I expect most children will be returning to schools.”

Looking for home-school help

Seventeen-year-old Jonica Jenkins this week returned to finish her senior year at Frederick Douglass Academy II after spending these past several months as a home-school student, learning from her family’s Harlem apartment.

Jenkins developed a daily routine: After waking between 6 a.m. or 7 a.m. she would eat breakfast and then log onto an online learning platform where she took such courses as government and art history, wrapping up around noon or 1 p.m. Then she spent her afternoons watching YouTube videos and playing Roblox, Tycoons or other video games.

She had decided not to return to school this fall, not just because of coronavirus concerns, but also because of other safety issues.

“COVID was one of the reasons. But I had a lot of bad experiences in school. I dealt with a lot of bullying,” Jenkins said. “It’s not even having to deal with the bullying itself. When I see other kids acting out and fighting in school, it messes with my mood — it gives me anxiety. I’m tired of having to deal with that.”

Jenkins’ mother Johndca Spencer had wanted to home-school her three children years prior to the pandemic, but was too busy running a home cleaning business. When that business fell apart after the pandemic shut down many parts of New York City, Spencer reevaluated.

The main reason for the return to a traditional school: Spencer didn’t know how colleges would accept her daughter’s home-school diploma, and she worried it wouldn’t carry as much weight as a Regents diploma from a brick-and-mortar school.

Spencer wasn’t sure how to find out the answers to her questions.

“How can you prove you graduated — just because your mom said you’re done?” Spencer said. “Basically I was on my own with that. The red tape surrounding that for this state was too much to navigate, especially when you’re not getting any assistance … There’s not enough resources and not enough help, and I just didn’t know how to access it.”

Without finding a community of families with high school seniors, Spencer felt ill-equipped to navigate her daughter’s graduation.

She was incensed that New York, unlike most other states, has no virtual public school option. The home-school office advised her daughter to get her high school equivalency diploma by taking the General Educational Development, or GED, test, and suggested the family could reach out to individual colleges to see what they might accept, Spencer said.

Fortunately, Jenkins’ school will accept the credits from the online platform she had been using this year so far, the mom said. And she’s looking forward to seeing her daughter don a cap and gown.

“She needs to be celebrated. She’s so smart and has worked so hard,” Spencer said. “I could do an awards ceremony with just her, but she deserves to walk across a stage and for other people to clap for her.”

Back to online learning

Harlem mom Inaya Shujaat became a reluctant home-schooler last summer when it became clear the city’s schools weren’t going to provide a remote option.

Shujaat was nervous about sending her children back into classrooms that she believed were not safe, though city officials have insisted that all classrooms have proper ventilation and transmission in school buildings is rare.

When a remote option didn’t materialize, Shujaat opted to enroll her two children, who are in the fifth and sixth grades, in The Muslim Academy, a virtual school that includes a mix of religious and secular studies at a cost of about $600 a month for the pair. (The children are considered home-schooled.)

Inaya Shujaat with her two children, Zubeda and Asad.

“I never considered home-schooling them myself,” she said. “They provide the curriculum and all the parent has to do is provide support for the child.”

The curriculum is largely pre-recorded except for two classes: a creative art class and a course that focuses on the Quran, Arabic, and Islamic studies, Shujaat said. A recent art class involved her son constructing a three-dimensional fire using paper. Shujaat said her children have been able to participate with minimal support from her.

Shujaat said she’s generally happy with the program, though she noted her children receive little qualitative feedback from their teachers.

Still, she said the program is sufficient for now, as the family considers next steps. Shujaat’s husband, who is a physician, is considering jobs outside of New York City.

“It’s definitely a stopgap or a big frickin’ band-aid,” Shujaat said. “We’re playing it by ear.”

Cam Rodriguez contributed.

How NYC students feel about school mask mandates

2022-02-11T22:03:56+00:00

New York may be ending its school mask mandate next month.

So Chalkbeat asked some experts — New York City students — about what it’s like to wear a mask all day, whether it affects their learning, and if they’re ready to be in school without one.

Their experiences are nuanced. While some are frank about the drawbacks that masks can create, like discomfort and trouble hearing classmates, some of those same students also said it felt safer to have their mouth and nose covered.

Some were reluctant to remove masks if it could mean COVID infections spike and schools are closed again. Some can’t see themselves going to school maskless any time soon. But others, vaccinated and boosted, are ready to leave masks behind.

Evidence is slim on both the health benefits of masking in school and any harms that could be stemming from it. Polling shows strong support among parents and adults for keeping masks. But, the third school year into the pandemic, some loud voices are pushing for mask mandates to end, citing concerns about how they may be affecting learning and socializing.

Even if the state lifts masking requirements, it will likely be up to New York City officials to decide whether staff and students in the nation’s largest country will continue to mask up.

We spoke to more than a dozen students across Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan about how they feel about masking in schools. Here’s what some of them had to say:

“People miss their old life without wearing a mask,” Priya Lee, fifth grade.

Ten-year-old Priya Lee readily acknowledges the downsides of wearing masks in school.

It can be a struggle to understand what her classmates are saying and her teachers often have to prompt her classmates to repeat themselves. It’s disconcerting to not be able to see her friends smile at her.

“I miss not wearing the masks,” said Lee, a student at Manhattan’s P.S. 19.

Priya Lee

But Priya isn’t planning to shed her KN95 anytime soon. “It keeps kids safe and it prevents everybody from getting sick,” she said.

Priya’s family was initially reluctant to send her to school in person this year because she has a seizure disorder, which hasn’t flared up in years. The family worried her health condition could be a risk factor for a more severe reaction to the virus, but they sent her to school in person because the education options for medically fragile students are extremely limited.

Priya was infected with COVID in December, though her case was relatively mild and says she has no lasting symptoms. She credits her mask with helping to protect her relatives from the virus while she was sick.

For now, Priya said it makes sense to require face coverings in school. If the mandate is lifted, she plans to keep hers on, but she wouldn’t be frustrated with classmates who take them off.

“It’s ultimately their decision,” she said. “People miss their old life without wearing a mask.”

“It hurts my ears,” Oscar Guazhima, Jr., first grade.

Oscar Guazhima

Six-year-old Oscar Guazhima Jr. said it can be uncomfortable wearing his two surgical masks to Bushwick’s P.S. 145 every day.

“It hurts my ears,” the first grader said.

But after a while, he said, he forgets he’s wearing the masks. Masking also has not made it difficult for him to understand his teacher or his friends, he said.

Lucelie Alvarez, Oscar’s mother, said Oscar is fully vaccinated. She still sends him to school with two masks because of how rapidly the omicron variant spread.

“I’m worried about their health more than anything,” Alvarez said.

Oscar said he doesn’t feel nervous about getting sick, and would still choose to wear his masks — even with the option to take it off.

“I’m gonna keep it on because it is coronavirus,” he said.

“Better than remote learning,” Daneil Harrison, 11th grade.

For Daneil Harrison, wearing a mask in school “may be uncomfortable sometimes.” But the 16-year-old junior in Manhattan isn’t ready for the mandate to end. He worried that doing so might lead to more cases of the virus in schools — and shutdowns.

“It should be really required, because more masks equals less, you know, COVID cases. And I think that’s better than remote learning for our students,” he said.

Daneil struggled with remote learning, calling it “really bad.” Wearing a mask is worth it, if students can stay in school, he said.

“I think if you’re actually just paying attention and you just don’t let the mask bother you, then you’re good to go. I think in person is just the best way to learn,” Harrison said. “I would keep wearing one.”

“It’s kind of disgusting,” Kris Aguirre, 10th grade.

Kris Aguirre, 15, a sophomore, enjoyed a break from wearing his black surgical mask while walking to lunch off campus. He said the masks are a nuisance. If it was no longer required, Kris said he would probably stop wearing one.

“It’s just irritating… Like when I sneeze or something? Or cough? Like, there’s like a lot of spit in the mask,” he said. “It’s kind of disgusting.”

His school gives out high-quality masks to any student who needs one, but Kris said the fit is uncomfortable so he’d rather bring his own. Despite his frustration with covering his face in school, Kris said it’s better than remote school.

“It’s just, like, something to cover your mouth. That’s not really affecting my learning or anything. But if it goes on Zoom, it’s a different story,” he said.

“The pandemic can start again,” Destine DeJesus, fifth grade.

Destine DeJesus, who is a fifth grader at P.S. 145 in Bushwick, said her teacher allows children to take mask breaks in the hallway for a couple of minutes. Sometimes it gets tough for Destine, 10, to breathe in the mask after climbing multiple flights of stairs in her school.

“Usually I go in the corner so I’m staying away from all the classrooms, and I take my mask down for a little bit, and then I go back into the class,” Destine said.

Destine said it has not been a problem following along with her teacher because the teacher makes sure to ask the students whether they can hear. Sometimes Destine has to repeat herself to friends because some words sound muffled.

Destine would potentially be ready to ditch her mask in a month or two, but not right now, she said. She was infected with COVID around winter break, when cases began exploding citywide.

“You never know if it’s really gone,” she said of COVID. “It could still be out in the world and it can always come back and the pandemic can start again.”

“I would never want to be maskless in a classroom,” Jenny Liu, 12th grade.

Jenny Liu

Wearing a mask has become second nature for 18-year-old Jenny Liu, a senior at Stuyvesant High School. She said her mask helps her feel safe in the packed school, which enrolls nearly 3,400 students and can get chaotic during arrival and dismissal.

“I would never want to be maskless in a classroom, honestly,” she said. “It just feels like I’m naked in a way now.”

Masking has not interfered with instruction, and in fact, it’s been fun to be in person again, Liu said. She has, however, heard from classmates taking language classes, who get frustrated when they can’t see how their teachers are pronouncing certain words.

“Instead of the phrase, ‘Oh you’re muted,’ on Zoom, in person now it’s, ‘I can’t hear you. Speak up,’” she said of class time.

It has been tough for Liu, a co-captain of the volleyball team, and her teammates to stay masked during games and practice. Players will sometimes wear their masks below their nose or pull it forward to get an extra breath.

“It makes me less incentivized to go to school,” Thomas Fuller, 12th grade.

Thomas Fuller

Thomas Fuller, a senior at Millennium Brooklyn High School, felt that COVID cases have dropped enough to merit going maskless in schools. The mandate could be reinstated if cases were to increase again, he said.

“I’m boosted and vaccinated, and everyone I know is as well,” said Fuller, 18, about why he feels safe to ditch his mask.

“Some people see [masking] as a good thing, they feel more comfortable with it. But for me personally, I feel like it’s hard to talk, hard to breathe. It makes my face hot. It makes me less incentivized to go into school because I really don’t like wearing them,” he said.

Fuller hasn’t had much trouble hearing or communicating at school being masked, though some of his teachers now wear microphones because students couldn’t hear them too well, he said. At the same time, students have learned to advocate for themselves and speak up when they can’t hear their teachers, he added.

“I’m still not comfortable with all these viruses going around,” Avery Gibson, sixth grade.

When Avery Gibson, 11, returned to her Queens middle school after winter break last month, it felt like she was sent home with a set of rapid tests from her school almost every day because she was repeatedly exposed to the virus.

Avery Gibson and her mother, Sheree.

That experience during the height of the omicron surge makes Avery and her mother, Sheree, wary of ditching masks for now. Still, Avery said she is already exposed to maskless students. Her peers often take their face coverings off on the hour-long bus ride to school, and students in her class sometimes lower their masks to speak.

“A lot of kids in my class take off their mask, and I don’t like it,” Avery said, adding that she keeps her disposable mask on. “I’m still not comfortable with all these viruses going around and people not being vaccinated.”

Avery, who is vaccinated and recovered from a COVID infection over the summer, said she would feel more comfortable about ditching the mask mandate in schools if face coverings were removed in other places first without lots of people getting sick.

Correction: This story previously stated an incorrect enrollment figure for Stuyvesant High School. Roughly 3,400 students attend the school.