Schools For Gifted Children In New York
Fri, 05 Mar 2010 02:41:30 +0000
As in many neighborhoods in the city, property values on the Upper West Side are frequently tied to the success of the neighborhood’s schools. So the mere mention of changing the zones of which blocks are assigned to which schools is enough to send shock waves through the area.
But the overcrowding on the Upper West Side has shown no signs of abating, with schools using closets to tutor children and using auditoriums as science labs and gyms. So, just a year after District 3 voted to shift some zones and move other schools around to relieve the overcrowding, Education Department officials announced in late January that they would open a new school in the neighborhood, placing three kindergarten classes in Middle School 44 on West 77th Street.
Elizabeth Rose, who oversees rezoning issues in Manhattan, said during the meeting that the city began to realize that more students were attending their zoned schools and that new space was needed.
West Side Spirit, the neighborhood newspaper, reported that Ms. Rose joked during the meeting: “At the end, I think we called ‘uncle.’ ”
“I don’t think anyone thought we would be here announcing a new school in this area at this time,” she added.
Although the school, which will be called Public School 452, is new, the department is not actually creating new space and does not have any plans to do so. Ms. Rose has said the plan is to “incubate” the elementary school inside the middle school, which is being phased out. The Computer School, West Prep Academy, a middle school and the Anderson School, a citywide Gifted and Talented program, also share space in the building. Anderson, which just moved to the building this year and was able to open a third kindergarten class, will go back to two kindergarten classes next year. Officials said they were still determining how they would decide who would get the seats at P.S. 452.
Noah Gotbaum, the chairman of the district’s Community Education Council, says the plan is not nearly good enough. Officials expect there to be 75 seats in the new kindergarten, but Mr. Gotbaum said he expected twice as many families to apply for the seats. Last week, the council passed a resolution stating that the department should create at least five kindergarten classes in the district this year and seven in 2011.
Both P.S. 87 and P.S. 199, considered among the most desirable District 3 schools, are so desirable that children who live in their zones will have to enter a lottery for next year’s kindergarten classes, and many will be turned away. For families who moved between 72nd and 80th Streets, Mr. Gotbaum said, students entering kindergarten have just a one in three chance in getting a seat at P.S. 87, their zoned school. Under the department’s regulations, students who live in a school zone and already have a sibling at the school will receive the highest priority in the lottery. But students who live outside the zone and already have siblings at the school will not be able to attend the school. (Parent leaders estimate that roughly 20 families will have students at two different elementary schools next year.)
“We’re going to have major problems,” Mr. Gotbaum said. “It’s a question of whose ox should be gored here. It’s going to end up unfairly treating any number of families no matter what way you look at it.”
And the fights are likely to continue. Mr. Gotbaum said that some families who live between West 64th and West 71st, which is zoned for P.S. 199, will be sent to P.S. 191, which has historically been the less popular of the two. (Department officials said it is too early to know if that will be the case.)
Next year, department officials expect to undertake a larger rezoning effort in District 3, which could cause significant shifts in which schools students are assigned to, not to mention anxiety among parents and real estate agents. And similar rezoning efforts could be afoot on the Upper East Side, Lower Manhattan, northeastern Queens and in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where there are plans to open a school that would draw students from both District 15 and District 13. Department officials did not say whether the lines for P.S. 321, an extremely popular and crowded school in central Park Slope, would be redrawn.
New School for a Storied Principal
Shimon Waronker, a former Bronx principal who received international attention after being featured in a front-page article in The Times, is about to start a new public school in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, trying out all sorts of intriguing ideas. It is not a charter school and is endorsed by the teachers’ union. The school will be trilingual, with students receiving instruction in Spanish and French, alongside English.
Teachers will stay with the same class from the time they are in kindergarten until they finish fifth grade. Teachers will be paid not just based on how long they have been teaching, but also on their effectiveness. And then there are the numbers: each 1,200-square-foot classroom will have 60 students and 4 teachers.
And it’s those numbers that have raised the eyebrows of parents who have spent years fighting to reduce class sizes throughout the city. Leonie Haimson, the executive director of Class Size Matters and a vocal critic of Chancellor Joel I. Klein, said the idea “makes absolutely no sense.”
“Anyone who has been to a birthday party of a 6-year-old knows that more than 25 kids in the room is a recipe for chaos,” she said.
Diane Ravitch, the education historian and another ardent critic of Mr. Klein, said the idea evoked the open classroom experiments that were tried in the mid-1960s and later abandoned after educators determined there was “simply too much chaos.”
Mr. Waronker, who has spent the last year at Harvard developing plans for the school, said he was certain the ratio of teachers to students, combined with an effort to attract and mentor high-quality teachers, would translate into tremendous results for students.
“Children often times don’t see adults collaborating for their benefit,” Mr. Waronker said. “The whole concept here is a relationship, where teachers can meet the needs of each of the students.”
Every Tuesday education beat reporters for The New York Times take you inside the New York City schools system. Have a tip? Send them to IntheSchools@nytimes.com.
November 30, 2009 at 9:19 am
This is very interesting and surprising, especially the candor of the parents involved in the admissions process.