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OVERCROWDING, from p.3
mostly youth of color, and Fariña said she values increasing diversity, but not of the sort she described as “artificial.” In addition to race and ethnicity, school diversity to her also includes income, as well as the number of special education students and English Language Learners enrolled. The Department of Education believes the percentage of nonwhite students under its first two options would move to between 40 and 50 percent at both 191 and 199 — which is close to 199’s current 36 percent. Pollak, whose child is in pre-K at P.S. 191, is part of a group of parents who say there is a much better way to increase diversity — linking the schools so that different grades are taught in different buildings. When P.S. 342 opens near P.S. 191 on West 61st Street in two years, the three schools would go from pre-K to 8, but proponents maintain a new structure could begin next September. It’s an idea that has been used in the past in the city, but the DOE currently opposes. Fariña didn’t reject it completely last week. Though she has generally opposed an overemphasis on test scores, Fariña said one complication is that it is harder to asses a principal of a school that only goes to second grade, because those students are not given standardized tests. At another meeting last month, the DOE’s Sarah Turchin, who has been presenting the District 3 zoning proposals, said Fariña and other administrators think splitting up elementary schools is not “instructionally sound.” Similarly, the district’s superintendent, Ilene Altschul, said of “pairing” the schools, “I am opposed to that... I feel that it doesn’t provide the students with a continuous education — [you have] a different leadership style, different visions, different missions — so it does cause a difficult transition for children.” But when a modified version was presented to Altschul at a CEC meeting this week, she said she and the DOE would give it some thought. The new idea would be to only “pair” P.S. 191 with 342, when the new building opens a block away in 2018. The modified “pairing plan” was suggested by P.S. 191’s School Leadership Team. Kajsa Reaves,
the school’s PTA president, said P.S. 191’s leaders oppose the DOE suggestion to share a zone with P.S. 342 because there’s a danger that too many families would want to go to 342, and 191 would always be seen as a second choice. She said there’s a lot more to study before the proposal is concrete, but added it is a “manageable” goal to put together enough information so it could be part of the formal presentation on November 19. CEC members have not been receptive to the idea of splitting three schools by grades, but on November 2, several members said the idea of splitting two was worth exploring more.
MANHATTAN EXPRESS
The audience at the October 28 town hall.
The big time pressure on the CEC is that the kindergarten application period has been moved up a month from its timing last year and is currently scheduled to go from December 7 to January 15. The change was celebrated in a DOE press release last month, in which Fariña said, “By making kindergarten offers earlier, we will make the process easier for families and strengthen the transition between pre-K and kindergarten.” For families across the city who get their first choice, the early news will undoubtedly be welcomed, but for waitlisted families it will prolong the period in limbo. Waitlists tend not to clear much until Gifted & Talented offers go out near the end of the school year, and the G & T timetable has not been changed. The key date on kindergarten applications is the last one, since there is no limit on how many times parents can change their desired school rankings. Last year, the city pushed back the deadline a few days to February 18. n
November 05 - 18, 2015 | ManhattanExpressNews.nyc