Chalkbeat

Read the farewell letter Carranza sent on his last day as NYC schools chief

2021-03-12T18:06:50+00:00

After three years at the helm of the nation’s largest school system, Friday marked Richard Carranza’s last day as New York City schools chancellor.

In an open letter he sent to education department staff, Carranza called his colleagues an “extended family,” and said he was proud to be on track for reopening school buildings in the fall.

He recalled one moment in particular when a young student whose father had been detained by ICE pleaded with the schools chief to never forget her.

In his letter, he promises staff that the incoming schools chancellor Meisha Porter “will have your backs” and “be a fierce warrior for our students and our schools.”

Her to-do list is formidable: Porter is now tasked with rebuilding trust among families and educators and catching up students after a year of interrupted learning, all on an incredibly short runway.

Read Carranza’s full farewell letter below.

From: Chancellor Richard Carranza

NYC will soon have a new schools chief. Here’s what to know about Meisha Porter.

2021-02-27T00:18:42+00:00

Meisha Ross Porter, who rose through the education department’s ranks as a teacher, principal, and executive superintendent, will become the first Black woman to lead the nation’s largest school system.

Her appointment comes after the surprise resignation of Chancellor Richard Carranza Friday morning and just 10 months before Mayor Bill de Blasio will leave office.

But even if Porter’s tenure may be brief, as a new mayor is likely to pick a new chancellor, she will not simply be turning out the lights on the remaining months of the mayor’s term. She is inheriting a system that has been rocked by the coronavirus pandemic, and she will immediately face enormous responsibilities: determining how much in-person instruction schools can offer in the coming months, developing a plan to catch up students whose education has been derailed by the pandemic, and gaining buy-in from bitterly fractured communities of families and educators.

“I promise we’ll do everything to reopen schools, starting with high schools, we’re ready to go,” Porter said at a news conference, hinting that she may jumpstart reopening high school campuses, which have been shut down since November, even as elementary and middle schools have reopened. “We’ll expand the learning opportunities and do more to address trauma and academic needs, because we know that that is very real.”

Porter is well respected among many of the city’s education leaders and known for building trust with parent leaders and principals, according to people who have worked with her. She also brings a deep understanding of the school system, a labyrinthine bureaucracy with roughly 150,000 employees and a $34 billion annual budget.

“For the first time in a number of chancellors, principals and superintendents are gonna feel like they have a friend, someone to talk to and someone who understands them,” said Richard Kahan, founder of Urban Assembly, a nonprofit that has created 23 public schools, and hired Porter for her first teaching job. “It hasn’t been that happy a place for principals for a long time.”

Raised in South Jamaica, Queens, Porter graduated from Queens Vocational and Technical High School, where she majored in plumbing.

Porter was about 17 and leading an anti-drug organization for teenagers when Kahan, then overseeing an urban planning effort for the Bronx, approached her to help his team craft policy ideas, he said.

Shortly after, Kahan tasked Porter with helping to plan Urban Assembly’s first school, Bronx School for Law, Government, and Justice. When the school was established, Kahan hired Porter to oversee its outside partnerships, unaware that she was studying to teach. Porter was later brought in to teach at the school, rising several years later to principal.

She was able to build relationships with students quickly and often saw opportunities to connect their learning to real-world issues, according to David Banks, the school’s founding principal.

After a student commented on a cigarette advertisement that faced the school building, Porter pushed to incorporate lessons about the effects of smoking. She also encouraged a letter-writing campaign pressuring then Mayor Rudy Giuliani to sign a bill that would ban advertisements for tobacco near school grounds, Banks said. Giuliani signed it into law, though it hit legal roadblocks.

“Those kids felt like they had something to do with it,” said Banks, who is now president of the Eagle Academy Foundation. “She’s not that traditional stuffy school leader. The kids adored her and they saw her as one of them.”

During a visit to the school when Porter was principal, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. recalled feeling struck by how she had students settle escalating disputes: They held a trial with student attorneys, a jury, and a judge.

After 18 years at the school, she left her post as principal to become a regional superintendent for Bronx District 11. Three years later, in 2018, Carranza tapped her as one of his newly created executive superintendents, overseeing all Bronx schools. Porter drew some criticism in 2019, when the schools watchdog received a complaint that she had enlisted subordinates to fundraise and organize a party to celebrate her promotion. The office later dropped its investigation.

Porter’s sense of what to prioritize when the pandemic hit exemplified her leadership style, according to principals and nonprofit leaders.

Luis Torres, principal of P.S. 55, said Porter helped bring to life his idea to create educational programming for children on public access television station BronxNet by rallying support among schools in the borough, so that teachers and administrators could create pre-recorded lessons for the program. And when some students across the Bronx were still deviceless in January, Porter pushed elected leaders for help, said Torres, who said he has known and worked with Porter for 15 years. Torres said it helped fill the gap at his own school.

Meisha Ross Porter, left, helps distribute donated devices for remote learning this past January with Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., center.

“Whatever it takes to get things done, this is what Meisha will do and I’ve seen it with my own eyes,” Torres said. “That’s why people appreciate her, because even though she was the executive superintendent, she gets her hands dirty, and she’s never forgotten where she came from.”

In another instance, Porter tapped New Visions for Public Schools, a nonprofit group that manages a network of district and charter schools, to help build out its data tools so that principals could better track whether students were failing to submit assignments in Google Classrooms or even whether they lacked devices for remote learning.

“She requested that we provide support and worked with us to make sure those supports complemented the greater work she was trying to do,” said Mark Dunetz, the president of New Visions. “She is somebody who is just very clear and effective.”

Bronx parents have praised Porter as an ally. The New Settlement Parent Action Committee, or PAC, an advocacy group based in the South Bronx, got word in 2018 that the education department was setting up new teams to focus on equity issues in District 9. The team’s goals targeted many of the same issues the committee had been focusing on for years: pushing for culturally relevant curriculum that reflects the borough’s diversity, discipline reform, and more.

PAC wanted to join the equity teams, to bring the perspectives and support of parents to the mix. But they ran into roadblocks and excuses about why they couldn’t. Until they reached out to Porter, who had recently been appointed executive superintendent.

“Meisha Ross Porter went to bat for us. She told the equity team we must be at the table — that there’s no equity team without us,” said Ronnette Summers, a parent advocate in District 9 for more than two decades. “She was just really, really receptive. Surprisingly receptive.”

Bronx parent leaders gather at an early meeting with Meisha Ross Porter to set up equity teams, made up of school officials and families working together to address disparities.

Throughout the pandemic, parents and school officials on the equity teams have worked together to make sure students have internet connections and devices, with parents passing along the names and contact information of hard-to-reach families whenever officials ran into dead ends or struggled to learn the extent of the need. Porter is a fixture at meetings and other events like town halls — a constant presence that Summers called “unheard of” in all her tenure as a parent advocate.

Aide Zainos, another member of PAC, said she is particularly appreciative of Porter’s help ensuring parents have school materials and meetings translated in their native language, whether that’s Spanish or African dialects.

“She understands the needs of families in the city,” Zainos said in Spanish, adding that the equity teams have included “all cultures and languages.”

But Porter may not have a lot of runway to execute her own vision, especially as Mayor de Blasio’s propensity to micromanage his agency chiefs is well known. One factor in Carranza’s resignation, according to the New York Times, was growing tensions with the mayor about how to handle admissions to the city’s Gifted & Talented program.

At a press conference on Friday morning, Carranza left her with one piece of parting advice: “Do you, be you, lead with the heart that you’ve led in every one of the assignments that you’ve had in New York City.”

Summers credited the outgoing chancellor with helping Bronx parents advance issues important to them, even in the face of “pushback from some of the affluent places that weren’t ready to give up stuff.” Throughout his tenure, Carranza, who is Mexican-American, faced racist rhetoric while pushing for school diversity and anti-bias training for teachers.

Summers predicted that Porter will come up against some of the same challenges, but said the new chancellor won’t stand alone.

“There’s going to be a lot of pushback for her being a woman, and a woman of color. But I think she’s capable of taking that on,” Summers said. “We’re going to have her back.”

Carranza to step down mid-pandemic after 3 years at helm of New York City schools

2021-02-26T17:26:13+00:00

New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza is leaving his post on March 15, a sudden departure in the midst of a public health crisis that has meant a tumultuous, draining year for the city’s roughly 960,000 students and their families — as well as the chancellor himself.

Meisha Ross Porter, the executive superintendent of the Bronx, will replace Carranza and become the first Black woman to lead the nation’s largest school system, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Friday.

Porter will take over a fraying school system, with many students having lost out on critical instructional time and facing mounting mental health needs. On top of that, many schools have seen significant enrollment drops, with the overall student population dropping 4% from the previous year, and as a result, many principals might start next year in serious debt.

Families and educators on both sides of the reopening debate — those who wished this year was fully remote and those who want their children back in classrooms five days a week — are frustrated with Carranza and de Blasio, and have blasted them for not having a clearer plan for September. But under the city’s system of mayoral control, de Blasio ultimately calls the shots, and his handling of the reopening saga has played a role in an exodus of education department insiders who said their expertise was shunned by City Hall.

Integration advocates have also repeatedly fingered de Blasio as the roadblock to more transformative school diversity efforts — something that may have played a role in Carranza’s sudden departure.

After losing 11 friends and relatives to the coronavirus, Carranza said he was leaving so he could grieve and focus on self-care, and he does not know what his next steps will be.

“I need time to grieve, and this city, this school system, deserves a chancellor who 100% is taking up the helm and leading the charge to bringing everybody back in September,” Carranza told reporters. “I’m proud and incredibly honored that I had the opportunity to do that to this point. At some point you have to heal your own heart if you can share your heart with others, and that’s what this is about.”

Porter, a New York City public school graduate, started out as a youth organizer in the Bronx’s Highbridge neighborhood and has worked for the education department for 20 years, serving as a teacher, principal, and superintendent in the Bronx. In 2018, Carranza appointed her to fill the new role of executive superintendent in the Bronx, overseeing the borough’s 361 schools.

“I am ready to hit the ground running and lead New York City schools to a full recovery,” Porter said in a statement.

Meisha Ross Porter, a 20-year veteran of the education department, will take over the nation’s largest school system.

Carranza took the reins three years ago, after leading Houston schools. He stepped into a contentious battle over integration in New York City, which is one of the most segregated systems in the country, by bluntly questioning the city’s admissions policies.

He was more outspoken than the mayor on wanting to overhaul the admissions system, and that may have played a role in the chancellor’s move. Carranza reportedly drafted a resignation letter after a recent disagreement with the mayor about the Gifted and Talented test for 4-year-olds, according to the New York Times. Black and Latino students are dramatically underrepresented in gifted enrollment, and the education department warned that administering the exams this year would only exacerbate disparities. (Ultimately, the mayor’s plan was upended by a surprise vote of the citywide Panel for Educational Policy, which narrowly rejected a contract to continue administering the test.)

De Blasio, speaking Friday on WNYC, denied that the decision was related to the gifted controversy. When asked if his departure was connected to disagreements with de Blasio, Carranza said he needed time “to take care of me.”

Along with the mayor, Carranza’s leadership has been criticized since the coronavirus pandemic forced school buildings to abruptly close in March 2020. Many educators faulted the mayor and chancellor for keeping buildings open too long in the spring and stifling information about possible cases among communities when school staff had to report to buildings as they prepared to transition to remote learning.

They’ve faced an uphill battle to regain educators’ trust. Following a chaotic summer of planning and major last-minute shifts — including two delayed starts to the school year and a reversal on the amount of live teaching for children on their remote days — the union representing principals and other school administrators issued a vote of no confidence in the chancellor and the mayor.

The return to in-person learning was also applauded by many as a serious feat considering the many logistical and labor roadblocks — ones that many other major school systems never overcame.

Yet many advocates criticized Carranza and de Blasio for missing the big picture for this year: while they focused time and money on reopening school buildings, roughly 70% of families ultimately chose to stay home full-time and participate in remote-only instruction. Many educators said the education department did not do enough to improve virtual instruction.

Other problems that have plagued the chancellor and mayor this year include a lack of devices for remote learning, questions about whether school buildings are properly ventilated, and whether the city’s Situation Room rapid response team is equipped to handle the weekly COVID-19 testing at schools.

Teachers union president Michael Mulgrew took a shot at the mayor, hinting that the chancellor’s hands may have been tied during the push to reopen schools.

“Richard Carranza was a real partner in our efforts to open school safely,” Mulgrew said in a statement. “Too often he had to fight behind the scenes to keep the needs of students, staff and their families ahead of politics.”

The timing of Carranza’s departure didn’t surprise some observers, as de Blasio’s second and final term will conclude at the end of the year, and many of the leading candidates to replace him have already said they plan to select a new chancellor to lead the education department.

Despite the complexity of school reopening and the difficulty of transitioning to a new chancellor in the middle of a crisis, it is clear much of the decision making is being run through City Hall, said Josh Starr, a former schools superintendent in Connecticut and Maryland and CEO of PDK International.

“The mayor’s clearly calling all the shots, and given that the mayor is on his way out, you’re going to have a new mayor and new chancellor,” he said. “It’s a political cycle.”

Carranza was the mayor’s second choice to run the school system after de Blasio’s first pick, Superintendent Alberto Carvalho of Miami-Dade County, backed out on live television. The mayor made it clear he wanted a caretaker chancellor who would continue the policies put in place under former chancellor Carmen Fariña. She had spent more than 50 years in the education department and her tenure was marked largely by undoing the legacy of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

One of Carranza’s first big moves was to shake up the education department bureaucracy by appointing new executive superintendents. He also pushed for implicit bias training for educators, earning him the appreciation of educators who rallied publicly in his defense, in the face of backlash in right-wing media and from some educators who said the sessions were hostile or uncomfortable.

His tenure began with hope for many parent advocates, who accused the education department of shutting them out of decisions affecting their local districts. He appointed Hydra Mendoza, a former colleague from Carranza’s time in San Francisco, as deputy chancellor to work with local advocates. Parents said they finally felt they could partner with the education department to address families’ concerns. But that relationship has steadily soured not long after Mendoza stepped down, following a string of other top-level departures that accelerated over the past year.

Despite reinstating the Chief Academic Officer position, educators have said that change has been slow to reach the classroom under Carranza’s leadership. His vision for improving instruction and supporting struggling schools has remained foggy. After the mayor ended his controversial and expensive turn-around program known as Renewal, there hasn’t been a clear strategy put in its place.

Richard Carranza climbed the steps of Tweed Courthouse, the education department headquarters, on his first day as chancellor.

His impact on school integration is limited to mainly advocacy for change — an important shift in rhetoric under a mayor who previously refused to even say the word “segregation,” but one that ultimately led to few, if any, top-down reforms. Some community driven efforts, however, have gotten off the ground. One of the most notable is in Brooklyn’s District 15, which overhauled middle school admissions policies.

Many integration advocates saw the pandemic as an opportunity to more aggressively pursue changes in the city’s admissions systems, which are blamed for helping to drive segregation. Ultimately the city only pursued one-year changes that are likely to have a limited impact on the demographics of who attends school together.

The most high profile integration push under the mayor and chancellor, to overhaul how students are admitted to the city’s elite specialized high schools, arguably backfired by galvanizing opposition from local parent volunteer councils all the way up to new citywide organizations who have fiercely fought school diversity efforts.

Several high level education officials have departed since last summer, including second-in-command Cheryl Watson-Harris, the mayor’s senior education advisor Brandon Cardet-Hernandez, and senior department official Ursulina Ramirez. Miranda Barbot, Carranza’s press secretary, recently announced her departure.

Porter, who was praised by many educators she’s worked with, drew some criticism in 2019, when the schools watchdog received a complaint that she had enlisted subordinates to fundraise and organize a party to celebrate her promotion. The office later dropped its investigation.

Alex Zimmerman contributed reporting.

Carranza to NYC families: ‘This is the time’ to weigh opting out of state tests

2021-02-25T19:43:42+00:00

New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza is encouraging parents to consider pulling their children from taking this year’s state tests.

“As an educator, I would say to parents, there is an opt-out, and if there is ever a time to consider whether that opt-out makes sense for you, this is the time,” Carranza told reporters during Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Thursday press conference. “We do not want to impose additional trauma on students that have already been traumatized.”

The federal government mandates certain exams for grades 3-8, English language learners, and high schoolers. The Biden administration affirmed this week that these standardized tests would be required this year after last year’s hiatus. The exams, they said, would help them understand the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on student learning. But they also said that schools wouldn’t be held accountable for test scores, and states will have broad flexibility, including offering remote exams, or extending the window for taking tests into the summer or even next school year.

Carranza said he and State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa are continuing to press the federal government to develop a “commonsense policy” on testing this year.

New York State education officials had previously joined several states in asking the federal government to waive the tests, citing the challenges in administering such exams during the ongoing public health crisis. Students are learning through a mix of in-person and remote learning, often without reliable access to a device or internet.

State officials have not revealed how they plan to give reading and math exams for grades 3-8 or other mandated tests, except that they don’t believe students should be forced to come into buildings to take a test. They also said that remote testing won’t be feasible. That leaves a big question mark for New York City, the nation’s largest school system, where the majority of students are learning exclusively from home.

The Board of Regents, which sets education policy in New York, is expected to vote next month on canceling high school exit exams that are not required by federal law, while removing all the exams as a requirement to earn a diploma this year. (The English, math and science Regents are mandated by the federal government.)

Early in his tenure, Carranza said it would be “an extreme reaction” for parents to opt out of state tests, but he has also said that a child’s education is “more than a sum total of a test.” His tune was different on Thursday, saying that educators already understand their students are behind.

“It just makes no sense in a pandemic to apply the rules of the past, pre-pandemic, to a pandemic situation,” Carranza said.

City officials have said they want to close the “COVID achievement gap,” but have not specified exactly what that gap looks like. In December, city officials revealed an initial framework to catch students up academically next school year, which includes “diagnostic” assessments of students. They have yet to reveal what those tests will look like or more specifics about what next year will look like. The mayor has promised that schools will reopen for families who want to return, but he has presented no specifics on whether city schools will continue to be hybrid.

Carranza’s comments could ultimately work against the ability to glean anything meaningful from state tests this year. If more parents than usual opt their children out of exams, experts say that it will be difficult to make any comparisons or gain useful data from tests.

While the chancellor acknowledged the flexibilities in the federal guidance issued this week, he offered an alternative path for assessing children. He prefers low-stakes “formative assessments,” which are meant to give teachers a sense during the school year of where students are behind instead of a “summative” state test, he said.

Generally speaking, formative assessments are given over the course of a class and can be in the form of quizzes, assignments, or even group work, and are meant to show how far individual students have progressed in a particular subject. Before the pandemic, Carranza had mandated 45-minute computer based assessments three times a year at struggling schools to get a sense of student progress.

Online tutors are helping NYC students catch up. But expanding these programs remains costly.

2020-12-22T18:48:06+00:00

Months after Read 718 opened its second Brooklyn storefront location, the one-on-one literacy tutoring program was forced to shut its doors because of the pandemic.

But that hasn’t stopped the organization’s expansion. In fact, Read 718 — which offers intensive, free or very low-cost tutoring to struggling readers from low-income families — had an easier time recruiting remote volunteers and held more sessions since it no longer had physical space constraints. The organization went from serving 55 third through eighth graders in person to 75 online and plans to continue seeing students online on top of in-person sessions next school year.

“It feels more important than ever doing this work because remote [school] instruction is just not the same,” said Emily Kirven, executive director of Read 718. Many students they work with have high-risk relatives at home and are learning remotely full-time.

The need for tutoring this year is immense, as data from across the nation indicates many students started the school year behind, particularly in math, and one study found that students of color lagged more than their white counterparts.

Large-scale tutoring programs could make a big difference, some education experts say, citing evidence that such small group interventions often can help children improve reading and math skills. England and parts of Australia have launched government-funded tutoring programs.

So far, New York City’s education department is not pursuing a systemwide tutoring program, officials said, but groups across the five boroughs like Read 718 are mobilizing volunteers to fill gaps and work with low-income families who can’t afford pricey individualized help.

Still, scaling up isn’t simple. While attracting volunteers has been easier, tutoring organizations face other logistical barriers, like training volunteers, doing background checks, and performing other quality control measures.

“Now we have more college students, writers, people who want to be teachers or are thinking about switching careers, retirees who worked in education or not,” Kirven said, but the organization still has staff-related bottlenecks when it comes to supporting volunteers. “It’s time consuming.”

While New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said “tutoring is absolutely being considered as one of the strategies that we will use to help students,” he also said “there’s a groundwork that has to happen for a tutoring program,” in terms of working with community-based organization, universities, and others.

Across the city, groups aren’t waiting for the city to create something formal. And the movement benefits from high-profile support, including a push from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. More than 13,000 people from around the globe responded to the New York congresswoman’s recent call for volunteers for a homework helper program in her district, which covers parts of Queens and the Bronx, said Jonathan Soto, a political organizer for the Ocasio-Cortez’s political campaign and a public school parent. The initiative aims to train — and provide background checks for — 1,000 volunteers by June to help with next school year, which will take a “massive amount of work,” the project’s website noted.

Ocasio-Cortez piloted the program over the past six weeks, with volunteers doing more than 200 tutoring sessions for families at a school in the Bronx neighborhood of Throggs Neck. Starting this week, the program is expanding to a school in Corona, Queens.

Tutoring sessions run during the week from 6-8 p.m., starting with a group welcome message, with volunteers and families then going into breakout rooms for hour-long sessions. Students, who are referred to the program through their schools’ parent/teacher associations, are required to be joined throughout the four-week program by their parents, who also often need tech support or other help understanding their children’s work.

All tutors must take training sessions from professional educators. About two thirds of the volunteers have teaching or tutoring experience, according to Soto. The congresswoman’s office is looking for volunteers, who speak Spanish, Bangla, Urdu, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, French, and Kru, to help her diverse constituencies.

“We do this more as a form of popular education. It’s really parent-directed,” Soto said. “The language access part is incredibly important.”

During the pandemic, Stuyvesant High School seniors Jonah Keller and Derick Fang, who have been running a free tutoring program for elementary school students, dramatically changed how their four-year-old organization, the Stuyvesant Study Society, works.

In the past, the organization had about seven tutors a year. Each met with four or five elementary school children at a time, essentially checking their homework.

Derick Fang and Jonah Keller, co-presidents of the Stuyvesant Study Society, which matches student tutors from their school and a few other top-notch high schools with elementary school students.

This year, the number of student tutors from the high-performing high school has increased tenfold, with about 70 teens now offering one-on-one online tutoring in a variety of languages — including Mandarin, Cantonese, and Bangla — at two schools. Keller and Fang looked to partner with schools where at least 80% of students come from low-income families. Over the summer they met twice a week for an hour with English learners at a Lower East Side elementary school. The group expanded this fall to a school in Corona, prioritizing areas that were especially hit hard by COVID-19. Initially, Keller and Fang manually matched student tutors with families, but as they’ve grown, they created a computer program to make matches primarily based on language and time preferences.

“When we were doing the afterschool program, we were just like a calculator — checking the answer to problems. It wasn’t a really one-on one connection,” Keller said. “Now more than ever, our tutors are like mentors. Our tutors aren’t just helping with education for the student. They’re more like a friend to talk to.”

Brooklyn mom Anna Garcia said Read 718’s tutoring program has made a big difference for her fourth grade son and third grade daughter. They are fully remote, having seen the effects of COVID-19 firsthand, after Garcia’s husband survived being on a ventilator for more than a month in March.

“There are days they are just over this whole remote thing,” she said. “They tune out.”

Her son, who has a learning disability, has been making steady progress in reading.

Transitioning to remote learning has been relatively seamless for Read 718, Kirven said, but nine months into the pandemic, some youngsters are feeling “Zoom fatigue,” she said. “They need more time outside of their homes and exercise, in general.”

Her organization works with children who were already struggling. Many have learning disabilities that make reading harder, she said, though they often go undiagnosed.

“Those are the kids I’m worried about. They need consistency. Two times a week for an hour is not the same as every school day,” Kirven said.

And although her program has been able to expand online, Read 718 is still limited by what their staff is capable of overseeing.

“We do an intake where we assess each child. We create plans based on that. Then we send those to tutors and follow up with tutors each week,” she explained. That makes programs like this one costly to scale.

Other free homework help programs are offered by the New York Public Library, from 2-11 p.m. daily, and Dial-A-Teacher, run by the teachers union, from 4-7 p.m. on Monday through Thursday.

Christina Veiga contributed.

NYC elementary school students can head back to buildings Dec. 7, as de Blasio shifts reopening strategy

2020-11-29T19:39:36+00:00

New York City’s youngest students will return to school buildings on Dec. 7, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday in an announcement that also signaled a shift in his approach to school reopening.

After facing intense pushback over his decision to close school buildings more than a week ago, de Blasio’s new reopening plan will welcome back students in 3-K, pre-K, and K-5 on Dec. 7. (Only grades K-5 will return in buildings that serve up to eighth or 12th grade.) Buildings will reopen on Dec. 10 for all grades of District 75, which serves students with the most significant disabilities. The mayor offered no timeline to bring back middle and high school students. He said the city is “just not able to do that yet,” citing the need to scale up COVID-19 testing and keep the focus on the city’s youngest and also most vulnerable students for now.

In a major shift for the nation’s largest public school system, de Blasio said the city will no longer use a percentage positivity rate to shutter buildings across the five boroughs, as it did Nov. 19 when the city hit a 3% coronavirus positivity rate over seven days. Instead, 20% of students and staff will be tested in schools on a weekly basis, as opposed to the monthly testing program at schools citywide. The city will continue targeted school closures.

“It’s a new approach because we have so much proof of how safe schools can be and this has come from real life experience in the biggest school system in America right there in New York City,” de Blasio said. “We feel confident that we can keep schools safe.”

De Blasio also said he wants to bring students back five days a week at schools where there is enough space and staffing. Only students who were already participating in blended learning or chose that option when the city offered families one final chance to get some in-person learning would be eligible for this, the mayor said. Such a plan would still follow social distancing and require a reshuffling of students and teachers, but would allow those schools to have just two types of students: fully remote and fully in-person as opposed to hybrid students who are learning both remotely and in-person during the week.

It will be up to individual school leaders to decide if this is an option for them, and the city did not provide an estimate of how many schools might pursue this option.

“It’s still a herculean task for our principals and communities,” Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said.

In a statement, principals union president Mark Cannizzarro said the education department “must provide clear direction and adequate resources in schools where it is possible” to phase out blended learning, “and afford school leaders flexibility and discretion where it is not.”

Individual schools or classrooms will close under existing protocols: one positive case would cause that student or staffer’s class to quarantine, while two or more cases can cause the whole building to close. That means there will likely continue to be instability in terms of school building and classroom closures over the coming weeks and months. If school buildings hadn’t been closed citywide, 173 buildings — or roughly 11% of all schools — would still have been shuttered either for 24 hours or two weeks based on positive cases among members of their community, according to public data.

Since only students who have already signed up for in-person learning will be allowed to return to buildings, the mayor estimated that 190,000 children could return — and their families must sign consent forms for COVID-19 testing to do so. Students will not be allowed to return to buildings without consent forms.

Even if middle and high schools reopen, about two thirds of children will remain fully remote, according to city data, with higher rates of students of color choosing to learn remotely full-time.

Michael Mulgrew, the president of the city teachers union, signaled support for the plan.

The union had put intense pressure on de Blasio and Carranza this summer over implementing stringent testing and safety protocols before reopening buildings. While it had backed the city’s 3% positivity rate trigger for closing schools, Mulgrew indicated a shift in approach, saying the union wanted the city to reopen schools in neighborhoods where the positivity rate had dropped and focus instead of closing buildings in hot spots instead of systemwide closures.

“We are supportive of a phased reopening of schools in other neighborhoods as long as stringent testing is in place,” Mulgrew said in a statement. “This strategy — properly implemented — will allow us to offer safe in-person instruction to the maximum number of students until we beat the pandemic.”

Some elected officials also signaled support for the plan, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, who is running for mayor, said he was pleased that de Blasio listened to parents who pushed for buildings to reopen, but now the city must “make in-person education an option for the older students who are being left behind by the failed implementation of remote learning.”

Others believed there should be more support for the city’s most vulnerable students. In a tweet, Brooklyn Councilman Brad Lander said the city should target in-person learning for “homeless students, kids with special needs.”

The move comes at a time when coronavirus cases are rising in the city, with the positivity rate over a seven-day average reaching 3.9%, according to the most recent city data. But many public health experts believe that schools are not contributing to higher rates of spreading the virus, and many other countries have prioritized keeping schools open while shuttering other businesses and institutions.

The number of school-based tests that have come back positive in schools has risen. As of last week, .28% of results were positive of the nearly 160,000 in-person students and staff who were tested. Overall, more than 3,000 students and staff have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to city data as of Nov. 24.

Schools that are in state-imposed orange zones will reopen in accordance with rules set by Cuomo. Orange zone areas have reached a 3% positivity rate based on state data of seven-day averages, which are calculated differently than the city’s average.

As of Saturday, parts of Staten Island remained in orange zones.

All students and staff must first test negative before reentering the building, which is not a requirement for other schools. These schools must also test 25% of students each week, with a different set of students tested each week.

Correction: This story incorrectly stated that schools in state-imposed orange zones must test 20% of its students each week. In fact, the testing requirement is 25%.

Most NYC students are learning online, but the city’s virtual teaching strategy remains elusive

2020-11-17T00:48:24+00:00

The success of this school year was always going to depend on remote learning.

Even before rising coronavirus infections threatened once again to force all teaching and learning back online, the vast majority of students were learning virtually on most days.

On a given school day, up to 800,000 students are expected to sign in for remote learning from home — while a maximum of 102,000 students show up to buildings, department figures show. Yet New York City has yet to put forward a detailed strategy to help schools improve online instruction, according to educators, experts, and union officials.

Instead, schools have largely been left to forge approaches of their own, all while contending with new health and safety rules, changing directives from the city’s education department, and managing two school environments at once — in-person and remote.

The city has traditionally given individual schools wide latitude over teaching and learning, which generated uneven results even before the pandemic. But some educators have been saying for months that they want more help adapting to the virtual environment, as even veteran teachers have returned to the drawing board to execute the most basic elements of their craft.

“A lot of it has been each teacher figuring this out at the school level,” said Mike Loeb, a middle school science teacher at the Urban Institute of Mathematics in the Bronx. “I’m annoyed that we had the wrong outlook from the beginning: The focus was all in person.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio spent the summer pushing hard to reopen school buildings, and his administration has acknowledged that health and safety procedures have been their top priority. Preparing for the school year largely meant focusing on procuring protective equipment, spinning up a school testing infrastructure, and negotiating the details of teachers’ work responsibilities — even sacrificing a guarantee of live remote instruction for some students to help alleviate a staffing crisis.

Virtual instruction and efforts to improve it are rarely discussed at the mayor’s daily press conferences, except to argue that online learning is inferior to in-person education. Officials tend to emphasize that the city has purchased and distributed hundreds of thousands of devices with preloaded internet access, but have said little about the quality of instruction delivered on them. Meanwhile, the city’s teachers union was focused on health and safety issues in the run-up to school starting, even threatening a strike, but was quieter about how to prepare teachers for a new medium.

The focus on safety has paid some dividends. The district has avoided significant virus outbreaks, which has had some public health experts and national media suggesting that New York City could be a model of how to reopen school buildings safely. Many parents say even limited in-person schooling has been valuable, especially for students with disabilities.

Still, the lack of a systemwide effort to elevate best practices of remote instruction raises questions about the fate of student learning this year, especially as the city approaches the 3% coronavirus positivity rate that would trigger all district school buildings to shut down. There are also big implications for education equity: 44% of parents of color say they don’t plan to send their children back to classrooms this school year, compared with 10% of white parents, according to a recent poll conducted by the Education Trust-New York.

Education department officials say their remote learning strategy consists of “high-quality” digital curriculum materials and hundreds of training sessions that have been viewed tens of thousands of times, including “master class” focusing on Google Classroom, but also subject-specific training in math, ELA, science, and other areas. They also noted teachers were given a several additional days to prepare before the school year started, delaying the start of the school year.

“Teachers have undergone many hours of professional development, we’ve developed and made available digital curriculum and digital supports for students, teachers, and parents,” schools Chancellor Richard Carranza told reporters on Monday.

But some of the resources city officials promised have not materialized. City officials said they would hire “virtual content specialists” to help adapt their curriculum to a remote setting, though the teachers union said the city hasn’t hired a single one. “I don’t know why we have all these people who work in central, if it seems like they just tell schools to figure it out on their own,” Michael Mulgrew, head of the United Federation of Teachers, said last week.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew

Meanwhile, teachers have been crunched for time to plan, attend training sessions, or confer with their colleagues to swap best practices. Teachers typically had about 80 minutes of professional development time a week. Now, about 40 minutes twice a month are devoted to “faculty and grade” conferences, which can include training, officials said. Funding for professional development was cut in this year’s budget.

“It’s a time when you need more,” said Verneda Johnson, a veteran science teacher at a Harlem middle school who said teacher training has been cut in half. “How many of us really know what we’re doing in digital spaces?”

The quality of each training can depend heavily on school leaders who are stretched even more than usual and may not have much time to prepare themselves. Recent sessions, Johnson said, focused on different functions within Microsoft Teams, including a virtual whiteboard and a tool that lets teachers conduct a poll of their students. Yet there has been little time for teachers to adapt the tools to their own lesson plans.

“Good intentions all around, but I need to see it more slowly and I need an opportunity to sit with it,” Johnson said.

Desperate to give their teachers more time than the 30 minutes allotted each day to plan their lessons, and another 30 minutes to coordinate lesson plans with their colleagues, some principals have blocked off entire days for teachers to devise units and share best practices, even though it cuts into students’ instructional time.

“There’s like no time for planning, which is crazy because there’s more of a need for it than ever,” said one Bronx high school principal who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. “No one can teach well if you don’t have time to plan.”

At the same time, some educators said their school’s training sessions are paying off. Carlotta Pope, an English teacher at Brooklyn Community Arts and Media High School, said she has benefitted from several training sessions, mostly offered by her school.

Carlotta Pope

As a “peer collaborative teacher,” which offers a bump in pay to teachers who take on more responsibility, Pope has attended sessions on helping students devise digital notebooks and on understanding certain student behaviors like keeping their cameras off. “Starting school year off was much better than how we transitioned in March,” Pope said. “In my school, personally, I was able to get the resources.”

There is evidence that parents agree remote instruction is improving. Nearly 70% of city parents said remote learning has improved since the spring, though the feeling is not universal: Only 56% of Black respondents said the same, according to the Education Trust poll.

Tom Liam Lynch, the education policy director at the New School’s Center for New York City Affairs, said he’s worried that the lack of an overarching strategy to improve remote teaching could exacerbate inequities. He applauded the city for focusing on distributing hundreds of thousands of devices with internet access, but said the city lacks clear frameworks for educators and parents about what high-quality remote teaching should look like once they have met the basic threshold of digital access.

“There are absolutely examples of schools that are figuring out how to do [remote learning] well,” Lynch said. But, he added: “I don’t see anything resembling a cogent, coherent, systemwide strategy for improving online teaching.”

NYC should subsidize internet for low-income remote learners, Stringer says

2020-11-06T22:40:50+00:00

For low-income families who cannot afford reliable internet service for remote schooling, the city should offer subsidies, said New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer.

Families would get “internet passports” they could use to purchase broadband service, Stringer wrote Monday in a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio and Chancellor Richard Carranza.

About 100,000 school age children live in 40,000 households without internet, Stringer wrote, citing an April report by the Citizens’ Committee for Children and his office’s analysis of Census data. It should cost at most $16 million to cover internet costs for low-income families without such service for the rest of the school year, based on estimates of the cost per household using currently advertised internet fees, but the city could use its purchasing power to negotiate “well below” that, according to Stringer.

At the least, Stringer is asking the city to discuss all “quick and affordable options” with providers to extend service for families.

“The failure to address this problem has resulted in students going to extreme ends – huddling on street corners around LinkNYC stations to get free Wi-Fi, struggling to find other weak connections in their general vicinity, or using DOE iPads for ‘hotspots’ which at best provided families with a weak signal of little use for robust 21st century learning,” Stringer wrote.

To address the connectivity problem, the city has purchased 450,000 iPads that connect to the internet through a cellular plan with T-Mobile. They not only don’t need an internet connection, they also serve as hotspots for other devices.

The city spent about $400 million on these devices, with 350,000 delivered to students through the spring and the summer, and another 100,000 recently purchased, based on cost per device estimates from the city. Last month officials said about 77,000 students remained without a proper device. School leaders have cited various reasons for this outstanding need, such as new enrollees, the need to replace broken or lost devices, and a delay in ordering devices in the first place.

But some families with these tablets still battle a variety of technical issues and face long waits with the education department’s help desk.

Bronx parent coordinator Maria Vargas said she was helping about three parents a day in October with untangling persistent technical issues on their city-issued iPads. Some, for instance, struggled to get consistent T-Mobile cellular signal at their home. The handful of problems she reported to the help desk went unanswered.

“A lot of times the internet seems to not work,” Vargas told Chalkbeat last month. “It’s frustrating — you want your child to get onto the class, and all of a sudden you don’t have internet.”

Cellular connection has been particularly spotty at some shelters housing homeless students, who as a result are unable to regularly log on for remote learning, if at all. The city recently committed to providing Wi-Fi at all family shelters, prioritizing the places with the most problems, but most shelters won’t have service until after the school year ends.

Citing reports to his office of long wait times for the education department’s help desk, Stringer is also asking the city to send more technical support to high needs areas. That could mean outreach at free meal distribution sites or having technicians work with community-based organizations in order to reach more people.

City officials are advocating with service providers for “free or reduced service during this pandemic,” said Sarah Casasnovas, a spokesperson for the education department. In the initial stages of the pandemic, service providers, including Altice, the parent company of Optimum, and Charter Communications, the parent company of Spectrum, offered free internet to families with K-12 students, but those deals expired in June. In late October, Altice again began offering free internet for 60 days to families with K-12 students, but those families would still be responsible for paying a $30 installation fee.

Casasnovas also pointed to the city’s internet-enabled iPad purchases as addressing families’ needs.

“We’ve made connectivity a priority since March, and have been in frequent discussions with broadband providers to address the critical need for internet service among our families,” Casasnovas said.

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, who is also running for mayor, has also called on service providers to provide free broadband to students in need. Over the summer, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer asked Verizon, Optimum, and Spectrum to extend their free deals through December.

City officials “are working diligently” to address technical needs and pointed to support pages on the education department’s website, including a page for the iPads, Google Classroom, and Microsoft Teams, education officials said. Families can also complete the Family Support Form for help.

Clarification: This story was updated on Nov. 6 to reflect that one company offered a new internet deal starting in October.

NYC suspension numbers plunged during remote learning

2020-11-04T01:12:30+00:00

Suspensions fell sharply last school year, largely because few schools handed them out when campuses were shuttered due to the coronavirus.

In total, suspensions dropped to 18,215 during the 2019-20 school year, down about 45% from 32,801 the previous school year, according to annual data the education department released Tuesday.

Suspensions from New York City public schools have fallen significantly in recent years, though Black students remain far more likely than their peers to be disciplined. Education department officials have attributed the overall decline in suspensions to discipline reforms, as well as an emphasis on restorative justice practices, which emphasize repairing harm instead of issuing punishment, and social-emotional learning.

The newly released data, however, represents a markedly steeper drop, which some discipline reform advocates say is good news. But they also cautioned against drawing conclusions based on year-over-year comparisons, given the unprecedented circumstances last school year.

During remote learning in the spring, schools handed out just six principal suspensions, which are less severe and can last for up to six days. During that period, there were no superintendent suspensions, which are more serious and can range from a few days to an entire school year. (New York City public schools averaged 3,644 suspensions a month during the 2018-2019 academic year.)

Even before campus closures, suspensions were trending downward, said Nathaniel Styer, a spokesperson for the education department. By March 16, the last day of in-person learning last school year, the total number of suspensions had dropped by nearly 13% compared to that same point a year earlier, Styer said. Before remote schooling started, suspensions longer than 21 days accounted for fewer than 1% of all suspensions, compared to 4% the previous year — likely a direct result of the city capping most suspensions by 20 days.

Yet disparities persist. Black students received 43% of all suspensions, even though they make up about a quarter of all students. Students with disabilities accounted for about 40% of suspensions, even though they make about 20% of the city’s student population.

Hispanic students make up just over 40% of the student population and received that percentage of suspensions, a slight uptick from the previous year.

White students, who make up 15% of New York City’s public school enrollment, were handed 9% of suspensions, and Asian students, who make up 16% of the student population, accounted for 5.5% of all suspensions. Advocates noted some other concerning statistics: Black students received nearly half of all suspensions or removals from school that also involved contact with the police, and six police-involved incidents involved 6-year-old children.

Styer acknowledged that officials “still have work to do” in combating racial disparities, which are problems at local and national levels, but pointed to the city’s efforts to provide implicit bias training, social-emotional learning and trauma-informed instruction.

Superintendent suspension lengths were similar across racial groups, averaging 11.1 days for white students, 11.4 days for Asian students, 11.5 days for Hispanic students, and 11.8 days for Black students.

“COVID-19 has put a spotlight on the role schools play for young people grappling with loss, grief, and trauma, and the investments we’ve made over the years have laid the groundwork for our students to feel safe and supported, whether in person or remotely,” Chancellor Richard Carranza said in a statement. “We will continue to lead with education, empathy, and repairing harm as we drive down suspensions and keep our school communities safe.”

Throughout his tenure, Mayor Bill de Blasio has overseen multiple changes to the discipline code, including limiting suspensions for the city’s youngest children and capping most suspensions to 20 days.

This summer, following the local and national outcry over police violence against Black people, de Blasio agreed to shift the supervision of school safety agents from the NYPD over to the education department over the next two years, but his move was criticized for not going far enough.

Meanwhile, some educators and union officials have criticized discipline reforms, saying that staff didn’t have enough support to implement changes, leading more students to believe there are little consequences for misbehavior. More recently, school leaders said the department provided little clarity on how to handle student misbehavior as they prepared to welcome some students back for in-person schooling, with most classes remaining online.

Some advocates who have pushed for discipline reform were encouraged by Tuesday’s suspension data, pointing to the very efforts they pushed for that the city has undertaken. But they said there is work ahead to improve the numbers and erase disparities.

Nelson Mar, an attorney with Bronx Legal Services, said the numbers were generally headed in a “good direction,” but it was hard to make too many conclusions because of school closures.

“One of the things that we would hope that the city does with the data is to really look at the schools that have the higher rates and the higher incidents,” and direct resources to those schools, Mar said.

Dawn Yuster, director of the School Justice Project at Advocates for Children New York, said the reduction in suspension length is “particularly notable” and is reflective of the education department’s revamp of the discipline code. She hoped the city’s plan to expand mental health supports in school communities hardest hit by the pandemic will lead to fewer disciplinary actions this school year.

Still, Yuster was concerned that the average length for a superintendent suspension hovered just above 11 days.

“I think there is still a lot of work to be done to reduce the amount of time that students are spending outside of school and not learning and losing days of instruction,” Yuster said.

Facing criticism, Carranza hints that NYC might give students more than one chance to return to classrooms

2020-10-29T19:34:35+00:00

The education department might allow families more than one opportunity to switch to in-person learning from fully-virtual classes, Chancellor Richard Carranza said Thursday — injecting uncertainty into an announcement made three days earlier that there would be one chance this school year to change.

On top of that, with far fewer students returning to classrooms than the city anticipated, certain schools may soon be able to offer more days of in-person learning, he said.

Carranza’s message to members of his parent advisory council, some of whom were visibly frustrated, was simple: “Change is the only thing that we can count on.” He suggested that changes in the trajectory of the coronavirus, or the availability of a vaccine, could alter the city’s plan to offer just one opportunity to opt for in-person schooling.

“If it’s possible, and if it makes sense, we can absolutely consider another time period where students and families can opt back in,” Carranza told parents, one of whom accused him of breaking his promise that families would have the opportunity each quarter to switch to in-person learning.

“I’m not breaking any promises — I’ve been very clear from the beginning that circumstances change,” Carranza said.

Some members of the chancellor’s parent advisory group pointed out that the latest controversy of shifting the deadline for returning to buildings fits a broader pattern of the city changing policy with little notice or time for families to plan. On top of two last-minute delays to the start of the year, the city also changed how much live instruction students are entitled to, among other shifts.

Officials were hoping that a single window to opt for in-person learning — from Nov. 2 to Nov. 15 — would give them a clearer sense of how many students actually want to return to their school buildings. Students would be allowed to start in-person learning between Nov. 30 and Dec. 11. If there isn’t an influx of students, that could allow some schools to offer four or five days a week of in-person instruction because they won’t have to leave space for students whose return is uncertain, Carranza said. A spokesperson said some schools have already begun to do that, though did not immediately say how many.

City officials previously assumed that all families who didn’t formally fill out a form for virtual learning would send their children back to school buildings. Of the city’s roughly 1 million students (a number based on last year’s enrollment), a little more than half opted for fully virtual instruction as of last week. Officials estimated that the rest were part of the city’s hybrid model, attending school buildings one to three days a week, for the most part.

But Carranza acknowledged on Thursday that assumption was incorrect: Only 280,000 students have attended in-person classes at least once — or roughly a quarter of the city’s students. That translates to about 180,000 fewer than the city claimed.

“The number of students that we planned for in person has not materialized,” Carranza said. “It may be the way we surveyed.”

That has left many classrooms with a tiny number of students and presents a logistical problem for principals. School leaders must leave space for students who never explicitly choose fully-remote learning in case they decide to return and have to figure out how to cover potentially higher numbers of remote learners.

It also has significant financial implications: The city could be spending an estimated $32 million a week more than normal to keep buildings open with new health protocols, according to an Independent Budget Office analysis. Carranza also suggested the city may have hired substitutes that weren’t necessarily needed because so few students showed up in person.

The decision to offer just one opportunity to opt for in-person learning was based on feedback from principals, city officials have said. Some school leaders, however, disagreed with the department’s policy. The union representing principals was not consulted, a union spokesperson said. The teachers union also criticized the policy.

Pat Finley, co-principal at the Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School in Queens, a middle and high school, said his parents have been panicking about having to make a decision for the rest of the school year, especially since infection rates could fluctuate significantly or a vaccine could be available.

“The idea that I should tell parents they have to project six months into the future when so many things could change — it doesn’t seem fair,” he said.

Students return to NYC’s 1,600 schools — for now

2020-10-01T22:55:31+00:00

As New York City’s middle and high school buildings reopened Thursday, freshman Yandeo Santiago eagerly awaited his first day at Brooklyn Community Arts and Media High School.

“I was feenin’ to go back,” the 15-year-old said, referring to how much he craved being back inside a school.

Standing outside the building 10 minutes before his 9 a.m. school start, however, he had to wait a little longer. Yandeo arrived without a mask, so school staff had him wait outside as someone fetched one for him.

Thursday marked a significant milestone: the first time that all 1,600 district schools opened their doors to students since March, when the coronavirus brought routines to a screeching halt. The nation’s eyes are on New York City, as the largest system opens with a hybrid schedule, having students report to buildings one to three days a week, while many other big districts stay closed. Families have also chosen to remain fully remote — with 48% of the city’s roughly 1 million students opting to remain out of buildings so far.

The remote numbers are higher for high school students, with roughly 60% learning remotely full-time, according to data from the teachers union. At Yandeo’s school, Media Arts, which enrolls 574 students, more than half planned to learn exclusively from home, according to city data.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has staked his legacy on reopening New York City’s schools, plodding through a confusing and chaotic summer of planning, culminating in two last-minute delays and a vote of no confidence from the union representing principals. De Blasio’s efforts have also been marred by fierce pushback from city teachers and their union, which forged a staffing agreement with the city that has compounded the need for teachers. Schools still need “a couple of thousand” more teachers, especially in high schools, said Michael Mulgrew, president of the teachers union.

The staffing shortage is a result of having three groups of students schools need to educate on a given day: those hybrid learning in person, hybrid students on their remote days, and fully remote students. On top of balancing the needs of these groups, many families and educators remain worried that buildings could close down again. The mayor said the city would shutter buildings if the coronavirus positivity rate surged about 3% over a 7-day rolling average. The 7-day rolling average was 1.52% as of Thursday, de Blasio said, up from 1.46% the day before.

Individual schools could also be shut down for two weeks, for instance, if two individuals in the building, who have had no close contact (defined as at least 10 minutes within 6 feet of each other) test positive.

The city recorded its first such shutdown of a school at the John F. Kennedy, Jr. main campus in Queens, which is part of the city’s District 75, serving students with the most complex disabilities. That school, which reopened to students last week, began a two-week closure on Thursday. About 260 students who had been attending classes in-person, will now shift to remote-only learning, along with 88 staffers who work at the school.

“Two or more” members of the school community tested positive for COVID-19, according to a note on the school’s website. Following the city’s complex protocols for handling positive cases in schools, JFK Jr. was initially shuttered for 24 hours so contact tracers could conduct an investigation into who had come in close contact with the infected people. No common links were found between those who tested positive, triggering the closure, de Blasio told reporters on Thursday.

The mayor stressed that the number of cases in schools has been “fairly low” and that officials are monitoring data constantly to stay ahead of any possible outbreaks. So far, 160 people had tested positive of the nearly 512,000 K-12 students, teachers, and staff who were expected to report to buildings, according to data compiled by the state. (3K and pre-K totals and case numbers are not included in the state database.) Random testing of students and staff is set to begin next week at schools.

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said schools were “buzzing” again, but more than two weeks into reopening, the education department has not released any attendance data for students whether in-person or online.

While several educators said that fewer than expected students showed up this week, the mayor said he was “not worried” about attendance, claiming that collecting and releasing the data this year is more complicated because it requires tallying who is learning from home and who is on campus.

“Parents will watch for the coming days and weeks and then make more decisions, and then I think you will see attendance keep growing as people see consistent success with the schools,” de Blasio said.

Many teachers still have safety concerns, which also prompted some students in Manhattan to rally Thursday against reopenings. Student organizers, NYC Student Strike Action Coalition, want the city to call off in-person learning until each city neighborhood has a positivity rate below 3%, according to their list of demands. They want in-person learning reserved for students with the highest needs, such as those with disabilities, and for the city to ensure every child has a device for remote learning.

Students rally against school reopening plans in Washington Square Park on Thursday.

When Manhattan’s New Design High School sent a reminder email Wednesday night to the 84 students expected in the building on Thursday, a handful replied to say they planned to opt out of in-person learning. Less than half showed up on Thursday, said New Design’s Melissa Dorcemus, who is teaching 10th grade biodesign remotely.

New Design, like many other high schools across the city, solved their staffing problem by having all their students learn online, even those who show up to the building, as teachers instruct students learning from their homes or from classrooms. One 10th grader decided in the middle of the school day that he no longer wanted to be in the building and was released early after the school called one of his parents, she said. She’s unsure why, but wondered if a rash of technical problems with school-based laptops in the morning was a factor.

In contrast, one of Dorcemus’ more vocal students excitedly told her he was in the building and offered to show her his classroom of five or six others — all while donning a mask.

“I just think it’s not for everybody, and people respond very differently,” Dorcemus said about returning to school.

Students at Stuyvesant High School, which enrolls more than 3,300 students, will also learn online even when they’re inside of the building.

Meril Mousoom, a 16-year-old senior at Stuyvesant who participated in the student rally, preferred to learn from home but chose the blended option so she could receive a MetroCard, which allows students three swipes a day to get to and from school and related activities. She wants to use the MetroCard to travel to multiple paid internships that she hopes will allow her to save up for college.

As of Thursday, she did not know which day she was supposed to report to the building. At Stuyvesant — considered one of the city’s most prestigious and selective high schools — the school website showed a schedule through Oct. 2 that did not include Meril’s cohort. She’s also still waiting on getting a device for school, which she requested in August.

“It’s very stressful,” Meril said. “It’s more like you have to figure it out yourself rather than them giving you the information.”

Stuyvesant’s principal did not respond to a request for comment.

Students at other schools may have been confused over their schedules as well.

Naun Umanzor, a special education teacher, expected nine students in his first period history class at William Cullen Bryant High School in Queens. No one showed up. Students are typically late for first period, he said, but he expected at least one face. He planned to reach out to some to find out what happened, wondering if any of them were confused by the hybrid schedule.

More students showed up for the rest of his four periods, and while it may have felt awkward for some of them initially, he said, eventually they seemed more comfortable.

“They kept their masks on,” Umanzor said. “The kids seemed engaged, and they really, I think, missed being in a classroom.”

Outside of Brooklyn Community Arts and Media, entry points were set up for freshman and seniors, and separately, for sophomores and juniors. One student sheepishly apologized to a social worker for not returning her calls over the summer. Staff could be heard saying, “Wear your face mask, please,” as students entered a room near the entrance to get their temperatures checked before heading farther into the building.

Andre Williams, a senior who had arrived 20 minutes before school was set to start, wasn’t nervous, but he was curious about what school would be like with masks and social distancing.

He chose to return because he did not want to be in his house anymore, and remote learning was “boring,” he said.

“I just want to have a normal school year,” Williams said.

As NYC sprints to reopen schools, several senior education officials have headed for the exit

2020-09-28T19:05:31+00:00

As New York City scrambles to reopen school buildings for hundreds of thousands of students this week, a handful of top officials charged with making that happen have left the education department in quick succession.

Three of those officials — Chief Operating Officer Ursulina Ramirez, Deputy Chancellor Karin Goldmark, and senior advisor Alison Hirsh — have announced in the past three weeks their plans to leave. All three have been involved in the city’s efforts to reopen schools, which has been delayed twice in the past month. Following the drumbeat of departures, and a swirl of rumors, the education department’s press secretary took the unusual step Friday of publicly denying that schools Chancellor Richard Carranza also planned to step down.

Goldmark, who has emphasized that her leave will be temporary, and Ramirez have been important players in carrying out the education department’s reopening strategy, focused on a wide portfolio of issues ranging from jump-starting the city’s school bus infrastructure to figuring out how to create enough space for socially distanced classes.

Deputy Chancellor Karin Goldmark

The back-to-back exits come at a precarious moment for the education department, which is scheduled to reopen school buildings to students in elementary, middle, and high schools this week. The reopening effort was further complicated on Sunday when the principals union indicated they have no confidence in the mayor and chancellor’s plans and demanded the state seize control of the city’s schools.

“We need real leadership and certainty in these times,” said Paula White, the executive director of the advocacy group Educators for Excellence in New York and a former education official in New Jersey. “When you have this level of churn at the top it just adds further chaos at this crucial moment.”

Some insiders and observers said broader frustration with the mayor’s mishandling of the reopening process has played a role in the exodus of senior education department officials, three of whom previously worked directly with de Blasio.

An official familiar with the recent slate of departures said de Blasio’s handling of school reopening was a factor. Much of the reopening effort has been run through City Hall, and top education department officials have felt minimized in key decisions. The mayor has also ignored advice from his own advisory group of experts who were asked to offer input on how to reopen schools. When concerns bubble up about issues such as inadequate staffing, which had been a cause of concern for weeks and ultimately contributed a last-minute delay to the school year, the mayor has been dismissive, the official said.

“There are roadblocks in City Hall and it’s difficult to make decisions and just articulate what some of the challenges are without being called bureaucrats,” said the official, who is not authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity. “People are really demoralized.”

Still, it is not uncommon for New York City officials to be prime candidates for a range of in-demand education jobs, given their experience managing the nation’s largest school system. And the desire to begin lining up other jobs has intensified since de Blasio is term-limited and his successor will be elected next year, with a new mayor likely replacing many senior education officials.

The latest round of departures began in June, with two senior officials leaving to run other school systems. Cheryl Watson-Harris, the department’s second-in-command, became the superintendent of a Georgia school district. She was replaced by Donald Conyers, a nearly 40-year veteran of the department.

Human resources chief Tomás Hana decamped for the top job at a school district in Pennsylvania, and the position was filled on an interim basis by Vicki Bernstein. That role may take outsized importance, as the education department scrambles to hire thousands of teachers in response to a staffing crisis, created in part by an agreement with the city’s teachers union, and which contributed to the delayed start to the school year.

Former First Deputy Chancellor Cheryl Watson-Harris

In September, Ramirez, the chief operating officer, left for a nonprofit job that has yet to be announced after working at the education department for almost seven years. Hirsh, who had worked at the education department for only three months after departing City Hall in June, also resigned this month. Ramirez and Hirsh, who both previously worked for de Blasio, will not be replaced, officials said.

And this week, Goldmark, a top education department deputy who previously worked at City Hall for six years, announced she would take a leave of absence to “do everything possible to ensure a Democratic victory” in the presidential election by working on the Biden campaign. An education department spokesperson, Miranda Barbot, said in a statement that Goldmark “has not formally been placed on leave” and did not elaborate on when the leave would begin or whether anyone would take over her role while she’s gone.

“We have incredibly strong leaders with dedicated teams at all levels of the [education department] who are focused on our common goal of a safe and successful school reopening,” Barbot wrote. “We have tremendous confidence in our staff as we begin this school year.”

Former Chief Operating Officer Ursulina Ramirez

Some said the string of departures was unlikely to cause immediate damage to the city’s reopening efforts, as a bureaucracy as large as the education department has plenty of managers who can fill in.

“We generally have a deep enough pool of people to do what we need to do,” said Mark Cannizarro, head of the union that represents school administrators. “Time will only tell whether or not things could have been done any differently or better with them remaining here.”

Even if it’s unclear whether their departures will have an immediate effect on day-to-day operations, it could create political problems. The mayor has alienated many parents and educators in recent months, despite many experts saying New York City is in a good position to reopen from a public health perspective and offering some in-person learning has potentially significant educational upsides.

The revolving door of senior staff could feed the perception that de Blasio’s plans are insufficient and provide fodder for critics, said Josh Starr, a former New York City schools official and current head of PDK International, an association for educators.

“There is a symbolic effect and you can’t deny that,” Starr said. “It continues to deteriorate the credibility in the overall administration.”

Applying to middle or high school? NYC delays admissions policy announcement until October

2020-09-24T21:27:05+00:00

Thousands of families who are anxiously waiting to learn how competitive school admissions will work in the coronavirus era will have to wait a little longer.

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza told parent leaders on Thursday that information about applying to gifted programs and middle and high schools will not be available until next month, even though officials had promised to reveal admissions criteria over the summer. That could leave families with just over 30 days between learning about how the admissions process will work and the current Dec. 4 deadline to apply to high school.

“There’s going to be nothing before mid-October, end of October,” Carranza said. “I just have to be honest: All hands [on] deck are making sure our schools are safe and we have a safe opening.”

New York City is home to the nation’s largest concentration of middle and high schools that are allowed to screen students, meaning they use admissions criteria such as grades, state test scores, and attendance to determine who gets in.

But due to the coronavirus pandemic, the city did away with traditional grading last school year and banned schools from using attendance records for admission decisions, in part to keep students from going to school sick before buildings shut down. Meanwhile, state tests were canceled.

That has left a pressing question for thousands of families: How will the city determine who gets into competitive schools and whom will those new rules benefit? The decision could have profound equity implications, as the screening process is a significant contributor to school segregation.

Some parents have pushed for using student records from the year before the pandemic hit to make decisions, relying on data from third-grade for middle school admissions and sixth grade for high school. Others have said that wouldn’t be fair and department officials have released data that shows students’ academic records in earlier grades are not as predictive of later academic success.

“I’m hearing from families every day who want some information because it’s so stressful not to know,” said Elissa Stein, who runs a business that helps families navigate the public high school admissions process. “It’s been a complete black hole.”

It’s also unclear how the sole test that determines admission to eight of the city’s specialized high schools will work, given that it is historically administered in person. Carranza indicated that information about specialized high school admissions will not be available until late October.

State law requires admission to those schools be governed by a single test, which has led to few Black and Hispanic students gaining admission. Carranza and Mayor Bill de Blasio have unsuccessfully pushed to scrap the test.

In a typical year, the middle and high school admissions process would have kicked off already, with schools holding open houses, information sessions, and scheduling interviews and tests that can be required for admission.

The city also typically holds borough-based high school fairs, where schools set up tables and answer questions from prospective families. The education department’s website indicates that those will occur on two weekends in October, however a separate calendar on the website does not include any information about those fairs. “Due to the ongoing pandemic, we encourage you to visit schools’ websites or inquire about virtual opportunities to learn more about them,” the website says.

Katie O’Hanlon, an education department spokesperson, said the city is reviewing the high school fair dates and they are subject to change. She added that the city has heard from a range of people, including parent leaders and educators, about how to craft an admissions policy and will incorporate that feedback.

“Given current public health guidance, we are exploring ways we can support safe, appropriate and enriching engagement opportunities for prospective students and parents, such as virtual events, for the next admissions cycle,” O’Hanlon wrote.

Stein, the admissions consultant, wondered whether schools would have enough time and capacity to come up with virtual alternatives and publicize them to families.

“There will hopefully be some way for prospective students to get to know the school,” she said. “That’s a big ask for schools that are already stretched too thin.”

NYC schools scramble to help students who lack devices as online learning ramps up again

2020-09-22T22:22:20+00:00

As most of the city’s 1.1 million students started their first full school days online this week, many still lacked proper devices to log on — and may not have them for several weeks, according to parents, advocates and educators.

Miscommunication from the education department on how to get new devices has led to more confusion and delays, several principals said. One Bronx elementary school had nearly 60 unfulfilled device requests, while more than three dozen students at a Washington Heights school still lacked devices, their principals said. Another Lower East Side principal said 40 of her students – mostly newly enrolled children – still needed devices. Some families have been waiting for more than two months since requesting devices.

It’s been nearly two weeks since Stephanie Taylor requested a device for her preschooler, who is on the autism spectrum and attends a pre-school in Queens run by a community-based organization. His class uses software that his mom’s old laptop can’t support, so he’s using her cellphone for now.

“I try to be understanding that we are dealing with unprecedented times, but when you have a child with special needs, it’s kind of upsetting,” said Taylor, who quit her receptionist job last January to help coordinate his therapies and is getting by on public assistance. “I can sort of sense the frustration from the school not getting the support they need from the higher ups in the [education department].”

The education department suggested that they had nearly enough devices for every student in the system with a total of 950,000 tablets and laptops in the system. That accounts for 500,000 school-owned devices, 35% of which went home to families in need of devices for remote learning. In the spring, the education department distributed more than 320,000 iPads with built-in internet connection and have about 20,000 iPads leftover. Another 106,000 devices that schools ordered since the spring should arrive soon, education officials said.

But different schools may have different stockpiles and have varying needs. Some school leaders said they are now having trouble retrieving some of the devices they handed out in the spring and with redistributing city-issued iPads to those who need internet connection. Others need to replace broken tablets or laptops, while some are trying to keep a stock of devices at the school for students participating in blended learning for what they might be doing when they’re on campus.

Meanwhile, device-less students are using cell phones, devices with cracked screens, borrowing what they can from relatives or resorting to paper packets, they said.

Randi Levine, policy director at Advocates For Children, said her organization has spoken to families who are “doing their best” using cell phones with limited data plans. One child goes to a grandmother’s home for internet connection but cannot travel there every day. Her organization is still hearing from children living in homeless shelters whose city-issued iPads cannot connect to the internet.

“We’re very concerned that some children are not able to log on and participate as the school year gets underway,” Levine said.

The education department in late July tasked principals with collecting and redistributing the department-issued internet-enabled devices given out in the spring. For those who still come up short, their schools must now pay for new devices out of their own budget, though the department said schools can request iPads leftover from the spring. The new guidance was sent multiple times to school leaders, but principals believe it was buried within reams of other guidance this summer. They said they didn’t learn of the change until parents began asking in August where their requested devices were, prompting many to place orders for tablets and laptops.

Chancellor Richard Carranza said this week families should continue to let schools know of their device needs, and the department continued to work closely with schools on the issue.

“We will not let a student that needs a device, not have a device,” Carranza said.

A Bronx principal, unauthorized to speak publicly, described some of the challenges her school is currently facing, as dozens of new pre-K and kindergarten students need devices, as well as about a dozen children in other grades. She worries that many of these children might have nothing but a parent’s cell phone to use this month, if that, so teachers are helping those students attempt logging onto Zoom or are creating paper packets for them.

The principal has been trying to chase down some of the devices she handed out in the spring. She learned one student took a device with her when she moved to Michigan. Two other students left for charter schools and have asked to keep their device until their charter school gives them one, while some families had received both a school device and a city-issued iPad.

Earlier this month, the education department asked schools how many devices they needed that they couldn’t supply on their own. After receiving little word from the department about her request for 60 devices, she ordered 100 iPads using Title I money, which she said she was not authorized to spend until the start of the month. Those devices, however, won’t come for another few weeks.

Then on Tuesday, the principal received an email from the education department, informing her that a shipment of city-issued iPads would arrive Wednesday. Even though she already used her school’s limited budget to buy others, she’s hopeful they will still come in handy at some point.

Julie Zuckerman, the principal of Castle Bridge School, an elementary school in Washington Heights, said she asked the education department for 50 iPads from its remaining cache of 20,000. She expects the request will be fulfilled, but has received no information on how long that will take. The school also earlier this month ordered 45 Chromebooks, which may not be delivered until November.

Her teachers are readying paper packets for students who will have no alternative, she said.

The delay has meant that some students haven’t logged on to these early days focusing on building relationships with new teachers.

Last week, a student at a Lower East Side school who hadn’t joined orientation sessions for two days finally logged on when his older sister did not have to use their shared device, according to his principal, who was also not authorized to speak with the press.

“I don’t know if that’s something he’ll be able to do all week,” she said.

She is not expecting to have the 90 devices she ordered for at least another three weeks.

The Bronx principal said parents are channeling their frustration at her because they don’t have devices. While she believes the delay is the result of the education department not communicating clearly with principals, she recognizes that none of that matters to students who don’t have a laptop or tablet that works.

“There is already this mistrust of school being a place where you don’t have resources,” she said. “I’ve always ensured our kids have resources, and this just looks irresponsible and, I feel like, [it’s] another blow to public education.”

7 things we still don’t know about the school year in NYC, but really should

2020-09-17T00:35:12+00:00

New York City students will begin to return to their school buildings on Monday, and they face a mountain of worries and unanswered questions.

Next week marks the first time that schools will reopen since the city became the epicenter of the coronavirus this spring, forcing its 1 million public school students to learn online. The city is attempting to become the only school district out of the top 12 largest in the country to re-open for in person learning. But education department leaders, principals, teachers, and parents are still scrambling to figure out what schooling during a pandemic will look like.

The unknowns are dizzying: Will the airflow in schools be working well enough to curb the spread of the coronavirus? Will school buses roll on time for students who need transportation, many of whom have special needs? How will students be disciplined for acting out over Zoom? How much live interaction will students have with their teachers on the days they’re learning online?

While coronavirus cases soared in the spring, New York City now has rates hovering around 1% over several weeks. Because of that, many public health experts support reopening schools. Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged to shut down the nation’s largest school system again, though, if more than 3% of coronavirus tests come back positive over a seven-day period.

Students are expected to attend classes between one and three times a week, and learn online the rest of the time. City officials already delayed the start of school to give teachers and principals more time to plan for a year filled with new social distancing rules and staffing conundrums. In that time, fresh worries have sprung up as coronavirus cases were uncovered among staff who returned to buildings last week. Already, some teachers are refusing to enter their school buildings, working outside instead to demonstrate their distrust for the city’s back-to-school plans.

“We’re going to keep making improvements as we go along, we’re going to keep adjusting and figuring out what we need in terms of staffing,” de Blasio told reporters on Wednesday. “We’ve come this far. We’re going to keep doing what we have to do to make it better every single day.”

Here’s what we know — and what we don’t — about the start of the school year.

Has the city invested enough in improving remote teaching?

Much of the focus on reopening schools has centered on health and safety issues, which are crucial for in-person learning. But the majority of instruction this school year will be conducted virtually, since most students will only be allowed to attend school one to three days a week, and 42% of students — and counting — have opted for fully virtual learning.

While much of the reopening logistics focused on personal protective equipment, cleaning supplies, and ventilation, comparatively little energy has been spent adapting curriculum to suit the remote learning environment. And without the education department providing a wide array of materials and templates for strong remote teaching, schools are largely coming up with their own strategies. That will likely produce uneven results, experts say.

“The operational only accounts for at most half of the problem, and we have to talk about instructional quality as well,” said Tom Liam Lynch, who runs the website InsideSchools and has previously consulted with the education department on instructional technology. “There isn’t a lot of direction or leadership when it comes to this part of the conversation.”

Education department officials have said parents should expect to find a better virtual learning experience than when the system abruptly shut down in March. The city has held training sessions for teachers on a range of topics, including how to adapt core academic subjects like reading math and how to set up virtual science classrooms. And teachers now have a few months of remote teaching under their belts.

But some teachers said they were less excited in the training sessions the department was offering — if they’d heard about them at all — and were more interested in opportunities to learn best practices from each other.

“I wish there wasn’t so much reinventing of the wheel,” said Lynn Shon, a science teacher at Brooklyn’s M.S. 88. “We’re all busting our tails making different versions of the same thing.”

Will schools have enough teachers?

Staffing remains one of the biggest challenges for school leaders. In-person classes will be smaller because of social distancing requirements, and students learning remotely from home also need instruction. Meanwhile, educators have gotten medical accommodations to work from home or requested family leave to take care of children or high-risk relatives.

The union representing principals and other administrators said schools are short 10,000 teachers. The mayor said this week the city plans to shift 2,000 education department employees into school teaching positions to address the staffing shortage, and the education department said it’s searching for other ways to fill gaps. During a town hall with District 15 parents Wednesday night, Carranza said the city is working with the City University of New York to place adjunct professors and graduate students at schools. The city also backpedaled on its promise to offer live instruction to the hybrid students on their remote days — a shift that reduces some of the staffing pressure.

The math still doesn’t add up, and it remains to be seen how the flux of students from in-person to full remote, which students can opt into at any time, will affect the impossible puzzle of creating class schedules — another conundrum Carranza has acknowledged.

Students continued to opt into remote-only learning even as online teacher check-ins kicked off Wednesday, educators said.

On top of the staffing shortage, will we see teacher layoffs?

New Yorkers are bracing for a wave of layoffs to hit the public sector. As the city faces a $9 billion budget hole over two years, de Blasio was expected to send layoff notices this month to about 22,000 public workers across all city agencies. He backed off at the last minute at the urging of union leaders, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Those layoffs might still happen if state lawmakers don’t give the city permission to borrow $5 billion or if the city doesn’t get help from the federal government. City officials have refused to specify how many at the education department could lose their jobs.

Separately, the city is also facing a budget squeeze from the state, which is temporarily withholding 20% of regular payments to districts across New York but announced Wednesday that it won’t withhold any money at the end of this month. If Gov. Andrew Cuomo decides to make these temporary cuts permanent, that could result in $2.3 billion of cuts for city schools, and the city could see 9,000 teachers laid off, according to Chancellor Richard Carranza. Such a loss would force the school system to revert to full remote learning, Carranza has said.

City Hall did not respond to Chalkbeat’s questions about potential layoffs or when the mayor will make a final decision. Freeman Klopott, a spokesman for the state’s budget office, declined to say when exactly Cuomo will decide on whether to make the 20% funding cuts permanent.

How will students be graded?

This was a major flashpoint in the spring, when school buildings first shut down because of the coronavirus.

Many argued that the abrupt shift to remote learning left behind students lacking stable home environments, reliable internet connections, or laptops. The struggle to keep up was only exacerbated by the health crisis, which fell disproportionately on Black and Latino communities, and poor neighborhoods. For those reasons and others, parents, and advocates pushed to suspend traditional grading.

Others, however, argued that children who managed to do well under tough circumstances should be recognized with high marks. This was especially true for parents eyeing competitive middle and high school placements for their children, since grades are a major factor in winning admission.

In the end, the city moved to a system more like pass or fail.

The education department has not yet said whether that policy will stick this year, or if schools will be allowed to design their own grading scales.

How will middle and high school admissions work?

More schools in New York City use “screens,” or competitive admissions standards, than anywhere else in the country. The competitive admissions process helps drive New York City’s status as one of the most segregated school systems in the country, and many parents, educators, and students have been advocating to end or pare back screening well before the coronavirus hit.

Competitive schools often use grades, in addition to state test scores and attendance records, to make admissions decisions. But the city nixed traditional grades at the end of last year, state tests were canceled, and schools could not consider attendance records for admission decisions.

Without those most commonly used screens this year, it remains unclear how students will be selected for sixth and ninth grade.

Some parents have insisted that schools be allowed to look at students’ academic records from before buildings were shuttered because of the pandemic, or even from the year prior — when students were only in third and sixth grades. Others have argued that would be unfair, and the education department has released data that shows those measures are often not reflective of students’ performance later in their school careers.

The city promised to announce a decision by this summer on how admissions would work for rising middle and high schoolers. But parents, students, and schools are still waiting. The department, which has held multiple virtual meetings on the topic, has gathered “important ideas and feedback” and is still working to create a “fair and equitable” plan, a spokesperson said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the application process typically kicks off as soon as classes begin, with open house tours, and sign-ups for interviews and tests.

When will families find out if they score free child care seats?

Because of space constraints and social distancing mandates, children who attend school in person will only be in classrooms for 5.5 hours, one to three days a week. Parents trying to head back to work — or just get more work done from home — will face the same child care challenges as when schools first shut down.

De Blasio promised free child care for 100,000 students on the days they are not learning in school buildings, much like the city did throughout the course of pandemic for the children of essential workers. However, only 30,000 spots will open by the first day of in-person classes. And parents have yet to learn whether they’ve snagged a seat.

“We are finalizing assignments and will have more information to share with families over the next few days,” a city spokesperson said Wednesday.

Charter school students are not eligible to enroll, the New York Times reported, which leaves out about 13% of the city’s public school enrollment.

Those who do land a spot could still have a child care crunch: Getting to and from the centers may be difficult, as officials have not said whether transportation will be provided. And after-care will be offered on a site-by-site basis, but is not guaranteed.

Will all children have a device when school starts?

Families can request devices online here, which will be routed to their schools, or call 311, schools officials said.

When remote learning started in the spring, schools gave students devices from their own stockpiles. Additionally, over several months, the education department purchased and distributed more than 320,000 internet-connected iPads to students who lacked reliable internet access or technology. Some 30,000 iPads remained in the department’s coffers at the end of July, but officials did not say how many are left now. All of these devices can also now operate as hotspots, officials said, which can provide internet connection for up to five other devices.

The responsibility of purchasing laptops and tablets will fall once again to principals this year, as will the job of redistributing the DOE-issued iPads from the spring. School leaders and their union are concerned about having to buy new devices as they’re dealing with smaller budgets this year. They’re worried about meeting the demand — while many of their returning students may be set with devices from the spring, school leaders must account for newly enrolled students or students who no longer want to share one device between multiple siblings.

“I know that our schools, as they’re preparing for the start of the school year, have reached out to families and students to make sure that they do have a device, they do have connectivity,” Carranza told reporters Wednesday. “And if they don’t, then we’re in communication with them to provide them those, either devices or connectivity.”

A suspension for acting out on Zoom? NYC offers little clarity on handling student misbehavior in the coronavirus era.

2020-09-16T00:41:37+00:00

Even as the coronavirus has created a slew of rules students will be expected to follow — from social distancing to wearing masks every day — New York City officials are instructing principals to use last year’s discipline policies.

As schools prepare to open their doors to students next week, the city’s discipline guidance does not explain how administrators should enforce health and safety standards, according to a memo obtained by Chalkbeat.

“They haven’t even bothered to update it — everything is from 2019,” said a Bronx high school principal who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. “It will literally endanger people’s health.”

One of the key questions, multiple principals said, is how they are supposed to enforce the mandate that all students wear masks throughout the school day. Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza declared last month that students who refuse to wear masks would be barred from in-person learning, but it’s unclear if or where that policy is spelled out and it was not included in a recent letter to families about school discipline.

Districts across the country are grappling with how to update their school discipline policies to reflect the coronavirus era — with some ratcheting up punishments for health-related infractions. In New York City, one of the only large urban school systems attempting to return to in-person learning this September, the challenge is particularly complex as teachers will be working with students in two separate learning environments: at home and in school buildings.

In New York, officials are instructing schools to deploy traditional discipline policies regardless of where students are, allowing schools to suspend students whether they are taking classes in person or remotely.

Students who are suspended for up to five days can be removed from their virtual or in-person classrooms, but teachers at their school must provide them with “substantially equivalent” classroom work during that time. As in previous years, students suspended for more than five days may be sent to suspension centers scattered throughout the city and staffed by a different set of educators. Amid COVID-19, that policy raises questions about the health impacts of mixing students from different school communities.

The guidance includes little detail about how suspensions should work in practice. If a student speaks out during a Zoom lesson, could they be barred from returning to class the next day? When two students have a minor scuffle in a hallway or spit on the ground, could they be temporarily banned from in-person instruction because of the health risks? As teachers are stretched between virtual and in-person learning, who will be tasked with ensuring suspended students receive their schoolwork?

Johanna Miller, director of the New York Civil Liberties Union’s education policy center, said she found the guidance puzzling and wondered why a student would need to be cut off from their school community for lengthier suspensions, rather than just be required to work from home.

“The idea that they couldn’t then work remotely from their home just shows that your access to education being taken away from you is the punishment,” she said. “Surviving coronavirus requires community, and resorting to punishments that break the bonds of community are never going to get us there.”

Advocates worry that the lack of clear guidance could also undermine the city’s efforts to train teachers in trauma-informed practices and make schools welcoming when students return. They fear that without clear guardrails, schools may wind up suspending students who are acting out in part because of trauma associated with the pandemic, which has hit communities of color hardest.

“We certainly don’t think it’s in the best interests of students right now to face further systems of exclusion when they have experienced collective trauma both with COVID-19 but also the fight for racial justice,” said Nelson Mar, an education attorney at Bronx Legal Services, a public interest organization. He added that Black students and those with disabilities are already more likely than their peers to be suspended.

Mar and other advocates and lawmakers have called for a statewide moratorium on suspensions, arguing that it is unfair to remove students from classes in the middle of a health crisis that has already caused students to miss out on instruction. New York City leaders have largely embraced policies designed to curtail suspensions, which have fallen significantly under Mayor Bill de Blasio, though some educators have said that has made classrooms more chaotic.

Carranza has indicated that he is not interested in harsh approaches to health violations. “There’ll be a lot of restorative ways of helping students to understand why it’s important to wear the mask,” Carranza said in July. “So it’ll be redirection, it’ll be education. We are not talking about punishing kids.”

But not long after, he said that students who don’t wear masks should be forced to learn from home. An education department spokesperson, Nathaniel Styer, emphasized that sending a student home for refusing to wear a mask should not be considered a disciplinary measure and should happen after a discussion with the student’s parents. He said students should only be barred from in-person learning if they continually flout the mask requirement or have coronavirus symptoms, such as a fever.

Some school leaders said it is essential for the city to provide clarity on how to enforce health rules, even without resorting to severe punishments.

A second Bronx principal, who also spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said it could be impossible to run in-person classes if staff and students see that there aren’t consequences for violating health rules.

“A lot of students need a lot of support and in-person support is the best thing and restorative practice is the best thing,” the principal said, referring to interventions such as peer mediation. But “if you can’t provide safety, there is no instruction that will happen.”

With a week left to reopen, can Mayor de Blasio convince NYC that school buildings are safe?

2020-09-15T01:21:10+00:00

Crouched over laptops and sitting in lawn chairs, teachers at a handful of New York City schools on Monday refused to enter their classrooms and instead worked on their back-to-school plans outside in a show of protest. Others picketed in the morning, waving signs at honking cars and chanting, “Not until it’s safe!”

The demonstrations showed the serious stress Mayor Bill de Blasio’s reopening plans face with just one week left before students are scheduled to return. New York City stands alone among the country’s largest school systems in attempting to launch in-person learning in September, and it is arguably the most consequential decision of de Blasio’s political career.

The mayor pledged Monday to activate a “situation room” to respond swiftly to positive coronavirus cases in schools. He also promised to have an additional 2,000 teachers available to meet the demand of teaching students both in-person and online. Still, educators wondered why the rapid response team wasn’t ready when they returned last week, and the union representing principals said that 10,000 teachers are needed to fill staffing gaps.

The city is forging ahead with plans to bring students back into buildings on Sept. 21 with a hybrid schedule, where most students attend classes up to three days a week and learn online the rest of the time. Already, the restart of in-person learning was delayed by about two weeks after mounting pressure from educators who said they needed more time. The mayor, who has framed reopening as a social justice issue for public school students and their families, said the city is taking steps to assuage educators’ fears.

With an infection rate hovering around 1%, public health experts say the city is in an excellent position to bring back students — especially as reams of evidence, and many families’ own experiences in the spring, suggest that remote-only schooling could pose a major setback for many of the city’s most vulnerable children.

“We’re completely reinventing the wheel on what public education looks like while we continue to navigate this pandemic,” education department spokesperson Miranda Barbot said in a statement. “These unprecedented circumstances are exactly why we pushed back the first day for students — to give staff more time to work together and plan for the year ahead. We continue to work closely with our labor partners to address any concerns they have.”

Yet confidence seems to be eroding not only among educators, but families as well. On Monday, the number of children choosing to do all-remote school ticked up to 42% citywide. School leaders, meanwhile, have only grown more alarmed over a massive staffing shortage.

Educators reported back to buildings for the first time last week, and some found filthy classrooms, broken sinks, locked-shut windows, and rumors of positive coronavirus cases among staff going uninvestigated by the city’s contact tracers.

When Monday came around, teachers at P.S. 139 in Brooklyn ran extension cords outside and went to work in socially distanced groups that fanned across the school’s front yard and playgrounds. Administrators made snacks and water available, and the school’s tech support worker made rounds, making sure everyone could connect to the Wi-Fi.

“We have staff members who lost family members. We have staff members who lost neighbors. This is serious,” said Megan Jonynas, a music teacher and the union chapter leader at P.S. 139.

“We realized we could not in good faith — for our communities, for ourselves, for our children — return to the building unless our basic needs were taken care of,” said Jonynas.

Her colleagues became concerned throughout last week when it became clear that promised deep-cleanings were not happening, with garbage left in classrooms overnight. Then news spread that a staffer had tested positive for the virus on Friday, but the school community was not officially informed until Sunday.

With the new “COVID Response Situation Room,” de Blasio promised a “rapid response” to positive cases that crop up in schools. The idea is to put multiple arms of the bureaucracy in the same physical room, including the health and education departments along with contact tracers — though it’s unclear to what extent that will speed the process.

“Some people will test positive, and those folks will immediately get support,” de Blasio told reporters. “They’ll be helped to get home, to safely separate. The contact tracing will go into effect right away.”

De Blasio also pointed to the data: 55 staff members in schools as of Monday registered positive tests, or just 0.32% of nearly 17,000 tests — substantially below the city’s average rate of infection.

The mayor’s message, however, was overshadowed by panic the previous week, when reports of positive cases at schools were tallied on social media, days before the education department eventually released its own statistics. At the time, the mayor insisted that more information about infections would be provided “once school begins” — seemingly brushing aside the fact that thousands of educators had already started reporting to school buildings.

De Blasio’s promise of swift contract tracing appeared to be strained even with a relatively low number of cases. At Brooklyn’s M.S. 88, which registered a single confirmed coronavirus case last week, some educators began to hear from contact tracers inquiring about possible exposure to their infected colleague days after the city sent them a letter saying the investigation had concluded and the building was safe for teachers to return. (Barbot, the education department spokesperson, indicated that tracers were made aware of additional close contacts of the teacher who tested positive after its initial round of interviews — something that is “not uncommon,” she said.)

The initially slow response might be difficult to overcome. Top union officials representing teachers and principals raised concerns about delays in confirming positive cases and quickly investigating them to determine which staff members needed to quarantine at home. United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said it was reminiscent of the spring, when schools stayed open even amid reports of staff members testing positive for the virus.

“Serious issues are still arising from when we get a reported case to when they confirm it. A two- to three-day lag of confirmation of a case is just unacceptable,” Mulgrew said Monday during a virtual press conference. “We’re not going to go back to March.”

At Urban Assembly Maker Academy, teachers marched outside the Lower Manhattan campus before the work day officially started. Joined by their principal and some parents, they unfurled a banner with a list of safety demands and planned another demonstration on their lunch break.

Ventilation inspections released by the city show that the campus, which houses four schools, has about half its supply and exhaust fans working. Those are some of the main components of an effective ventilation system, with supply fans bringing fresh air inside the building, and exhaust fans sucking stale air out. Principal Luke Bauer said that only two bathrooms within the six-story campus have been deemed safe to use.

He and his staff want an update on repairs made to the campus since the city’s last inspection, Bauer said. They also want to see airflow calculations that show how much air is actually coming in and out of classrooms — something the education department has not released. Meanwhile, Bauer said the education department rejected a proposal from the school to phase in students for in-person learning to make sure all of the safety protocols are working.

Roughly 90% of Maker Academy families have chosen remote-only classes for the fall, said the principal, who spent the summer communicating with families about their safety concerns.

“It’s unfortunate that it takes events like parents and teachers picketing to draw attention to something that we’ve been talking about for the last few weeks,” he said. “We all want to be in school. And there’s a way to do that safely. But I’m worried that this way is not safe.”

Health precautions are top of mind for educators, but there are also gaping staffing holes that will need to be filled if buildings are to reopen.

City leaders and the teachers union struck an agreement that teachers should not be responsible for both in-person and remote classes — and has since railed on the city for not filling needed positions, even while facing a gaping budget hole caused by the virus’ economic fallout. Over the weekend, the UFT emailed its members that chapter leaders would be filing reports in cases where teachers were being given assignments that flout the agreement, saying “staffing and scheduling are becoming a nightmare.”

“This staffing dilemma is not yours to solve,” the email assured members.

The mayor has offered only 2,000 credentialed educators, pulled from all corners of the system, to fill shortages. Meanwhile, the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, which represents principals, said that schools will need 10,000 staffers for in-person and remote classes. The CSA derided the city’s staffing agreement with the teacher’s union as “irresponsible” and said that superintendents are telling principals they simply will not be able to fill the need.

“There is now a week to go before students return to schools, and the City and DOE clearly have no comprehensive plan to fully staff our schools,” CSA President Mark Cannizzaro said in a statement.

Meanwhile, de Blasio has not backed down. Facing reporters at a press conference on Monday, the mayor was asked how certain he is that New York City schools will reopen for in-person learning on Sept. 21. His answer was blunt.

“Of course it will open,” de Blasio said.

NYC teachers union prepares for strike authorization votes this week

2020-08-29T22:04:43+00:00

New York City’s teachers union is rapidly laying the groundwork for a strike to halt the reopening of school buildings, following months of threats that educators would take action over coronavirus safety concerns.

The United Federation of Teachers scheduled a meeting of school-based delegates for Tuesday after suggesting they could vote this week to approve what would be a historic work action, according to emails union representatives sent to members this weekend.

Before Tuesday’s possible vote from the union’s delegate assembly — which includes roughly 3,200 representatives from every public school — the UFT’s executive board is expected to vote Monday to authorize a strike, according to an email sent to Brooklyn chapter leaders Friday night.

“Things are getting real. Based on what is going on, we need to have an emergency Chapter Leader meeting in preparation for a strike,” wrote Brooklyn UFT official Jason Golberg, in the Friday evening email obtained by Chalkbeat.

Accompanying the email is a checklist for school-based union representatives, also known as chapter leaders, to create a strike plan for their own campus. To-do items include identifying strike captains who will assign picket locations in front of building entrances and distribute signs, and creating subcommittees to coordinate social media and communication with members.

The email asks for chapter leaders to submit a strike plan by Monday afternoon.

New York City teachers have not gone on strike for nearly half a century and authorizing one does not mean it will actually happen. Just calling for one, however, ratchets up pressure on Mayor Bill de Blasio to delay the scheduled return to in-person instruction on Sept. 10, something teachers and principals have been loudly demanding. Walking off the job carries big risks, both political and economic, as it would be a violation of state law and could force teachers to forfeit wages and lead to steep penalties for union leaders.

The coronavirus pandemic forced school buildings to close in March, and de Blasio has been forging ahead to reopen with a hybrid schedule. The plan calls for most students to attend in person one to three days a week and to learn from home the rest of the time. But teachers are worried the city has not done enough to ensure buildings will be safe to reopen, and the union has demanded that every school meet a litany of safety requirements and that all teachers and students should be tested for the virus before returning to in-person instruction.

Caren Cleckley, one of the Brooklyn chapter leaders who received Goldberg’s email, said she began reaching out to teachers at her school, Brooklyn Academy of Science and the Environment, as soon as she got the notice.

“I don’t think anybody wants to strike but there are real concerns around safety,” Cleckley, a biology and chemistry teacher, said, emphasizing the union’s demand that all students and staff get tested before showing up for in-person classes. “We think the mayor is rushing.”

Marilyn Ramirez, the chapter leader at High School for Media and Communications in Washington Heights, said she will gauge how her members feel on Monday. Ramirez, a bilingual special education teacher, said she is still deciding how to vote. She said she will support a strike if that’s what the majority wants, but even preparing for one is “distracting from the work that needs to be done,” such as ensuring ventilation systems are in good shape, and she wishes the summer was spent improving remote learning.

“This is a critical week for all of us, and I want to make a decision that is best for the entire school community,” Ramirez said.

The investigative news site The Intercept first reported that the union’s top brass are expected to deliberate Monday on a strike action. Meanwhile, multiple chapter leaders in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Queens said they had received no formal communication about a strike vote.

“We are preparing for any eventuality to make sure schools reopen safely for students, staff and the entire school community,” union spokesman Dick Riley wrote in an email. The resolutions that will be voted on Monday and Tuesday have not yet been finalized, Riley said, though he noted the procedure for striking typically involves authorizing the union’s leadership to make the final call.

While preparations appear to be moving quickly, the city could still be some time away from an actual strike — if one happens at all. Union President Michael Mulgrew has repeatedly said the UFT would head to court to stop a return to buildings, before calling a walkout.

He has not said what the basis of such a suit would be, but this week a judge in Florida sided with the state teachers union there, which sued to prevent educators from reporting to school buildings. The decision has been appealed and is expected to be tied up in the legal system for months.

Still, the mere threat of a work stoppage in other cities, including in Chicago, appears to have forced officials to scrap their plans for in-person instruction.

A teachers strike here would be historic — there hasn’t been one in New York City since 1975. It would also likely be illegal under the state’s Taylor Law, which forces penalties on public sector union employees who participate in work stoppages. The union could lose its ability to automatically collect dues, teachers could miss out on paychecks, and union leadership could even face jail time under the law.

All of that makes it unclear how an authorization vote would unfold in a union with almost 80,000 teachers, and thousands of other staff members including teachers aides, social workers, nurses, speech therapists, and others.

Will Ehrenfeld, the chapter leader at Pathways in Technology Early College High School in Brooklyn, said his understanding is that the votes next week would give the union’s leadership the ability to call a strike.

But Ehrenfeld, who teaches history, said union leaders have not been clear about what the votes next week would authorize and there are some serious concerns among teachers at his school that a strike in violation of state law could mean lost wages or healthcare coverage. And while he does not believe schools are safe enough to reopen, he’s also unclear on what the union’s exact demands would be in the event of a strike.

“The communication from the union has not been particularly clear and that’s a concern,” he said. “I’m definitely still taking feedback from the membership of my school. I’m leaning toward [voting] yes, but I’m still wrestling with it.”

In many ways, the standoff between de Blasio and the union has echoes of March, when the coronavirus crisis first exploded in New York City. As the mayor fought calls to shutter campuses, Mulgrew also threatened legal action immediately before classrooms shut down this spring, and teachers were organizing their own sickout. Ultimately, neither happened because, facing escalating pressure, the mayor abruptly closed schools.

Bill Neidhardt, a de Blasio spokesperson, said: “We continue to have discussions with UFT. They have the right to call meetings as they see fit and we respect that.”

De Blasio has been similarly insistent on reopening this fall for in-person instruction, arguing that keeping schools closed will be disastrous for learning and for low-income parents who rely on schools for social services and so they can work.

But a fiscal crisis looms that only adds to the monumental task of restarting a school system with 1.1 million children. The education department’s budget has already been slashed by more than $700 million. On top of that, the state has begun to temporarily withhold 20% of payments to school districts, cuts which Gov. Andrew Cuomo has warned could become permanent.

At a marathon public meeting earlier this month that stretched past 3 a.m., schools Chancellor Richard Carranza admitted that, without an injection of cash, students would have to return to remote-only learning. Such a cut would result in 9,000 teacher layoffs, he said.

“This is not smoke and mirrors; this is, if we get a 20% cut, we will not be able to open up our schools for in-person learning,” he said.

Facing a $9 billion deficit, de Blasio is hoping against all indications to win borrowing authority to keep the city running, or for federal relief. Without that, the city will begin sending notices Monday of layoffs to an estimated 22,000 employees across all city agencies because workers are entitled to a 30-day warning. Citing ongoing labor negotiations, city officials have refused to say how many education department jobs could be impacted — a matter that is separate from the projected teacher layoffs from permanent state funding cuts.

Hundreds of principals and their union have called for delay to in-person learning, arguing there is just not enough time to get ready before school is set to begin.

Reema Amin contributed to this report.

NYC schools can hold classes outside this fall, as Carranza suggests well-funded PTAs could help pay for it

2020-08-24T21:15:22+00:00

With just over two weeks before school buildings are set to reopen, New York City is encouraging principals to find outdoor learning space in nearby parks and streets, an idea that Mayor Bill de Blasio slow-walked for over a month.

The announcement gives principals the official go-ahead to set up classrooms in schoolyards and creates a formal process to use off-campus outdoor space in parks or on adjacent streets — something schools had previously requested only to find lots of red tape. School leaders are now being encouraged to consider using outdoor space for art, physical education, chorus, and drama, though holding traditional academic classes outdoors is also allowed.

“Principals have been asking for this,” schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said at a press conference on Monday. “Our sister agencies and the Department of Education are taking on the bureaucracy to streamline the approval process.”

Outdoor learning could help reduce the threat of COVID-19, as the virus does not appear to spread as effectively outside. It could also mitigate the risks of old buildings, where air circulation may be lacking due to faulty ventilation systems and windows that do not open. Officials said they are prioritizing outdoor learning in 27 neighborhoods that have been particularly hard hit by the pandemic and at schools with no existing outdoor space.

But the city’s program, which also applies to charter and private schools, omitted many key details. Officials did not say whether schools would receive any additional resources or materials such as tents, though Carranza suggested parent associations could fill in gaps, sparking swift backlash given the vast disparities in fundraising between schools.

The plan also comes more than a week after school leaders were required to submit their hybrid learning plans, detailing how many students could learn in-person at a time. While the education department says that the use of outdoor space doesn’t impact student capacity, some questioned why the city did not roll out its outside learning approval process sooner so principals could incorporate it into their overall planning.

“Once again, the city and [education department] have made decisions, rolled out guidance and announced a deadline far too late and haphazardly for school leaders to develop and implement a thoughtful and well-constructed plan,” Mark Cannizzaro, president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, the union that represents principals, said in a statement.

The tight timeline to set up outdoor learning before the school year begins on Sept. 10 adds to a dizzying array of logistical questions principals must answer as they simultaneously launch virtual and in-person learning.

Principals are encouraged to submit their outdoor learning requests by Aug. 28 and officials said they will respond by Sept. 4, after which requests will continue to be considered on a rolling basis. The decision to approve requests will be made by a working group, which will include officials from the city’s parks, fire, police, transportation, and sanitation departments. Officials said outdoor classes will not increase the amount of time students can expect to learn in person.

Schools that want to use street space are “strongly encouraged” only to request those with limited traffic, not on an existing bus route, and not used by a parking garage, hospital, or fire station. But actually managing the space appears to be up to schools themselves, which will have to “provide staffing and barriers to close any street,” according to a press release.

It’s unclear to what extent the education department will help schools set up outdoor learning; de Blasio downplayed the cost of the effort, declining to provide a dollar amount the city will commit. He said if there are additional costs “we’re going to be supportive any way we can.”

Katie O’Hanlon, an education department spokesperson, said schools would be expected to draw on existing resources but also said the city also plans to seek philanthropic support.

If schools are tasked with pulling off outdoor learning on their own, that could give those with more resources a leg up. Some parent associations have already begun raising money for supplies and outdoor tents, Carranza said. Asked about how the city plans to address disparities in access to additional outdoor learning materials, the chancellor suggested that wealthier PTAs could help other schools.

“I’m asking that if a PTA has done their fundraising and they’ve raised more than enough for their school, let’s identify another school that doesn’t have that fundraising capacity — let’s help them out, too,” Carranza said. An education department spokesperson did not elaborate on how PTAs would be encouraged to share resources and Carranza has not implemented policies that would require parent groups to share funding.

Mark Treyger, chairman of City Council’s education committee, blasted the suggestion that parent associations could step in. “Relying on PTA fundraising to fund this effort only exacerbates inequity,” he wrote on Twitter.

The outdoor learning announcement won mixed reactions from teachers and elected officials. Brad Lander, a Brooklyn city council member who advocated for outdoor learning, praised the announcement but said the city needs more funding from the state and federal governments to pull it off equitably.

Liat Olenick, a Brooklyn elementary school teacher who has pushed for outdoor education, said the move could benefit teachers like her. She was granted a medical accommodation to teach remotely because she has a compromised immune system due to a liver transplant, but would be open to teaching in person if she could work outside.

Still, she worries that with just over two weeks to plan before campuses are set to welcome back students, the opportunity might be lost for many schools.

“You have to figure out the resources on your own, you have to figure out the barriers to close down streets on your own,” she said. “The city should have been planning for this two months ago.”

De Blasio tells educators to step up and serve. They say the mayor is making that hard.

2020-08-20T22:38:55+00:00

The morning after hundreds of New Yorkers asked the education department to pause its plans to reopen campuses, Mayor Bill de Blasio instead asked educators to step up and serve.

The mayor doubled down on his push to reopen schools on Sept. 10, unveiling on Thursday a back-to-school pledge, outlining the city’s health- and safety-related commitments to school communities.

“Educators chose the profession because they love kids and they care about kids, and they know kids are suffering right now,” de Blasio said. “It’s time to say, public servants rise to the occasion and answer the call. Our transit workers did, our first responders did, our health care workers did, our grocery workers did.”

But many feel that the mayor — who ultimately controls city schools — has not given them the guidance and resources to make a safe return feasible. De Blasio’s promises to provide sufficient safety masks, cleaning supplies, and full-time nurses in every school building, among other resources, is doing little to assuage the concerns of many teachers, who want more than a checklist. It also fails to answer some major curriculum and staffing challenges that principals must resolve before opening their school doors.

Moreover, the city has shifted the burden of responsibility onto parents to decide whether they will return to school buildings or go fully remote. Roughly 30% of students have so far opted into fully remote learning, but those numbers are growing by the day, principals said, making planning difficult. Meanwhile, the number of teachers the city will permit to work remotely is also unknown.

“Teachers love kids. That is true. And we love educating them,” said Deirdre Tuite, a high school teacher at Long Island City’s Academy of American Studies. “Schools can have all the PPE available, but it’s more than that.”

She and other teachers want to know, for instance, what bathroom policies will look like and how children will be escorted to the nurse’s office.

“We are teaching [students] that they need to question what is not fair,” Tuite said.“ That is our job.”

The mayor promised that classrooms or buildings without proper ventilation will not be used this year. Teachers — many of whom have worked in poorly ventilated spaces for years — remain skeptical.

The teachers union has threatened to take legal action or even strike if their demands, such as COVID-19 testing for all students and staffers entering buildings, aren’t met. MORE UFT, a social justice arm of the teachers union, ratcheted up the threat of action.

“If the UFT does not follow through on its promise to stop schools from reopening unsafely, then the rank and file will take action to protect students and their families,” according to a statement the group issued on Thursday. “It’s time to stop wasting time on a reopening plan that will fail, and instead focus energy in making remote instruction as effective and equitable as possible.”

Principals meanwhile are hearing from both teachers and families while feeling overwhelmed by the lack of guidance not only on safety issues, but also on curriculum and staffing. School leaders are still struggling with how to staff their blended classrooms of in-person and remote learning. They still don’t know whether an in-person teacher can contractually teach remotely. They say they’ve received no guidance on how to provide services to students with disabilities or those learning English as a new language.

Nearly 30 principals in Manhattan’s District 2 sent a letter to the mayor, Chancellor Richard Carranza, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday, asking them to delay reopening school buildings — joining the ranks of principals in Brooklyn districts 13 and 15, and Manhattan’s District 6. With class sizes of roughly 10 students, the Manhattan principals said they need double or triple the number of teachers. Despite asking on a “near-daily basis for months” how to fill those gaps, they’ve received no guidance, they said. And high staffing needs comes at a time when state budget cuts could mean 9,000 fewer teachers, Carranza warned Wednesday.

“Now, as the summer days wane and we barrel towards September, we can no longer ‘await further guidance’ on many important issues,” District 2 principals wrote. “It is untenable for us to plan — let alone open our school buildings in a matter of weeks — without critical policies and resources.”

Amid the uncertainties, schools are giving staff just two days to clean out classrooms — frozen in time since last March — and get ready for learning to teach in this new reality.

“This is very traumatic for staff coming back,” said Nancy Harris, founding principal of Spruce Street School, a K-8 school in Lower Manhattan.

While Harris said she’s up for a challenge, “the math doesn’t add up.”

“I like a good puzzle,” she said, “but this is a faulty puzzle. There are 100 pieces missing out of the jigsaw box. It doesn’t matter how hard I try.”

State budget cuts threaten 9,000 teacher jobs and NYC’s in-person learning plans, Carranza warns

2020-08-20T08:30:43+00:00

If the state follows through on threatened cuts to schools, New York City will be forced to lay off 9,000 teachers, and students will have to learn from home for the year, schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said Wednesday night.

Carranza’s comments came during a nearly 10-hour public meeting that bled into Thursday morning, during which roughly 200 New Yorkers pleaded with the city’s education department to delay its plans to reopen school buildings on Sept. 10. In recent weeks, city educators, citing health and safety concerns, have intensified calls to put off reopening campuses.

For months Gov. Andrew Cuomo has warned that New York State’s fiscal crisis could mean cutting up to to 20% of state funding for various local services, including for school districts, if federal officials did not offer up more coronavirus relief for states. School officials in the city and elsewhere said they learned last week that the state would temporarily withhold payments to districts. (A Cuomo administration spokesperson said the state has withheld these payments since June). Cuomo can move to make these cuts permanent, provided he notifies the legislature, which has 10 days to come up with an alternate plan for saving money. If the funding isn’t restored, the whole school year could be fully remote because officials won’t have enough resources to operate buildings, Carranza said. A shrunken budget could also cost 9,000 city teachers their jobs, he said.

“This is not smoke and mirrors; this is, if we get a 20% cut, we will not be able to open up our schools for in-person learning,” Carranza said at the Panel for Educational Policy, an appointed board that approves major education policies and contracts. “That means that parents who have no other choice will not be able to go out and get a job. It means we will not be able to man our school system.” (Many families have argued that the current hybrid schedules also do not allow parents to work full-time.)

One way to avoid that outcome, he said, would be to borrow money, but that would require approval from the state legislature, which lawmakers have previously rejected.

After days of dismissing calls for a delayed reopening, Carranza signaled support for such a plan Wednesday night, saying that spending more time to plan and communicate with teachers “sounds like really good practice.” But, he said the state could withhold money from the city for not holding the mandated 180 days of instruction. Districts can request a waiver for meeting this requirement. Carranza said he’s talking to the state education department but did not say whether his office has applied for a waiver or what exactly he’s seeking. He has not yet received “in writing, an assurance” that the district won’t be financially penalized for a delay, he said.

Without such an assurance, delaying reopening would mean making up for lost instructional days by canceling breaks, which Carranza said he’s unwilling to do since educators lost their Spring break and the summer while planning for reopening.

Students, teachers, lawmakers, and parents testified over several hours during Wednesday’s meeting, often expressing deep criticism and distrust in the city’s ability to protect students and staff from contracting the coronavirus. Speakers floated several alternate plans, but one after another said the city’s plans to roll out hybrid learning could not happen in the next three weeks without major compromises.

“I feel like a prop to reopen the economy,” said Meril Mousoom, a rising senior at Stuyvesant High School, who was one of nine students of varying ages who spoke at the meeting. All opposed a return to school buildings but called for varying alternatives. A 7-year-old said it would be too difficult for her peers “to stay silent all the way during lunch,” when students will have to remove masks to eat in their classrooms. A rising sixth-grader advocated pivoting to outdoor learning, “especially for younger kids who felt really cut off during this remote learning.”

Speakers raised myriad concerns about the city’s reopening plan. They worried about the risks of virus transmission in school buildings, how the city’s fiscal crisis would impact its ability to buy health and safety supplies for schools, who exactly will teach students learning remotely, and how teachers could be properly trained in trauma-informed instruction before buildings opened.

Naomi Peña, a member of the parent council in Manhattan’s District 1, on the Lower East Side, said parents she spoke with want school buildings to remain closed, but favored learning outdoors, where virus transmission is less likely. They also want to expand city child care centers from the spring, with priority given to students with disabilities, those who are homeless, learning English or are the children of essential workers, she said. (The city has said it will provide child care for 100,000 students this fall, but no other details have been revealed.)

Many speakers said they were part of a parent group called PRESS NYC, which had recently described their concerns in an op-ed for the Washington Post. The group had asked families and elected officials to speak Wednesday in support of a delay. Many teachers who spoke were with MORE, a caucus within the teachers union that has forcefully scrutinized reopening plans.

Families can opt for full-time remote learning at any point during the school year. About 30% of students have so far chosen a fully remote schedule. That number grew by nearly 41,000 students between Aug. 7 and last Friday, and will likely continue to rise ahead of the September start date.

“I sympathize with students and parents who are like, ‘I need to get my kid back in the building because the level of learning is not the same.’ But I have to say, we hear over and over again from our parents that it’s not safe and the plan doesn’t make sense — instructionally, pedagogically, it doesn’t make any sense because these kids aren’t replicating the actual classroom environment they had before,” said Eric Crump, a member of the parent council in District 4, which includes East Harlem.

Pressure to delay reopening has intensified in recent weeks from the unions representing teachers and principals, but also from rank-and-file educators who have banded together to publicly share their concerns. Mayor Bill de Blasio and Carranza have dismissed their calls to delay a reopening, instead announcing safety measures, such as equipping every school building with a full-time nurse and creating a hotline for principals who need additional masks and cleaning supplies. During Wednesday’s meeting Carranza emphasized the city’s 0.24% coronavirus positivity rate announced Wednesday morning, a record low since March.

“We are the only school system of the 10 largest in America that is in this position, because of the science, to be able to plan for in-person learning,” Carranza said. “Don’t fall for the urban myth, don’t fall for science fiction. Look at the science.”

Several public health experts have said it’s safe to reopen school buildings in New York City if various safety measures are in place. Education department officials say they have been working for months to repair hundreds of faulty ventilation systems and have put in place robust sanitizing, mask-wearing, and social-distancing protocols.

But some speakers, wary of the massive virus death toll in New York City, questioned the safety of congregating at all — echoing the recent concerns of a longtime health advisor of de Blasio. As the meeting neared a close around 3:40 a.m., three of the 11 panel members also called for a delay.

“We have an overwhelming desire to return to school, but I stress again, one case of positive [coronavirus] — whether it’s from one staff member, a child — is too much,” said Paullette Healey, a parent and member of the Citywide Council on Special Education.

Separately, several people became alarmed after Carranza raised his voice and cut off a parent who leveled allegations of racism against the principal of her Brooklyn elementary school. That parent’s comments came after multiple others raised similar concerns, all naming the principal.

Carranza said he wouldn’t allow the principal to be accused of something in a public forum, where she could not defend herself, and told the parent to contact administrators before asking the facilitator to “take control of the meeting,” who muted the parent’s microphone. Several speakers, including that parent, said they had already unsuccessfully contacted administrators. They criticized the chancellor’s reaction and tone. Carranza defended his comments multiple times during the meeting and forcefully shot down insinuations that he did not care about communities of color.

“I will fight for our children of color, which I’ve done since I got here, but I will also protect the due process of our employees, so do with that what you may,” Carranza said, who later said one of his deputies would look into their complaints.

Panel member Tom Sheppard said he felt that parents were disrespected.

“Mr. Chancellor, with all due respect, I understand what you are saying about slandering someone, but I’m sitting here feeling like a degree of trauma has been inflicted on me and on parents of 1.1 million children,” Sheppard said.

More than three dozen Manhattan principals join growing calls to delay in-person school

2020-08-18T21:50:31+00:00

Principals from more than 40 Upper Manhattan schools have joined calls to delay the reopening of in-person learning.

School leaders from District 6, which includes Inwood and Washington Heights, are asking Mayor Bill de Blasio and Chancellor Richard Carranza for more time for logistical planning. They join dozens of principals in Brooklyn’s districts 13 and 15 who have put forth proposals calling for such a delay. Echoing those districts’ concerns, the city principals union also asked for a delay, a move the union representing teachers supports.

“Asking an undervalued and under-resourced system to do three times the work with even fewer resources is unrealistic and unattainable,” District 6 principals wrote in a letter Tuesday. “We cannot do a better job with remote learning [and well over half of all students will be remote each day whether children are fully remote or doing blended learning], while pretending that we can be back in the buildings at the same time.”

The education department’s hybrid models, with children attending school buildings five days every two or three weeks to allow for up to about 11 students in a room at a given time, won’t work for their communities, the principals said. These schedules don’t allow parents to return to their jobs, and they require schools to have twice as many teachers as they currently have, the letter stated. They also fear it’s not “physically and emotionally appropriate” to restrict children’s movement in a 6-square-foot area for 5.5 hours a day.

In recent days, city officials have dismissed the growing chorus of calls from school leaders and educators that classrooms won’t be ready by Sept. 10, and instead announced various protocols expected to be in place for reopening.

The city would ensure that every New York City school building will have a full-time nurse by the start of the school year, de Blasio said last week. Principals will have a special hotline to request additional safety supplies, like masks, that will be “immediately delivered,” the mayor said.

“We’re throwing in the kitchen sink here to keep the schools safe,” de Blasio told reporters Tuesday. “I cannot even give you the whole list because it’s so long, of all the measures being taken to make sure schools are safe and clean and healthy – one measure layered on top of another, on top of another.”

School staff typically spend just two days together in the building getting their classrooms in order before welcoming students, but principals argue this is no typical year. Staff will use that same timeline to prepare their socially distanced classrooms and make sure they understand the protocols of the physical environment as well as curriculum changes — where remote and in-person teachers will have to figure out new ways to collaborate, as schools are expected to focus on trauma-informed instruction.

The mayor’s recently announced efforts still fall short of the requests of not just unions, but groups of rank-and-file educators who have publicly banded together to air their concerns. They say they remain unsure of many logistics, such as who will teach the students in the hybrid classes on the days children are fully remote. The education department has also failed to provide any guidance for how to deliver services for students with disabilities and multilingual learners, the principals noted. Many questions remain about how schools will train everyone around new health and safety protocols.

Miranda Barbot, a spokesperson for the education department, cited the city’s low virus positivity rate, hovering around 1%, as a reason schools are safe to reopen — a point educators have said isn’t fair in ZIP codes where the infection rate is higher.

Officials are sharing guidance frequently, Barbot added.

“Educators and school leaders are doing tremendous work to make the most important school year in history safe and healthy for children,” she said, “and we know they need information and resources to make reopening possible.”

Similar to requests from other districts’ principals, those in District 6 are asking city officials to hold remote-only instruction “until the system is prepared to implement verifiable safety protocols.”

Many educators have been skeptical that building ventilation systems will be fixed or personal protective equipment will arrive in time for the start of school despite city assurances. As the system races to fix poor ventilation at hundreds of buildings across the city, officials have said they won’t open any classrooms with faulty, unrepaired systems.

The letter asks the education department to phase students into in-person learning after “health and safety protocols” have been met, though it doesn’t specify specific benchmarks. In an attempt to address child care, the letter also asks city officials to open each elementary school as a child care center for students who are scheduled for remote learning but cannot safely stay home alone without an adult, though it is unclear from the letter who would staff such centers.

Julie Zuckerman, one of the principals who signed the letter, told Chalkbeat she would like her school to go fully remote while staffing her building with teachers who would supervise children of families struggling to find child care.

“It’s not about staff not recognizing that families need this — it’s a responsibility that we think is ours,” Zuckerman said. She’s trying to figure out how to provide that for her community, she said.

City officials have planned to offer child care to 100,000 children, but have not shared more details about who will have access to these seats or where they will be.

Most NYC schools have firmed up their hybrid schedules. But figuring out classroom assignments remains a challenge.

2020-08-14T21:44:02+00:00

Schools will next week begin informing families which days their children will attend school buildings for those choosing the blended model of in-person and remote learning, education officials said Friday.

But schools still need to figure out complicated staffing issues to create their classes ahead of the planned Sept. 10 start date.

Of roughly 1,600 schools, nearly 1,070 schools got the go-ahead to follow one of the education department’s scheduling models, which for the most part allow students to attend one to three days a week. Most schools can only accommodate a third to a half of their students, since many classrooms can only hold up to about 12 children at a time while keeping students 6 feet apart.

Another 125 schools won approvals for exceptions that tweaked the department’s models. For instance, some schools requested that certain students attend five days a week — similar to the model the education department had already sanctioned for District 75 schools, which serve students with the most profound disabilities. Nearly 240 schools are still awaiting word on whether the department will grant their exceptions. All schools must submit their plans by Friday.

No schools requested fully remote schedules, according to Miranda Barbot, a spokesperson for the department.

Department officials have said that while they strongly favor the hybrid models the city set forth, schools could ask for exceptions if the proposed schedules weren’t feasible because of staffing levels or space restrictions, or because schools have “unique programmatic needs that must be addressed,” according to a department spokesperson.

For some schools that meant an all-school fully remote schedule. But several school communities said they felt discouraged from submitting such requests since the education department publicly said full-remote schedules wouldn’t be approved. Officials later said they would consider changing that stance, but still strongly opposed all-remote models if the whole school did not opt out of hybrid learning.

At Stuyvesant High School, one of the city’s coveted specialized high schools, the student newspaper reported that the local superintendent did not allow the former principal to submit a request for a full-time remote schedule. Parents said that the high performing Bard College Early High School Queens had to go back to the drawing board after creating a plan for a fully remote schedule that would have left the building open for the neediest students. Teachers at Upper Manhattan’s M.S. 324 said education department officials shot down their requests for one remote day a week for the entire school community.

The news about Stuyvesant led Julie Zuckerman, the principal of a small Washington Heights English/Spanish dual language school, to table her idea for a remote-only schedule in the fall.

Instead, Zuckerman, who leads Castle Bridge School, officially requested one of the education department models where students switch off between attending school three days one week and two days the next. About half of her students are choosing to learn from home full-time, which means she will have five students per classroom.

Because her building will have some extra capacity, she’s asked the department to allow phasing in more students who would attend school five days a week so she can help meet the needs of working families struggling to find child care. (About 65% of Castle Bridge students were from low-income families in the 2018-2019 school year, the most recently available data.)

“Because as it is, Zuckerman said, “the plans don’t allow parents to go back to work.”

The school would only allow that if they go two and a half weeks without any positive virus cases in their community, she explained. City officials have said they plan to offer 100,000 slots for child care in the fall, but many worry that the number of seats will fall short of the need.

Despite Friday’s deadline for submitting school plans, Zuckerman said she wants to meet with her School Leadership Team again to decide if they should go back to the drawing table and request an all-remote schedule.

She worries that having children come some days but not others will not only be confusing for them, but also too tough for their teachers, who will be managing multiple cohorts of students, to plan around. She also thought having all students remote would allow her and her teachers to focus on creating a more coherent virtual curriculum.

But while she’d prefer all of her students to go remote, she knows that’s not feasible for her families. So, she would keep the building open for students whose families need child care five days a week, emulating the Regional Enrichment Centers that opened this spring for children of essential workers. All students would still learn virtually, but students in the building would have a staff person supervising them.

Now that schools are beginning to firm up their schedules, the next step is to create classes and figure out who will teach the students when they’re in school as well as on their remote days. They also need to determine who will teach the fully remote students. About 26% of students have so far requested to go fully remote. Roughly 15% of teachers have requested medical accommodations, but officials have not said how many will be granted.

It’s still an open question for Zuckerman’s school, where all the classes are staffed with two teachers who instruct general education students alongside students with disabilities. She could split those teachers up — but doing so could risk skirting special education laws. Students with disabilities in those classes cannot be segregated from their general education peers, and they still require access to a special education teacher. Officials have still not answered how these kinds of co-taught classes — known as Integrated Co-Teaching — will work in a hybrid setting. Another complication could be how many of her 26 teachers work from home exclusively. One was approved to work from home, she said, while another teacher, a paraprofessional, and two speech therapists have requested such accommodations.

“We have two teachers and at least one [paraprofessional] for each class, so how are those people going to decide how to staff it?” Zuckerman said. “And it’s certainly trickier when you have one person in the team who’s home — that puts much more pressure on the teacher. No one is grumbling about it, but it certainly has the potential to really wear on people. There’s no guidance.”

With less than a month to the first day of school, a growing number of principals are asking the city for more time. The union representing school administrators this week asked to delay building re-openings until the end of September. A group of principals from Brooklyn’s District 15 has asked to allow students to attend virtually the first two weeks of school, as staff readies the buildings and receive trauma-related training. The schools would then phase in students over the following several weeks.

The mayor dismissed the idea, but the education department has not yet posted an official school calendar.

Christina Veiga contributed.

NYC will hire 400 school nurses amid pressure from educators and families

2020-08-13T20:02:11+00:00

All New York City school buildings will have a full-time nurse by the start of the school year, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Thursday, addressing a longtime concern of educators and families.

With the coronavirus pandemic lingering, officials said they will hire 400 more full-time nurses for K-12 schools, seeking to fill vacancies at 359 school buildings with additional hires to cover absences and retirements.

As of the end of 2019, 116 school buildings and 137 schools serving about 70,000 students were without a full-time nurse, according to an estimate from the United Federation of Teachers, the union representing New York City public school teachers. But a union spokesperson said that analysis was conservative: It excluded pre-Ks, District 75 schools, which serve students with the most significant disabilities, schools with on-site health clinics, or charter schools, which can be co-located in buildings with district schools.

The city will hire another 100 nurses to cover 2,000 early childhood programs, as well as child care centers the city plans to open when the school year starts. Officials said these nurses will provide more broad “geographic” coverage of programs, “prioritizing the zip codes hardest hit by COVID-19,” according to a news release from City Hall. The education department will also contract with a tele-health nursing provider to create a hotline for all child care programs, which providers can call for medical-related questions.

Officials said these nurses will work full-time and will be staffed through contracts issued by the city’s Health and Hospitals system. Their salaries will come out of the hospital system’s budget. But these nurses will not remain in school buildings permanently — the hiring agreement will only span the upcoming school year, said Nathaniel Styer, a spokesperson for the education department.

“Health and Hospitals came to the rescue here,” de Blasio told reporters.

The mayor said he was confident the agency could hire the nurses with just a month before school starts, noting that the agency had quickly hired “thousands” of additional nurses this spring as New York became the brutal epicenter of a virus that has killed about 23,000 New Yorkers.

A spokesperson for Health and Hospitals did not respond to a question about how much the hiring of school nurses would cost.

Thursday’s announcement addressed just one concern of the unions representing teachers and principals, which have pushed back strongly on the city’s school reopening plans. In a statement, Chancellor Richard Carranza credited advocacy of parents and schools staff as why the city was addressing the nursing shortage.

Union leaders have asked for more specificity around health and safety measures, such as how contact tracing will work when a student or staffer tests positive for the coronavirus. They also want a guarantee that their schools will have all necessary personal protective equipment — the cost for which individual schools will not have to shoulder, the city has promised.

Both unions, which have been involved in the planning for reopening, are now asking the city to delay the start of in-person school, to give school leaders more planning time. After weeks of sharp statements against the city’s reopening plans, Thursday’s news drew a more conciliatory tone from the teachers union, or UFT.

“Parents and educators will be relieved, and the 70,000 students who have gone without will now have access to a medical professional if and when school buildings reopen,” said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, in a statement.

But concerns over pay disparities, already an issue among school nurses, are likely to remain — an issue that Councilman Mark Treyger, chair of the council’s education committee, immediately raised after de Blasio’s announcement. School nurses are staffed by both the health and education departments; Health and Hospitals is its own agency. Those staffed by the education department are represented by the UFT and make between $10,000 and $20,000 more than their counterparts, according to one estimate reported by Gothamist. In 2018, a staff nurse represented by the UFT made between $64,418 and $70,513, depending on years of experience.

The city made a similar promise before schools closed in March, though the plan was only to hire 85 additional nurses. Styer, of the education department, said the city had issued an emergency contract for these nurses, who were deployed to buildings briefly before they closed.

Carranza indicated that school nurses’ role in buildings generally won’t change, as they will remain “the medical expert on campus.” The city is requiring schools to create an isolation room, where students experiencing virus symptoms will be placed while they wait for a parent or guardian to pick them up. But those rooms will not be monitored by nurses, but instead by a staff person in the building, who will be required to wear personal protective equipment to do so. (That person, Carranza said, can also staff the room by standing outside of it.)

He also noted that with this hiring plan, some buildings in the Community Schools program, which provide wrap-around services, will have more than one health professional. That’s because schools in that program may be partnered with a community-based organization that already staffs the building with a rotation of nurses and doctors.

However, the city has levied a $9 million cut to Community Schools, meaning some schools could decide to reduce spending on such contracts.

Principals call on NYC to delay start of in-person school

2020-08-12T19:32:51+00:00

As New York City hurtles toward a Sept. 10 school start date, the unions representing both school administrators and teachers are asking the city to delay the start of in-person school until the end of September.

Opening in less than one month ignores “dire warnings” from principals and would “disregard” the “well-being of our school communities,” Mark Cannizzaro, president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators wrote Wednesday to Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza. The union, which the city has regularly consulted on its fall scheduling, said last month that the planning process had an “alarming lack of direction.”

Schools must submit their individual plans by Friday and then wait for approval, which could mean less than 15 working days to prepare for the arrival of students, Cannizzaro said. On top of that, they are still waiting for guidance for many details about reopening, making the task impossible to complete while also providing assurances that their buildings are safe.

“Regrettably, the city started the planning process far too late for them to have any faith or confidence that they can reopen their buildings on September 10th,” Cannizzaro wrote. “Especially given that teachers do not report until September 8th, allowing frighteningly little time for the preparation and training necessary for these unprecedented circumstances.”

Separately, nearly three dozen principals in Brooklyn’s District 15 asked the city to phase-in the reopening of schools, starting with a remote-only schedule, according to a letter they addressed to de Blasio, Carranza and Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The Brooklyn principals are calling to have students learn from home through Sept. 18, with pre-recorded lessons only, to give staff time to learn new safety protocols and practice safety procedures, set up and inspect classrooms, and ensure that promised building improvements have actually been made. Schools would also use this time to train staff on trauma-informed instruction. Then, from Sept. 21 to Oct. 18, they would phase-in the children opting for the mix of in-person and at-home learning.

“We are gravely concerned that the central response to opening has been piecemeal,” the letter stated. “The COVID-19 funding provided to schools is completely inadequate to address the challenges we face. Our schools need immediate answers, a clear blueprint, and the resources to move forward safely.”

The principals said they have little information on how key scheduling challenges will be met, such as how to program their hybrid schedules for students with disabilities or those learning English as a new language. Some schools with more resources are trying to negotiate using outdoor space and purchase extra personal protective equipment, for instance, while other schools are unable to do that, raising concerns about equity across the system, they wrote.

Getting answers to various specific questions — such as for health and safety, space usage, and academics — has even been tough for the district’s superintendent’s team, the letter said. The city has held informational sessions with school leaders, have worked in concert with the unions representing educators, and has publicly posted their academic and health plans, as required by the state. Still, many of their concerns feel unheeded, school leaders said.

The teachers union agreed with its principal union counterparts.

“The UFT has said repeatedly that we cannot re-open schools unless they are safe for students and staff,” United Teachers Federation president Michael Mulgrew said in a statement. “Will any parents be willing to put their children in a school whose principal believes the building is not ready to open because it is not safe?”

Mayor Bill de Blasio pushed back on the unions’ calls to delay in-person reopening, noting that he has spoken recently with Mulgrew and Cannizzaro and was working to address their concerns. Unions “will always sound various alarms [and] say things, sometimes, in a very dramatic fashion,” he said.

“If you want to take away another month of a kid’s education, you can do that, but that’s not where I start,” de Blasio said after he toured Village Academy in Far Rockaway on Wednesday afternoon to observe the measures taken to ensure social distancing. “Let’s start with the valid concerns that teachers and administrators are raising with a whole month to go.”

There, Principal Doris C. Lee told reporters she had some “clear systems and structures” in place to reopen and has enjoyed support from her superintendent and her district’s borough office.

But school leaders and communities in other parts of the city are echoing concerns similar to the unions about the start date. Manhattan’s Urban Assembly Maker Academy drafted a detailed proposal to phase in groups of students over six weeks, allowing for those not in school to continue learning remotely only. Instruction during the first phases would focus on social emotional learning and community building, only moving to academic content several weeks in.

As long as indoor dining is prohibited, the school would not allow students to eat indoors either, according to the lengthy proposal. To bring anyone back in the building, staff would have to check off on an extensive list of “prerequisites,” to ensure no one is experiencing coronavirus symptoms.The school is demanding not only clear guidance on how testing and tracing will work, but also a reliable data sharing plan among the schools it shares a building with. The city has mapped out various scenarios that would trigger the closure of classrooms or school buildings if someone tests positive for the virus, but educators say they need more details.

Roughly 76% of the school’s students are Black and Hispanic, and its proposal notes that COVID-19 has disproportionately affected communities of color. But school leaders don’t feel they have enough data to help guide their reopening in a way that is safe or community-driven for their families, which is one reason why they want more time.

They hope their proposal could be a model for others. Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer endorsed the plan and sent it to other principals in Manhattan, the school said.

“While the proposal will need to evolve and draw specifics from each school’s unique context, we hope that it can be adapted for use throughout NYC public schools, whenever we eventually begin to reopen,” the school community wrote. “Any safe reopening of schools must center the specific needs of populations who will be disproportionately harmed by COVID spread.”

Principals have largely been trying to pick a hybrid schedule without having some key data, such as how many families will opt for a fully remote schedule or how many teachers will request to work from home, until this week.

The city this week announced that 264,000 district students, or 26%, have so far chosen to learn exclusively from home in the fall, and 15% of teachers have requested medical accommodations.

Some principals, especially of large, overcrowded schools, worry how they will staff classes in-person as well as virtually, given a hiring freeze and budget constraints. For instance, there might be no biology teacher available for students who are fully or partially remote, while no algebra teachers might be available for in-person instruction. Or a school might not have a third grade teacher working remotely, so they might need to tap their music teacher to fill that gap.

“As you know, teachers cannot be in two places at once,” said Moses Ojeda, principal of Thomas A. Edison Career and Technical Education High School in Queens, during a discussion about reopening plans on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show.

Even if they have figured out a schedule that works in terms of their student enrollment and building space constraints —to allow for six feet of social distancing — some school leaders are worried about what happens if staff gets sick during the school year. Principals can bring in substitutes or staff from the city’s Absent Teacher Reserve, but it could be a financial and logistical challenge to do so especially as they might need someone for a specific content area.

Ojeda and two other principals, both in the Bronx, told Lehrer that they supported a delay in opening. Students would still learn remotely while school leaders have more time to game out what in-person schedules would look like, they said.

“Time does not have to be our enemy, it can actually be an ally,” said Roshone Ault Lee, principal and founder of South Bronx Academy for Applied Media. “So, if we delay the start of school and we are able to strategically plan and think through and mitigate all the challenges, it will be beneficial for everyone.”

A quarter of NYC students opt out of school buildings this fall, while 736,000 are set to return — for now

2020-08-10T19:14:04+00:00

More than a quarter of New York City families who attend traditional public schools plan to start the 2020-2021 school year fully remote, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Monday.

That means roughly 264,000 students are opting to stay out of school buildings while another 736,000 children are set to participate in a hybrid schedule that combines in-person instruction one to three days a week, while learning at home the rest of the time.

About 120,000 other children attend charter schools, which have created their own fall plans, with some starting fully remote and others prioritizing younger learners or students with disabilities for in-school time.

“I’ve given the order to move forward only if we can do it safely and effectively and in a way that keeps our kids healthy,” de Blasio told reporters. “I know we can.”

The numbers reflected the vast desire of families to be back in school buildings, de Blasio said. But Monday’s figures may be a preliminary look, since families can switch to remote-only learning at any time during the school year, and many families opted to avoid making a decision at this point. (Those who filed for remote-only learning can only return to school buildings on a quarterly basis after the first quarter starts on Nov. 16.)

The numbers might not indicate how many families feel safe returning to buildings, rather, to some extent, point to families’ need for their children to be in school for part of the week as parents and guardians head back to work. Even with the hybrid schedule, however, many families will continue to need child care on the remote days as well as the school days, which will be 5.5 hours long. The city is expected to launch 100,000 child care slots for the days children are still in school.

Remote learning was profoundly difficult for many families for various reasons, including trouble with accessing reliable technology and internet or difficulty navigating lessons, particularly for the city’s youngest learners, students with disabilities, and students learning English as a new language. Some families, who are on the fence and could potentially keep their children home, felt they had little information at this point in terms of what full time remote learning will look like. The education department, for instance, has said the vast majority of remote students would be taught by teachers from their school, but could not guarantee that.

Others might have held off from making a decision about the fall as they await their school’s final programming choice letting them know whether their children can attend school buildings five days every two weeks, three weeks or less.

Schools are expected to share schedules with families in the next two weeks, officials said. Figuring out how many days students can attend in person has posed incredible challenges for school leaders, who have been operating without knowing their in-school enrollment figures or the number of teachers who will be working remotely because of medical accommodations. Roughly 15% of teachers have requested medical accommodations to teach from home, meaning 66,000 others will report to buildings, Chancellor Richard Carranza said. The city, which had estimated up to 20% of teachers could work from home, has not yet said how many of these requests will be granted.

New York City is the only major urban school district planning to offer in-person classes in the fall. De Blasio underscored the city’s low coronavirus infection rate, which has hovered around 2% since June, as the reason why it’s possible. Schools will not open if the infection rate surpasses 3% over a seven-day average, the mayor said.

“If you look at what’s happening in other places, it probably causes you a certain amount of concern and a certain amount of doubt,” de Blasio said, “but we are not those other places.”

Public health experts have said it’s safe to reopen schools if various safety precautions are taken. The city has “very stringent standards” for reopening its buildings, the mayor added. “So long as we can meet those standards, we’re gonna be ready to serve our kids in September.”

Schools across the state are allowed to reopen because of New York’s overall low infection rate, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Friday, setting the state’s infection rate threshold at 5%. Cuomo asked the state’s largest districts to hold more informational sessions with parents and teachers in order to build more trust about reopening plans.

Despite being consulted on the reopening plans, the teachers and principals unions said the city has failed to address numerous concerns about the school system’s ability to reopen buildings safely. The United Federation of Teachers, or UFT, for example, has demanded a more robust contact tracing system for when someone in a school building tests positive for the virus. A caucus within the teachers union is exploring how to conduct sickouts as a way to get around laws prohibiting strikes.

“This is one step in the process of figuring out if schools reopen how to do it safely,” said UFT President Michael Mulgrew in a statement about Monday’s announcement. “We have a long way to go. Many questions about safety and about blended learning are still unanswered.”

Along with the unions, some city lawmakers have questioned the city’s ability to pay for all the costs associated with preparing buildings in the fall given its financial situation. The education department has declined to say how much it will cost to buy protective equipment, such as masks, more sanitizer, and more cleaning equipment for all of its schools.

Meanwhile, state education officials are urging Cuomo and the legislature to help districts pay for these increased costs, as the state faces its own financial crisis.

The education department has daunting tasks ahead with one month to go before the city’s Sept. 10 start date. Many schools don’t have full-time nurses — something de Blasio said Monday the city is “working on.” The teachers union said schools should not reopen unless every building had a nurse.

City officials also vowed to fix faulty ventilation systems — another sticking point with the union and something that public health experts have said is an important consideration for reopening schools.

De Blasio said a “few hundred” out of 58,000 of classrooms needed ventilation fixes, but did not provide specific figures. A New York Daily News analysis found that 650 school buildings last year had at least one documented deficiency with ventilation.

Many educators are skeptical that the city will follow through on promises of addressing ventilation systems. For example, officials last week told Chalkbeat that the overall system at Upper Manhattan’s M.S. 324 did not require repair. This week they told the Daily News that crews were scheduled to fix ventilation fans Monday. De Blasio promised Monday to shed light on the progress of systemwide repairs moving forward.

Maintenance crews have been working through the summer to update ventilation systems and filters, Carranza said. Schools will not open classrooms without properly functioning systems. That’s one reason why the education department is searching for alternate classroom space, Carranza said. Some city officials and educators are pushing the department to allow more learning to happen outdoors.

The education department distributed 321K iPads to NYC students for remote learning. Now principals have to get them back.

2020-07-29T19:53:10+00:00

When school buildings closed down in the spring, the education department’s central office raced to purchase and deliver hundreds of thousands of iPads with built-in internet access. The massive task took months to carry out, and as of last week, some 321,500 internet-enabled iPads reached students’ hands, officials said.

Now the job of collecting all of those devices and redistributing them will be up to individual schools — a shift that principals requested, according to the education department. But so will the job of ordering and paying for any new devices, and some principals, as well as their union, are not happy about having to shoulder those costs.

Some are concerned the bills for devices could be a burden as they begin the year with smaller budgets and a hiring freeze amid a pandemic-fueled financial crisis.

“The [education department], while giving us autonomy, is passing the financial buck to the schools,” said one principal who asked to remain anonymous in fear of retribution. “I worry about that.”

Schools have long been responsible for purchasing devices. But as remote learning started, the education department took over, spending $269 million on 300,000 iPads with internet plans, or roughly $897 per device, officials said in April. They ended up purchasing and distributing about 21,000 more than that, and have an additional 30,000 iPads left over. The department will give those to schools that cannot afford to buy new ones, officials said.

The department did not have an estimate of how many new devices might be needed or how this shift will impact different schools, but the burden of buying new devices could fall disproportionately on high poverty schools where the needs for devices are greater.

(Officials declined to say what will happen if the 30,000-surplus runs out, except that the department’s response will “depend” on each school’s situation.)

The iPads handed out last school year follow the student. For example, a fifth grader who received a device in the spring will return that device to their new middle school instead of their former elementary school. Graduating seniors are currently in the process of returning their devices, education department officials said. Then there are incoming kindergarteners and other students new to the system.

After schools collect any iPads that their students received over the spring, along with their own inventories of laptops and tablets, staff will redistribute the devices based on who still needs internet access and who can get by with a regular computer.

Also, principals anticipate that students’ devices could break. Existing iPads are covered by a 3-year warranty that covers issues such as battery replacement or accidental damage, department officials said, meaning schools will not have to take on those costs but will be responsible for requesting the repair.

Apart from the department’s central budget, principals manage their own budgets that pay for school-level costs, such as staff, various services for students, and supplies. They have long been in charge of purchasing devices for their students, such as laptops and tablets. In fact, individual schools distributed about 175,000 laptops and tablets — without built-in internet — to their students as educators raced to prepare for virtual school.

But as the coronavirus forced students to learn remotely in March, the education department took over the task of distributing — and paying for — devices that included internet. With an estimated 300,000 students needing internet-enabled devices, it took the education department weeks to purchase and deliver them. Some frustrated families went long stretches of time before seeing their requests fulfilled, forcing them to rely on printed packets their schools managed to send students or to use cell phones to complete classwork.

The need for the internet-ready iPads grew as the school year progressed, and principals believe they might see an uptick in requests this fall. Some families soon realized they could not manage sharing one device among multiple family members. Others struggled to find reliable or affordable internet. The department said it is advocating for internet companies to extend free or reduced-price deals for the fall.

Returning the responsibility of requesting and distributing devices at the school level would make some things easier, such as technical support, some principals told Chalkbeat. For example, if families come to pick up their order at the school, staff can show parents or students how to use the device and the apps needed for remote learning, such as Google Classroom, they said. This sort of support became extremely complicated to offer from afar in the spring since devices were sent directly to homes. Often, families were confused about how to order devices in the first place. And generally, principals said, they understand their students’ needs best.

But budgeting could become tricky.

Come fall, one principal said she’ll likely redistribute her devices based on age group. Her older elementary school students need laptops since they type more than those in K-2, who would do fine with tablets. She could simply have students trade devices, but this may also require the purchase of more laptops.

This principal also has 50 new students on her roster, meaning she may need more devices based on what their needs are. Her school has some money to cover these potential costs, but she noted that other schools may not have funds at all because of overall cuts to school budgets.

“While [the central] system will help if we don’t have the money, then we wind up having to make a case for why we don’t have money,” said the principal, who also asked to remain anonymous in fear of retribution.

Shifting this cost to schools is misguided right now, the principals union contended.

“School budgets have already been greatly impacted across the city,” said Henry Rubio, executive vice president of the union that represents principals and administrators, in a statement, when asked about the plan. “The [education department] should take on these costs so that school leaders can use their limited funds to provide students with the supports they need.”

A department spokesperson said the shift from centrally controlling device distribution was based on feedback from school administrators.

“We heard loud and clear from school leaders that they need the flexibility restored to buy devices based on their school’s needs, and we are reverting back to this long-standing school policy and practice,” a department spokesperson said.

In financial crisis, NYC cut $707M from its education budget. These programs will feel the effects.

2020-07-23T00:33:28+00:00

The city’s education department took a $707 million hit in the new fiscal year, including $65 million more in budget cuts than Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed in the spring.

While the budget saved a few big ticket items the mayor originally planned to slash, it cut back on or eliminated several programs that directly affect teachers, students, and school leaders.

The economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic helped fuel a $9 billion citywide budget shortfall. Coupled with nationwide protests that followed the police killing of George Floyd, de Blasio and the City Council faced pressure this year to back away from proposed cuts to education and social services. In June, city lawmakers agreed to transition school safety officers from the NYPD to the education department.

In the current fiscal year, which began July 1 and runs through June 30, 2021, the department’s budget will total just over $27 billion — about 3% less than the year before. Additionally, New York City has received less state money than last year, since state lawmakers replaced some of its contribution to districts with the exact amount they are expected to receive in federal coronavirus relief dollars. The state could choose to cut additional money from local budgets if its own fiscal crisis grows.

Initially, in April, Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed nearly $642 million in new education cuts. Public school advocates decried two big parts of that: $100 million in reductions to Fair Student Funding, a city funding formula that sends more dollars to schools with high needs, and $11 million in cuts for Single Shepherd, a program providing counseling to middle school students. Public advocacy helped restore those components in the final budget, along with $5 million for school social workers. Some principals told Chalkbeat that their school budgets are not as tight as expected, but they are still facing tough decisions, such as cutting after-school programs or electives.

“This budget reflects our commitment to schools amidst the incredible fiscal challenges that the entire city faces and we are tirelessly advocating for help from the state and federal government,” Katie O’Hanlon, a spokesperson for the education department, said in a statement.

But other reductions remained once the budget was finalized on July 1. Here are some of the education cuts that made it into the final budget.

Hiring freeze remains

A hiring freeze across the education department, proposed in April, is expected to save at least $56 million this fiscal year, according to budget documents. Schools in need of more staff can turn to the Absent Teacher Reserve, a controversial pool of educators who remain on the city payroll but do not have permanent positions.

Still, the freeze will likely present a staffing challenge for many school leaders who need more teachers to oversee smaller cohorts of classes this fall, as they plan in-person and remote schedules.

Because of budget constraints, Suzy Ort, an assistant principal at Park East High School in East Harlem, said her school will eliminate some sections of various elective classes, such as financial literacy and popular English electives, including poetry and practical philosophy. These sections were taught by teachers who were paid more to pick up an extra class, she said.

“So instead of having two sections of that, we’ll have one section of it, so fewer kids get to pick that class,” Ort said. “There’s gonna be far fewer classes offered.”

Ort added that the hiring freeze means they’re unable to hire a new parent coordinator whom they’d hoped to bring on right before the pandemic hit.

“We have been in discussion with the [education department] — can we get an exemption for the parent coordinator position, which is pretty important in this whole mess?” Ort said, referring to the pandemic.

School supplies program is gone — for now

The final budget erases Teacher’s Choice, a program that reimburses teachers and other school staff, including social workers and literacy coaches, for certain classroom supplies. Teachers received reimbursements up to $250.

The $20 million program, which was previously zeroed out in 2011 after the last recession, is on a “one-year pause” and will be reevaluated for the future, according to the education department. That’s despite “strong objections” from the United Federation of Teachers, said the city’s teachers union, which told its members in a note that it “will fight hard” to restore those funds next year.

Queens teacher Jillian Gruber said she relied on the reimbursement program over the past five years she has taught K-2 students at a District 75 school, which serves children with significant disabilities. She has taught students with autism, who require many “sensory tools,” so she bought play foam and Play-Doh, as well as Legos, puzzles, and books.

She’s now turned instead to crowdsourcing donations to cover the cost of supplies. She said she will “get by” this school year and is more concerned with schools having enough face masks. Still, the program cut is hard to swallow as she prepares to teach third-, fourth, and fifth-graders for the first time.

“I understand why it was taken away, but at the same time, I’m setting up a brand new classroom with a new grade level and kids with new abilities,” Gruber said.

Councilman Mark Treyger, chair of the education committee, said he learned at the last minute that the program would be cut. Administration officials previously said that Teacher’s Choice was not on the chopping block, Treyger said. City Hall spokesperson Laura Feyer said the cuts were discussed with the Council’s finance committee “in a timely way.”

“It’s really shameful,” Treyger said. “As we’re pushing for federal money and state assistance, that is an item that I am absolutely prioritizing that has to be restored.”

Treyger said he ultimately voted for the budget because he wanted to meet the legal deadline to pass a plan. Missing the deadline would allow the state’s Financial Control Board to assume control of the city’s finances.

Uncertain future for some community schools

About $9 million, year over year, was cut from the community schools program, which provides wraparound services for high needs students at 267 schools. Last fiscal year, these schools received about $222 million in city, state and federal dollars, according to city records.

These schools, which the city publicly celebrated just six months ago, forge contracts with community-based organizations to provide a range of services, such as academic help, mental health counseling or free eye screenings. While the city cut a baseline $6 million, it did not restore another $3 million that supports contracts at 20 of the community schools, according to community organizations at those schools, who said they fight to restore those dollars annually.

The loss of that $3 million means those 20 schools could lose access to their services, said Yolanda McBride, director of public policy for Children’s Aid, which serves six of those schools. The Coalition for Community Schools Excellence, a group of nonprofits providing wraparound services, also estimates that the $6 million overall cut could close wraparound programming at another 14 community schools — unless the cuts are spread evenly across community schools.

“These cuts hurt, especially for a program that has such a positive impact on the lives of the young people it touches,” wrote Chris Caruso, senior executive director at the Office of Community Schools, in a July 1 letter to community organizations and schools. “We are still working on exactly what they mean to our programming, and which schools will be impacted.”

A department spokesperson said last week that the cut is a “general reduction” of spending on these contracts but did not specify further, and a City Hall spokesperson said a decision about what will be cut is “still under discussion.” Community organizations, which are pushing city leaders to restore this funding, said news of the cuts came as a complete surprise and still remain in the dark.

Michelle Neugebauer, executive director of Cypress Hills Development Corporation, said her organization partners with three small high schools in Brooklyn to assist with food access, mental health care, and vision screenings, and to help the school community navigate immigration status concerns and housing insecurity — “you name it,” she said.

Neugebauer has still not heard how, if at all, Cypress Hills will see cuts to their city contracts, which total about $818,000.

“Right now we serve over 1,000 families in those schools, so we would have to reduce services, whether that means cutting mental health services, cutting the enrichment after-school activities, tutoring,” Neugebauer said. “It’s just a very big cut, so it would have to be collaboratively decided on.”

This was another last-minute cut, Treyger said. When the budget negotiations team meets again this summer, Treyger said he plans to make a pitch to restore the funds.

Tightening up supports for schools

The department’s borough field support offices, which help schools with professional development, hiring, and budgets, services for English language learners and students with disabilities, and safety issues, among other matters, will see $20 million in cuts this fiscal year.

Treyger had called for cuts to these offices in the spring. He said he didn’t want schools to take more direct financial hits, especially with a hiring freeze and the possibility of layoffs across city agencies in the fall.

“The chancellor argued that he needs to have systems and structures in place to support schools,” Treyger said. “My respectful counter-argument to this is, if you have fewer teachers working in schools and they’re excessed, I don’t know who they’re supporting.”

Many had joined Treyger in calling for more central office cuts. But the move may present some challenges for school leaders. Ort, the Park East assistant principal, said her school often leaned on the “really, really great” team at their support center in Manhattan.

“We call them for a ton of things: help with purchasing, help with programming, help with budget, and our team happens to be really good,” Ort said. “[The cut] was really troubling to hear, like hopefully those people aren’t going anywhere.”

Other cuts include:

$40 million to school allocation memos, which pay for a range of school-level services, including social workers, restorative justice programs, and programming for students with disabilities and for English language learners. The education department has not yet said how these cuts would be distributed.
$112.6 million in cuts to professional development. The education department has said those cuts would be from non-mandated trainings.
$38.8 million in savings, between fiscal years 2020 and 2021, from eliminating the department’s travel and conference budget because the pandemic has “substantially limited travel for work and events with most becoming virtual.”
$50 million in savings from not using school buses for summer school (though the education department said no contracts have been cut as they are “still in talks” with vendors).
$4 million to pause the Teaching Fellows program, which trains and helps place future teachers.
$43.8 million saved in delaying the expansion of 3K, one of the mayor’s signature early childhood education programs.

NYC has two options for distributing coronavirus relief to private schools. It’s suing to avoid both.

2020-07-21T00:06:56+00:00

When using federal coronavirus relief dollars, New York’s school districts must either send more relief to private schools or restrict their spending to Title I schools.

New York City education department officials say both scenarios are untenable, and they have joined a multi-state lawsuit, arguing that these options misinterpret the federal CARES Act and should be thrown out. The state, however, indicated Monday it will comply with the Trump administration mandate, meaning districts must choose between the two paths in order to receive and spend the money.

Either option could mean another financial hit for New York City’s public schools, already under budget constraints due to the pandemic, but a boon for the city’s private schools, which are facing dwindling enrollment and could see more federal money than originally expected. Dozens of city private schools have received federal loans through the Paycheck Protection Program, Gothamist reported.

“As the largest school district in the nation, we need more — not less — funding from our country’s leaders whose job it is to support public institutions rather than privatization that benefits the privileged few,” said schools Chancellor Richard Carranza in a news release Friday about the lawsuit. “Safe reopening requires all the resources we can get, and we call on the Trump Administration to stop playing politics with our children.”

New York schools are set to receive about $1 billion in pandemic relief under the federal CARES Act, with $717 million of that going to New York City. Some portion of those funds will go to private schools for services, such as tutoring or after-school programming. The federal bill allocated each state’s relief based largely on the Title I formula, which sends extra dollars to districts serving large portions of students from low-income families.

Districts normally use Title I dollars to help private schools with various services; that support is based on the number of private school students from low income families in a given area. But this spring, U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said pandemic relief dollars should be shared with private schools based instead on their total enrollment.

Public school advocates denounced DeVos’s guidance, saying that wasn’t how Congress intended districts to spend the money, and that it would take resources away from public schools. U.S. education officials disputed that reading of the law and argued that many private schools are facing financial stress and could close. Some states decided to reject the guidance, while others said they would comply.

DeVos decided last month to give districts another option: School systems could calculate how much they owe to private schools based only on the number of non-public students from low-income families in the area, but would then be restricted to spending the remainder of their stimulus dollars on Title I schools only.

No longer optional guidance, school systems are now legally bound to choose one of these paths. If New York City took the Title I schools route, opting to calculate private school assistance based on the number of needy students they serve, most of the city’s public schools would see some coronavirus relief dollars. There are roughly 1,300 Title I schools in New York City, with another 275 schools receiving Title I money to support homeless students on their rosters. (These figures don’t include charter schools that receive similar funds.) However, in this scenario about 250 non-Title I schools, which still educate low-income students, would lose out on a total $100 million in stimulus support, according to the city.

City officials believe they would owe $91 million to private schools when accounting for low-income students, an education department spokesperson told Chalkbeat on Monday. Officials believe that cost would rise to $144 million when considering total enrollment.

The plaintiffs have asked the courts to temporarily block the U.S. Department of Education from enforcing its rule as the lawsuit proceeds. But a decision on that could take several months, said Julia Martin, legislative director at the law firm Bruman and Mansfield, which had provided legal advice to states about DeVos’s original guidance.

City education officials did not answer a question Monday about how they plan to use CARES Act dollars. Districts seeking the money must first apply for the funds through the state education department.

The two available options are “just not practical for a place like New York,” Martin said. That’s because the state used federal coronavirus relief to supplant state dollars for districts, Martin said, which left the biggest financial burden on districts with high shares of low-income students, including New York City.

If the district opted for the Title I-only option, they would have to follow other rules that require federal dollars to “supplement” local revenue, not just replace it to pay for something a district can no longer afford, Martin said.

“That means using CARES Act dollars for devices, Wi-Fi hotspots, additional meals, PPE, but that means we are still left without funds to backfill lost state and local revenue,” Martin said.

NYC schools can open if local infection rate stays below 5% — but a spike could shut buildings down again, Cuomo says

2020-07-13T21:37:06+00:00

Gov. Andrew Cuomo laid out strict benchmarks New York City must meet before reopening schools this fall and will require buildings to shut down if there is a resurgence of the coronavirus in the area.

New York school districts will be allowed to reopen if the surrounding region has reached the fourth and final phase of reopening and the daily infection rate is below 5%, based on the proportion of tests coming back positive and based on a 14-day average, Cuomo said Monday. State officials will determine if New York City, which counts as its own region, has met that threshold in the first week of August.

But if the city’s infection rate surges past 9% later in August or after the school year starts (based on a seven-day average), schools will be forced to shut down again. Fewer than 2% of coronavirus tests in New York City have come back positive in recent weeks, state data show, though the city has not yet reached phase four of reopening.

“We’re not going to use our children as guinea pigs,” Cuomo said during a press conference, repeatedly criticizing President Donald Trump’s stance that school buildings should reopen across the board. “You can follow the number — that’s what’s nice about this. There’s no politics, there’s no personal opinion, there’s no vaguery.”

New York City schools, which announced a reopening plan last week, has not yet said how it would screen students or how it would address positive cases of the coronavirus at its school buildings. Last week, city officials said they don’t believe schools would have to close down — as they did before buildings closed in March — if a positive case pops up.

All school districts across the state are required to submit their reopening plans by July 31, which education officials must simultaneously make public. A spokesperson for the governor, Jason Conwall, said the state does not anticipate providing districts with more funding to aid their reopening plans, as the coronavirus has blown a hole in the state’s budget. Cuomo has previously warned that education cuts could be in the offing without additional federal stimulus money.

Also on Monday, the state education department gave a preliminary look at what reopening plans should address in New York’s 732 school districts. While the full guidance won’t be released until Wednesday, the state spelled out some specific requirements, including masks for students and staff, screening students for virus symptoms, and regular disinfection of buses. State guidance will address various parts of daily school life, including school schedules, transportation, instruction, and social-emotional support.

“This will continue to be a work in progress,” said Vice Chancellor T. Andrew Brown. “We have no doubt that additional issues and problems will arise and the field will require guidance, and we’ll continue to provide that guidance.”

The state Department of Health also released more health-related rules for schools Monday. That will include checking everyone’s temperature every day and sending students or staff home if their temperatures exceed 100 degrees. Schools must also report any positive cases at a school to state health officials, and log every time they clean and disinfect buildings.

New York City last week said that students would learn through a combination of in-person and remote learning. Schedules will vary based on the number of students and space within each school, allowing for social distancing. That plan falls in line with the new state guidance, which asks districts to consider various learning models.

Also conforming with state guidance is New York City’s plan to require students and staffers to wear masks. Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza has said students won’t be disciplined for not wearing them, rather, they will be “encouraged” to pull them on — raising concerns among some educators and parents who are wary of returning to buildings.

Pico Kassell, a public pre-K teacher at Roosevelt Island Day Nursery, worries about the various challenges masks can pose for the city’s youngest learners, such as conveying their needs to a teacher as they’re still learning word pronunciations.

“I was talking to other teachers and we were wondering, well, how many masks would they have to have because we’re sure they’re gonna sneeze in them, and do they have to change their mask after snack?” she said.

As state guidance will require, New York City schools will have an isolation room for any student who feels ill during the school day. The city also plans to disinfect school buildings every night.

But the state requirements also underscore many questions that city officials haven’t yet addressed for the fall.

Districts will be required to train staff on how to screen students for illness. School systems must also provide transportation for all students who need it. The city has not yet said how it will handle either of those issues. On Friday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city will announce “shortly” how it would address entry into school buildings.

The city is “currently assessing ways to provide safe transportation options this fall,” said Miranda Barbot, a spokesperson for the city’s education department. Officials are considering a plan that would provide busing only to special needs students whose education plans require busing, the New York Post reported over the weekend.

On instruction, state education officials said districts must provide all students with “clear opportunities for equitable instruction” with curriculum grounded in state standards. Teachers must interact with students daily in a “substantive way.” There must also be “clear communication” between schools and families, state officials said. Officials did not elaborate on how districts should tackle any of these points, but more detailed information could come when the full guidance is released.

No matter the learning model, schools will be required to provide physical education classes in some form, officials said. Educators should plan a “menu” of activities for students to complete, even if that means students completing work on their own time.

Districts should provide devices and technology support for students, families and teachers. They should also offer teachers professional development focused on “best practices” for remote instruction, state officials said.

Schools should also be required to spell out how they’ll provide high-quality instruction to students who are learning at home, according to Ian Rosenblum, executive director of Education Trust-New York, an advocacy and civil rights organization that joined several groups in calling for specific instructional policies as districts reopen. That instruction should include culturally relevant and anti-racist curriculum, he said.

“Either we are coming back to school with the widening inequities that have been exacerbated by the pandemic, or we are going to take steps to start addressing those inequities,” Rosenblum said. “So these questions about curriculum and support for students can’t be an afterthought. They need to be right there alongside health and safety issues as we think about a way to reopen in a way that supports all students.”

Social-emotional support should be the highest priority for districts, state officials said. They made clear that districts should offer “multi-tiered systems of support,” but on Monday did not provide specifics about how districts should do that aside from reevaluating their counseling practices.

Several Regents raised concerns about how districts would pay for resources tied to the mandated health guidance, such as thermometers for temperature checks or masks, as cities are grappling with the pandemic’s financial aftershock. Officials in New York City, which cut the education department’s budget by $773 million this fiscal year, have not yet disclosed how much personal protective equipment will cost. The education department said costs won’t be clear until closer to the start of the school year.

“It is clear that in a number of places, resources are necessary and are not givens that can be taken for granted,” said Regent Luis Reyes.

The state education department has raised those concerns with the governor’s office, state officials said.

“It’s a difficult fiscal environment right now, so I envision this is going to be a challenge, but certainly it’s not going to stop us from advocating for the needs of the school districts in meeting those expectations,” said Phyllis Morris, the department’s chief financial officer.

Most NYC students will go to school 1, 2, or 3 days a week this fall. But key reopening details remain scarce.

2020-07-08T18:11:58+00:00

New York City students will only attend school one to three days a week next school year, with the exact number rotating weekly based on student enrollment and building capacity, officials said Wednesday.

School leaders will choose among staggered schedules to accommodate dramatically fewer children and staff in buildings, while students learn remotely for the remainder of the school week as the coronavirus still circulates in the city.

For some overcrowded schools that only have room to serve about a third of their normal enrollment at a given time, students might attend school every two days — though every few weeks, they would only be in class for one day. (Some schools can accommodate even fewer than 30% percent of students at a time.)

Some students with disabilities will be offered a full week of in-person instruction, when building space allows. Schools in District 75, which serve students with more complex disabilities, will have their own scheduling options to choose from.

The education department is also allowing families to opt for full-time remote learning, which could help schools that are grappling with how they will staff their in-person classes. If the city’s roll-out of fully remote summer school this week is any indication, offering students a totally online version of classes next year won’t be easy for the department to pull off: Many educators and students have not been provided with full access to summer coursework days after summer school was scheduled to start.

Families can begin to register for fully remote instruction on July 15, and the deadline to do so is August 7. Students can switch to remote-only learning at any point throughout the school year and can choose to return for in-person instruction on a quarterly basis, the chancellor said.

The education department is planning a series of information sessions, which will kick off on July 16. Principals are expected to inform families of their individual school’s plan sometime in August.

“For the vast majority of kids,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a press conference, “you’ll either be going two days a week or three days a week, depending on the week.”

He added: “This is new and different, and I know it’s no one’s first choice.”

The city’s announcement was light on key details, and officials still must submit a plan for state approval. State leaders could ultimately decide not to allow schools to reopen in the fall.

In New York City, officials did not say to what extent live online instruction will be required, though Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said there will be some requirement to hold live lessons. (Live instruction was not required when school buildings shut down but is mandatory for summer school.)

There was no mention of what procedures will be in place if a member of a school community tests positive for the coronavirus — a major source of frustration before schools shut down in March and the subject of an investigation.

Reopening the country’s largest school system is a crucial piece of reopening the economy and allowing parents to get back to work. But the part-time schedule still presents an enormous child care challenge for many families, including teachers, principals, and other school staff with children. Officials did not provide details on how they expect families with work responsibilities to arrange childcare on the days their children must be at home.

“We’re going to have to figure out more in terms of child care. This is something we’re going to be building as we go along,” de Blasio said.

Based on guidelines for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, students must have 6 feet between them, which means many schools must operate at half or a third capacity — or less for the city’s most overcrowded schools. Most classrooms will hold nine to 12 children at a time, officials said. The education department plans to convert into classrooms spaces like auditoriums, gyms or other rooms. They also hope to identify spaces in non-school buildings to help with the space crunch, the mayor said.

Staffing schools, however, will likely be a massive hurdle. The education department estimates that up to 20% of teachers might not return to classrooms this fall because of health accommodations. School leaders are already discussing shifting support teachers, art teachers, and others with teaching licenses into the classrooms to meet the demands of the smaller classes. Compounding these challenges, economic fallout from the coronavirus blew a $9 billion hole in the city’s budget, leading to a hiring freeze within the education department.

Carranza said the department is looking within its ranks, and considering using substitute teachers who have been helping to staff child care centers that were opened after school buildings shut down, to meet staffing needs.

“We’re taking a holistic look at making sure everyone that has a teaching credential, that can be in a classroom, will do that if we need them,” Carranza said.

Children and staff will be required to wear face masks, the chancellor said, and the city will provide cleaning supplies to schools so that they don’t have to pay for hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes out of their own budgets. Before the coronavirus hit, it was often a struggle just for schools to keep bathrooms stocked with hand soap. Buildings will be cleaned with electrostatic sprayers nightly, and ventilation systems will get upgraded over the summer, Carranza said.

Lunch will be served in classrooms, or with assigned seating in cafeterias.

“Our city has been to hell and back. We do not want to return to that,” Carranza said. “So we are going to make sure that our schools are safe for our families, our students, and our staff.”

Officials repeatedly emphasized that “health and safety” is their top priority, though some teachers and union officials have said the city mishandled the process of closing schools in the first place and have expressed skepticism that the city will adequately protect them.

Michael Mulgrew, head of the United Federation of Teachers, supports the city’s reopening plan, but said unanswered questions remain about sufficient funding and protections for educators to safely teach in person.

“We’re fine with this plan but there’s a lot that has to be figured out,” Mulgrew said, adding that he estimates the cost of operating schools safely could grow by 10-20%, making additional federal funding a crucial ingredient. “Without the federal package, I doubt we’re opening.”

He also said some key details for protecting teachers and students have yet to be outlined including the city’s coronavirus testing protocols. “It’s a huge piece and that has not been worked out. If there’s somebody with symptoms in a school — student or staff — we have to get them tested immediately,” he said.

Abrupt school closures in March forced 1 million students to learn from home for about a third of the last school year, a massive experiment in online learning that many educators conceded is a poor replacement for what happens in the classroom and could have life-long consequences for students who missed out on in-person instruction.

Children have suffered socially as well during quarantine, cut off from their friends and the social support networks many find in school buildings. On top of that, many students have lost family members to the virus, and face dire financial circumstances as the prolonged shutdown has wrecked economic havoc, job loss, and hunger.

As the city slowly begins to re-open certain businesses, privately run child care centers got the green light to reopen after a three-month shutdown. Still, it’s unclear how quickly programs will be able to ramp up, and with a pre-pandemic capacity of about 150,000, they are unlikely to be able to meet the city’s demand.

“We’ve got a lot to do here, and I feel for parents who have to juggle so much,” de Blasio said.

De Blasio said he was working in concert with the state on school reopening plans. He and Gov. Andrew Cuomo have butted heads over school plans since the beginning of the outbreak, with Cuomo quick to assert his power as the ultimate decision-maker.

The state will decide the week of Aug. 1 whether schools can reopen in the fall, Cuomo said. Before that, New York’s roughly 700 districts will be required to submit their reopening plans to the state by July 31. State officials said they will release reopening guidance to districts on July 13. Originally, the state had said it would release such guidance in early June.

Asked if New York City’s reopening plan could be approved today, Cuomo said no, because of the uncertainty of what virus infection rates could look like closer to the fall.

“We very much want to open up schools in September,” Cuomo said. “If anybody sat here today and told you they can reopen the schools in September, it would be reckless and negligent of that person. You don’t know what the infection rate is, you don’t know what else is going on, and you’ve decided at a much earlier time than you actually had to decide?”

School every three days? That could be the new reality of in-person learning in NYC.

2020-06-27T00:02:56+00:00

Concrete plans on how schools — and their buildings — will operate this fall aren’t likely to be made for weeks. But to help move the planning process forward, education department officials have sent principals preliminary estimates outlining how many students their buildings and classrooms can safely hold while adhering to social distancing and health precautions.

While some schools might be equipped to handle half their population at a time, others are having frank conversations with their families about being able to accommodate fewer students than that. Many estimates revealed only about a third of students — and sometimes fewer than that — can be in the building at a given time. If schools are planning for hybrid schedules, as Chancellor Carranza previously indicated, that means, for instance, some students might only be able to attend school in-person once every three days for schools alternating days, or one week every three weeks if schools end up rotating weeks.

At Francis Lewis High School, a Queens school that struggles with overcrowding, students could attend only one day a week based on the preliminary estimates, a teacher there, Arthur Goldstein, said.

“It’s a horror to think that we have to do education like that,” said Goldstein, whose principal shared the estimates with him.

The education department estimates are based on classroom size data and guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calling on schools to keep children 6 feet apart; that translates into about 65 square feet per person. Most rooms would have one adult, with two adults in pre-K and early childhood classrooms. The next step for schools, according to department officials, is to survey their spaces and confirm or adjust their given estimates.

Education department officials declined to provide a breakdown of school space estimates.

At Goldstein’s school, the estimate called for nine students in a regular-sized classroom. That won’t be easy for the school, which had 4,492 students enrolled in a building that was overcrowded even by normal standards. According to the district’s blue book data, the building is equipped for 2,188 students.

Under new COVID-era guidelines, the school should only serve between 950 and 1020 at a time.

Francis Lewis is among 105 schools in the city operating at 150% capacity or more, according to Leonie Haimson, of the advocacy group Class Size Matters. There were about 580,000 students in buildings that were at 100% capacity or more in 2018-2019, according to the blue book, the annual report on school space.

Overcrowded schools across the city are grappling with how to plan for next year. The principal at Midtown Manhattan’s Professional Performing Arts School wrote a letter home telling families that only a third of the school’s students might be allowed in the building at a time. At P.S. 107 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, the principal also indicated that a third of the students might attend at once, according to reports. A few blocks away at P.S. 39, the school was discussing similar numbers, parents told Chalkbeat.

“We have a massive number of overcrowded buildings in normal times, we have 1.1 million kids, we were the epicenter, and, in many ways, remain the epicenter of this crisis because we’re still feeling the effects,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a press conference Friday. “A school that was overcrowded back in February, by definition, cannot put 6 feet between kids. So, they can only handle a certain amount of their kids at a given time.”

De Blasio said the education department was working out schedules for those schools, acknowledging it would be more difficult than at schools that are not as crowded.

“We’re taking gym space, auditorium space, whatever it takes to use as classroom space,” the mayor said. “We’re going to use every available space, set up for the maximum number of kids, be ready for staggering, where it’s needed.”

Justin Krebs, a member of the District 15 President’s Council and P.S. 39 Parent Association, said he’s heard that the school may separate students into groups of nine or fewer. The possibility of smaller class sizes could also lead to more specialized and engaged interactions between students and their teacher.

Parents from P.S. 39 and other schools in the district have expressed a desire for choice, he said.

“The same one-size-fit-all schedule and structure won’t work for every student,” said Krebs. “There are some parents who need to work all day, others who can’t send their children for health concerns, and plenty of others who have multiple children, IEPs, and many other considerations that just make it impossible to imagine there’s one solution for every family.”

Many more shoes need to drop before schools figure out what kind of schedule they can actually follow. Some families might end up not returning, thereby shrinking their numbers of in-person attendees (and perhaps their budgets). Up to 20% of teachers might also work remotely because of health risks, according to education department projections.

Goldstein, who serves as the union chapter leader for his school, said he’s had many teachers email him indicating that underlying health conditions would prevent them from teaching in-person this fall. Goldstein, himself, said he’s still deciding whether he wants to continue teaching.

“It’s a hard decision for me,” said Goldstein, who recently wrote an op-ed for the Daily News about reopening concerns. “I value what I do. ... If I go to see nine students at a time, my work as a teacher is kind of devalued and absurd.”

Teaching while adhering to social distancing would likely mean he couldn’t walk over to a child and look at their work, he said. And on-camera teaching from home would mean that he wouldn’t be able to move around as freely and be aware of what students are doing.

Another issue, he said, is that the estimates don’t account for what students do when they’re outside of the classroom, noting that teenagers are especially social.

“That estimate doesn’t account for kids walking in the hallways. It doesn’t account for kids being on buses,” he said. “It doesn’t account for kids being outside of the school hanging around at the gas station, going to the food truck. … There’s so much that it doesn’t account for.”

Amid worries over internet access, NYC orders 40,000 more iPads ahead of summer school

2020-06-26T22:51:04+00:00

The New York City education department will order 40,000 more internet-connected iPads primarily for summer school students, which could be a boon for families poised to lose connection as free broadband deals expire.

Separately, elected officials are pushing internet service providers to extend through the end of 2020 the free deals they offered families early in the pandemic.

When a projected 178,000 students start summer school July 6, children without reliable internet access could face big hurdles getting online. In March, amid the transition to remote learning, some New York City families without home internet signed up for free service deals companies such as Optimum and Spectrum offered. The companies had barred some families from accessing these temporary deals because they had old debt with the service provider — a policy they later suspended after Chalkbeat raised questions.

Free internet was likely helpful for those among the thousands of low-income New York City families who didn’t otherwise have broadband access. But the deals began to expire in the last month, raising questions about how students facing economic hardship could get internet service for the rest of the school year, which ended Friday, and during the summer.

Optimum extended its free service through the end of June. The city’s education department previously told Chalkbeat that they had asked Spectrum to follow suit, though the company has not done so.

Charter Communications, the parent company of Spectrum, will “work with our customers to find a plan that matches their needs and budget, including for qualified households, our affordable low-income broadband service Spectrum Internet Assist,” a $15 monthly plan, said company spokesperson Justin Venech in a statement. Katherine De La Rosa, a parent in the Bronx who had a free deal with Spectrum, told Chalkbeat that she was not informed of this policy when she called last month to extend her own deal.

This week, an education department spokesperson said the city will order the additional internet-connected iPads to distribute to families who need access for summer school, who may not already have such an iPad, “including if their internet provider deal is expiring.” The spokesperson did not disclose the cost of those iPads, but the department previously told Chalkbeat it spent $269 million on an initial 300,000 iPads. (To request a device, families can fill out a survey at schools.nyc.gov/devices or can call 718-935-5100, press 5.)

Lisa Anselmo, a spokesperson for Altice, the parent company for Optimum, said the company is in continued conversations with the city’s education department, and is “actively working with them on a variety of options to continue to assist those in our footprint.”

The education department is “grateful that Spectrum and Optimum provided free service this spring. We’re all very hopeful that they will extend this complimentary service into the summer and fall,” said Danielle Filson, a spokesperson for the education department, in a statement after this story published.

In the meantime, some schools may take matters into their own hands. A few weeks ago, De La Rosa’s Inwood charter school found a hotspot that her kindergartener could use through the summer and possibly into the fall, should remote learning continue.

Prior to the additional purchase, the education department had ordered and distributed about 310,000 internet-connected iPads to families without technology access as remote learning rolled out — ordering the additional 10,000 as demand rose. The gargantuan task of distributing those devices left many students without technology for weeks.

As the department, educators, and families grapple with possible virtual learning in the fall, some city officials are pressing for solutions to technology now, with no clear idea of how many students will need access in the fall. In a letter sent Thursday to the mayor and Chancellor Richard Carranza, Comptroller Scott Stringer demanded more information about what options the city has been exploring with these internet companies for the fall and whether every child who requested a device received one.

On Thursday Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer sent letters to Verizon, Optimum, and Spectrum, asking the companies to extend their free internet deals through December 2020.

“An extension of free internet service will provide some relief to New Yorkers who need it most during this crisis,” Brewer wrote in the three letters, along with representatives of Manhattan’s 12 community boards. “This is especially important for the record-high number of students who will enroll in summer school this year, all of which will take place remotely and rely heavily on internet access.”

Those letters also ask the companies to reverse policies that bar families with debt from signing up, which Optimum and Spectrum did in March.

A Verizon representative did not respond to a request for comment.

NYC students in foster care need their own education department point person, advocates say

2020-06-25T00:46:32+00:00

The closure of school buildings due to the coronavirus has been a challenge for students across the board, but children in foster care have faced even steeper hurdles.

The pandemic, advocates say, has highlighted the need for a senior-level education department staffer to focus full time on this group of students as the city plans for the fall. In a letter sent Wednesday, more than 20 advocacy and legal groups pleaded with New York City schools Chancellor Richard Carranza to appoint “a high-level senior leader focused specifically” on the needs of students in foster care.

“We understand the city is facing a budget shortfall due to the pandemic, but the educational needs of students in foster care raise issues of justice and equity that cannot continue to be overlooked,” the letter read.

Roughly 5,000 of the city’s 1.1. million students are in foster care, and even in typical times many of them struggle. Students in foster care are more likely than their peers to repeat a grade, need special education services, or be suspended, the letter stated. They are disproportionately Black and overwhelmingly from the lowest income areas of the city. Many have experienced trauma.

Children in foster care are legally under the care and custody of the city — not their foster parents, the letter explained. Remote schooling due to COVID-19 created special complications for these children. While they received priority for the education department-issued iPads, many had to wait two weeks or more to get the devices because school officials required signatures from their foster parents, according to the letter. Meanwhile, the process of obtaining remote special education evaluations or teletherapy services was mired in confusion over who could issue consent for children in foster care. There were also questions around who could access students’ online Google classroom or NYC Schools accounts.

“It would be great if someone within that office was tasked solely with looking at students in care as opposed to it being ... a very, very, very tiny part of a few people’s job,” said Erika Palmer, Supervising Attorney for Advocates for Children of New York.

Palmer said students in foster care often don’t get the support they need, noting: “In general, it is a really small group of students ... so their needs do often get overlooked.”

As of now, foster care students are overseen by the Office for Students in Temporary Housing, but there is no one point person who is responsible for responding to concerns from students, families, and advocates about the needs and rights of foster care children, she said.

The organizations behind the letter to the chancellor are demanding that someone dedicated to students in foster care be tasked with streamlining complex processes, such as getting consent for teletherapy.

They are also requesting that the district create a guaranteed transportation system to take children in foster care between their living situations and schools. While school has the potential to be a stabilizing factor when their home life is in flux, foster care children are often forced to change schools because they lack guaranteed transportation. One in 4 students change schools upon entering the foster care system, the letter said.

For its part, the education department hired a foster care transportation liaison about a year ago. That person is tasked with coordinating efforts between the city’s Office of Pupil Transportation, its children’s services administration, and individual schools. Currently, the district only guarantees transportation for students with disabilities who have special transportation mandated on their Individualized Education Programs, or IEPs.

The city places children in foster care on existing yellow bus routes. When that’s not possible, students receive MetroCards to use public transportation, but that’s not always ideal, said Chantal Hinds, an attorney for Advocates for Children.

“If that child was very young, how are they going to navigate public transportation on their own when foster parents are working and frequently have more than one foster child that they have to get to and from school?” Hinds said.

In the past, the education department signaled that it would do more to ensure students in foster care were participating in academic enrichment and mentoring programs. This cohort was a “priority” for the 2019-20 year, a spokesperson for the DOE said last year.

But the education department hasn’t done enough, the letter stated.

Nathaniel Styer, an education department spokesman, thanked the advocates for their letter and said officials would “continue to seek feedback from key stakeholders in the foster community.”

“Supporting students in foster care continues to be a priority for every educator at the DOE, and we take seriously the responsibility to meet their needs academically and emotionally,” Styer said.

‘Expect a lot of uncertainty’: Schools brace for cuts as NYC’s budget deadline approaches

2020-06-24T21:46:32+00:00

Lawmakers are racing to pass a budget for next fiscal year as New York City reels from the coronavirus pandemic and protests against police brutality, leaving big questions about school funding, youth services, and school safety.

Next year’s financial plan will be unlike any budget Mayor Bill de Blasio has overseen since taking office in 2014. As residents quarantined and COVID-19 left some 20,000 people dead, the city is projected to see a $9 billion revenue shortfall and still could face further cuts from the state.

“It’s an incredibly difficult budget because we’re in the middle of such a crisis wrapped in crisis,” de Blasio said during a press conference on Monday, “but everyone’s been working incessantly over the last few weeks.”

City Council must approve a budget by July 1. To do so, councilors and the mayor’s office negotiate a plan based on de Blasio’s proposal in April. That plan assumed a $7.4 billion revenue shortfall, a number that grew to $9 billion in the past month and could mean layoffs of city workers.

De Blasio has proposed cutting nearly $642 million from the education department next fiscal year. Much of the slashing would fall on classroom instruction, according to an analysis by the Independent Budget Office.

Students, educators, and elected officials have demanded the city avoid slashing money for city schools by severing certain contracts, finding deeper cuts at the central office, or even asking the state to tax the ultra-wealthy. Additionally, advocates have called to shift money from the police department’s budget over to education — a demand that gained strength this month alongside nationwide protests against racist policing.

Separately, tens of thousands of families and hundreds of youth service providers are eagerly awaiting news about whether the city will reinstate, in some form, summer day camps and a youth jobs program.

Here are four key education issues we’re watching as the city hurtles toward its budget deadline.

School budgets are taking a hit — but how much?

De Blasio’s budget proposal would shrink the education department’s budget by 3%, driven largely by a hiring freeze, programmatic cuts, and $100 million in cuts to Fair Student Funding. Those funds, which represent the largest chunk of individual school budgets, go toward instruction and are based on a formula that sends more money to high-need schools. Another $40 million would be cut from a range of school-level services, including social workers, restorative justice programs, and other programming for students with disabilities and English learners.

Education officials recently told principals to expect a 3% cut to their individual budgets. That represents an average cut across all schools, and the department is devising a way to slash “equitably” to lessen the blow for the most vulnerable school communities, a department spokesperson said. Officials did not have further details.

Adding to that uncertainty, schools and other agencies could face cuts even after the budget passes if the city’s economic recovery is worse than expected, or if the state decides to claw back money from cities.

Schools typically have their preliminary budgets by the end of May, but have yet to receive them. So planning for next year feels more like guesswork.

At Castle Bridge School in Washington Heights, a 3% cut would equal about $100,000, said Principal Julie Zuckerman. She may need to cut professional development, staff coaches, or after-school programming.

Zuckerman hopes the delay means elected officials “had to go back to the drawing board” amid criticism of the steep cuts facing schools.

“Do I know what’s happening? No,” Zuckerman said. “I’m choosing to, at this point, take it in an optimistic light.”

Others are frustrated as they try to plan for a school year that could involve staggered schedules, many teachers working from home, and large supplies of masks and hand sanitizer. Jose Jimenez, principal of P.S. 290Q in Queens, said it’s “insane” not having his budget as school leaders brace for possible staffing cuts and the elimination of certain programs, such as after-school activities.

“If we’re gonna be real about what the next school year means to our students, it’s a time to invest, and so I’m just concerned that we’re going into a complacency mode,” Jimenez said. “I think people need to speak up and say education is not one of those things that you can just easily cut.”

22,000 possible pink slips, but it’s unclear how many could be for teachers

The city is digging for $1 billion in savings from the municipal workforce, or else face layoffs of 22,000 public employees, de Blasio said Wednesday.

“We are running out of options here,” he said at a press conference. “Unfortunately now we have to talk about the last resort. The last resort would be layoffs and furloughs.”

The mayor is hoping to negotiate concessions from labor unions to stave off job losses, saying it’s “the only way we can close this budget gap.” He did not mention how this would directly affect the education department, which employs some 150,000 people. But with the clock ticking on the budget deadline, de Blasio said positions may have to be slashed from “literally every single agency.”

Any job cuts would be slated to take place in the fall, he said, while maintaining “the hope and the prayer,” that more federal stimulus money may get approved or the state would allow the city to borrow money to ultimately avoid issuing pink slips.

The Citizen’s Budget Commission — a nonprofit, nonpartisan watchdog organization — has suggested the city can avoid layoffs and cut costs simply through attrition and renegotiating some benefits such as health insurance costs for public employees. The Commission also recommends eliminating the Absent Teacher Reserve, a controversial pool of educators who remain on the city payroll but do not have permanent positions because they face disciplinary action, or because their schools closed or lost enrollment.

Michael Mulgrew, president of the New York City teachers union, gave a sarcastic retort to the mayor’s dire warning.

“There’s a ‘thank you for your service’ during the pandemic — a layoff notice for thousands of city workers who created an unparalleled virtual education program, staffed the clinics, drove the ambulances and kept other city services going,” Mulgrew said in a statement.

De Blasio vows to move NYPD money to youth programs, but details are scarce

In the aftermath of massive protests against the killing of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police, Mayor Bill de Blasio has vowed to reduce funding for the police department to help finance youth programming.

But the details are murky and it remains unclear whether that will include significant changes to the school safety division, which deploys over 5,000 unarmed school officers across the city’s public schools.

The mayor’s current budget proposal includes a 1.3% increase to the school safety division next fiscal year for a total of $427 million. That represents a 38% jump since de Blasio took office. A spokesperson for de Blasio did not answer questions about whether the school safety division will be subject to cuts.

Activists and some city lawmakers have also called for transferring supervision of school safety from the police department, which took control from the education department in 1998 under Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The police commissioner has said he is open to the idea but de Blasio has been publicly opposed.

“I want to see reprioritization to young people for sure, and I want to make sure we stay safe,” de Blasio said. “Gotta strike the right balance.”

Grim summer ahead as youth programming remains uncertain

The mayor proposed cancelling the Summer Youth Employment Program, or SYEP, over virus and budget concerns, saving the city $124 million typically spent to match about 74,500 young people with jobs and paychecks. He also proposed cutting subsidized day camps, which serve about 100,000 children, predominantly from low-income families.

But following intense public outcry, city officials said they will find a virtual alternative for the jobs program and would shift more police department money to youth services. They have remained silent on specific details. Additionally, an expected $23 million contribution from the state for the jobs program is also up in the air.

Youth and families, who rely on the jobs program for extra cash and experience and the day camps for childcare, remain in limbo, as New York City businesses begin to reopen. (The Cuomo administration has OK’ed in-person camps, but they must follow a list of social distancing and hygiene rules.)

“Thousands of students around the city look at SYEP as an opportunity to stand up for themselves and begin their career, and that’s how most students fund their family,” said high school senior Abdullah Mazmudar during a press conference Tuesday held by student advocacy group Teens Take Charge.

Providers of these programs — many of whom have prepared for various scenarios – have laid off workers or plan to. They are uncertain how they’ll scale up quickly, including rehiring employees to run programs, if funding does come through at the last minute.

Known unknowns

The city’s final spending plan will “almost certainly” change after July 1 because of three unknowns: potential state cuts, the city’s economic recovery, and potential help from the federal government, said George Sweeting, deputy director of the city’s Independent Budget Office.

“So as the City Council and mayor will do something to get some budget in place, it will probably include a lot of unknowns,” Sweeting said. “It’s only as those questions get answered during the course of the next 12 months we’ll know the final number for how much the city spends on schools and everything else the city does.”

Another unknown: A second wave of the coronavirus in the fall could further skew projections for how fast the economy will recover, Sweeting said.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, facing his own $10 billion shortfall, has the power this year to periodically cut funding for localities if state revenue falls slightly below projections — something that has already happened. Without extra help from Washington, D.C., which has already provided a round of relief for states, Cuomo has warned of cuts up to 20% for school funding across the state. That could mean up to $2.3 billion lost for New York City schools alone.

It’s possible the city finds itself able to spend more money than expected if the economy improves more rapidly, or if there’s a huge influx of federal dollars. But a new stimulus bill is stuck in Congress, so it’s unclear if and when more money could come.

These “wild cards” mean that school leaders have little to prepare with right now, Sweeting said.

“I think they should expect a lot of uncertainty,” Sweeting said.

20% of NYC teachers might work from home because of health concerns, according to education department estimates

2020-06-15T22:42:42+00:00

Much about the coming school year remains uncertain, including how many New York City teachers will feel comfortable returning to their classrooms: Up to 20% could teach from home over concerns of being at higher risk for severe complications from the coronavirus, education department officials told principals last week.

That could mean up to 15,000 city teachers will work from home, a number that represents more teachers than Houston’s entire public school system. It could have a significant impact on what classrooms for the city’s 1.1 million students will look like.

As the city offered more details about fall planning last week, education department officials mentioned the estimate during an informational call with school leaders about possible reopening scenarios as well as other logistical details to consider for the fall, according to principals familiar with the call.

That figure was a rough estimate based on state and federal guidance of who is considered high risk, including age of educators and health conditions that teaching staff have self-reported, according to an education department spokesperson. The department presented the figure to help schools figure out various contingency plans as leaders consider their options for the fall.

The coronavirus can cause mild to severe illness, sometimes creating no symptoms at all. Some people are at higher risk for severe complications, including people who are older than 65 or have pre-existing conditions, such as cancer, chronic lung disease, heart disease, and being immunocompromised, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

“The [education department] has committed to offering accommodations to staff members with high-risk medical conditions in accordance with CDC guidelines,” teachers union president Michael Mulgrew wrote to his members last week.

An education department spokesperson said on Monday the department was still figuring out specific accommodations.

It’s likely very complicated to determine the actual number of teachers who are at high risk. Besides age, principals may not know the various health conditions of their employees or if they will want to stay home.

Mark Cannizzaro, president of the union that represents principals and other administrators, said it’s too early to actually know how many teachers will need special accommodations. The need will vary from school to school — adding another wrinkle for planning reopenings in the fall.

“If 20% of staff are out, that means that either we’re gonna need substitutes in the building to make up that or we’re gonna have to further reduce the number of students that can attend at any time,” Cannizzaro said.

The education department has emphasized that there is no set plan for how schools will reopen next fall but it is considering a variety of options, including split schedules and a hybrid model of in-person and virtual learning.

“Right now, we are in the planning phase for what school will look like next year, and nothing is definitive,” Miranda Barbot, a spokesperson for the education department, said in a statement. “The goal is to provide as much in-person learning as possible, and our job is to be prepared by sharing the information we have now with principals to help them plan for a range of possibilities.”

In his letter to his members last week, Mulgrew said the union was gravitating toward a hybrid model and that it was working with the education department to accommodate school workers who are considered high risk.

“How to staff this new hybrid model is one of the challenges ahead of us. Will certain educators be fully remote and others always on-site, or will most staff follow a hybrid model like their students?” Mulgrew wrote.

Mayor Bill de Blasio also noted that families might not feel comfortable with sending their children back to school.

“I think there’s going to take time for parents in some cases to feel comfortable,” de Blasio said last week. “Some parents won’t be ready. And so, we’re going to have to have a remote element for anyone who’s not yet ready to send their child back.”

Liat Olenick, a science teacher at a Brooklyn elementary school, takes immunosuppressant medication for a liver transplant she received in college. In March, her doctor advised her to stay out of school buildings before officials decided to close the district.

“It does remain a concern for me, and I know as a chapter leader there are other people in my school who have the same concern, who are vulnerable,” said Olenick, who is active with MORE, a social justice caucus of the teachers union that has been critical of the UFT’s response during the coronavirus. “I think the concern is about being in the school building but also getting to school.”

Olenick also worries about teachers who may not be considered high risk and may not qualify for special accommodations but live with family members who have pre-existing conditions.

“Right now I don’t know what it means to be accommodated for health issues, and there needs to be more clarity,” Olenick said. “We can’t find out that on Aug. 30 that ‘accommodated’ means, ‘Here’s an extra bottle of hand sanitizer. Good luck.’”

Alex Zimmerman contributed to this report.

NYC educators demand reforms, and reevaluate their own classrooms, after George Floyd’s killing

2020-06-12T02:49:03+00:00

With so much ground to cover in a typical year, U.S. history teacher Tracy Garrison-Feinberg doesn’t spend much time diving into uprisings that have helped shape the course of the country.

Next year, she plans to change that.

As demonstrations have gripped the nation following George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police, the seventh-grade teacher at Brooklyn Prospect Charter School in Clinton Hill is thinking about making protests and rebellions her “theme” in the classroom. She wants her students to grapple with the contradictions of the nation’s founders, who pressed for independence while simultaneously oppressing others through slavery and taking indigenous land.

“I know that I want to spend a lot more time being a lot more complicated,” said Garrison-Feinberg.

As protesters — including students and teachers — keep up demonstrations against police violence, many educators in New York City are also calling for a reckoning of how racism shapes what happens inside classrooms. Their demands are sweeping, from eliminating admissions policies that deepen segregation in the city’s schools, to recruiting teachers who reflect the diversity of their students, and reconsidering curriculum to make lessons more relevant to students’ backgrounds.

Shifting such practices could have very real consequences, research suggests. For example, ethnic studies courses can help improve attendance and grades, and integrated schools help reduce bias as well as boost test scores. Much of the change in New York City schools have been piecemeal, with school’s like Garrison-Feinberg’s, which commits to attracting and serving students who reflect the city’s diversity, leading the way. But as systemic shifts within the country’s largest school system inch along, the recent public awakening is inspiring individual educators to overhaul their own classrooms.

“I think that this is going to have a lasting impact on what I teach and how I teach my students,” said Jacqueline Du, an art teacher at M.S. 35 in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Jacqueline Du, art teacher at M.S. 35 in Brooklyn.

Virtually all of Du’s students are black or Hispanic and come from low-income families living in an area undergoing dramatic changes. White newcomers have flocked in recent years to the historically black neighborhood, sparking fear among some long time residents that the local culture is being erased. The demographic shifts have left the local school district in difficult straits. Enrollment is dwindling in District 16, with many families opting out of the neighborhood schools.

Du is aware of the neighborhood dynamics and is grappling with how to respond in her classroom. She recently thought back to one of the first lessons she did during remote learning. School buildings were closed to help stem the spread of the coronavirus, and Du asked students to give presentations to their classmates about a work of art they were familiar with. What followed was a stream of the expected — Picassos and van Goghs and other European masters.

“It was clear to me that their heart wasn’t in it. They weren’t interested,” Du said.

She has always made an effort to expose students to artists of color, something that Du, who is Asian-American, says she was often lacking in her own education. When young people don’t see themselves represented in their textbooks, “it’s something that I know can be limiting,” she said.

Going forward, Du said she’ll double down, but also bring her lessons closer to home for her students. She wants them to know artists who they can relate to, not just because they are black or brown, but also because they’re making art or grew up in the same neighborhood.

“I’m going to make sure that the content of the artwork that I introduce is relevant to my students present-day, to what they know has been going on around them, and to their personal experiences, and their futures,” she said.

Though teachers feel increasingly compelled to address racism in the classroom, many feel ill-equipped to do so.

“Despite an increasing number of instructors bringing a critical analysis of racial injustice to their curriculum, many report challenges in teaching this content effectively,” researchers at Vanderbilt University wrote in a recent guide to teaching about race.

In New York City, the education department is taking some steps towards more systemic reform and grappling with the fact that the teaching force looks different than the student body. While more than 80% percent of New York City students are black, Hispanic, or Asian, the teaching force is overwhelmingly white.

Last summer, the department made a public commitment to what is often called culturally responsive or sustaining teaching practices — making sure that all students are reflected in what is taught, and how it’s taught. This spring, after facing intense lobbying from parents, the city released a recommended reading list featuring authors and protagonists of color. Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza has also made a priority to make sure teachers receive anti-bias training, despite intense public backlash.

For Stephanie Carroll, the principal of P.S. 307 in Vinegar Hill, shifting teaching practices began before the recent protests unfolded. But watching the crowds pour into American streets has unleashed a new resolve — and a feeling of immense pressure — to serve her students well.

“What really scares me is that I could be sitting here having the same conversation five years from now. That can’t be,” she said. “Enough with the words.”

P.S. 307 is no stranger to facing racism head-on, after a bruising battle in 2016 to redraw the attendance boundaries around the school, which has enrolled almost exclusively black and Hispanic children from the nearby Farragut public houses. Today, 10% percent of the roughly 370 students attending are white.

As an integrating school, P.S. 307 has made it a point to engage its parents in conversations about race and class, but Carroll said it’s time for those to become deeper and more explicit.

She also feels a new sense of urgency around developing new lessons that center the contributions of black people. For that, the school has been working with its best-known booster, Nikole Hannah-Jones, a parent there — and the New York Times journalist who won a Pulitzer for leading the 1619 Project, reframing the country’s history through the legacy of slavery. Carroll hopes to create a working group of educators within the school, district, and beyond, to get that work going in earnest.

“This has definitely made it one of my top priorities to get that work done over the summer, to be able to engage our students in that rich curriculum,” Carroll said.

Carroll said she has benefitted from the support of the local superintendent and others in the community who have seen the need for more integrated schools, a push that has also demanded that school communities bring race, and all the ways it affects educational opportunities, to the forefront.

“It’s like permission to do this work, and that’s important when working in a large institution,” Carroll said. “Feeling empowered to do that is key. I’m not fighting the fight alone.”

Only time will tell whether individual schools and teachers can keep up their resolve to change their own classrooms after protesters have gone home — or whether the country’s largest school system will commit to more wide-scale reforms. Schools Chancellor Carranza proved early in his tenure that he was not afraid to shine a harsh light on city practices that fall disproportionately hard on students of color.

Now educators are demanding equally forceful action. Hundreds of teachers marched in the streets this weekend, calling for more guidance counselors and fewer cops in schools. Hundreds more of the education department’s own central office employees released an open letter to the chancellor this week demanding the city “build an anti-racist educational system.”

“The time has come for our actions to align with our words,” education department employees wrote. “This is the moment to dissociate ourselves from institutional racism and to affirm that Black Lives Matter.”

Cuomo OKs in-person special education this summer, but unclear if NYC will opt in

2020-06-05T23:42:02+00:00

School districts throughout New York state can provide in-person special education services over the summer, according to an executive order Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued Friday evening.

It’s not clear whether the order will nudge New York City education department officials to offer in-person special education services this summer, since districts won’t be required to provide such services in-person.

The governor had previously announced that summer school statewide would need to take place remotely.

Last month, Mayor Bill de Blasio said that all summer instruction would be provided virtually, disappointing some caregivers for students with disabilities who had hoped for at least some in-person support.

City education department officials previously said they were looking to provide in-person services for students with disabilities “as soon as possible.”

Spokespeople for City Hall and the education department did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday evening, following Cuomo’s executive order.

About 39,000 New York City students receive year-round special education services. These services typically go to those students who have more serious needs, including autism or communication delays, and are at greatest risk of losing ground over the summer.

Many of those students attend District 75 programs, which serve students with the most profound disabilities, and often continue school over the summer.

Some parents had worried that the limits of remote summer learning would be felt even more acutely by students with complex disabilities, many of whom are already struggling to cope with the loss of routine, access to social groups, and are at greatest risk of falling further behind.

Still, other parents have expressed concerns about the possible dangers of returning to school buildings as the coronavirus still poses a significant threat. Some educators have expressed reservations about returning over the summer and the New York City teachers union has outlined measures they want in place before buildings reopen, including widespread testing and temperature checks.

Shortly after the order was issued, one group of educators said the move was a “slippery slope” that could jeopardize the health of educators and families.

“We support special education services for our students & families, but this executive order sets a terrible precedent, @NYGovCuomo, that our special education teachers, students, and families will be forced to risk their lives during a global pandemic,” MORE-UFT, the union’s social justice caucus, tweeted.

If school systems choose to offer in-person special education services, they will be required to follow state and federal guidance, the executive order said. No such state guidance was released Friday but is expected to be posted “in the next day or so,” Rich Azzopardi, a senior advisor to the governor, said in a tweet.

Carranza’s top deputy expected to land superintendent job in Georgia

2020-06-05T01:28:25+00:00

New York City’s second in command in the education department is expected to head to Georgia to lead the DeKalb County school district, just outside of Atlanta.

Cheryl Watson-Harris, who currently serves as first deputy chancellor, was named the sole finalist for superintendent, the DeKalb district announced Thursday. She is expected to be appointed on July 1, pending a 14-day waiting period that is mandated by Georgia law. During that time, she’ll meet with the public in virtual meetings.

In an email she sent to some colleagues, which was obtained by Chalkbeat, Watson-Harris said she was “delighted about this opportunity” and that she knows “this is my next calling.”

“I hope this is not goodbye, but a so long and the opportunity to do great things for children in a new space,” she wrote.

It’s not guaranteed that she’ll be appointed. Just weeks ago, it looked like the position would go to former New York City Chancellor Rudy Crew, who currently leads Medgar Evers College. But the school board, expressing concerns about his age and past allegations against him, backtracked and declined to offer him a contract.

In New York City, the education department acknowledged last week that Watson-Harris had been job hunting since December, after it became public that she had applied for a superintendent position in Florida.

She is set to leave the country’s largest school system just as it faces some of its greatest challenges, amid the coronavirus pandemic and resulting budget squeeze. Those difficulties coincide with widespread civil unrest in the wake of the death of George Floyd, a black Minnesota man who died under the knee of a white police officer.

DeKalb’s announcement of her selection credits Watson-Harris with devising the city’s new school support system under schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, which includes supervising nine newly created executive superintendent positions and managing the department’s somewhat opaque efforts to improve schools. Those reforms have garnered criticism from some who say they have added bureaucracy, been poorly defined, and do not include clear metrics for improving schools.

Carranza, who appointed Watson-Harris as his right-hand in 2018, called her looming departure “bittersweet.”

“We are so grateful for all Cheryl has contributed to advancing equity and excellence for New York City’s 1.1 million public school students,” he wrote. “We wish her the best in this incredible new endeavor and know the students of DeKalb County would be lucky to have Cheryl as their leader.”

Watson-Harris rose quickly through the ranks of the city’s education department, serving in two different stints here that were broken up by time spent as a principal and senior education official in Boston. Upon her return in 2015, she was responsible for just one of the city’s school-support centers in Brooklyn and went on to supervise all seven of them. At one point, she had been rumored to be under consideration to become chancellor.

DeKalb County serves about 100,000 students, fewer than Watson-Harris oversaw in Brooklyn, the role she held prior to joining the education department’s central offices. Most of those enrolled are students of color: almost 64% are black, about 17% are Hispanic, 11% are white, and just over 6% are Asian.

DeKalb school board Chair Marshall Orson touted Watson-Harris’ experience and “her commitment to equity for all students.”

“Cheryl Watson-Harris is part of the next generation of outstanding leaders in public education,” he said. “She fits the criteria desired by the DeKalb community.”

After George Floyd killing, Carranza asks NYC educators to meet ‘the pain and struggle of this moment’

2020-06-03T23:21:53+00:00

New York City schools Chancellor Richard Carranza released a letter to educators on Wednesday that urged school communities to “answer the call to be anti-racist” in the wake of George Floyd’s killing.

Carranza wrote that racism is deeply woven into the fabric of America’s economy and institutions, noting: “That is true in New York City, as progressive and forward-thinking as we are, including in our public school system.”

He encouraged educators to work every day to unravel racist systems. “We will continue in our resolve to advance equity now,” he wrote. “We will honor the dignity and humanity of every student, family, and educator every day.”

The letter does not outline any new steps or changes the country’s largest school system will make in the wake of Floyd’s death and the resulting demonstrations against racism. Rather, Carranza said educators “must double down on our work for equity and evolution.” He pointed to the education department’s existing discipline reforms, anti-bias training, and wrap-around supports, including mental health treatment.

Carranza also told teachers that their work is “by definition part of the effort to fight injustice.”

“You are working to address and reverse the effects of systemic racism and bias by providing an excellent education,” he wrote. “And I am here to work shoulder to shoulder with you, championing and charting the path for this work every step of the way.”

The education department also shared a list of resources for educators to lean on as they try to help students process Floyd’s death and the resulting unrest across the country. They include short videos, discussion prompts, and suggested lessons.

The resources also point educators towards mental health supports for teachers and students, including crisis hotlines and counseling services.

Carranza’s No. 2 at the education department is job hunting outside NYC

2020-05-28T20:28:33+00:00

The chancellor’s right-hand at the New York City education department is looking for a new gig.

Cheryl Watson-Harris was briefly one of more than 20 candidates vying to become superintendent of Sarasota County schools, which enrolls about 44,000 students on the west coast of Florida, according to a copy of her application that had been posted on the district’s website.

But she withdrew from the running Thursday afternoon, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported. A spokesperson for the New York City education department said Watson-Harris “is pursuing other opportunities, a process we understand to have begun in December.”

Florida has unusually broad public records laws, while New York City’s education department is notoriously difficult to pry documents from. Her resume, cover letter, and letters of recommendation had been posted online, alongside the other candidates.

Hours after receiving questions from Chalkbeat about her application, Watson-Harris withdrew from consideration, according to John Reichert, a consultant with the Florida School Boards Association who is helping to lead the superintendent search.

“That was just a personal choice,” Watson-Harris told the Herald-Tribune.

Watson-Harris currently serves as second-in-command of the country’s largest school system and led New York City’s transition to remote learning after the coronavirus outbreak, according to her May 17 cover letter. Chancellor Richard Carranza tapped her for a newly created first deputy chancellor position shortly after he took the reins in 2018. Watson-Harris has been responsible for overseeing the chancellor’s new approach to supporting and supervising schools.

Watson-Harris set her sights elsewhere as the city’s education department is facing enormous uncertainty brought on by the coronavirus, along with a looming budget crisis that will likely be felt for years to come. With school buildings shuttered for at least a third of the academic year, it is unclear when students will be able to return. Watson-Harris has been a key player in the department’s response to the outbreak.

In a statement provided through the education department before removing herself from the running in Sarasota, Watson-Harris said it was time to weigh her options.

“I’ve learned so much in my time here. As my daughter graduates high school and my son looks to begin high school in the fall, and as I evaluate personal and family obligations, this is a time for my family to make difficult decisions for our future,” she said. “If I were to accept a job elsewhere, I would do everything to make sure our 1.1 million NYC school children and my colleagues have the support they need for a successful transition.”

She did not respond to a Chalkbeat request for comment after withdrawing her interest in the Florida position.

Her application for the Florida job signals that a reshuffling at the education department might be on the horizon. In New York City, the mayor controls the school system, and Mayor Bill de Blasio is wrapping up his final term. In the short history of mayoral control, each new city leader has shaken up the leadership at Tweed, the education department’s central offices. That means many senior officials may be looking now for their next steps.

Aaron Pallas, department chair of education policy and analysis at Teachers College at Columbia University, said it’s likely that Watson-Harris is simply looking to take on her own leadership role.

“My sense is that she’s still well respected, that she’s managed the responsibilities that she’s had effectively. The [department of education] is sprawling, and complicated, and hard to manage — and there’s certainly not a perception that things are falling apart,” Pallas said.

But, he added, there’s no specific initiative identified with Watson-Harris “that people are clearly happy about.”

Her rise through the New York City ranks has been swift, moving quickly from being responsible for just one of the city’s school-support centers in Brooklyn, to supervising all seven. She had been rumored to be in the running to become chancellor after former schools chief Carmen Fariña retired.

In a recommendation letter for the Sarasota position, Carranza praised Watson-Harris for her ability to implement systems that keep individual students and schools in mind.

“She believes that change is possible, within our control, and a moral imperative,” he wrote. “These internal beliefs undergird everything she does.”

Watson-Harris described herself as “an equity-warrior, impactful leader, and champion for children” in her cover letter. She pointed to her management of nine executive superintendents, and a reorganization of how superintendents and borough-level school support offices work with each other as key accomplishments. Spearheaded by Carranza, those changes have raised eyebrows among some critics who say they have been expensive and the benefits of additional superintendents are unclear.

Although Carranza — and Watson-Harris — have embraced “advance equity now” as a mantra, there have been few dramatic policy changes under their leadership. The mayor, who sets the department’s agenda, has largely been content to stick with ideas he rolled out during his first term.

Watson-Harris has largely avoided controversy while in New York City — but not completely. Questions were raised about how her two children ended up in coveted schools after moving to the city in the summer of 2015. The city’s competitive application process typically makes it difficult for transfer students to snag seats at sought-after campuses. In a lawsuit filed by three white women claiming reverse discrimination by the education department, a former top official charged that she was leap-frogged by Watson-Harris for the first deputy chancellor position, even though Watson-Harris lacked the required license.

“The children in New York City — 70% of whom are black and brown children — get to see senior level administrators that look like them,” Carranza said when asked about the lawsuit. “And they happen to be extremely well-qualified individuals who at any moment could get tapped to lead their own school system anywhere across this country.”

Which NYC schools offer live instruction? Some leaders want the education department to keep track.

2020-05-27T22:24:13+00:00

New York City schools officials don’t know how many of its 1 million public school students are receiving live instruction — and some local leaders said Wednesday that they want answers.

During a City Council oversight hearing focused on remote learning, Chief Academic Officer Linda Chen said officials “don’t have exact data in terms of how many students are receiving it for how long.”

Ursulina Ramirez, the department’s chief operating officer, said the initial focus after city school buildings closed in March was “getting our system up and running,” and making sure teachers were trained properly to teach students virtually. For many schools, that meant getting familiar with the online platform Google Classroom and helping colleagues who didn’t know how to use it, teachers have said.

“I think it’s been an ongoing effort to make sure we have live instruction for our students,” Ramirez said.

At the hearing, Councilman Mark Treyger, who also chairs the council’s education committee, asked the education department to determine how many students are receiving live instruction from each school district. He said this information could show how some schools — those with enough devices on hand, say, and those whose teachers were already familiar with Google Classroom — were better prepared for remote learning from the start.

“Some communities had a head start on remote learning — what that means is they might be more able to receive live instruction than those communities that still need to adjust to just getting the tablet and knowing how to use it and making sure teachers are getting the adequate support,” Treyger said. “And so I really think this is an issue that just speaks to the built-in inequities in the school system.”

Such data is likely complicated to collect. The city’s 1,800 schools have developed their own class schedules and strategies for how to teach students from home. Some teachers may be holding live classes with students at set times, while others may largely rely on setting assignment due dates and offering one-on-ones or office hours for students.

“There is no one-size fits all approach, and teachers are structuring their day to best meet the needs of their students and families,” Danielle Filson, a spokeswoman for the education department, said, when asked why live instruction data hadn’t been collected and whether the department will collect it in the future. “Teachers have been using tools and techniques to engage students, mixing live and self-paced instruction to accommodate other responsibilities faced by students and employees during these times.”

Filson also said the department sees value in live instruction, and is “supporting teachers in implementing it when possible.”

Schools are also marking students present in different ways, with some looking at completed assignments, others at participation, and others still at whether students have been in touch with their teachers. As of last week, an average 87% of students were counted present since April 6, which represents data from an average of 94% of all students, according to the education department.

It’s possible there are students who have never logged on, Ramirez said, but she added that schools are required to do “wellness checks” on students who they haven’t heard from.

Chen said many teachers are trying to reproduce what happens in the classroom, such as holding virtual morning meetings. But participating in live instruction can also be tough for students, such as those who are sharing a laptop with siblings and those who may be working to support family during the pandemic.

The city teachers union has encouraged teachers not to “replicate” a normal school day with virtual teaching, given how the pandemic could be shifting schedules or presenting challenges for families and staff.

Some students and families are craving more interaction.

Joshua Applewhite, a student at Liberation Diploma Plus High School in Coney Island, said he was never big on school but liked Liberation because he met helpful teachers and people he could relate to. Remote learning has changed that, he said.

“Now being back in comfort of my own home, doing the work — the same work I was doing, just without the interactiveness — I feel like a robot,” said Applewhite, who was invited to speak before the hearing started. “As a matter of fact, I feel like this whole situation is handled like we’re robots and we’re not humans with different feelings and different circumstances and different situations.”

Lori Podvesker, a policy manager at INCLUDEnyc and a member of the city’s Panel for Educational Policy, said her son’s District 75 school has had “barely” any live instruction, which she believes will hurt his social development and ability to be independent in the future.

District 75 serves more than 24,000 New York City students with significant disabilities.

“There are a lot of other aspects to that other than the social interactions — it’s the skills,” Podvesker said during the hearing.

Chancellor Richard Carranza has said providing more live teaching is a focus for summer school, which is expected to serve about 178,000 students this year. The education department will train teachers specifically on live instruction ahead of the summer, Chen said. She added that 27,000 students with disabilities who require year-round schooling will need “more and differentiated types of live instruction” this summer.

DeVos guidance could shift $38 million in federal relief from NYC’s public schools to private ones, advocates say

2020-05-20T00:15:45+00:00

As states decide whether to follow controversial federal guidance that would send additional pandemic-related support to private schools, one advocacy group says the new recommendation could cost city public schools millions of dollars.

The Education Law Center, which is funded in part by national and state teachers unions, says the federal guidance would “significantly diminish the resources available to public school districts” to strengthen remote learning, and is asking the state to reject the guidance, David Sciarra, the center’s executive director, wrote Tuesday in a letter to Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Just over $1 billion in federal pandemic relief is set aside for schools in New York state — including $717 million for New York City schools, with some portion going toward services for private school students, such as tutoring and after-school programming. If the state follows Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s guidance on how districts should direct money to support private schools, New York City’s public schools could lose an estimated $38 million, according to the Education Law Center, which used state data to calculate the amount.

At issue are federal CARES Act dollars, which are supposed to help schools deal with costs linked to the pandemic, such as buying laptops for students so they can learn from home. Federal officials decided on how much money each district would get largely based on the Title I formula, which sends extra dollars to districts with many low-income students.

With businesses closed, New York State expected a massive revenue shortfall when it developed its budget in March. Instead of using the federal dollars to bolster state money for school districts, Cuomo and lawmakers cut state dollars in a way that effectively canceled out CARES Act funds. That approach left the biggest financial burden on school districts with high-shares of low-income students.

In normal times, school districts use Title I funds to support services for low-income private school students. On April 30, DeVos issued guidance that said private schools should receive CARES Act services based on the school’s total enrollment, not just based on the number of low-income students it serves. That means that private schools, many of which are also suffering financially, would receive a larger than anticipated share of the federal relief dollars because they generally enroll a smaller share of low-income students, compared to public schools.

The U.S. Department of Education has defended its guidance, saying that it follows the law’s intent of helping both public and private schools. The Education Law Center disagrees, as do many other public school advocates. The center points out that the CARES Act calls for funding to be distributed “in the same manner” as Title I dollars.

“The Secretary seeks to accomplish her objective by instructing public schools to not only set aside funds for low income private school students, but also students in every income bracket, including the most wealthy,” Sciarra wrote. “By allowing even the wealthiest students in the most expensive private schools to receive services paid for with CARES Act funds, New York would divert millions that could be used by [school districts] to meet the critical needs of low income students.”

Private schools have to opt in to receive such services and it’s not clear how many, or which ones, will do so.

New York officials have not yet said whether they’ll follow DeVos’s guidance. Freeman Klopott, a spokesperson for the governor, said the state education department will decide how districts should allocate CARES Act dollars. The state education department, however, is still finalizing the application that districts must fill out to receive their portion of the federal relief money, a spokesperson said Tuesday. Information about how districts should account for private schools will be released when the application is complete, the spokesperson said, though it’s not known when that will be.

Some states have already made decisions. Kentucky and Tennessee, for example, will follow the federal guidance, while Indiana has told districts to ignore it and prioritize funding for schools serving a large number of students from low-income families.

The New York City education department did not respond for comment, though spokesperson Katie O’Hanlon recently told Chalkbeat that the department had “initial concerns about its impact given an already difficult financial landscape.”

A recent analysis found that private school enrollment is much higher in the wealthiest parts of the city.

New York City private schools would receive an estimated $88 million in CARES Act relief if the district distributed resources based on the number of low-income students, the Education Law Center projects. That would rise to $126 million if the state decides to adopt DeVos’s guidance, according to the center.

That estimated loss to city schools is relatively tiny — the education department’s current budget is $34 billion — but it would come as the city is already clamoring for more dollars amid a budget crisis where the state has effectively nullified the federal aid. The mayor has proposed nearly $830 million in cuts for schools through next fiscal year as city officials work to finalize a new budget, and cuts from the state are expected this month if more federal dollars don’t come through. New York City schools Chancellor Richard Carranza has said the department is “at the bone” and can’t find additional savings, though some have been pushing the department to slash pricey contracts and central office employee salaries.

Sciarra, of the Education Law Center, believes districts could individually decide whether to follow DeVos’s guidance, but his organization prefers states make the final call.

“We would rather [that] than have districts deal with this on their own because it might be difficult for districts to decide individually not to follow guidance by the U.S. Secretary of Education,” Sciarra said in an interview. “They may be worried about that — they may feel they don’t have the authority to do that.”

How NYC schools officials played down the coronavirus threat

2020-05-12T02:06:45+00:00

This story was originally published on May 11, 2020 by THE CITY.

After Mayor Bill de Blasio shut down the city’s public schools in mid-March, teachers were ordered to report to classrooms to receive in-person training on the “distance learning” they’d be practicing with their students.

At P.S. 139 in Brooklyn, teachers dutifully showed up on Tuesday, March 17. Late that night, however, they got an emergency email from the principal informing them the next day’s session had been canceled.

“I will be in touch tomorrow with more information,” the Ditmas Park school’s principal promised, according to an email obtained by THE CITY.

The next day, the staff stayed home, but no further explanation emerged. When teachers showed up at school that Thursday, they learned what had happened: A colleague, with whom they had been working the previous week in the Rugby Road building had tested positive for COVID-19.

“They waited for us to come in for training to tell us,” said one teacher, adding the staff was furious about what appeared to be a deliberate lack of transparency to make sure they came into work.

“I was surprised and worried, and when I asked if there was any way to know if we had been around the person who had tested positive, [the principal] said we had to all assume that everyone has been exposed to it across the whole city by this point,” the teacher recalled.

Communications Breakdown

The delay in informing teachers about a staffer with the virus was not a unique incident.

A review by THE CITY of internal emails and interviews with teachers uncovered a pattern of Department of Education officials playing down the threat of COVID-19 in the days before the schools shuttered, during the week teachers were required to come in for training, and even after the start of remote learning.

Among THE CITY’s findings:

• Students with presumed COVID-19 were not to be logged into the DOE’s official incident reporting system unless they had tested positive. Obtaining the necessary test was, for weeks before and after the shutdown, extremely difficult.

• At some schools, supervisors withheld information in communications with teachers and parents about staff and students who were later revealed to be presumed positive.

• In the final days before the shutdown, DOE headquarters instructed staff not to contact the city Health Department, which was serving as the command center for de Blasio’s COVID-19 response, if a staffer tested positive. That policy is now the subject of an investigation.

• The DOE continued to allow large gatherings of students as part of school events right up until the shutdown, even after the federal Centers for Disease Control was recommending that they be canceled.

• In the days before the shutdown, the United Federation of Teachers contended the DOE was not following state protocols in its coronavirus response. A union official told THE CITY there were reports school officials weren’t notifying teachers and parents about presumed COVID-19 cases within schools.

• Before the shutdown, schools were required to shut down for 24 hours and do “deep cleaning” if a student or teacher was presumed positive. In some instances the union was told of schools that weren’t properly cleaned as required during temporary closures, the official said.

• The UFT pushed behind the scenes for the closure of schools for days before going public with its call.

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew speaks at a 2018 City Hall news conference.

Closure Concerns

The question of whether to shut the nation’s biggest school system was a contentious affair from the start.

As the number of New York City residents infected with the virus began to rise day by day in early March and private schools started to shut down, de Blasio adamantly insisted on keeping the public schools open.

Around March 7, UFT President Michael Mulgrew began pressing the DOE to close the schools, arguing that more staff and students would be exposed to the virus every day classes remanded in session, union officials told THE CITY.

“We cannot know how differently the pandemic would have played out if schools and other public facilities had been closed earlier than they were,” Mulgrew told THE CITY last week. “Logic would certainly suggest that better planning would have helped, in particular in the case of schools, which didn’t introduce teacher training in remote instruction until mid-March.”

As of Monday, 74 Department of Education staff had died of COVID-19, including 30 teachers, officials said.

Miranda Barbot, a DOE spokesperson, insisted that in the days before the shutdown and during the in-school teacher training, the schools adhered to the advice of medical experts — and relied only on confirmed positive cases to minimize the release of potentially erroneous information.

“Since the beginning, the Department of Education issued near-daily updates aligned to federal, state, and local guidance that adjusted to the rapidly changing public health landscape,” Barbot wrote in an emailed response to questions by THE CITY.

“All of our decisions are informed by public health experts in order to protect the health and safety of our students and staff.”

Barbot asserted that DOE’s protocol was to “immediately” notify school communities about COVID-positive cases confirmed by the state Department of Health.

But by limiting official reporting to confirmed cases, DOE obscured the extent of the virus’ apparent spread, teachers said.

A Brooklyn Tech teacher told THE CITY that throughout March, many of her students called out sick. By late March, after the schools were shut, a student informed the teacher that she was “presumptive positive” with COVID-19.

The teacher said she asked the principal, David Newman, whether the child should be logged into the Department of Education’s Online Occurrence Reporting System, the internal database DOE uses to track all incidents, including COVID-19 cases.

In an email, Newman responded that the student was not to be tallied as part of the official count: “The DOE only is having us log cases of positive tests.”

Teacher Erin McCarthy during her February trip to Italy.

Early Signs

The virus first appeared under the radar in the weeks after the February winter break, when multiple teachers and students returned from trips to coronavirus hot spots China and Italy. At the time, it was very difficult for anyone to get tested, even if they were displaying potential virus symptoms.

In early March, when de Blasio was encouraging New Yorkers to go about their normal daily routines, THE CITY reported on school teacher Erin McCarthy’s troubles: She’d returned from a winter break trip to Italy to her classroom at PS 369 in Brooklyn and soon after spiked a fever.

McCarthy’s request for testing was rejected because, at the time, Italy was not yet on the hot spot list. It was not until the day after McCarthy’s case was revealed that de Blasio ordered testing for teachers, first responders and city health care workers who’d returned from any hot spot, including Italy.

A few blocks away from PS 369, concerns were growing at Brooklyn Tech, the elite 6,000-student specialized school from which de Blasio’s son, Dante, graduated in 2015.

The Brooklyn Tech teacher who spoke to THE CITY said that in February several students in her class had returned from winter break visits to the Wuhan province in China where the virus was festering. They were very sick, she said.

Then another teacher with whom this teacher shared a classroom called out sick and was feared to be COVID-19 positive.

“They weren’t telling anyone,” the teacher recalled. “As the week went on, we had fewer and fewer kids” showing up.

Soon after, the teacher learned that yet another colleague had also caught the virus.

“He told us,” the teacher said. “The administration did not tell us.”

At that point, the directive to limit public release of information on virus infections was coming from school headquarters.

As THE CITY revealed, DOE officials issued a system-wide memo dated March 10 — the day New York City recorded its 70th confirmed positive case — instructing staff, “At the moment, there is no reason for any school to call [the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene] to report potential or confirmed cases. DOHMH is receiving information … about positive test results strictly from laboratories.”

The memo justifies the do-not-call instruction by stating, “We can support our colleagues at DOHMH by keeping their phones clear to speak with laboratories.”

‘Do Our Damndest’

Responding to THE CITY’s questions about the memo, DOE officials said they were receiving positive confirmations directly from the state and relying on DOHMH’s “guidance that ensured the city’s Department of Health’s lines remained open for New Yorkers.”

The March 10 memo also explicitly allowed schools to continue holding “large gatherings” of students and teachers.

“This was aligned to federal and city guidance at the time,” Barbot said.

Two days after the DOE’s memo, the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention advised schools nationwide to “Give special consideration to events that might put students, staff, or their families in close proximity to others from communities that may have identified cases of COVID-19. Consider whether any of these events should be canceled.”

A day after the DOE’s memo went out, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a global pandemic. That same day, Seattle announced it was shutting down its schools. San Francisco followed suit the next day.

Nevertheless, de Blasio continued to resist a growing call to shut down, even as private schools, religious schools and the biggest charter school in the city, Success Academy, had already announced closures.

During a March 12 press briefing, de Blasio insisted the public schools would remain open.

“We are going to do our damnedest to keep the schools open,” the mayor stated. “It is where our children are safe in the day, and many parents have no alternative. It’s where our kids – a lot of kids get their meals. It is the pivot for a lot of people we need to get to work to get to work that their kids have a place to be. A lot of them have no other choice.”

The next day, Mulgrew met with the mayor, after which he issued a statement saying that the two men had “decided to respectfully disagree.”

“We have reached the point where continuing to keep our classes open poses a greater lasting threat than the disruption that will result from school closings,” Mulgrew warned, noting that by then, schools in Washington, Los Angeles, Michigan, Maryland, Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia and Oregon had closed due to the COVID-19 crisis.

Brooklyn Technical High School in Fort Greene

‘Cold and Flu Season’

At Brooklyn Tech, teachers were aware that at least one and possibly two of their colleagues were sick with the virus. But Newman continued to insist that was not true, according to an email obtained by THE CITY.

Mid-morning on March 15, Newman sent parents and staff a memo insisting he was “committed to transparently sharing information to ensure a clear understanding of the novel coronavirus facts within our school community. That includes dispelling any circulating rumors or information not backed up by facts.”

“At this time,” Newman stated, “no member of our student body or school staff has a confirmed case of coronavirus.”

He then offered a new narrative to counter the notion that a staff member had tested positive, stating that “a member of our school community who is at a higher risk of potentially contracting the virus has been quarantined at home.”

He went further to quell fears of the virus’ presence within the school.

“Since it is cold and flu season, the NYC Department of Health also advises that we should not interpret any illness or absence from work or school for any amount of time as a novel coronavirus related absence or illness,” he wrote.

That afternoon, de Blasio reversed course and announced that schools would be closed starting Monday and teachers would be required to attend in-school training for “distance learning” that Tuesday through Thursday.

That Monday, Newman sent out a new memo: “I am writing to inform you that a member of our school community has self-reported that they tested positive for COVID-19.”

In her email to THE CITY, the DOE’s Barbot wrote that the principal was following protocol, stating, “A self-reported and confirmed case are different. After we closed all buildings, we were no longer confirming individual cases with the state Health Department and supported schools in notifying their communities of a self-reported case if they wished to do so.”

“Everything was changing hour by hour at this point, and we were giving info in real time as soon as we had it,” she added.

‘Open at Any Cost’

At P.S. 139, a similar scenario was unfolding.

On Thursday, March 19, staffers were ushered in groups into the auditorium and told that one of their colleagues had tested positive for COVID-19.

The principal did not identify the staffer.

“None of this is easy for anyone,” said the teacher who spoke to THE CITY. “I don’t envy the position the principal was put in.

The DOE said the principal “did not follow the DOE’s guidance” in canceling training on March 18.

“At this time, we were at widespread community transmission,” Barbot wrote, “and the city’s Health Department advised that schools and the workplace were of no greater risk than the rest of NYC.”

Over the last few weeks, Councilmember Robert Holden (D-Brooklyn) has raised questions about the insistence by de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza to keep the schools open as long as they did.

“That’s their whole m.o. of trying to keep the schools open at any cost,” he said. “That’s typical of the bureaucracy of the DOE. They cross words, they use double-speak. They cover up. That’s why we have investigators.”

Barbot called Holden’s contention “completely false and absurd. At the time there was a lot of fear and confusion, and we were focused on providing clear communication primarily based on confirmed information from health experts rather than rumors.”

How DOE’s approach will ultimately be viewed remains to be seen. The Special Commissioner for Investigation for the city schools recently opened an inquiry into how DOE responded to the crisis during the time de Blasio insisted on keeping schools open — and after he changed his mind and shut it down.

And with the mayor wrestling with the possibility of reopening the schools in September, UFT President Mulgrew is urging a careful approach.

“As a city, we have learned hard lessons in this health crisis,” he added. “We need to make sure we heed those lessons in order to re-open school buildings safely for students, staff, and our communities.”

Coronavirus fallout forces NYC to reconsider $19B in capital projects for schools

2020-05-08T03:10:57+00:00

Facing a budget crisis resulting from the coronavirus, the city’s education department is rethinking spending for future capital projects, officials said Thursday night.

The proposed capital plan, developed before the pandemic upended life in New York City, maps out nearly $19 billion in spending through fiscal year 2024. It would include spending on a litany of projects, including building capacity for 57,000 more students to address overcrowding and making school buildings more accessible for students with disabilities.

Now officials have gone back to the drawing board. The Panel for Educational Policy, an appointed board that approves major spending and policy changes, was set to vote on the plan last week, but technical issues with the virtual meeting platform forced officials to reschedule to Thursday. But Thursday’s vote on the plan was canceled ahead of the meeting, as officials rethink budget priorities, Deputy Chancellor Karin Goldmark said during the meeting.

“We have not honestly figured out what is the path forward,” Goldmark said. “We are in a much more constrained budget environment than we were in when this plan was formulated.”

The fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, which has left more than 19,000 New York City residents dead, could also mean more than $7 billion in lost revenue for the city as businesses remain closed. As a result, Mayor Bill de Blasio has proposed nearly $830 million in education department cuts through next fiscal year that would directly hit school budgets, institute a hiring freeze, and slow down some of his signature programs, such as the expansion of pre-K for 3-year-olds.

Many teachers, students, and elected officials have urged city officials to find ways to limit cuts, such as by increasing taxes on billionaire New Yorkers or cutting spending elsewhere in the budget. Some aired those same concerns during Thursday’s meeting, which was still going at 11:30 p.m.

Some education department projects are already on the chopping block. The city had planned to install air conditioners in every school by next fiscal year, but now is proposing putting that on hold. Money from the capital plan would have expanded electrical capacity at older buildings to support new air conditioners.

Goldmark’s comments came after about a dozen people — mostly student advocates from youth organization Ya-Ya Network — criticized the plan’s proposed allocation of $200 million for school security. They argued that the expansion of a digital surveillance system and upgrading metal detectors would make students feel like criminals. That money should instead go toward more social workers or training for restorative justice practices, the students said.

“In what world does it make sense to cut funding for things students must have to get an education, while paying for security cameras and metal detectors,” said Tenzin Chophel, a student who is part of Ya-Ya Network.

Some advocacy organizations have long argued against metal detectors in schools and have pushed to remove police officers from school buildings, asking instead for restorative justice practices. Mayor Bill de Blasio has not addressed all of those concerns, but last summer introduced a slew of discipline reform policies, which included more restorative justice training.

It’s unclear when the plan will come back for a vote, but Goldmark said she heard students’ concerns “loud and clear.”

Separately, some school bus employees urged the panel to pass emergency bus contracts, which have been delayed as education officials rethink those agreements.

About $180 million in emergency contracts for March, plus millions more as an automatic extension for April, were set for a vote last week but were withdrawn from the agenda before the meeting started because officials are in discussions with bus companies, given the city’s financial situation, said Danielle Filson, a spokesperson for the education department. The delay, however, has forced bus companies to furlough thousands of workers, the Daily News reported last week.

Some parents and educators have argued against reinstating the contracts during the city’s budget crisis, since the buses are currently out of use. One bus worker suggested the city use buses for other initiatives, such as delivering personal protective equipment.

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the total amount in emergency bus contracts for March and April.

Many of NYC’s bilingual special education students don’t get the right services. Remote learning has made it even harder.

2020-04-30T19:04:32+00:00

After years of searching in vain for the right school for her son, Erendira Matamoros was hopeful she found a good fit.

David, a 14-year-old who is autistic and primarily speaks Spanish, is legally entitled to a small special education classroom led by a bilingual teacher, but that’s hard to come by in New York City. Only about a third of the roughly 5,500 students who required small bilingual special education classrooms this fall were placed in such settings.

After attending three different schools over the past three years, David was admitted this January to a high school program for children with autism. The program is not bilingual, so David was paired with a paraprofessional serving as a translator. The arrangement isn’t optimal — many nights he still needed help translating his homework — but his mother was hoping David would thrive there.

Now, as the coronavirus has shuttered school buildings across the city, David is readjusting once again. For the first month of remote learning, David went without a translator, and even now, his translator isn’t available every day.

“After so many changes for him, all the schools, I think he was feeling more comfortable with the teachers and the classrooms — he was starting to have an environment,” Matamoros said. “Then everything already changed again for him.”

Students with disabilities who are learning English have long been among the most vulnerable in the city. As of November 2019, about 3,800 students legally entitled to be in small, bilingual special education classes didn’t receive the accommodation, according to education officials.

There is no easy fix, and the educational crisis brought on by coronavirus has only underscored that these students are at an extreme disadvantage.

Under state regulations, districts must ensure that English language learners with disabilities are receiving the services outlined in their individualized education plans, or IEPs — and schools must consider their special language needs. Nothing “can, or should, replace” a student’s access to bilingual or other language programs because staff isn’t available or because of scheduling conflicts.

But that isn’t the reality for many students. It’s difficult enough for the district to hire bilingual teachers. It’s even harder to find bilingual teachers with a special education background, often due to the cost and extra work required for the certifications, advocates say. Also, students who speak the same language and have similar special education needs are rarely in the same school buildings, making it tough to group them into classes. For example, half of the students who needed Spanish-language special education services in the 2017-18 school year were the only students in their schools who did so, the department said.

Since 2016, New York City has been on a state corrective action plan, ordering the education department to better serve students who are learning English. But according to documents obtained by Chalkbeat through the Freedom of Information Law, the city failed to meet the deadline for certain benchmarks of the plan last school year, prompting the state to give the city an extension.

Under the plan, which asks the city to improve myriad services for English language learners, the state ordered the city to ensure that all students like David receive their entitled services by next school year — a goal that is likely to remain unmet.

Danielle Filson, a spokesperson with the education department, said education officials have connected more children with the proper services in the last few years, but they “recognize there is work to do.”

The state recently approved a special mixed class structure for New York City, where monolingual and bilingual special education students are taught together by certified bilingual and special education teachers, so that schools can form more classes, city officials said. Schools started implementing that in September.

“We’re committed to meeting the needs of English Language Learners with disabilities, and in order to expand opportunities we’ve developed a new, specific class model and are working with the State on teacher certifications,” Filson wrote in a statement.

In the meantime, in lieu of a bilingual special education teacher, students are often paired with a paraprofessional, who speaks the child’s native language and supports them in class by translating coursework and lessons, according to the education department.

But bilingual education is “not about translating from one language to the other,” said Tamara Alsace, a past president of the New York State Association of Bilingual Educators, who oversaw multilingual students at Buffalo public schools for a decade. Translation can be a “turn-off” for students, and often doesn’t help them understand the concept of what’s being taught unless the paraprofessional is familiar with the subject area, she said.

“These are not new issues; they’ve been around for a long time,” Alsace said. “Unless we think of long-term solutions, we are not going to resolve them.”

Uphill battle

Finding the right special education services can be daunting for any family, but it’s even more challenging for non-English speaking parents, advocates say. Many may not be aware of all their rights, such as asking for a translated version of their child’s IEP.

“All this burden is on the parents to navigate such a complex system,” said Paola Jordan, co-director of the Metropolitan Parent Center at Singeria, an organization that helps Spanish-speaking families navigate the special education system. “It is a complex problem that needs a complex solution.”

Finding support for David has been an uphill battle for Matamoros since her son moved into her Queens apartment in 2017, after living with his grandmother in Mexico while Matamoros worked to support two other sons. She took days off of work to research good programs for David and attend workshops that taught her about the city’s special education system.

Erendira Matamoros fixes her son David’s hair before he heads off to school at 6:30 a.m. on morning in March.

In some ways, Matamoros had an advantage over some parents of English language learners since she’s been in the U.S. for longer than her son and is comfortable speaking English.

After enrolling David at a middle school in Maspeth, where they live, school officials evaluated David and classified him as being on the autism spectrum. They determined he should be in a bilingual class serving no more than a dozen students with similar needs. Because they couldn’t provide those services, he was paired with a paraprofessional who translated lessons for him.

“He was feeling very intimidated with the new language, and he only wanted to speak Spanish,” Matamoros said.

His mother was also intimidated, having to figure out how to meet the needs of her son, who she hadn’t lived with for the past decade. She would spend her mornings before work on the phone and searching the internet for support services, winding her way through the special education bureaucracy.

“Sometimes it’s difficult for me to do calls and following up,” Matamoros said. “It’s difficult for me to follow everything.”

The next couple years were a saga to find the right spot for David. His mother had enrolled David in a dual language middle school in Cypress Hills, but officials soon determined that he needed more intensive support than it could provide and should be in a District 75 program offering specialized programs for students with significant disabilities.

Matamoros, working with the group Advocates for Children, eventually won the right to send her son to a state-approved private school. But none of the schools she toured had bilingual services.

David ended up in a public high school in Williamsburg that was unable to provide the bilingual special education and speech therapy mandated by his IEP. The school gave Matamoros a list of providers to call, with the cost covered by the education department. Matamoros contacted nearly 40 speech therapists over several months before finding someone — a therapist who they would see once a week, about an hour away from their home, she said.

Late last year, Matamoros took one last shot at getting her son at least some of the services he needed. She applied for David to attend a Horizon program, which caters to autistic students who are on or below grade level. He was accepted to a program in January at Brooklyn Community Arts and Media High School. Again, he was paired with a paraprofessional to help translate.

David was happy with landing at a school where he’d likely stay.

“Everytime I had to change a school, I had to say goodbye to people who already I know,” David said in Spanish during an interview last month.

Now, life has been upended once more.

On top of helping David navigate online learning, Matamoros lost her fast food job and worries about keeping her family afloat financially. The mall food court where Matamoros works is temporarily closed, and she’s already one month behind on bills. She needs to find a steady stream of income by the end of April, but doing so is complicated because her son can’t be left home alone to navigate online learning.

Even before this crisis, she had to help David with his homework, often looking up YouTube videos in Spanish to understand his English or Algebra lessons. But now the demands have increased. The rupture of routine is particularly difficult for individuals with autism, who tend to struggle with flexible thinking, but can thrive with clear routines. Now David and his mom spend hours every day trying to keep up with the teen’s coursework.

“I feel like this is another full-time job because I have to sit with David, I have to see what he’s doing, what he’s learning, and then I have to basically review with him again because a lot of things have to be translated, and then make sure he is understanding,” Matamoros said.

Bilingual teaching shortage

One of the biggest hurdles to expanding bilingual special education is a shortage of certified teachers. There are currently 500 certified bilingual special education teachers in the city, according to officials, with another 500 special education teachers who have a bilingual “extension,” meaning they later became certified in the field. This still falls short of the need, including for students who speak less common languages, the education department said.

Last school year, most New York City districts that had the greatest need for these small, bilingual programs — particularly in Spanish and Chinese — also had high shares of low-income families, according to the city’s response to the state’s corrective action plan. Often, high-needs districts also have difficulty attracting and retaining teachers.

“It’s really hard to get teachers to go to those areas,” said Lori Podvesker, director of disability and education policy at INCLUDEnyc and a member of the city’s Panel for Educational Policy.

Recruiting enough qualified teachers is a huge challenge in opening new bilingual special education programs, according to advocates and the education department. Currently, there are a total 275 bilingual special education classes across all grades in New York City, a spokesperson said.

People who want to become certified in both bilingual and special education must pursue about 18 to 24 more credit hours of coursework than a general education teacher according to the city teachers union. In the end, they’re serving students who have some of the highest needs in the city.

“It’s not like they get paid extra to do that,” said Alsace, the former Buffalo educator. “They don’t get anything extra for being a bilingual special education teacher.”

Bilingual special education teachers, however, are eligible for more pay under the city’s Bronx Plan, which provides salary boosts for teachers at certain hard-to-staff schools, according to the education department.

The needle seems to be inching up in the right direction. The percentage of students with disabilities and are English language learners who are receiving the support they need has slightly improved over the past few years —34% percent of students last school year received mandated services, up from 26% two years before that.

Through a program with New York City Teaching Fellows, the city subsidizes tuition for special education teachers to get their bilingual certification. The city also helps recruit teachers and covers extra tuition costs at certain colleges for a state program called the Intensive Teacher Institute in Bilingual Special Education. The first cohort started this year with Hunter College, according to the city.

Rita Rodriguez-Engberg, director of the Immigrant Students Rights Project at Advocates for Children, believes the city and state should bolster partnerships with universities, as well as loan repayment and recruitment programs, to encourage more people to pursue bilingual special education.

Erendira Matamoros, a single mother, juggled caring for her family with a fast food job as she fought to find the right school for David. Now, she’s out of work and helping David, while struggling to find new work during the pandemic.

The city said it could use more support from the state on recruiting more teachers for this work. The state did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story. At a March Board of Regents meeting, Interim Commissioner Shannon Tahoe said the state is considering work groups on how to address teacher shortages in bilingualism and special education.

Advocates believe the department of education should tap outside providers to create hubs offering various therapies and support. Having after-school programs where parents could take their children to receive extra help would be one way to achieve that, said Jordan, from Singeria. Podvesker suggested creating borough-based programs where students could receive their related services, such as speech therapy. These wouldn’t close the gap for bilingual special education services and still may not work for all families, she said, but it would help some people who would instead be charged with finding services on their own, as David’s mother did with his required speech therapy.

As for David, Matamoros believes it’s too early to know if his current school will help him get on track. He has only been there for a couple months, and now he’s learning from home under challenging circumstances.

Matamoros said she admires how David never complains and adjusts to situations as best as he can. He often asks his mother why he’s had to change schools or why he has extra services. She tells him it’s so he can one day be on his own.

“You are going to have to go and work for your own living, and I’m not gonna be here all the time with you like I am now,” Matamoros said she tells David. “So you have to learn how to do everything on your own.

“So that’s my goal. That is what I’m looking for in all the services he is getting.”

These 267 NYC schools were honored as ‘Recognition Schools’ for their academic performance

2020-04-23T20:21:21+00:00

New York City is home to 267 of the state’s highest-performing schools, according to state accountability measures.

These so-called “Recognition Schools,” which state officials announced on Thursday, must have shown high academic achievement and substantial progress over the 2018-2019 school year. Of those in New York City, 35 are charters, and the rest are district schools.

In Manhattan’s District 2, one of the most affluent school districts in New York City, with about half of its students from low-income homes, 41 schools made the list — the highest of any other city district. By contrast, the Bronx’s District 9 and Brooklyn districts 14, 16, 18, and 32, where from 70% to 92% of students come from low-income families, each had one school on the list.

This is the second year that school progress is being measured under the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, which has given states more freedom to decide which schools are performing well and which ones are struggling.

“These are exemplary public schools that demonstrate that all students can achieve at high levels with the right supports and resources,” Board of Regents Chancellor Betty A. Rosa said in a statement.

To be considered top-performing, schools must already be in “good standing” with the state, meaning they cannot have been identified recently as needing improvement. Under the state’s accountability framework, schools are rated from Level 1, the lowest, to Level 4, the highest, on several different measures. Elementary and middle schools must earn a Level 4 on academic performance and progress for all students, while high schools must earn 4s for their academic performance and graduation rate.

Schools cannot earn the lowest score on any other indicator: progress on state tests; chronic absenteeism; English proficiency among students learning English as a new language; and college, career, and civic readiness for high schools.

Schools cannot have any subgroups of students, such as English language learners, that were identified last school year as needing extra support.

And at least 95% of students at these “Recognition Schools” must have taken a state reading or math exam, in accordance with the federal law.

Schools can appear on the list year after year. Last year, 277 city schools were recognized. Of those, 147 were recognized again, while 130 didn’t make this year’s list, according to a Chalkbeat analysis. This year, 120 schools were recognized for the first time under the new accountability framework.

This year, a total 582 schools across the state made the list.

See which New York City schools made this year’s list below.

Gabrielle LaMarr LeMee contributed reporting.

Searchable database created by Gabrielle LaMarr LeMee

Week 4 of remote learning is wrapping up in NYC. The education department wants to know how it’s going.

2020-04-17T19:44:24+00:00

The education department launched a family survey Friday to check how remote learning, now in its fourth week, is going.

As the coronavirus pandemic has shuttered schools, students, teachers, and parents have been adjusting their lives to remote learning.

While the transition has been a frustrating adjustment for some, it has been especially tough on families who are balancing work or don’t have the technology or internet access to get online. Now, families are in for the long haul. Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced that school buildings will remain closed for the rest of the school year (though Gov. Andrew Cuomo insists he has final say, and has so far extended closures to May 15).

Feedback from the survey will help schools “make adjustments and best serve the NYCDOE community during these unprecedented times,” said Danielle Filson, a spokesperson for the education department, in a statement.

The 15-question survey is available online until May 1 in 10 languages. It is split up by borough, but has the same questions for everyone.

Responses will be anonymous, and results will be shared with individual schools the week of May 4, but won’t be publicly released, according to the education department. Students in grades 6-12 can also take the survey. The survey asks parents and students to rate how they feel about a range of things, including their emotional well-being, and how reliable their internet access is.

Families without internet can call 311 for instructions on taking the survey over the phone.

Chancellor Richard Carranza will be writing a letter to schools to tell them about the survey. Schools and parent coordinators will also reach out to families, and flyers will be sent to elected officials, advocates, and community-based organizations.

Memo ordering NYC schools to keep coronavirus cases quiet is under investigation

2020-04-15T02:10:30+00:00

This story was originally published on April 14, 2020 by THE CITY.

The Special Commissioner for Investigations for city schools is probing the Department of Education’s bid to squelch coronavirus infection information in the chaotic days before schools were closed.

The investigation comes in response to a report by THE CITY revealing an internal memo advising school officials to not report cases of teachers or staff who tested positive for COVID-19 or were likely infected to the city health department.

Following the story, Councilmember Robert Holden (D-Queens) asked Special Commissioner for Investigations Anastasia Coleman to look into the origin of the memo — and whether it contributed to the spread of the virus within schools before Mayor Bill de Blasio reluctantly announced on March 15 that schools would be shuttered.

Councilmember Robert Holden (D-Queens) Photo: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

In an interview Tuesday with THE CITY, Holden said he believes the March 10 memo was intended to help cover up the scope of the spread of the virus within the city public education system to justify keeping schools open amid an avalanche of pressure.

“A lot of teachers were calling us and saying, ‘Why aren’t the schools closed? We have some staff who are infected,’” Holden recalled.

“This is the DOE’s M.O., this is how they operate. They were trying to cover up. They were saying to us, they want to cover this up, we don’t want to cause mass hysteria,” he said.

🔗A Wave of Deaths

On March 30, SCI investigator Hector Rivera notified Holden, “I am assigned and investigating the allegations of negligence by the Department of Education, regarding the COVID-19 cases in the city schools.”

On Tuesday, Regina Gluzmanova, an SCI spokesperson, declined to discuss the investigation, stating, “SCI is in receipt of the Council Member’s letter and will not comment any further on an open investigation.”

The Department of Education confirmed this week that 50 public school staff, including 21 teachers, have died of COVID-19 illness since the pandemic hit the city.

As pressure mounted last month to shut the schools, de Blasio resisted the call, saying he feared the closure would hurt families who need their children to be in school while they’re working.

On March 4, THE CITY reported on a teacher who’d returned from a coronavirus hotspot in Italy and was displaying symptoms of the virus but couldn’t get tested. Days later de Blasio agreed that teachers, first responders and city health care workers with likely symptoms and travel histories should get tested.

At the time, the United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew criticized school officials for dragging their feet on testing teachers. As the days passed, Catholic schools closed, and one private school after another followed suit.

Then on March 10, with public schools still open, DOE management sent staff an internal memo advising them on how to handle the growing crisis. The memo specified that the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which was tracking the spread, should not be contacted.

“At the moment, there is no reason for any school to call DOHMH to report potential or confirmed cases,” the memo states. “DOHMH is receiving information…about positive test results strictly from laboratories. We can support our colleagues at DOHMH by keeping their phones clear to speak with laboratories.”

🔗‘An Abundance of Caution’

Confronted about this at a news conference, Chancellor Richard Carranza defended the memo, stating, “With increasing numbers of people coming out, what we don’t want to do is inundate the Department of Health with these cases.”

Five days later, de Blasio announced the shutdown.

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza with Mayor Bill de Blasio Photo: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

“Look at how many staff have died,” Holden told THE CITY Tuesday. “Leaving these classrooms open for that many days was dangerous.”

On Tuesday, Miranda Barbot, a spokesperson for Carranza, said: “When school buildings were open, we received confirmations directly from the State Health Department, and our guidance ensured the city’s Department of Health’s lines remained open for New Yorkers.

“We immediately notified communities when there was a confirmed case by the State Health Department, which happened once, and out of an abundance of caution we closed six other sites that had self-reported cases.”

No days off: NYC reverses course and cancels entire spring break

2020-04-04T02:19:51+00:00

New York City teachers will have no spring break this year, city officials announced Friday night, a move that immediately generated outrage from the teachers union directed at Mayor Bill de Blasio.

“With this step, Mayor de Blasio shows that he does not recognize just how hard you have been working during these stressful and anxiety-filled times,” United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew wrote in a Friday evening letter to teachers.

Before the spread of the new coronavirus forced schools statewide to shut down, New York City had scheduled spring break April 9-17, a total of seven school days. But the state earlier this week released guidance that schools should continue instruction even through this previously scheduled vacation time.

At first, it seemed teachers would at least be off for two major religious holidays that fall during the original break: April 9 and 10, which mark the first two days of Passover. April 10 is also Good Friday. That changed late Friday night, when the union announced to its members that the mayor had decided to keep class in session for the entirety of the previously scheduled break.

Most regional enrichment centers, which educate the children of first responders, and food hubs will also remain open.

City officials suggested that canceling the break was a public health measure.

“We are confident that continuing remote learning will help ensure that families adhere to social distancing in the coming weeks, which is imperative to slowing the spread of the virus and keeping New Yorkers safe,” Carranza told educators in a letter sent Friday.

Teachers who still want to take those two days off must use “accrued leave,” according to the letter. In a tweet, schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said remote learning would continue “for students who aren’t observing.”

“We recognize this may feel like a disappointment to many students and schools as we have all been working tirelessly in our transition to remote learning and very reasonably want a break,” Carranza wrote.

“We have finalized arrangements with our union partners at this time to provide four additional leave days to school-based staff who otherwise would have had Spring Recess. We will have additional details to share about these arrangements in the week ahead.”

Mulgrew told members that the union will negotiate for extra compensation for the additional days. “I will do everything in my power to see that you are properly compensated for your time,” Mulgrew said in the letter.

The sudden change sparked outrage from educators across the city. The teachers union’s official Twitter account retweeted teachers who blasted de Blasio as “disgusting,” “disgraceful,” and “disrespectful.”

Numerous teachers tweeted criticism of the city’s decision Friday night.

So now @NYCMayor wants to take away, the 2 days off us teachers had next week #Passover Really???? You can't let us even have that???? #UnbelievablyIgnorant
— Mindy Rosier-Rayburn (@MindyRosier) April 4, 2020

@NYCMayor you clearly have no respect for the men & women who work tirelessly in our schools. #disrespectfuldeblasio #mayorfail #april9and10
— Dennis Gault (@DennisGault) April 4, 2020

@NYCMayor’s decision to keep @NYCSchools ”open” next Thursday and Friday during Jewish and Christian holidays is disrespectful to students’, parents’, and teachers’ social and emotional learning. @UFT #iteachmath #mtbos #edchat
— Bobson Wong (@bobsonwong) April 4, 2020

The lack of respect for the dignity of our work is what hurts most as a NYC teacher
— Patrick Sprinkle (@psprinkle) April 4, 2020

Open NYC’s child care centers to homeless students, comptroller says

2020-04-01T15:30:32+00:00

Homeless students should be allowed to attend the city’s under-enrolled child care centers, set up for families of frontline workers responding to the coronavirus pandemic, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer said Wednesday.

Echoing calls from advocates, Stringer asked Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza to open these centers up to homeless students, charging that shelters are not an appropriate place for students to learn. Students in shelters often don’t have the space and supports needed for remote learning, like internet access.

“For students who are homeless, the stability and continuity of a safe learning environment could make the difference between keeping pace and falling behind their peers,” Stringer wrote in a letter to Carranza. “We simply cannot afford the devastating consequences for these children if they fall further behind.”

Just a week after the city closed schools because of the coronavirus, it opened 93 “regional enrichment centers” where workers in healthcare, transit, and emergency services could send their children. The idea was to ease the burden of school closures on some of the city’s most critical workers.

But enrollment in the centers and attendance has remained low, leading the city to open the centers up to children of workers in grocery stores, pharmacies, and a few other city agencies.

Last week, low enrollment led the city to close 23 of these centers, in part to allow school nurses to help with other healthcare needs as the city braces for critical weeks of its coronavirus response.

City officials have emphasized that the centers are to ensure that essential workers aren’t burdened with child care and unable to come into work.

“That’s really the crucial crux of this matter — is making sure we are supporting these essential workers and giving them those options in terms of their kids,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said last week.

But given the low enrollment, advocates have urged the city to add homeless students to the remote learning centers. Council Speaker Corey Johnson and Brooklyn Councilmember Stephen Levin called for the same.

“As we rise to meet the challenges of remote learning during this time of crisis, we must do all we can for our most vulnerable students,” Johnson and Levin said in a joint statement on Wednesday, following Stringer’s letter.

City officials said Wednesday they had delivered internet-connected iPads to the 12,000 students in city shelters. Even if students are able to get a device from their school for remote learning, they often lack access to the internet in their shelters.

That’s what happened to 10-year-old Allia Phillips, who is in a shelter on the Upper West Side.

“I went downstairs to find out that they don’t have any internet,” Kasha Phillips-Lewis, Allia’s mother, told the New York Times. “You’re screwing up my daughter’s education. You want to screw me up? Fine. But not my daughter’s education.”

Allia has since received an iPad, officials said.

Read the full letter below:

The ‘new reality’ of coronavirus: Here’s what NYC’s first day of remote learning looked like

2020-03-24T01:31:54+00:00

Class was in session Monday morning in New York City, even as school buildings were shuttered.

Teachers fired up laptops from their kitchen tables and living room couches. Students logged on to conference calls and video chatrooms. Parents reluctantly tried to teach fractions while cooped up at home.

Remote learning kicked off in the country’s largest school system with much anticipation, wracked nerves, a few technical snafus, and some pleasant surprises.

The moment required frenzied planning on the part of the system’s 75,000 teachers and their school leaders, who scrambled to distribute whatever devices they had on hand to ensure the city’s 1 million public school students could get online. Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said schools have distributed 175,000 laptops, iPads, and Chromebooks so far. For the thousands who still lack access, schools handed out printed packets of work.

It was the first of probably many days of digital teaching and learning. Campuses are slated to be closed through at least April 20, after spring break. But Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday said it was unlikely school buildings will reopen this academic year.

Carranza said at a Monday evening press conference that teachers and students are “rising to the occasion,” but to expect road bumps.

“Today is day one of a new reality for the 1.1 million students and families in New York City,” he said. “The two operative words as we go forward are flexibility and patience.”

Here’s what the first day of (remote) school looked like for educators and parents on the front lines.

🔗‘I was incredibly heartened’: Nate Stripp, eighth-grade social studies teacher at M.S. 50

Brooklyn middle school teacher Nate Stripp logged on to Google Classroom Monday morning, surprised to see that all but two of the 18 students in his homeroom had marked themselves present.

“That’s better than homeroom attendance normally,” Stripp said, laughing.

Stripp, who teaches eighth grade social studies at Williamsburg’s M.S.50, offered his students a chance in the morning to video conference with him in case they had questions about assignments, or if they just wanted to chat. Fifteen students logged on, and he was again surprised: A few of his typically uncooperative students said they wanted to be back in school, and a few others had questions about how to complete assignments.

School leaders also held a schoolwide video conference, anticipating 15 students to join. Instead, about 100 logged on, reaching the allowed capacity for the meeting.

“I was incredibly heartened by the eagerness to work,” Stripp said.

He is in the middle of a unit on World War II and plans to stream live, virtual lessons to students on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.

In the afternoons, he will head to work at a downtown Brooklyn Regional Enrichment Center, where health care, transit, and emergency workers can send their children for care while they follow remote learning plans from their schools. Stripp volunteered because he’s healthy, young, and doesn’t have kids at home.

“It just made sense for me as someone with less to put on the table than a lot of my colleagues have,” he said.

It’s still too early to tell, but so far Stripp was “feeling OK” about virtual teaching. He previously used Google Classroom to post assignments and spent most of last week helping other teachers become familiar with the online teaching platform. He’s planned reading assignments for students through Newsela, which provides articles at five different reading levels. That’s important, he said, because his school’s students are diverse in their abilities — he estimates that about a third of his students have individualized education programs, and a third of them are learning English as a new language.

Leading up to Monday, teachers at his school drove around Brooklyn to drop off Chromebooks they already had on hand to any families in need. M.S.50 is a Title I school, which receives extra federal money because it has a large portion of low-income students. Many students there don’t have computers or WiFi access, he said.

Across the city, the education department aims to distribute about 25,000 internet-enabled iPads this week to students who have no access to technology.

“We know the DOE is planning to provide stuff, but how quickly those iPads are going to be rolled out is really up in the air,” Stripp said. “Last week, we wanted to organize and make sure kids have something to start.”

🔗‘I was terrified when I woke up’: Naomi Peña, mother of four on the Lower East Side

On the first day of remote learning citywide, Naomi Peña woke up to 25 notifications from her 10-year-old son’s classroom teacher, who was busy uploading digital assignments, unwittingly deluging parents’ email.

“I was terrified when I woke up,” Peña said. “I was completely overwhelmed.”

Her 10-year-old daughter’s teacher, by contrast, made sure each child had an email account, access to video tutorials, and detailed color-coded schedules for parents to follow, including assignments that should be completed on a given day (labeled in pink).

Naomi Peña is a mother of four on the Lower East Side.

The twins attend the same school, but their classroom teachers have varying comfort levels with technology. “My daughter’s teacher has got it together,” said Peña. “My [10-year-old] son’s teacher is not there yet — everyone is learning from each other.”

Peña, a mother of four who works as an administrator at a tech company, said the schools have generally been helpful in preparing for the transition. Her seventh-grade son’s school trained parents to use Google Classroom, and Peña has received multiple phone calls from their schools to check in and make sure she feels supported.

“Oftentimes you feel like you’re alone in this process, but every single teacher called me and, if they didn’t get a response, they called again,” said Peña, who is also a parent council leader in Manhattan’s District 1. So far, her children’s coursework mostly involves assignments that can be completed throughout the day and don’t require logging in at an appointed time.

Despite that support, Peña is still nervous about morphing from parent to homeschool teacher. Two of her children have dyslexia and one of them receives more structured reading instruction and math tutoring at programs outside of school multiple times a week; now those programs are indefinitely on hold.

Two of her children also receive extra services including speech and occupational therapy. Her children’s therapists have been in touch to continue those services virtually, but it’s unclear when they will begin, Peña said.

“I wasn’t trained in these skills that these other professionals have to help him,” referring to her 10-year-old son.

She’s also worried about what happens if closures stretch for the rest of the school year. “Are we going to have to invest an entire school year on catching kids up?”

🔗‘I miss my students’: Noah Garcia, sixth-grade English teacher at M.S. 447

Noah Garcia spent much of her morning answering a steady stream of questions coming in from her sixth-grade students at M.S. 447 in Brooklyn.

In a thread of about 90 messages in Google Classroom, the students from her English class wanted to know how to edit their responses and whether they could move on to a new assignment. Some just posted to say that they missed their classmates. “I don’t know if we anticipated all of our students to get on at the same time but it definitely worked out that way,” she said.

The English department at M.S. 447 is easing its students into online learning. Day one was a review of expectations now that classes are online, and what each day’s schedule would look like. By 2:45 p.m., almost all of Garcia’s students had submitted their assignments for the day.

Noah Garcia teaches sixth grade English at M.S. 447 in Brooklyn.

For those who didn’t, Garcia planned an early evening phone call to nudge them along. It’s not about giving failing grades, but about checking in with students and families, she said. Her school plans to be as flexible as it can.

“If a student reaches out and says, ‘Hey my WiFi is choppy,’ or, ‘My parents are online,’ then we’re going to be understanding,” Garcia said. “We still want them to learn and not be deterred from getting online.”

Garcia, who teaches classes that mix students with disabilities alongside general education students, spent the past week in a mad dash of preparations. She collaborated with her colleagues to create slideshows, add recorded audio to lessons, and reach out to students who have disabilities and might need reading materials that are on a lower grade level or narrated by a teacher, among other accommodations.

“I think it’s really important to recognize in this time how hard teachers are working and how emotionally invested teachers are in these students,” Garcia said.

Though the lead up to Monday was a blur, there were moments when the emotional toll of having to leave behind her classroom began to set in. It hit her as she went to the library alone and hand-picked books based on her students’ tastes to send home, and again when she realized she’d have to bring home the class betta fish, Elmo.

“It’s unexplainable. We don’t know if we’re going to go back to school,” she said. “I miss my students.”

🔗‘We have to kind of improvise’: Ronnie Almonte, biology teacher at Edward R. Murrow High School

Biology teacher Ronnie Almonte is trying to teach his students about gene expression, but he is having them submit answers to questions using Google Forms instead of pencil and paper.

“In some ways, it’s not so different from what I’d do in the building,” said Almonte, who teaches at Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn.

He largely spent the day devising assignments, uploading them to Google Classroom, and reviewing student work. For an AP Biology class, he reviewed changes to the exam, which can now be taken online and has been shortened to 45 minutes.

Ronnie Almonte is a high school biology teacher in Brooklyn.

Almonte is still expecting his students to complete regular assignments that take between 30 minutes and one hour, and he is planning to hold virtual office hours for students who have questions or need more direction. He hopes what they turn in can be graded pass/fail, but has not yet received clear grading guidance for online learning.

“Everything has been thrown at us, and we have to kind of improvise,” he said.

Almonte is also concerned about what the shift to online learning will mean for his students, especially those with disabilities. He teaches a freshman integrated co-teaching class — with two teachers and a mix of special education and general education students — and is worried that students who need help understanding assignments will struggle.

“It’s not the same as being in class and having that dialogue,” he said.

And he’s also hoping for answers soon on whether he should still be preparing his “living environment” class to take the Regents exam with the same name. State officials have canceled standardized tests for students in grades 3-8, but have not said whether the Regents, a state graduation requirement, will continue as planned this year.

🔗‘This online thing, it’s not working’: Magdalena Garcia, mother of two in East Harlem

The school day got started late in Magdalena Garcia’s East Harlem home. Her two children — a daughter in fifth grade and a second-grade son — slept in and didn’t log into their laptops by 9:30 a.m., as their teachers had asked.

Garcia said she struggles with depression and panic attacks, expected it to be hard to homeschool. On Monday, she learned just how hard.

“They have their own separate schedules, with different things to do at different times,” she said. “I’m going to be honest: I couldn’t keep up.”

Magdalena Garcia struggled to keep up with the schoolwork of her two children.

For her son, Garcia has to help navigate multiple online programs, like Zearn and Brain Pop. Her daughter is trying to learn fractions by emailing and messaging her teachers.

“Even though the lines of communication are open and she’s able to ask the teachers the questions she needs, it’s still different than face-to-face,” Garcia said, noting her daughter has been struggling with the day’s material.

She’s worried about her children being held back — especially her daughter, who is supposed to head to middle school next year. Garcia said she lost steam after just a few hours of online classes and plans to ask their teachers for printed packets of work instead.

“It has nothing to do with the teacher. It has to do with the way my children learn,” Garcia said. “And this online thing, it’s not working for them. It’s not working for me.”

🔗‘It was nice to see how excited and engaged my students were’: Stephanie Edmonds, 10th-grade global history teacher at Bronx High School for Law and Community Service

On Monday, high school teacher Stephanie Edmonds started a new balancing act. She woke up at 6 a.m. and posted the day’s assignments to Google Classroom for her sophomore Global History students along with explainer videos. Then she turned her attention to her 4-year-old son, who would usually be in a pre-K class.

They played educational games for a few hours, until his nap time at 1 p.m. A half-hour later, it was time for Edmond’s first official Zoom session, open to all 65 of her students. About 25 people logged on for the extra-credit session focusing on the coronavirus pandemic, which walked students through an assignment that is due tomorrow.

Stephanie Edmonds, a global history teacher at Bronx High School for Law and Community Service, prepares assignments for the first day of remote learning as her 4-year-old son watches videos on an iPad.

There was one hiccup. A few students used unidentifiable user names in Zoom and typed swear words in the chatbox, she said. She booted them out and wants to require students to identify themselves properly tomorrow to discourage acting out.

For the most part, the session went well, she said. Even her students who were too shy to turn on their cameras were using the chat to share their thoughts. Edmonds thought she and her co-teacher had the same teaching rhythm they have in person.

“It was nice to see how excited and engaged my students were in wanting to participate,” she said. “We’ll see at the end of today how many students got in their assignments.”

She plans to check in on students who don’t submit their lessons on time, not to “punish” them, but to see if they need help or if they had trouble accessing Google Classroom. Now that some of her students are home, they’re also spending time watching younger siblings — some of whom made a guest appearance on Monday’s Zoom session, she said.

Edmonds was also in touch with a few students who had not yet checked into Google Classroom since last week. One of them told her that she didn’t have internet access for her school-issued laptop. Edmonds told her about the 60-day free WiFi options from Spectrum and Optimum but hasn’t heard from that student since. If she doesn’t hear back soon, Edmonds will turn to a school counselor for help.

That’s why Edmonds thinks that constant communication will be key.

“Reaching out to the kids who didn’t turn anything in, making sure they saw the assignment, making sure they understood it,” Edmonds said. “I don’t want them to get two days behind.”

🔗‘When you have lemons, make lemonade’: Anthony Cosentino, principal of P.S. 21 in Staten Island

For all the uncertainties of the last two weeks, Monday felt like a good day to Anthony Cosentino, principal of P.S. 21 in Staten Island.

Students were meeting teachers virtually. Teachers have offered one-on-one appointments to students so they can connect and offer feedback. Cosentino spent the day checking in with teachers, paraprofessionals, and other support staff and peeking into some of the video conferences that teachers were holding.

He heard from parents and even a couple of students who liked the instructional videos that were posted to Google Classroom.

But as he’d expected, there are some kinks to work out. Teachers were working “tirelessly” to help families troubleshoot a variety of issues — whether it was signing in or getting familiar with the online learning platform, he said. Many families had never used it before, and P.S. 21’s youngest students, such as kindergartners, need their parents’ help to access the program.

He said the school provided tutorials on their website and on social media, in both English and Spanish. Still, learning the platform takes time, which might be a scarce commodity for parents.

“If you have two working parents who are supporting one or more children in remote learning at home, it’s really challenging, right?” Cosentino said.

He believes that with time, “trust and patience,” families and students will get used to it. And if schools are closed past April 20, Cosentino said he expects his students to become well-versed in it.

Despite the troubleshooting, families, teachers, and children have said they like Google Classroom and “want to move forward” with it, he said.

“That was something really nice to see — using the cliche, when you have lemons, make lemonade,” Cosentino said.

This article answers questions raised by our readers. Share your coronavirus-related questions, concerns, and ideas by emailing us at community@chalkbeat.org, and keep up with our reporting on COVID-19 here.

Thousands of NYC students won’t have access to computers before remote learning starts next week

2020-03-20T00:54:41+00:00

More than one million New York City students are slated to begin remote learning next week, but the education department acknowledged Thursday that it could take weeks before all students have the technology they need to communicate with their teachers.

“We’re not going to have 300,000 devices by Monday — we never said we would,” said Chancellor Richard Carranza, referring to the city’s estimate of the number of families who need technology to work remotely. “We do have a plan for having those devices in the hands of our students in the coming weeks.”

The city is prioritizing devices for students who live in public housing, come from low-income families, or are homeless and anticipated distributing 25,000 devices over the next week, Carranza said. Some schools are also distributing materials on paper.

But that still means thousands of students will not be able to fully connect with their schools or teachers for lessons immediately, an indication that the transition to online learning will be bumpy.

Aide Zainos went to her children’s elementary school in the Bronx today in the hopes of securing devices for her second and fourth grader. But she said they didn’t have enough to lend, since they were prioritizing students in shelters and others with greater needs. She said she understood.

“If they are really in need, don’t worry, give it to them,” Zainos said in Spanish.

Zainos hopes to borrow a computer from her husband’s coworker so that their two children can get online. Worse comes to worst, she’ll resort to using her phone.

“It’s not the same, but I said, ‘It doesn’t matter. We’re going to adapt to the little that we have,’” she said. “It’s nobody’s fault.”

Zainos is the Community Education Council president for District 9 in the Bronx, but she has still found it difficult to understand how the shift to online learning will happen. She still hasn’t received the needed code to make online accounts for her children, and said the education department needs to do a better job communicating with parents.

“They haven’t explained how this work is going to happen,” she said. “We need a better explanation.”

Parents and advocates said they’re worried that unequal access to technology could put some students at an even greater disadvantage.

“It’s definitely going to show the haves and the have nots,” said NeQuan McLean, a parent council leader in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

He said some students in his district have been receiving laptops that have been used at their schools, and said his district appears to have enough technology on hand. Still, school computers depend on families’ access to the internet, potentially limiting their utility, McLean added.

That’s the challenge facing Brigitte Bermudez, whose 11-year-old daughter picked up a laptop from Mott Hall Science and Technology Academy in the Bronx. The family does not have internet at home, so her daughter’s teacher told them that Spectrum was offering free service for K-12 students affected by recent school closures. (You must sign up as a customer and will be billed after 60 days).

But when Bermudez called, a representative told her that Spectrum didn’t offer service in her area and suggested she call Optimum, which is offering a similar service. When she called Optimum, a representative told her she still owed $150 from an unpaid cable bill from a few years ago and wouldn’t be able to set up the account.

Bermudez said she isn’t working right now and can’t pay the bill. A neighbor has offered the family her WiFi password. But Bermudez said that when it works at all, it can be slow, “so it comes out to be a lot of difficulties.”

Bermudez’s problem is not rare, said parent Tom Sheppard, who sits on District 11’s parent council in the Bronx. He’s heard from other families with the same issue, and worries that families don’t have enough information about how to best access the devices they’re getting.

Sheppard, who worked for a decade as an Apple technician, said he’s worried about how parents will troubleshoot problems if the devices act up, noting that one school in his district handed out 5-year-old iPad minis that were shelved until this week. Will it be up to the schools to help, or will parents have a phone number to call, he wondered.

“The best analogy I can give is watching a slow-motion trainwreck,” Sheppard said. “People are doing the best they can under the circumstances, so I don’t want to sound like I’m going in on the DOE, but I believe in my heart they were wholly unprepared for this.”

Another massive challenge of ramping up online learning: figuring out who needs technology in the first place. Department officials recently began asking families to tell them if they don’t have access to technology so they could give them internet-connected iPads, and have since extended pick-up into next week.

Schools were supposed to distribute surveys, but efforts to reach families have proved complicated. Some advocates said they worry parents won’t fill out the survey and that schools may struggle to reach them. The survey was only originally available in English, but by Thursday it was available in nine languages.

Families who could not access the survey were also asked to call 718-935-5100 to report what they needed. Department officials also planned to tell families how to access the survey at sites where they could pick up grab-and-go meals.

“This is an ever-changing situation and schools will be communicating additional guidance and directions for pick-up of laptops, tablets, and printed materials with their communities in the coming days,” education department spokesperson Danielle Filson said in a statement. “We continue to urge all families who are requesting a device to fill out the remote learning device survey.”

With NYC schools closed, many parents become reluctant homeschoolers

2020-03-17T00:21:33+00:00

Families across New York City grappled Monday with the first day of an unprecedented systemwide shutdown of schools.

Learning from home sparked a range of early concerns. Top among them: What role are parents expected to play in their children’s remote education while balancing life’s other demands?

“I’m trying to take it one step at a time because when I think about April 20, I feel a little bit of terror,” said Manhattan mother Takiema Bunche Smith, who held a family meeting with her ninth-grade son on Sunday night after learning about the school closures.

They’ve got one thing down so far — he has to shower and be ready to learn by 9 a.m. They’re trying to figure out the rest.

New York City schools were closed as of Monday morning until at least after spring break, as the nation and world try to curb the coronavirus pandemic. Teachers will attend a three-day training this week to learn how to teach students remotely. Students will pick up the technology they’ll need for online learning later this week, according to the education department, which plans to purchase up to 300,000 iPads for students who don’t have them.

In the meantime, many parents are trying to pick up the slack, turning themselves into de facto educators. The burden can be especially heavy for those with young children who are still learning the fundamentals of reading and writing.

To help support parents, the education department sent parents a link to “learn at home” resources. Some schools have already sent home packets of work, while others have offered families little additional materials or guidance at this time.

Until his announcement Sunday of systemwide school closures, Mayor Bill de Blasio had for days resisted closing schools — out of concern, he said, for the burden it would place on city families. Ultimately, the decision to shutter schools left families with little time to plan for at-home learning.

Melissa, a Manhattan parent of students with special needs, is a freelance art therapist who typically works at senior centers, which have shut their doors out of caution for older adults who are more susceptible to the new coronavirus. That means she’s not earning any money right now, she said. Her husband, a freelance photographer, has had most of his upcoming jobs canceled because of the threat of the illness.

“It’s disillusioning,” said Melissa, who asked Chalkbeat not to publish her last name to protect her children’s privacy. “I don’t know how to help these kids.”

In the meantime, she’s figuring out how to keep her third- and sixth-graders on track, as both of them require extra academic help in school. Her third-grader is behind in school, and receives phonics and math help throughout the week. On Monday, she had to spend most of the day by his side to keep him from getting distracted.

“So we don’t know what the state of the economy is going to be in two weeks,” she said. “Like, who is going to get paid? Meanwhile, we are here trying to help our kids learn.”

For students who require therapies, such as speech therapy, the education department has said in-person visits would be unlikely and that they are exploring tele-therapy options. Schools will contact families this week to set up remote-learning plans for children with special needs, education department officials said Monday.

The education department also shared more training details with Chalkbeat. Teachers will be trained to use online platforms, such as Google Classroom, and online grading tools. They would be expected to post their first assignments by March 23. The department expected to distribute 25,000 iPads next week.

“I know this may feel abrupt and has the potential to cause disruption in your lives,” Carranza wrote to families in a letter Monday. “We are committed to consistent and clear communication with you throughout this time period, and a clear understanding of what will happen.”

But as the first day of the transition progressed, families were trying to figure out what’s next. Natasha Capers, director of Coalition for Educational Justice, worries her children, an eighth-grader and a high school sophomore, will feel isolated without seeing their friends or taking classes they actually enjoy.

“They cook and bake,” Capers said of her son’s class, “and I think for the first time in my son’s academic life, he was disappointed not to be able to go to school. He was like, ‘But we’re baking,’ and I was like, ‘You’re just gonna have to bake with me for the next couple of months.’”

Capers is able to work from home and make sure her sons are on track, but she said that’s not the case for many parents. She pointed to the health care workers fighting this pandemic or those who work in retail stores that remain open, such as Rite-Aid. (The department will turn some schools into enrichment sites where essential workers, such as those in health care, transit, and emergency response, can send their children.)

Asked if she had an idea of how remote learning would work in her own apartment, or had a plan for maintaining a daily schedule, she said, “None at all. Not a single clue.”

Harlem mom Yenny Carrasco said she is lucky that her mother will be able to help supervise her three children, who are 6, 9, and 14. Still, Carrasco worried about her children falling behind on their schoolwork during the weeks-long closure.

“Is the school year going to be extended to compensate for what’s going on?” she asked. “There’s definitely a lot of uncertainty.”

While the family has a computer and internet access, she said it’s not clear how all three of her children could do schoolwork simultaneously if it requires technology use.

And even if coursework is available on paper, she said it wouldn’t be the same as having a teacher directly guiding her children through the work in a classroom setting.

“I don’t know how with virtual learning the teachers will be able to assist them or guide them through challenges if they’re not next to each other,” she said.

There are a lot of unknowns still. Smith, the Manhattan mother of a ninth-grader, said her son’s school uses an online platform for sharing assignments when students are out sick, so that could be what teachers use going forward. But details remain unclear.

“Is he gonna have to log in at 9 a.m. for physics? Will there be video or audio, sort of, call-in opportunities so it looks somewhat similar to an in-person class, or is it going to be, ‘Here is your assignment, due by this date,’” she wondered. “If it is the latter, what level of support will there be for students as they’re working through the work, especially new concepts? Will there be a chat option?”

As parents navigate the many uncertainties of the next several weeks, Melissa believes she’ll be increasingly relying on her fellow parents. Parents of her sons’ classmates have already created a network, sending each worksheets and planning a way to share books, since the public libraries in Manhattan are closed.

They’re also planning to Skype or FaceTime with each other so their children can see their friends, she said.

For children who are accustomed to school, being home all day can be confusing. Melissa’s sixth-grader, who is typically a conscientious student in school, wanted to play video games at his Manhattan apartment. Instead, his mom made him listen to an audiobook before reading a book.

As the first day wrapped up, Melissa asked him to tell a reporter how being at home was going.

“It’s horrible!” he replied.

Brooklyn teacher at center of coronavirus scare reveals gaps in NYC response

2020-03-09T14:19:40+00:00

This story was originally published on Mar. 9, 2020 by THE CITY.

Brooklyn public school teacher Erin McCarthy learned Friday that she’d tested negative for the coronavirus that’s hit more than 100,000 people across the globe, killing over 3,600.

But first she spent a week in hell — thanks to a bureaucracy that couldn’t handle her situation after she returned from a trip to Italy and worked for days with students before showing symptoms of the virus.

Initially told she could not be tested because she didn’t meet the proper “criteria,” McCarthy was left adrift on a sea of anxiety and dread — experiencing a claustrophobic dynamic of fear, uncertainty and frustration over being blamed for something that wasn’t her fault.

She received angry calls from colleagues. Anonymous trolls vilified her on social media. When she finally was about to be tested, the doctor told her, “You probably have it.”

After McCarthy got the good news Friday afternoon, she experienced both relief and profound sorrow.

“Finally on Friday night, I just wept. The whole thing was just too much,” she told THE CITY on Sunday. “I don’t like how everyone went into a mass panic and assumed I spread a disease around.”

She said the experience reminded her of the dissemination of misinformation at the advent of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. “Fear brings out the worst in people,” she said. “It really made me look at people differently.”

‘Passing the Buck’

McCarthy, 44, teaches art to special education students at Public School 369 in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. A married mom of two children, she has worked at PS 369 for 16 of her 19 years in the New York City public school system.

Over the February winter break, she and her mother took a trip to Northern Italy. They spent a week in the Lombardo and Veneto region, visiting Milan and Venice during Fashion Week.

When they arrived in Italy, airport workers took their temperature. At the time, only China was listed as a coronavirus hot zone by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

After she and her mother landed back at Kennedy Airport, McCarthy checked her phone and saw the number of people testing positive for coronavirus in the regions they just visited had spiked.

McCarthy returned to the classroom on Feb. 24, feeling fine. She visited the Department of Education website, which then only listed mainland China as a zone that would trigger testing.

A few days later, she began experiencing headaches. As the week progressed, she called HR Connect, the advice helpline for city employees.

“I told them the website wasn’t updated. It doesn’t include Iran. It doesn’t include South Korea. It doesn’t include Italy. And [the HR Connect representative] said, ‘I don’t know, I’ll have to get back to you.’ That’s it. They keep on passing the buck to someone else.”

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza speaks at a news conference at the Office of Emergency Management about the Coronavirus, March 2, 2020. Photo: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITYNot everyone was passing the buck. McCarthy noted that when she told the school’s assistant principal about her concerns, she was “very supportive” — making a point of keeping their conversation confidential and checking up on her regularly.

McCarthy later called a coronavirus hotline set up by Mayor Bill de Blasio and was told the DOE was still listing only China as a hot zone. On the weekend of Feb. 29-March 1, a fever kicked in and her temperature hit 101 degrees. “It felt like there were bricks on my chest,” she said.

No Test Given

On Monday, March 2 — a day after Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the first confirmed coronavirus case in New York City — McCarthy visited the NYU Langone Health-Cobble Hill emergency department and said she ran into a bureaucratic wall.

Though the doctors were well-prepared to deal with coronavirus, wearing hazmat suits, fully masked, ready to perform the test, there was one problem: McCarthy did not meet the criteria that then existed.

Only a recent visit to China — not Italy — would trigger a test for someone of her age with no underlying medical issues, she was told.

“The doctor said she’d worked through the Ebola issue, she’d worked through many health crises and this was the first time that her hands were tied, that she could not test me, that she would like to, but she cannot,” McCarthy recalled.

“She said many people have come in and unless they hit certain guidelines — unless they had immune system issues or they were elderly — she could not test them.”

“I cried,” she said, recalling the surreal experience of sitting in a room with staff in full moon suits before being sent on her way.

Mayor Bill de Blasio speaks about the coronavirus at a Midtown news conference with Gov. Andrew Cuomo, March 2, 2020. Photo: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITYMcCarthy left with a letter stating that under Health Department rules, she was “mandated” to self-isolate until there was a “complete resolution” of the symptoms for an unspecified “viral condition.”

“It was quite a sight to be treated like you’re in that movie ‘Silkwood,’ and then to walk out and everything’s cool,” she said.

‘Panic’ at School

McCarthy called her school and informed them of the letter requiring her to self-isolate. She said a staffer called back soon after “in a panic.”

She says the staffer told her, “There are pregnant people there. They should know. If they find out later, they’re going to be mad at you.”

“I did not need this,” McCarthy said. “I did not get the memo on how to deal with this. I’m literally just trying to keep my own head above water right now.

“I was having anxiety attacks. I tried to play Uno with my kids. I couldn’t even focus on the game Uno. I forgot the rules.”

McCarthy said that if she simply been tested when she first went for help March 2, “It wouldn’t have gotten to the point that it went to. I thought I was having a heart attack.”

She then got a call from a city Department of Health official, who left a voice message stating, “I hope you don’t mind. Some of my colleagues shared your contact information with me. I understand you might have some questions and concerns about possible exposure to coronavirus.”

When McCarthy called back and asked how she got her number, she got a different story: “Some of your colleagues said you had some questions about the coronavirus.”

McCarthy said that conversation was followed by calls from colleagues expressing anger at her for not telling everyone that she potentially could have contracted coronavirus.

Then the building management where she lives in Brooklyn sent an email advising residents to report anyone with suspected coronavirus — including delivery workers and even neighbors — to the superintendent. The building management later retracted the email, McCarthy said.

On Wednesday, THE CITY ran a story about McCarthy’s plight, without identifying her by name. Soon after, de Blasio promised she would be tested and that new criteria for handling such cases would soon be announced.

Meanwhile, McCarthy said she was shaken by social media reaction to THE CITY’s story — including anonymous tweet that declared, “She should be jailed. She’s technically a terrorist. When will people realize this is serious?”

On Thursday, Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot signed an emergency order mandating that all teachers, first responders and city health care workers must be tested if they’d recently been in any of the countries designed the prior week as hot zones — South Korea, Iran, Japan and Italy — in addition to China.

That day, United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew called McCarthy, apologized for what she’d experienced and promised to help arrange testing.

‘You Probably Have it’

That was followed by a call from a city Department of Health staffer named Ellie who, McCarthy emphasized, “was amazing.” Ellie apologized for the way McCarthy had been treated, and set up a test at New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital in Park Slope.

McCarthy waited four hours in an empty room with an open door and no bed or chair. When the doctor finally walked in, she said he told her, “You probably have it.”

The test included sticking a swab deep into her nasal cavity and far down her throat.

She was informed the test had come back negative around 1:10 p.m. Friday, five days after she’d initially requested the test.

As of Saturday, McCarthy was one of three city public school teachers who’d tested negative for coronavirus after visiting the regions of Italy where the illness was spiking during the winter break. One of the teachers was tested right away. McCarthy and a teacher at a Lower Manhattan school had to wait for days.

As of Sunday city health officials had tallied 13 individuals who’d tested positive for coronavirus. Results of 76 tests remained pending.

McCarthy is taking some time off. For now, she hopes to return to her school, but is unsure how the PS 369 community will react.

The UFT planned to send a representative to the school Monday to talk with staff and ensure that McCarthy is treated fairly when she gets back to work at a job she loves.

“Putting you through all this, thinking you had this disease, nobody testing you, going into quarantine,” she said, struggling to process her ordeal.

“By the end, I just lost it.”

NYC schools scramble to track student and teacher travel amid coronavirus threat

2020-03-06T00:40:48+00:00

The city’s education department is taking an inventory of school trips as concern about the spread of the coronavirus grows, officials announced Thursday.

The global spread of the virus coincided with a week-long school vacation, Feb. 17-21, during which some students and school employees traveled out of the country. Tracking down those who were abroad could take some time, given the school system’s size.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said one teacher had tested negative for the virus after traveling to Italy as part of a school trip with James Madison High School in Brooklyn. More than 40 students took part in the trip, along with six other school staffers. None of the students from Madison have shown symptoms, the mayor said, and therefore have not been asked to stay home.

Two other teachers who traveled to Italy on vacation are awaiting the results of testing and are not currently in school. One educator returned to her classroom for several days after a trip before showing any symptoms. The mayor said the city would follow up with those schools if needed once the results are known.

It’s unclear how many school-organized trips to affected countries — which include China, South Korea, Japan, Italy, and Iran — have taken place since the coronavirus outbreak. But James Madison is not alone. Brooklyn’s Edward R. Murrow High School also organized a trip to Italy during the February break, according to students and staff there, some of whom shared concerns that those on the trip were not asked to stay home.

“These kids came back and came into the general population,” said one Murrow staffer who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

“It seemed foolhardy,” the staffer added.

Symptoms of the coronavirus include fever, coughing, and shortness of breath.

Guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for travelers returning to the U.S. has shifted since the students returned. The most recent guidance advises people returning from Italy to stay home for 14 days. Though the Murrow and Madison students returned fewer than 14 days ago, they are not being asked to stay home.

“The health and safety of our students comes first, and we believe the guidance issued to students was consistent with federal guidelines at the time,” education department spokesperson Miranda Barbot wrote in an email.

Despite the more recent federal guidelines that call on people to stay home, city officials said they were not recommending students on those trips self-quarantine because they believe the risk is relatively low. “At this point, it wouldn’t be a time to start a quarantine, unless we saw something problematic,” de Blasio said.

“No need for it,” added Oxiris Barbot, commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said that the city now has protocols in place to track future school trips, but the city is still trying to reconstruct where students and teachers may have previously traveled. The scope of the department’s effort to track school trips — in terms of timeframe and locations — was not immediately clear.

Pressed on why the city doesn’t already have that information, the chancellor noted the size of the system, which includes over a million students and roughly 75,000 teachers. Some trips may not have been directly sponsored by the school, but by parent organizations, Carranza said.

De Blasio added: “The bottom line is, we’re going to inventory everything now, and go back and look if there’s anything we need to follow up on,” he said. “We’re going to inventory everything and we’re going to be very transparent about it.”

The chancellor added that the school system is sharing guidance and providing cleaning supplies to private schools.

“We are here to serve the children of New York City — all children,” Carranza said.

In the meantime, some students at Murrow High School said classes and school activities were going on as usual.

Others expressed concern about students returning from Italy, which has locked down certain towns and closed schools and universities across the country. “It’s a little scary, a little nerve-wracking,” said sophomore Shawn Robinson.

Barbot said no one at Murrow is being tested because no one is symptomatic and that the education department is in contact with school officials, who did not reply to Chalkbeat’s requests for comment.

The city’s health commissioner also released a new order on Thursday for city employees, including teachers. The guidance allows the city to require employees to be tested for the virus, or require a quarantine for those who may refuse testing — or “face employment consequences,” de Blasio said.

NYC elementary and middle school principals earn less than high school leaders. The union’s new contract is starting to narrow the wage gap.

2020-02-13T18:36:50+00:00

Paid parental leave, salary bumps for leaders in hard-to-staff schools, and fewer off-site meetings were among new provisions in the tentative contract the principals union and the de Blasio administration announced on Thursday.

Despite the union’s efforts, the tentative agreement did not, however, bring the salaries of elementary school and middle school principals up to their high school counterparts — though principals of lower grades were awarded extra pay. It was the first time the union won such a dedicated boost with the goal of eventually closing the wage gap.

“Hopefully, sooner or later the city will realize that every principal has a difficult job,” said Mark Cannizzaro, president of the Council of Schools Supervisors & Administrators, the principals union known informally as the CSA. “If you think about the tremendous responsibility of an elementary school principal and leader: children have to learn to read, and there’s the safety factor of taking care of babies.”

Elementary and middle school principals will see an additional salary bump in February 2021, which varies depending on years of service. But salary disparities will remain.

For example, a middle school principal with five years of experience will see an additional $2,250, pushing the salary up to $164,398. An elementary school principal with five years of experience will see a $4,500 bump, boosting the salary up to $159,893.

A high school principal with five-years of experience, however, would still earn about $10,000 more than an elementary school principal with the same number of years under her belt.

Principals are the only education department staffers that earn different amounts depending on the school level. Teachers and assistant principals earn the same regardless of the grade. The gap has been persistent over the half-century the union has been advocating for principals, Cannizzaro noted.

The lower salaries of elementary school principals disproportionately affect women.

Roughly 81% of elementary school principals are female, according to union estimates. About 60% of middle school principals are female, and 54% of high school principals are female — a percentage that has increased in recent years.

Cannizzaro was particularly pleased with the paid parental leave benefit for the union’s 6,400 school administrators, including assistant principals. It covers up to five weeks, fully paid, for birth, foster, or adoptive parents. (That’s still one week short of what the teachers union won last June.)

“Our folks make a career out of taking care of children. They should be afforded the opportunity to spend time taking care of their own children,” said Cannizzaro, who lamented not having paid parental leave when he had his three children.

Principals, across the board, will see raises totaling 7.5% over three years, and principals at certain schools that have suffered from high turnover — selected at the chancellor’s discretion — will get a $10,000-$15,000 differential to attract and retain stable leadership where it’s often needed most.

Additionally, the tentative contract addresses some safety-related concerns. For one, principals have complained about their frequent meetings taking them outside their buildings.

“People need to be in their schools in order to run their schools,” Cannizzaro said. “We all understand the need to communicate information and professional development, but in this day and age of technology, communicating information should not be so difficult.”

To that end, the new contract attempts to limit the number of meetings for professional development or training by defining the number of principal group meetings with their superintendents. (It will be one for most months, while October, January, and March can have two.)

The agreement also addresses concerns about the roughly 100 schools that don’t have assistant principals, which could pose problems when principals are out of their buildings. The contract would require superintendents sign off on an alternative safety plan for schools that opt not to have an assistant principal. It also allows elementary and middle schools to create a position for an assistant principal responsible for climate, culture, and security — a role that high schools already can have.

“This contract raises the average [union] member’s pay by almost $11,000, and we are proud to have come to a deal that includes paid parental leave and hard to staff differentials,” mayoral spokesperson Laura Feyer said. “We will always continue working with our unions to ensure fair wages and benefits.”

Union members have until Mar. 11 to vote on the agreement.

Lawmakers press Carranza on special education and school safety, as chancellor pleads for more state funding

2020-02-11T23:58:00+00:00

Testifying before state lawmakers Tuesday, New York City schools Chancellor Richard Carranza was peppered with questions about special education, school safety, and integration efforts. When asked about expanding services or giving more to individual city schools, his responses typically boiled down to one thing: more state funding.

“This is another reason why $1.1 billion owed to children of New York City makes it difficult to scale toward the needs of students,” Carranza said in response to a question about the school system’s piloting of a dyslexia screening tool at two Brooklyn schools.

That $1.1 billion figure is how much city officials say is owed to New York City under a 12-year-old state formula, known as Foundation Aid, that sends extra dollars to high-needs districts. That funding has never been given to districts at the levels initially promised, state education officials, lawmakers, and advocates have long contended. (However, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said there is no longer a legal obligation for the state to provide Foundation Aid at those levels, and his administration has pointed to annual funding increases for the city.)

In his budget proposal for next fiscal year, which starts in April, Cuomo has proposed about $11.5 billion for New York City schools — close to 2% more than what the city got from the state last year. State funding currently represents 36% of the education department’s budget, with the remainder coming from city and federal sources.

Still, Cuomo’s proposal would leave a $136 million gap in what city officials project they’ll need from the state next fiscal year, according to testimony Monday and Tuesday from both Mayor Bill de Blasio and Carranza. That figure is tantamount to what it costs to employ 400 social workers or guidance counselors, they said.

As Cuomo’s budget proposal gets debated, lawmakers will hash out their own draft. Then, negotiations — done largely behind closed doors — will produce a final budget, which must be approved by April 1 and is effective through March 31, 2021.

But the conversation on Tuesday about New York City’s education system often veered from the topic of budgeting. Here are a few highlights from Carranza’s testimony.

Special education

Several lawmakers questioned Carranza about the district’s struggle to meet special education needs, including on the buckling impartial hearing process, through which families can lodge complaints about whether their children’s mandated services are being delivered.

Brooklyn Democratic Sen. Andrew Gournardes noted the roughly 10,200 unresolved complaints that families have filed. Nearly 70% are past the legal deadline for a resolution. That backlog is now the subject of a class-action lawsuit.

“It raises the question of how urgently the department is taking this issue,” Gournardes said.

Carranza said the city is “on a track to clear that backlog by the end of the school year.” An education department spokesperson later clarified that he was not referring to the entire backlog of delayed cases, only those that the education department has already agreed to settle, but have still not been processed, and were filed last school year or before that.

He also said the city is working “hand in glove” with Albany on the state-issued compliance assurance plan, which details a broad range of problems with the city’s special education system.

“I can assure you, sir, that this is a priority for us, that we are in the weeds really undoing and redoing [the system] to serve the community,” Carranza told Gournardes.

Both Carranza and a couple of lawmakers highlighted the city’s struggles to open enough pre-K seats for students with disabilities: Nearly 2,000 such students could go without a seat this spring. Part of the reason is stagnant state financing for private pre-K providers, which educate the majority of preschool students with disabilities who require specialized classrooms.

Without a higher reimbursement rate from the state for such providers — known as 4410 schools — Carranza said they could be forced to “close their doors because they simply can’t pay the bills.”

“It’s a perfect storm: 4410 schools closing with more students being identified for needing support,” Carranza said. The city has opened 1,000 seats for students with disabilities in public pre-K programs in the past two years but has not made up for lost seats elsewhere in the system.

Assemblymember Helene E. Weinstein, another Brooklyn Democrat, asked why the city is still fighting Carter Cases, which allow parents of children with special needs to be reimbursed for certain private school placements, after the mayor promised in his first term that the city would fight parents less over them. Spending for Carter Cases has grown from $222 in 2013 to $540 million this fiscal year.

Carranza said, ideally, all children with special needs could be served in public schools. But “in the meantime, as we work to make that a reality,” the school system must resolve parent pleas to send their children to school elsewhere. The de Blasio administration has made it easier for families to get tuition reimbursements.

“The north star would be that parents would not have to see the need of going outside of the school system — the DOE — to get the services they need for their students,” Carranza said, referring to the city education department.

School safety

Carranza was asked repeatedly about what he’s doing to address concerns over school safety from school leaders, parents, and students, and whether the system is embracing the right discipline efforts.

The chancellor faced criticism in recent weeks after he left a heated Queens town hall where parents raised concerns about school safety issues, including sexual assault. Carranza sparred with politicians on Twitter over why he left and emphasized that school officials were working directly with parents to address concerns. He later apologized for how the matter was handled and offered to meet with the parents.

In the summer of 2019, the mayor announced a range of new discipline reforms, including curbing lengthy suspensions and limiting student arrests for low-level offenses. Last month, the principals union said the reforms have led to more unruly schools, and administrators have struggled to embrace the changes.

“I understand that the administration would like to focus on intervention and restorative justice, and that’s OK, but it’s not OK when you have parents and teachers and administrators around the city saying they don’t feel safe,” said Assemblymember Nicole Malliotakis, a Staten Island Republican.

Carranza said he didn’t agree that “all parents, all students, all administrators” feel unsafe. The school system works with the police department when, for example, students are accused of serious crimes. Restorative justice practices, which attempt to get to “the root” of a problem, are reserved for less serious offenses, Carranza said.

“But a student that is mouthy, a student that is disrespectful, a student that isn’t paying attention — when you suspend that kind of a student, you’re treating a symptom,” Carranza said.

Integration

In one testy exchange, Queens Democratic Sen. John Liu asked Carranza, “Do you think you might have some issues in the Asian-American community?”

Carranza has faced backlash from some Asian-American New Yorkers over various policy decisions — most notably, for his support of getting rid of the admissions test for specialized high schools in order to diversify those schools. Since a majority of admissions offers go to Asian students – 51% last school year — some Asian-American families believe scrapping the test would elbow their children out. Some feel Carranza and the mayor haven’t done enough to understand their concerns and have called for Carranza’s firing.

Carranza pushed back and said he’s “working hard to bridge the divide” with Asian-American families, and that he would welcome Liu’s help. Liu, who oversees the Senate’s New York City education committee, said he’s offered help “many times, but you’ve never taken me up on it.”

Later, Manhattan Sen. Robert Jackson, a Democrat, said he thought Carranza is an inclusive leader, and encouraged the chancellor to “hang in there,” and “listen to what people have to say.”

Carranza doubled down on his support for repealing Hecht-Calandra, the part of state education law that governs the specialized high school admissions test. Repealing that law would effectively allow the city to set admissions policies for its three largest specialized high schools.

“Get out of the school board business,” Carranza told the room of lawmakers. “You have bigger fish to fry.”

Liu, who doesn’t support the plan to repeal the law altogether, questioned why the city couldn’t change policies at its five other specialized high schools not named in Hecht-Calandra. Carranza said it wasn’t clear the law allows them to do so, and that those schools don’t want to be a “bifurcated” system of schools with and without the test.

After boycotting his own advisory group, Carranza returns — slamming Cuomo in the process

2020-01-09T22:46:44+00:00

Returning to his parent advisory group following a monthslong boycott, Chancellor Richard Carranza dished on inequities in parent association funding, discussed a revised strategy for integrating specialized high schools, and took direct aim at Gov. Cuomo’s education funding stance.

Carranza had stopped attending the monthly meetings last November, amid a bitter internal battle over whether a recent election for the group’s leadership was legitimate. A committee tasked with investigating the matter found the complaints “without merit,” prompting the chancellor to come back to the group created as a conduit between parents and the schools chief.

“You are a body of parents that advises me, and if you didn’t have your act together, I’m not going to be part of that conversation,” Carranza told the group Thursday. “Now that it’s resolved, I’m thrilled to be back here.”

The chancellor also outlined some of his priorities for the year. Here are some of the highlights.

Carranza to Cuomo: Your school funding proposal had ‘no basis in reality’

Just a day after Cuomo’s State of the State address, Carranza slammed the governor for his repeated arguments that school districts need to do a better job of funneling money to high-need schools, saying it “has no basis in reality.”

“It sounds great — motherhood and apple pie — until we saw his plan,” Carranza said, an apparent reference to Cuomo’s previous proposals for approving school budgets and for creating an entirely new funding formula. On Wednesday, Cuomo officials said the state should “require” that state education funding go to the neediest schools, though they haven’t provided details.

New York City already funnels more money to high-need schools, and Carranza emphasized that Cuomo should instead pour more money into “foundation aid,” a state funding stream that directs more money to high-need districts, including New York City. Activists and some city leaders have said the state has never fully funded the formula and still owes the city more than $1 billion. Carranza added that he hopes “the governor and his team will work with us.” Cuomo’s formal budget proposal is expected later this month.

Movement on unequal parent association funding

Carranza said he is eager to find ways to address massive discrepancies in parent association fundraising and wants to collaborate with parents to find a solution. Some schools with wealthy parents raise thousands of dollars per student, funding a slew of enrichment activities, while many others raise substantially less or no money at all.

“We have schools in New York City that have a whole other funding system in play,” he said. “The privileged get even more privileged and the poor get even more poor […] That’s something I think we could make a lot of headway on.”

Still, addressing those disparities will be politically contentious, especially if a solution involves diverting money from wealthier parent groups to fund poorer ones, or setting a cap on the amount of money they can spend.

New strategy for integrating specialized high schools

After failing to get traction last legislative session on a plan to overhaul admissions to eight specialized high schools, Carranza pledged to continue lobbying in Albany, albeit with a slightly different approach.

Instead of pushing to overhaul the state law that mandates admission to specialized schools be determined on the basis of a single test, Carranza appeared to back a new strategy to repeal the law entirely, which would give the city control over admissions.

“I know people say it’s a fool’s errand,” Carranza said. “I want the legislature to get out of the school board business.”

It’s unclear if Carranza and Mayor Bill de Blasio will have any more success this session pushing to automatically admit the top 7% of students across city middle schools, a move that would significantly increase racial integration at the coveted schools.

Carranza’s comments sparked at least one observer to point out the city could change the admissions policies at five of the eight specialized schools with no change in state law, but have chosen not to.

A second look at small schools

Carranza said he plans to discuss what to do when schools get so small that they struggle to offer AP classes, sports teams, and other activities.

“One of the public conversations we have to have this year is how small is too small and what are we going to do about it?” Carranza said.

Under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, city officials closed many low-performing large high schools and created small ones in their place, a strategy that research has shown produced academic benefits — though some small schools continued to struggle.

The de Blasio administration has closed or merged some schools, often citing enrollment issues, though there have not been any new closures on Carranza’s watch.

Senior NYC school official charged with attempting to lure a teen to a hotel, possession of child porn

2020-01-07T02:55:00+00:00

David Hay, the deputy chief of staff to schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, was charged Friday with child enticement and possession of child pornography, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Wisconsin where Hay was arrested earlier this week.

Hay, 39, was taken into custody at a Milwaukee airport on Sunday following a months-long investigation.

On Friday, Hay pleaded not guilty and was released on home detention, according to Kenneth Gales, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office.

The Brooklyn resident formerly lived in Wisconsin where he was a principal at Tomah and Kettle Moraine high schools. Hay began corresponding in July on a popular dating app with someone he believed to be a 14-year-old boy named “Colton,” who was living in Neenah, Wisconsin, according to a press release.

Hay allegedly began engaging in sexually explicit conversations with “Colton” and making plans to meet up with the minor for sex, the release said.

“Colton,” however, was a City of Neenah Police Investigator operating undercover, and according to the charges, Hay allegedly booked a “whirlpool suite” at a Neenah area hotel for the purpose of meeting up with the child.

David Hay via Twitter

Hay ended up bailing out of the hotel rendezvous, saying his mother had fallen down the stairs, and he needed to help his family. He also said he was “a bit scared” to meet and cited their “age diff,” according to the criminal complaint.

After Hay’s arrest, authorities searched his smart phone and found sexually explicit images of a former student at Tomah High School where Hay was principal from 2011-2014. Hay did not immediately return messages seeking comment; his lawyer could not immediately be reached.

At an unrelated press conference on Friday, Carranza called Hay’s conduct “absolutely unacceptable” and told reporters that he immediately fired Hay because of the seriousness of the allegations.

“There is the assumption of innocence until proven guilty, however there is no room in my office or in this school system for anyone who is accused of that kind of crime,” Carranza said.

The city’s Department of Investigation has acknowledged that it did not complete Hay’s background check when he was hired by the city in 2016, owing to a backlog of files awaiting review. Education department officials said he was subject to two other background checks through a separate process, in 2016 and 2018. Carranza declined to comment Friday when asked about the background check process.

Hay faces a minimum sentence of 10 years and up to a lifetime of imprisonment if convicted of the enticement charge. He faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of the child pornography possession charge.

Hay earned a doctorate at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and was hired by New York City’s education department in 2016 under then-Chancellor Carmen Farina, according to his LinkedIn profile.

In his role as chief of staff, Hay was a key behind-the-scenes advocate of the chancellor’s agenda, including implicit bias training. He was a point person on assessments and standardized testing, as well as the department’s school improvement efforts. Hay was frequently on hand at high profile school visits and press conferences.

Hay’s case is being handled by federal authorities because the alleged criminal behavior occurred across state lines.

After a wave of anti-Semitic violence, NYC schools plans curriculum to combat hate

2020-01-03T22:58:32+00:00

In the wake of a string of anti-Semitic attacks in and around New York City, schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said Friday the education department is developing a new curriculum about hate crimes that will be rolled out next school year.

In the meantime, the nation’s largest school system said it will make available additional resources to teach about these crimes in the context of current and historical events.

“We know that enlightenment starts in the classroom,” Carranza told reporters at Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School in Borough Park, a Brooklyn neighborhood known for its large ultra-Orthodox Jewish population. “It starts with how do students learn about each other, how do they learn about other cultures, how do they make connections from what history has taught us to what is happening currently?”

As part of a broader set of efforts to combat anti-Semitism, city officials said they are implementing “hate crime awareness programming” this month at middle and high schools in Williamsburg, Crown Heights, and Borough Park, three Brooklyn neighborhoods that are home to large numbers of ultra-Orthodox Jews, many of whom wear traditional garb and speak Yiddish. In recent weeks, several members of these communities have faced alleged instances of verbal harassment and physical assault on New York City streets.

Chancellor Richard Carranza at Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School on Friday.

In light of recent events, schools are being encouraged to foster discussions about discrimination and religious intolerance “and collectively explore the positive actions they can take to promote acceptance, inclusion, and the diversity of their communities,” a department official wrote.

By next school year, schools throughout the city will also have access to “curriculum on hate crimes.” Officials said it will build on existing curriculums and “will focus on the concept of and occurrence of hate crimes and how they relate to historical events.”

Education officials said schools will not be required to use it, though state regulations mandate similar topics, including the Holocaust, be taught in middle and high schools.

The push for more programming in schools comes after the region has seen a spate of violence that has heightened anxiety among Jews across the city, from a Hanukkah stabbing at a rabbi’s home in suburban Rockland County, New York, last month to a mass shooting at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City.

In recent weeks, there have been a series of assaults that appear to have been directed at religious Jews in New York City; some of the assailants were reportedly teenagers. The New York Police Department has said there was a significant increase in anti-Semitic hate crimes last year.

The education department is also facing political pressure to ramp up education about hateful ideologies; on Friday, over three dozen city lawmakers sent Carranza a letter pushing for curriculum “around genocides throughout history” including the Holocaust.

Mark Treyger, who helms city council’s education committee, said it is not yet clear what the education department’s curriculum will look like, but said it should be prioritized citywide, not just in three Brooklyn neighborhoods.

“This is more valuable, quite frankly, than some of the tests our students are taking,” he said in an interview.

Even before the latest string of attacks, Carranza has said school curriculum should be more culturally responsive, arguing it can be a “matter of life and death” for some students. (Most members of the city’s various ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects send their children to private, religious schools, rather than to the city’s public schools — and the recent bias incidents have taken place away from schools.)

Department officials have said they are evaluating core curriculum offerings based in part on whether they include materials that represent students of different backgrounds, including race, socioeconomics, sexual orientation, and disability status.

During a press conference Friday, Carranza bristled at a question about whether there is research showing how long it might take for an expanded curriculum on anti-Semitism to deliver benefits.

“You don’t need a study to prove that if you teach kids about other kids, if you teach kids about other cultures, sorry to get passionate about this, this cannot be quantified in studies,” Carranza said. “If you teach kids not to hate, they’re not going to hate.”

There have been some studies on civics education and efforts to teach anti-Semitism more specifically. One study, for instance, found that students who visited a Holocaust museum were more likely to support protecting civil liberties and demonstrated deeper historical knowledge. However, there were also some unintended consequences: Those students were less likely to express high levels of religious tolerance.

Still, the researchers, Daniel Bowen and Brian Kisida, argue schools can act as an important lever for promoting civic values.

“We find that teaching students about the Holocaust, an extremely challenging subject for secondary school students, can play a vital role in the development of citizens who will protect civil liberties and defend oppressed populations,” they wrote.

Five years later, NYC schools still struggle with de Blasio’s cell phone policy

2019-12-17T17:53:21+00:00

Principal Gail Lambert had a problem: Cell phone use was out of control.

Not long after taking the helm three years ago of the Brooklyn Academy of Science and the Environment, known as BASE, she was fielding a mountain of complaints about mobile devices. Students were constantly on their phones in the hallways, using them to look up test questions, and shooting videos of school fights.

“One of the huge complaints from the teachers was cell phones,” Lambert said. “In the classroom, [students] would sit with the earbuds in, not focused, not paying attention.”

Nearly five years after New York City’s education department lifted the ban on cell phones, schools across the city, including BASE, are still grappling with an influx of devices and limited guidance about what to do with them.

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced in January 2015 he was overturning Michael Bloomberg’s ban on cell phones in schools, saying it was “out of touch with modern parenting.” He gave schools three months to figure out whether they would allow students to store cell phones and other mobile devices in backpacks or at designated school locations.

The policy was intended to address an inequity in the system: The ban mostly affected students at schools with metal detectors, which tend to serve low-income families — like BASE — and it often meant that students at such schools paid at least $1 a day to store their phones at local bodegas and trucks.

The education department does not track individual schools’ cell phone policies, but officials said they worked with schools to craft their policies when the cell phone ban was initially reversed. Teachers union officials, however, say there are dozens of schools that are in the process of rethinking their cell phone policies. At BASE, for instance, staff now collect phones, but the school is looking to purchase lockers to streamline the laborious process.

“While all students are permitted to bring cell phones to school, and we encourage schools to explore the use of mobile applications in their classrooms, we do not mandate or track policy at a school level,” said education department spokesperson Isabelle Boundy.

Finding the right solution

When Lambert joined BASE, students were only supposed to use their cell phones during lunch. It didn’t work.

“It was just a cat-and-mouse game,” Lambert said. Before the school collected cell phones, “If there was a huge fight, they would videotape what was going on.” These videos sometimes spilled onto social media, reverberating inside — and outside — the school.

It’s been a long and winding road for Lambert, working alongside other school staffers and parents, to find a fix.

Last year, the school settled on what seemed like an elegant solution: grey fabric pouches that would allow students to keep phones with them throughout the day, but which could be locked and unlocked by school staff at the beginning and end of the day with a special magnetic device.

BASE Principal Gail Lambert demonstrates cell phone pouches that the school ultimately abandoned.

But students quickly found YouTube videos with different strategies for getting around the magnetic locks, from ordering specialized magnets online to just smashing them on a table until they opened.

“It was kind of chaotic, because people would pull them apart or rip them or just keep them entirely,” said Abigail Thompson, a senior at BASE who is supportive of the school’s efforts to limit cell phone use.

This year, officials abandoned the pouches, which had cost the school $6,000, Lambert said. The school has settled — for now — on a low-tech solution: When students enter the building, they are required to deposit their phones in big plastic bins, affixing their name with a post-it note and a rubber band. The bins are labeled with each last period class, which are given to those respective teachers to return to students at the end of the day.

Cell phones are loaded up for storage in a locked room at the Brooklyn Academy of Science and the Environment.

On a recent morning, students from all four schools that share BASE’s building trickled into the building. BASE students were directed to a table staffed by Eva Hunte, an aide who has worked at the school for 50 years and who students refer to reverently as “grandma.” She is responsible for helping students find the correct bins for their phones, greeting them with smiles and small talk, a process that usually takes a minute or two.

Next, students from all four schools snake their way through an airport-style line to a series of metal detectors. (On a recent morning, one metal detector was down, creating a line that zig zags through the cafeteria.)

Abigail Thompson and Talike Bennett wait in line to go through metal detectors.

Ann Marie, the school’s parent-teacher association president, thought collecting cell phones was having a positive impact in the classroom. “We’re seeing the results — they can focus,” she said.

Lambert said she believes the policy is leading to more students passing their classes and is reducing disciplinary incidents, including suspensions. (City officials have also made it harder for schools to suspend students.)

Now, Lambert said,“Our hallways are extremely peaceful.”

But the current process is time-consuming and labor-intensive, requiring staff members to spend hours each morning collecting phones, including from students who arrive late.

BASE is hoping to purchase cell phone lockers that would allow students to stash their phones more quickly and with less supervision. Locker systems can run thousands of dollars, and school officials are looking for outside funding.

Other schools are in similar situations. The teachers union is working with a handful of them to lobby City Council to fund cell phone lockers, union officials said.

Device-less student concerns

BASE’s cell phone collection process has been popular with many school staffers and some students, though not everyone is on board.

Several students contended the school should only confiscate phones from those who abuse them during the day, and some worried that their phones could be damaged in the school’s care. A few argued that not having their phones could potentially endanger them.

“God forbid, say somebody like a school shooter comes in, we gotta contact our parents, and we can’t contact our parents,” said senior Turrel Tillock. Students, for instance, sent parents frantic texts during the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Fla. alerting them to the situation.

Other students expressed more day-to-day concerns. Senior Mickayla Harewood claimed her phone was damaged during the collection process, though school officials disputed her account.

“I’m not a very trusting person — an iPhone is expensive,” she said.

(The school will reimburse a student for repairs if the phone is cracked on their watch and said this has only happened once, Lambert noted.)

BASE senior Mickayla Harewood turns her phone in on a recent morning.

Another potential wrench in BASE’s cell phone policy: three other high schools that share the building don’t collect phones — and BASE students can sneak in phones by handing them off to a friend at another school and meeting up with them later in a hallway.

School officials estimated that a handful of phones slip through every day. If a student sneaks in a phone, their parent or guardian must come pick it up.

The resulting conversations with parents, who must come to the school to retrieve the phones, can spark conversations about a student’s overall academic performance or other problems. Roughly 70 parents have had to come pick up phones this year, Lambert said.

In one case, she said a mom didn’t realize her son was having significant attendance issues until he smuggled in his phone and the school brought her in. That student with attendance problems, she noted, hasn’t missed a day in weeks following that parent meeting.

Overall, teachers said students are more engaged in classes without phones as a distraction.

“We only have you for 6 hours and 20 minutes,” said BASE science teacher Caren Cleckley, “and we’re trying to prepare you for the next part of your life.”

Principal of coveted Queens gifted school leaving mid-year

2019-12-11T20:31:21+00:00

Principal Vasilios Biniaris is retiring from the 30th Avenue School in Queens, one of the city’s sought-after gifted and talented schools, according to the education department.

The 22-year New York City schools veteran is moving to be closer to his family, an education department spokeswoman said. He will step down on Jan. 10.

The Astoria school is one of only five citywide gifted and talented schools. As such, only 4-year-olds posting the highest scores on the city’s G&T are eligible to enter kindergarten. The 550-seat school goes up to eighth grade.

“My decision was made after long and careful deliberation,” Biniaris wrote to parents in an email. He added that he was “steadfast and confident” that the school’s remaining leadership team “will move our school to new heights.”

Biniaris took the reins from the school’s founding principal about three years ago, and the transition was, at times, rocky. PTA meeting minutes show that parents had concerns about families pulling their children out of the school. They also were alarmed by turnover of well-liked staff.

“Teacher and staff turnover has been unacceptably high, leading to a chaotic and unstable working and learning environment,” noted a 2018 resolution of the parent association that listed a litany of concerns, including whether students with special needs or those learning English as a new language were being properly supported.

But the most recent school surveys show that Biniaris had begun to improve his standing with teachers and parents. For example, 67% of teachers said he was an effective leader in last year’s survey, up from only about a quarter in 2016-17.

Biniaris did not respond to requests for comment.

Current Assistant Principal Sonita Ramkishun will serve as interim acting principal for the remainder of the school year, according Biniaris’s email to parents.

Education department spokeswoman Danielle Filson said the city will “engage the entire school community as we search for a new permanent leader.”

“We thank Principal Biniaris for his service at The 30th Avenue School, and we’ll work closely with Superintendent Composto to ensure a smooth transition,” she wrote.

Find out how much your school’s PTA raises (or doesn’t)

2019-12-03T00:40:12+00:00

A tiny portion of New York City parent-teacher associations reported raising more than $1,000 per student — amounting, in some cases, to more than $1 million — while hundreds of other such school groups said they raised no money at all.

The data, released for the first time Monday, lays bare the funding disparities between schools in wealthy neighborhoods and those in higher poverty ZIP codes. It does not include data for charter schools, alternative schools, and pre-K centers because these schools are not required to have parent associations, an education department spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, about a quarter of these schools reported raising no money at all — a finding that is a “cause for alarm,” said Councilman Mark Treyger, who sponsored the bill that now requires the city to aggregate and release fundraising data.

“I think this data is a starting point in a call for much further action to address very glaring and alarming inequities in our school system,” said Treyger, who has previously called for the education department to provide parent associations with baseline funding to help level the playing field.

The data, from the 2018-19 school year, included some caveats. The figures were unaudited and appear to contain some inaccuracies. Officials are looking for more precise ways of reporting fundraising numbers, and are considering offering financial training to parent organizations, a department spokesperson said. (Roughly 240 schools failed to submit any data to the education department.)

A handful of schools posted numbers that appeared to be wildly off-base, including $76 million in reported income for the parent-teacher organization at P.S. 133 in Boerum Hill. The numbers are self-reported by PTAs and PAs, and officials asked schools to confirm the numbers that they received. The education department said P.S. 133 confirmed the figures, but in an email, PTA co-president Jennifer Skoda told Chalkbeat there was likely a clerical error because they reported raising a number two decimal points to the left, or about $760,000. In 2016-2017, the organization reported nearly $612,000 in revenue. Other errors included the PTA at Forest Hills’ P.S. 196 raising $2.3 million, a figure its PTA leadership says is incorrect. (Tax filings from 2017 indicate the group raised $1.4 million that year.)

> SEE: How much did your school’s PTA bring in last year?

Still, the numbers offer a window into how parent organizations at schools across the city raise vastly different amounts. Money raised by parent organizations cannot be used to pay for teachers but can pay for supplemental staff, such as teaching assistants and art teachers. They can collect fees for programs that parents pay for directly, and can also cover expenses for after-school programs and other services that a school’s principal can’t or won’t budget for. That can enable schools with wealthier PTAs to pay for extra enrichment that its less-resourced counterparts cannot.

In a statement accompanying the release of the data, Chancellor Richard Carranza said that while he supports the contributions parent associations make to schools, “in some instances, and without clear intent, these systems can also perpetuate or exacerbate disparities in opportunities for students.”

Officials are also looking for ways parent associations can partner between schools and how the city can encourage these groups to meet with each other “and share best practices,” an education department spokesperson said.

“While we respect the autonomy of these associations and value the support of parent and community partnership, we recognize the need to increase transparency and foster greater collaboration between parent leaders,” Carranza said. “We will continue to partner with parent leaders in order to generate innovative solutions to the challenges and opportunities before us.”

Treyger said that “the DOE needs to get its act together in terms of accurate recordkeeping and needs to be more proactive with school communities” to ensure their parent organizations are active, but that the report largely confirmed vast fundraising disparities between schools in affluent neighborhoods and those serving high-poverty communities.

At the Upper West Side’s P.S. 87, for instance, the PTA raised roughly $2.1 million, or about $2,320 per student; the Upper East Side’s P.S. 158 raised about $1.5 million, or $1,840 per student; and Carroll Gardens’ P.S. 58 PTA raised about $2.1 million, or $2,085 per student. (These schools were among the 2% of New York City PTAs that reported raising S1,000 or more per student.)

By contrast, P.S. 194 in Manhattanville raised $391, or about $2 per student. Other schools reported numbers that were even lower — less than $5 in total at some campuses.

“We’re trying to understand, what is being funded at a school by PTAs? What is being funded by the budget? When you have low enrollment, how does it impact this?” said Sharmilee L. Ramudit, a parent in Manhattan’s District 3 who sits on the Community Education Council’s Equity Committee, in an interview with Chalkbeat last week. She is one of several parents in the district, which spans the Upper West Side and parts of Harlem, who plan to use this data to begin addressing fundraising disparities among schools.

Some argue that schools with high shares of low-income students should actually be doing fine since they get extra city and state funding, and receive federal Title 1 funds for services, such as academic support for high-needs students and parent and community engagement. For example, P.S. 194 — the school that raised less than $400 last year — had more than $28,000 per student in its budget. P.S. 58, one of the schools that raised more than $2 million, spent just under $18,000 per student, according to data available through Education-Trust New York, an education and civil rights advocacy group, which argues schools with greater needs should receive more funding.

Those additional funds exist to help schools that are grappling with the pronounced demands of high-needs students, said David Bloomfield, professor of educational leadership, law, and policy a the CUNY Grad Center and Brooklyn College.

“So the idea that somehow you’re going to keep [Title 1 schools] in the same place while you increase funding to other schools — to equalize that funding is antithetical to the idea that these schools have greater need,” Bloomfield said.

In a quick analysis of its own, Ed-Trust New York found that the schools serving the smallest share of low-income students are able to raise and spend more than other schools.

“The issue is not that some schools deserve less; it’s that our education system is responsible for providing every school with the resources to provide a high-quality education, including ensuring that the students with the greatest needs have the additional resources that are necessary for their success,” Ian Rosenblum, executive director of Ed-Trust New York, said in a statement.

Search for your school’s PTA. School numbers appear in three digits, so for example, type in “P.S. 001” when searching for P.S. 1. (Credit: Samuel Park/Chalkbeat)

School	PTA Income	Income Per Student	% Poverty	Economic Need Index	% Asian	% Black	% Hispanic	% Multiple Race Categories Not Represented	% White	% Students with Disabilities	% English Language Learners
Citywide	$113,501,797.00	$100.76	72.8%	70%	16.2%	25.5%	40.6%	2.7%	15.1%	20.2%	13.2%
District 1 Districtwide	$7,123,105.90	$626.15	63.0%	65%	21.5%	15.5%	41.3%	3.8%	18.0%	22.2%	8.5%
District 10 Districtwide	$4,244,920.64	$77.29	82.0%	82%	7.8%	15.0%	69.6%	1.6%	6.0%	19.6%	20.6%
District 11 Districtwide	$390,603.11	$9.85	76.7%	76%	8.6%	38.1%	42.4%	2.1%	8.8%	19.7%	11.8%
District 12 Districtwide	$53,211.22	$2.42	91.2%	92%	2.9%	24.1%	69.9%	1.6%	1.5%	22.5%	20.4%
District 13 Districtwide	$5,001,567.00	$229.72	63.7%	61%	20.5%	41.9%	17.0%	3.5%	17.1%	14.1%	4.2%
District 14 Districtwide	$6,656,597.55	$359.62	71.3%	74%	5.3%	20.1%	57.0%	2.0%	15.6%	20.4%	10.8%
District 15 Districtwide	$11,423,546.87	$343.88	55.4%	56%	16.3%	13.6%	35.6%	3.8%	30.7%	19.2%	13.9%
District 16 Districtwide	$87,921.91	$13.04	82.4%	83%	2.2%	73.1%	19.5%	2.1%	3.1%	24.3%	4.6%
District 17 Districtwide	$332,809.37	$15.14	78.6%	76%	3.0%	74.3%	16.0%	2.5%	4.2%	18.1%	10.4%
District 18 Districtwide	$153,104.21	$10.20	75.9%	70%	1.9%	84.5%	7.9%	2.0%	3.8%	19.4%	7.4%
District 19 Districtwide	$180,264.33	$8.13	87.2%	86%	7.9%	42.8%	45.0%	2.1%	2.1%	21.0%	13.7%
District 2 Districtwide	$18,528,870.68	$294.24	52.0%	52%	22.2%	14.1%	32.3%	4.9%	26.5%	17.1%	8.0%
District 20 Districtwide	$8,091,721.36	$149.90	75.3%	74%	43.6%	2.6%	26.5%	1.2%	26.1%	15.5%	22.1%
District 21 Districtwide	$1,226,910.31	$33.04	71.1%	72%	25.6%	13.7%	24.8%	2.0%	33.9%	18.2%	17.4%
District 22 Districtwide	$1,388,206.40	$39.03	69.0%	63%	20.8%	28.9%	15.4%	2.4%	32.5%	16.5%	11.6%
District 23 Districtwide	$73,233.33	$7.88	89.0%	88%	1.3%	74.3%	21.2%	1.9%	1.4%	24.3%	4.8%
District 24 Districtwide	$1,608,053.63	$26.99	74.7%	71%	19.8%	2.5%	62.8%	1.4%	13.4%	16.7%	21.5%
District 25 Districtwide	$1,362,459.30	$34.90	67.3%	61%	49.3%	7.0%	29.3%	2.1%	12.2%	14.0%	18.0%
District 26 Districtwide	$3,818,853.54	$116.86	56.2%	45%	52.9%	11.5%	17.3%	2.5%	15.8%	14.3%	8.1%
District 27 Districtwide	$1,336,463.08	$29.60	74.0%	67%	22.6%	22.0%	39.4%	5.6%	10.4%	17.4%	10.7%
District 28 Districtwide	$4,294,114.31	$101.33	68.1%	60%	29.9%	20.0%	27.7%	6.0%	16.4%	15.1%	10.7%
District 29 Districtwide	$389,153.15	$14.47	71.5%	61%	16.4%	60.7%	16.2%	4.9%	1.8%	15.9%	8.6%
District 3 Districtwide	$10,289,076.12	$455.73	48.1%	48%	8.6%	20.9%	31.8%	5.8%	33.0%	17.7%	4.7%
District 30 Districtwide	$6,333,283.45	$155.49	69.0%	67%	21.5%	6.4%	52.8%	2.5%	16.7%	14.7%	16.1%
District 31 Districtwide	$12,473,496.92	$200.33	56.8%	51%	11.1%	12.4%	28.7%	2.5%	45.3%	24.0%	6.3%
District 32 Districtwide	$127,063.44	$11.52	88.0%	86%	2.2%	16.7%	78.0%	0.8%	2.3%	20.6%	18.5%
District 4 Districtwide	$508,766.05	$39.02	80.4%	82%	8.6%	23.7%	60.1%	3.0%	4.7%	24.0%	10.0%
District 5 Districtwide	$444,699.57	$39.58	80.6%	82%	3.4%	48.8%	39.1%	2.8%	5.8%	23.8%	8.2%
District 6 Districtwide	$547,321.83	$24.96	84.5%	83%	1.5%	7.1%	84.6%	1.2%	5.6%	20.0%	26.9%
District 7 Districtwide	$545,869.67	$28.20	90.8%	91%	1.1%	26.4%	69.5%	1.4%	1.6%	23.5%	15.8%
District 75 Districtwide	$385,457.34	$15.13	85.1%	88%	8.7%	35.5%	40.3%	2.6%	12.9%	98.4%	22.7%
District 8 Districtwide	$3,955,641.44	$141.08	81.9%	82%	6.3%	21.4%	64.7%	1.7%	5.9%	23.3%	13.5%
District 9 Districtwide	$125,429.10	$3.67	91.4%	92%	1.4%	27.6%	68.7%	0.9%	1.4%	22.1%	22.4%
47 The American Sign Language and English Secondar / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	88.3%	77%	3.1%	27.6%	64.3%	0.5%	4.6%	27.0%	4.6%
A. Philip Randolph Campus High School / District 6	$0.00	$0.00	85.5%	86%	5.5%	27.3%	62.7%	2.3%	2.3%	15.4%	14.2%
A.C.E. Academy for Scholars at the Geraldine Ferra / District 24	$35,608.13	$60.56	65.0%	53%	15.8%	2.9%	48.8%	3.6%	28.9%	10.2%	9.5%
Abraham Lincoln High School / District 21	$2,073.36	$1.09	75.0%	81%	15.3%	41.8%	24.7%	1.2%	17.0%	16.4%	17.6%
Academy for Careers in Television and Film / District 30	$5,398.62	$9.61	55.7%	53%	7.1%	11.7%	55.9%	6.6%	18.7%	21.4%	1.6%
Academy for College Preparation and Career Explora / District 17	$0.00	$0.00	83.6%	80%	0.3%	75.6%	15.6%	6.1%	2.5%	20.3%	16.4%
Academy for Conservation and the Environment / District 18	$0.00	$0.00	80.3%	75%	6.0%	76.0%	9.3%	2.3%	6.3%	18.0%	13.3%
Academy for Environmental Leadership / District 32		$0.00	91.2%	88%	4.2%	15.5%	75.6%	0.4%	4.2%	19.3%	43.7%
Academy for Health Careers / District 17	$0.00	$0.00	84.1%	81%	4.7%	76.1%	14.6%	3.0%	1.7%	14.3%	3.7%
Academy for Language and Technology / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	100.0%	99%	0.0%	0.3%	99.4%	0.3%	0.0%	6.5%	73.1%
Academy for New Americans / District 30	$1,021.68	$8.73	93.2%	81%	14.5%	2.6%	68.4%	0.0%	14.5%	0.9%	100.0%
Academy For Personal Leadership And Excellence / District 10	$1,600.00	$2.75	91.6%	93%	1.9%	10.8%	85.1%	1.0%	1.2%	27.3%	31.4%
Academy for Scholarship and Entrepreneurship: A Co / District 11	$0.00	$0.00	73.6%	76%	1.6%	63.3%	30.2%	3.3%	1.6%	22.6%	5.2%
Academy for Software Engineering / District 2	$2,875.95	$6.27	67.3%	67%	9.6%	20.3%	55.8%	3.9%	10.5%	25.3%	4.1%
Academy for Young Writers / District 19	$326.10	$0.59	84.8%	81%	1.1%	69.0%	27.4%	1.5%	1.1%	22.1%	3.4%
Academy of American Studies / District 30	$758.00	$0.75	62.2%	53%	26.0%	4.3%	35.0%	0.3%	34.5%	7.7%	2.6%
Academy of Applied Mathematics and Technology / District 7	$238.89	$0.78	92.8%	93%	2.0%	28.3%	68.1%	0.7%	1.0%	27.4%	11.7%
Academy of Arts and Letters / District 13	$679,998.00	$1,287.88	22.3%	30%	5.9%	29.9%	15.3%	9.5%	39.4%	20.8%	0.6%
Academy of Finance and Enterprise / District 24	$1,835.00	$2.83	80.7%	68%	25.1%	4.5%	50.7%	4.2%	15.6%	12.8%	5.7%
Academy of Hospitality and Tourism / District 17	$0.00	$0.00	92.9%	81%	0.5%	81.6%	13.8%	0.5%	3.6%	20.9%	20.4%
Academy of Innovative Technology / District 19	$0.00	$0.00	82.2%	76%	6.2%	39.1%	48.6%	3.6%	2.6%	20.6%	11.6%
Academy of Medical Technology: A College Board Sch / District 27		$0.00	82.3%	83%	6.2%	42.0%	45.7%	2.4%	3.7%	15.5%	16.0%
Academy of Public Relations / District 7	$0.00	$0.00	90.6%	95%	0.0%	22.6%	75.2%	1.1%	1.1%	32.3%	29.3%
Accion Academy / District 12	$0.00	$0.00	95.9%	93%	1.0%	18.5%	78.5%	0.5%	1.5%	23.3%	30.4%
ACORN Community High School / District 13		$0.00	84.7%	83%	4.0%	77.3%	13.3%	2.7%	2.7%	26.0%	4.7%
Albert Shanker School for Visual and Performing Ar / District 30	$6,145.90	$8.88	84.8%	79%	28.5%	16.9%	44.8%	1.2%	8.7%	17.5%	8.1%
Alfred E. Smith Career and Technical Education Hig / District 7	$0.00	$0.00	92.3%	89%	0.4%	21.8%	75.8%	0.7%	1.3%	27.7%	19.3%
All City Leadership Secondary School / District 32	$1,455.00	$3.38	81.4%	68%	6.3%	8.6%	75.3%	0.5%	9.3%	11.6%	2.6%
Amistad Dual Language School / District 6	$33,372.82	$82.61	78.7%	77%	1.0%	2.0%	92.3%	0.5%	4.2%	18.1%	28.5%
Ampark Neighborhood / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	51.6%	45%	3.7%	13.0%	62.7%	4.0%	16.7%	22.2%	3.7%
Andries Hudde / District 22	$2,333.00	$3.39	82.3%	75%	16.3%	57.5%	16.1%	1.7%	8.4%	20.5%	17.0%
Antonia Pantoja Preparatory Academy: A College Boa / District 8	$25,984.29	$58.26	83.0%	88%	5.2%	16.8%	74.7%	2.0%	1.3%	28.5%	14.3%
Archer Elementary School / District 12	$0.00	$0.00	95.5%	88%	14.0%	23.6%	57.2%	3.1%	2.1%	28.1%	22.9%
Archimedes Academy for Math, Science and Technolog / District 8	$317.26	$0.48	76.8%	83%	10.6%	27.0%	59.3%	1.2%	1.8%	27.2%	10.6%
Art and Design High School / District 2	$67,777.10	$45.86	55.5%	56%	8.5%	14.8%	53.9%	5.5%	17.3%	21.2%	0.8%
Arturo A. Schomburg Satellite Academy Bronx / District 12	$0.00	$0.00	86.8%	87%	0.0%	36.8%	57.7%	1.1%	4.4%	20.9%	14.8%
Aspirations Diploma Plus High School / District 17	$0.00	$0.00	82.7%	83%	0.0%	78.5%	19.8%	0.8%	0.8%	25.7%	3.0%
Astor Collegiate Academy / District 11	$0.00	$0.00	72.2%	74%	8.0%	27.8%	49.2%	3.0%	12.0%	23.0%	7.6%
August Martin High School / District 27	$800.00	$2.57	77.5%	72%	12.9%	65.9%	14.8%	5.1%	1.3%	23.2%	6.1%
Automotive High School / District 14		$0.00	82.4%	80%	3.0%	49.8%	42.2%	2.1%	2.7%	33.7%	6.4%
Aviation Career & Technical Education High School / District 24	$5,772.18	$2.76	61.4%	65%	36.8%	4.0%	46.0%	4.0%	9.2%	14.0%	2.9%
Baccalaureate School for Global Education / District 30	$124,818.92	$233.74	35.4%	41%	46.3%	3.9%	18.9%	3.9%	27.0%	7.5%	1.9%
Ballet Tech, NYC Public School for Dance / District 2	$30,402.00	$214.10	44.4%	46%	27.5%	17.6%	24.6%	8.5%	21.8%	4.2%	2.8%
Bard High School Early College / District 1	$317,604.51	$516.43	40.2%	39%	28.9%	10.7%	17.6%	2.4%	40.3%	7.8%	0.2%
Bard High School Early College Queens / District 24	$97,742.36	$152.01	42.6%	40%	35.8%	10.3%	18.8%	2.8%	32.3%	5.3%	0.2%
Baruch College Campus High School / District 2	$78,774.92	$165.84	38.7%	39%	34.9%	3.6%	13.3%	5.7%	42.5%	12.6%	1.1%
Battery Park City School / District 2	$646,377.93	$761.34	15.1%	16%	20.3%	4.0%	13.7%	9.4%	52.7%	18.4%	3.2%
Baychester Academy / District 11	$10,873.00	$25.64	80.7%	71%	2.6%	70.0%	23.8%	1.9%	1.7%	17.9%	5.7%
Baychester Middle School / District 11	$50.00	$0.18	85.1%	80%	2.1%	62.3%	31.0%	3.6%	1.1%	22.1%	5.3%
Bayside High School / District 26	$197.75	$0.07	71.0%	51%	42.3%	12.5%	26.9%	1.7%	16.6%	16.6%	8.2%
Beacon High School / District 3	$685,767.00	$481.92	36.1%	30%	9.0%	14.2%	19.7%	10.3%	46.8%	11.8%	0.1%
Bedford Academy High School / District 13		$0.00	89.8%	61%	4.1%	78.5%	8.5%	5.5%	3.3%	14.9%	1.1%
Bedford Park Elementary School / District 10	$7,281.50	$17.21	86.5%	86%	13.2%	6.1%	67.1%	1.9%	11.6%	15.4%	28.1%
BELL Academy / District 25	$41,149.00	$113.36	41.3%	37%	36.6%	3.9%	26.2%	2.2%	31.1%	20.7%	1.9%
Belmont Preparatory High School / District 10		$0.00	84.4%	84%	4.6%	21.8%	71.0%	1.3%	1.3%	23.1%	12.1%
Benjamin Banneker Academy / District 13	$0.00	$0.00	73.0%	66%	5.3%	79.4%	11.4%	3.0%	1.0%	14.8%	1.5%
Benjamin Franklin High School for Finance & Inform / District 29	$220.00	$0.57	84.8%	68%	14.9%	59.1%	16.7%	7.2%	2.1%	17.2%	13.1%
Benjamin N. Cardozo High School / District 26		$0.00	62.3%	49%	42.3%	21.4%	20.8%	1.8%	13.6%	13.4%	4.6%
Blueprint Middle School / District 8	$0.00	$0.00	89.5%	89%	23.4%	12.1%	55.8%	2.1%	6.6%	20.7%	21.3%
Boys and Girls High School / District 16	$0.00	$0.00	80.4%	85%	1.4%	82.0%	11.4%	3.2%	2.1%	28.5%	6.2%
Brighter Choice Community School / District 16	$5,863.12	$18.38	79.6%	76%	0.9%	58.9%	31.0%	2.2%	6.9%	17.9%	4.4%
Bronx Academy for Software Engineering (BASE) / District 10	$150.56	$0.36	75.7%	80%	6.2%	27.2%	61.1%	2.1%	3.3%	28.2%	9.1%
Bronx Academy of Health Careers / District 11	$0.00	$0.00	78.6%	85%	3.9%	41.2%	52.1%	1.7%	1.1%	20.9%	13.1%
Bronx Aerospace High School / District 11	$100.00	$0.31	78.3%	86%	5.3%	37.6%	52.8%	2.2%	2.2%	26.4%	18.0%
Bronx Alliance Middle School / District 11		$0.00	86.7%	86%	3.0%	60.7%	34.7%	1.3%	0.3%	23.3%	6.3%
Bronx Arena High School / District 8	$0.00	$0.00	90.2%	89%	1.6%	37.8%	57.0%	1.6%	2.1%	13.0%	6.2%
Bronx Bridges High School / District 8	$0.00	$0.00	80.9%	98%	12.8%	4.6%	76.6%	2.4%	3.6%	10.3%	83.9%
Bronx Career and College Preparatory High School / District 12		$0.00	85.8%	92%	2.6%	35.8%	59.3%	1.9%	0.4%	28.4%	23.9%
Bronx Center for Science and Mathematics / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	87.7%	83%	6.7%	20.5%	67.6%	2.2%	2.9%	23.2%	5.8%
Bronx Collaborative High School / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	80.7%	85%	3.4%	28.6%	63.2%	1.4%	3.4%	22.7%	19.1%
Bronx Collegiate Academy / District 9		$0.00	88.1%	93%	3.4%	23.2%	71.9%	0.5%	1.0%	21.1%	19.1%
Bronx Community High School / District 8		$0.00	84.2%	89%	1.1%	35.9%	61.4%	0.0%	1.6%	17.4%	7.6%
Bronx Compass High School / District 8	$0.00	$0.00	82.4%	87%	4.2%	27.6%	63.8%	2.1%	2.4%	23.4%	10.8%
Bronx Dance Academy School / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	92.3%	88%	1.5%	19.2%	78.2%	0.0%	1.1%	22.9%	6.3%
Bronx Delta School / District 8	$57,779.76	$170.44	72.6%	60%	6.5%	13.6%	64.3%	1.8%	13.9%	18.3%	6.8%
Bronx Design and Construction Academy / District 7		$0.00	89.4%	87%	0.4%	27.9%	67.7%	2.0%	2.0%	29.2%	16.8%
Bronx Early College Academy for Teaching & Learnin / District 9		$0.00	87.8%	89%	2.7%	27.8%	66.7%	1.2%	1.6%	18.8%	9.2%
Bronx Engineering and Technology Academy / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	92.8%	87%	4.8%	27.6%	64.2%	1.1%	2.4%	24.7%	18.6%
Bronx Envision Academy / District 12	$800.94	$1.92	87.3%	89%	1.9%	32.8%	59.6%	3.1%	2.6%	23.9%	16.7%
Bronx Green Middle School / District 11	$600.00	$1.47	91.9%	84%	6.9%	17.9%	59.0%	1.5%	14.7%	21.4%	22.1%
Bronx Haven High School / District 7		$0.00	80.8%	88%	0.6%	33.5%	62.9%	1.2%	1.8%	31.1%	7.8%
Bronx Health Sciences High School / District 11		$0.00	69.5%	69%	6.1%	52.9%	31.5%	5.4%	4.1%	12.9%	4.7%
Bronx High School for Law and Community Service / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	89.8%	88%	1.5%	27.6%	66.7%	1.7%	2.5%	25.4%	12.9%
Bronx High School for Medical Science / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	81.4%	89%	6.7%	25.8%	63.5%	2.4%	1.7%	20.5%	13.8%
Bronx High School for the Visual Arts / District 11	$0.00	$0.00	78.3%	78%	3.7%	27.1%	59.0%	0.9%	9.3%	29.7%	6.1%
Bronx High School for Writing and Communication Ar / District 11		$0.00	70.7%	80%	4.7%	47.6%	43.8%	1.6%	2.2%	23.7%	15.5%
Bronx High School of Business / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	93.1%	95%	2.2%	20.4%	73.8%	1.5%	2.2%	21.8%	38.2%
Bronx International High School / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	89.2%	99%	2.9%	12.4%	80.9%	0.7%	3.1%	2.9%	91.4%
Bronx Lab School / District 11	$0.00	$0.00	83.3%	89%	2.4%	35.0%	56.3%	3.0%	3.2%	30.2%	15.4%
Bronx Latin / District 12		$0.00	94.8%	89%	1.6%	19.0%	77.8%	0.5%	1.2%	24.8%	14.3%
Bronx Leadership Academy High School / District 9		$0.00	87.3%	93%	0.5%	30.1%	66.5%	1.4%	1.4%	27.8%	19.8%
Bronx Leadership Academy II High School / District 7	$0.00	$0.00	94.1%	92%	1.4%	26.0%	69.5%	1.6%	1.6%	27.8%	13.1%
Bronx Little School / District 12	$3,028.59	$9.74	88.4%	84%	16.1%	15.8%	64.6%	2.3%	1.3%	21.2%	20.3%
Bronx Park Middle School / District 11	$3,029.92	$7.48	93.1%	86%	7.4%	18.8%	61.0%	1.5%	11.4%	18.8%	20.5%
Bronx Regional High School / District 12		$0.00	89.5%	92%	2.8%	33.7%	60.2%	0.6%	2.8%	18.8%	9.9%
Bronx River High School / District 8	$0.00	$0.00	81.2%	85%	5.4%	23.1%	63.3%	3.1%	5.2%	24.9%	16.2%
Bronx School for Law, Government and Justice / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	86.3%	86%	1.5%	23.0%	72.4%	2.3%	0.8%	21.7%	10.8%
Bronx School of Law and Finance / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	88.1%	89%	1.1%	21.7%	72.4%	1.6%	3.3%	21.1%	21.7%
Bronx Studio School for Writers and Artists / District 8	$9,125.66	$14.15	84.5%	91%	0.8%	20.5%	77.1%	0.2%	1.6%	26.8%	12.2%
Bronx Theatre High School / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	84.1%	91%	1.2%	32.3%	60.5%	3.5%	2.6%	23.6%	5.8%
Bronx Writing Academy / District 9		$0.00	92.5%	94%	1.2%	31.7%	64.1%	1.5%	1.5%	25.7%	24.2%
Bronxdale High School / District 11	$0.00	$0.00	78.9%	74%	5.0%	28.3%	57.1%	1.3%	8.3%	22.9%	6.8%
Brooklyn Academy High School / District 13	$0.00	$0.00	84.4%	87%	0.9%	81.8%	16.9%	0.4%	0.0%	27.1%	1.3%
Brooklyn Academy of Science and the Environment / District 17	$644.00	$1.69	73.6%	76%	3.9%	79.8%	11.5%	1.3%	3.4%	16.2%	5.8%
Brooklyn Arbor Elementary School / District 14	$155,517.76	$252.46	56.7%	60%	3.1%	2.6%	63.1%	3.7%	27.4%	21.1%	9.6%
Brooklyn Arts and Science Elementary School / District 17	$42,908.80	$115.97	66.5%	61%	4.6%	45.7%	28.6%	2.4%	18.6%	24.6%	13.0%
Brooklyn Bridge Academy / District 18		$0.00	73.9%	78%	2.3%	83.3%	10.8%	1.8%	1.8%	19.8%	10.8%
Brooklyn Brownstone School / District 16		$0.00	73.4%	62%	2.1%	73.1%	12.2%	2.8%	9.8%	18.5%	1.0%
Brooklyn Collaborative Studies / District 15		$0.00	65.4%	67%	2.6%	34.6%	45.0%	2.5%	15.2%	29.5%	5.4%
Brooklyn College Academy / District 22	$2,990.91	$4.53	71.1%	55%	9.5%	68.9%	11.5%	5.9%	4.1%	14.1%	0.6%
Brooklyn Collegiate: A College Board School / District 23	$0.00	$0.00	88.3%	83%	1.3%	84.1%	12.6%	1.7%	0.4%	23.0%	5.9%
Brooklyn Community Arts & Media High School (BCAM) / District 13	$0.00	$0.00	87.9%	80%	1.0%	69.1%	26.4%	2.6%	1.0%	26.4%	3.6%
Brooklyn Democracy Academy / District 23	$0.00	$0.00	78.8%	81%	0.9%	79.3%	16.6%	2.3%	0.9%	25.8%	3.7%
Brooklyn Environmental Exploration School (BEES) / District 23	$0.00	$0.00	92.2%	92%	1.0%	71.6%	23.5%	1.0%	2.9%	39.2%	7.8%
Brooklyn Frontiers High School / District 15	$0.00	$0.00	88.0%	78%	2.2%	64.7%	31.5%	1.1%	0.5%	41.8%	4.9%
Brooklyn Gardens Elementary School / District 19	$5,928.70	$20.17	94.9%	97%	0.0%	64.3%	31.6%	2.0%	2.0%	27.9%	5.1%
Brooklyn Generation School / District 18	$0.00	$0.00	77.2%	75%	0.0%	81.0%	11.6%	2.6%	4.8%	23.8%	12.2%
Brooklyn High School for Law and Technology / District 16		$0.00	81.8%	81%	3.7%	63.2%	28.7%	2.5%	1.9%	22.1%	6.1%
Brooklyn High School for Leadership and Community / District 13	$0.00	$0.00	80.5%	81%	1.0%	67.3%	29.8%	1.5%	0.5%	23.4%	6.3%
Brooklyn High School of the Arts / District 15	$1,415.00	$1.51	70.8%	65%	3.4%	65.1%	21.4%	5.3%	4.8%	17.5%	1.1%
Brooklyn Institute for Liberal Arts / District 17		$0.00	85.3%	70%	1.7%	86.3%	9.2%	2.4%	0.5%	19.3%	4.6%
Brooklyn International High School / District 13	$0.00	$0.00	78.3%	95%	25.1%	20.6%	43.5%	0.0%	10.9%	3.1%	76.3%
Brooklyn Lab School / District 19		$0.00	87.7%	87%	11.6%	23.7%	57.0%	2.3%	5.3%	20.0%	35.3%
Brooklyn Landmark Elementary School / District 23	$19,238.12	$49.84	76.2%	80%	2.3%	74.9%	21.5%	0.5%	0.8%	16.6%	2.8%
Brooklyn Latin School, The / District 14	$27,493.00	$39.39	59.7%	54%	55.0%	12.2%	11.9%	7.9%	13.0%	2.3%	0.0%
Brooklyn Preparatory High School / District 14		$0.00	83.3%	76%	0.9%	42.7%	53.3%	1.5%	1.5%	18.8%	2.1%
Brooklyn School for Music & Theatre / District 17		$0.00	79.7%	82%	0.3%	77.4%	19.9%	0.7%	1.7%	21.6%	2.7%
Brooklyn School of Inquiry / District 20	$506,740.18	$948.95	26.4%	26%	20.4%	5.1%	4.7%	3.0%	66.9%	8.4%	10.3%
Brooklyn Science and Engineering Academy / District 18	$8,571.63	$27.04	77.6%	58%	0.9%	93.1%	4.1%	0.9%	0.9%	15.5%	2.8%
Brooklyn Studio Secondary School / District 21	$11,739.87	$12.64	76.7%	72%	21.7%	4.0%	29.2%	1.9%	43.2%	20.1%	16.0%
Brooklyn Technical High School / District 13		$0.00	59.4%	51%	60.7%	5.7%	7.0%	2.1%	24.4%	1.2%	0.0%
Brooklyn Theatre Arts High School / District 18	$0.00	$0.00	82.6%	78%	2.3%	83.1%	10.3%	2.6%	1.7%	17.1%	2.3%
Brownsville Academy High School / District 17	$0.00	$0.00	84.9%	85%	0.0%	79.8%	16.8%	1.7%	1.7%	25.2%	4.2%
Brownsville Collaborative Middle School / District 23	$0.00	$0.00	94.6%	96%	0.4%	69.1%	27.7%	1.1%	1.8%	36.7%	11.2%
Bushwick Community High School / District 32		$0.00	81.6%	88%	0.0%	31.1%	67.9%	0.0%	1.0%	36.2%	4.6%
Bushwick Leaders High School for Academic Excellen / District 32		$0.00	95.7%	92%	1.7%	19.9%	75.5%	1.7%	1.3%	27.2%	25.8%
Business Of Sports School / District 2	$1,707.42	$3.98	72.5%	79%	1.2%	32.9%	61.3%	1.6%	3.0%	24.0%	8.2%
Business Technology Early College High School / District 26	$0.00	$0.00	65.5%	57%	24.7%	43.4%	19.5%	6.7%	5.8%	12.9%	4.0%
Cambria Heights Academy / District 29		$0.00	73.2%	58%	14.6%	72.7%	9.5%	1.6%	1.6%	16.8%	10.3%
Careers in Sports High School / District 7	$0.00	$0.00	83.7%	89%	0.4%	29.2%	68.0%	0.4%	2.1%	25.0%	17.4%
Cascades High School / District 1	$0.00	$0.00	84.0%	83%	2.7%	48.1%	48.1%	0.0%	1.1%	20.9%	2.1%
Castle Bridge School / District 6	$2,100.00	$10.00	65.7%	67%	1.4%	5.7%	69.0%	3.8%	20.0%	34.3%	34.8%
Catherine & Count Basie Middle School 72 / District 28	$0.00	$0.00	81.3%	76%	6.8%	68.2%	15.7%	6.5%	2.7%	28.5%	6.5%
Celia Cruz Bronx High School of Music, The / District 10	$117.00	$0.28	86.9%	78%	1.4%	26.6%	66.0%	4.8%	1.2%	22.8%	5.7%
Central Park East High School / District 4	$64.45	$0.13	78.0%	73%	17.5%	26.2%	49.4%	2.6%	4.3%	15.9%	1.8%
Central Park East I / District 4	$56,572.28	$299.32	43.9%	55%	9.0%	14.8%	38.6%	10.6%	27.0%	20.1%	4.8%
Central Park East II / District 4	$24,742.00	$51.23	51.3%	64%	5.4%	31.9%	40.8%	7.2%	14.7%	25.5%	3.1%
Channel View School for Research / District 27	$10,181.44	$10.53	71.0%	63%	8.8%	41.4%	35.7%	2.5%	11.7%	11.7%	2.1%
Chelsea Career and Technical Education High School / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	78.0%	77%	13.5%	20.4%	60.8%	1.8%	3.5%	20.6%	4.0%
Christopher Avenue Community School / District 23	$116.45	$0.37	96.5%	95%	0.3%	62.3%	34.8%	0.9%	1.6%	23.7%	4.1%
City College Academy of the Arts / District 6	$510.00	$0.84	80.9%	79%	1.3%	3.9%	91.4%	0.7%	2.6%	14.6%	5.4%
City Knoll Middle School / District 2	$22,633.32	$129.33	82.3%	74%	8.0%	25.1%	57.1%	4.0%	5.7%	32.0%	11.4%
City Polytechnic High School of Engineering, Archi / District 13	$0.00	$0.00	76.3%	63%	7.3%	63.4%	21.8%	2.3%	5.2%	19.2%	1.6%
Civic Leadership Academy / District 24	$0.00	$0.00	76.1%	76%	13.2%	4.9%	69.0%	6.9%	6.1%	19.9%	6.6%
Clara Barton High School / District 17	$1,456.50	$1.21	74.6%	70%	1.5%	87.0%	7.2%	3.3%	0.9%	18.1%	7.8%
Claremont International HS / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	97.5%	99%	7.5%	19.7%	67.9%	0.8%	4.2%	5.0%	84.5%
Cobble Hill School of American Studies / District 15	$0.00	$0.00	90.0%	83%	3.4%	62.4%	28.9%	2.6%	2.7%	18.6%	11.3%
Collaborative Arts Middle School / District 29	$10,966.71	$33.74	79.4%	62%	1.2%	82.2%	13.5%	2.2%	0.9%	22.2%	5.5%
College Point Collaborative / District 25	$9,649.25	$62.66	77.3%	64%	16.2%	0.6%	68.2%	2.6%	12.3%	17.5%	13.0%
Collegiate Institute for Math and Science / District 11		$0.00	72.5%	71%	11.5%	34.3%	40.4%	2.0%	11.9%	18.6%	3.3%
Columbia Secondary School / District 5	$139,940.99	$194.90	48.3%	52%	8.9%	20.6%	39.0%	5.6%	25.9%	16.2%	0.6%
Community Action School - MS 258 / District 3	$0.00	$0.00	82.8%	80%	2.5%	35.1%	53.6%	0.8%	7.9%	25.1%	4.6%
Community Health Academy of the Heights / District 6	$0.00	$0.00	88.2%	89%	0.7%	7.2%	90.0%	0.1%	2.0%	20.2%	18.1%
Community Math & Science Prep / District 6	$0.00	$0.00	97.6%	91%	2.9%	8.6%	84.3%	0.5%	3.8%	35.7%	51.4%
Community School for Social Justice / District 7	$0.00	$0.00	89.9%	92%	0.0%	22.9%	74.6%	1.8%	0.6%	26.0%	20.5%
Community Voices Middle School / District 29	$1,440.00	$4.15	74.4%	67%	2.3%	82.1%	11.5%	2.9%	1.2%	27.7%	8.4%
Comprehensive Model School Project M.S. 327 / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	87.9%	90%	0.3%	19.5%	78.9%	0.3%	1.1%	26.4%	11.3%
Concord High School / District 31	$0.00	$0.00	76.5%	80%	1.2%	24.7%	54.2%	4.2%	15.7%	29.5%	2.4%
Concourse Village Elementary School / District 7		$0.00	85.8%	82%	1.7%	32.9%	63.3%	0.3%	1.7%	19.1%	9.2%
Conselyea Preparatory School / District 14	$19,892.34	$40.76	49.4%	57%	2.5%	5.5%	55.5%	0.4%	36.1%	19.1%	4.3%
Cornerstone Academy for Social Action / District 11	$7,005.72	$18.29	88.5%	81%	0.5%	53.3%	40.2%	2.6%	3.4%	21.1%	3.7%
Cornerstone Academy for Social Action Middle Schoo / District 11		$0.00	74.3%	76%	0.0%	61.1%	35.8%	1.6%	1.6%	24.1%	1.9%
Corona Arts & Sciences Academy / District 24	$4,029.00	$5.29	96.8%	89%	1.3%	1.8%	96.3%	0.3%	0.3%	20.0%	23.0%
Creston Academy / District 10	$5,696.83	$12.41	95.0%	94%	1.7%	11.1%	85.2%	0.9%	1.1%	19.0%	29.8%
Crotona International High School / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	84.4%	99%	1.5%	6.3%	87.7%	0.6%	3.9%	3.3%	95.8%
CSI High School for International Studies / District 31	$29,855.47	$60.19	47.8%	36%	16.7%	7.3%	19.6%	2.2%	54.2%	14.9%	0.0%
Cultural Academy for the Arts and Sciences / District 18	$0.00	$0.00	73.4%	73%	1.1%	84.4%	8.9%	3.2%	2.5%	21.6%	11.7%
Curtis High School / District 31	$9,320.25	$3.60	74.5%	72%	7.0%	35.9%	40.6%	3.1%	13.4%	19.0%	8.2%
Cynthia Jenkins School / District 29	$0.00	$0.00	80.8%	72%	2.6%	85.3%	10.0%	1.2%	1.0%	20.9%	3.3%
Cypress Hills Collegiate Preparatory School / District 19	$0.00	$0.00	90.4%	83%	11.9%	18.5%	64.9%	1.7%	3.0%	19.5%	21.5%
DeWitt Clinton High School / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	78.8%	83%	10.7%	31.7%	52.1%	2.3%	3.1%	18.9%	14.8%
Digital Arts and Cinema Technology High School / District 15	$0.00	$0.00	80.1%	74%	3.7%	54.9%	34.6%	1.6%	5.3%	21.5%	0.4%
Discovery High School / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	85.9%	90%	4.1%	16.5%	75.9%	1.2%	2.2%	25.3%	25.1%
Dock Street School for STEAM Studies / District 13		$0.00	64.3%	60%	7.2%	65.7%	18.1%	2.2%	6.9%	22.0%	0.4%
Dos Puentes Elementary School / District 6	$158,215.06	$384.02	65.3%	65%	0.2%	2.7%	76.7%	1.7%	18.7%	23.3%	29.1%
Dr. Jacqueline Peek-Davis School / District 17	$4,722.06	$16.86	93.9%	92%	0.4%	71.4%	23.6%	1.4%	3.2%	23.9%	6.4%
Dr. Susan S. McKinney Secondary School of the Arts / District 13	$0.00	$0.00	89.5%	87%	1.9%	70.9%	24.3%	1.6%	1.3%	28.1%	3.8%
DreamYard Preparatory School / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	88.6%	94%	0.7%	27.7%	68.6%	1.1%	1.8%	24.4%	22.5%
E.S.M.T- I.S. 190 / District 12	$2,065.00	$7.48	93.8%	91%	1.4%	29.7%	67.4%	1.1%	0.4%	22.1%	12.3%
Eagle Academy for Young Men / District 9		$0.00	78.0%	81%	0.4%	54.6%	41.9%	2.1%	0.9%	26.6%	4.2%
Eagle Academy for Young Men II / District 23	$0.00	$0.00	79.6%	73%	0.6%	88.9%	8.4%	1.7%	0.3%	27.2%	0.5%
Eagle Academy for Young Men III / District 29		$0.00	68.2%	56%	1.4%	88.7%	3.4%	5.0%	1.4%	25.2%	0.4%
Eagle Academy for Young Men of Harlem / District 5	$1,159.41	$3.10	74.6%	80%	0.5%	69.5%	24.1%	4.5%	1.3%	30.5%	4.3%
Earth School / District 1	$116,000.00	$331.43	55.7%	57%	7.1%	10.9%	40.3%	8.0%	33.7%	26.6%	6.0%
East Bronx Academy for the Future / District 12	$0.00	$0.00	94.2%	92%	2.4%	24.9%	69.5%	2.1%	1.2%	29.2%	16.8%
East Brooklyn Community High School / District 18	$0.00	$0.00	80.6%	83%	1.5%	76.0%	17.3%	1.5%	3.6%	43.4%	6.1%
East Elmhurst Community School / District 30	$6,680.78	$14.62	91.5%	82%	4.4%	6.8%	84.2%	0.9%	3.7%	17.5%	37.0%
East Flatbush Community Research School / District 18		$0.00	85.8%	83%	2.2%	85.1%	5.6%	2.2%	4.9%	26.9%	11.6%
East New York Elementary School of Excellence / District 19		$0.00	93.2%	93%	4.7%	49.8%	42.2%	2.5%	0.8%	20.8%	14.4%
East New York Family Academy / District 19	$2,090.00	$4.21	82.5%	80%	3.2%	62.5%	31.9%	2.0%	0.4%	22.0%	3.0%
East New York Middle School of Excellence / District 19	$0.00	$0.00	91.7%	90%	3.0%	55.8%	38.5%	0.8%	1.9%	27.5%	12.1%
East Side Community School / District 1	$20,909.60	$30.75	66.5%	64%	11.8%	16.6%	53.8%	2.5%	15.3%	27.1%	1.3%
East Side Elementary School, PS 267 / District 2	$392,719.00	$948.60	12.6%	8%	12.6%	1.0%	10.4%	2.9%	73.2%	13.8%	4.6%
East Side Middle School / District 2	$229,629.00	$509.16	16.2%	13%	14.0%	2.9%	11.8%	7.3%	64.1%	16.6%	0.0%
East Williamsburg Scholars Academy / District 14	$0.00	$0.00	90.5%	88%	0.7%	35.2%	61.8%	1.3%	1.0%	21.4%	32.9%
East-West School of International Studies / District 25	$4,325.65	$6.67	82.3%	66%	69.0%	6.6%	17.6%	2.0%	4.8%	13.9%	6.9%
Ebbets Field Middle School / District 17	$225.05	$1.69	94.0%	87%	6.0%	68.4%	17.3%	0.8%	7.5%	30.1%	20.3%
EBC High School for Public Service - Bushwick / District 32		$0.00	85.8%	90%	0.2%	8.8%	88.7%	0.2%	2.1%	22.8%	19.6%
Edward A. Reynolds West Side High School / District 3	$0.00	$0.00	89.4%	88%	0.4%	31.1%	65.4%	0.7%	2.4%	38.3%	9.9%
Edward R. Murrow High School / District 21		$0.00	66.3%	65%	25.0%	21.9%	19.3%	4.0%	29.9%	18.4%	8.9%
El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice / District 14	$0.00	$0.00	83.0%	88%	0.4%	4.9%	92.4%	1.8%	0.4%	25.9%	18.3%
Eleanor Roosevelt High School / District 2	$282,975.00	$533.92	19.4%	19%	15.3%	2.6%	10.0%	6.2%	65.8%	15.7%	0.0%
Elementary School for Math, Science, and Technolog / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	95.7%	97%	0.7%	22.3%	76.3%	0.7%	0.0%	18.0%	29.1%
Elijah Stroud Middle School / District 17		$0.00	86.7%	84%	4.6%	67.6%	20.8%	2.3%	4.6%	35.8%	13.3%
Ella Baker School / District 2	$43,638.75	$134.69	28.1%	35%	5.9%	15.1%	30.6%	9.3%	39.2%	18.8%	1.5%
Elm Tree Elementary School / District 24	$3,518.67	$6.81	93.4%	85%	6.2%	3.3%	87.6%	0.6%	2.3%	22.2%	40.8%
Emma Lazarus High School / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	93.3%	100%	40.3%	17.5%	30.8%	2.5%	8.9%	0.0%	81.0%
Emolior Academy / District 12	$0.00	$0.00	89.9%	90%	4.0%	23.8%	64.6%	3.4%	4.3%	22.6%	20.7%
Energy Tech High School / District 30	$11,103.48	$20.83	73.0%	62%	16.9%	9.2%	57.8%	3.9%	12.2%	18.0%	2.6%
English Language Learners and International Suppor / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	86.1%	98%	2.3%	21.4%	69.3%	2.9%	4.2%	0.3%	95.5%
Epic High School - North / District 27	$2,403.59	$5.85	73.7%	68%	27.7%	16.5%	41.1%	9.5%	5.1%	15.1%	9.7%
Epic High School - South / District 27	$0.00	$0.00	64.9%	65%	27.7%	32.2%	28.5%	8.6%	2.9%	19.4%	8.9%
Esperanza Preparatory Academy / District 4	$0.00	$0.00	87.5%	92%	1.9%	10.0%	86.1%	0.4%	1.6%	24.6%	32.5%
Essex Street Academy / District 2	$2,535.07	$7.48	67.6%	68%	6.5%	34.5%	42.8%	6.2%	10.0%	26.8%	3.5%
Evergreen Middle School for Urban Exploration / District 32	$1,000.00	$2.70	94.6%	90%	0.8%	21.9%	75.4%	0.0%	1.9%	22.7%	16.5%
Excelsior Preparatory High School / District 29	$5,806.00	$13.26	83.6%	57%	2.5%	82.4%	8.0%	4.6%	2.5%	16.0%	7.8%
Eximius College Preparatory Academy: A College Boa / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	81.4%	86%	0.9%	32.1%	65.3%	1.6%	0.0%	25.8%	8.6%
Expeditionary Learning School for Community Leader / District 21	$0.00	$0.00	76.5%	77%	15.6%	18.0%	36.0%	4.0%	26.5%	20.4%	15.6%
Explorations Academy H.S. / District 12	$0.00	$0.00	87.1%	91%	1.5%	27.9%	69.0%	0.9%	0.6%	26.4%	21.8%
Facing History School, The / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	79.0%	85%	1.1%	25.5%	69.9%	1.3%	2.2%	24.7%	11.0%
Fairmont Neighborhood School / District 12		$0.00	94.5%	94%	0.0%	38.2%	60.5%	0.0%	1.3%	29.8%	14.2%
Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School / District 12	$0.00	$0.00	82.2%	90%	0.8%	28.2%	67.7%	1.9%	1.3%	30.1%	12.7%
Fannie Lou Hamer Middle School / District 12	$0.00	$0.00	83.2%	90%	1.1%	25.0%	71.4%	0.0%	2.5%	22.9%	16.4%
FDNY - Captain Vernon A. Richard High School for F / District 19		$0.00	81.6%	84%	1.4%	68.2%	25.6%	4.0%	0.7%	27.4%	4.0%
Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art a / District 3	$746,725.89	$270.55	28.3%	29%	19.7%	9.9%	17.0%	8.4%	45.0%	3.4%	0.2%
Flushing High School / District 25	$0.00	$0.00	77.9%	77%	15.9%	19.2%	59.1%	2.7%	3.1%	12.5%	20.8%
Flushing International High School / District 25	$0.00	$0.00	91.8%	97%	44.8%	1.9%	48.6%	0.5%	4.2%	2.3%	86.9%
Food and Finance High School / District 2	$288.00	$0.77	82.7%	77%	5.6%	34.7%	53.1%	4.0%	2.7%	20.0%	3.2%
Fordham High School for the Arts / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	89.3%	80%	1.6%	38.6%	55.2%	2.5%	2.2%	21.6%	3.8%
Fordham Leadership Academy / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	82.4%	89%	2.8%	25.6%	69.0%	1.1%	1.4%	24.1%	19.9%
Forest Hills High School / District 28	$17,673.88	$4.64	78.2%	58%	24.2%	7.1%	35.3%	3.9%	29.4%	15.7%	8.6%
Forsyth Satellite Academy / District 1	$304.39	$1.57	84.0%	85%	0.0%	43.3%	50.5%	2.1%	4.1%	32.0%	5.7%
Fort Greene Preparatory Academy / District 13	$0.00	$0.00	91.6%	88%	3.7%	65.6%	26.5%	2.8%	1.4%	30.7%	5.6%
Fort Hamilton High School / District 20	$69,715.89	$15.29	71.2%	72%	27.9%	3.1%	31.6%	1.9%	35.5%	14.7%	15.0%
Fort Hill Collaborative Elementary School / District 31	$0.00	$0.00	93.9%	90%	8.8%	23.2%	55.2%	3.3%	9.4%	39.8%	26.5%
Francis Lewis High School / District 26	$2,200,659.00	$489.91	69.1%	58%	56.5%	6.1%	21.3%	1.1%	14.8%	14.5%	10.5%
Frank Mccourt High School / District 3	$106.49	$0.26	53.0%	49%	4.6%	13.6%	46.2%	5.8%	29.8%	20.8%	2.9%
Frank Sinatra School of the Arts High School / District 30	$97,712.15	$114.55	38.8%	36%	11.4%	13.2%	33.1%	6.4%	35.9%	18.8%	0.8%
Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School / District 20	$7,031.00	$2.19	77.8%	86%	38.4%	10.0%	33.7%	1.2%	16.7%	14.3%	33.1%
Frederick Douglass Academy / District 5	$0.00	$0.00	77.0%	80%	1.3%	67.7%	26.4%	2.2%	2.4%	18.2%	5.6%
Frederick Douglass Academy II Secondary School / District 3	$0.00	$0.00	82.3%	88%	2.2%	61.6%	32.0%	2.2%	1.9%	25.4%	10.2%
Frederick Douglass Academy III Secondary School / District 9	$3,000.00	$7.35	86.3%	92%	1.2%	43.4%	52.2%	1.5%	1.7%	25.7%	20.3%
Frederick Douglass Academy V. Middle School / District 12		$0.00	88.6%	93%	2.7%	34.1%	60.9%	1.8%	0.5%	23.6%	16.4%
Frederick Douglass Academy VI High School / District 27	$100.00	$0.29	75.1%	87%	1.2%	49.1%	46.2%	2.9%	0.6%	19.9%	30.3%
Frederick Douglass Academy VII High School / District 23	$0.00	$0.00	88.9%	86%	2.0%	84.3%	12.4%	1.3%	0.0%	32.7%	3.9%
Frederick Douglass Academy VIII Middle School / District 19	$2,303.75	$6.82	89.9%	69%	6.5%	69.8%	20.7%	0.0%	3.0%	21.3%	2.4%
Gaynor McCown Expeditionary Learning School / District 31	$10,556.25	$24.32	43.5%	38%	2.1%	9.0%	22.1%	7.4%	59.4%	26.7%	0.7%
George Washington Carver High School for the Scien / District 29	$1,109.29	$2.66	71.5%	60%	4.3%	73.4%	15.1%	6.0%	1.2%	17.0%	5.0%
George Westinghouse Career and Technical Education / District 13	$5,034.35	$6.49	76.7%	74%	4.0%	68.6%	23.2%	2.6%	1.7%	17.9%	2.3%
Goldie Maple Academy / District 27		$0.00	67.2%	73%	3.5%	68.7%	22.3%	3.5%	2.0%	9.0%	1.3%
Gotham Collaborative High School / District 8	$0.00	$0.00	85.7%	91%	7.7%	30.1%	58.3%	0.9%	3.0%	26.7%	15.4%
Gotham Professional Arts Academy / District 13		$0.00	78.7%	85%	0.6%	78.1%	20.2%	0.6%	0.6%	36.0%	3.9%
Gramercy Arts High School / District 2	$600.00	$1.28	79.1%	74%	4.3%	33.5%	49.6%	6.2%	6.4%	16.9%	2.1%
Grant Avenue Elementary School / District 9	$6,422.36	$14.12	93.6%	90%	4.8%	29.0%	62.9%	1.8%	1.5%	30.5%	23.5%
Gregorio Luperon High School for Science and Mathe / District 6	$3,732.51	$7.16	99.2%	99%	0.0%	0.0%	100.0%	0.0%	0.0%	1.7%	77.9%
Grover Cleveland High School / District 24	$2,719.56	$1.59	70.3%	74%	10.0%	5.8%	63.6%	2.4%	18.2%	19.2%	17.4%
H.E.R.O. High (Health, Education, and Research Occ / District 7	$0.00	$0.00	80.6%	87%	1.5%	38.9%	57.2%	1.7%	0.8%	20.9%	10.0%
Hamilton Grange Middle School / District 6	$2,100.00	$7.12	90.8%	85%	1.7%	10.5%	82.7%	1.7%	3.4%	22.4%	20.7%
Hamilton Heights School / District 6	$13,670.54	$91.75	67.8%	70%	3.4%	20.1%	49.7%	6.0%	20.8%	18.8%	16.8%
Harbor Heights / District 6	$7,830.65	$60.70	97.7%	91%	0.0%	0.0%	100.0%	0.0%	0.0%	1.6%	91.5%
Harlem Renaissance High School / District 5		$0.00	87.0%	88%	0.9%	52.8%	42.1%	0.9%	3.2%	32.9%	16.2%
Harold O. Levy School / District 6	$0.00	$0.00	96.9%	92%	0.0%	3.4%	95.4%	0.8%	0.4%	24.5%	46.7%
Harry S Truman High School / District 11		$0.00	72.0%	75%	3.2%	49.8%	41.7%	2.5%	2.7%	26.2%	8.4%
Harvest Collegiate High School / District 2	$12,964.37	$28.37	67.2%	62%	6.6%	21.0%	49.9%	4.2%	18.4%	25.2%	2.4%
Harvey Milk High School / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	87.3%	84%	1.6%	20.6%	65.1%	0.0%	12.7%	36.5%	3.2%
Hawtree Creek Middle School / District 27	$7,338.54	$19.52	89.6%	62%	32.7%	34.6%	18.6%	12.2%	1.9%	23.9%	2.9%
Health Opportunities High School / District 7	$4,270.00	$8.59	86.9%	91%	0.8%	37.6%	58.4%	2.4%	0.8%	22.3%	13.7%
Helen M. Marshall School / District 24	$35,175.82	$62.70	93.2%	87%	6.4%	3.7%	88.6%	0.5%	0.7%	21.0%	29.9%
Herbert H. Lehman High School / District 8	$573.00	$0.72	77.5%	77%	14.5%	27.3%	47.1%	2.0%	9.1%	24.6%	12.8%
Heritage School, The / District 4	$0.00	$0.00	89.8%	88%	3.8%	26.2%	65.2%	1.3%	3.5%	22.0%	7.0%
High School for Arts and Business / District 24	$4,837.54	$6.17	68.4%	73%	8.8%	7.5%	76.1%	2.3%	5.2%	16.2%	9.9%
High School for Civil Rights / District 19	$0.00	$0.00	79.1%	87%	2.1%	68.2%	26.8%	1.3%	1.7%	26.8%	11.7%
High School for Community Leadership / District 28	$1,008.57	$2.17	76.7%	68%	22.8%	35.1%	28.0%	9.3%	4.7%	15.3%	14.9%
High School for Construction Trades, Engineering a / District 27	$14,181.00	$13.30	59.7%	52%	30.9%	8.9%	36.5%	11.8%	11.9%	16.3%	1.6%
High School for Contemporary Arts / District 11	$0.00	$0.00	79.0%	87%	1.8%	39.2%	54.2%	1.3%	3.5%	24.8%	17.2%
High School for Dual Language and Asian Studies / District 2	$500.00	$1.24	88.6%	78%	91.0%	2.2%	3.5%	1.0%	2.2%	3.2%	13.4%
High School for Energy and Technology / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	81.3%	88%	3.7%	24.1%	70.0%	1.0%	1.2%	26.8%	14.3%
High School for Environmental Studies / District 2	$936.65	$0.82	82.0%	78%	10.9%	15.7%	64.1%	2.7%	6.5%	18.9%	8.7%
High School for Excellence and Innovation / District 6	$0.00	$0.00	94.0%	95%	0.0%	8.8%	89.6%	0.5%	1.1%	19.2%	51.1%
High School for Health Careers and Sciences / District 6	$0.00	$0.00	98.1%	92%	1.9%	14.9%	81.1%	1.2%	0.9%	18.2%	41.1%
High School for Health Professions and Human Servi / District 2	$477.23	$0.26	69.5%	74%	21.6%	15.7%	52.7%	2.2%	7.7%	13.3%	4.2%
High School for Innovation in Advertising and Medi / District 18		$0.00	68.8%	72%	1.7%	80.8%	11.7%	1.3%	4.6%	20.8%	9.2%
High School for Law and Public Service / District 6	$0.00	$0.00	89.6%	92%	0.6%	13.9%	83.2%	0.2%	2.1%	25.6%	39.1%
High School for Law Enforcement and Public Safety / District 28	$1,493.44	$3.23	69.5%	68%	12.6%	57.6%	24.2%	3.7%	1.9%	20.8%	6.9%
High School for Law, Advocacy and Community Justic / District 3	$0.00	$0.00	89.7%	83%	4.7%	33.1%	57.6%	2.1%	2.6%	16.8%	6.5%
High School for Mathematics, Science and Engineeri / District 5	$128,363.46	$261.43	40.3%	38%	29.7%	8.6%	16.7%	14.7%	30.3%	5.1%	0.2%
High School for Media and Communications / District 6	$23,600.00	$59.60	95.5%	92%	0.8%	9.8%	87.4%	0.8%	1.3%	17.4%	49.7%
High School for Medical Professions / District 18	$0.00	$0.00	97.2%	71%	4.1%	76.5%	13.9%	3.7%	1.7%	15.2%	4.6%
High School for Public Service: Heroes of Tomorrow / District 17	$1,750.00	$3.79	76.2%	72%	3.7%	77.3%	15.6%	2.2%	1.3%	15.8%	1.5%
High School for Service & Learning at Erasmus / District 17	$997.70	$3.36	76.8%	82%	2.7%	76.4%	16.2%	1.7%	3.0%	21.5%	14.8%
High School for Teaching and the Professions / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	86.7%	93%	2.9%	14.5%	77.1%	1.2%	4.3%	22.9%	26.3%
High School for Violin and Dance / District 9	$1,109.78	$4.39	91.7%	93%	0.4%	34.8%	62.8%	0.4%	1.6%	30.8%	17.8%
High School for Youth and Community Development at / District 17	$1,038.01	$2.22	78.8%	77%	3.9%	78.2%	14.6%	1.1%	2.4%	24.8%	8.8%
High School M560 - City As School / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	66.1%	71%	4.2%	34.9%	44.2%	2.0%	14.8%	23.3%	3.7%
High School of American Studies at Lehman College / District 10	$565,302.87	$1,375.43	23.8%	25%	21.7%	3.9%	9.7%	8.0%	56.7%	2.7%	0.0%
High School of Applied Communication / District 24	$0.00	$0.00	74.7%	67%	14.5%	8.1%	61.7%	2.7%	13.0%	17.2%	6.9%
High School of Arts and Technology / District 3	$0.00	$0.00	84.8%	84%	6.3%	31.7%	55.5%	2.8%	3.7%	25.2%	8.7%
High School of Computers and Technology / District 11	$0.00	$0.00	76.2%	83%	7.9%	35.1%	53.1%	2.4%	1.5%	25.1%	8.1%
High School of Economics and Finance / District 2	$490.52	$0.66	75.7%	76%	21.7%	24.4%	44.0%	1.9%	8.0%	18.9%	5.9%
High School of Hospitality Management / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	90.0%	86%	5.0%	27.6%	62.1%	3.4%	1.8%	25.8%	9.2%
High School of Language and Innovation / District 11		$0.00	98.9%	98%	19.5%	6.1%	53.8%	1.6%	19.0%	4.2%	80.2%
High School of Sports Management / District 21		$0.00	75.5%	81%	6.2%	48.1%	28.6%	5.0%	12.0%	22.4%	12.4%
High School of Telecommunication Arts and Technolo / District 20	$2,461.92	$1.99	76.8%	75%	20.8%	6.0%	49.8%	3.3%	20.1%	18.4%	8.5%
High School of World Cultures / District 12	$0.00	$0.00	97.2%	98%	9.4%	9.2%	75.6%	1.3%	4.6%	3.9%	79.7%
Highland Park Community School / District 19		$0.00	90.4%	82%	2.6%	15.1%	77.0%	3.5%	1.7%	18.6%	14.0%
Hillcrest High School / District 28	$20,267.53	$6.14	82.4%	72%	32.3%	26.2%	33.5%	4.7%	3.3%	11.1%	18.0%
Hillside Arts & Letters Academy / District 28	$0.00	$0.00	72.3%	70%	20.1%	41.2%	29.5%	6.7%	2.5%	19.0%	14.1%
Hostos-Lincoln Academy of Science / District 7	$1,877.25	$3.43	79.5%	85%	2.2%	23.4%	72.4%	0.7%	1.3%	19.9%	3.3%
Hudson High School of Learning Technologies / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	80.3%	82%	6.3%	25.2%	63.0%	2.5%	2.9%	25.6%	8.8%
Humanities & Arts Magnet High School / District 29	$336.00	$0.77	82.9%	66%	6.2%	74.0%	15.0%	3.0%	1.8%	16.6%	11.4%
Humanities Preparatory Academy / District 2	$0.08	$0.00	79.6%	73%	6.1%	21.6%	62.0%	2.9%	7.3%	20.4%	3.3%
Hunters Point Community Middle School / District 30	$9,931.00	$23.26	53.6%	55%	13.8%	9.8%	48.2%	4.7%	23.4%	24.6%	3.3%
I. S. 381 / District 22	$5,497.16	$21.56	76.5%	72%	11.8%	55.7%	18.4%	2.7%	11.4%	18.8%	12.9%
I.S. 007 Elias Bernstein / District 31	$34,986.60	$29.98	36.7%	27%	6.8%	0.7%	11.1%	1.5%	79.9%	18.5%	1.7%
I.S. 010 Horace Greeley / District 30	$7,898.82	$9.94	75.3%	77%	20.5%	6.2%	56.6%	0.8%	16.0%	18.2%	16.9%
I.S. 024 Myra S. Barnes / District 31	$54,465.65	$41.36	44.6%	34%	6.2%	1.7%	15.9%	1.7%	74.5%	25.7%	2.3%
I.S. 025 Adrien Block / District 25	$24,384.56	$23.16	54.8%	48%	55.6%	1.9%	23.1%	1.6%	17.9%	14.9%	12.0%
I.S. 027 Anning S. Prall / District 31	$54,455.27	$52.56	73.5%	66%	10.7%	21.7%	40.0%	1.8%	25.8%	25.5%	4.9%
I.S. 034 Tottenville / District 31	$121,042.31	$114.08	37.9%	26%	5.2%	0.8%	13.2%	1.0%	79.7%	29.4%	2.0%
I.S. 051 Edwin Markham / District 31	$55,459.70	$41.54	78.0%	72%	4.9%	22.5%	48.2%	1.6%	22.6%	30.3%	7.6%
I.S. 059 Springfield Gardens / District 29	$3,154.06	$5.27	65.3%	59%	2.0%	87.0%	5.8%	4.2%	1.0%	19.0%	3.3%
I.S. 061 Leonardo Da Vinci / District 24	$24,131.17	$10.72	92.8%	85%	6.0%	2.5%	89.2%	0.4%	2.0%	20.8%	32.0%
I.S. 061 William A Morris / District 31	$23,391.34	$24.19	78.4%	80%	3.4%	33.5%	47.3%	1.7%	14.2%	30.1%	11.2%
I.S. 068 Isaac Bildersee / District 18		$0.00	80.6%	75%	4.2%	77.5%	9.7%	1.4%	7.3%	28.4%	23.5%
I.S. 072 Rocco Laurie / District 31	$42,656.09	$29.54	62.5%	48%	22.9%	4.8%	26.2%	1.7%	44.5%	21.7%	4.6%
I.S. 075 Frank D. Paulo / District 31	$105,822.26	$72.73	41.0%	28%	9.9%	1.7%	12.4%	2.3%	73.7%	22.6%	1.8%
I.S. 077 / District 24	$6,382.31	$6.88	90.0%	80%	9.5%	1.9%	79.1%	0.3%	9.2%	28.7%	20.7%
I.S. 093 Ridgewood / District 24	$556.00	$0.49	89.7%	74%	7.6%	2.5%	72.1%	0.7%	17.2%	22.2%	13.6%
I.S. 096 Seth Low / District 21	$75.00	$0.09	74.3%	78%	33.3%	8.3%	28.0%	1.2%	29.1%	21.4%	30.0%
I.S. 117 Joseph H. Wade / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	94.9%	95%	1.0%	18.2%	79.1%	0.4%	1.2%	24.2%	36.1%
I.S. 119 The Glendale / District 24	$40,734.28	$31.95	73.4%	47%	27.1%	2.0%	29.6%	2.1%	39.3%	9.1%	2.5%
I.S. 125 Thom J. McCann Woodside / District 24	$54,203.72	$35.92	73.8%	77%	39.0%	1.9%	53.2%	0.7%	5.2%	16.6%	16.6%
I.S. 136 Charles O. Dewey / District 15	$225.50	$0.45	92.7%	88%	9.1%	2.6%	82.6%	0.8%	4.9%	23.5%	36.8%
I.S. 141 The Steinway / District 30	$18,926.72	$16.04	57.7%	59%	19.5%	3.6%	36.4%	3.5%	37.1%	13.7%	9.2%
I.S. 145 Joseph Pulitzer / District 30	$15,888.81	$9.30	89.8%	79%	8.3%	1.9%	87.8%	0.3%	1.7%	14.2%	19.1%
I.S. 171 Abraham Lincoln / District 19	$523.50	$1.25	94.0%	86%	7.7%	8.9%	80.9%	1.7%	1.0%	18.9%	29.4%
I.S. 181 Pablo Casals / District 11	$24,851.62	$27.92	79.1%	63%	5.1%	60.6%	27.2%	3.5%	3.7%	23.5%	3.6%
I.S. 192 The Linden / District 29	$265.00	$0.54	68.1%	58%	4.5%	77.4%	10.4%	7.3%	0.4%	22.8%	8.1%
I.S. 204 Oliver W. Holmes / District 30	$0.00	$0.00	88.7%	87%	16.3%	18.7%	58.5%	0.4%	6.1%	26.3%	17.6%
I.S. 206 Ann Mersereau / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	93.0%	96%	2.6%	12.7%	83.0%	0.9%	0.9%	29.3%	33.2%
I.S. 211 John Wilson / District 18		$0.00	80.7%	70%	1.8%	82.3%	10.1%	2.1%	3.7%	27.1%	9.9%
I.S. 219 New Venture School / District 9	$4,475.50	$13.01	93.9%	95%	0.6%	39.0%	59.0%	0.6%	0.9%	34.9%	24.4%
I.S. 227 Louis Armstrong / District 30		$0.00	69.3%	60%	13.8%	7.9%	50.3%	1.4%	26.5%	13.9%	4.1%
I.S. 228 David A. Boody / District 21	$21,523.20	$15.23	75.5%	68%	29.3%	5.0%	25.4%	1.3%	38.9%	15.8%	12.8%
I.S. 229 Roland Patterson / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	93.8%	96%	0.4%	37.4%	60.1%	2.1%	0.0%	33.3%	15.6%
I.S. 230 / District 30	$1,062.00	$0.84	74.6%	72%	35.3%	0.2%	58.3%	1.7%	4.5%	13.1%	14.0%
I.S. 232 / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	96.9%	94%	0.2%	22.1%	76.9%	0.0%	0.8%	22.9%	35.4%
I.S. 237 / District 25	$21,147.74	$15.36	79.4%	70%	77.9%	5.0%	15.0%	0.8%	1.3%	12.5%	20.8%
I.S. 238 - Susan B. Anthony Academy / District 29		$0.00	83.1%	72%	29.5%	35.6%	28.1%	4.9%	1.9%	14.3%	16.3%
I.S. 250 The Robert F. Kennedy Community Middle Sc / District 25	$2,486.37	$6.77	86.4%	74%	31.1%	24.5%	32.2%	4.9%	7.4%	19.9%	15.0%
I.S. 254 / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	88.4%	93%	2.4%	15.8%	80.7%	0.4%	0.6%	28.2%	37.3%
I.S. 281 Joseph B Cavallaro / District 21	$37,421.49	$27.80	83.0%	75%	41.4%	6.0%	23.6%	0.6%	28.5%	17.3%	17.0%
I.S. 285 Meyer Levin / District 18		$0.00	76.5%	71%	0.9%	93.0%	3.7%	1.7%	0.7%	21.9%	3.3%
I.S. 289 / District 2	$174,937.51	$615.98	52.8%	48%	48.6%	4.2%	14.8%	2.8%	29.6%	22.9%	4.9%
I.S. 303 Herbert S. Eisenberg / District 21	$4,388.90	$7.74	75.0%	80%	21.9%	10.1%	37.9%	1.4%	28.7%	16.0%	16.6%
I.S. 313 School of Leadership Development / District 9		$0.00	90.4%	95%	0.3%	26.2%	71.5%	1.3%	0.7%	23.8%	36.8%
I.S. 318 Eugenio Maria De Hostos / District 14	$0.00	$0.00	62.2%	70%	7.8%	16.8%	56.8%	0.8%	17.8%	18.7%	5.5%
I.S. 339 / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	91.8%	95%	1.7%	29.1%	68.1%	0.4%	0.6%	27.0%	28.9%
I.S. 340 / District 17		$0.00	82.4%	74%	0.5%	74.0%	19.1%	4.9%	1.5%	21.6%	2.5%
I.S. 347 School of Humanities / District 32	$972.25	$3.12	94.2%	91%	0.3%	4.5%	93.9%	0.0%	1.3%	24.0%	18.6%
I.S. 349 Math, Science & Tech. / District 32	$0.00	$0.00	97.0%	92%	0.6%	13.1%	85.4%	0.0%	0.9%	21.0%	19.8%
I.S. 364 Gateway / District 19	$58.00	$0.18	81.5%	79%	0.9%	69.3%	25.8%	1.2%	2.7%	28.0%	1.8%
I.S. 392 / District 23	$205.00	$0.67	76.5%	65%	2.6%	77.9%	15.3%	3.9%	0.3%	16.0%	1.3%
I.S. 49 Berta A. Dreyfus / District 31	$0.00	$0.00	90.1%	87%	8.6%	34.8%	48.2%	1.3%	7.1%	33.5%	13.5%
I.S. 5 - The Walter Crowley Intermediate School / District 24	$18,808.12	$10.52	75.2%	77%	40.2%	1.8%	55.3%	1.0%	1.7%	19.2%	17.9%
I.S. 528 Bea Fuller Rodgers School / District 6	$0.00	$0.00	96.6%	89%	0.9%	0.9%	97.4%	0.0%	0.9%	18.5%	27.5%
I.S. 584 / District 7	$0.00	$0.00	96.8%	94%	0.4%	24.3%	74.9%	0.4%	0.0%	30.0%	24.7%
I.S. 73 - The Frank Sansivieri Intermediate School / District 24	$43,645.19	$22.14	66.1%	68%	29.1%	0.8%	58.0%	0.6%	11.6%	19.4%	13.5%
I.S. 98 Bay Academy / District 21	$70,306.35	$45.04	51.4%	49%	28.3%	2.6%	8.7%	2.9%	57.5%	9.2%	1.7%
I.S. R002 George L. Egbert / District 31	$42,822.00	$40.25	69.2%	62%	14.2%	9.9%	30.0%	1.8%	44.2%	23.6%	9.5%
I.S. X303 Leadership & Community Service / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	98.4%	93%	1.3%	27.0%	70.1%	0.9%	0.6%	35.5%	13.8%
I.S. X318 Math, Science & Technology Through Arts / District 12	$0.00	$0.00	94.8%	93%	1.2%	32.9%	64.3%	0.8%	0.8%	30.6%	13.5%
In-Tech Academy (M.S. / High School 368) / District 10	$6,785.73	$6.64	85.9%	80%	4.2%	8.4%	82.3%	1.5%	3.6%	21.7%	16.8%
Independence High School / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	86.8%	87%	1.3%	29.5%	62.7%	0.9%	5.6%	25.7%	7.5%
Information Technology High School / District 30	$0.00	$0.00	74.1%	76%	20.8%	11.1%	59.6%	1.3%	7.2%	19.4%	7.3%
Innovation Diploma Plus / District 3	$0.00	$0.00	81.0%	82%	1.1%	38.0%	58.7%	0.0%	2.2%	14.1%	5.4%
Institute for Collaborative Education / District 2	$255,009.00	$524.71	27.4%	35%	7.0%	22.2%	19.1%	4.1%	47.5%	16.5%	0.4%
Institute for Health Professions at Cambria Height / District 29	$757.58	$1.83	82.6%	67%	10.9%	70.5%	13.1%	3.6%	1.9%	10.4%	9.7%
International Community High School / District 7	$0.00	$0.00	97.6%	99%	4.2%	16.0%	75.3%	2.1%	2.4%	6.6%	81.4%
International High School at Lafayette / District 21	$0.00	$0.00	85.9%	98%	33.1%	3.7%	37.8%	0.6%	24.8%	2.3%	88.8%
International High School at LaGuardia Community C / District 24	$0.00	$0.00	66.9%	86%	23.1%	2.6%	64.5%	0.4%	9.5%	1.8%	65.1%
International High School at Prospect Heights / District 17	$0.00	$0.00	78.0%	96%	16.3%	23.6%	49.7%	1.9%	8.4%	4.1%	87.8%
International High School at Union Square / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	86.0%	98%	15.7%	19.7%	53.9%	0.6%	10.1%	2.8%	86.2%
International High School for Health Sciences / District 24	$0.00	$0.00	90.8%	96%	23.1%	4.4%	64.8%	1.1%	6.6%	3.3%	74.7%
International School for Liberal Arts / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	98.1%	95%	0.2%	0.2%	99.6%	0.0%	0.0%	8.7%	71.2%
Inwood Early College for Health and Information Te / District 6	$0.00	$0.00	91.1%	82%	0.5%	11.8%	84.3%	1.9%	1.4%	24.9%	11.6%
Irwin Altman Middle School 172 / District 26	$23,070.12	$23.56	60.0%	45%	62.4%	8.3%	16.1%	2.7%	10.5%	17.5%	6.0%
Isaac Newton Middle School for Math & Science / District 4	$0.00	$0.00	88.3%	89%	5.4%	21.7%	70.4%	0.8%	1.7%	29.6%	12.9%
It Takes a Village Academy / District 18	$320.00	$0.49	68.9%	76%	1.8%	88.5%	6.7%	2.0%	1.1%	14.9%	17.6%
J. M. Rapport School Career Development / District 75	$0.00	$0.00	91.6%	95%	0.8%	39.0%	57.1%	0.2%	2.9%	98.7%	31.6%
J.H.S. 008 Richard S. Grossley / District 28	$1,631.48	$4.25	85.4%	78%	18.5%	40.6%	26.8%	12.2%	1.8%	17.7%	13.5%
J.H.S. 014 Shell Bank / District 22	$3,821.94	$7.25	85.4%	81%	15.7%	35.9%	15.6%	1.5%	31.3%	23.0%	26.2%
J.H.S. 022 Jordan L. Mott / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	97.4%	95%	0.7%	21.0%	76.0%	0.5%	1.9%	23.8%	28.1%
J.H.S. 050 John D. Wells / District 14		$0.00	88.9%	85%	1.2%	20.7%	75.3%	0.9%	1.9%	29.9%	17.6%
J.H.S. 054 Booker T. Washington / District 3	$1,420,260.77	$1,638.13	19.4%	23%	11.5%	8.0%	15.6%	8.8%	56.2%	13.7%	1.2%
J.H.S. 057 Whitelaw Reid / District 16		$0.00	94.4%	92%	1.9%	62.5%	31.3%	1.9%	2.5%	34.4%	8.1%
J.H.S. 062 Ditmas / District 20	$4,174.35	$3.44	85.5%	82%	32.8%	17.6%	34.5%	1.1%	13.9%	19.0%	21.8%
J.H.S. 067 Louis Pasteur / District 26	$51,597.51	$54.26	42.6%	30%	61.9%	3.6%	13.0%	1.9%	19.6%	9.4%	4.0%
J.H.S. 074 Nathaniel Hawthorne / District 26	$23,195.49	$20.03	46.2%	37%	66.4%	3.5%	11.3%	2.1%	16.8%	15.2%	6.4%
J.H.S. 078 Roy H. Mann / District 22	$66,414.76	$116.72	74.3%	63%	6.7%	65.9%	10.7%	3.0%	13.7%	24.1%	6.3%
J.H.S. 080 The Mosholu Parkway / District 10		$0.00	88.3%	90%	11.2%	13.3%	70.6%	1.2%	3.7%	25.2%	31.6%
J.H.S. 088 Peter Rouget / District 15	$9,181.92	$6.35	78.9%	77%	19.6%	12.6%	56.7%	1.2%	9.9%	23.3%	13.9%
J.H.S. 098 Herman Ridder / District 12	$0.00	$0.00	92.5%	92%	3.4%	25.2%	68.4%	1.9%	1.1%	27.1%	35.7%
J.H.S. 104 Simon Baruch / District 2	$266,097.50	$238.44	42.8%	40%	34.9%	7.5%	17.6%	5.1%	34.9%	15.6%	4.8%
J.H.S. 118 William W. Niles / District 10	$2,088.82	$1.89	89.8%	87%	15.7%	20.0%	60.7%	1.3%	2.3%	22.3%	12.4%
J.H.S. 123 James M. Kieran / District 8	$823.00	$1.97	85.9%	91%	2.9%	20.6%	74.2%	1.4%	1.0%	24.9%	25.1%
J.H.S. 127 The Castle Hill / District 11		$0.00	73.8%	77%	31.8%	22.1%	40.7%	2.8%	2.6%	19.2%	13.2%
J.H.S. 131 Albert Einstein / District 8		$0.00	82.9%	90%	3.3%	33.2%	61.8%	1.0%	0.6%	30.3%	10.2%
J.H.S. 143 Eleanor Roosevelt / District 6	$715.00	$2.89	90.3%	92%	1.2%	3.2%	90.3%	1.2%	4.0%	30.8%	58.7%
J.H.S. 144 Michelangelo / District 11		$0.00	76.1%	79%	6.4%	58.8%	30.5%	0.4%	3.9%	24.9%	10.7%
J.H.S. 151 Lou Gehrig / District 7	$0.00	$0.00	96.5%	94%	0.4%	24.8%	71.7%	0.4%	2.6%	27.4%	32.2%
J.H.S. 157 Stephen A. Halsey / District 28	$31,900.00	$19.32	53.3%	46%	24.5%	8.3%	23.3%	3.5%	40.4%	14.6%	10.4%
J.H.S. 162 The Willoughby / District 32	$1,678.05	$5.21	86.6%	91%	4.3%	3.1%	90.4%	0.6%	1.6%	21.4%	16.5%
J.H.S. 167 Robert F. Wagner / District 2	$374,570.21	$271.62	30.4%	28%	18.2%	6.8%	16.4%	5.4%	53.2%	17.3%	3.0%
J.H.S. 185 Edward Bleeker / District 25	$23,666.64	$15.71	73.8%	62%	57.9%	1.8%	29.7%	0.7%	9.9%	14.3%	13.5%
J.H.S. 189 Daniel Carter Beard / District 25	$10,441.84	$13.47	76.4%	79%	64.4%	3.0%	29.5%	0.8%	2.3%	18.1%	27.1%
J.H.S. 190 Russell Sage / District 28	$133,440.36	$123.33	42.0%	40%	32.4%	7.0%	27.1%	3.8%	29.7%	14.0%	10.2%
J.H.S. 194 William Carr / District 25	$134,419.59	$105.02	54.4%	46%	42.7%	1.4%	28.0%	1.6%	26.3%	14.4%	8.9%
J.H.S. 201 The Dyker Heights / District 20	$353,287.83	$213.98	72.7%	64%	54.4%	0.5%	15.9%	0.4%	28.8%	13.3%	9.8%
J.H.S. 202 Robert H. Goddard / District 27	$16,389.90	$14.75	76.2%	68%	33.7%	8.3%	46.8%	5.2%	6.0%	16.5%	7.4%
J.H.S. 210 Elizabeth Blackwell / District 27	$6,987.67	$3.71	81.1%	74%	29.4%	4.6%	59.3%	2.8%	3.9%	16.7%	16.0%
J.H.S. 216 George J. Ryan / District 26	$27,810.05	$18.30	68.9%	54%	65.9%	4.7%	13.9%	2.0%	13.4%	10.9%	6.8%
J.H.S. 217 Robert A. Van Wyck / District 28	$0.00	$0.00	70.3%	73%	34.3%	15.5%	41.3%	4.7%	4.1%	17.4%	16.6%
J.H.S. 218 James P. Sinnott / District 19	$170.00	$0.40	97.0%	92%	17.8%	42.3%	36.4%	1.9%	1.6%	27.3%	24.3%
J.H.S. 220 John J. Pershing / District 20	$2,243.00	$1.47	84.9%	90%	50.2%	1.2%	42.7%	0.4%	5.5%	15.8%	32.3%
J.H.S. 223 The Montauk / District 20	$0.00	$0.00	96.8%	90%	58.1%	1.8%	27.6%	0.3%	12.1%	16.8%	28.2%
J.H.S. 226 Virgil I. Grissom / District 27	$708.50	$0.78	86.5%	68%	32.7%	34.2%	17.7%	13.7%	1.6%	20.4%	7.4%
J.H.S. 227 Edward B. Shallow / District 20	$28,840.61	$17.87	90.3%	82%	57.6%	0.6%	29.8%	0.6%	11.4%	15.2%	27.9%
J.H.S. 234 Arthur W. Cunningham / District 22	$29,511.80	$16.69	70.8%	63%	23.8%	16.5%	14.7%	2.0%	43.0%	15.4%	9.9%
J.H.S. 259 William Mckinley / District 20	$110,553.89	$58.49	79.0%	72%	45.3%	0.7%	19.5%	1.1%	33.4%	12.1%	11.9%
J.H.S. 278 Marine Park / District 22	$55,881.32	$46.45	69.5%	51%	10.7%	39.9%	17.5%	2.2%	29.6%	17.6%	4.1%
J.H.S. 291 Roland Hayes / District 32	$14,011.00	$48.31	94.8%	94%	1.0%	13.8%	83.4%	0.3%	1.4%	27.9%	29.3%
J.H.S. 292 Margaret S. Douglas / District 19	$500.00	$0.89	94.3%	92%	14.6%	48.5%	32.1%	1.8%	3.0%	25.6%	16.0%
J.H.S. 383 Philippa Schuyler / District 32	$38,274.39	$42.11	81.7%	74%	4.6%	34.5%	57.3%	1.4%	2.1%	17.1%	5.8%
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis High School / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	76.7%	79%	6.3%	23.7%	65.2%	1.4%	3.4%	20.1%	9.0%
Jamaica Children's School / District 28	$3,182.30	$15.91	88.5%	79%	2.5%	65.0%	27.0%	2.0%	3.5%	28.5%	6.5%
Jamaica Gateway to the Sciences / District 28	$0.00	$0.00	74.5%	65%	37.7%	34.6%	15.8%	9.1%	2.8%	14.4%	9.9%
James Baldwin School, The: A School for Expedition / District 2		$0.00	80.8%	79%	2.4%	40.0%	52.2%	0.8%	4.5%	32.2%	8.6%
James Madison High School / District 22	$22,514.39	$5.93	74.5%	64%	20.2%	15.2%	16.9%	1.1%	46.6%	15.6%	13.7%
James Weldon Johnson / District 4	$20,151.24	$25.03	87.6%	94%	4.3%	24.3%	68.2%	1.6%	1.5%	27.6%	11.3%
Jean Nuzzi Intermediate School / District 29		$0.00	65.2%	55%	32.1%	40.3%	18.5%	5.8%	3.4%	15.9%	7.0%
Jill Chaifetz Transfer High School / District 7		$0.00	81.4%	88%	1.4%	29.1%	66.8%	1.8%	0.9%	29.5%	8.2%
John Adams High School / District 27		$0.00	73.8%	74%	34.6%	24.6%	32.0%	6.0%	2.8%	14.0%	13.9%
John Bowne High School / District 25	$0.00	$0.00	71.5%	74%	29.6%	19.0%	43.4%	2.5%	5.5%	14.8%	17.7%
John Dewey High School / District 21	$0.00	$0.00	81.6%	79%	30.8%	31.3%	23.0%	2.1%	12.8%	12.9%	17.7%
John Ericsson Middle School 126 / District 14	$0.00	$0.00	86.4%	85%	0.5%	21.4%	68.8%	0.0%	9.2%	26.3%	8.9%
John F. Kennedy Jr. School / District 75	$1,760.00	$3.64	85.7%	88%	17.4%	17.4%	45.9%	2.1%	17.4%	100.0%	46.1%
John Jay School for Law / District 15	$0.00	$0.00	78.0%	76%	2.3%	63.3%	28.9%	2.8%	2.8%	18.6%	3.2%
Jonas Bronck Academy / District 10	$4,717.40	$17.47	85.9%	83%	6.7%	14.4%	75.9%	1.1%	1.9%	18.5%	7.0%
Juan Morel Campos Secondary School / District 14		$0.00	85.2%	91%	1.0%	19.4%	72.8%	0.8%	6.0%	34.0%	27.8%
Kappa / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	86.9%	92%	3.0%	48.0%	45.6%	0.6%	2.7%	26.1%	10.6%
Kappa III / District 12	$213.05	$0.55	91.0%	90%	2.1%	25.8%	70.5%	1.3%	0.3%	26.9%	9.8%
Kappa V (Knowledge and Power Preparatory Academy) / District 23	$0.00	$0.00	90.3%	85%	0.0%	86.2%	10.7%	2.6%	0.5%	31.6%	3.1%
Khalil Gibran International Academy / District 15	$140.00	$0.62	81.9%	86%	17.7%	35.8%	8.0%	6.2%	32.3%	19.0%	37.2%
Kingsborough Early College School / District 21	$14,845.13	$22.19	69.5%	65%	7.0%	24.8%	32.0%	2.4%	33.8%	19.3%	1.3%
Kingsbridge International High School / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	96.1%	99%	3.3%	3.3%	90.2%	0.6%	2.6%	4.3%	87.2%
Knowledge and Power Preparatory Academy Internatio / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	87.1%	84%	2.2%	26.9%	66.4%	1.7%	2.8%	24.6%	11.0%
Knowledge and Power Preparatory Academy VI / District 27		$0.00	84.5%	72%	1.5%	42.4%	51.5%	1.5%	3.0%	17.8%	6.1%
Kurt Hahn Expeditionary Learning School / District 18		$0.00	80.6%	74%	0.7%	89.1%	6.5%	2.0%	1.7%	28.2%	7.1%
Lafayette Academy / District 3	$8,150.94	$53.27	72.5%	73%	0.7%	48.4%	35.3%	3.3%	12.4%	20.3%	12.4%
Landmark High School / District 2		$0.00	80.0%	81%	3.0%	33.3%	59.1%	2.1%	2.4%	22.1%	5.5%
Leaders of Tomorrow / District 11		$0.00	90.9%	87%	1.2%	59.0%	37.3%	1.2%	1.4%	31.2%	13.8%
Leadership and Public Service High School / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	82.9%	83%	8.5%	26.8%	59.0%	2.1%	3.6%	20.1%	4.9%
Learners and Leaders / District 24	$45,863.82	$77.47	84.5%	77%	7.8%	2.0%	76.4%	1.0%	12.8%	24.5%	22.5%
Leon M. Goldstein High School for the Sciences / District 22	$59,933.67	$56.70	45.4%	43%	28.7%	6.8%	8.9%	1.2%	54.4%	16.7%	0.5%
Liberation Diploma Plus / District 21	$0.00	$0.00	80.4%	86%	2.9%	46.5%	39.6%	0.0%	11.0%	39.2%	8.6%
Liberty Avenue Middle School / District 19	$0.00	$0.00	95.7%	88%	4.3%	21.7%	69.4%	2.7%	1.9%	24.4%	15.1%
Liberty High School Academy for Newcomers / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	75.1%	99%	9.0%	24.2%	56.9%	0.9%	9.0%	3.3%	87.7%
Life Academy High School for Film and Music / District 21	$170.00	$0.59	76.6%	77%	11.5%	31.1%	41.6%	1.7%	14.0%	23.8%	9.8%
Life Sciences Secondary School / District 2	$460.50	$1.08	78.8%	85%	7.1%	25.6%	61.9%	1.6%	3.8%	21.6%	10.4%
Lighthouse Elementary School / District 27	$0.00	$0.00	95.2%	95%	3.3%	61.7%	26.8%	4.3%	3.8%	30.6%	8.6%
Linden Tree Elementary School / District 11	$3,408.00	$8.81	76.5%	82%	18.1%	14.0%	64.3%	1.6%	2.1%	25.8%	28.4%
Long Island City High School / District 30	$0.00	$0.00	82.3%	79%	14.7%	10.2%	67.5%	1.9%	5.8%	16.5%	11.4%
Longwood Preparatory Academy / District 8		$0.00	87.4%	91%	0.9%	33.3%	62.6%	2.0%	1.2%	28.1%	17.5%
Lower East Side Preparatory High School / District 1	$0.00	$0.00	69.4%	94%	50.5%	9.4%	37.9%	0.4%	1.8%	7.7%	71.8%
Lower Manhattan Arts Academy / District 2		$0.00	75.2%	81%	8.6%	27.6%	55.9%	5.2%	2.8%	36.6%	6.9%
Lower Manhattan Community Middle School / District 2	$248,963.74	$646.66	54.5%	54%	43.1%	10.1%	15.8%	3.9%	27.0%	28.3%	6.0%
Lucero Elementary School / District 9	$2,763.75	$6.63	97.1%	94%	0.2%	7.7%	91.1%	0.5%	0.5%	22.3%	44.8%
Luisa Pineiro Fuentes School of Science and Discov / District 10	$2,571.78	$7.52	82.5%	89%	5.6%	5.3%	87.4%	0.0%	1.8%	20.2%	42.1%
Lyons Community School / District 14		$0.00	90.0%	90%	0.8%	32.9%	62.6%	0.6%	3.0%	25.3%	11.0%
M.S. 035 Stephen Decatur / District 16	$5,161.34	$22.94	88.4%	86%	0.9%	83.6%	13.3%	0.9%	1.3%	29.8%	3.1%
M.S. 053 Brian Piccolo / District 27	$0.00	$0.00	86.5%	90%	1.3%	51.7%	42.2%	3.0%	1.7%	34.8%	15.7%
M.S. 061 Dr. Gladstone H. Atwell / District 17		$0.00	72.3%	76%	2.4%	85.4%	10.5%	1.2%	0.6%	18.7%	4.5%
M.S. 113 Ronald Edmonds Learning Center / District 13	$2,935.18	$8.56	88.0%	86%	6.1%	63.8%	25.9%	2.3%	1.7%	31.2%	5.0%
M.S. 129 Academy for Independent Learning and Lead / District 12		$0.00	89.8%	93%	3.1%	23.3%	70.6%	1.1%	1.8%	25.7%	13.5%
M.S. 131 / District 2	$26,275.64	$65.53	89.0%	83%	79.8%	6.5%	11.2%	0.7%	1.7%	24.7%	25.2%
M.S. 137 America's School of Heroes / District 27	$34,549.77	$18.03	82.4%	69%	53.1%	5.1%	35.5%	3.0%	3.3%	16.1%	10.1%
M.S. 158 Marie Curie / District 26	$43,635.61	$40.48	55.0%	40%	63.6%	4.2%	15.1%	2.4%	14.7%	12.8%	6.7%
M.S. 180 Dr. Daniel Hale Williams / District 11		$0.00	68.1%	56%	3.1%	67.0%	24.2%	2.7%	3.0%	19.9%	3.2%
M.S. 224 Manhattan East School for Arts & Academic / District 4		$0.00	68.6%	71%	10.8%	29.7%	44.9%	3.8%	10.8%	28.1%	5.4%
M.S. 243 Center School / District 3	$289,862.79	$1,202.75	13.7%	21%	5.0%	10.4%	18.3%	9.5%	56.8%	17.4%	0.0%
M.S. 246 Walt Whitman / District 17		$0.00	85.1%	87%	2.0%	71.1%	22.0%	1.5%	3.4%	21.0%	26.7%
M.S. 250 West Side Collaborative Middle School / District 3	$1,329.45	$8.21	69.8%	74%	0.6%	37.0%	49.4%	4.9%	8.0%	29.6%	6.8%
M.S. 255 Salk School of Science / District 2	$218,177.00	$553.75	14.2%	14%	18.3%	2.0%	9.6%	8.1%	61.9%	15.7%	0.3%
M.S. 267 Math, Science & Technology / District 16	$800.00	$3.39	86.9%	86%	0.4%	75.4%	19.1%	3.4%	1.7%	36.0%	4.2%
M.S. 297 / District 2	$375,060.02	$668.56	27.3%	30%	8.6%	9.4%	23.0%	4.6%	54.4%	21.6%	3.4%
M.S. 301 Paul L. Dunbar / District 8		$0.00	93.4%	96%	0.0%	41.7%	54.5%	1.7%	2.1%	21.9%	26.4%
M.S. 302 Luisa Dessus Cruz / District 8	$0.00	$0.00	96.9%	94%	0.4%	20.7%	76.3%	1.0%	1.5%	28.6%	21.2%
M.S. 319 - Maria Teresa / District 6	$0.00	$0.00	95.6%	89%	0.0%	3.1%	96.1%	0.0%	0.8%	26.5%	39.2%
M.S. 324 - Patria Mirabal / District 6	$71.00	$0.21	90.9%	89%	0.9%	11.2%	84.1%	0.3%	3.5%	30.6%	34.1%
M.S. 358 / District 28		$0.00	85.6%	75%	23.8%	24.3%	46.1%	3.6%	2.2%	19.9%	16.3%
M.S. 390 / District 10		$0.00	95.2%	93%	1.1%	13.0%	85.3%	0.2%	0.4%	25.8%	27.8%
M.S. 442 Carroll Gardens School for Innovation / District 15	$13,650.85	$45.20	32.8%	37%	8.9%	14.2%	29.5%	3.6%	43.7%	34.1%	3.6%
M.S. 51 William Alexander / District 15	$97,941.16	$86.29	32.2%	35%	17.8%	6.6%	21.1%	5.0%	49.5%	20.1%	2.3%
M.S. 582 / District 14	$0.00	$0.00	83.0%	87%	1.0%	24.1%	71.8%	1.4%	1.7%	32.3%	12.6%
M.S. 594 / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	94.4%	93%	0.5%	27.9%	70.1%	1.0%	0.5%	30.5%	30.5%
M.S. 839 / District 15	$68,188.58	$197.65	41.2%	45%	11.0%	13.6%	24.9%	6.1%	44.3%	28.1%	2.3%
M.S. 890 / District 22		$0.00	77.0%	68%	11.7%	38.5%	35.7%	2.3%	11.7%	14.1%	6.1%
M.S. 907 / District 19	$250.00	$6.10	87.8%	81%	2.4%	65.9%	29.3%	2.4%	0.0%	26.8%	2.4%
M.S. K266 - Park Place Community Middle School / District 13		$0.00	81.3%	77%	2.5%	71.2%	22.5%	0.6%	3.1%	31.9%	6.3%
M.S. K394 / District 17	$2,223.00	$5.67	85.2%	86%	9.2%	70.7%	18.4%	1.0%	0.8%	13.0%	7.9%
M.S. M245 The Computer School / District 3	$622,414.00	$1,544.45	28.5%	31%	7.7%	12.7%	28.8%	6.2%	44.7%	20.8%	1.7%
M.S. M247 Dual Language Middle School / District 3		$0.00	89.5%	85%	0.9%	1.4%	95.5%	0.0%	2.3%	27.3%	25.0%
M.S. X101 Edward R. Byrne / District 8		$0.00	73.0%	57%	15.6%	10.1%	56.9%	2.0%	15.4%	23.5%	1.3%
Madiba Prep Middle School / District 16	$0.00	$0.00	91.1%	87%	2.2%	70.9%	24.0%	1.1%	1.7%	35.8%	6.1%
Magnet School of Math, Science and Design Technolo / District 15	$943,960.31	$992.60	21.3%	30%	8.7%	8.5%	27.0%	6.0%	49.7%	19.6%	4.6%
Manhattan / Hunter Science High School / District 3	$33,000.07	$74.83	59.0%	53%	27.2%	16.3%	30.6%	5.0%	20.9%	13.8%	0.0%
MANHATTAN ACADEMY FOR ARTS & LANGUAGE / District 2	$500.00	$2.15	97.9%	96%	0.9%	2.1%	94.8%	0.0%	2.1%	12.0%	67.4%
Manhattan Bridges High School / District 2	$247.66	$0.47	87.0%	92%	0.2%	0.4%	98.9%	0.4%	0.2%	7.3%	46.4%
MANHATTAN BUSINESS ACADEMY / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	87.0%	80%	6.3%	22.2%	65.0%	1.7%	4.8%	21.0%	6.3%
Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics / District 4	$109.95	$0.07	80.4%	75%	19.7%	18.7%	52.9%	3.3%	5.4%	14.2%	6.8%
Manhattan Comprehensive Night and Day High School / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	88.9%	92%	21.7%	30.1%	42.5%	1.4%	4.4%	10.1%	52.6%
Manhattan Early College School for Advertising / District 2	$359.86	$0.87	73.1%	72%	9.9%	36.1%	45.0%	3.8%	5.3%	19.2%	3.8%
Manhattan International High School / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	70.6%	95%	14.4%	15.0%	50.8%	0.3%	19.5%	1.6%	71.6%
Manhattan School for Career Development / District 75	$0.00	$0.00	87.6%	91%	4.3%	33.8%	52.6%	1.7%	7.7%	97.9%	20.5%
Manhattan Village Academy / District 2	$248.00	$0.55	76.8%	67%	8.8%	14.2%	63.5%	4.6%	8.8%	15.7%	2.0%
Marble Hill High School for International Studies / District 10	$210.00	$0.47	89.1%	86%	13.8%	15.0%	65.0%	1.6%	4.7%	13.4%	29.7%
Mark Twain I.S. 239 for the Gifted & Talented / District 21	$335,204.00	$250.90	35.2%	35%	26.8%	6.4%	7.0%	8.6%	51.2%	14.3%	1.3%
Marsh Avenue School for Expeditionary Learning / District 31	$30,737.19	$68.30	46.0%	37%	10.9%	9.3%	29.1%	1.8%	48.9%	23.8%	2.2%
Marta Valle High School / District 1	$0.00	$0.00	88.2%	81%	7.1%	37.0%	51.2%	2.4%	2.4%	27.6%	6.3%
Martin Van Buren High School / District 26	$968.30	$0.83	73.7%	66%	28.7%	45.4%	17.5%	5.2%	3.2%	11.4%	13.0%
Maspeth High School / District 24	$2,620.00	$2.16	55.0%	54%	17.4%	1.7%	46.4%	6.9%	27.6%	15.8%	3.0%
Mathematics, Science Research and Technology Magne / District 29	$0.00	$0.00	73.5%	69%	17.2%	66.3%	12.0%	2.5%	2.0%	10.8%	14.5%
Medgar Evers College Preparatory School / District 17	$39,736.00	$29.83	66.9%	54%	2.5%	86.9%	5.4%	4.3%	0.9%	6.7%	0.4%
Metropolitan Diploma Plus High School / District 23	$0.00	$0.00	92.5%	87%	0.4%	78.9%	17.6%	1.8%	1.3%	37.0%	3.1%
Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School / District 28	$11,889.00	$14.29	70.8%	52%	19.7%	16.7%	41.6%	5.9%	16.1%	18.6%	2.0%
Metropolitan High School, The / District 12	$0.00	$0.00	93.8%	93%	1.1%	23.9%	72.2%	1.1%	1.7%	30.1%	22.5%
Middle College High School at LaGuardia Community / District 24	$0.00	$0.00	69.7%	73%	8.1%	2.6%	81.5%	0.6%	7.3%	16.9%	1.2%
Middle School 322 / District 6	$0.00	$0.00	95.0%	91%	0.7%	4.0%	93.8%	0.2%	1.3%	24.5%	42.5%
Middle School for Art and Philosophy / District 18		$0.00	89.0%	77%	1.2%	87.8%	8.1%	2.3%	0.6%	30.2%	7.6%
Midwood High School / District 22	$67,469.43	$16.23	73.5%	63%	35.0%	28.1%	12.7%	3.0%	21.3%	11.8%	2.7%
Millennium Art Academy / District 8	$0.00	$0.00	74.2%	82%	1.4%	27.0%	67.5%	1.7%	2.4%	25.1%	6.6%
Millennium Brooklyn HS / District 15	$12,621.96	$18.70	34.7%	39%	12.7%	16.6%	19.7%	6.5%	44.4%	15.1%	0.3%
Millennium High School / District 2	$224,501.26	$329.66	49.3%	47%	47.0%	3.8%	11.0%	6.2%	32.0%	12.3%	0.7%
Milton Fein School / District 10	$2,479,770.00	$3,604.32	79.5%	74%	6.4%	6.0%	78.9%	0.6%	8.1%	11.6%	20.2%
Morris Academy for Collaborative Studies / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	94.1%	90%	1.7%	27.4%	68.9%	0.2%	1.7%	27.1%	17.1%
Mosaic Preparatory Academy / District 4		$0.00	95.2%	94%	2.2%	38.0%	54.0%	4.5%	1.3%	32.3%	9.3%
Mott Hall Bridges Academy / District 23	$1,593.57	$8.01	92.5%	92%	1.0%	82.9%	14.6%	0.5%	1.0%	31.2%	1.5%
Mott Hall Bronx High School / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	91.6%	90%	0.0%	26.4%	71.2%	1.3%	1.1%	22.7%	11.1%
Mott Hall Community School / District 8	$3,060.21	$8.97	85.6%	78%	2.6%	17.6%	71.6%	0.6%	7.6%	30.5%	11.1%
Mott Hall High School / District 5	$0.00	$0.00	92.0%	91%	4.2%	34.7%	56.6%	1.7%	2.8%	31.6%	20.1%
Mott Hall II / District 3		$0.00	64.5%	61%	2.8%	25.7%	49.8%	5.6%	16.1%	24.1%	3.7%
Mott Hall III / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	92.9%	89%	0.8%	32.3%	64.9%	0.8%	1.1%	17.6%	5.4%
Mott Hall IV / District 23		$0.00	82.1%	86%	0.6%	87.3%	11.6%	0.0%	0.6%	32.9%	1.2%
Mott Hall V / District 12	$0.00	$0.00	88.2%	90%	2.5%	16.2%	78.6%	1.8%	0.9%	30.2%	14.7%
Mott Haven Community High School / District 7	$0.00	$0.00	84.4%	90%	0.0%	31.7%	63.4%	0.4%	4.5%	32.1%	10.3%
Mott Haven Village Preparatory High School / District 7	$0.00	$0.00	96.8%	93%	1.3%	25.7%	69.8%	2.2%	1.0%	30.8%	20.0%
Mount Eden Children's Academy / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	93.4%	88%	0.2%	17.6%	79.4%	1.9%	0.9%	15.9%	21.1%
Multicultural High School / District 19		$0.00	92.5%	100%	0.0%	1.9%	98.1%	0.0%	0.0%	1.1%	87.6%
Murray Hill Academy / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	86.2%	81%	5.9%	30.6%	53.0%	3.9%	6.6%	24.7%	3.9%
Murry Bergtraum High School for Business Careers / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	76.9%	80%	4.4%	50.5%	40.1%	3.3%	1.6%	23.6%	6.0%
Muscota / District 6		$0.00	35.5%	42%	4.1%	3.0%	45.6%	6.4%	40.9%	17.6%	6.1%
N.Y.C. Lab School for Collaborative Studies / District 2	$178,058.26	$378.04	26.1%	29%	18.7%	3.6%	12.3%	8.9%	56.5%	20.0%	0.6%
N.Y.C. Museum School / District 2	$22,840.84	$50.87	56.1%	55%	24.1%	12.9%	35.6%	6.0%	21.4%	20.3%	0.9%
Naples Street Elementary School / District 31	$119,210.55	$365.68	37.1%	37%	6.4%	13.5%	27.6%	1.2%	51.2%	28.2%	0.9%
Neighborhood School / District 1		$0.00	40.5%	45%	6.9%	8.8%	37.6%	4.6%	42.2%	22.5%	1.3%
Nelson Mandela High School / District 16		$0.00	80.6%	84%	1.6%	83.3%	10.3%	4.0%	0.8%	30.2%	0.8%
New Bridges Elementary / District 17	$39,493.92	$87.96	84.9%	84%	1.3%	68.4%	22.7%	2.7%	4.9%	23.2%	8.7%
New Design High School / District 2		$0.00	77.5%	84%	5.2%	34.0%	57.5%	1.6%	1.6%	25.8%	5.4%
New Design Middle School / District 5	$0.00	$0.00	95.8%	94%	0.7%	62.0%	33.8%	0.7%	2.8%	43.7%	10.6%
New Directions Secondary School / District 9	$108.05	$0.47	94.7%	96%	0.9%	26.3%	68.0%	3.5%	1.3%	28.9%	38.2%
New Dorp High School / District 31	$13,294.38	$4.36	62.4%	53%	9.6%	10.1%	26.8%	2.3%	51.2%	23.3%	4.5%
New Explorations into Science, Technology and Math / District 1	$1,479,000.00	$843.22	23.5%	26%	33.3%	6.7%	11.3%	8.9%	39.7%	9.2%	1.6%
New Heights Middle School / District 17	$2,570.91	$9.96	77.5%	79%	0.4%	83.3%	10.1%	4.3%	1.9%	30.6%	7.8%
New Millennium Business Academy Middle School / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	87.1%	92%	0.9%	30.4%	66.1%	0.3%	2.2%	27.0%	30.7%
New Utrecht High School / District 20	$10,380.00	$3.03	78.9%	78%	40.6%	2.8%	30.2%	1.3%	25.0%	16.4%	19.8%
New Voices School of Academic & Creative Arts / District 15	$25,903.00	$44.66	28.4%	32%	6.4%	7.4%	29.3%	4.1%	52.8%	22.1%	1.7%
New World High School / District 11	$0.00	$0.00	96.1%	95%	9.2%	12.1%	66.9%	2.1%	9.7%	5.8%	68.8%
New York City Academy for Discovery / District 27	$11,730.24	$29.70	83.0%	67%	18.5%	5.6%	67.6%	5.6%	2.8%	18.7%	17.0%
New York City Lab Middle School for Collaborative / District 2	$354,221.49	$629.17	34.5%	37%	63.9%	1.2%	5.3%	6.2%	23.3%	14.6%	1.6%
Newcomers High School / District 30		$0.00	87.4%	99%	27.9%	1.0%	63.8%	1.6%	5.8%	0.7%	78.3%
Newtown High School / District 24	$240.00	$0.13	76.1%	79%	25.4%	8.0%	59.6%	2.3%	4.8%	13.8%	23.9%
Norma Adams Clemons Academy / District 17	$9,089.71	$14.01	81.5%	85%	1.1%	73.2%	20.2%	2.0%	3.5%	19.7%	20.6%
North Bronx School of Empowerment / District 11		$0.00	88.5%	88%	3.9%	57.2%	35.2%	1.8%	2.0%	26.3%	13.5%
North Queens Community High School / District 25	$0.00	$0.00	74.6%	67%	12.2%	45.0%	32.8%	1.6%	8.5%	19.0%	4.2%
NYC iSchool / District 2		$0.00	34.1%	34%	8.4%	14.8%	21.2%	9.9%	45.7%	16.1%	1.1%
Olympus Academy / District 18	$0.00	$0.00	83.4%	69%	1.0%	89.3%	7.3%	1.0%	1.5%	23.4%	1.5%
One World Middle School at Edenwald / District 11	$63.00	$0.18	88.1%	75%	4.4%	56.1%	34.6%	3.8%	1.2%	28.2%	6.1%
Orchard Collegiate Academy / District 1		$0.00	81.2%	87%	9.6%	26.9%	56.9%	3.6%	3.0%	27.9%	11.7%
Origins High School / District 22	$0.00	$0.00	79.5%	82%	16.2%	33.8%	16.7%	1.7%	31.6%	12.3%	26.8%
P. S. 62 - Chester Park School / District 27	$40,847.72	$44.84	66.0%	71%	60.2%	4.0%	24.4%	9.7%	1.9%	12.7%	15.4%
P.S. /I.S. 384 Frances E. Carter / District 32	$9,735.30	$19.28	85.3%	89%	0.6%	12.1%	86.5%	0.2%	0.6%	26.7%	25.0%
P.S. 001 Alfred E. Smith / District 2	$13,018.43	$44.13	75.6%	81%	49.8%	18.0%	28.5%	1.4%	2.4%	27.5%	19.0%
P.S. 001 Courtlandt School / District 7	$14,922.00	$22.99	95.8%	95%	0.9%	23.6%	74.4%	0.2%	0.9%	23.3%	24.2%
P.S. 001 The Bergen / District 15	$40,151.29	$33.49	81.0%	86%	6.9%	1.3%	88.7%	0.3%	2.8%	16.1%	37.7%
P.S. 001 Tottenville / District 31	$135,693.00	$304.24	39.7%	34%	3.8%	0.9%	19.1%	0.2%	76.0%	24.0%	4.7%
P.S. 002 Alfred Zimberg / District 30	$27,000.29	$47.87	72.3%	61%	20.4%	4.1%	36.2%	1.4%	37.9%	19.0%	16.3%
P.S. 002 Meyer London / District 2	$42,104.02	$87.17	93.2%	89%	76.0%	8.1%	14.7%	0.0%	1.2%	22.6%	31.7%
P.S. 003 Charrette School / District 2	$524,672.67	$717.75	22.3%	18%	9.4%	5.3%	16.3%	5.9%	63.1%	19.6%	4.4%
P.S. 003 The Bedford Village / District 13	$2,435.41	$6.77	92.5%	84%	9.2%	73.3%	9.2%	5.8%	2.5%	18.1%	11.4%
P.S. 003 The Margaret Gioiosa School / District 31	$9,575.54	$12.92	32.8%	23%	7.4%	0.3%	14.3%	1.2%	76.8%	20.1%	1.9%
P.S. 004 Duke Ellington / District 6		$0.00	86.9%	90%	2.4%	7.2%	89.4%	1.0%	0.0%	26.1%	28.7%
P.S. 004 Maurice Wollin / District 31	$123,476.97	$182.12	38.1%	35%	11.9%	2.7%	19.3%	2.7%	63.4%	30.7%	5.8%
P.S. 005 Dr. Ronald Mcnair / District 16		$0.00	84.3%	83%	3.7%	77.3%	15.7%	0.9%	2.3%	31.0%	3.7%
P.S. 005 Ellen Lurie / District 6	$2,595.20	$4.70	91.8%	88%	0.5%	6.2%	91.8%	1.1%	0.4%	23.9%	41.1%
P.S. 005 Huguenot / District 31	$194,170.70	$620.35	21.7%	17%	3.8%	0.0%	7.3%	0.6%	88.2%	22.7%	1.9%
P.S. 006 Lillie D. Blake / District 2	$936,143.84	$1,395.15	12.2%	10%	17.1%	2.4%	6.1%	1.6%	72.7%	15.4%	3.3%
P.S. 006 West Farms / District 12	$5,793.82	$10.89	97.9%	96%	0.8%	23.3%	74.4%	0.6%	0.9%	26.5%	9.2%
P.S. 007 Abraham Lincoln / District 19	$5,476.70	$6.65	91.3%	84%	6.7%	7.0%	82.5%	1.3%	2.4%	18.8%	20.9%
P.S. 007 Louis F. Simeone / District 24	$40,125.76	$29.18	82.0%	76%	60.7%	0.3%	35.1%	0.6%	3.3%	12.3%	39.3%
P.S. 007 Samuel Stern / District 4	$0.00	$0.00	92.4%	93%	3.7%	29.0%	62.2%	2.7%	2.5%	27.5%	9.1%
P.S. 008 Isaac Varian / District 10	$12,247.00	$13.04	86.4%	85%	5.8%	7.6%	79.0%	1.1%	6.6%	21.1%	25.6%
P.S. 008 Luis Belliard / District 6		$0.00	97.4%	89%	0.2%	1.8%	96.2%	0.0%	1.8%	20.0%	36.6%
P.S. 008 Robert Fulton / District 13	$1,567,065.44	$1,739.25	19.5%	18%	6.4%	13.8%	12.8%	8.4%	58.6%	11.2%	2.9%
P.S. 009 / District 75	$0.00	$0.00	81.9%	83%	14.4%	31.3%	41.3%	1.8%	11.2%	99.8%	29.6%
P.S. 009 Sarah Anderson / District 3	$783,805.00	$1,282.82	22.1%	18%	8.5%	4.7%	18.2%	9.3%	59.2%	18.2%	2.3%
P.S. 009 Teunis G. Bergen / District 13	$364,682.00	$387.14	35.8%	37%	7.9%	41.3%	16.1%	4.1%	30.6%	14.9%	2.1%
P.S. 011 Highbridge / District 9	$11,364.94	$20.59	91.8%	94%	0.5%	29.5%	69.0%	0.4%	0.5%	23.6%	24.5%
P.S. 011 Kathryn Phelan / District 30	$13,214.67	$13.71	64.2%	67%	35.8%	1.9%	49.3%	3.1%	10.0%	19.9%	21.5%
P.S. 011 Purvis J. Behan / District 13	$1,046,661.40	$1,170.76	39.3%	44%	2.5%	61.1%	13.6%	8.9%	13.9%	10.3%	1.3%
P.S. 011 William T. Harris / District 2		$0.00	31.1%	34%	15.4%	5.7%	24.3%	8.4%	46.1%	15.0%	3.3%
P.S. 012 James B. Colgate / District 24	$35,420.52	$30.61	86.5%	74%	55.1%	0.1%	40.7%	1.0%	3.2%	15.0%	30.3%
P.S. 013 Clement C. Moore / District 24	$10,883.90	$7.18	72.6%	77%	29.8%	8.3%	56.0%	1.7%	4.4%	14.7%	29.6%
P.S. 013 M. L. Lindemeyer / District 31	$71,154.77	$82.83	70.8%	67%	20.5%	13.6%	45.3%	3.4%	17.2%	24.0%	17.7%
P.S. 013 Roberto Clemente / District 19	$6,448.00	$14.33	94.0%	92%	4.2%	66.2%	24.9%	2.2%	2.4%	25.8%	8.9%
P.S. 014 Fairview / District 24	$4,057.00	$2.58	81.7%	86%	5.8%	2.2%	89.6%	0.6%	1.7%	18.2%	34.2%
P.S. 015 Jackie Robinson / District 29	$3,514.48	$7.99	74.3%	64%	1.6%	87.7%	8.0%	2.0%	0.7%	16.1%	4.1%
P.S. 015 Patrick F. Daly / District 15	$141,565.47	$291.89	71.3%	78%	1.2%	33.6%	44.3%	4.9%	15.9%	31.5%	4.9%
P.S. 015 Roberto Clemente / District 1	$276.00	$1.59	83.3%	88%	13.8%	27.6%	54.6%	0.6%	3.4%	21.8%	4.6%
P.S. 016 John J. Driscoll / District 31	$9,926.42	$20.42	97.7%	91%	5.8%	28.0%	54.7%	2.5%	9.1%	32.1%	27.0%
P.S. 016 Leonard Dunkly / District 14	$3,117.04	$14.04	88.7%	94%	0.0%	37.8%	60.4%	0.5%	1.4%	32.4%	2.7%
P.S. 016 Wakefield / District 11	$3,898.39	$11.64	93.7%	82%	5.4%	45.7%	38.5%	7.5%	3.0%	22.4%	10.7%
P.S. 017 Henry D. Woodworth / District 14	$16,613.94	$55.94	68.7%	75%	1.0%	4.7%	82.8%	0.7%	10.8%	35.0%	19.9%
P.S. 017 Henry David Thoreau / District 30	$4,638,707.00	$7,915.88	69.5%	75%	15.0%	10.2%	52.0%	3.1%	19.6%	20.1%	23.2%
P.S. 018 Edward Bush / District 14	$10,905.66	$56.21	82.5%	85%	0.5%	21.1%	68.0%	1.0%	9.3%	35.6%	13.4%
P.S. 018 John G. Whittier / District 31	$0.00	$0.00	90.6%	93%	4.9%	44.8%	44.0%	2.4%	3.9%	36.7%	7.5%
P.S. 018 John Peter Zenger / District 7	$7,513.37	$13.09	99.8%	96%	1.2%	25.4%	68.5%	1.0%	3.8%	27.5%	27.9%
P.S. 018 Park Terrace / District 6	$5,443.00	$15.25	92.7%	89%	0.3%	2.2%	96.4%	0.0%	1.1%	21.0%	27.5%
P.S. 018 Winchester / District 26	$42,422.06	$71.90	58.6%	45%	61.7%	13.1%	14.4%	1.9%	9.0%	15.1%	10.8%
P.S. 019 Asher Levy / District 1	$22,318.82	$89.63	72.3%	67%	5.6%	20.9%	62.7%	3.6%	7.2%	36.9%	3.2%
P.S. 019 Judith K. Weiss / District 11	$43,278.33	$83.23	51.5%	40%	3.3%	6.2%	26.7%	2.7%	61.2%	15.6%	9.4%
P.S. 019 Marino Jeantet / District 24	$91,859.72	$48.63	88.4%	86%	5.0%	0.4%	93.5%	0.3%	0.7%	21.1%	55.5%
P.S. 019 The Curtis School / District 31	$37,920.22	$69.32	85.0%	83%	6.0%	13.3%	70.6%	3.1%	6.9%	28.2%	17.6%
P.S. 020 Anna Silver / District 1	$101,140.91	$210.27	65.7%	74%	28.7%	13.7%	49.7%	3.3%	4.6%	23.9%	13.1%
P.S. 020 Clinton Hill / District 13	$324,492.96	$674.62	58.4%	49%	2.9%	43.0%	20.8%	5.8%	27.4%	14.8%	4.8%
P.S. 020 John Bowne / District 25	$32,415.29	$26.72	89.0%	80%	71.2%	3.9%	21.3%	0.9%	2.7%	12.7%	33.6%
P.S. 020 Port Richmond / District 31	$9,824.77	$21.78	94.5%	92%	1.1%	16.0%	76.5%	2.2%	4.2%	37.0%	38.8%
P.S. 021 Crispus Attucks / District 16	$50,510.21	$88.00	72.1%	79%	0.7%	85.7%	10.3%	0.3%	3.0%	19.3%	1.9%
P.S. 021 Edward Hart / District 25	$6,735.66	$5.00	76.1%	65%	63.2%	1.0%	29.7%	1.1%	5.1%	11.2%	24.8%
P.S. 021 Philip H. Sheridan / District 11	$302.75	$0.47	90.9%	87%	3.2%	61.8%	30.0%	3.4%	1.5%	20.6%	10.7%
P.S. 022 Graniteville / District 31	$23,070.69	$24.73	86.1%	78%	9.1%	21.5%	57.0%	2.9%	9.4%	27.9%	17.1%
P.S. 022 Thomas Jefferson / District 25		$0.00	89.4%	77%	63.3%	1.0%	31.0%	1.7%	3.0%	11.0%	46.4%
P.S. 023 Carter G. Woodson / District 14	$3,057.55	$10.51	89.7%	92%	1.0%	50.9%	44.3%	2.4%	1.4%	34.4%	8.6%
P.S. 023 Richmondtown / District 31	$217,180.53	$398.50	34.7%	32%	8.6%	1.1%	15.2%	1.8%	73.2%	28.4%	4.2%
P.S. 023 The New Children's School / District 10	$1,692.19	$3.80	96.9%	96%	0.7%	33.3%	64.0%	1.1%	0.9%	24.7%	20.2%
P.S. 024 / District 15	$7,888.95	$12.83	93.8%	86%	4.2%	1.3%	88.6%	1.0%	4.9%	17.2%	43.4%
P.S. 024 Andrew Jackson / District 25	$45,269.34	$43.28	65.9%	69%	84.7%	1.8%	10.8%	1.2%	1.4%	11.5%	37.5%
P.S. 024 Spuyten Duyvil / District 10	$113,898.98	$134.95	27.3%	25%	9.1%	7.2%	43.1%	5.0%	35.5%	13.6%	4.3%
P.S. 025 Bilingual School / District 7		$0.00	94.3%	91%	0.7%	10.0%	87.8%	0.6%	0.9%	30.9%	18.5%
P.S. 025 Eubie Blake School / District 16	$1,063.00	$12.96	95.1%	95%	3.7%	52.4%	34.1%	3.7%	6.1%	18.3%	17.1%
P.S. 026 Jesse Owens / District 16	$11,550.00	$44.59	71.8%	78%	2.3%	67.2%	23.6%	1.2%	5.8%	18.9%	3.9%
P.S. 026 Rufus King / District 26	$83,732.30	$117.11	66.0%	55%	61.3%	9.7%	15.1%	2.5%	11.5%	18.0%	13.8%
P.S. 026 The Carteret School / District 31	$25,385.29	$85.19	46.3%	41%	12.1%	4.7%	30.9%	3.4%	49.0%	21.5%	11.1%
P.S. 028 Mount Hope / District 9		$0.00	94.1%	93%	0.7%	20.9%	77.2%	0.3%	1.0%	23.8%	28.1%
P.S. 028 The Warren Prep Academy / District 16	$0.00	$0.00	95.7%	93%	1.7%	82.8%	12.1%	0.0%	3.4%	28.4%	4.3%
P.S. 028 Wright Brothers / District 6		$0.00	90.8%	94%	0.8%	13.6%	80.7%	0.7%	4.2%	29.1%	38.0%
P.S. 029 Bardwell / District 31	$65,563.33	$108.91	53.0%	41%	18.8%	7.1%	22.3%	3.3%	48.5%	20.6%	6.6%
P.S. 029 John M. Harrigan / District 15	$1,733,654.00	$1,824.90	13.4%	12%	4.9%	2.6%	11.3%	6.8%	74.3%	12.6%	3.1%
P.S. 029 Queens / District 25	$2,353.00	$3.35	82.2%	70%	25.7%	1.4%	62.9%	0.4%	9.5%	17.5%	27.9%
P.S. 030 Hernandez/Hughes / District 5	$3,667.97	$14.50	93.3%	93%	1.2%	40.7%	53.8%	1.2%	3.2%	22.5%	8.7%
P.S. 030 Westerleigh / District 31	$227,451.13	$275.36	38.3%	30%	10.4%	3.0%	24.3%	3.4%	58.8%	24.0%	8.0%
P.S. 030 Wilton / District 7	$0.00	$0.00	92.5%	94%	0.7%	22.6%	73.5%	0.9%	2.2%	22.0%	20.9%
P.S. 031 Bayside / District 26	$23,863.97	$44.27	58.1%	44%	55.8%	7.8%	20.2%	2.2%	13.9%	18.0%	11.1%
P.S. 031 Samuel F. Dupont / District 14	$181,036.66	$292.47	72.1%	64%	8.4%	5.0%	41.0%	2.1%	43.5%	12.8%	6.5%
P.S. 031 William T. Davis / District 31	$1,652.02	$4.26	92.5%	94%	0.3%	49.2%	42.3%	3.9%	4.4%	33.0%	7.7%
P.S. 032 Belmont / District 10	$3,932.02	$5.19	96.7%	95%	0.9%	17.9%	77.7%	0.9%	2.5%	22.6%	17.8%
P.S. 032 Samuel Mills Sprole / District 15	$188,980.47	$393.71	41.7%	42%	9.8%	21.3%	22.3%	5.4%	41.2%	25.6%	4.2%
P.S. 032 State Street / District 25	$150,311.35	$151.22	64.4%	54%	69.8%	0.7%	17.5%	2.8%	9.2%	11.3%	14.2%
P.S. 032 The Gifford School / District 31	$138,870.87	$204.52	34.5%	31%	9.0%	0.4%	16.6%	1.9%	72.0%	26.4%	4.7%
P.S. 033 Chelsea Prep / District 2	$515,398.00	$815.50	48.7%	49%	23.6%	18.4%	28.8%	8.9%	20.4%	14.7%	6.0%
P.S. 033 Edward M. Funk / District 29	$1,500.00	$1.58	76.3%	59%	48.8%	14.5%	23.8%	8.6%	4.2%	13.8%	17.5%
P.S. 033 Timothy Dwight / District 10		$0.00	90.6%	95%	0.7%	9.8%	86.0%	2.5%	1.1%	20.9%	24.2%
P.S. 034 Franklin D. Roosevelt / District 1	$8,439.93	$27.67	98.7%	94%	2.6%	33.4%	59.7%	1.3%	3.0%	37.4%	7.2%
P.S. 034 John Harvard / District 29	$7,918.55	$13.20	87.3%	68%	13.3%	65.7%	16.5%	3.2%	1.3%	15.2%	10.0%
P.S. 034 Oliver H. Perry / District 14	$142,440.98	$302.42	26.5%	36%	2.3%	4.9%	18.3%	2.8%	71.8%	13.0%	16.8%
P.S. 035 / District 75	$0.00	$0.00	84.2%	87%	2.5%	42.9%	43.5%	2.2%	8.8%	89.9%	6.6%
P.S. 035 Franz Siegel / District 9		$0.00	94.7%	92%	0.6%	27.0%	69.7%	1.3%	1.3%	24.6%	24.8%
P.S. 035 Nathaniel Woodhull / District 29	$320.00	$0.47	82.2%	71%	28.9%	33.1%	26.1%	8.9%	3.0%	14.2%	14.1%
P.S. 036 J. C. Drumgoole / District 31	$257,414.03	$297.24	37.0%	28%	7.3%	0.2%	16.5%	1.5%	74.5%	23.0%	3.7%
P.S. 036 Margaret Douglas / District 5	$1,965.55	$5.54	89.6%	88%	1.7%	38.9%	56.9%	0.6%	2.0%	31.0%	8.5%
P.S. 036 Saint Albans School / District 29		$0.00	68.1%	68%	2.5%	80.9%	11.8%	4.4%	0.5%	20.6%	6.6%
P.S. 036 Unionport / District 8	$34,293.66	$44.89	72.1%	81%	26.4%	9.0%	58.6%	2.5%	3.4%	18.6%	12.8%
P.S. 038 George Cromwell / District 31	$33,009.04	$90.68	69.5%	61%	19.5%	3.6%	31.0%	2.7%	43.1%	19.8%	22.3%
P.S. 038 Rosedale / District 29	$0.00	$0.00	70.7%	50%	2.5%	86.9%	7.8%	0.7%	2.1%	15.5%	5.7%
P.S. 038 The Pacific / District 15	$518,097.19	$845.18	47.8%	50%	16.3%	30.5%	22.7%	8.0%	22.5%	12.6%	4.4%
P.S. 039 Henry Bristow / District 15	$240,219.00	$583.06	13.3%	15%	8.0%	4.4%	8.7%	1.9%	76.9%	10.4%	4.1%
P.S. 040 Augustus Saint-Gaudens / District 2	$498,759.00	$704.46	11.4%	14%	12.1%	1.7%	14.0%	10.2%	62.0%	16.0%	2.5%
P.S. 040 George W. Carver / District 16	$4,620.45	$13.28	83.0%	90%	3.7%	68.1%	21.8%	4.3%	2.0%	18.1%	9.2%
P.S. 040 Samuel Huntington / District 28	$3,829.00	$9.67	88.4%	84%	14.1%	53.8%	25.5%	1.5%	5.1%	23.2%	6.3%
P.S. 041 Crocheron / District 26	$94,444.28	$203.54	37.7%	31%	52.8%	1.3%	19.4%	2.8%	23.7%	18.1%	7.5%
P.S. 041 Francis White / District 23	$3,968.20	$9.87	97.0%	95%	0.7%	59.5%	33.3%	4.7%	1.7%	27.9%	6.2%
P.S. 041 Greenwich Village / District 2	$1,023,319.00	$1,474.52	7.1%	8%	7.3%	1.4%	9.1%	13.0%	69.2%	16.1%	1.6%
P.S. 041 Gun Hill Road / District 11	$742.25	$0.86	96.5%	90%	2.1%	49.4%	45.2%	0.5%	2.8%	19.3%	11.6%
P.S. 042 Benjamin Altman / District 2		$0.00	69.7%	79%	86.6%	1.4%	7.5%	0.5%	4.0%	16.7%	32.6%
P.S. 042 Claremont / District 9	$2,697.47	$6.76	98.7%	96%	0.3%	38.3%	58.1%	0.5%	2.8%	28.6%	10.5%
P.S. 042 Eltingville / District 31	$232,695.39	$220.36	32.5%	31%	11.1%	1.4%	13.4%	1.2%	72.9%	22.6%	3.5%
P.S. 043 / District 27	$1,700.00	$1.90	93.3%	86%	2.9%	57.4%	32.9%	1.8%	5.0%	23.0%	8.3%
P.S. 043 Jonas Bronck / District 7	$0.00	$0.00	95.8%	92%	0.2%	24.3%	74.3%	0.4%	0.7%	20.1%	12.6%
P.S. 044 David C. Farragut / District 12	$42.20	$0.15	97.5%	96%	0.7%	35.8%	62.5%	0.4%	0.7%	16.8%	17.2%
P.S. 044 Marcus Garvey / District 13	$0.00	$0.00	95.0%	92%	0.8%	83.2%	12.6%	0.0%	3.4%	25.2%	8.4%
P.S. 044 Thomas C. Brown / District 31	$57,025.00	$73.87	93.9%	92%	3.9%	38.5%	50.4%	4.8%	2.5%	31.1%	7.5%
P.S. 045 Clarence Witherspoon / District 27		$0.00	84.3%	71%	7.2%	64.3%	20.1%	5.3%	3.1%	19.1%	8.5%
P.S. 045 John Tyler / District 31	$55,544.35	$64.44	70.2%	65%	8.5%	16.8%	48.4%	4.1%	22.3%	21.8%	5.5%
P.S. 046 Albert V. Maniscalco / District 31	$22,477.12	$92.50	84.4%	66%	8.2%	16.5%	40.7%	2.5%	32.1%	30.5%	9.9%
P.S. 046 Alley Pond / District 26	$79,278.13	$141.82	46.5%	39%	63.3%	4.8%	14.5%	3.8%	13.6%	23.4%	12.3%
P.S. 046 Arthur Tappan / District 5	$825.88	$1.31	93.0%	95%	1.0%	48.4%	48.6%	1.1%	1.0%	31.6%	9.4%
P.S. 046 Edgar Allan Poe / District 10	$3,017.86	$3.54	87.9%	93%	1.5%	13.4%	82.4%	0.9%	1.8%	23.1%	39.9%
P.S. 046 Edward C. Blum / District 13		$0.00	88.5%	84%	2.7%	49.2%	43.8%	2.3%	1.9%	28.1%	14.6%
P.S. 047 Chris Galas / District 27	$60,473.97	$247.84	43.4%	35%	0.8%	1.6%	16.0%	1.6%	79.9%	27.0%	1.6%
P.S. 047 John Randolph / District 12	$0.00	$0.00	95.5%	91%	12.8%	17.2%	64.8%	2.7%	2.6%	19.2%	24.0%
P.S. 048 Joseph R. Drake / District 8		$0.00	94.3%	95%	0.4%	21.9%	76.3%	0.1%	1.2%	28.1%	22.6%
P.S. 048 Mapleton / District 20	$52,691.39	$93.26	71.0%	77%	43.7%	0.9%	29.7%	1.4%	24.2%	20.4%	28.3%
P.S. 048 P.O. Michael J. Buczek / District 6	$10,133.95	$21.20	92.1%	86%	1.3%	1.5%	92.5%	0.8%	4.0%	24.3%	32.4%
P.S. 048 William G. Wilcox / District 31	$99,425.01	$99.33	43.9%	37%	21.1%	4.3%	18.0%	1.9%	54.7%	19.5%	7.3%
P.S. 048 William Wordsworth / District 28	$14,726.55	$26.16	89.3%	81%	18.8%	50.4%	23.3%	5.9%	1.6%	25.0%	11.9%
P.S. 049 Dorothy Bonawit Kole / District 24	$55,680.38	$46.25	50.7%	35%	19.4%	1.1%	23.7%	1.7%	54.1%	15.9%	6.6%
P.S. 049 Willis Avenue / District 7		$0.00	96.2%	95%	0.3%	28.2%	69.4%	1.2%	0.9%	28.8%	13.5%
P.S. 050 Frank Hankinson / District 31	$54,407.39	$75.04	50.3%	32%	16.1%	1.9%	17.2%	2.1%	62.6%	18.9%	5.2%
P.S. 050 Talfourd Lawn Elementary School / District 28	$12,123.66	$14.30	88.7%	75%	23.3%	17.9%	44.2%	12.6%	1.9%	16.7%	15.0%
P.S. 051 / District 27	$11,376.20	$46.43	77.1%	67%	24.9%	4.1%	47.8%	7.8%	15.5%	9.4%	23.7%
P.S. 051 Bronx New School / District 10	$12,338.84	$60.19	85.9%	85%	2.0%	31.2%	64.9%	0.5%	1.5%	15.6%	3.9%
P.S. 051 Elias Howe / District 2	$48,852.36	$101.56	56.1%	58%	12.9%	14.8%	47.6%	2.9%	21.8%	19.5%	7.3%
P.S. 052 John C. Thompson / District 31	$69,590.28	$119.78	62.3%	52%	21.3%	1.4%	19.3%	2.2%	55.8%	19.6%	16.5%
P.S. 052 Queens / District 29	$0.00	$0.00	79.9%	77%	5.3%	75.3%	15.7%	2.2%	1.5%	20.3%	6.5%
P.S. 052 Sheepshead Bay / District 22	$103,401.69	$126.56	76.1%	70%	18.1%	14.8%	14.0%	1.6%	51.5%	13.2%	25.9%
P.S. 053 Basheer Quisim / District 9	$27,034.24	$26.07	90.9%	95%	1.4%	30.6%	66.2%	0.4%	1.4%	15.4%	33.5%
P.S. 054 Charles W. Leng / District 31	$7,887,086.00	$10,021.71	61.9%	50%	34.8%	6.5%	19.9%	2.3%	36.5%	25.0%	6.2%
P.S. 054 Hillside / District 28	$12,957.61	$24.17	77.2%	82%	32.8%	5.8%	53.7%	5.6%	2.1%	17.0%	24.8%
P.S. 054 Samuel C. Barnes / District 13	$5,460.63	$24.16	88.1%	83%	7.1%	52.7%	31.4%	3.5%	5.3%	18.6%	11.1%
P.S. 055 Benjamin Franklin / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	97.6%	97%	0.0%	47.5%	51.9%	0.0%	0.7%	19.0%	9.5%
P.S. 055 Henry M. Boehm / District 31	$116,401.97	$200.00	34.5%	28%	6.0%	0.3%	12.4%	0.9%	80.4%	23.7%	3.6%
P.S. 055 Maure / District 28	$10,102.58	$19.69	79.1%	65%	44.8%	8.0%	23.0%	22.2%	1.9%	17.5%	12.9%
P.S. 056 Harry Eichler / District 27	$12,955.76	$36.19	78.5%	68%	36.0%	3.6%	43.6%	4.2%	12.6%	18.4%	25.7%
P.S. 056 Lewis H. Latimer / District 13	$53,746.05	$203.58	64.8%	65%	4.2%	52.7%	14.8%	3.8%	24.6%	23.9%	4.9%
P.S. 056 Norwood Heights / District 10	$21,577.14	$32.25	83.1%	90%	21.1%	8.5%	62.5%	2.4%	5.5%	24.5%	15.4%
P.S. 057 Crescent / District 12	$456.93	$0.80	91.2%	94%	1.4%	24.9%	68.7%	2.8%	2.3%	23.3%	17.3%
P.S. 057 Hubert H. Humphrey / District 31	$2,214.99	$3.46	87.2%	90%	4.5%	53.1%	34.1%	4.4%	3.9%	28.7%	8.6%
P.S. 058 / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	93.0%	96%	0.9%	25.6%	71.4%	0.5%	1.6%	27.7%	26.5%
P.S. 058 The Carroll / District 15	$2,104,019.00	$2,085.25	11.9%	11%	3.4%	2.1%	10.6%	9.6%	74.3%	12.2%	4.5%
P.S. 059 Beekman Hill International / District 2	$851,102.86	$1,423.25	11.4%	8%	19.9%	1.3%	10.5%	10.2%	58.0%	13.9%	4.7%
P.S. 059 The Community School of Technology / District 10	$5,835.61	$11.24	98.1%	96%	0.8%	31.2%	65.9%	0.8%	1.3%	27.6%	17.7%
P.S. 059 William Floyd / District 14	$0.00	$0.00	94.6%	94%	1.8%	53.9%	41.4%	1.8%	1.2%	25.6%	7.7%
P.S. 060 Alice Austen / District 31		$0.00	58.8%	42%	15.9%	4.5%	23.4%	3.0%	53.1%	25.8%	4.1%
P.S. 060 Woodhaven / District 27	$29,690.47	$25.23	82.2%	73%	17.4%	3.0%	72.5%	4.1%	3.1%	15.3%	17.7%
P.S. 061 Francisco Oller / District 12	$6,622.74	$22.53	94.6%	94%	0.7%	17.7%	79.3%	1.7%	0.7%	17.3%	10.5%
P.S. 062 Inocensio Casanova / District 8	$10,880.94	$16.29	96.7%	92%	0.1%	18.9%	77.5%	0.9%	2.5%	32.9%	12.7%
P.S. 063 Author's Academy / District 9	$4,717.29	$8.90	96.0%	93%	0.8%	40.4%	54.5%	1.1%	3.2%	22.5%	18.5%
P.S. 063 Old South / District 27	$74,237.16	$61.20	78.7%	67%	37.4%	6.4%	46.0%	4.4%	5.8%	16.5%	13.4%
P.S. 064 Joseph P. Addabbo / District 27	$6,681.14	$12.04	72.4%	76%	61.4%	2.7%	29.4%	3.8%	2.7%	12.8%	21.8%
P.S. 064 Robert Simon / District 1	$5,712.50	$25.62	86.1%	90%	3.1%	18.4%	71.3%	1.8%	5.4%	27.8%	2.7%
P.S. 065 / District 19	$0.00	$0.00	81.6%	85%	3.1%	7.3%	85.8%	2.9%	0.9%	13.0%	25.4%
P.S. 065 Mother Hale Academy / District 7		$0.00	97.1%	97%	2.1%	30.2%	65.5%	1.3%	0.8%	24.7%	12.7%
P.S. 066 Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis / District 27	$13,216.30	$26.86	81.3%	65%	16.5%	5.3%	64.2%	4.7%	9.3%	23.4%	29.3%
P.S. 066 School of Higher Expectations / District 12		$0.00	88.5%	93%	1.8%	26.8%	68.4%	0.8%	2.2%	21.2%	13.5%
P.S. 067 Charles A. Dorsey / District 13	$5,487.25	$25.29	98.2%	93%	4.1%	61.3%	30.4%	1.4%	2.8%	32.3%	8.3%
P.S. 067 Mohegan School / District 12	$0.00	$0.00	98.8%	95%	0.2%	24.3%	73.6%	1.2%	0.6%	21.6%	12.2%
P.S. 068 Bronx / District 11		$0.00	65.9%	70%	1.4%	75.1%	20.4%	1.7%	1.4%	24.0%	1.6%
P.S. 068 Cambridge / District 24	$31,312.23	$52.45	65.2%	71%	3.2%	1.7%	87.4%	0.5%	7.2%	20.3%	13.4%
P.S. 069 Daniel D. Tompkins / District 31	$101,599.04	$109.84	57.8%	49%	23.0%	2.3%	20.8%	2.6%	51.4%	23.0%	14.3%
P.S. 069 Jackson Heights / District 30	$72,134.64	$70.86	60.3%	66%	50.7%	0.6%	38.7%	2.3%	7.8%	12.0%	21.3%
P.S. 069 Journey Prep School / District 8		$0.00	83.8%	80%	2.5%	15.4%	79.0%	1.3%	1.7%	21.3%	11.8%
P.S. 070 / District 30	$27,604.30	$32.14	77.4%	70%	16.5%	3.3%	42.5%	2.4%	35.3%	13.3%	22.5%
P.S. 070 Max Schoenfeld / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	96.1%	94%	0.5%	23.3%	75.1%	0.2%	1.0%	21.0%	28.8%
P.S. 071 Forest / District 24	$31,349.31	$44.78	84.7%	69%	4.9%	0.9%	53.7%	5.7%	34.9%	17.4%	15.4%
P.S. 071 Rose E. Scala / District 8	$12,941.09	$8.26	72.5%	60%	8.6%	5.0%	62.7%	1.3%	22.5%	20.4%	9.6%
P.S. 072 Dr. William Dorney / District 8	$22,102.14	$29.20	86.0%	81%	4.2%	22.3%	68.6%	0.0%	4.9%	28.5%	4.9%
P.S. 073 Bronx / District 9	$14,431.91	$25.14	94.9%	96%	0.0%	23.7%	74.6%	0.5%	1.2%	20.7%	25.1%
P.S. 075 Emily Dickinson / District 3	$126,269.27	$230.42	70.1%	66%	2.6%	21.7%	55.3%	3.5%	17.0%	40.0%	15.3%
P.S. 075 Mayda Cortiella / District 32		$0.00	91.2%	94%	1.9%	21.1%	74.7%	0.0%	2.3%	25.3%	17.5%
P.S. 076 A. Philip Randolph / District 3		$0.00	95.3%	91%	0.2%	73.4%	23.0%	0.7%	2.7%	23.9%	7.7%
P.S. 076 The Bennington School / District 11	$17,354.46	$19.43	76.3%	82%	5.3%	43.3%	43.7%	1.2%	6.5%	16.9%	16.0%
P.S. 076 William Hallet / District 30	$22,460.12	$50.36	79.1%	86%	7.6%	29.4%	51.3%	2.0%	9.6%	33.2%	13.7%
P.S. 078 Anne Hutchinson / District 11	$6,198.89	$7.59	81.5%	83%	1.5%	71.0%	24.1%	1.0%	2.4%	17.3%	6.2%
P.S. 079 Francis Lewis / District 25	$128,563.17	$118.16	49.7%	38%	54.0%	0.5%	20.1%	1.2%	24.3%	12.1%	12.1%
P.S. 081 Robert J. Christen / District 10	$38,055.38	$51.01	44.1%	39%	7.0%	9.2%	52.8%	3.6%	27.3%	18.4%	8.0%
P.S. 081 Thaddeus Stevens / District 16	$900.00	$3.15	92.7%	90%	3.8%	59.4%	30.4%	3.1%	3.1%	32.5%	7.0%
P.S. 082 Hammond / District 28		$0.00	80.1%	85%	22.8%	5.7%	67.1%	3.5%	0.9%	16.7%	34.6%
P.S. 083 Donald Hertz / District 11		$0.00	64.7%	71%	9.8%	7.0%	48.1%	1.3%	33.8%	19.4%	17.4%
P.S. 083 Luis Munoz Rivera / District 4	$16,826.80	$40.64	86.7%	80%	9.9%	18.6%	68.8%	0.5%	2.2%	22.7%	9.2%
P.S. 084 Jose De Diego / District 14	$115,971.35	$151.79	48.7%	57%	3.4%	5.9%	61.1%	5.2%	24.3%	17.5%	12.4%
P.S. 084 Lillian Weber / District 3	$528,029.63	$796.42	37.4%	39%	4.1%	7.1%	32.4%	5.7%	50.7%	16.3%	6.9%
P.S. 084 Steinway / District 30	$30,570.08	$107.26	53.7%	58%	7.7%	6.0%	40.0%	2.1%	44.2%	17.2%	9.8%
P.S. 085 Great Expectations / District 10	$2,978.91	$3.23	94.8%	94%	1.0%	26.5%	71.3%	1.0%	0.3%	20.9%	26.2%
P.S. 085 Judge Charles Vallone / District 30	$29,971.20	$47.12	39.8%	46%	16.8%	2.7%	28.1%	4.1%	48.3%	12.3%	13.2%
P.S. 086 Kingsbridge Heights / District 10	$6,352.50	$3.91	86.5%	92%	3.7%	5.7%	88.7%	0.6%	1.4%	20.2%	31.4%
P.S. 086 The Irvington / District 32	$11,639.03	$32.88	95.8%	91%	2.0%	0.8%	94.9%	0.3%	2.0%	26.3%	26.8%
P.S. 087 Bronx / District 11	$3,260.11	$5.54	74.0%	70%	4.9%	69.0%	18.4%	5.6%	2.0%	19.6%	4.4%
P.S. 087 William Sherman / District 3	$2,086,338.00	$2,323.32	9.8%	11%	7.8%	3.1%	14.5%	9.6%	65.0%	17.9%	3.0%
P.S. 088 Seneca / District 24	$12,265.25	$14.23	74.8%	65%	7.9%	1.7%	49.3%	1.7%	39.3%	18.2%	15.4%
P.S. 089 Bronx / District 11		$0.00	76.8%	83%	10.1%	19.9%	53.9%	1.3%	14.9%	16.5%	19.9%
P.S. 089 Cypress Hills / District 19	$700.00	$1.49	94.9%	85%	0.9%	2.3%	95.9%	0.9%	0.0%	23.9%	43.9%
P.S. 089 Elmhurst / District 24	$33,403.14	$18.45	75.7%	79%	22.4%	0.1%	74.4%	1.0%	2.2%	14.8%	44.0%
P.S. 090 Horace Mann / District 27	$21,031.96	$25.97	89.1%	71%	31.2%	4.0%	57.5%	3.3%	4.0%	18.5%	23.8%
P.S. 091 Bronx / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	95.7%	94%	3.6%	14.7%	78.0%	1.9%	1.9%	21.2%	40.4%
P.S. 091 Richard Arkwright / District 24	$52,470.21	$71.19	64.7%	53%	3.1%	2.0%	51.3%	0.5%	43.0%	18.3%	11.0%
P.S. 091 The Albany Avenue School / District 17	$5,574.00	$21.94	88.2%	81%	1.2%	82.7%	12.6%	2.4%	1.2%	23.6%	9.8%
P.S. 092 Adrian Hegeman / District 17	$1,036.38	$2.50	87.5%	81%	11.3%	68.7%	14.9%	2.9%	2.2%	21.9%	19.8%
P.S. 092 Harry T. Stewart Sr. / District 30	$26,724.92	$29.47	80.0%	83%	1.2%	0.7%	97.2%	0.4%	0.4%	20.1%	22.7%
P.S. 092 Mary McLeod Bethune / District 5	$6,408.92	$24.74	98.5%	95%	0.8%	62.5%	34.0%	1.2%	1.5%	35.9%	6.9%
P.S. 093 Albert G. Oliver / District 8		$0.00	70.4%	74%	0.0%	42.8%	54.0%	2.1%	1.2%	19.4%	5.3%
P.S. 093 William H. Prescott / District 13	$0.00	$0.00	95.5%	91%	22.7%	65.0%	10.0%	1.8%	0.5%	20.9%	9.5%
P.S. 094 David D. Porter / District 26	$44,173.63	$142.50	44.8%	36%	59.4%	3.2%	16.1%	3.2%	18.1%	14.5%	10.6%
P.S. 094 Kings College School / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	93.1%	92%	8.6%	15.6%	69.6%	2.5%	3.8%	23.3%	25.5%
P.S. 094 The Henry Longfellow / District 15	$57,581.24	$44.88	98.8%	94%	69.7%	0.2%	28.2%	0.3%	1.6%	8.3%	48.8%
P.S. 095 Eastwood / District 29	$3,250.00	$2.26	68.8%	74%	42.8%	9.9%	39.7%	6.2%	1.4%	12.0%	20.4%
P.S. 095 Sheila Mencher / District 10		$0.00	81.1%	86%	5.7%	16.4%	71.5%	2.0%	4.4%	21.5%	16.2%
P.S. 095 The Gravesend / District 21	$58,471.83	$59.54	70.3%	77%	36.7%	7.4%	33.1%	0.5%	22.3%	17.4%	13.6%
P.S. 096 / District 27	$4,487.89	$14.29	82.8%	70%	44.3%	19.1%	15.9%	16.2%	4.5%	11.8%	13.7%
P.S. 096 Joseph Lanzetta / District 4	$0.00	$0.00	93.7%	95%	2.0%	23.6%	69.5%	2.3%	2.5%	31.2%	21.1%
P.S. 096 Richard Rodgers / District 11	$11,662.15	$13.00	77.7%	83%	3.9%	19.4%	64.7%	1.3%	10.7%	20.4%	8.0%
P.S. 097 Bronx / District 11	$15,434.26	$25.43	77.4%	65%	17.6%	29.2%	37.6%	1.6%	14.0%	20.6%	8.1%
P.S. 097 Forest Park / District 27	$10,235.93	$14.34	83.2%	71%	18.1%	2.0%	72.0%	1.7%	6.3%	15.8%	23.4%
P.S. 098 Shorac Kappock / District 6	$0.00	$0.00	87.6%	85%	0.0%	1.0%	94.0%	0.7%	4.3%	17.7%	33.0%
P.S. 098 The Douglaston School / District 26	$92,419.80	$328.90	20.3%	20%	28.1%	4.6%	14.6%	6.0%	46.6%	18.5%	2.5%
P.S. 099 Isaac Asimov / District 21	$27,785.29	$32.27	70.7%	78%	43.1%	6.3%	17.2%	0.6%	32.9%	12.9%	26.2%
P.S. 099 Kew Gardens / District 28	$317,388.00	$406.39	61.6%	55%	23.6%	5.8%	38.7%	5.1%	26.9%	20.6%	12.4%
P.S. 100 Glen Morris / District 27	$52,191.41	$54.14	58.9%	64%	31.7%	6.3%	20.6%	37.4%	3.8%	17.6%	8.3%
P.S. 100 Isaac Clason / District 8	$31,766.08	$56.83	83.7%	92%	0.7%	26.3%	68.9%	2.7%	1.4%	29.2%	8.1%
P.S. 100 The Coney Island School / District 21	$36,536.17	$44.45	48.7%	46%	3.8%	2.9%	5.6%	1.2%	86.5%	16.7%	20.1%
P.S. 101 School in the Gardens / District 28	$717,032.95	$1,067.01	14.4%	13%	29.6%	3.0%	17.7%	8.3%	41.4%	14.3%	4.0%
P.S. 101 The Verrazano / District 21	$60,156.78	$68.59	60.7%	65%	51.7%	1.3%	16.4%	0.9%	29.8%	24.6%	21.4%
P.S. 102 Bayview / District 24	$49,882.27	$38.28	83.5%	67%	60.8%	3.1%	31.8%	1.3%	3.0%	13.2%	13.3%
P.S. 102 Jacques Cartier / District 4		$0.00	97.0%	82%	9.4%	30.6%	49.1%	5.7%	5.3%	29.4%	10.2%
P.S. 102 The Bayview / District 20	$125,860.12	$88.38	61.9%	58%	15.9%	1.1%	27.1%	2.9%	52.9%	19.2%	13.6%
P.S. 103 Hector Fontanez / District 11		$0.00	88.4%	88%	2.7%	46.4%	44.3%	3.3%	3.2%	23.4%	18.0%
P.S. 104 The Bays Water / District 27	$7,589.82	$11.97	77.6%	84%	3.0%	40.4%	50.6%	1.7%	4.3%	20.2%	12.6%
P.S. 105 Sen Abraham Bernstein / District 11	$29,070.63	$28.28	91.6%	85%	9.8%	10.4%	63.4%	1.8%	14.6%	19.0%	26.5%
P.S. 105 The Bay School / District 27	$2,389.00	$2.87	88.3%	93%	3.1%	60.1%	34.3%	1.6%	1.0%	30.2%	4.9%
P.S. 105 The Blythebourne / District 20	$46,322.50	$32.76	85.1%	90%	91.9%	0.4%	4.7%	0.1%	3.0%	6.8%	44.5%
P.S. 106 Edward Everett Hale / District 32	$6,517.00	$16.33	95.0%	90%	1.0%	10.5%	87.2%	0.5%	0.8%	28.1%	28.6%
P.S. 106 Parkchester / District 11	$6,455.41	$5.84	75.4%	78%	36.9%	24.1%	33.4%	2.1%	3.5%	19.9%	16.6%
P.S. 107 / District 8	$5,753.97	$10.41	98.4%	96%	0.4%	30.9%	66.7%	0.5%	1.4%	34.9%	11.2%
P.S. 107 John W. Kimball / District 15	$416,712.41	$756.28	9.1%	9%	9.1%	4.2%	10.9%	2.4%	73.5%	14.9%	2.7%
P.S. 107 Thomas A Dooley / District 25		$0.00	74.7%	58%	53.6%	1.7%	33.5%	1.1%	10.1%	14.8%	23.9%
P.S. 108 Assemblyman Angelo Del Toro Educational C / District 4	$8,017.65	$17.06	86.4%	92%	3.8%	33.2%	58.3%	1.3%	3.4%	31.3%	6.8%
P.S. 108 Captain Vincent G. Fowler / District 27	$30,341.80	$21.49	81.8%	63%	30.9%	5.7%	57.1%	0.5%	5.8%	15.9%	9.6%
P.S. 108 Philip J. Abinanti / District 11	$71,836.98	$122.17	77.6%	58%	13.3%	4.6%	41.2%	1.9%	39.1%	15.0%	13.1%
P.S. 108 Sal Abbracciamento / District 19	$33,439.90	$35.80	79.3%	83%	5.9%	9.4%	81.0%	2.8%	0.9%	23.2%	10.5%
P.S. 109 / District 22	$22,754.00	$39.10	84.0%	71%	1.9%	78.5%	15.3%	1.7%	2.6%	27.3%	5.3%
P.S. 109 Sedgwick / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	90.2%	91%	0.0%	19.1%	80.0%	0.3%	0.5%	20.9%	23.1%
P.S. 11 Thomas Dongan School / District 31	$13,222.97	$42.79	78.0%	68%	9.7%	17.2%	39.8%	1.6%	31.7%	23.0%	12.6%
P.S. 110 / District 24	$3,561.00	$3.98	91.5%	88%	7.6%	0.3%	91.4%	0.2%	0.4%	19.2%	41.7%
P.S. 110 Florence Nightingale / District 1	$4,457,595.00	$11,982.78	56.5%	59%	15.9%	9.9%	45.2%	3.2%	25.8%	12.4%	2.2%
P.S. 110 The Monitor / District 14		$0.00	23.7%	30%	7.0%	1.4%	18.1%	2.7%	70.7%	8.1%	7.0%
P.S. 110 Theodore Schoenfeld / District 9	$494.00	$1.21	97.5%	95%	0.2%	35.3%	55.9%	0.7%	7.8%	22.1%	17.4%
P.S. 111 Adolph S. Ochs / District 2	$110,645.79	$267.91	56.4%	58%	15.7%	13.6%	47.0%	4.1%	19.6%	21.8%	9.9%
P.S. 111 Jacob Blackwell / District 30	$0.00	$0.00	90.9%	95%	4.1%	48.1%	42.8%	2.4%	2.7%	30.1%	10.6%
P.S. 111 Seton Falls / District 11	$2,999.50	$4.66	88.5%	85%	1.4%	60.1%	35.7%	1.1%	1.7%	27.6%	5.6%
P.S. 112 Bronxwood / District 11		$0.00	87.9%	91%	0.0%	51.9%	45.9%	0.0%	2.2%	22.2%	5.1%
P.S. 112 Dutch Kills / District 30	$8,665.10	$19.26	81.3%	87%	33.1%	22.2%	34.9%	1.8%	8.0%	12.7%	13.8%
P.S. 112 Jose Celso Barbosa / District 4	$2,959.91	$9.28	77.4%	85%	2.5%	23.8%	66.5%	1.3%	6.0%	36.7%	19.7%
P.S. 112 Lefferts Park / District 20	$26,538.50	$38.74	67.9%	73%	37.1%	0.4%	36.6%	0.3%	25.5%	18.1%	22.3%
P.S. 114 Ryder Elementary / District 18	$1,285.13	$2.50	76.3%	79%	2.3%	78.6%	13.4%	1.0%	4.7%	22.9%	13.6%
P.S. 115 Alexander Humboldt / District 6	$1,566.00	$3.46	96.2%	91%	1.3%	0.7%	94.2%	0.4%	3.3%	19.5%	27.0%
P.S. 115 Daniel Mucatel School / District 18	$40,106.83	$44.46	61.4%	64%	3.1%	81.5%	8.4%	1.6%	5.4%	17.7%	8.0%
P.S. 116 Elizabeth L Farrell / District 32		$0.00	89.2%	92%	1.7%	3.7%	93.5%	0.6%	0.6%	23.9%	28.7%
P.S. 116 Mary Lindley Murray / District 2		$0.00	32.3%	34%	22.2%	8.9%	19.6%	6.5%	42.7%	17.1%	5.0%
P.S. 117 J. Keld / Briarwood School / District 28		$0.00	68.1%	65%	34.2%	9.5%	35.9%	4.0%	16.3%	17.8%	13.3%
P.S. 118 Lorraine Hansberry / District 29	$182.00	$0.40	70.1%	71%	5.1%	72.9%	17.1%	2.7%	2.2%	19.7%	8.2%
P.S. 119 Amersfort / District 22	$4,279.35	$9.57	70.9%	71%	18.6%	58.6%	15.2%	3.8%	3.8%	15.7%	7.6%
P.S. 120 Carlos Tapia / District 14		$0.00	87.4%	91%	1.3%	19.4%	73.8%	1.0%	4.5%	21.0%	16.5%
P.S. 120 Queens / District 25	$21,919.75	$22.46	71.0%	75%	83.5%	0.4%	14.4%	0.7%	0.9%	12.2%	38.5%
P.S. 121 Nelson A. Rockefeller / District 21	$30,053.12	$89.18	65.3%	73%	18.7%	3.6%	42.4%	1.8%	33.5%	26.4%	22.3%
P.S. 121 Queens / District 28	$12,809.74	$14.52	78.3%	60%	54.0%	16.4%	12.7%	15.1%	1.8%	12.2%	4.2%
P.S. 121 Throop / District 11	$10,484.00	$12.44	70.0%	74%	8.8%	53.9%	31.0%	0.9%	5.5%	18.0%	4.6%
P.S. 122 Mamie Fay / District 30	$73,010.40	$53.45	47.7%	47%	26.4%	3.8%	19.3%	4.8%	45.8%	8.3%	7.4%
P.S. 123 / District 27	$1,852.84	$2.77	82.9%	66%	12.0%	56.1%	18.9%	10.3%	2.7%	18.7%	6.9%
P.S. 123 Mahalia Jackson / District 5	$13,331.60	$28.30	94.9%	93%	2.1%	50.7%	41.2%	2.3%	3.6%	24.4%	16.3%
P.S. 123 Suydam / District 32	$12,315.52	$20.98	92.7%	86%	5.8%	2.0%	89.4%	0.9%	1.9%	16.0%	34.1%
P.S. 124 Osmond A Church / District 27	$25,885.91	$22.83	58.7%	65%	46.7%	19.5%	22.1%	8.3%	3.4%	12.7%	7.2%
P.S. 124 Silas B. Dutcher / District 15	$70,215.00	$230.21	61.6%	66%	21.0%	2.6%	53.4%	4.3%	18.7%	19.7%	16.7%
P.S. 124 Yung Wing / District 2	$32,767.53	$48.54	52.4%	60%	93.5%	0.0%	2.1%	3.0%	1.5%	12.7%	25.5%
P.S. 125 Ralph Bunche / District 5	$33,136.66	$116.68	66.9%	66%	4.2%	38.0%	36.6%	4.6%	16.5%	17.6%	2.1%
P.S. 126 Dr Marjorie H Dunbar / District 9		$0.00	94.0%	93%	0.7%	23.5%	74.3%	0.2%	1.4%	16.9%	26.8%
P.S. 126 Jacob August Riis / District 2	$68,143.60	$95.71	76.4%	75%	64.3%	8.7%	17.1%	3.2%	6.6%	20.8%	14.7%
P.S. 127 Aerospace Science Magnet School / District 30		$0.00	85.4%	76%	13.2%	9.6%	74.8%	0.6%	1.8%	17.1%	28.2%
P.S. 127 Mckinley Park / District 20	$36,186.00	$71.23	81.1%	65%	40.7%	0.8%	23.2%	1.2%	34.1%	20.9%	23.8%
P.S. 128 Audubon / District 6	$10,831.65	$18.14	90.6%	84%	1.0%	3.9%	91.8%	0.8%	2.5%	20.6%	21.9%
P.S. 128 Bensonhurst / District 21	$4,247.41	$9.13	84.3%	74%	26.9%	1.1%	21.3%	0.9%	49.9%	16.8%	45.8%
P.S. 128 The Lorraine Tuzzo, Juniper Valley Elemen / District 24	$96,534.54	$101.40	26.7%	23%	3.9%	0.6%	19.7%	0.6%	75.1%	13.6%	3.4%
P.S. 129 John H. Finley / District 5	$1,377.96	$3.39	91.1%	90%	2.0%	48.5%	44.3%	3.0%	2.2%	26.6%	7.1%
P.S. 129 Patricia Larkin / District 25	$37,020.16	$34.31	75.7%	62%	34.3%	1.6%	51.3%	1.2%	11.6%	14.1%	21.9%
P.S. 130 / District 25	$42,091.82	$103.42	43.0%	39%	53.6%	3.2%	19.7%	2.7%	20.9%	17.9%	13.3%
P.S. 130 Abram Stevens Hewitt / District 8	$18,030.09	$41.64	88.2%	93%	0.9%	23.3%	73.0%	0.5%	2.3%	28.4%	18.9%
P.S. 130 Hernando De Soto / District 2	$1,230,293.00	$1,433.91	44.9%	55%	87.3%	0.8%	5.6%	3.5%	2.8%	16.2%	16.0%
P.S. 130 The Parkside / District 15	$191,990.56	$231.04	36.1%	43%	17.6%	5.5%	21.8%	5.2%	49.9%	19.5%	7.6%
P.S. 131 Abigail Adams / District 29	$13,364.19	$17.87	90.1%	67%	76.6%	5.5%	10.3%	2.4%	5.2%	11.2%	16.0%
P.S. 131 Brooklyn / District 15	$25,962.45	$27.68	84.8%	90%	35.0%	1.1%	54.7%	0.9%	8.4%	18.9%	30.9%
P.S. 132 Garret A. Morgan / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	90.5%	96%	0.3%	47.0%	51.1%	0.5%	1.1%	26.8%	14.1%
P.S. 132 Juan Pablo Duarte / District 6		$0.00	88.3%	92%	0.0%	2.0%	96.4%	0.0%	1.6%	23.5%	45.7%
P.S. 132 Ralph Bunche / District 29	$1,080.63	$2.99	76.2%	62%	1.1%	89.8%	7.5%	1.1%	0.6%	19.9%	3.9%
P.S. 132 The Conselyea School / District 14	$36,799.30	$48.74	38.3%	50%	6.5%	13.9%	32.3%	3.0%	44.2%	13.0%	6.6%
P.S. 133 Fred R Moore / District 5	$1,084.33	$4.82	93.3%	93%	3.6%	44.4%	45.3%	2.7%	4.0%	42.2%	9.8%
P.S. 133 Queens / District 26	$24,367.26	$41.72	57.5%	41%	63.9%	6.2%	16.8%	3.6%	9.6%	15.6%	7.2%
P.S. 133 William A. Butler / District 13	$760,213.52	$1,012.27	33.4%	43%	3.6%	24.6%	33.0%	8.1%	30.6%	16.5%	4.8%
P.S. 134 George F. Bristow / District 12	$0.00	$0.00	96.8%	94%	1.4%	39.7%	53.7%	2.7%	2.4%	17.8%	16.4%
P.S. 134 Henrietta Szold / District 1	$21,957.09	$78.14	92.2%	91%	9.6%	26.0%	60.1%	1.1%	3.2%	41.3%	8.5%
P.S. 134 Hollis / District 29		$0.00	70.2%	70%	5.7%	74.7%	15.7%	2.7%	1.2%	17.2%	12.0%
P.S. 135 Sheldon A. Brookner / District 18		$0.00	85.0%	78%	1.2%	80.4%	8.0%	1.6%	8.9%	13.8%	8.2%
P.S. 136 Roy Wilkins / District 29	$0.00	$0.00	71.1%	66%	2.6%	85.7%	9.5%	0.7%	1.5%	14.1%	5.3%
P.S. 138 / District 75		$0.00	90.0%	93%	3.6%	28.9%	60.4%	0.7%	6.5%	100.0%	30.3%
P.S. 138 Brooklyn / District 17		$0.00	84.8%	80%	1.7%	80.1%	11.3%	0.9%	5.9%	21.5%	8.2%
P.S. 138 Samuel Randall / District 8		$0.00	86.2%	86%	2.9%	27.4%	66.1%	3.0%	0.6%	20.9%	7.6%
P.S. 139 Alexine A. Fenty / District 22	$60,829.64	$64.10	78.8%	72%	19.4%	24.1%	41.8%	3.6%	11.1%	17.2%	15.0%
P.S. 139 Rego Park / District 28	$105,552.11	$144.20	60.0%	55%	28.0%	2.5%	26.4%	3.4%	39.8%	16.9%	21.9%
P.S. 140 Edward K Ellington / District 28		$0.00	89.9%	76%	7.6%	65.3%	21.0%	3.4%	2.7%	18.1%	6.5%
P.S. 140 Nathan Straus / District 1	$10,015.90	$26.02	83.4%	89%	4.4%	14.0%	79.2%	0.0%	2.3%	35.6%	11.2%
P.S. 142 Amalia Castro / District 1	$1,594.00	$4.52	95.8%	90%	3.7%	15.6%	77.3%	2.0%	1.4%	36.3%	7.4%
P.S. 143 Louis Armstrong / District 24	$48,217.65	$35.82	94.2%	89%	3.9%	0.9%	93.7%	0.5%	1.0%	22.9%	57.7%
P.S. 144 Col Jeromus Remsen / District 28	$158,159.04	$174.76	21.4%	20%	34.8%	1.2%	17.9%	8.0%	38.1%	13.1%	4.9%
P.S. 145 Andrew Jackson / District 32	$1,011.00	$1.96	87.4%	91%	0.2%	5.4%	92.6%	0.4%	1.4%	15.7%	16.9%
P.S. 145, The Bloomingdale School / District 3	$0.00	$0.00	76.2%	80%	1.0%	24.8%	57.2%	1.8%	15.3%	27.3%	11.2%
P.S. 146 Ann M. Short / District 4	$17,903.72	$46.75	97.4%	94%	4.7%	22.5%	70.0%	0.5%	2.3%	39.4%	17.5%
P.S. 146 Edward Collins / District 8	$5,955.12	$15.75	96.8%	93%	0.3%	38.1%	58.7%	1.9%	1.1%	20.6%	11.1%
P.S. 146 Howard Beach / District 27	$98,519.00	$158.14	46.5%	28%	5.3%	1.4%	38.7%	1.6%	53.0%	21.8%	2.1%
P.S. 147 Isaac Remsen / District 14	$5,862,949.00	$16,285.97	70.6%	72%	5.3%	18.1%	56.9%	6.7%	13.1%	17.5%	12.5%
P.S. 148 Queens / District 30	$45,720.53	$56.87	74.6%	79%	14.7%	0.9%	81.5%	0.2%	2.7%	18.3%	30.5%
P.S. 149 Christa Mcauliffe / District 30	$29,283.02	$29.91	74.9%	78%	9.7%	1.2%	85.7%	0.7%	2.7%	19.0%	38.2%
P.S. 149 Danny Kaye / District 19	$1,396.23	$2.19	93.6%	90%	3.3%	60.0%	34.3%	0.9%	1.4%	20.2%	6.9%
P.S. 149 Sojourner Truth / District 3	$0.00	$0.00	98.3%	93%	3.8%	59.1%	30.2%	2.1%	4.7%	23.8%	17.0%
P.S. 150 / District 2	$204,576.00	$1,082.41	17.5%	14%	20.6%	0.5%	9.5%	9.0%	60.3%	11.1%	2.1%
P.S. 150 Charles James Fox / District 12	$1,917.09	$2.45	93.1%	93%	0.9%	20.6%	75.8%	0.4%	2.3%	22.4%	23.6%
P.S. 150 Christopher / District 23		$0.00	96.3%	98%	1.0%	62.3%	31.4%	3.7%	1.6%	29.3%	5.8%
P.S. 150 Queens / District 30	$6,050.00	$5.89	51.4%	60%	25.8%	1.1%	46.9%	4.7%	21.6%	12.8%	16.0%
P.S. 151 Lyndon B. Johnson / District 32	$9,596.11	$32.64	92.5%	91%	0.7%	10.9%	83.0%	0.7%	4.8%	16.3%	29.6%
P.S. 151 Mary D. Carter / District 30	$7,086.18	$19.74	91.9%	85%	16.2%	26.5%	51.0%	1.7%	4.7%	26.7%	9.5%
P.S. 152 Dyckman Valley / District 6		$0.00	91.7%	91%	0.2%	2.3%	95.0%	1.1%	1.4%	18.5%	26.8%
P.S. 152 Evergreen / District 8	$36,556.86	$44.69	89.9%	95%	1.6%	16.4%	80.0%	1.2%	0.9%	24.9%	27.5%
P.S. 152 Gwendoline N. Alleyne School / District 30	$20,333.21	$20.03	74.1%	79%	52.9%	0.4%	41.0%	1.9%	3.8%	12.5%	24.9%
P.S. 153 Adam Clayton Powell / District 6	$6,633.55	$12.28	89.6%	89%	2.2%	17.0%	75.4%	1.1%	4.3%	15.6%	30.4%
P.S. 153 Helen Keller / District 11	$42,884.00	$68.83	61.8%	51%	13.6%	57.5%	23.8%	1.4%	3.7%	11.7%	1.6%
P.S. 153 Homecrest / District 21	$7,526.22	$13.76	76.6%	80%	27.4%	1.3%	36.0%	4.4%	30.9%	21.8%	24.5%
P.S. 153 Maspeth Elem / District 24	$57,373.61	$50.95	64.3%	54%	10.6%	0.8%	45.3%	1.5%	41.8%	18.0%	9.9%
P.S. 154 Harriet Tubman / District 5	$2,327.34	$8.11	95.8%	92%	6.3%	54.4%	32.8%	1.4%	5.2%	25.1%	16.4%
P.S. 154 Jonathan D. Hyatt / District 7	$11,098.17	$33.33	97.3%	95%	0.6%	41.1%	55.9%	1.5%	0.9%	21.3%	8.7%
P.S. 154 Queens / District 25	$7,006.09	$10.55	78.3%	67%	50.0%	9.3%	25.9%	3.3%	11.4%	18.2%	15.8%
P.S. 155 / District 27	$28,553.11	$53.37	88.4%	62%	29.7%	21.7%	21.1%	26.2%	1.3%	14.6%	5.4%
P.S. 155 William Paca / District 4		$0.00	96.8%	95%	0.8%	9.7%	85.5%	3.6%	0.4%	34.3%	38.3%
P.S. 156 Laurelton / District 29	$450.00	$1.96	65.2%	59%	3.0%	87.4%	6.5%	1.7%	1.3%	14.8%	6.1%
P.S. 156 Waverly / District 23	$6,719.88	$10.47	90.3%	89%	1.1%	79.0%	18.2%	1.2%	0.5%	21.5%	1.7%
P.S. 157 Grove Hill / District 7	$10,906.99	$17.18	95.0%	90%	0.2%	27.7%	65.5%	6.3%	0.3%	20.5%	7.9%
P.S. 158 Bayard Taylor / District 2	$1,466,193.00	$1,841.95	11.7%	11%	12.9%	2.0%	8.0%	6.5%	70.5%	14.7%	5.4%
P.S. 158 Warwick / District 19	$33,803.11	$65.38	89.6%	87%	1.2%	47.4%	48.7%	1.4%	1.4%	19.9%	8.1%
P.S. 159 / District 26	$75,216.21	$113.62	46.7%	39%	61.8%	0.9%	14.2%	1.8%	21.3%	14.5%	17.7%
P.S. 159 Isaac Pitkin / District 19	$2.00	$0.00	83.6%	88%	40.3%	28.2%	27.5%	2.9%	1.1%	17.5%	19.4%
P.S. 159 Luis Munoz Marin Biling / District 10	$3,364.00	$17.34	86.6%	93%	0.0%	12.4%	85.1%	1.0%	1.5%	13.9%	30.9%
P.S. 160 Walt Disney / District 11		$0.00	70.0%	53%	1.9%	61.5%	31.0%	4.0%	1.6%	25.5%	4.0%
P.S. 160 Walter Francis Bishop / District 28	$0.00	$0.00	79.1%	74%	16.2%	45.9%	21.5%	14.9%	1.4%	18.5%	10.3%
P.S. 160 William T. Sampson / District 20	$58,981.70	$46.22	82.4%	90%	88.3%	0.4%	7.1%	0.2%	3.9%	13.0%	61.1%
P.S. 161 Arthur Ashe School / District 28	$10,798.93	$17.01	84.6%	70%	69.8%	5.8%	12.0%	9.8%	2.7%	12.3%	9.4%
P.S. 161 Juan Ponce De Leon School / District 7	$18,386.60	$37.91	97.5%	94%	0.4%	20.0%	76.5%	1.2%	1.9%	26.0%	13.8%
P.S. 161 Pedro Albizu Campos / District 5	$17,299.00	$21.46	94.3%	93%	1.7%	20.3%	74.4%	0.9%	2.6%	26.4%	24.2%
P.S. 161 The Crown / District 17		$0.00	91.4%	83%	4.9%	80.5%	11.6%	1.9%	1.1%	24.1%	7.6%
P.S. 162 John Golden / District 26	$85,201.00	$128.90	60.2%	44%	72.0%	1.7%	10.7%	2.6%	13.0%	14.5%	19.8%
P.S. 163 Alfred E. Smith / District 3	$110,621.73	$200.77	47.9%	48%	6.7%	18.7%	41.2%	5.8%	27.6%	18.7%	5.4%
P.S. 163 Arthur A. Schomburg / District 9	$11,155.77	$23.64	98.3%	95%	0.8%	36.4%	60.8%	0.6%	1.3%	24.8%	36.7%
P.S. 163 Bath Beach / District 20	$35,406.99	$59.11	82.8%	73%	28.0%	1.8%	37.1%	0.5%	32.6%	18.7%	21.2%
P.S. 163 Flushing Heights / District 25	$46,324.90	$56.98	80.0%	67%	81.3%	1.0%	15.3%	1.4%	1.1%	13.5%	39.4%
P.S. 164 Caesar Rodney / District 20	$9,352.00	$13.71	81.2%	87%	43.4%	1.2%	41.1%	1.2%	13.2%	18.3%	12.8%
P.S. 164 Queens Valley / District 25	$20,590.80	$30.37	73.3%	56%	31.9%	4.9%	26.1%	1.5%	35.7%	17.1%	13.3%
P.S. 165 Edith K. Bergtraum / District 25	$1,315.00	$1.84	67.8%	61%	53.1%	11.8%	19.9%	2.0%	13.3%	24.4%	11.6%
P.S. 165 Ida Posner / District 23	$3,755.00	$12.95	83.4%	86%	0.0%	79.3%	15.5%	1.0%	4.1%	22.8%	1.0%
P.S. 165 Robert E. Simon / District 3	$42,911.79	$100.73	66.0%	65%	3.8%	13.6%	58.2%	1.4%	23.0%	17.1%	11.0%
P.S. 166 Henry Gradstein / District 30	$226,887.24	$226.89	66.8%	61%	23.4%	4.3%	42.8%	4.0%	25.5%	11.2%	14.5%
P.S. 166 The Richard Rodgers School of The Arts an / District 3		$0.00	14.9%	14%	12.4%	4.2%	16.8%	9.4%	57.2%	9.4%	2.4%
P.S. 168 / District 75		$0.00	90.4%	93%	4.0%	33.8%	58.7%	1.3%	2.3%	100.0%	22.8%
P.S. 169 Bay Terrace / District 25	$49,972.33	$115.14	34.6%	29%	34.6%	4.4%	26.0%	3.2%	31.8%	14.7%	7.1%
P.S. 169 Sunset Park / District 15	$1,931,034.00	$1,382.27	91.3%	92%	61.6%	1.0%	32.6%	0.9%	3.9%	17.5%	46.5%
P.S. 170 / District 9	$5,995.00	$25.40	85.2%	90%	1.7%	23.3%	72.9%	1.3%	0.8%	18.6%	27.5%
P.S. 171 Patrick Henry / District 4	$52,920.00	$68.46	70.4%	77%	8.8%	27.0%	57.3%	3.0%	3.9%	20.2%	2.7%
P.S. 171 Peter G. Van Alst / District 30		$0.00	92.3%	87%	19.8%	28.2%	44.1%	1.5%	6.5%	20.0%	19.8%
P.S. 172 Beacon School of Excellence / District 15		$0.00	84.4%	69%	7.8%	3.8%	73.2%	0.7%	14.5%	29.8%	24.6%
P.S. 173 / District 6	$8,332.42	$17.25	82.6%	78%	3.9%	2.9%	90.1%	0.4%	2.7%	17.4%	13.9%
P.S. 173 Fresh Meadows / District 26	$105,612.79	$109.56	54.8%	45%	59.1%	1.7%	11.5%	2.2%	25.5%	15.0%	11.0%
P.S. 174 William Sidney Mount / District 28	$97,437.28	$143.08	33.8%	33%	35.1%	2.8%	25.7%	5.3%	31.1%	9.5%	11.0%
P.S. 175 City Island / District 11	$29,955.33	$96.01	51.0%	38%	4.5%	9.0%	39.4%	2.9%	44.2%	19.2%	3.5%
P.S. 175 Henry H Garnet / District 5	$2,722.28	$7.85	92.2%	90%	4.9%	54.5%	35.7%	2.0%	2.9%	20.7%	12.1%
P.S. 175 The Lynn Gross Discovery School / District 28	$41,581.07	$51.15	56.0%	46%	22.3%	1.1%	13.3%	3.0%	60.4%	15.7%	9.0%
P.S. 176 Cambria Heights / District 29	$28,187.41	$37.24	65.0%	37%	3.4%	75.4%	4.9%	15.3%	0.9%	11.1%	0.8%
P.S. 176 Ovington / District 20	$147,417.58	$114.01	85.5%	78%	67.8%	0.5%	20.3%	0.9%	10.6%	11.3%	23.0%
P.S. 177 The Marlboro / District 21	$61,978.98	$62.92	73.5%	78%	31.0%	0.7%	30.4%	1.7%	36.2%	18.0%	32.5%
P.S. 178 - Dr. Selman Waksman / District 11		$0.00	76.8%	59%	3.4%	60.2%	29.0%	1.2%	6.1%	22.2%	4.6%
P.S. 178 Saint Clair Mckelway / District 23	$0.00	$0.00	84.6%	89%	2.7%	76.6%	14.8%	2.4%	3.6%	17.2%	5.9%
P.S. 179 / District 7	$500.00	$1.61	94.5%	93%	1.0%	15.1%	81.7%	1.3%	1.0%	20.9%	21.5%
P.S. 179 Kensington / District 20	$19,811.20	$24.25	81.6%	87%	55.0%	3.7%	24.4%	1.1%	15.9%	17.0%	41.0%
P.S. 180 Hugo Newman / District 3	$89,935.04	$175.65	69.7%	69%	2.9%	51.0%	28.1%	4.9%	13.1%	19.7%	7.6%
P.S. 181 Brookfield / District 29		$0.00	65.8%	61%	3.1%	73.0%	16.8%	5.9%	1.2%	25.5%	3.7%
P.S. 181 Brooklyn / District 17	$18,253.00	$28.34	76.2%	81%	1.6%	84.0%	9.8%	1.9%	2.8%	18.9%	14.0%
P.S. 182 / District 8	$39,655.20	$51.97	86.8%	83%	6.0%	22.3%	65.7%	1.0%	5.0%	18.7%	7.7%
P.S. 182 Samantha Smith / District 28	$4,028.78	$5.61	95.0%	81%	29.1%	11.7%	54.7%	2.9%	1.5%	17.4%	38.2%
P.S. 183 Dr. Richard R. Green / District 27	$5,951.00	$12.30	90.7%	88%	4.1%	59.5%	27.1%	3.7%	5.6%	33.7%	6.8%
P.S. 183 Robert L. Stevenson / District 2	$558,046.28	$1,007.30	11.9%	6%	15.9%	2.7%	8.5%	6.0%	67.0%	15.9%	6.1%
P.S. 184 Flushing Manor / District 25	$108,427.00	$209.32	46.9%	36%	45.0%	0.2%	13.5%	1.9%	39.4%	16.8%	11.6%
P.S. 184 Newport / District 23	$0.00	$0.00	97.9%	94%	0.2%	69.6%	27.6%	1.5%	1.1%	28.9%	3.8%
P.S. 184m Shuang Wen / District 1	$111,622.74	$164.64	67.7%	66%	69.0%	4.0%	13.1%	6.3%	7.5%	15.6%	14.6%
P.S. 185 Walter Kassenbrock / District 20	$211,787.00	$334.05	43.1%	41%	7.1%	1.1%	21.3%	3.0%	67.5%	16.9%	6.6%
P.S. 186 Castlewood / District 26	$48,556.68	$129.14	35.1%	33%	35.1%	13.3%	18.1%	3.5%	30.1%	29.8%	1.1%
P.S. 186 Dr. Irving A Gladstone / District 20	$82,314.35	$77.58	74.4%	74%	40.8%	0.2%	27.1%	1.1%	30.7%	17.2%	34.3%
P.S. 188 Kingsbury / District 26	$100,433.33	$139.49	25.6%	21%	59.9%	1.3%	6.5%	3.8%	28.6%	8.7%	2.6%
P.S. 188 Michael E. Berdy / District 21	$10,614.35	$27.22	88.2%	91%	4.4%	49.2%	35.1%	3.6%	7.7%	25.1%	7.2%
P.S. 188 The Island School / District 1	$3,485.38	$8.56	93.6%	96%	1.5%	32.9%	61.2%	0.7%	3.7%	33.9%	7.4%
P.S. 189 / District 6	$26,266.96	$35.35	92.7%	88%	0.5%	1.3%	94.8%	0.0%	3.4%	19.9%	24.5%
P.S. 189 The Bilingual Center / District 17		$0.00	90.0%	81%	2.4%	70.1%	24.6%	0.9%	2.0%	14.8%	17.6%
P.S. 190 Sheffield / District 19	$0.00	$0.00	94.9%	93%	0.6%	75.1%	20.9%	1.1%	2.3%	15.3%	3.4%
P.S. 191 Mayflower / District 26	$38,945.43	$101.69	64.8%	51%	72.6%	3.7%	13.8%	2.9%	7.0%	11.2%	13.3%
P.S. 191 Paul Robeson / District 17	$0.00	$0.00	96.3%	92%	3.0%	81.1%	11.0%	3.0%	1.8%	24.4%	6.1%
P.S. 192 - The Magnet School for Math and Science / District 20	$2,074.91	$3.23	79.9%	87%	16.8%	2.0%	46.9%	0.5%	33.8%	22.3%	27.4%
P.S. 192 Jacob H. Schiff / District 6	$0.00	$0.00	91.5%	85%	0.3%	9.5%	86.2%	0.3%	3.8%	20.8%	29.2%
P.S. 193 Alfred J. Kennedy / District 25	$131,236.20	$234.77	32.7%	25%	19.1%	0.9%	19.9%	1.6%	58.5%	15.2%	6.3%
P.S. 193 Gil Hodges / District 22	$24,341.69	$34.63	71.8%	64%	16.8%	41.7%	13.9%	7.5%	20.1%	20.6%	18.9%
P.S. 194 Countee Cullen / District 5	$391.25	$2.03	97.9%	95%	1.0%	56.5%	35.2%	4.1%	3.1%	29.5%	15.5%
P.S. 194 Raoul Wallenberg / District 22	$16,934.30	$30.40	88.2%	91%	11.7%	46.3%	19.9%	1.4%	20.6%	27.1%	12.9%
P.S. 195 / District 12	$8,059.00	$9.15	90.4%	95%	2.4%	13.4%	82.3%	1.7%	0.2%	21.5%	31.8%
P.S. 195 Manhattan Beach / District 22	$33,532.35	$69.28	29.5%	28%	2.7%	1.2%	1.7%	1.2%	93.2%	6.6%	16.3%
P.S. 195 William Haberle / District 29	$7,450.54	$14.03	83.1%	55%	2.1%	89.5%	7.3%	0.8%	0.4%	15.4%	2.6%
P.S. 196 / District 12	$1,267.55	$1.43	87.2%	94%	1.0%	14.0%	81.1%	2.5%	1.4%	20.8%	33.7%
P.S. 196 Grand Central Parkway / District 28	$2,275,423.19	$2,226.44	26.2%	21%	37.9%	2.1%	11.2%	6.8%	42.1%	12.7%	6.5%
P.S. 196 Ten Eyck / District 14		$0.00	86.2%	84%	0.6%	20.5%	74.9%	0.9%	3.1%	22.6%	9.8%
P.S. 197 - The Kings Highway Academy / District 22	$7,510.40	$9.77	60.9%	65%	17.3%	9.0%	11.1%	2.0%	60.7%	15.7%	29.0%
P.S. 197 John B. Russwurm / District 5	$1,192.00	$3.91	93.8%	93%	0.7%	59.7%	37.4%	0.3%	2.0%	27.2%	6.2%
P.S. 197 The Ocean School / District 27	$10,650.00	$20.36	95.4%	82%	1.7%	41.5%	51.2%	2.1%	3.4%	21.4%	18.5%
P.S. 198 Brooklyn / District 22		$0.00	80.9%	75%	2.9%	82.8%	10.3%	2.5%	1.5%	20.6%	1.5%
P.S. 198 Isador E. Ida Straus / District 2	$48,001.00	$98.36	40.4%	36%	22.7%	10.5%	21.3%	4.3%	41.2%	21.3%	5.9%
P.S. 199 Frederick Wachtel / District 21	$13,209.53	$23.30	83.4%	80%	25.4%	6.2%	21.5%	1.4%	45.5%	22.9%	28.6%
P.S. 199 Jessie Isador Straus / District 3	$705,415.81	$858.17	13.7%	12%	16.1%	4.5%	9.2%	7.4%	62.8%	17.2%	2.7%
P.S. 199 Maurice A. Fitzgerald / District 24	$27,709.26	$34.59	67.7%	73%	32.2%	2.0%	57.3%	2.0%	6.5%	17.7%	31.8%
P.S. 199X - The Shakespeare School / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	98.6%	93%	1.8%	24.8%	67.6%	3.6%	2.1%	19.8%	27.2%
P.S. 200 Benson School / District 20	$109,307.40	$80.91	81.1%	75%	32.9%	1.1%	20.7%	1.3%	44.0%	13.5%	27.3%
P.S. 200- The James Mccune Smith School / District 5	$4,271.00	$11.12	89.3%	91%	0.5%	63.8%	30.7%	2.9%	2.1%	27.6%	9.1%
P.S. 201 The Discovery School for Inquiry and Rese / District 25	$17,721.67	$37.39	71.3%	75%	16.5%	38.4%	39.7%	2.7%	2.7%	23.6%	8.6%
P.S. 202 Ernest S. Jenkyns / District 19	$3,349.95	$9.85	95.6%	93%	3.5%	57.1%	35.0%	1.5%	2.9%	24.4%	11.5%
P.S. 203 Floyd Bennett School / District 22	$32,280.56	$47.82	65.8%	65%	8.7%	73.5%	10.8%	3.3%	3.7%	21.9%	8.9%
P.S. 203 Oakland Gardens / District 26	$123,362.91	$134.97	42.1%	34%	74.7%	1.6%	10.0%	2.2%	11.5%	8.6%	14.8%
P.S. 204 Morris Heights / District 9	$9,354.17	$14.80	84.0%	91%	1.3%	27.5%	70.1%	0.5%	0.6%	21.4%	12.3%
P.S. 204 Vince Lombardi / District 20	$126,311.92	$113.69	72.0%	62%	53.4%	0.4%	18.9%	0.7%	26.6%	16.0%	13.8%
P.S. 205 Alexander Graham Bell / District 26	$55,793.77	$176.56	26.9%	22%	43.7%	3.5%	21.2%	5.7%	25.9%	16.5%	5.4%
P.S. 205 Clarion / District 20	$84,091.14	$64.49	64.6%	71%	58.3%	1.2%	21.1%	0.5%	18.9%	18.9%	23.5%
P.S. 205 Fiorello LaGuardia / District 10	$5,720.78	$6.12	89.1%	94%	1.9%	12.2%	79.7%	0.7%	5.5%	21.4%	24.5%
P.S. 206 Jose Celso Barbosa / District 4	$28,582.73	$59.92	79.7%	87%	1.9%	24.5%	67.3%	2.1%	4.2%	43.6%	14.9%
P.S. 206 Joseph F Lamb / District 22	$54,541.23	$35.93	69.4%	60%	46.8%	1.6%	10.1%	1.6%	39.8%	11.7%	23.8%
P.S. 206 The Horace Harding School / District 28	$6,216.92	$10.17	75.1%	66%	24.4%	13.1%	30.0%	3.6%	29.0%	12.3%	26.7%
P.S. 207 / District 10		$0.00	90.5%	88%	6.0%	9.5%	77.1%	0.9%	6.5%	21.7%	26.5%
P.S. 207 Elizabeth G. Leary / District 22	$109,234.43	$94.25	47.7%	38%	14.4%	33.8%	15.8%	2.6%	33.4%	18.3%	4.3%
P.S. 207 Rockwood Park / District 27	$212,555.28	$308.05	29.4%	15%	4.3%	1.6%	19.4%	1.0%	73.6%	19.9%	0.9%
P.S. 208 Elsa Ebeling / District 18	$15,373.86	$42.82	87.2%	73%	1.9%	90.0%	5.6%	0.8%	1.7%	26.5%	3.1%
P.S. 209 / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	93.8%	91%	0.4%	19.2%	79.7%	0.4%	0.4%	27.2%	22.1%
P.S. 209 Clearview Gardens / District 25		$0.00	38.6%	29%	48.7%	0.7%	17.4%	1.8%	31.4%	13.8%	7.7%
P.S. 209 Margaret Mead / District 21	$25,905.09	$36.69	73.1%	68%	30.7%	3.0%	25.1%	1.8%	39.4%	26.6%	20.5%
P.S. 21 Margaret Emery-Elm Park / District 31	$9,941.87	$28.73	83.8%	87%	1.4%	29.8%	57.2%	2.0%	9.5%	37.6%	14.5%
P.S. 211 / District 12	$2,176.00	$3.81	91.4%	94%	0.2%	13.0%	85.5%	0.7%	0.7%	21.5%	18.7%
P.S. 212 / District 12	$0.00	$0.00	98.3%	96%	0.0%	28.3%	68.9%	1.1%	1.7%	12.2%	26.7%
P.S. 212 / District 30	$23,673.05	$29.85	55.6%	64%	27.1%	0.6%	59.0%	2.6%	10.6%	14.8%	15.0%
P.S. 212 Lady Deborah Moody / District 21	$87,910.61	$122.10	84.4%	82%	34.0%	11.9%	36.7%	1.1%	16.2%	24.9%	21.1%
P.S. 212 Midtown West / District 2	$214,533.00	$591.00	20.4%	25%	16.5%	6.9%	23.4%	6.9%	46.3%	11.0%	2.2%
P.S. 213 New Lots / District 19		$0.00	91.6%	91%	4.6%	66.9%	20.5%	2.7%	5.3%	17.9%	8.4%
P.S. 213 The Carl Ullman School / District 26	$53,213.40	$116.70	55.0%	48%	65.6%	7.0%	14.5%	1.5%	11.4%	12.7%	13.6%
P.S. 214 / District 12	$0.00	$0.00	85.4%	91%	2.6%	24.4%	70.0%	1.6%	1.3%	19.9%	14.3%
P.S. 214 Cadwallader Colden / District 25	$15,029.40	$33.93	77.0%	70%	64.8%	7.0%	24.2%	2.3%	1.8%	13.1%	19.6%
P.S. 214 Michael Friedsam / District 19	$19,767.34	$22.59	79.3%	86%	51.4%	10.5%	32.6%	1.5%	4.0%	15.0%	13.7%
P.S. 215 Morris H. Weiss / District 21	$73,097.90	$87.23	69.5%	66%	25.2%	1.4%	25.7%	1.3%	46.4%	14.8%	22.0%
P.S. 216 Arturo Toscanini / District 21	$45,393.46	$60.93	73.8%	69%	29.0%	3.1%	17.6%	1.6%	48.7%	15.3%	23.9%
P.S. 217 Colonel David Marcus School / District 22	$58,699.16	$51.45	76.2%	79%	53.5%	8.6%	16.4%	3.2%	18.2%	13.1%	25.2%
P.S. 219 Kennedy-King / District 18	$22,805.66	$53.41	78.7%	85%	1.4%	84.3%	10.8%	1.4%	2.1%	24.6%	11.5%
P.S. 219 Paul Klapper / District 25	$22,605.07	$36.17	71.4%	58%	49.4%	6.9%	29.3%	1.0%	13.4%	30.4%	15.7%
P.S. 220 Edward Mandel / District 28	$15,886.83	$22.60	70.1%	63%	32.3%	5.7%	23.3%	3.4%	35.3%	10.7%	22.2%
P.S. 221 THE NORTH HILLS SCHOOL / District 26	$100,143.53	$157.71	37.3%	26%	63.3%	2.5%	14.8%	1.7%	17.6%	12.6%	6.5%
P.S. 221 Toussaint L'Ouverture / District 17	$0.00	$0.00	81.7%	84%	0.0%	86.3%	11.8%	0.0%	1.9%	18.3%	3.8%
P.S. 222 Katherine R. Snyder / District 22	$144,317.26	$162.52	51.9%	40%	21.5%	13.7%	17.9%	2.9%	43.9%	22.4%	10.5%
P.S. 223 Lyndon B. Johnson / District 27	$7,100.73	$12.33	89.2%	73%	13.2%	55.2%	18.9%	11.6%	1.0%	19.4%	5.2%
P.S. 224 Hale A. Woodruff / District 19	$690.70	$1.75	93.9%	91%	1.0%	62.5%	33.4%	1.5%	1.5%	23.5%	7.8%
P.S. 226 / District 10	$6,476.42	$14.39	95.8%	93%	0.4%	21.6%	77.3%	0.7%	0.0%	17.3%	26.2%
P.S. 226 Alfred De B. Mason / District 21	$49,359.14	$48.30	80.9%	76%	30.6%	1.5%	29.9%	1.3%	36.7%	16.6%	26.2%
P.S. 229 Dyker / District 20	$160,931.29	$128.54	57.2%	48%	60.5%	1.9%	12.1%	1.1%	24.3%	14.7%	11.9%
P.S. 229 Emanuel Kaplan / District 24	$75,858.81	$53.38	69.7%	54%	36.6%	2.0%	41.0%	0.6%	19.7%	19.5%	7.7%
P.S. 230 Doris L. Cohen / District 15	$138,371.44	$124.55	72.0%	76%	46.4%	1.8%	33.1%	2.1%	16.7%	17.3%	24.8%
P.S. 232 Lindenwood / District 27	$79,122.61	$83.37	56.6%	52%	9.0%	8.6%	48.7%	1.9%	31.8%	19.6%	3.8%
P.S. 233 Langston Hughes / District 18		$0.00	83.4%	71%	1.0%	91.1%	5.8%	0.2%	1.9%	20.4%	3.1%
P.S. 234 / District 30	$40,759.30	$83.52	79.3%	72%	22.3%	6.4%	38.1%	2.9%	30.3%	18.2%	15.8%
P.S. 234 Independence School / District 2	$660,795.01	$1,035.73	10.3%	8%	8.8%	1.7%	8.8%	8.6%	72.1%	16.1%	1.3%
P.S. 235 Janice Marie Knight School / District 18		$0.00	65.2%	51%	1.0%	92.5%	2.9%	2.4%	1.2%	9.2%	1.4%
P.S. 236 Langston Hughes / District 9	$9,855.89	$30.14	95.4%	92%	0.3%	24.5%	73.7%	0.6%	0.9%	26.0%	12.8%
P.S. 236 Mill Basin / District 22	$55,895.68	$99.99	45.1%	34%	10.6%	19.3%	14.7%	5.7%	49.7%	14.0%	6.6%
P.S. 238 Anne Sullivan / District 21	$6,651.68	$10.83	85.2%	89%	22.5%	3.9%	48.5%	1.1%	23.9%	19.4%	35.2%
P.S. 239 / District 24	$48,781.67	$90.50	86.5%	83%	15.2%	2.0%	75.9%	0.4%	6.5%	21.0%	24.3%
P.S. 241 Emma L. Johnston / District 17	$8,045.00	$17.12	86.6%	79%	0.4%	84.9%	9.4%	2.6%	2.8%	11.7%	6.2%
P.S. 242 - The Young Diplomats Magnet Academy / District 3	$1,491.00	$10.80	80.4%	82%	0.0%	60.9%	33.3%	4.3%	1.4%	31.9%	7.2%
P.S. 242 Leonard P. Stavisky Early Childhood Schoo / District 25	$23,832.00	$60.03	66.2%	59%	76.8%	3.8%	14.6%	1.3%	3.5%	14.4%	32.5%
P.S. 243K- The Weeksville School / District 16	$7,453.79	$30.67	92.6%	93%	3.7%	70.8%	22.2%	2.5%	0.8%	28.0%	5.8%
P.S. 244 Richard R. Green / District 18	$15,345.15	$31.84	81.3%	69%	1.9%	90.0%	5.8%	1.2%	1.0%	22.2%	4.1%
P.S. 245 / District 22	$5,737.00	$18.39	95.2%	79%	1.6%	53.8%	39.7%	1.9%	2.9%	22.8%	7.7%
P.S. 246 Poe Center / District 10		$0.00	91.5%	94%	2.3%	7.0%	86.4%	0.6%	3.7%	21.7%	38.1%
P.S. 247 Brooklyn / District 20	$56,203.97	$65.13	62.8%	68%	52.4%	0.5%	11.8%	0.3%	35.0%	18.1%	26.8%
P.S. 249 The Caton / District 17	$2,193.35	$2.50	72.0%	77%	6.8%	42.1%	45.2%	1.5%	4.3%	17.9%	21.8%
P.S. 250 George H. Lindsay / District 14	$33,330.08	$72.14	78.1%	83%	17.7%	13.0%	67.7%	0.4%	1.1%	16.0%	11.3%
P.S. 251 Paerdegat / District 22	$13,484.00	$28.21	76.4%	78%	2.5%	74.9%	14.4%	2.7%	5.4%	18.8%	6.9%
P.S. 251 Queens / District 29	$19,818.50	$56.46	71.2%	57%	6.0%	78.9%	11.1%	3.1%	0.9%	21.7%	1.7%
P.S. 253 / District 21	$0.00	$0.00	79.4%	87%	36.0%	0.4%	36.6%	1.6%	25.4%	14.5%	21.0%
P.S. 253 / District 27	$3,339.77	$5.94	97.3%	88%	3.4%	29.4%	64.2%	2.0%	1.1%	24.2%	29.2%
P.S. 254 - The Rosa Parks School / District 27	$19,155.02	$31.71	75.5%	64%	10.8%	3.3%	75.2%	2.5%	8.3%	13.6%	17.1%
P.S. 254 Dag Hammarskjold / District 22	$77,358.07	$100.99	56.7%	54%	29.0%	0.8%	8.5%	0.5%	61.2%	12.1%	23.1%
P.S. 255 Barbara Reing School / District 22	$53,726.22	$60.91	76.9%	70%	21.9%	2.5%	9.6%	1.9%	64.1%	16.8%	21.5%
P.S. 256 Benjamin Banneker / District 13	$758.25	$3.09	97.6%	89%	1.2%	68.6%	26.9%	0.4%	2.9%	18.0%	11.4%
P.S. 257 John F. Hylan / District 14	$34,916.31	$58.10	82.5%	89%	0.7%	21.1%	76.5%	0.5%	1.2%	26.1%	13.1%
P.S. 261 Philip Livingston / District 15	$373,279.36	$470.13	34.5%	35%	7.6%	20.8%	18.4%	5.5%	47.7%	17.6%	4.3%
P.S. 262 El Hajj Malik El Shabazz Elementary Schoo / District 16		$0.00	89.8%	81%	0.6%	79.5%	15.9%	1.1%	2.8%	15.9%	2.3%
P.S. 264 Bay Ridge Elementary School For The Arts / District 20	$78,215.00	$170.03	66.3%	59%	12.4%	3.3%	34.3%	1.5%	48.5%	25.4%	12.6%
P.S. 268 Emma Lazarus / District 18	$626.61	$1.85	80.5%	78%	0.9%	89.1%	7.4%	0.3%	2.4%	18.0%	8.6%
P.S. 270 Johann DeKalb / District 13		$0.00	86.6%	89%	3.6%	65.2%	28.6%	1.8%	0.9%	33.9%	7.1%
P.S. 272 Curtis Estabrook / District 18	$2,550.00	$5.68	88.0%	88%	3.6%	73.7%	14.9%	2.7%	5.1%	32.1%	5.8%
P.S. 273 / District 27	$4,457.00	$14.10	91.5%	71%	16.5%	5.4%	73.1%	3.2%	1.9%	18.0%	11.7%
P.S. 273 Wortman / District 19	$6,425.22	$18.90	84.7%	88%	1.5%	72.4%	24.1%	1.2%	0.9%	23.2%	2.4%
P.S. 274 Kosciusko / District 32		$0.00	98.3%	89%	1.1%	12.8%	80.2%	2.5%	3.3%	19.8%	22.8%
P.S. 276 Louis Marshall / District 18	$16,574.10	$27.13	84.9%	67%	2.5%	86.3%	3.9%	1.1%	6.2%	16.2%	14.6%
P.S. 277 / District 7	$8,543.00	$17.80	90.6%	94%	0.8%	23.1%	72.9%	2.1%	1.0%	20.6%	14.6%
P.S. 277 Gerritsen Beach / District 22	$74,518.00	$172.10	49.2%	37%	15.5%	2.3%	12.0%	1.6%	68.6%	20.8%	6.5%
P.S. 279 Captain Manuel Rivera, Jr. / District 10	$3,451.88	$3.35	95.4%	95%	3.3%	16.0%	79.5%	0.9%	0.3%	20.2%	27.4%
P.S. 279 Herman Schreiber / District 18	$11,438.00	$28.45	80.3%	68%	2.5%	87.8%	5.7%	1.0%	3.0%	13.7%	5.2%
P.S. 28 - The Thomas Emanuel Early Childhood Cente / District 24	$14,521.40	$30.70	79.1%	83%	6.3%	0.0%	92.8%	0.4%	0.4%	20.1%	63.4%
P.S. 280 / District 30	$45,207.62	$72.68	95.5%	81%	7.4%	1.3%	89.2%	1.0%	1.1%	13.7%	31.5%
P.S. 282 Park Slope / District 13	$182,379.95	$280.58	44.0%	50%	3.4%	45.8%	24.9%	2.8%	23.1%	18.0%	1.8%
P.S. 287 Bailey K. Ashford / District 13		$0.00	91.7%	90%	5.5%	64.8%	21.4%	4.1%	4.1%	24.8%	6.2%
P.S. 288 The Shirley Tanyhill / District 21	$7,734.25	$12.58	93.7%	96%	2.4%	60.8%	31.4%	0.3%	5.0%	29.6%	5.2%
P.S. 289 George V. Brower / District 17	$5,135.28	$14.19	79.8%	85%	5.5%	70.7%	16.6%	3.6%	3.6%	24.6%	9.4%
P.S. 290 Juan Morel Campos / District 19	$12,787.00	$27.74	95.0%	87%	2.4%	21.3%	74.4%	1.5%	0.4%	22.8%	21.0%
P.S. 290 Manhattan New School / District 2	$683,811.55	$1,149.26	13.3%	9%	10.9%	2.9%	9.4%	6.1%	70.8%	14.3%	2.2%
P.S. 291 / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	99.8%	93%	0.7%	7.5%	91.5%	0.0%	0.3%	17.8%	28.6%
P.S. 295 / District 15	$114,741.07	$266.22	39.0%	50%	10.0%	7.0%	39.9%	5.6%	37.6%	30.9%	9.0%
P.S. 297 Abraham Stockton / District 14	$10,529.00	$51.61	86.8%	94%	1.5%	37.3%	57.4%	2.9%	1.0%	22.1%	13.2%
P.S. 298 Dr. Betty Shabazz / District 23	$100.00	$0.36	97.9%	97%	1.8%	68.7%	25.6%	2.5%	1.4%	22.8%	7.1%
P.S. 299 Thomas Warren Field / District 32	$1,983.18	$8.33	95.0%	89%	0.4%	43.7%	54.2%	0.0%	1.7%	22.7%	14.3%
P.S. 3 Raul Julia Micro Society / District 10	$13,005.90	$40.52	97.5%	91%	0.0%	28.3%	71.3%	0.0%	0.3%	21.2%	15.0%
P.S. 304 Early Childhood School / District 8	$48,543.24	$95.18	66.7%	45%	7.6%	6.9%	67.5%	1.2%	16.9%	21.2%	2.5%
P.S. 305 Dr. Peter Ray / District 13	$0.00	$0.00	94.4%	92%	5.6%	69.7%	14.1%	2.8%	7.7%	28.2%	14.1%
P.S. 306 / District 10	$19,165.05	$29.44	87.9%	94%	1.4%	25.0%	72.7%	0.2%	0.8%	20.3%	16.3%
P.S. 306 Ethan Allen / District 19	$1,100.00	$3.63	92.4%	96%	0.3%	75.2%	23.1%	0.3%	1.0%	32.3%	1.0%
P.S. 307 Daniel Hale Williams / District 13		$0.00	77.2%	79%	2.7%	53.2%	31.7%	2.4%	9.9%	34.4%	3.0%
P.S. 308 Clara Cardwell / District 16	$0.00	$0.00	92.8%	90%	2.8%	75.9%	18.5%	2.0%	0.8%	28.5%	4.4%
P.S. 309 The George E. Wibecan Preparatory Academy / District 16		$0.00	86.1%	83%	2.8%	56.9%	31.9%	2.8%	5.6%	22.7%	5.6%
P.S. 310 Marble Hill / District 10	$4,317.87	$6.41	93.8%	87%	2.1%	10.1%	85.3%	0.3%	2.2%	15.1%	14.2%
P.S. 312 Bergen Beach / District 22	$68,701.98	$87.41	55.1%	47%	5.6%	37.0%	14.8%	2.7%	39.9%	20.4%	4.6%
P.S. 315 Lab School / District 10	$5,910.87	$25.70	93.9%	91%	1.7%	14.3%	83.0%	0.4%	0.4%	20.4%	13.5%
P.S. 316 Elijah Stroud / District 17	$50,278.68	$87.59	64.1%	58%	2.3%	67.8%	16.4%	3.0%	10.6%	15.2%	3.3%
P.S. 319 / District 14	$800.00	$6.90	65.5%	77%	1.7%	5.2%	81.0%	0.0%	12.1%	9.5%	24.1%
P.S. 321 William Penn / District 15	$1,166,809.10	$844.90	8.6%	7%	6.0%	2.8%	6.2%	8.4%	76.7%	13.2%	2.2%
P.S. 326 / District 22	$2,244.72	$13.20	72.4%	69%	17.6%	59.4%	14.7%	4.7%	3.5%	20.6%	27.6%
P.S. 327 Dr. Rose B. English / District 23	$16,245.00	$55.63	96.6%	93%	2.1%	64.7%	26.7%	4.5%	2.1%	26.4%	6.8%
P.S. 328 Phyllis Wheatley / District 19	$0.00	$0.00	98.6%	96%	2.8%	58.3%	33.1%	1.4%	4.5%	26.2%	12.8%
P.S. 329 Surfside / District 21	$202.00	$0.52	94.6%	92%	4.9%	61.6%	28.4%	0.8%	4.4%	27.3%	4.1%
P.S. 333 Manhattan School for Children / District 3	$0.00	$0.00	17.2%	28%	6.5%	13.1%	16.0%	6.5%	58.0%	20.5%	2.1%
P.S. 335 Granville T. Woods / District 16		$0.00	89.3%	91%	0.0%	73.8%	23.4%	0.5%	2.3%	26.6%	7.0%
P.S. 340 / District 10	$9,179.72	$15.48	83.8%	89%	1.9%	7.9%	87.5%	0.5%	2.2%	25.8%	30.4%
P.S. 345 Patrolman Robert Bolden / District 19	$6,774.13	$12.38	83.2%	89%	7.7%	30.3%	58.3%	2.0%	1.6%	16.3%	17.4%
P.S. 346 Abe Stark / District 19	$35,174.00	$62.14	88.7%	73%	4.6%	62.9%	25.3%	4.1%	3.2%	21.0%	1.4%
P.S. 35 The Clove Valley School / District 31	$99,607.46	$244.14	35.5%	32%	11.3%	9.3%	21.1%	6.4%	52.0%	23.8%	3.2%
P.S. 36 / District 75	$1,864.56	$4.82	89.4%	92%	6.2%	63.3%	24.5%	1.6%	4.4%	99.0%	7.8%
P.S. 360 / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	93.3%	87%	2.1%	11.1%	83.4%	0.5%	3.0%	23.8%	18.0%
P.S. 360 / District 29	$59,701.14	$285.65	60.3%	43%	0.5%	93.8%	5.3%	0.5%	0.0%	10.5%	0.0%
P.S. 361 East Flatbush Early Childhood School / District 22		$0.00	79.0%	81%	4.2%	75.0%	16.0%	0.5%	4.4%	23.3%	21.3%
P.S. 368 / District 75		$0.00	91.6%	93%	3.2%	55.2%	32.4%	1.6%	7.6%	96.0%	9.2%
P.S. 370 / District 75	$5,053.78	$20.30	79.1%	84%	12.4%	32.1%	24.9%	1.6%	28.9%	100.0%	30.5%
P.S. 371 - Lillian L. Rashkis / District 75	$0.00	$0.00	90.4%	92%	5.6%	56.4%	26.4%	0.4%	11.2%	98.0%	12.4%
P.S. 372 -The Children's School / District 75	$164,057.85	$792.55	40.6%	44%	4.8%	18.8%	28.0%	5.8%	42.5%	100.0%	6.8%
P.S. 373 - Brooklyn Transition Center / District 75	$0.00	$0.00	89.0%	92%	2.9%	52.2%	36.8%	1.8%	6.4%	99.8%	25.8%
P.S. 375 Jackie Robinson School / District 17	$2,257.57	$6.66	94.7%	83%	2.4%	69.3%	23.9%	2.7%	1.8%	26.3%	23.6%
P.S. 376 / District 26	$20,283.37	$117.24	46.2%	39%	59.0%	4.6%	19.7%	2.9%	13.9%	10.4%	13.9%
P.S. 376 / District 32	$16,875.61	$31.96	82.4%	78%	2.3%	8.5%	84.3%	1.1%	3.8%	13.1%	15.2%
P.S. 377 / District 27	$25,575.95	$86.70	64.7%	53%	24.4%	9.2%	47.8%	6.8%	11.9%	10.8%	5.8%
P.S. 377 Alejandrina B. De Gautier / District 32	$0.00	$0.00	91.0%	81%	0.0%	22.6%	76.8%	0.0%	0.6%	26.5%	11.6%
P.S. 38 Roberto Clemente / District 4	$0.00	$0.00	94.2%	94%	2.1%	35.3%	57.7%	2.5%	2.5%	30.3%	12.4%
P.S. 380 John Wayne Elementary / District 14		$0.00	77.4%	85%	1.1%	19.5%	69.3%	0.0%	10.2%	26.3%	19.5%
P.S. 384 / District 30	$104.60	$3.27	43.8%	29%	28.1%	3.1%	25.0%	12.5%	31.3%	15.6%	21.9%
P.S. 39 Francis J. Murphy Jr. / District 31	$15,695.84	$29.90	64.8%	64%	17.7%	8.4%	32.2%	1.7%	40.0%	26.5%	16.8%
P.S. 396 / District 10	$5,372.61	$18.46	93.1%	92%	1.0%	17.9%	80.4%	0.3%	0.3%	33.7%	19.9%
P.S. 397 Foster-Laurie / District 17	$2,388.00	$12.77	85.0%	79%	2.1%	73.8%	10.2%	8.6%	5.3%	18.7%	11.2%
P.S. 398 Walter Weaver / District 17	$3,355.00	$11.73	96.2%	93%	1.4%	80.4%	12.6%	3.1%	2.4%	23.1%	11.9%
P.S. 399 Stanley Eugene Clark / District 17	$21,748.15	$65.90	95.8%	84%	3.3%	76.1%	17.0%	2.7%	0.9%	15.2%	10.3%
P.S. 452 / District 3	$427,044.00	$1,135.76	30.6%	28%	13.0%	12.8%	16.0%	2.9%	55.3%	17.8%	4.5%
P.S. 5 Port Morris / District 7	$823.85	$1.13	96.2%	95%	0.4%	27.7%	68.6%	0.8%	2.5%	23.6%	24.6%
P.S. 503: The School of Discovery / District 20	$29,418.15	$29.75	94.5%	92%	20.0%	0.5%	74.5%	0.1%	4.9%	23.7%	55.3%
P.S. 506: The School of Journalism & Technology / District 20	$21,201.86	$27.04	93.4%	90%	31.0%	0.8%	64.2%	0.4%	3.7%	18.9%	32.5%
P.S. 527 - East Side School for Social Action / District 2	$388,063.06	$900.38	16.9%	18%	12.5%	3.9%	14.2%	11.4%	58.0%	16.2%	3.9%
P.S. 536 / District 12	$11,331.75	$27.24	94.0%	89%	8.9%	23.6%	62.7%	2.4%	2.4%	18.5%	18.8%
P.S. 56 The Louis Desario School / District 31	$137,955.74	$238.68	31.5%	28%	5.4%	1.0%	17.0%	0.7%	76.0%	28.9%	1.4%
P.S. 58 - The School of Heroes / District 24	$42,701.83	$41.70	73.1%	57%	40.1%	0.6%	39.7%	1.4%	18.2%	14.1%	12.3%
P.S. 583 / District 8	$68.00	$0.35	81.3%	83%	38.5%	12.5%	42.2%	3.1%	3.6%	13.5%	12.0%
P.S. 595 / District 12	$2,911.50	$18.78	91.6%	91%	0.0%	28.4%	67.7%	0.6%	3.2%	21.3%	14.2%
P.S. 6 Corporal Allan F. Kivlehan School / District 31	$135,510.29	$254.72	40.8%	32%	1.3%	0.6%	18.8%	1.1%	78.2%	33.6%	3.4%
P.S. 65 - The Raymond York Elementary School / District 27		$0.00	67.0%	74%	40.3%	5.7%	41.6%	9.0%	3.3%	17.4%	9.5%
P.S. 65 The Academy of Innovative Learning / District 31	$71,683.35	$164.04	64.1%	59%	2.3%	17.6%	51.7%	7.3%	21.1%	30.2%	4.8%
P.S. 66 / District 18	$13,872.20	$17.38	67.5%	60%	1.1%	85.3%	8.5%	1.6%	3.4%	13.0%	3.6%
P.S. 69 Vincent D. Grippo School / District 20	$33,661.03	$43.72	96.8%	90%	91.7%	0.3%	3.9%	0.3%	3.9%	10.5%	49.1%
P.S. 723 / District 75	$0.00	$0.00	94.6%	96%	1.5%	35.2%	54.4%	2.7%	6.3%	98.1%	8.3%
P.S. 74 Future Leaders Elementary School / District 31		$0.00	87.9%	87%	6.0%	29.2%	58.4%	1.0%	5.4%	31.2%	23.5%
P.S. 748 Brooklyn School for Global Scholars / District 20	$4,994,493.00	$9,405.82	73.8%	66%	36.7%	0.9%	28.4%	1.3%	32.6%	14.1%	13.9%
P.S. 75 School of Research and Discovery / District 8	$1,778.29	$3.02	83.2%	91%	1.4%	22.6%	72.1%	1.0%	2.9%	20.1%	15.3%
P.S. 77 Lower Lab School / District 2	$589,848.00	$1,638.47	10.8%	9%	32.8%	0.3%	4.7%	11.7%	50.6%	8.9%	0.0%
P.S. 770 New American Academy / District 17	$49,984.80	$157.68	53.0%	54%	2.5%	53.9%	9.5%	14.5%	19.6%	14.2%	2.2%
P.S. 78 / District 31	$0.00	$0.00	95.3%	93%	3.6%	42.5%	47.4%	3.3%	3.2%	33.1%	8.2%
P.S. 8 Shirlee Solomon / District 31	$153,297.92	$257.21	35.7%	29%	10.6%	1.3%	14.4%	1.5%	72.1%	21.3%	3.0%
P.S. 81Q Jean Paul Richter / District 24	$25,926.34	$40.32	79.5%	84%	5.3%	1.9%	84.6%	0.6%	7.6%	27.1%	26.6%
P.S. 889 / District 22	$15,532.12	$114.21	61.8%	61%	16.9%	35.3%	18.4%	3.7%	25.7%	7.4%	8.8%
P.S. 89 / District 2		$0.00	8.8%	9%	19.1%	1.5%	11.8%	8.3%	59.2%	14.3%	6.1%
P.S. 9 Ryer Avenue Elementary School / District 10	$6,560.36	$7.90	92.2%	95%	2.0%	14.9%	80.7%	1.3%	1.0%	20.4%	31.7%
P.S. 90 Edna Cohen School / District 21	$6,210.70	$9.73	81.8%	87%	11.9%	16.3%	56.3%	2.5%	13.0%	16.6%	20.5%
P.S. 97 The Highlawn / District 21	$93,357.85	$121.24	64.0%	68%	50.6%	1.4%	21.9%	0.6%	25.3%	17.1%	29.9%
P.S. K004 / District 75	$0.00	$0.00	82.0%	86%	7.4%	58.8%	25.1%	2.2%	6.5%	100.0%	23.5%
P.S. K053 / District 75	$0.00	$0.00	87.7%	89%	10.3%	36.8%	36.8%	5.8%	10.3%	100.0%	27.9%
P.S. K077 / District 75		$0.00	82.7%	87%	17.0%	38.6%	24.2%	0.0%	20.2%	100.0%	26.4%
P.S. K134 / District 22	$20,782.09	$35.40	88.4%	84%	46.5%	3.6%	8.2%	1.7%	40.0%	13.3%	17.2%
P.S. K140 / District 75		$0.00	88.8%	91%	2.4%	67.2%	26.6%	2.4%	1.5%	100.0%	9.2%
P.S. K141 / District 75		$0.00	90.4%	92%	5.1%	44.2%	33.5%	0.8%	16.3%	100.0%	19.2%
P.S. K225 - The Eileen E. Zaglin / District 21	$18,340.25	$18.41	80.5%	82%	21.8%	2.1%	33.4%	1.2%	41.5%	19.8%	39.0%
P.S. K231 / District 75	$703.16	$2.00	80.6%	84%	19.7%	24.5%	23.4%	1.1%	31.3%	99.7%	29.1%
P.S. K315 / District 22	$7,361.08	$11.32	87.7%	81%	9.1%	53.8%	26.9%	2.8%	7.4%	23.7%	15.4%
P.S. K369 - Coy L. Cox School / District 75	$0.00	$0.00	85.6%	87%	6.6%	50.9%	33.1%	1.1%	8.2%	99.8%	15.9%
P.S. K396 / District 75	$0.00	$0.00	89.9%	92%	6.8%	44.2%	20.9%	18.8%	9.2%	99.8%	22.8%
P.S. K721 - Brooklyn Occupational Training Center / District 75	$3,446.10	$7.18	90.2%	93%	12.7%	38.3%	24.2%	1.0%	23.7%	100.0%	34.0%
P.S. K753 - School for Career Development / District 75	$0.00	$0.00	91.7%	94%	1.9%	69.4%	21.5%	0.8%	6.4%	97.4%	9.4%
P.S. K771 / District 75	$3,314.97	$7.66	80.6%	85%	19.2%	31.4%	21.9%	1.8%	25.6%	100.0%	17.6%
P.S. K811 Connie Lekas School / District 75	$0.00	$0.00	92.0%	93%	9.5%	49.6%	22.3%	3.6%	15.1%	100.0%	30.6%
P.S. M079 - Horan School / District 75	$0.00	$0.00	93.2%	96%	1.5%	29.3%	63.2%	1.5%	4.5%	100.0%	39.5%
P.S. M094 / District 75	$1,185.05	$2.87	81.6%	85%	7.5%	30.0%	44.8%	1.2%	16.5%	100.0%	18.2%
P.S. M169 - Robert F. Kennedy / District 75	$0.00	$0.00	92.1%	94%	1.7%	48.9%	44.4%	1.7%	3.4%	100.0%	14.0%
P.S. M226 / District 75	$0.00	$0.00	84.2%	88%	3.7%	34.9%	50.0%	3.0%	8.4%	100.0%	16.4%
P.S. M721 - Manhattan Occupational Training Center / District 75	$0.00	$0.00	90.4%	93%	7.6%	30.3%	49.5%	0.5%	12.1%	100.0%	37.9%
P.S. M811 - Mickey Mantle School / District 75		$0.00	89.9%	93%	1.9%	43.6%	50.4%	0.8%	3.3%	99.2%	16.1%
P.S. Q004 / District 75	$3,908.77	$9.53	70.7%	74%	25.9%	27.8%	29.8%	3.9%	12.7%	100.0%	14.9%
P.S. Q016 The Nancy DeBenedittis School / District 24	$105,678.51	$70.03	85.0%	88%	7.4%	0.1%	90.7%	0.4%	1.4%	19.4%	45.1%
P.S. Q023 @ Queens Children Center / District 75		$0.00	85.3%	89%	14.7%	33.5%	30.4%	1.6%	19.8%	82.1%	5.4%
P.S. Q086 / District 28	$13,512.13	$15.82	78.3%	82%	56.1%	5.6%	32.2%	2.8%	3.3%	14.5%	28.3%
P.S. Q177 / District 75	$601.56	$1.23	78.9%	81%	21.5%	32.0%	21.1%	2.5%	23.0%	100.0%	24.2%
P.S. Q222 - Fire Fighter Christopher A. Santora Sc / District 30	$21,788.88	$77.82	67.1%	53%	12.9%	0.7%	70.4%	5.0%	11.1%	12.5%	21.4%
P.S. Q224 / District 75	$24,924.81	$62.94	69.2%	73%	22.2%	18.9%	29.5%	19.7%	9.6%	100.0%	21.7%
P.S. Q233 / District 75	$1,529.00	$3.00	84.7%	86%	16.7%	31.6%	29.7%	6.7%	15.3%	99.6%	26.1%
P.S. Q255 / District 75	$17,087.69	$40.68	78.1%	82%	20.0%	10.2%	38.6%	2.1%	29.0%	100.0%	41.9%
P.S. Q256 / District 75	$550.00	$1.06	76.5%	88%	6.9%	51.3%	30.0%	1.2%	10.6%	86.3%	14.0%
P.S. Q811 / District 75	$373.20	$0.87	80.3%	82%	21.1%	31.1%	28.3%	5.3%	14.2%	100.0%	26.2%
P.S. Q993 / District 75	$0.00	$0.00	77.7%	81%	20.3%	18.4%	36.9%	1.9%	22.4%	100.0%	40.7%
P.S. R373 / District 75	$24,800.82	$43.66	79.6%	82%	10.6%	23.6%	29.8%	4.0%	32.0%	100.0%	13.7%
P.S. X010 / District 75	$393.00	$0.67	88.6%	92%	2.2%	30.2%	60.5%	1.0%	6.1%	99.8%	24.9%
P.S. X012 Lewis and Clark School / District 75	$2,866.77	$10.58	93.7%	95%	3.0%	31.4%	56.1%	6.6%	3.0%	100.0%	34.7%
P.S. X014 Senator John Calandra / District 8		$0.00	67.3%	51%	5.0%	5.9%	66.4%	2.4%	20.3%	23.1%	7.4%
P.S. X015 Institute for Environmental Learning / District 10	$2,879.75	$6.06	77.9%	86%	1.5%	11.4%	86.1%	1.1%	0.0%	20.4%	11.4%
P.S. X017 / District 75	$0.00	$0.00	89.8%	93%	2.2%	39.2%	51.9%	1.8%	4.9%	100.0%	18.0%
P.S. X037 - Multiple Intelligence School / District 10	$700.00	$1.11	85.7%	86%	1.9%	21.1%	73.8%	1.3%	1.9%	27.9%	15.4%
P.S. X088 - S. Silverstein Little Sparrow School / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	95.9%	95%	0.7%	21.8%	75.5%	0.0%	2.0%	16.3%	16.3%
P.S. X114 - Luis Llorens Torres Schools / District 9		$0.00	95.5%	94%	3.5%	21.5%	70.6%	1.3%	3.1%	20.4%	31.1%
P.S. X140 The Eagle School / District 8	$3,271.00	$5.34	95.4%	94%	0.2%	36.2%	61.7%	0.8%	1.1%	23.0%	9.3%
P.S. X176 / District 75		$0.00	84.3%	87%	2.3%	41.5%	48.7%	1.1%	6.3%	100.0%	12.5%
P.S. X188 / District 75	$0.00	$0.00	89.7%	93%	2.6%	37.4%	54.7%	2.0%	3.4%	100.0%	22.3%
P.S. X596 / District 75	$10,339.93	$25.47	78.8%	82%	2.7%	39.4%	51.7%	0.7%	5.4%	100.0%	9.4%
P.S. X721 - Stephen McSweeney School / District 75	$0.00	$0.00	91.8%	94%	1.7%	33.2%	57.8%	0.9%	6.3%	100.0%	35.8%
P.S. X811 / District 75	$1,823.70	$2.88	92.9%	96%	3.2%	34.4%	57.7%	1.1%	3.6%	99.7%	38.0%
P.S./ I.S. 155 Nicholas Herkimer / District 23	$0.00	$0.00	96.2%	92%	2.7%	49.1%	45.7%	0.7%	1.8%	20.1%	17.4%
P.S./ IS 178 Holliswood / District 26	$28,282.86	$51.61	36.9%	32%	11.9%	7.1%	9.5%	2.4%	69.2%	15.0%	6.8%
P.S./I.S. 045 Horace E. Greene / District 32	$0.00	$0.00	82.0%	84%	3.5%	44.3%	47.2%	1.0%	4.0%	19.6%	13.8%
P.S./I.S. 087 Middle Village / District 24	$64,877.67	$105.15	55.9%	51%	4.9%	1.9%	55.3%	1.8%	36.1%	22.0%	8.9%
P.S./I.S. 104 The Fort Hamilton School / District 20	$75,252.13	$60.49	61.9%	56%	19.4%	4.4%	25.5%	3.0%	47.7%	14.1%	10.9%
P.S./I.S. 113 Anthony J. Pranzo / District 24	$83,832.00	$94.83	46.4%	33%	6.1%	1.6%	41.4%	1.1%	49.8%	15.2%	6.0%
P.S./I.S. 116 William C. Hughley / District 29	$12,488.53	$16.20	75.9%	78%	8.2%	50.3%	37.5%	2.5%	1.6%	22.0%	18.8%
P.S./I.S. 137 Rachel Jean Mitchell / District 23	$9,998.66	$34.60	88.9%	87%	0.0%	76.5%	18.0%	4.5%	1.0%	30.1%	6.2%
P.S./I.S. 157 The Benjamin Franklin Health & Scien / District 14		$0.00	82.0%	88%	0.2%	18.0%	79.4%	0.5%	1.9%	28.5%	15.8%
P.S./I.S. 187 Hudson Cliffs / District 6	$14,532.56	$18.75	39.6%	39%	4.9%	3.6%	48.1%	4.8%	38.6%	16.9%	3.9%
P.S./I.S. 208 / District 29	$139,901.45	$195.94	41.9%	33%	8.1%	72.7%	14.1%	4.1%	1.0%	16.9%	0.4%
P.S./I.S. 210 - Twenty-first Century Academy for C / District 6	$21,862.44	$51.44	92.7%	88%	0.2%	1.4%	98.1%	0.2%	0.0%	22.1%	38.4%
P.S./I.S. 217 Roosevelt Island / District 2	$236,036.84	$382.56	33.1%	29%	29.0%	13.5%	14.3%	7.0%	36.3%	13.6%	13.9%
P.S./I.S. 218 Rafael Hernandez Dual Language Magne / District 9	$3,888.04	$3.75	86.0%	92%	2.5%	4.7%	90.8%	0.9%	1.1%	17.8%	24.7%
P.S./I.S. 224 / District 7		$0.00	96.6%	95%	0.3%	25.3%	72.6%	0.3%	1.5%	29.6%	19.2%
P.S./I.S. 266 / District 26	$50,343.10	$76.98	49.2%	34%	37.2%	21.9%	24.8%	2.9%	13.3%	20.3%	2.8%
P.S./I.S. 268 / District 29	$8,014.05	$12.68	70.9%	66%	27.4%	26.4%	33.2%	10.4%	2.5%	15.0%	18.0%
P.S./I.S. 295 / District 29	$4,512.25	$9.23	71.8%	56%	32.3%	25.4%	32.1%	7.4%	2.9%	17.6%	7.6%
P.S./I.S. 30 Mary White Ovington / District 20	$25,151.22	$25.30	79.0%	76%	23.5%	0.7%	30.5%	1.6%	43.7%	18.8%	21.4%
P.S./I.S. 323 / District 23	$5,080.95	$8.28	93.8%	93%	2.4%	76.1%	19.5%	1.0%	1.0%	19.7%	5.0%
P.S./I.S. 54 / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	96.2%	93%	2.5%	23.2%	72.2%	0.6%	1.5%	21.1%	15.4%
P.S./I.S. 78Q / District 30	$214,080.00	$290.47	23.2%	20%	24.0%	4.3%	25.2%	6.4%	40.0%	11.5%	5.4%
P.S./M.S 042 R. Vernam / District 27	$0.00	$0.00	94.9%	88%	2.5%	69.3%	24.6%	2.3%	1.2%	26.2%	4.0%
P.S./M.S. 004 Crotona Park West / District 9		$0.00	94.4%	96%	1.1%	51.5%	45.0%	0.5%	1.8%	23.9%	16.0%
P.S./M.S. 029 Melrose School / District 7		$0.00	91.6%	93%	1.4%	32.2%	63.4%	1.8%	1.3%	21.6%	14.6%
P.S./M.S. 031 The William Lloyd Garrison / District 7	$464,423.00	$648.64	88.8%	91%	3.1%	26.4%	66.1%	1.1%	3.4%	22.5%	13.1%
P.S./M.S. 114 Belle Harbor / District 27	$64,680.88	$95.40	25.7%	17%	1.5%	1.3%	10.9%	1.5%	84.8%	21.4%	0.6%
P.S./M.S. 11X498 - VAN NEST ACADEMY / District 11	$17,718.07	$27.17	77.9%	70%	6.7%	11.3%	63.2%	1.5%	17.2%	21.3%	7.1%
P.S./M.S. 138 Sunrise / District 29		$0.00	75.8%	61%	3.5%	78.2%	12.4%	2.8%	3.1%	17.2%	6.3%
P.S./M.S. 147 Ronald McNair / District 29		$0.00	69.0%	57%	1.6%	87.7%	8.2%	1.6%	0.9%	20.5%	5.5%
P.S./M.S. 194 / District 11	$14,190.69	$10.98	79.2%	85%	38.0%	6.3%	48.3%	2.8%	4.6%	14.3%	18.7%
P.S./M.S. 200 - The Magnet School of Global Studie / District 25	$23,690.97	$43.79	72.1%	50%	13.9%	20.0%	50.3%	2.8%	13.1%	18.1%	4.3%
P.S./M.S. 280 Mosholu Parkway / District 10	$5,555.00	$6.81	93.5%	88%	9.6%	7.7%	77.0%	0.6%	5.1%	29.8%	16.9%
P186X Walter J. Damrosch School / District 75	$0.00	$0.00	92.6%	95%	2.4%	39.2%	53.4%	1.7%	3.4%	98.6%	30.6%
P469X - The Bronx School for Continuous Learners / District 75		$0.00	92.9%	94%	3.7%	34.3%	58.3%	0.3%	3.4%	99.4%	25.3%
Pace High School / District 2	$8,213.05	$14.36	78.0%	74%	4.5%	33.4%	54.2%	4.0%	3.8%	18.4%	3.0%
Pan American International High School / District 24	$389.56	$0.92	84.2%	96%	0.0%	0.2%	99.1%	0.5%	0.2%	2.8%	84.2%
Pan American International High School at Monroe / District 12	$0.00	$0.00	98.9%	99%	0.0%	0.5%	99.1%	0.5%	0.0%	3.2%	87.8%
Park East High School / District 4		$0.00	80.7%	76%	6.7%	25.4%	61.7%	3.6%	2.6%	17.5%	4.1%
Park Slope Collegiate / District 15	$10,628.58	$15.40	65.5%	63%	4.6%	33.8%	42.0%	2.6%	17.0%	22.5%	7.1%
Parkside Preparatory Academy / District 17		$0.00	89.1%	78%	4.0%	76.9%	14.1%	2.1%	2.9%	18.9%	11.6%
Pathways College Preparatory School: A College Boa / District 29	$9,155.50	$15.57	76.0%	48%	6.6%	84.0%	4.9%	3.2%	1.2%	14.3%	3.1%
Pathways in Technology Early College High School ( / District 17	$0.00	$0.00	72.1%	65%	1.7%	82.4%	11.9%	3.1%	0.9%	18.2%	2.2%
Paula Hedbavny School / District 6	$33,795.53	$61.33	67.9%	63%	2.5%	2.5%	76.8%	2.2%	16.0%	20.0%	14.9%
Pelham Academy of Academics and Community Engageme / District 11	$0.00	$0.00	87.3%	78%	8.7%	16.9%	61.1%	0.3%	13.0%	22.6%	15.1%
Pelham Gardens Middle School / District 11	$2,163.06	$4.56	76.2%	75%	4.2%	54.2%	34.0%	3.2%	4.4%	23.6%	8.6%
Pelham Lab High School / District 8		$0.00	72.8%	80%	6.5%	20.8%	60.8%	4.4%	7.4%	22.1%	15.6%
Pelham Preparatory Academy / District 11	$0.00	$0.00	72.8%	73%	7.4%	25.4%	55.0%	1.8%	10.4%	24.5%	6.1%
Performing Arts and Technology High School / District 19	$750.00	$1.83	89.5%	86%	1.7%	59.4%	36.7%	1.2%	1.0%	22.7%	18.1%
Pioneer Academy / District 24	$19,959.06	$22.20	95.0%	86%	2.3%	0.9%	95.2%	0.4%	1.1%	23.2%	37.7%
Port Richmond High School / District 31	$9,710.00	$6.21	74.9%	72%	7.6%	23.3%	45.7%	2.1%	21.3%	27.5%	9.2%
Port Richmond School for Visionary Learning / District 31	$20,050.00	$84.24	79.4%	69%	4.6%	27.7%	51.3%	4.6%	11.8%	18.9%	4.6%
Preparatory Academy for Writers: A College Board S / District 29	$0.00	$0.00	71.1%	51%	3.3%	89.6%	5.9%	0.9%	0.3%	16.3%	2.9%
Professional Pathways High School / District 22	$0.00	$0.00	77.1%	72%	10.5%	25.7%	33.3%	1.9%	28.6%	21.0%	3.8%
Professional Performing Arts High School / District 2	$286,437.00	$513.33	34.9%	36%	7.0%	20.8%	20.4%	6.6%	45.2%	14.2%	0.2%
Professor Juan Bosch Public School / District 6	$56,960.26	$200.56	66.9%	67%	1.1%	2.1%	80.3%	1.4%	15.1%	24.6%	10.9%
PROGRESS High School for Professional Careers / District 14		$0.00	83.5%	88%	0.6%	27.2%	68.8%	2.4%	1.0%	20.9%	20.6%
Providing Urban Learners Success In Education High / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	92.2%	91%	0.0%	9.1%	59.3%	31.6%	0.0%	16.5%	7.4%
PS 80 The Thurgood Marshall Magnet School of Mult / District 28	$15,917.07	$33.72	74.8%	62%	2.3%	83.9%	8.3%	4.0%	1.5%	21.6%	2.5%
PS/MS 20 P.O.George J. Werdann, III / District 10	$2,254.50	$2.28	96.2%	88%	8.3%	11.4%	73.5%	1.7%	5.1%	28.1%	25.3%
Queens Academy High School / District 25		$0.00	69.5%	68%	11.8%	22.4%	55.7%	1.7%	8.4%	20.4%	7.6%
Queens Collegiate: A College Board School / District 28	$44,729.22	$66.86	85.7%	67%	29.3%	42.2%	18.8%	8.8%	0.9%	16.9%	9.1%
Queens Explorers Elementary School / District 27	$14,839.09	$37.01	76.1%	58%	28.2%	7.0%	47.1%	6.0%	11.7%	13.7%	4.2%
Queens Gateway to Health Sciences Secondary School / District 28		$0.00	55.3%	52%	50.4%	25.2%	10.0%	9.4%	5.1%	12.9%	1.1%
Queens High School for Information, Research, and / District 27	$0.00	$0.00	69.1%	80%	4.9%	40.1%	48.7%	3.2%	3.0%	20.6%	21.7%
Queens High School for Language Studies / District 25	$7,361.21	$17.36	77.1%	76%	59.4%	5.9%	28.1%	3.8%	2.8%	5.9%	22.6%
Queens High School for the Sciences at York Colleg / District 28	$0.00	$0.00	59.8%	47%	81.9%	3.2%	4.0%	4.8%	6.1%	0.0%	0.0%
Queens High School of Teaching, Liberal Arts and t / District 26	$138.06	$0.13	56.9%	40%	20.8%	52.6%	14.8%	4.6%	7.2%	20.1%	2.4%
Queens Metropolitan High School / District 28	$97,271.36	$88.11	60.9%	43%	10.1%	3.7%	42.4%	1.0%	42.8%	16.8%	3.2%
Queens Preparatory Academy / District 29	$25.00	$0.06	78.6%	65%	3.6%	81.9%	8.8%	3.9%	1.8%	13.7%	11.6%
Queens Satellite High School for Opportunity / District 28	$0.00	$0.00	89.3%	76%	9.7%	50.0%	27.2%	5.8%	7.3%	11.2%	7.3%
Queens School of Inquiry, The / District 25	$4,250.91	$7.23	54.1%	54%	40.5%	15.1%	23.5%	3.2%	17.7%	16.0%	4.3%
Queens Technical High School / District 24	$0.00	$0.00	85.5%	75%	9.5%	5.1%	79.8%	0.3%	5.3%	17.9%	7.3%
Queens Transition Center / District 75		$0.00	84.2%	87%	12.0%	46.8%	32.1%	2.0%	7.1%	98.0%	26.7%
Queens United Middle School / District 29	$817.75	$4.81	70.0%	57%	1.2%	91.2%	5.3%	1.8%	0.6%	18.2%	4.1%
Quest to Learn / District 2	$27,630.02	$50.70	72.1%	66%	13.0%	21.7%	43.1%	3.7%	18.5%	27.9%	3.9%
Rachel Carson High School for Coastal Studies / District 21	$2,657.05	$4.26	67.4%	76%	18.0%	13.8%	18.9%	2.1%	47.2%	17.8%	18.6%
Ralph A. Fabrizio School / District 20	$12,597.67	$12.42	90.7%	79%	58.0%	0.2%	16.8%	1.3%	23.8%	16.4%	32.1%
Ralph R. McKee Career and Technical Education High / District 31	$5,095.33	$6.41	70.1%	70%	4.7%	26.5%	46.9%	3.5%	18.4%	32.6%	6.5%
Red Hook Neighborhood School / District 15	$727.18	$6.01	95.9%	96%	2.5%	47.1%	47.9%	0.8%	1.7%	38.8%	14.0%
Redwood Middle School / District 28	$1,983.27	$5.94	64.7%	56%	14.1%	65.3%	9.9%	9.0%	1.8%	21.0%	5.4%
Renaissance High School for Musical Theater and th / District 8	$0.00	$0.00	71.5%	77%	3.7%	24.1%	63.9%	1.7%	6.5%	23.3%	5.9%
Renaissance School of the Arts / District 4		$0.00	94.6%	94%	1.2%	39.9%	55.4%	2.4%	1.2%	27.4%	7.1%
Repertory Company High School for Theatre Arts / District 2	$9,359.35	$39.49	67.5%	54%	0.8%	28.7%	45.1%	11.0%	14.3%	16.9%	0.4%
Research and Service High School / District 16		$0.00	89.4%	86%	0.7%	74.7%	19.2%	1.0%	4.5%	34.6%	2.4%
Richard R. Green High School of Teaching / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	82.1%	76%	6.3%	27.3%	57.6%	5.6%	3.3%	19.1%	4.2%
Richmond Hill High School / District 27	$11,789.99	$7.48	80.6%	77%	31.5%	12.4%	45.6%	6.6%	3.9%	14.4%	23.0%
River East Elementary / District 4	$0.00	$0.00	84.2%	86%	0.0%	39.0%	52.9%	3.1%	5.0%	27.4%	5.0%
Riverdale / Kingsbridge Academy (Middle School / H / District 10		$0.00	50.8%	47%	7.4%	9.5%	55.5%	1.5%	26.1%	18.7%	7.0%
Riverdale Avenue Community School / District 23	$0.00	$0.00	93.1%	89%	1.5%	75.3%	18.8%	1.5%	2.8%	22.1%	6.2%
Riverdale Avenue Middle School / District 23	$0.00	$0.00	98.5%	92%	3.7%	72.4%	18.7%	4.5%	0.7%	32.8%	8.2%
Robert E. Peary School / District 75	$0.00	$0.00	80.2%	83%	15.4%	31.6%	40.7%	4.3%	8.0%	100.0%	29.8%
Robert F. Kennedy Community High School / District 25	$250.00	$0.36	80.6%	70%	35.6%	12.5%	35.3%	2.7%	13.8%	17.8%	8.0%
Robert F. Wagner, Jr. Secondary School for Arts an / District 24	$5,410.93	$8.34	73.0%	58%	22.8%	5.4%	53.9%	2.0%	15.9%	16.6%	2.8%
Robert H. Goddard High School of Communication Art / District 27	$4,553.22	$7.24	74.4%	55%	26.2%	7.5%	37.5%	4.6%	24.2%	19.1%	3.8%
Rockaway Collegiate High School / District 27		$0.00	80.7%	80%	2.9%	55.9%	34.3%	1.3%	5.6%	30.1%	8.2%
Rockaway Park High School for Environmental Sustai / District 27		$0.00	90.1%	84%	3.0%	43.1%	40.1%	4.6%	9.2%	29.6%	12.2%
Ronald Edmonds Learning Center II / District 17	$0.00	$0.00	86.9%	89%	3.0%	75.0%	17.9%	1.8%	2.4%	29.2%	8.3%
Samara Community School / District 12	$3,391.10	$13.62	95.6%	85%	0.4%	11.6%	87.6%	0.0%	0.4%	22.5%	18.1%
Satellite Academy High School / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	75.8%	82%	0.4%	34.0%	61.4%	1.8%	2.5%	27.0%	7.4%
Satellite East Middle School / District 13		$0.00	94.7%	89%	8.5%	68.1%	16.0%	3.2%	4.3%	28.7%	12.8%
Scholars' Academy / District 27	$185,357.64	$137.20	47.2%	33%	19.3%	17.2%	19.5%	2.1%	41.7%	12.9%	0.1%
School for Classics High School / District 19	$0.00	$0.00	91.9%	90%	12.6%	43.0%	37.0%	3.0%	4.4%	21.9%	26.7%
School for Environmental Citizenship / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	98.0%	97%	0.7%	11.6%	86.3%	0.0%	1.5%	17.9%	32.6%
School for Excellence / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	87.1%	92%	0.9%	28.5%	68.4%	0.9%	1.2%	27.9%	27.0%
School for Global Leaders / District 1		$0.00	84.4%	84%	12.8%	23.6%	56.4%	3.2%	4.0%	38.0%	10.0%
School for Human Rights, The / District 17	$2,566.00	$7.29	81.5%	74%	2.3%	87.5%	7.7%	1.4%	1.1%	18.8%	8.0%
School for Tourism and Hospitality / District 8		$0.00	92.0%	94%	0.7%	31.1%	65.2%	1.0%	2.0%	29.8%	24.7%
School of Math, Science, and Healthy Living / District 20	$3,408.17	$9.94	91.8%	85%	44.3%	0.9%	44.9%	0.3%	9.6%	14.0%	43.4%
School of Performing Arts / District 12	$0.00	$0.00	88.8%	92%	0.6%	33.6%	61.1%	3.2%	1.5%	29.2%	15.9%
School of Science & Technology / District 22	$3,841.00	$5.86	75.9%	79%	7.6%	57.9%	28.2%	1.5%	4.7%	20.3%	16.8%
School of the Future Brooklyn / District 19	$0.00	$0.00	95.9%	94%	1.0%	66.8%	30.1%	1.0%	1.0%	29.0%	10.4%
School of the Future High School / District 2	$194,299.50	$259.41	43.5%	41%	20.0%	11.2%	24.2%	9.9%	34.7%	21.2%	0.7%
Schuylerville Preparatory High School / District 8		$0.00	68.3%	76%	5.8%	27.8%	56.4%	1.7%	8.3%	22.5%	14.4%
Science and Technology Academy: A Mott Hall School / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	94.0%	87%	3.3%	27.3%	68.4%	0.4%	0.4%	20.0%	16.9%
Science Skills Center High School for Science, Tec / District 13	$40.00	$0.07	82.7%	75%	8.1%	66.7%	17.7%	3.3%	4.2%	14.4%	3.3%
Science, Technology and Research Early College Hig / District 17	$13,138.50	$22.81	77.6%	60%	4.3%	77.3%	13.0%	4.2%	1.2%	15.3%	1.2%
Secondary School for Journalism / District 15		$0.00	85.4%	80%	6.7%	46.6%	36.9%	1.1%	8.6%	19.0%	14.2%
Sheridan Academy for Young Leaders / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	97.6%	93%	2.2%	28.9%	68.0%	0.4%	0.4%	24.5%	22.3%
Sixth Avenue Elementary School / District 2	$300,469.00	$886.34	8.0%	12%	8.6%	2.4%	11.5%	14.7%	62.8%	18.9%	1.2%
Soundview Academy for Culture and Scholarship / District 8	$0.00	$0.00	80.4%	86%	2.6%	30.4%	65.3%	0.5%	1.3%	24.7%	8.2%
South Bronx Academy for Applied Media / District 7	$0.00	$0.00	88.3%	93%	1.7%	30.3%	66.2%	1.7%	0.0%	33.3%	15.6%
South Bronx International Middle School / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	88.9%	95%	0.0%	15.6%	84.4%	0.0%	0.0%	11.1%	88.9%
South Bronx Preparatory: A College Board School / District 7	$200.00	$0.30	94.2%	93%	1.7%	24.7%	71.1%	0.8%	1.8%	26.2%	7.0%
South Brooklyn Community High School / District 15		$0.00	87.3%	86%	4.4%	29.8%	58.0%	5.5%	2.2%	43.6%	3.3%
South Richmond High School I.S./P.S. 25 / District 75	$5,703.12	$9.80	82.3%	84%	2.2%	37.5%	30.1%	2.1%	28.2%	99.0%	5.2%
Space Shuttle Columbia School / District 31	$129,540.21	$187.47	51.8%	44%	20.0%	3.9%	26.6%	2.9%	46.6%	25.3%	7.8%
Special Music School / District 3	$259,551.56	$826.60	22.0%	30%	13.7%	9.9%	14.0%	15.6%	46.8%	12.4%	0.3%
Spring Creek Community School / District 19	$30.00	$0.06	82.0%	80%	1.3%	72.2%	21.8%	2.8%	1.9%	24.6%	3.4%
Spruce Street School / District 2	$46,566.58	$83.15	17.0%	16%	16.4%	3.9%	15.9%	10.5%	53.2%	20.4%	2.3%
Staten Island School of Civic Leadership / District 31	$40,388.16	$44.58	71.6%	61%	13.7%	20.2%	41.7%	4.5%	19.9%	23.8%	4.0%
Staten Island Technical High School / District 31	$136,950.81	$102.89	42.1%	34%	50.0%	0.7%	2.0%	5.3%	42.0%	1.2%	0.0%
STEM Institute of Manhattan / District 3	$3,198.00	$24.05	91.7%	88%	3.8%	49.6%	36.1%	0.8%	9.8%	33.1%	15.0%
Stephen T. Mather Building Arts & Craftsmanship Hi / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	79.3%	82%	4.2%	26.4%	63.1%	2.0%	4.2%	25.2%	7.2%
Stuyvesant High School / District 2	$1,028,636.00	$310.20	41.7%	39%	73.1%	0.9%	3.0%	4.1%	18.8%	0.5%	0.0%
Sunset Park Avenues Elementary School / District 15	$19,034.84	$38.07	84.6%	81%	14.4%	0.4%	78.2%	0.0%	7.0%	22.0%	33.8%
Sunset Park High School / District 15	$1,751.41	$1.44	85.0%	86%	9.9%	7.5%	74.0%	0.5%	8.1%	21.2%	21.9%
Sunset Park Prep / District 15	$1,735.38	$3.26	92.7%	89%	18.9%	2.1%	75.8%	0.0%	3.2%	23.5%	18.9%
Susan E. Wagner High School / District 31	$40,125.17	$11.86	54.6%	50%	15.0%	10.3%	27.1%	1.6%	45.9%	21.3%	3.9%
Tag Young Scholars / District 4	$269,628.00	$448.63	34.1%	38%	41.3%	16.5%	15.0%	10.1%	17.1%	4.8%	0.8%
Talent Unlimited High School / District 2		$0.00	56.0%	53%	3.5%	29.3%	43.2%	11.8%	12.2%	15.4%	1.0%
Teachers College Community School / District 5	$85,193.97	$273.94	48.9%	60%	2.6%	37.9%	39.9%	5.8%	13.8%	18.0%	1.6%
Teachers Preparatory High School / District 23	$0.00	$0.00	93.2%	89%	2.0%	78.5%	15.6%	0.5%	3.4%	39.5%	9.3%
The 30th Avenue School (G&T Citywide) / District 30	$339,559.42	$648.01	25.0%	29%	46.6%	4.2%	9.9%	9.7%	29.6%	4.6%	1.7%
The 47 American Sign Language & English Lower Scho / District 2	$1,454.92	$7.54	67.9%	70%	3.6%	21.2%	44.0%	5.2%	25.9%	50.8%	19.7%
The Academy for Excellence through the Arts / District 28	$48,800.00	$231.28	23.7%	22%	35.5%	5.7%	19.0%	2.8%	37.0%	13.3%	1.4%
The Academy of Talented Scholars / District 20	$345.12	$0.90	42.1%	40%	23.1%	4.2%	11.4%	1.8%	59.5%	29.6%	8.1%
The Academy of Urban Planning and Engineering / District 32	$0.00	$0.00	98.7%	88%	0.4%	22.5%	75.8%	0.4%	0.9%	27.3%	23.8%
The Active Learning Elementary School / District 25		$0.00	79.5%	66%	87.6%	1.1%	7.4%	2.0%	2.0%	10.2%	54.0%
The Anderson School / District 3	$1,030,522.95	$1,974.18	14.9%	14%	29.1%	2.5%	9.0%	11.3%	48.1%	8.0%	0.2%
The Angelo Patri Middle School / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	90.9%	95%	1.9%	23.2%	73.3%	0.6%	1.1%	26.3%	35.6%
The Barbara Esselborn School / District 31	$101,203.84	$120.48	37.6%	31%	15.8%	1.2%	12.5%	2.3%	68.2%	20.2%	5.2%
The Bellaire School / District 29	$19,827.28	$21.27	55.7%	57%	36.7%	23.9%	21.5%	14.2%	3.8%	16.0%	15.6%
The Bilingual Bicultural School / District 4	$0.00	$0.00	96.2%	93%	0.3%	5.4%	93.9%	0.0%	0.3%	27.7%	31.2%
The Boerum Hill School for International Studies / District 15	$103,315.00	$142.90	45.4%	48%	4.0%	30.0%	23.1%	6.8%	36.1%	20.7%	7.2%
The Bronx High School of Science / District 10	$849,395.12	$281.63	42.0%	38%	64.9%	2.6%	7.1%	3.1%	22.3%	1.4%	0.0%
The Bronx Mathematics Preparatory School / District 8	$1,146.93	$5.17	97.3%	90%	3.6%	36.0%	56.8%	2.7%	0.9%	34.7%	13.1%
The Bronx School of Young Leaders / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	85.5%	92%	1.2%	26.5%	71.7%	0.5%	0.2%	25.3%	20.5%
The Bronxwood Preparatory Academy / District 11	$0.00	$0.00	70.6%	74%	3.9%	63.3%	25.8%	3.3%	3.6%	21.9%	9.7%
The Brooklyn Academy of Global Finance / District 16	$0.00	$0.00	96.2%	92%	7.6%	70.5%	17.1%	1.9%	2.9%	26.7%	14.3%
The Brooklyn Green School / District 16		$0.00	90.2%	86%	0.0%	85.4%	12.2%	2.4%	0.0%	39.0%	2.4%
The Brooklyn New School, P.S. 146 / District 15	$274,238.41	$395.16	33.4%	37%	4.6%	18.2%	22.8%	13.5%	40.9%	29.1%	4.2%
The Brooklyn School for Math and Research / District 32	$0.00	$0.00	88.8%	80%	5.1%	47.7%	42.2%	2.5%	2.5%	17.7%	9.7%
The Brooklyn School for Social Justice / District 32		$0.00	83.0%	92%	1.2%	19.4%	74.6%	1.5%	3.3%	22.1%	35.8%
The Children's Lab School / District 24	$9,587.23	$22.66	82.5%	75%	28.4%	0.0%	57.7%	1.4%	12.5%	21.5%	29.3%
The Children's Workshop School / District 1	$134,233.00	$419.48	48.1%	53%	9.7%	10.3%	39.7%	5.3%	35.0%	23.4%	3.4%
The Christa McAuliffe School\I.S. 187 / District 20	$186,959.20	$196.18	60.8%	55%	69.4%	1.4%	5.7%	0.7%	22.9%	9.9%	2.6%
The Cinema School / District 12	$2,947.96	$9.30	77.9%	84%	1.6%	16.1%	72.9%	6.0%	3.5%	19.9%	4.7%
The Clinton School / District 2		$0.00	16.0%	20%	12.7%	4.0%	12.4%	7.3%	63.6%	16.7%	0.3%
The College Academy / District 6	$0.00	$0.00	96.0%	93%	0.2%	6.3%	90.2%	1.2%	2.1%	17.6%	52.2%
The David Marquis School of the Arts / District 75	$60,650.00	$165.71	77.6%	80%	7.1%	16.1%	30.1%	3.3%	43.4%	100.0%	6.6%
The Dr. Emmett W. Bassett School / District 8		$0.00	82.7%	89%	29.3%	10.1%	46.5%	5.9%	8.3%	15.9%	27.5%
The Eagle Academy for Young Men of Staten Island / District 31	$4,224.14	$15.64	78.9%	76%	5.2%	48.1%	36.3%	1.9%	8.5%	37.4%	6.3%
The East Village Community School / District 1	$231,777.51	$696.03	27.0%	34%	9.6%	4.5%	23.1%	5.4%	57.4%	15.6%	1.5%
The Emerson School / District 28		$0.00	81.3%	78%	22.9%	43.6%	24.6%	7.3%	1.7%	23.7%	11.5%
The Family School / District 9	$1,105.75	$1.99	91.9%	95%	4.0%	26.7%	68.1%	0.4%	0.9%	26.5%	28.6%
The Fresh Creek School / District 19		$0.00	94.5%	91%	0.5%	65.5%	29.5%	3.0%	1.5%	21.0%	3.5%
The Global Learning Collaborative / District 3	$48.00	$0.12	81.6%	84%	1.9%	26.1%	65.5%	1.4%	5.1%	20.3%	12.3%
The Gordon Parks School / District 29	$23,619.26	$31.45	71.2%	42%	0.5%	94.9%	2.7%	1.6%	0.3%	15.8%	0.5%
The Gregory Jocko Jackson School of Sports, Art, a / District 23	$6,212.50	$22.19	95.0%	97%	0.4%	67.9%	31.1%	0.7%	0.0%	20.7%	6.4%
The Harbor View School / District 31	$59,691.28	$198.31	60.5%	59%	1.7%	33.6%	41.5%	8.6%	14.6%	21.6%	0.3%
The High School for Enterprise, Business and Techn / District 14	$0.00	$0.00	85.8%	82%	6.0%	30.2%	59.4%	1.9%	2.4%	16.1%	11.6%
The High School for Global Citizenship / District 17		$0.00	90.1%	77%	4.2%	72.8%	18.8%	1.4%	2.8%	16.9%	15.0%
The High School For Language And Diplomacy / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	75.5%	83%	24.2%	23.2%	45.7%	3.0%	4.0%	17.5%	10.9%
The High School of Fashion Industries / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	80.8%	75%	5.4%	31.1%	56.4%	1.8%	5.3%	16.8%	3.2%
The Highbridge Green School / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	96.8%	94%	0.3%	20.6%	76.7%	0.8%	1.6%	25.4%	22.0%
The Hunts Point School / District 8	$24.44	$0.08	91.0%	95%	1.7%	26.3%	70.3%	0.3%	1.3%	31.0%	25.0%
The Ivan Lafayette Early Childhood School of the A / District 30	$21,733.83	$71.49	84.5%	77%	7.6%	0.7%	86.2%	1.6%	3.9%	22.0%	47.0%
The James J. Ambrose School / District 26	$77,491.84	$99.60	37.9%	35%	70.3%	5.5%	12.5%	4.8%	6.9%	10.7%	6.0%
The Jermaine L. Green STEM Institute of Queens / District 28	$4,660.82	$8.02	79.5%	67%	2.1%	83.0%	9.1%	5.2%	0.7%	17.4%	3.1%
THE JUDITH S. KAYE HIGH SCHOOL / District 4	$0.00	$0.00	75.2%	83%	0.0%	37.6%	56.4%	3.0%	3.0%	37.6%	5.9%
The Kathleen Grimm School for Leadership and Susta / District 31	$80,782.45	$286.46	28.4%	22%	4.6%	1.1%	11.7%	1.4%	81.2%	18.1%	1.4%
The Laboratory School of Finance and Technology: X / District 7	$2,166.55	$3.27	95.0%	91%	0.9%	16.6%	81.3%	0.5%	0.8%	19.9%	7.6%
The Lexington Academy / District 4	$10,287.32	$15.92	87.6%	90%	2.6%	16.1%	78.0%	0.9%	2.3%	25.9%	10.4%
The Locke School of Arts and Engineering / District 3	$21,548.73	$59.20	82.7%	82%	2.2%	54.1%	32.4%	2.5%	8.8%	22.0%	5.2%
The Longwood Academy of Discovery / District 8	$3,573,071.00	$5,716.91	96.2%	94%	0.5%	19.8%	76.3%	0.6%	2.7%	30.1%	21.3%
The Marie Curie School for Medicine, Nursing, and / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	75.8%	84%	3.3%	28.8%	62.3%	1.9%	3.7%	23.5%	12.8%
The Math & Science Exploratory School / District 15	$77,114.00	$141.49	27.2%	28%	11.0%	11.4%	20.4%	4.0%	53.2%	23.9%	1.1%
The Matilda Avenue School / District 11	$7,734.00	$47.45	75.5%	76%	4.3%	52.1%	33.7%	4.9%	4.9%	11.0%	4.9%
The Maurice Sendak Community School / District 15		$0.00	17.4%	15%	9.9%	9.9%	12.8%	8.7%	58.8%	12.2%	1.7%
The Maxine Greene HS for Imaginative Inquiry / District 3	$0.00	$0.00	79.5%	85%	3.2%	36.7%	53.1%	2.9%	4.1%	25.2%	12.9%
The Metropolitan Soundview High School / District 12	$0.00	$0.00	91.3%	88%	2.6%	23.2%	71.9%	0.7%	1.7%	23.9%	15.6%
The Michael J. Petrides School / District 31		$0.00	44.2%	44%	9.4%	20.6%	25.6%	4.2%	40.2%	28.6%	1.4%
The Mott Hall School / District 6	$1,615.10	$5.38	77.3%	74%	2.7%	8.0%	81.0%	2.0%	6.3%	14.0%	2.3%
The New American Academy at Roberto Clemente State / District 9	$1,002.29	$1.40	97.8%	96%	0.0%	38.5%	59.1%	1.4%	1.0%	27.9%	15.3%
The New School for Leadership and Journalism / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	98.1%	88%	3.5%	10.6%	83.4%	0.9%	1.6%	22.2%	23.3%
The Peck Slip School / District 2	$423,874.81	$905.72	12.8%	10%	15.8%	4.1%	12.8%	14.1%	53.2%	18.2%	1.7%
The Queens College School for Math, Science and Te / District 25	$40,198.21	$75.14	45.4%	40%	53.5%	19.4%	15.0%	5.0%	7.1%	9.0%	3.7%
The Queens School for Leadership and Excellence / District 28	$11,133.95	$26.07	84.5%	77%	40.7%	18.5%	36.1%	2.6%	2.1%	14.5%	18.0%
The Richard H. Hungerford School / District 75	$39,290.05	$85.60	91.3%	92%	7.0%	17.6%	36.4%	1.7%	37.3%	100.0%	15.7%
The River School / District 2	$398,871.55	$1,180.09	30.2%	19%	32.5%	9.2%	12.4%	4.7%	41.1%	15.7%	17.5%
The Riverside School for Makers and Artists / District 3	$61,856.00	$109.48	68.0%	67%	7.4%	30.3%	43.4%	1.9%	17.0%	24.4%	6.9%
The Riverview School / District 75	$9,229.45	$19.11	76.2%	79%	24.2%	16.8%	43.5%	2.3%	13.3%	100.0%	42.9%
The School For Future Leaders / District 20	$42,030.10	$102.26	95.9%	87%	87.1%	0.0%	8.3%	0.0%	4.6%	11.7%	42.1%
The School for Inquiry and Social Justice / District 8	$6,180.36	$12.29	78.1%	84%	2.4%	20.9%	73.0%	2.6%	1.2%	23.1%	13.9%
The School of Creativity and Innovation / District 15	$747.00	$19.66	92.1%	84%	60.5%	0.0%	36.8%	2.6%	0.0%	7.9%	52.6%
The School of Integrated Learning / District 17	$0.00	$0.00	84.2%	77%	2.0%	81.1%	14.1%	2.4%	0.3%	22.2%	4.4%
The School of Science and Applied Learning / District 12	$0.00	$0.00	91.0%	94%	0.5%	33.9%	64.1%	0.3%	1.2%	30.4%	15.1%
The Science And Medicine Middle School / District 18	$4,017.04	$10.07	79.9%	69%	1.5%	85.5%	9.5%	1.3%	2.3%	20.8%	3.0%
The SEEALL Academy / District 20	$101,970.08	$94.68	86.3%	82%	44.0%	1.4%	29.0%	1.3%	24.3%	15.6%	28.8%
The STAR Academy - P.S.63 / District 1	$13,400.62	$58.26	76.5%	73%	1.7%	19.6%	65.2%	3.9%	9.6%	31.7%	1.7%
The STEAM Bridge School / District 11	$2,998.59	$13.88	89.4%	83%	9.3%	11.6%	62.5%	2.8%	13.9%	15.7%	32.4%
The Stephanie A. Vierno School / District 31	$89,171.50	$127.75	65.3%	52%	14.3%	3.2%	33.4%	2.4%	46.7%	22.1%	14.5%
The Urban Assembly Bronx Academy of Letters / District 7	$0.00	$0.00	90.3%	94%	0.3%	32.4%	63.4%	0.9%	3.1%	28.8%	13.6%
The Urban Assembly School for Collaborative Health / District 19	$0.00	$0.00	76.0%	80%	13.9%	32.8%	44.1%	5.9%	3.3%	10.9%	18.6%
The Urban Assembly School for Emergency Management / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	84.2%	81%	5.7%	28.7%	60.0%	2.6%	3.0%	21.1%	3.4%
The Urban Assembly School for Global Commerce / District 5	$0.00	$0.00	83.6%	90%	1.2%	48.8%	46.0%	1.2%	2.8%	27.6%	10.0%
The Urban Assembly School for Green Careers / District 3	$0.00	$0.00	85.2%	83%	2.0%	28.0%	59.2%	2.6%	8.2%	23.0%	15.1%
The Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice / District 13	$0.00	$0.00	69.4%	68%	2.3%	65.5%	26.2%	3.9%	2.1%	17.2%	2.1%
The Urban Assembly Unison School / District 13	$177.00	$1.10	81.4%	82%	2.5%	82.0%	13.7%	0.6%	1.2%	35.4%	7.5%
The Vida Bogart School for All Children / District 75	$0.00	$0.00	92.2%	94%	3.0%	37.3%	54.9%	2.6%	2.2%	100.0%	15.0%
The Walton Avenue School / District 9		$0.00	93.0%	95%	0.4%	14.9%	80.9%	1.8%	2.0%	22.5%	23.1%
The Williamsburg High School of Art and Technology / District 14	$0.00	$0.00	78.5%	83%	3.3%	22.5%	67.5%	1.3%	5.3%	24.8%	23.8%
The Windsor Terrace School / District 15	$299,754.79	$543.03	16.3%	18%	6.9%	3.1%	17.6%	6.3%	66.1%	17.8%	3.3%
The Woodside Community School / District 30	$10,464.84	$30.25	76.3%	63%	36.1%	1.2%	54.9%	2.3%	5.5%	12.4%	24.0%
Theatre Arts Production Company School / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	79.3%	87%	2.2%	24.1%	71.1%	0.9%	1.7%	23.5%	7.6%
Thomas A. Edison Career and Technical Education Hi / District 28	$4,161.85	$1.90	75.6%	60%	48.5%	17.9%	23.1%	6.4%	4.1%	13.7%	2.2%
Thomas C. Giordano Middle School 45 / District 10	$3,391.89	$4.78	95.9%	92%	0.8%	16.5%	78.4%	0.8%	3.4%	18.8%	19.2%
Thurgood Marshall Academy for Learning and Social / District 5	$0.00	$0.00	71.6%	78%	2.0%	68.0%	26.8%	1.6%	1.6%	23.4%	4.3%
Thurgood Marshall Academy Lower School / District 5	$0.00	$0.00	84.8%	81%	1.9%	79.0%	17.1%	1.9%	0.0%	20.0%	1.0%
Tompkins Square Middle School / District 1	$65,718.00	$181.54	67.4%	66%	21.5%	13.0%	40.6%	3.9%	21.0%	27.3%	1.9%
Tottenville High School / District 31	$91,767.42	$25.11	33.9%	31%	5.4%	1.6%	11.3%	1.7%	80.0%	20.8%	1.6%
Townsend Harris High School / District 25	$102,444.38	$86.67	46.7%	37%	55.8%	5.1%	12.4%	7.4%	19.4%	4.4%	0.1%
Transit Tech Career and Technical Education High S / District 19	$0.00	$0.00	75.4%	79%	4.7%	59.0%	29.6%	4.3%	2.4%	25.1%	6.2%
Union Square Academy for Health Sciences / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	83.1%	82%	11.8%	20.0%	59.7%	2.4%	6.0%	15.5%	7.5%
Unity Center for Urban Technologies / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	91.4%	86%	8.3%	25.2%	60.4%	1.4%	4.7%	24.1%	6.8%
University Heights Secondary School / District 7	$0.00	$0.00	81.7%	80%	5.2%	25.6%	63.6%	3.7%	1.9%	18.7%	2.5%
University Neighborhood High School / District 1	$0.00	$0.00	86.7%	82%	36.9%	19.5%	38.1%	1.0%	4.6%	16.8%	14.7%
University Neighborhood Middle School / District 1		$0.00	84.2%	81%	8.6%	19.6%	62.7%	1.0%	8.1%	44.0%	3.3%
Urban Academy Laboratory High School / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	58.5%	53%	6.1%	34.0%	32.0%	2.7%	25.2%	14.3%	0.7%
Urban Action Academy / District 18		$0.00	78.8%	78%	2.7%	76.5%	11.0%	0.8%	9.1%	15.9%	23.1%
Urban Assembly Academy for Future Leaders / District 5	$0.00	$0.00	86.4%	92%	2.4%	54.4%	37.6%	2.4%	3.2%	43.2%	8.8%
Urban Assembly Academy of Government and Law, The / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	82.7%	85%	5.9%	33.6%	56.5%	0.9%	3.1%	19.8%	4.0%
Urban Assembly Gateway School for Technology / District 2	$10,713.50	$23.49	57.2%	66%	7.0%	28.5%	53.7%	4.8%	5.9%	21.7%	3.5%
Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Y / District 13	$0.00	$0.00	82.0%	80%	9.8%	61.8%	15.0%	3.0%	10.4%	16.8%	6.8%
Urban Assembly Maker Academy / District 2	$255.73	$0.66	77.7%	70%	8.2%	27.4%	49.2%	4.4%	10.8%	19.5%	3.8%
Urban Assembly New York Harbor School / District 2	$7,554.97	$14.17	54.6%	53%	7.5%	17.6%	40.2%	7.9%	26.8%	22.7%	2.1%
Urban Assembly School for Applied Math and Science / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	94.2%	90%	0.5%	29.4%	68.8%	1.0%	0.3%	28.2%	12.7%
Urban Assembly School for Criminal Justice / District 20	$0.00	$0.00	90.9%	86%	48.6%	13.1%	19.5%	2.9%	15.8%	14.4%	13.3%
Urban Assembly School for Media Studies, The / District 3	$0.00	$0.00	87.0%	83%	2.5%	32.2%	60.7%	2.7%	2.0%	15.5%	5.4%
Urban Assembly School for Music and Art / District 13		$0.00	86.5%	81%	0.5%	74.4%	22.2%	1.0%	1.9%	23.7%	4.3%
Urban Assembly School for the Performing Arts / District 5	$40.00	$0.10	82.9%	87%	0.8%	48.3%	47.3%	2.8%	0.8%	24.0%	7.5%
Urban Assembly School of Business for Young Women, / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	84.4%	82%	5.0%	49.2%	36.9%	5.6%	3.4%	16.8%	7.3%
Urban Assembly School of Design and Construction, / District 2	$0.00	$0.00	79.8%	86%	5.6%	22.8%	67.9%	1.0%	2.6%	25.8%	11.6%
Urban Institute of Mathematics / District 8	$5,959.85	$15.77	73.3%	57%	3.2%	13.8%	67.7%	1.6%	13.8%	20.9%	5.0%
Urban Scholars Community School / District 12	$186.00	$0.62	95.7%	96%	1.7%	45.5%	51.2%	1.0%	0.7%	28.6%	15.0%
Validus Preparatory Academy / District 9	$0.00	$0.00	88.9%	92%	0.6%	31.6%	66.5%	0.8%	0.6%	27.4%	15.2%
Van Siclen Community Middle School / District 19	$0.00	$0.00	93.9%	92%	1.9%	69.6%	24.0%	0.0%	4.5%	39.7%	9.3%
Vanguard High School / District 2		$0.00	72.6%	76%	5.6%	25.1%	58.3%	4.2%	6.8%	24.8%	3.0%
Veritas Academy / District 25	$587.00	$1.04	68.8%	68%	13.4%	12.5%	61.0%	3.7%	9.3%	18.2%	7.9%
Victory Collegiate High School / District 18	$218.00	$0.64	74.5%	76%	1.5%	81.5%	10.6%	2.3%	4.1%	25.5%	6.7%
Village Academy / District 27		$0.00	81.2%	83%	1.6%	57.1%	38.9%	0.8%	1.6%	22.2%	16.9%
Vista Academy / District 19	$0.00	$0.00	96.4%	83%	5.7%	23.6%	66.2%	3.2%	1.3%	20.4%	11.3%
Voyages Prep - South Queens / District 27		$0.00	64.8%	68%	6.9%	70.8%	16.7%	4.1%	1.6%	11.6%	0.9%
VOYAGES Preparatory / District 24		$0.00	68.6%	68%	7.9%	13.4%	72.4%	2.5%	3.8%	9.6%	4.2%
W. H. Maxwell Career and Technical Education High / District 19	$0.00	$0.00	89.1%	87%	2.4%	64.6%	29.0%	1.9%	2.1%	32.4%	8.8%
Wadleigh Secondary School for the Performing & Vis / District 3	$273.50	$0.87	79.6%	87%	0.6%	52.7%	40.9%	3.8%	1.9%	22.4%	2.9%
Washington Heights Academy / District 6	$2,221.72	$3.77	85.9%	78%	2.0%	1.9%	93.9%	0.2%	2.0%	17.7%	11.9%
Washington Heights Expeditionary Learning School / District 6	$98,613.91	$114.14	80.7%	84%	1.2%	3.5%	91.2%	0.7%	3.5%	20.5%	16.1%
Waterside Children's Studio School / District 27	$47,364.86	$91.61	69.8%	62%	5.6%	23.0%	46.4%	5.2%	19.7%	17.0%	8.1%
Waterside School For Leadership / District 27	$342.00	$1.40	88.5%	78%	3.3%	52.9%	33.6%	2.5%	7.8%	25.8%	9.4%
Wave Preparatory Elementary School / District 27	$0.00	$0.00	87.8%	82%	1.5%	39.6%	57.5%	1.3%	0.2%	16.8%	18.2%
West Bronx Academy for the Future / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	94.3%	92%	2.0%	17.9%	78.3%	0.7%	1.1%	26.3%	12.2%
West Brooklyn Community High School / District 15	$0.00	$0.00	75.7%	78%	4.0%	15.5%	70.4%	0.0%	10.2%	39.4%	7.1%
West End Secondary School / District 3	$202,598.71	$468.98	17.6%	18%	7.2%	6.5%	19.0%	3.7%	63.7%	21.5%	0.5%
West Prep Academy / District 3	$0.00	$0.00	84.8%	86%	0.5%	52.5%	43.6%	1.5%	2.0%	32.8%	9.8%
Westchester Square Academy / District 8	$0.00	$0.00	79.2%	73%	6.3%	24.4%	56.3%	2.2%	10.8%	21.5%	9.6%
William Cullen Bryant High School / District 30	$954.12	$0.41	83.3%	80%	26.2%	6.7%	51.5%	2.0%	13.7%	14.4%	18.6%
William E. Grady Career and Technical Education Hi / District 21	$1,763.35	$4.28	88.1%	79%	4.6%	55.8%	24.8%	2.9%	11.9%	38.6%	6.8%
Williamsburg High School for Architecture and Desi / District 14	$0.00	$0.00	79.5%	71%	2.2%	28.4%	61.0%	1.9%	6.4%	22.4%	3.1%
Williamsburg Preparatory School / District 14	$0.00	$0.00	79.6%	78%	3.1%	15.7%	70.4%	1.6%	9.2%	21.1%	4.7%
Wings Academy / District 12	$0.00	$0.00	89.2%	91%	0.4%	55.9%	40.4%	1.9%	1.3%	29.4%	5.0%
Women's Academy of Excellence / District 8	$0.00	$0.00	90.3%	89%	11.3%	38.3%	33.5%	1.2%	15.7%	20.2%	21.4%
World Academy for Total Community Health High Scho / District 19	$0.00	$0.00	92.0%	88%	4.0%	70.8%	21.6%	1.6%	2.0%	19.6%	15.2%
World Journalism Preparatory: A College Board Scho / District 25	$1,265.98	$2.18	60.0%	45%	16.7%	3.8%	38.0%	3.1%	38.5%	17.9%	1.9%
World View High School / District 10	$0.00	$0.00	75.5%	80%	1.3%	23.0%	71.5%	3.3%	0.9%	17.4%	25.0%
York Early College Academy / District 28	$8,664.55	$13.17	69.0%	48%	26.3%	51.1%	8.8%	12.8%	1.1%	10.9%	0.8%
Yorkville Community School / District 2	$228,259.00	$469.67	37.9%	37%	6.6%	14.8%	23.5%	6.2%	49.0%	18.3%	4.1%
Yorkville East Middle School / District 2	$72,321.06	$314.44	30.0%	26%	6.5%	8.7%	23.0%	3.9%	57.8%	25.7%	1.3%
Young Leaders Elementary School / District 7	$0.00	$0.00	97.2%	95%	0.0%	15.5%	81.7%	1.2%	1.6%	32.1%	32.9%
Young Voices Academy of the Bronx / District 11		$0.00	81.4%	79%	13.2%	8.7%	63.1%	0.7%	14.4%	13.6%	19.5%
Young Women's Leadership School / District 4		$0.00	78.1%	78%	8.1%	25.6%	59.0%	4.0%	3.3%	18.3%	2.3%
Young Women's Leadership School of Brooklyn / District 14	$1,227.58	$3.21	79.3%	80%	3.4%	46.1%	43.2%	2.6%	4.7%	19.4%	8.6%
Young Women's Leadership School of the Bronx / District 9	$4,452.90	$8.31	83.8%	81%	2.6%	32.3%	61.2%	2.2%	1.7%	18.3%	4.9%
Young Women's Leadership School, Astoria / District 30	$2,188.01	$3.73	79.2%	68%	33.3%	7.7%	40.4%	1.4%	17.2%	13.5%	3.6%
Young Women's Leadership School, Queens / District 28	$4,739.29	$8.66	70.9%	58%	38.9%	40.8%	11.7%	6.0%	2.6%	15.4%	1.6%

PTA Funding 2019

This article tackles a topic raised during our 2019 Listening Tour. Read more about the Listening Tour here, and see more articles inspired by community input here.

Amid infighting, Chancellor Carranza has stopped attending his own parent advisory group

2019-11-15T00:01:50+00:00

A parent advisory group charged with offering feedback to New York City’s schools chancellor is going to be missing a key audience member in the foreseeable future: the chancellor himself.

Chancellor Richard Carranza’s decision to stop attending the meetings of his own parent advisory group is a direct response to a bitter internal battle among the parents who are supposed to offer him counsel. At issue: accusations that an election held last month to determine the group’s leadership was illegitimate.

Those grievances spilled into public view Thursday morning during a contentious, three-hour meeting of the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council, the little-known group of parent leaders at the center of the controversy. Some members in attendance expressed frustration that the group’s bylaws for holding elections were not followed.

Complicating matters, there is no apparent procedure for addressing such a dispute. The council’s members have accused the education department of overstepping its authority by trying to render a decision about the election’s legitimacy, and voted to embark on their own investigation.

“It’s a complete waste of time having to go through this,” said Marco Battistella, an executive board member for the past three years from Manhattan’s District 1. “But if somebody has a complaint, that complaint has to be looked at.”

Over bagels and other snacks at the education department’s stately Lower Manhattan headquarters, CPAC’s monthly meetings typically include a chance for its 38 members — parent association leaders from throughout the city — to share concerns and ask questions of the chancellor, hear from department officials about new initiatives, and discuss other issues bubbling up in their communities.

Last month, the group was scheduled to hold elections for a new slate of executive board members. But at least two former executive board members, who continue to serve on CPAC, have raised questions about the process and filed “grievances” alleging it was unfair.

One of those members, Sheree Gibson, who had served as the group’s co-chair, alleged in a complaint sent to Carranza more than two dozen problems with the process, including that proper notice was not given beforehand, and that there were not adequate checks on whether each voter was eligible to cast a ballot. Other parents disputed the allegations cited in the complaint. (Unlike most parent associations, the rules governing CPAC are largely not spelled out in the education department’s regulations and are left to the group’s own bylaws.)

“There were a lot of different things that were done wrong in the process of electing the leadership,” Gibson said during the Thursday meeting, “and it’s really important that we’re doing the process right.”

Still, the stakes of the fight appear relatively low: Even though Gibson lost her position on the executive board, she will continue as a member of CPAC. She noted that she doesn’t have any specific complaints about the parents who have now assumed leadership positions on the executive board and was largely pressing the issue as a matter of fairness.

Some parent leaders dismissed the complaints as a distraction.

“Do we want to make schools better or do we want to fight?” said Martha Kessler, one of the newly elected executive board members, during the meeting. “We’re a team and we’re a council and we need to remember that.”

Adding to the discord, education department officials have waded into the controversy, pledging to settle the matter themselves.

In an email sent to CPAC members Wednesday night that was obtained by Chalkbeat, a deputy chancellor wrote that the department had received four complaints and unsuccessfully tried to get parents to come to a resolution. The message added that CPAC “did not conduct a full and fair investigation of the grievances.”

As a result, the Division of Family and Community Engagement “will be forwarding all grievances regarding the CPAC election to the DOE’s Office of General Counsel for investigation and final determination,” wrote Adrienne Austin, an acting deputy chancellor who replaced Hydra Mendoza earlier this fall. “As such, the Chancellor will suspend his appearance at the CPAC meetings until these grievances are investigated and resolved.”

It’s not clear that the education department has any formal authority over the advisory group and some parents said the move infringes on the group’s independence. At the Thursday meeting, Austin suggested it was a “conflict of interest” for CPAC to investigate whether its own elections were conducted fairly.

“When Hydra was here things had really changed in how [the DOE] was handling parents and now it feels like it has jumped back,” Battistella said. “There is no regulation that makes them responsible” for the election dispute, he added.

In response, the parent group nearly unanimously approved a resolution creating their own investigation of the election complaints Thursday, excluding any current or former executive board members and those who filed the grievances.

In the meantime, some parents said they were angry that the chancellor would not be attending meetings until the dispute is resolved and passed a resolution demanding Carranza attend.

“I come [because] I’m interested in discussing things with the chancellor; we are the voice of the parents,” said Leonard Silverman, a CPAC rep for Manhattan’s District 2. “That to me is offensive and that requires an apology as far as I’m concerned.”

Education department spokesperson Miranda Barbot said that Carranza is “eager to have this important parent advisory group back to the important work of partnering with him to serve our 1.1 million children. Every day internal politics take precedent is a day the group is unable to advance the children’s agenda.”

After hours of arguing, the meeting wound down with a previously scheduled presentation for new members on parliamentary procedure and Robert’s Rules of Order. But by that point, several members had already left the room to talk amongst themselves and department officials about the controversy roiling the advisory group.

Student suspensions fall sharply in New York City, reversing an unusual bump the year before

2019-11-01T19:40:58+00:00

Suspensions handed out to New York City public school students last year fell significantly, reversing an unusual uptick the year before.

The total number of suspensions decreased 10.5% in the 2018-19 school year to 32,801, according to data released Friday by the education department.

Principal suspensions, which are handed out for less serious offenses, and are typically under six days, decreased by nearly 10%. Meanwhile, more serious superintendent suspensions — which can range from a few days to an entire school year — decreased by roughly 12%. Still, big disparities remain in terms of which students are punished. Black students and students with disabilities continue to be disproportionately suspended, while white and Asian students are underrepresented.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has made school discipline reform a priority since taking office in 2014. City schools have seen multiple changes to the discipline code that have limited suspensions for the city’s youngest students and for more subjective infractions such as “insubordination.” The changes have also required approval from central office administrators for a host of infractions. But these efforts have won mixed reviews from educators, who say training in alternatives to student suspensions has been scattershot and has coincided with a parallel drop in discipline within some schools.

The decrease last year more than erases a 4% increase during the 2017-18 school year, the first rise in suspensions under Mayor Bill de Blasio. Chancellor Richard Carranza suggested that increase was linked to the response of a fatal school stabbing in the Bronx that year. Following that uptick, city officials rolled out more training on “restorative” approaches, a constellation of practices that favor peer mediation and conflict resolution over ejecting students from their regular schools or classes.

On average, the length of the average suspension last year slid to 5.8 days compared with 7.5 days the year before. (This school year, the department tweaked the discipline code to limit most suspensions to 20 days, though they had been quietly doing that even before the policy officially changed.) Students who are suspended for more than five days on superintendent suspensions are typically sent to alternative sites, which some students have likened to jails.

Overall, suspensions have fallen roughly 39% in the past five years, and major crimes in schools have fallen 32%, officials said.

De Blasio has championed policies that make issuing suspensions more difficult — including among students in grades K-2 — and the education department has started requiring central signoff for suspensions for certain infractions. The city has also invested in training staff members to provide alternatives to suspensions, something that community advocates have asked for.

Yet, the city’s new discipline policies have drawn criticism from some educators as well as union officials. Limiting schools’ ability to suspend students without proper training in alternative approaches has made schools more chaotic and dangerous, they argue.

[Calling all educators: Tell us about your experience with student discipline by filling out our survey]

The data released Friday continues to show deep disparities, and many students of color note they continue to be disproportionately targeted for discipline. A report from the city’s Independent Budget Office found black students are more likely to receive harsher suspensions than students from other racial groups for the top eight out of ten categories of infractions.

Research has shown that suspensions can have a long-lasting impact. They are associated with declines in students’ academic performance, and suspended students are more likely to drop out of school and enter the juvenile-justice system. A study focusing on New York City suggests that suspensions contribute to students passing fewer classes, increasing their risk of dropping out, and lowering the odds of graduating.

Nearly 45% of the city’s suspensions went to black students, even though they represent about 26% of the student population. (City officials stressed that the number has fallen about eight percentage points in the past five years.)

White students accounted for nearly 9% percent of the city’s suspensions despite being roughly 15% of the city’s students. Hispanic students accounted for 39% of suspensions and are just under 41% of students.

About 40% of suspensions were issued to students with disabilities last year. Overall, 20% of the city’s students are listed as having a disability.

The share of suspensions among these different groups were similar to the year before.

“Our schools are safe and our approach is working, and we’re going to continue to dive deeper into this work to address disparities that persist nationally, and in New York City,” Carranza said in a statement.

New York City has joined many other districts working to reduce suspensions, especially for historically marginalized student groups. But even supporters of the mayor’s efforts say the city still needs to do more to ensure schools aren’t funneling certain student populations into the criminal justice system.

City officials pointed to a number of initiatives to improve school climate and reduce student suspensions. They noted that the education department has overhauled an agreement with the police department to limit the situations in which police officials can send students into the criminal justice system for relatively low-level offenses. And they pointed to investments in implicit-bias training and additional social workers.

Research suggests that some of the disparities in school discipline are rooted in bias from teachers and administrators. A study in Louisiana found that black students received slightly harsher punishments than white students for the same altercation; other research has shown that black students are more likely to be suspended for discretionary offenses such as insubordination. Black teachers are also less likely to suspend black students than white teachers.

Some advocates cheered the continued decline in suspensions, and added that more social support is needed.

“Going forward, it is critical that the city build on these promising results by creating a solid infrastructure to institutionalize them and make the necessary additional investments in mental health services and supports, social workers, and restoratives practices to further expand on them,” said Dawn Yuster, director of the School Justice Project at Advocates for Children.

Filling up the dream box: strengthening teaching and learning for every New York City student

2019-10-10T21:12:54+00:00

In my experience leading school districts in four states across the U.S., I’ve noticed a trend in thinking about education like a series of shiny objects: What new initiative or trend will get results? What’s the upcoming announcement? What’s the latest and greatest rallying cry?

As any of the 80,000-plus teachers and administrators in New York City public schools could tell you, strong teaching and learning is more than this approach. Those of us who have taught in the classroom and led schools know that the kind of academic achievement that leads to success for our students in college, career, and life comes from rolling up your sleeves and diving deeply into the nuts and bolts of what goes on during class time. Getting there requires systems and structures that support a clear vision of how children will be taught and what they will learn.

In New York City, our instructional vision grows out of a mission of Equity and Excellence for All. We have a high bar of achievement for every student — this is excellence. And we are prepared to deliver the support that each of them need to meet that bar. This is equity.

So what does a unified teaching and learning strategy look like for more than 1,800 schools that collectively serve 1.1 million students?

First, we are strengthening core instruction. This means raising the bar in every subject area by instituting the use of clear protocols and complex texts in every school for every student. It means every child is reading and discussing those complex texts from different perspectives, learning to use writing as a tool for expressing ideas, and developing vocabulary skills to deepen their understanding of the world.

I recently witnessed young students in an elementary school, who, after reading a picture book featuring Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, constructed their own “dream boxes” in which they placed their own dreams and the path to achieve them. The activity was both intellectually rigorous and engaging. It required students to express their ambitions in writing using new vocabulary words and sentence structures, explain their thinking verbally to classmates, and to draw on the concepts presented in the picture book. It was a brilliant example of strong core instruction in action, one that is replicated in different ways every day across the five boroughs.

The second component of our Instructional Leadership Framework demands that we know every student well. We need to know each student’s knowledge, skills, and abilities, along with their identities and personal experience, if they are to achieve excellence. Schools will sharpen and deepen the incorporation of student data in the classroom. Accordingly, educators can use this information in a more precise and student-centered manner to create transformational learning moments.

In many schools, this is likely to manifest as less instructional time spent on administering assessments, and more time spent reflecting on outcomes and designing effective instruction in response. Imagine teachers working in teams to look at how many students have developed an essential reading skill, and how many are still striving to get there. Then, imagine that team planning ways to adapt instruction to ensure students who have the skill keep moving, and students who need additional reinforcement receive it in tailored ways, while still participating in the core instruction occurring in the classroom each day. This is the real work of teaching and learning.

The third element is using a shared and inclusive curriculum. As an educator, I know firsthand the value and importance of having a shared approach for lesson plans across grades. A third-grader who learns to do multiplication without understanding the concept underlying this skill will face a serious challenge when she walks into a fourth grade classroom where multiplication is taught differently. Our students should know that there are multiple roads to the right answer, and what really matters is understanding the concepts that get them there.

An inclusive curriculum means we leverage each student’s lived experiences and full identities as we design instruction. This is why we are adopting the evidence-based approach of Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education, which makes students feel welcome and engaged, leading to deeper levels of learning.

In one Brooklyn middle school, the library was recently filled with books that reflected the lives and experiences of the children enrolled in that school, and book circulation went up by 70%! Right now, we are asking families, students, and communities across the city to help us spread that success system-wide by recommending new books for our NYC Reads 365 booklist. We hope all New Yorkers will share their favorites here.

Underlying the Instructional Leadership Framework is the belief that every child deserves a rigorous learning environment in every subject area. To do that, there must be strong teams of teachers and administrators leading this work at every school, and world-class educators who are delivering rigorous, relevant, and student-centered instruction in their classrooms every day. This work has already been happening at many schools across the city, and many more are seeking ways to further bring it to life.

The Instructional Leadership Framework demonstrates what we know and believe—that all students can learn at high levels. It is up to us to ensure that they do, and that teachers have the support to make that happen. So the next time you hear conversation about the latest trend in education, remember the real work of ensuring strong systems of teaching and learning is already underway in New York City public schools.

Richard Carranza is the chancellor of New York City schools.

About our First Person series:

First Person is where Chalkbeat features personal essays by educators, students, parents, and others trying to improve public education. Read our submission guidelines here.

Anti-bias training and culturally responsive education are a ‘matter of life and death,’ Carranza says

2019-10-08T21:16:15+00:00

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said Tuesday that core elements of his agenda — including implicit bias training and making sure classroom materials reflect a diverse set of experiences — are not just sound education practice, but are urgently important for student survival.

Referencing rhetoric from federal and local officials “that students are hearing all the time about who they are, where they come from, what their parents are,” Carranza suggested students are internalizing harmful messages.

“So, the idea of implicit bias training, the idea of having culturally responsive and sustaining curricula and pedagogy is not a matter of just educational practice,” he said. “In many of our communities, it’s a matter of life and death.”

Carranza’s comments are striking because they underscore his belief that those policies will have dramatic ripple effects in students’ lives. They are also defining elements of his agenda for the nation’s largest school system.

The department has required implicit bias training for the majority of its employees, which has invited mixed reactions from educators and invective from conservative commentators, but which Carranza has forcefully defended. And last month, officials announced they will begin ensuring that book lists and the curriculum recommended to schools represent students of different backgrounds.

Carranza’s remarks came during a panel discussion Tuesday about a new study on teacher and parent perceptions of childrens’ identities, hosted by the Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit responsible for the Sesame Street television show.

Carranza also referenced a series of problems connected to racial identity, including that the vast majority of the city’s students are black, Hispanic or Asian, but most educators are white. He said that helps explain why black students are disproportionately punished, even receiving longer suspensions than students from other racial backgrounds for the same infractions. Some research backs the claim that black teachers are less likely to remove black students from class as a punishment.

Acknowledging controversy over his agenda, Carranza emphasized that he remains committed to raising questions about racial equity.

“You have a Latino chancellor who has been unvarnished and unbridled about talking about this issue and how it affects our kids,” he said. “The story really is what are parents wanting to learn and what are we doing about empowering those adults that work in the school system that do not look like the children they’re serving,” he said. “How are we talking about issues of race and issues of identity?”

Carranza wants to assess NYC students throughout the year, but critics decry overtesting

2019-09-27T21:29:42+00:00

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza’s plan to roll out tests to gauge student progress throughout the school year is raising eyebrows among elected officials, union leaders, and testing critics.

The chancellor reiterated his support this week for “formative assessments” — which he has said would be offered four times a year — to help the education department understand whether students are mastering material across the system in “real time,” allowing officials to direct extra help to schools where students are struggling. After this story published, an education department spokeswoman, Danielle Filson, said the frequency of assessments has not been set.

“We have to have a systematic approach to really dipstick the academic health of our students in all of our schools,” Carranza said, noting that the city may use “two or three” of them system-wide (officials said a final number has not been determined). The results could be used to assign coaches or additional resources to schools, he added, and the city plans to begin with a smaller group of schools this year.

But the department has offered few specifics about the content of these new tests, who will create them, what subjects they will cover, what grades they’ll be used in, and even whether schools will be forced to use them. Top union officials have raised concerns the exams will be of little use because schools use a wide range of curriculum and department officials do not centrally track what choices schools make. It’s not clear what curriculum the tests would be based on.

“How do you use a standardized formative assessment when you don’t have any sort of standardized curriculum?” said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, the city’s teacher union. “You don’t even know what you’ll be measuring.”

Students in grades 3-8 already take standardized state tests every year to measure their proficiency in reading and math, but the results are released well after the school year is over, meaning educators don’t learn their students strengths and weaknesses until they’ve already moved on.

City officials say more regular assessments can help give educators, superintendents, and even the chancellor a more up-to-date picture of student progress. David Hay, the education department’s deputy chief of staff, said the city is still working out key details, but emphasized that about 1,200 of the city’s roughly 1,700 district schools already use assessments to measure student learning throughout the year.

“I think one of the misnomers here is that people think it’s new,” Hay said. “We’re not getting in the way of the good work that’s already happening in schools.”

Hay said the city doesn’t plan to spend additional money on the assessments and the goal is not to use them to evaluate teachers or students.

Department officials plan to hold regular “EduStat” meetings to discuss the results from those assessments, and other data sources such as school surveys and state tests. The city plans to hire 10 people to help develop the EduStat system and has budgeted $1.7 million this fiscal year for it, according to city council documents.

But concern about these assessments has spread quickly, especially among testing critics who believe that students already take too many exams. At a city council hearing this week focused on “breaking testing culture,” department officials brought up their plan to deploy more formative assessments.

“The irony was not lost on me that at my hearing on a hyper-testing culture in our school system, the education department drops this announcement of a new assessment,” said Mark Treyger, chairman of City Council’s education committee.

“I offered a low-cost solution” to evaluating student progress, Treyger added, “it’s called a cell phone or an email and you can contact an educator and simply ask them. That does not require millions of dollars or a fancy rollout.”

Carranza is already pushing back against criticism over additional testing. “This could be swallowed up as, ‘well, the chancellor is in favor of more testing.’ No, I’m not,” Carranza said. “But as a chancellor, I need to know as well, are we on track?”

There are some indications that more regular student assessments can boost learning. One study in Indiana found that regular interim assessments in grades 3-8 led to higher scores on state math and reading exams. But at least one large school district, Boston Public Schools, is going in the opposite direction and recently placed a moratorium on district-mandated tests, including interim assessments.

Lynette Guastaferro, executive director of the nonprofit Teaching Matters, said rolling out more regular “low-stakes” tests could be beneficial, especially in early grades when reading instruction is crucial to later academic success.

“The system currently has no way of really knowing who is on track for reading failure until third grade,” said Guastaferro, whose organization has partnered with dozens of schools in the Bronx to help improve reading instruction.

“The question is, can they come up with a formative assessment that’s really going to inform teaching that is better than the state tests and not overwhelm schools with yet another assessment,” Guastaferro said. If not, “I think there’s a big chance that it could just lead to more testing.”

NYC ditched its school turnaround program months ago. Principals are still wondering what comes next.

2019-07-25T00:30:23+00:00

Months after top officials said they were ending Mayor Bill de Blasio’s controversial, $773 million Renewal school turnaround program, school leaders, union officials, and even the people responsible for supporting schools on the ground are still in the dark about what to expect next.

In February, de Blasio and schools Chancellor Richard Carranza promised a new framework for school improvement, one that doesn’t focus only on the lowest-performing schools and would not hinge on a rigid set of interventions.

But interviews with principals across the city, both inside and out of the city’s now-shuttered Renewal program, suggest schools lack precise details about what type of support they will receive, creating uncertainty for the coming school year. And the senior official responsible for overseeing “continuous school improvement” abruptly resigned this month, potentially complicating the education department’s efforts.

“We’ve gotten no instruction or guidance on what will be provided,” said one administrator at a former Renewal school in Brooklyn, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity because this individual wasn’t authorized to talk to the press. “There’s just a general lack of information about what the borough offices are doing, how they’re structured, how they’re staffed, and what they’re doing to support schools.”

Carranza’s new improvement effort, called “Comprehensive School Support,” is based on the idea that every school in the system should receive different types of help based on their individual needs. That is a big departure from Renewal, which was designed to rapidly improve just 94 of the city’s lowest-performing schools with a fixed menu of interventions, such as partnerships with social service organizations, changes to curriculum, longer school days, and access to leadership coaches.

After four years, more than three-quarters of a billion dollars, and limited evidence of meaningful improvements at most schools, officials announced they would phase out Renewal at the end of last school year. They promised schools wouldn’t lose many key pieces of the program — such as nonprofit partnerships that offer everything from dental clinics to mental health counseling — or funding increases they received. But the education department ultimately rolled back other features, such as lengthening the school day by an hour.

The shift in philosophies — from a defined set of interventions to more fluid support — has left some principals feeling a sense of limbo. One Renewal school leader said it is still unclear whether schools will receive coaches, who train teacher leaders how to help their peers improve instruction and how to use student performance data to make tweaks to their teaching practices over time.

“We’ve been waiting to find out whether there’s going to be any coaching support through the borough offices,” the administrator said, making it difficult to know how to budget for the coming school year, since the school would have to find a way to pay for coaches once provided through Renewal.

But some leaders welcomed aspects of the change. Ronald Saltz, who runs Replications, a non-profit that has worked in a handful of Renewal schools, said he is optimistic that school communities will have flexibility to participate in decisions about what they need.

“That sense of, ‘build the collective from the school-level up’ rather than ‘do it my way from the district level down’ is a very different feeling,” he said. “The lines of communication feel clearer and more coherent now than they did at the beginning of the Renewal work.”

Ben Honoroff, the principal of Brooklyn’s M.S. 50, said he was glad the city is keeping many elements of the Renewal program even as it officially ends. The school will continue its partnership with a nonprofit organization that helps with everything from after-school activities to home visits where staff distribute information about the high school admissions process. It will also continue to receive the funding boost it got through the initiative.

“I’ve always been a big supporter of Renewal [and the] support that we got,” Honoroff said.

There are other areas, however, where Honoroff has been less enthusiastic about the city’s strategy. Along with every other Renewal school, he extended the school day by an hour, time filled with enrichment activities including his school’s hugely successful debate program, volleyball, and a class dissecting biases embedded in Disney movies.

Citing budget pressures, city officials cut funding for the extended school days, which has infuriated the principal’s union and has left school leaders like Honoroff scrambling to figure out how to fill the gap out of their own budgets or scale back activities if necessary. “We are hopeful that [extended learning time] will be funded,” Honoroff said.

A Manhattan principal, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said it was a relief to be out from some of the pressures of the Renewal program, which included lots of extra mandates that didn’t feel directly connected to improving instruction.

This principal said there were repeated requests to fill out paperwork offering a “root cause analysis” of everything from low test scores to attendance issues. “It would eat a day of my life,” the principal said. “Then I would never see it ever again.”

Still, there are downsides to being on the outside of the city’s improvement efforts. Teachers at the same school received training from Teachers College to improve writing instruction, which the principal linked to gains in student performance. But it’s unlikely, the principal said, that the school will continue the training for new teachers without the financial support of Renewal given other competing demands on the school’s budget.

Uncertainty about the next phase of school improvement isn’t limited to principals: Even borough-level staff members responsible for working directly with schools said there has not yet been clear guidance.

“There’s a lot less structure for the work,” said one staffer who works directly with schools, and spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly. “The criticism of Renewal is that it was too targeted, too specific, too top down,” the staffer said. But with the new framework, “You’re kind of left with, ‘What does this look like?’”

The borough-level staffer said they have been asked to focus on schools designated in January as low-performing by the state, first by helping them conduct annual comprehensive education plans required of every school.

City officials said they have “revamped” this planning process, which will help determine what kinds of help schools receive, and now includes “quarterly checkpoints” on how schools are progressing on individual goals including test scores, graduation information, and rates of chronic absenteeism. A spokeswoman added that superintendents and borough office members will reveal more about what help schools can expect at a back-to-school event in August.

“We have been working for months to revamp existing systems and develop new ones that will allow us to provide tailored support for every school, and we’re excited to hit the ground running in September,” education department spokeswoman Miranda Barbot said in a statement.

Mark Cannizzaro, head of the city’s principal union said it could be difficult for school leaders to move at full-steam next year given that they don’t yet know exactly what kinds of help they will receive and haven’t had time to communicate plans to educators across the school.

“Things that are going to be rolled out [next] school year are not going to have any opportunity to take root until the following school year,” he said.

Adding to some of the uncertainty about the next phase of school improvement, Abram Jimenez, whom Carranza hired to help oversee school improvement efforts, resigned after the New York Post reported on elements of his employment history, including that he left from a previous school after a probe into misused school money. The Post reported that there was not a competitive process for his hiring; a spokeswoman for the city’s Special Commissioner of Investigation confirmed that they have opened an investigation into Jimenez.

A department spokeswoman emphasized that the chancellor’s school improvement efforts weren’t solely assigned to Jimenez, and that senior officials including deputy chancellors and executive superintendents are also spearheading the effort. Officials said Cheryl Watson-Harris, Carranza’s second-in-command, will oversee much of Jimenez’s school improvement portfolio.

A spokeswoman added that the department plans to hire a “chief strategy officer” under Watson-Harris, who will take over Jimenez’s efforts to launch a new data system called EduStat. That system will give senior department leaders up-to-date information about school performance, partly so they can figure out which schools need extra training, coaches, or other services throughout the year.

Still, big questions remain: Unlike the Renewal program, top officials have declined to offer any details about how much money will be devoted to their improvement efforts, or even the criteria they will use to determine whether the investment is paying off.

Priscilla Wohlstetter, a Teachers College professor who has studied school improvement, said there are advantages to a strategy that is less rigid because there aren’t many surefire methods to quickly turn around schools.

But, she added, the lack of details about elements of the department’s latest improvement efforts could reflect an unwillingness to face accountability if the results are disappointing — especially after the mayor took political hits for the Renewal program’s shortcomings.

If they offer specific benchmarks, “they’re going to be held accountable for it,” she said. “They’re not ready for that.”

NYC parent leaders seek — and receive — new assurance about Chancellor Carranza’s future

2019-07-11T21:41:51+00:00

Following sharp criticism from some City Council members and the recent resignation of a senior appointee, Chancellor Richard Carranza and his future with the education department were on the minds of parent leaders assembled Thursday for their monthly meeting.

After hearing a flurry of concerns, Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council member Sheree Gibson decided to ask deputy chancellor Hydra Mendoza point blank if Carranza was leaving the post he’s held since last year.

Mendoza “was surprised and emphatically stated that’s not true,” Gibson said, adding that the deputy chancellor said Carranza “is a fighter.” Asked whether the chancellor was resigning, a spokeswoman for the education department press office said, “It’s not true.”

Mendoza’s unequivocal response was the latest in the back-and-forth from elected officials, department staffers, and parents over Carranza’s policy initiatives, hiring practices, and focus on racial bias in the school system.

As parents worried about the chancellor’s fate, Carranza’s Twitter account shared a July 3 letter signed by members of the Brooklyn Black Elected Officials Coalition showing their steadfast support and citing “egregious resistance” to the chancellor’s priorities. Coalition member Walter Mosley, a state assemblyman, said the group started drafting the letter last month in response to the lack of movement on the city’s plan to diversify the specialized high schools, as well as the ongoing criticism of Carranza.

“Chancellor Carranza should be commended for his new initiatives, as he is seeking to make New York City public schools equitable by challenging the current racial disparities in discipline, segregation and ensuring culturally relevant education,” the letter said.

It was not immediately clear what prompted the sudden wellspring of concern about Carranza’s tenure, though a group of city lawmakers have previously questioned the chancellor’s performance and suggested that he should be fired if he “continues to divide this city” with “contentious rhetoric” about race.

That letter was largely symbolic — only the mayor has the authority to hire and fire the schools chancellor — though it represented an unusual rebuke. In public, Mayor Bill de Blasio has stood by the schools chief, saying Carranza “isn’t going anywhere.”

Gibson said she inquired about the chancellor’s status partly because parent leaders are “quite aware of the firestorm going on around him. We don’t want our parent representatives to be blindsided themselves” — or for unfounded claims to spread.

The letter from Brooklyn’s black elected officials was just the latest display of public support for a chancellor who, in recent months, has encountered fierce pushback on his leadership style and priorities. He has also come under fire for hiring practices, followed by the abrupt departure this month of Abram Jimenez, the department’s Senior Executive Director of Continuous School Improvement, after questions were raised by The New York Post about his employment history.

Some parent leaders and advocates said the scare over Carranza’s tenure may serve as encouragement to keep up their defense of his leadership.

Others said they weren’t so sure how the situation would play out, given the Department of Education’s notoriously opaque nature.

“I’ve been a parent since ’94 in the DOE,” said Celia Green, a co-chair of the advisory council, “and you know to take nothing for granted.”

NYC vows to address special education failures detailed in state review. But will their reforms go far enough?

2019-07-09T20:48:38+00:00

In the wake of a scathing state report that found failures at virtually every level of New York City’s special education system, city officials acknowledged some flaws and pledged to address them in a response released Tuesday.

The education department offered explanations for the systemic failures detailed in May’s state review, which found that initial evaluations for special education services are often delayed or don’t happen at all. Officials also promised a series of reforms to tackle other issues, including that mandated services go unmet and that the formal appeal process is overwhelmed with a surge in complaints, leaving students in limbo.

In the response — which didn’t impress some advocates — the city said hundreds of new staff, including additional psychologists and lawyers, would be hired to help conduct evaluations and to handle disputes about services. They also promised to beef up preschool special education programs.

The city education department “is fully committed to the action steps and timelines outlined in our [response],” schools Chancellor Richard Carranza wrote in a letter to the state education commissioner, “and we are focused on working toward full compliance in every area.”

Whether those reforms result in significant changes on the ground will have enormous consequences: There are more than 224,000 students with disabilities in the city’s public schools, a population that alone would rank among the nation’s 10 largest school systems and whose students face significantly worse academic outcomes than their peers. Nearly a quarter of students with disabilities don’t receive all of their required services, with thousands of students not receiving any mandated services whatsoever, according to city data.

“These children only have one shot at education; whether we get it right or wrong today impacts their life chances,” said Randi Levine, the policy director at Advocates for Children, an organization that works with special needs families. The state’s initial report, known as a “Compliance Assurance Plan,” noted that the city had been violating federal law governing students with disabilities for the past 13 years and that previous efforts to reform the system had “not resulted in the systemic change necessary.”

In their response, city officials offered a variety of reasons as part of a “root cause analysis” of why they’re falling short. Officials said evaluations aren’t always conducted on time in part due to a lack of staff, with psychologists managing caseloads of more than 100 students. Officials described shortages of special education teachers, dysfunctional data systems that make it hard to tell if students are receiving services, and closures of community-based special education preschools that have left some of the city’s youngest students without a school placement.

But advocates questioned whether the city’s proposed solutions will make a significant dent.

The city has struggled to find a seat for every preschool student with a disability who needs one, owing in part to stagnating state funding for private community-based providers, some of which have closed in recent years.

And while the city is proposing to add 200 new preschool seats for those students next year, in addition to a few hundred that were already added, Levine said it will not close the gap entirely. “The [education department] is opening thousands of new 3-K seats, so we know they have the ability to open a preschool special education class seat for every child who needs one,” Levine said, “and it’s not acceptable that they’re not doing that.”

Some of the education department’s goals struck advocates as unambitious. In one example the state report found that just 68% of evaluations for preschool special education services happened on time. The education department’s new goal only pledges to boost that rate by 5%.

Advocates also said they were underwhelmed by the city’s plans to address problems with the city’s impartial hearing offices, the system that allows parents to challenge the city if they believe their child is not getting the correct services or school placement. A series of systemic problems, including payment issues for hearing officers, too few hearing rooms, and staffing shortages have left the process “vulnerable to imminent failure” one report found. In recent years, the number of complaints filed has jumped over 50%.

In the meantime, students often go months or over a year without services their entitled to as the system struggles to process cases.

“The state [report] addresses a number of those issues and unfortunately the DOE punted on most of them without giving a solution and in some instances saying there was no solution to be had,” said Rebecca Shore, the litigation director at Advocates for Children.

For their part, city officials said they would hire 52 new staffers dedicated to the hearing and settlement process, promised regular and prompt payments to hearing officers, and have asked the state to certify more of them, among a series of efforts to identify “specific points in the process that are challenging for families.” The city also noted that Chancellor Carranza toured the Impartial Hearing Office, which a separate state report said was cramped, unkempt, had poor temperature control, and housed teachers who had been reassigned due to disciplinary issues, among other problems. (Under the city’s plan, some improvements have been made to the space and reassigned teachers have been removed.)

The city’s response to the state report was formally due on June 3, but state and city officials did not release it in response to a public records request for more than a month.

State education department spokeswoman Emily DeSantis said the department is reviewing the city’s responses, which “do not represent final actions.” She said the state will offer feedback, but did not immediately offer a timeline.

Danielle Filson, a city education department spokeswoman, emphasized investments the city has made to boost special education services in recent years.

“We have added 4,300 more special education staff over the course of the administration, tripled the number of students with IEPs enrolled in 3-K and Pre-K, and expanded programs for bilingual students, students with autism, and preschooler,” she said in a statement.

“The chancellor has communicated a clear sense of urgency, and we will continue to collaborate closely with the state to ensure all children receive the special education programs and services they need.”

You can read the city’s full responses to the state here.

School year ends in NYC with demands for integration, calls for Carranza’s ouster, and lingering questions over pay parity for pre-K teachers

2019-06-26T23:22:06+00:00

The school year ended in New York City for most students and their families on Wednesday, but debates that have dogged the system — about integration, the prestigious specialized high schools, and pay parity for pre-K teachers — remained conspicuously unresolved.

Dueling afternoon protests erupted at City Hall. Just outside, some voiced opposition to the focus of schools Chancellor Carranza on racial bias in the school system. But inside, students from the youth organization Teens Take Charge, which has not been shy about calling out Mayor Bill de Blasio’s lack of progress integrating the city’s more than 400 high schools, occupied part of the building prior to the start of a city council meeting.

“We want to remind the mayor that we need action now,” said Sophie Mode, a rising junior at Millennium Brooklyn High School who participated in the sit-in. “Every single day a student is walking into a segregated high school where so many students are not receiving the education that they need and deserve, and this is something that he can change.”

More than a dozen students sat in the lobby of City Hall and shared their own experiences with inequity in New York City schools and repeating chants like, “Education is a right! Not just for the rich and white!”

They were joined by education chair Mark Treyger, and other councilmembers, including Brad Lander, Antonio Reynoso, Keith Powers, and Inez Barron.

“We have a lot of work to do,” Treyger told the students. “We can’t afford another study or another working group that will put out something three, four, five years down the road. We need integration now.”

Some of the power to enact change rests in Albany. But the legislative session ended last week with lawmakers again declining, for the second year in a row, to approve a plan put forward by Mayor Bill de Blasio to eliminate the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test, or SHSAT, which solely governs admissions to the city’s prestigious specialized high schools.

That plan — a bid to help integrate the schools, which enroll only 10 percent black and Hispanic students, a demographic that makes up about two-thirds of the school system — has prompted fiery pushback. Asian parents, whose children make up a disproportionate share of enrollment, have fought particularly hard against the proposal.

Just outside City Hall, some who have protested the plan said the city has focused divisively on issues of race and called for Carranza’s ouster. They criticized the school chief’s hiring practices and his rollout of implicit bias training, which have recently come under fire. The protesters, who also support preserving the SHSAT, sang “We Shall Overcome” as they marched away from City Hall and ended their rally.

“He’s polarizing different minority groups, and his strategy is divisive. It’s like diversity is everything, and merit means nothing,” said Linda Lam, an advocate from Elmhurst who helped coordinate the protest.

Missing altogether was Mayor de Blasio, who was in Florida for the first presidential debate, an absence that attracted criticism on social media. As de Blasio makes his longshot bid for the White House, he has touted the city’s progress in making pre-K universal for all city 4-year-olds.

But the mayor’s signature achievement is also weighed down by some unfinished business: Pre-K teachers who work in community organizations, which enroll the majority of pre-K students, have been fighting for pay equal to pre-K teachers in public schools. The salary disparity can be as high as 60 percent — and is particularly striking because, unlike in public schools, many teachers in community programs are black or Hispanic.

Earlier this month, the mayor and city council members announced they had agreed on a “path” towards pay parity as a part of their budget deal. The details, however, are still being worked out in labor negotiations.

With little information beyond a verbal commitment to boost teacher pay, some pre-K teachers have grown impatient, and those who aren’t unionized wonder if they will be included in the final deal.

On Wednesday, Keun-woo Lee, who has taught pre-K in the Bronx for the last two years, called on her fellow educators to tweet at the other presidential candidates ahead of the debate to highlight the fight for equal pay.

“If there’s more national attention around it, I feel like city leaders and elected officials will feel more pressure to do something that’s actually real,” she said.

Lee said she makes $45,000 and is leaving the classroom this summer for a policy fellowship at the education department. She said she has been frustrated by all the positive attention the mayor has gotten for rolling out universal pre-K, or UPK, even while the salary disparities remain.

“The success of UPK was done on the backs of women of color,” Lee said. “He’s just perpetuating these systems of inequity.”

‘We’re going to move the agenda’: Chancellor Carranza speaks at graduation for top screened middle school

2019-06-25T22:50:08+00:00

Chancellor Richard Carranza spoke at the Mott Hall School’s eighth-grade graduation ceremony on Tuesday, where he praised the hard work and dedication of the students, and used his speech to address the controversy his education agenda has sparked in recent weeks to a largely friendly audience of students, parents, and educators.

“Our fundamental belief is that every student deserves a great education and let me tell you what that looks like,” Carranza said to a room erupting in applause. “It looks like the classrooms of Mott Hall School.”

The school is screened for students who must live in District 6 in upper Manhattan who apply and qualify for admission. In the past, Carranza has questioned the appropriateness of screens in public education, which can work to exclude low-income black or Hispanic students. Eighty-one percent of students at Mott Hall, by contrast, are Hispanic, and 77 percent are considered economically disadvantaged. Last week, state education officials recognized it as one of the highest achieving schools in the state.

Priscilla Jimenez, who came to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic when she was seven years old and spoke very little English and is one of the school’s two salutatorians, is representative of students at the school. Many of the graduates are first-generation immigrants from the D. R., and Carranza likened their experiences as immigrants and English language learners to his own.

Speaking in both English and Spanish, the chancellor told the graduates that they were “powerful examples of why the Department of Education is focused on equity and excellence for all,” and referenced the pushback his agenda has encountered.

“While there may be a bunch of adults in the Department of Education, our agenda is the children’s agenda,” the chancellor continued. “That means that sometimes we’re going to move the agenda to serve our students, and people that have been very comfortable for a very long time doing absolutely nothing for the children that they’re supposed to serve are going to feel uncomfortable.”

Carranza’s education platform has raised charges from some quarters that he’s a divisive figure in the city. Several lawmakers have criticized his controversial anti-bias training, “contentious rhetoric” about race, and perceived overemphasis on integration over academics. On Wednesday, a group of his critics will hold a rally on the steps of City Hall to pressure the mayor to fire him.

But the chancellor also enjoys fierce support among his allies, who see his bold support of integration as long overdue.

Ydanis Rodríguez, a council member for District 10, was also a featured speaker at the graduation and praised Carranza for his work. In his speech, he noted that Mott Hall didn’t have the same resources as other schools in the city.

“The New York City education system is the most segregated in the whole nation, and that’s why the chancellor is being attacked,” Rodriguez said. “How is Mott Hall able to say we are preparing the students to go to high school and then to college when we don’t have the same building that other schools have?”

Student speakers credited Mott Hall for offering them the support they needed to feel ready to start high school in the fall.

“The academic and personal achievements we have reached as of today did not come for free. During our journey together, I have learned so much from so many people here today,” Jimenez said. “This ceremony is a reflection of our arduous work and effort.”

Simona Jegelevicius, the second salutatorian, said she was thankful for the valuable lessons that helped her grow as a student.

“Everyone in this graduating class has a good head on their shoulders,” she said in her speech. “We’ve all made it here today despite the challenges. With hard work there are no limits.”

Carranza — and his critics — dig in as controversy over racism and integration roils NYC’s schools

2019-06-20T22:16:13+00:00

For weeks, tensions had been mounting.

Three top education officials sued New York City claiming they were demoted because they are white. Tucker Carlson, the conservative Fox News host, ran a segment criticizing the department’s expanded anti-bias workshops. And the New York Post had been zeroing in on specific hires, claiming the chancellor had skirted proper procedure to bring in friends from previous jobs.

Faced with a question about the controversy, Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza’s message was blunt.

“There are forces in this city that want me to just be quiet,” he told reporters who gathered last week for a press conference announcing that the education department would accept a series of school integration measures. “They want me to be the good minority and just be quiet. Don’t bring the race issue up. I will not be silenced, I will not be quiet.”

In recent days, Carranza has come under siege from critics, including some local lawmakers, who see cronyism in his hiring practices, an over-emphasis on implicit-bias and the role of race in policy matters, and have decried the chancellor as “divisive.” At the same time, he enjoys staunch support among integration advocates who see the attacks as evidence of the very racism they say they are trying to combat in the nation’s most segregated school system.

That Carranza has brought in some of his own people from the outside is not, on its face, a stark departure from the practice of many school superintendents, some observers say. More unusual has been the fight’s public nature, and the stark battle lines it has already drawn around issues — racial bias and how to increase integration — that in recent decades have been all but absent from the policy table.

To Carranza’s supporters, the controversy is not surprising but the expected fallout from inevitably difficult and long overdue conversations — one reason, many of them say, they are not backing down in the face of pushback or criticism.

“The truth is, people who have been doing this work and people of color feel — finally, for once — there’s someone in that office who understands the issues,” said Naomi Peña, a proponent of integration and parent leader on Community Education Council in Manhattan’s District 1.

But whether the chancellor’s bold rhetoric and the resulting friction is sufficient or will lead to tangible changes in the classroom remains to be seen, especially given that Carranza likely has only a short runway under a term-limited mayor whose own time in office is nearly up.

“It’s not that difficult to stand up on a soapbox and yell and scream — and that’s necessary in a lot of ways. But it’s a lot harder to get the work done,” said Josh Starr, the CEO of PDK International, an association for educators.

From the earliest moments of his tenure, Carranza has set himself apart from his predecessors and even the mayor who hired him by relentlessly and unapologetically calling out racial inequities in the nation’s largest school system.

After weeks of critical Post stories, a small group of local lawmakers joined the fray on Saturday, releasing a letter asking for Carranza to be fired if he “continues to divide this city” with “contentious rhetoric” about race.

Next came the revelation that one of Carranza’s new directors, Abram Jimenez, had been sanctioned for improper conduct as a teacher and quit his job as assistant principal of a California school after an audit found more than $92,000 of school money had been “mismanaged.” He took leave this week.

Education department spokesman Will Mantell said Jimenez had extended an existing trip visiting family and noted that he left his assistant principal job for a more senior role. The department was aware of Jimenez’s disciplinary record from his teaching days when he was hired in New York City, Mantell said, chalking it up to a youthful mistake when Jimenez was 23 years old.

Hiring controversies and staff shake-ups are nothing new at Tweed, the education department’s Manhattan headquarters. Shortly after former Mayor Michael Bloomberg gained control of the city’s schools, two top officials resigned in a nepotism scandal. Perhaps most infamously, he appointed a schools chancellor, Cathie Black, who lacked the proper credentials and quit after just 95 days. When Carmen Fariña was appointed to head the department after Mayor Bill de Blasio was elected, it marked a radical change in philosophy and, along with it, another staffing shake-up in the form of an exodus.

“It’s gone back for years,” said Eric Nadelstern, a former deputy under the previous mayoral administration, of the staffing churn.

What is different this time about the reshuffling of personnel is that it has occurred against a backdrop of ongoing debate over racism in the school system, with the chancellor’s supporters and detractors lining up on either side of the issue and digging in.

The dueling expressions of support — and condemnation — have been followed up with rallies and a flood of posts on social media. In the midst of it all, Carranza has refused to give an inch, fielding multiple interviews to counter the criticism, and even seeming at times to relish the fight: posting video messages explaining his agenda and tweeting a defense of his hires.

The public attacks, far from putting a dent in his support, appear to have only invigorated integration activists and the chancellor’s defenders. About 100 staffers recently took to the steps of Tweed to rally in support of the chancellor, and a handful of high ranking officials brought in by the chancellor wrote an open letter on Medium standing by Carranza. Even Cynthia Nixon, the “Sex and the City” actress and education advocate, and former gubernatorial contender, has weighed in.

“Carranza has this parent’s support,” she recently tweeted.

One employee within the Office of Policy and Evaluation said he’s sensed no divisiveness in the department but noted that he might be “in a bubble” since his office has held regular discussions around racial equity since even before Carranza arrived. Far from causing consternation, criticism of Carranza has prompted discussion about why some people might not see eye to eye with the chancellor’s agenda.

The employee’s division within the department has been using the Post stories and similar coverage as examples of “white supremacy culture” during its race and equity discussions, said the employee, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak with the press.

“Even right after the first Post article came out, somebody printed a thing that said ‘We support Chancellor Carranza’ and posted it up in our office,” the employee said. “I think it’s mostly seen as all of these voices are not the norm within the DOE, so it’s mostly a chance for us to examine white supremacy.”

But Carranza’s detractors are not relenting either. This week, parents rallied in the rain near City Hall chanting, “Hey, ho. Carranza’s got to go!”

Joe Borelli, a councilman from Staten Island, is one of nine elected officials who signed onto the letter calling for Carranza’s potential removal. He said Carranza’s focus has alienated families who will ultimately need to buy into the city’s integration plans, and hasn’t done enough to lift school quality.

“The chancellor only is focused on issues of race and integration. I haven’t heard one iota out of his mouth on how we’re going to fix schools that have a problem producing competitive students,” Borelli told Chalkbeat.

Some observers say the criticism of Carranza is likely inevitable since there is no way to confront elements of inequity and racism within the education department without upsetting some employees, especially those who might have benefitted from the status quo.

“It is much easier to gain power and direct influence in the DOE and other similar institutions if you’re white,” said Shael Polakow-Suransky, a former deputy chancellor during the Bloomberg administration and president of the Bank Street College of Education. “Talking about that in and of itself is very threatening for folks who haven’t examined the history of racism in our city and country.”

Yet it’s also possible the controversy could grow strong enough to become a distraction, hindering some of Carranza’s goals, said United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew. But that doesn’t mean Carranza should apologize for his bold rhetoric, he added. Instead, Mulgrew suggested, Carranza should continue meeting with school communities and show that he “respects other people’s thoughts and ideas and keep moving forward.”

“We knew this chancellor was going to run into a tough time before he even got here because the mayor had made it clear that he wanted a chancellor from outside the system ― that he thought the bureaucracy of the DOE had to be shaken up,” Mulgrew said.

It’s unclear how, or when, the conflict will be resolved. On the horizon is a mayoral election for 2021, which means Carranza’s time is almost certainly limited. In New York City, the mayor appoints the chancellor. And de Blasio’s bid for the White House is creating its own political gravitational field. His run as a progressive could be bolstered by the chancellor’s unapologetic stance. So far, the mayor has stood by his schools chief, saying Carranza “isn’t going anywhere.”

Zipporah Osei contributed to this report.

NYC announces its first overhaul of how police operate inside schools since Mayor Giuliani

2019-06-20T08:00:17+00:00

After years of delays, top city officials have reached an agreement to overhaul the way the New York City Police Department operates in schools for the first time since Mayor Rudy Giuliani was in office.

The new agreement, set to be announced Thursday, is meant to limit the situations in which police officials can send students into the criminal justice system for relatively low-level offenses. The agreement also discourages school officials from making referrals to the police for minor misbehavior.

The changes mark a major move away from the zero-tolerance policies that dominated the city’s approach to school discipline when the agreement was created. The document — which governs police involvement in school security and formally handed the police department authority over roughly 5,000 school safety agents — was supposed to be updated every four years, but has never been revised.

Among the biggest changes, the new agreement says that police officials should not arrest or summons students “whenever possible” for low-level offenses such as marijuana possession, disorderly conduct, spitting, or graffiti. It also limits school staff from calling school safety agents for infractions like uniform violations, cutting class, lateness, smoking, lying, or gambling — as long as they can be addressed “safely.”

Some advocates said the new agreement is a big step in dialing back police presence in schools. Though arrests and summonses have fallen in recent years, the vast majority are issued to black and Hispanic students.

“There’s still a lot of discretion baked in, but what you’re seeing is the school safety division give up their authority to arrest in every situation, and that’s big coming from the NYPD,” said Johanna Miller, an education policy expert at the New York Civil Liberties Union who participated on a mayoral task force to revise the agreement.

“This [agreement] addresses some of the biggest contributors to arrests in schools and should reduce them dramatically,” she added.

In the past, students could also be arrested in school for minor offenses that occurred off school grounds, a practice that advocates have criticized as needlessly disruptive to schools and students. In a separate change, officials said the police patrol guide has been revised to “strictly limit” those arrests to felonies, sex offenses, and “crimes where there is an immediate risk of escape or where the perpetrator is apprehended in hot pursuit.”

The agreement between the police and education departments has been controversial since it was first inked in 1998, with some city officials saying the presence of police officials made student misbehavior more likely to end in arrests. The process of updating it has been long and fraught.

In 2016, a mayoral task force proposed an overhaul to the agreement and negotiated a series of changes that would have limited police involvement on issues such as cutting class, smoking cigarettes, and certain instances of insubordination, participants said.

Even though top education and police officials participated in the process and seemed amenable to changes, those proposed compromises largely disappeared when the city presented a new draft agreement, according to people who were present during the meetings. Some task force members said education and police department lawyers, who had not participated in the group’s discussions, played a role in stripping the draft agreement of the most important reforms.

Meanwhile, members of the task force often went long stretches without substantive updates, and a final agreement was repeatedly delayed. Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza even expressed reservations about a draft agreement this March. “I was not satisfied with what I saw was developing,” he said. “There was a lot in that [agreement] that was very much law-enforcement centric. We’ve been pushing back and we’ve actually been having great conversations with NYPD.”

Miller, who had been frustrated that their initial recommendations were gutted, said the final version “reflects some of the language the leadership team worked on together, so I’m really pleased to see that.”

In addition to reducing arrests, summonses, and police referrals, the new agreement calls for expanded training on de-escalation and conflict resolution among school safety agents and traditional patrol officers.

“The updated MOU and Patrol Guide reflect our values and demonstrate a clear commitment to safe and supportive learning environments for all students and staff,” Carranza said in a statement. “Taken together with our investments in restorative justice, and social-emotional learning, we’re ensuring each of our school communities has a foundation of positive relationships, respect, and support.”

Phil Weinberg, 35-year veteran of NYC education department, to retire

2019-06-14T16:27:22+00:00

Phil Weinberg, who has overseen the education department’s division of teaching and learning under two chancellors, announced Friday that he is stepping down.

“This has been a very difficult decision for me, but one that I have been thinking about for some time,” Weinberg wrote in a letter to education department staffers.

The education department will open Weinberg’s position, Deputy Chief Academic Officer for Teaching and Learning, in a public search, officials said. Until then, another department official, Alice Brown, will occupy the role. Brown has worked for the education department since 1997 as a teacher, a principal, and executive director in the Office of School Support before her current role, officials said.

Weinberg, whose career in the city’s education department began as a teacher in 1984, rose through the ranks to eventually oversee efforts to improve instruction and oversee some of the mayor’s most visible education initiatives.

Weinberg began at John Dewey High School before leaving for Brooklyn’s High School of Telecommunication Arts and Technology — and wound up staying for 27 years. After rising to principal in 2001, Weinberg ran Telly “like the beloved mayor of a close-knit town” as the New York Times once put it, building “learning communities” within the school that helped shepherd students to graduation.

In 2014, Chancellor Fariña plucked him from that post to head up a resurrected “teaching and learning” division that had been dormant for years.

His tenure got off to a rocky start, with some early staff turnover under his watch. But he was seen as a key hire to advise Chancellor Fariña on the high school world, where she had less direct experience. He also managed several of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s early education initiatives, including making computer-science classes available to all students by 2025.

After Fariña exited the department and was replaced last year by Chancellor Richard Carranza, Weinberg’s role become less senior as part of a broader reorganization. Instead of reporting directly to the chancellor, he reported to Chief Academic Officer Linda Chen. The division of teaching and learning no longer has a deputy chancellor level position.

“Phil has been a tireless champion for students, educators, and our city for 35 years,” Carranza said in a statement. “We will all miss his spirit, vast knowledge, and dedication to the work. He is an educator’s educator and true public servant who has made a real difference in the lives of countless New Yorkers, and we thank him for his leadership and wish him great things in his retirement.”

He currently oversees the offices of leadership; teacher development; curriculum, instruction and professional learning; policy and evaluation; and postsecondary readiness, officials said.

You can read Weinberg’s full letter to education department staffers here:

Reema Amin contributed.

A ‘big deal’ or not enough? What to know about the diversity recommendations de Blasio just embraced

2019-06-10T23:35:02+00:00

Mayor Bill de Blasio endorsed a series of recommendations offered by the city’s School Diversity Advisory Group, an announcement that top city officials — and even some integration advocates — heralded as a triumph.

“Today’s a big deal,” Chancellor Richard Carranza said, noting the city had accepted virtually all of the advisory group’s 67 recommendations. It “represents the systemic change that we’ve been yearning for,” said Mark Treyger, chairman of City Council’s education committee.

But despite the soaring rhetoric, the suggestions the city has pledged to adopt don’t come with precise integration goals, changes to any enrollment policies, or a timeline for seeing results.

The initial recommendations made by the advisory group, released in February, did not address some of the most explosive issues — including gifted and talented programs or academic screening — that advocates say are essential in addressing segregation. The education department’s latest announcement sidesteps those issues, too.

Instead, the city has pledged to push schools to be more representative of their surrounding districts and boroughs — with the goal for schools to eventually match citywide demographics. That is a more aggressive target than the city’s previous diversity goals, which experts said were extraordinarily modest. Officials also announced Monday that five additional districts would receive $200,000 each in grant funding to begin the process of crafting hyper-local integration plans.

Some school integration advocates who were part of the diversity advisory group said those efforts represent an important milestone.

“This is more policy that’s been implemented than anywhere in the country I’ve seen voluntarily,” said Matt Gonzales, who supports school integration work through the nonprofit New York Appleseed. “This is a critical step.”

Monday’s announcement, which de Blasio previewed in an op-ed, is notable partly because the mayor has been reluctant to discuss integration for most of his time in office, even though the city’s schools are among the most segregated in the country.

Though the mayor introduced a proposal to integrate eight specialized high schools last year, which requires approval from state lawmakers, some advocates argue the mayor hasn’t done enough to address segregation in the vast majority of schools whose enrollment processes he directly controls.

Last week, hundreds of students gathered on the steps of the education department’s headquarters to demand a more integrated schools system, chanting “where’s our mayor?” The rally was timed for the two year anniversary of the mayor convening the diversity task force. De Blasio, who is running for president, did not attend Monday’s press conference and has less than three years left in his second, final term.

Tiffani Torres, student integration activist with the group Teens Take Charge and an organizer of last week’s rally, said she was disappointed that the education department did not explain in detail how the city hopes to boost integration, especially among the city’s high schools.

“The proposals are a step in the right direction, but they don’t match the urgency of the crisis of segregation in our schools,” said Torres, a student at Manhattan’s Pace High School who has pressed the mayor on school segregation.

Some members of the diversity task force understand the impatience for change but are also hopeful more is coming. Lazar Treschan, youth policy expert at the Community Service Society, said accepting the initial recommendations “lay the groundwork” for broader policy changes even if it isn’t yet enough.

“This administration will only be successful in integrating schools that dismantle some of the mechanisms that are the greatest barriers to integration — like gifted and talented, middle school screening, and high school screening — which aren’t in today’s announcement,” Treschan said.

Members of the advisory group said its second and final report would address academic screening and gifted programs, though they declined to say what changes are under consideration. That report is expected in a few weeks.

The announcement Monday included five new districts that will receive grants to kick off a process of creating district-specific integration policies. They are: Bronx District 9, Districts 13 and 16 in Brooklyn, District 28 in Queens and Staten Island’s district 31. Districts in Manhattan and Brooklyn have used that process to change zoning lines or eliminate academic screens.

Many of the 62 recommendations the education department accepted with some tweaks address issues such as training teachers in culturally responsive education and requiring schools to work to eliminate racial disparities in suspensions.

Some on the advisory group see such efforts as critical follow-ups to any desegregation plan — to ensure that “once students from different backgrounds are in a school together that all students are honored and may feel welcome,” said Richard Kahlenberg, another member of the committee, and a researcher at the progressive think tank The Century Foundation. But the extent to which the city will be able — or willing — to change student demographics at individual schools is unclear.

The education department rejected two of the diversity group’s initial recommendations, including hiring a “chief integration officer” and looking into transferring oversight of school safety officers from the police department to the education department.

Officials said they are “continuing to review” a few other suggestions, such as making more grant money available to districts to spur integration efforts and adding enrichment programs to elementary schools.

NYC’s anti-bias training for educators is contentious — and behind schedule. Some advocates say that’s not a bad thing.

2019-06-01T00:16:13+00:00

Last summer, schools Chancellor Richard Carranza announced plans to accelerate the rollout of anti-bias efforts to every city educator within two years, calling the workshops a “cornerstone” of his school improvement efforts.

But shortening the runway from two to four years for getting about 125,000 department employees through the contentious implicit bias trainings has created challenges — and the initiative is already lagging the chancellor’s aggressive timeline. The department has trained only about 15,000 people so far and anticipates roughly 50,000 more will participate in a workshop next school year, according to Paul Forbes, who helps oversee the implicit bias efforts.

“We have some backlog work to do,” Forbes said, noting that the 15-person team spearheading the workshops has been hiring additional staff in recent months. “We are honoring the chancellor’s commitment to say, ‘let’s make this a priority.’”

The education department’s implicit-bias trainings have been the subject of intense controversy this month, sparked by a series of New York Post stories that quote educators who have felt uncomfortable and were offended by the trainings, including one exercise about “white supremacy culture.” Those stories have captured the attention of national right-wing outlets, including Fox News and Breitbart.

More than 100 education department employees, in an unusually direct response to the negative media coverage, wore blue in solidarity and rallied on the steps of Tweed Courthouse, the department’s Downtown Manhattan headquarters. Escalating scrutiny this week, three top education department officials filed a lawsuit claiming they were demoted because they are white women, an allegation Carranza has forcefully rejected.

Carranza has also vigorously defended the implicit bias training, which is one of the largest initiatives of his young administration. “It’s about the process of being able to do that self-reflection,” he said at a recent City Council hearing. “And if there is a bias, how do you deal with that bias, and how do we help each other not fall into a situation where we’re giving unintended messages to students?”

Forbes said it’s understandable that some educators are having negative reactions to the workshops, which he said are designed to help make people aware of how unconscious assumptions about gender, sexual orientation, race, and disability status can affect the way they treat others or are themselves treated. The purpose, he noted, is not to single out specific groups of people.

“It’s not because you have a character flaw,” Forbes said. “Every facilitator is different but I’m very intentional at every session that if I’m a human being, this is affecting all of us.”

The trainings are required for teachers, administrators, and staff in borough-based support centers — part of a $23 million effort. And educators have expressed a broad range of views about the workshops, which last about five hours, and are conducted during planned professional development sessions, weekends, and even over the summer.

Bronx middle-school teacher Leah Clark said she believed before receiving the training that it was “so necessary” and thought the department’s mandatory session would build on what she’s learned about biases through other professional development. Instead, she was upset by the lack of discussion on how to address biases in the classroom.

“It was 1:15 p.m. — I look at my phone and I realize we’ve been here all day, and I hadn’t felt uncomfortable, I hadn’t felt challenged, and I should have,” Clark said.

For Harlem elementary school teacher Abigail Fuselier, the training “felt planned, it felt professional,” and well thought-out, though she was left wondering how to move forward from recognizing biases. Fuselier thinks the training should be required of everyone, “especially for people who have been in the [department] for 20 or 30 years who haven’t been a part of that.”

And some students have also welcomed the trainings as overdue.

Yet some research suggests mandatory training can activate stereotypes instead of quashing them. (The education department did not respond to a detailed list of questions, including whether the city could cite research supporting its approach. “We’re making real progress towards our ambitious goal of training 125,000 staff members by the end of next year. This work is urgent and important to advance equity now,” department spokeswoman Miranda Barbot wrote in an email instead.)

Forbes said the city is deploying the expanded bias workshops in conjunction with other efforts. Fourteen districts across the city have convened “equity teams” that are digging into data ranging from which students are classified as disabled to which are identified for gifted programs to determine if bias plays a role in such disparities.

Two schools from each of those districts are considered “incubators” that can respond to some of those issues and share best practices — “focusing on things like more culturally responsive curriculum, or reducing suspension disproportionality,” Forbes said.

Still, the mandated workshops are a centerpiece of the education department’s anti-bias efforts. Advocates had pushed the department to expand training, pointing to the disparate impact of suspensions and high-profile instances of teachers accused of offering racist lessons.

But even some advocates have wondered about the speed of the department’s planned rollout and whether they can maintain quality while offering workshops to over 125,000 people in two years.

“The fact that we’re moving at a slightly slower pace is probably better than moving super fast and not being as good,” said Natasha Capers, who directs the Coalition for Educational Justice, an organization that has pushed for the workshops.

City officials emphasized that while they are expanding the rollout, schools and administrators have contracted with various groups to conduct implicit bias training for years. (The education department did not respond to questions about how widespread those workshops have been in the past.)

In its current iteration, the department is also relying partly on outside groups including The National Training Institute on Race and Equity and the Perception Institute, Forbes said.

Forbes added his team has worked to make sure there is some consistency across the workshops, with enough leeway for each facilitator to bring their own experience to the discussion.

“If this is a productive conversation — even with some tension — I’m okay with that,” he said.

Carranza blasts lawsuit claiming 3 white administrators were improperly demoted

2019-05-29T21:08:06+00:00

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza pushed back Wednesday against a lawsuit claiming that three top education officials were improperly demoted because they are white women, saying the allegations are “absolutely not true.”

The complaint was filed Tuesday on behalf of three high-level officials: Lois Herrera, who was previously CEO of the Office of Safety and Youth Development; Laura Feijoo, who was the Senior Supervising Superintendent; and Jaye Murray, who was executive director of the Office of Counseling and Support Programs.

The lawsuit is notable because senior department administrators rarely sue the district in a direct challenge to the chancellor’s hiring practices. All three women claim that their work was minimized and they were demoted as part of Carranza’s reorganization last year and replaced with less qualified people of color.

“Carranza has improperly conflated the daunting task of addressing tough socioeconomic challenges facing many of the students in the New York City public school system with a discriminatory belief that caucasians in the DOE workplace, particularly more senior caucasian women, are causing or exacerbating those challenges” according to the lawsuit filed in state court, first reported by the New York Post.

On Wednesday, the schools chief aggressively challenged those claims.

“Last time I checked, as the chancellor I have the prerogative of organizing the system to deliver better results. That’s exactly what I did,” Carranza said at an unrelated press conference in the Bronx about summer meals.

He added: “The children in New York City — 70% of whom are black and brown children — get to see senior level administrators that look like them. What’s wrong with that? And they happen to be extremely well-qualified individuals who at any moment could get tapped to lead their own school system anywhere across this country.”

The lawsuit comes as Carranza has made racial equity a centerpiece of his agenda. One of his most tangible policy moves since taking office a year ago has been requiring that all of the city’s educators receive implicit bias training within two years, an effort he has described as a “cornerstone” of his school improvement efforts.

Those trainings have also sparked pushback from some education department employees who have anonymously claimed in a series of Post stories that the trainings have created a toxic work environment. (The anti-bias trainings are not specifically described in the lawsuit.)

[Calling all educators: Help us understand New York City’s implicit bias training]

Herrera, Feijoo, and Murray repeatedly felt devalued because of their race, according to the lawsuit, which seeks $90 million in damages. Some of their specific claims include:

At a graduation for students in temporary housing that Hererra attended, a superintendent said he was “so glad to see a sea of black and brown children,” according to the lawsuit. Another presenter at the graduation read a poem “that warned racial minority students against caucasians.” Carranza and Robinson offered standing ovations, which “distressed and marginalized Hererra,” according to the complaint.
Last June, Carranza told a group of administrators that “if you draw a paycheck from DOE … Get on board with [his] equity platform or leave,” according to the lawsuit, which suggests this was a threat used to silence white education department employees. Carranza denied saying that on Wednesday.
The lawsuit claims that Cheryl Watson-Harris was appointed first deputy chancellor above Feijoo even though Watson-Harris did not initially have the appropriate license.
At a professional learning session that included Herrera, Robinson said that “If you’ve been with the DOE for more than 20 years, you’re responsible for the problem” referring to racial inequities, according to the lawsuit. Herrera has been at the education department since the mid 1980s.
The lawsuit claims formal hiring processes were not followed in making promotions. On Wednesday, Carranza said there was a process that included interviews.

Will Mantell, an education department spokesman, declined to comment on the specific allegations listed in the lawsuit. “We hire the right people to get the job done for kids and families, and these claims of ‘reverse racism’ have no basis in fact,” he said in a statement. “We’ll continue to foster a supportive environment for all our employees.”

Mantell added that Feijoo, Herrera, and Murray all earn the same or higher salaries as they did when Carranza took office.

Calling all educators: Help us understand New York City’s implicit bias training

2019-05-28T22:47:45+00:00

Richard Carranza has promised every single New York City educator will receive implicit bias training — a “cornerstone” of his agenda since he took the helm of the nation’s largest school system last year.

The $23 million initiative is backed by an ambitious goal: Within two years, every educator is supposed to receive anti-bias instruction. Advocates had long pushed for additional training, pointing to statistics that show black students are disproportionately removed from their classrooms for misbehavior, and that the teaching force is mostly white but the city’s students are predominantly black or Hispanic.

In recent days, the education department’s implicit bias training has faced scrutiny after a string of New York Post stories featuring largely anonymous sources criticizing elements of the training, including an exercise on “white supremacy culture.” In response, over 100 education department officials wore blue in solidarity last week to protest the negative coverage and support Carranza’s anti-bias initiative.

We’re interested in learning directly from educators and school officials about how those trainings are playing out across the city. What do you think of them? Using the form below, you can help us understand what the trainings look like, whether they’re changing how you approach your job, and whether you think they are helpful or could be improved.

Carranza says changes to NYC’s school discipline manual are coming soon. Here are 4 questions we’re asking.

2019-05-21T20:35:15+00:00

Chancellor Richard Carranza is poised to unveil the results of his overhaul of school discipline policies — and the changes could be significant.

Carranza said recently he is “very close” to announcing his recommended changes to the code, which governs acceptable behavior and punishments for students across the city. The chancellor — who has has been much more forceful in calling out racial disparities in student punishments than his predecessor — has said there will be “no sacred cows” as he rethinks the manual.

After two rounds of changes to school discipline policies since Mayor Bill de Blasio took office in 2014, suspensions have fallen by 32 percent, though big disparities have persisted.

The chancellor has signaled that reducing suspensions and racial disparities will be at the center of the education department’s revisions.

“We’ve driven down suspensions and suspension lengths while crime has also fallen, but there’s a lot more work to do to advance equity now,” education department spokesperson Miranda Barbot wrote in a statement.

But what, exactly, is under consideration and how would any edits to the discipline code affect students and educators? The education department declined to say what is under consideration, but here are four questions we’re asking.

Will the city cut down on lengthy suspensions?

Suspensions have generally fallen, but lengthier out-of-school suspensions have remained relatively steady under de Blasio. Discipline reform advocates are hoping the city will aggressively cut down on these so-called “superintendent” suspensions, which were handed out more than 10,000 times last school year and which can last from six days up to an entire school year.

These suspensions often result in students being removed from their school and sent to a suspension center, often disrupting their studies and landing them in an environment that some have described as feeling like jail. Almost 90% of out-of-school suspensions were issued to black or Hispanic students last school year, a group that comprises 67% of the city’s students

City officials have strongly hinted that changes could be coming. A spokesperson previously said the mayor is “concerned with the length of our suspensions.” And the education department has quietly started sending students back to class faster after they are suspended.

“I would expect suspension caps in terms of length,” said Dawn Yuster, the school justice project director at Advocates for Children. A bill making its way through the state legislature would cap suspensions at 20 days and eliminate suspensions for students in grades K-3, but it is not clear whether it will pass before the session ends in June or whether the city will consider those changes on its own.

Racial disparities have persisted despite fewer suspensions. Can the city tackle that?

Disparities in who gets suspended have remained stubborn despite two waves of discipline reforms under de Blasio. Black students receive about 46% of the city’s suspensions, despite being 26% of the student body, according to the most recent suspension data. Black students are also more likely to receive harsher punishments for the same offenses as students from other racial backgrounds, an Independent Budget Office report found.

One approach to reduce those disparities, advocates say, would be to limit the discretion educators have in punishing students and eliminating minor and more subjective infractions such as “insubordination.” (The education department now requires extra approval to suspend a student for insubordination, though other large districts have scrapped similar violations entirely.)

Cara Chambers, the director of the Legal Aid Society’s education advocacy project, pointed to infraction B24, which covers everything from spitting to throwing chalk. Students who are cited for B24 can receive punishments ranging from a meeting with school officials to an out-of-school suspension for two weeks. “There’s a lot of discretion there that leaves room for bias or racial discrimination to sneak in,” she said.

How will educators respond?

Some educators and union officials have pushed back against efforts to curtail suspensions, arguing the efforts have created less orderly classrooms.

Chanan Kessler, who has recently taught at two Bronx high schools, said he’s not in favor of another round of discipline reforms and worries about what the effects might be. After multiple overhauls of the discipline code, he said, educators felt pressure not to suspend students for fear of attracting scrutiny from supervisors or education department officials.

As a result, “students felt like they could be roaming the halls, cutting class, engaging in other behaviors that sort of lends to [a] chaotic atmosphere,” Kessler said. He said he has not received explicit training on restorative justice, an approach favored by the city that relies on mediation, discussions to ferret out the root causes of conflict, and other interventions in lieu of suspensions.

“I think schools have to have some tools,” he said, referring to suspensions. Any changes to the discipline code will require the city to hold public hearings before they’re adopted.

Will the city boost training for alternatives to suspensions?

One thing supporters and critics of discipline reform agree on: The education department has not paired its mandate to reduce suspensions with enough training to effectively transition to more restorative approaches.

An education department spokesperson wrote in an email that the city spends $47 million each year on a series of initiatives, including mental health restorative justice, and an additional $23 million on anti-bias training. Officials could not say how many schools or educators citywide had received restorative justice training.

Nelson Mar, an attorney at Bronx Legal Services who supports discipline reforms, stressed that additional trainings are essential. Without helping educators across the city adapt to restorative approaches, “it’s likely you’re going to experience significant pushback, you won’t get that buy in,” he said, “and you’ll see these efforts significantly frustrated.”

NYC reverses plan to close P.S. 25, a Brooklyn elementary school with just 82 students

2019-05-16T21:07:14+00:00

It’s the little elementary school that could.

After a yearlong legal battle, the city’s education department announced Thursday it will spare P.S. 25, a Brooklyn elementary school, from closure.

The sudden about-face means that a key legal question about school closures and attendance zones will not be immediately resolved. Advocates argued the city violated one of the few formal powers of local parent councils in closing the school. The closure has been on hold since last summer, when a judge ordered the education department to keep the school open while the case proceeded.

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza made the decision after reviewing the situation and “listening closely to District 16 parents,” education department spokesman Doug Cohen wrote in an email. “This gives P.S. 25 clarity and stability moving forward, and we’re excited to continue our work with the school to support a high-quality and sustainable learning environment,” Cohen added.

That represents a complete reversal from early last year, when district officials said the elementary school suffered from low and dwindling enrollment and was unsustainable. The school’s enrollment fell to 82 students this school year, down from 102 the previous year, and is projected to cost $50,000 per student to operate, officials said. (That projection is based on a lower enrollment of 60 students; it is not clear what the current spending figure is.) The department has previously argued schools with enrollments that low are too costly to keep open and struggle to offer a full range of programs.

The change came just before a legal hearing in the case Thursday morning, but also signals Carranza’s reluctance to shutter schools, a process that proved controversial for his predecessor. The decision to close P.S. 25 was made before Carranza took office, and no closures have been proposed since.

Advocates for P.S. 25 argued that the city’s efforts to close the school didn’t make sense because it has improved significantly in recent years, according to state tests. About half of its students are proficient in reading and 70 percent are proficient in math, above city averages.

“The school is doing extremely well for an extremely high-need school population,” said Leonie Haimson, executive director of the advocacy group Class Size Matters who has pushed to keep the school open. The school is 92 percent black and Hispanic, and virtually every student comes from a low-income family, city data show.

Parents and advocates, including Haimson, also filed a lawsuit to save the school, arguing the city didn’t have the legal authority to unilaterally close it.

Typically, the education department can close schools without approval from local parent councils. But since the councils have authority over how school zones are drawn, and P.S. 25 is the only zoned elementary school for a swath of Bedford-Stuyvesant, the lawsuit argued that closing the school amounted to “unlawfully usurping” the local education council’s authority.

This isn’t the first time a legal argument about school zone lines has gained traction. A similar lawsuit filed in 2009, and joined by the city’s teachers union, prompted the city to reverse efforts to replace three elementary schools with charter schools.

In a twist, the local education council in this case originally supported the plan to close P.S. 25, meaning that even if the lawsuit had prevailed, it’s possible the council would have voted to close the school.

But on Thursday, the District 16 parent council president, NeQuan McLean, said the council now supports the decision to keep the school open. McLean said the change of heart was due to assurances from department officials that they would assist with a plan to help attract families to the school and support other schools in the district.

“We are confident that the [education department] is going to help promote the school,” McLean said. “We believe this is what’s best for this school at this point.”

Correction: Due to incorrect information provided by an education department spokesman, an earlier version of this story suggested the per-student spending at P.S. 25 is $50,000 this school year. In fact, that is a projection.

These numbers show how much New York City middle schools might change with two new integration plans in place

2019-04-15T22:27:34+00:00

The first hints of whether two high-profile middle school integration plans are working came Monday when the education department revealed the latest admissions offer data.

After years of advocacy, and some harsh pushback, many schools in Brooklyn’s District 15 and Manhattan’s District 3 appear to be making progress towards enrolling a more diverse student body, the data shows.

[Read more about the integration plans here.]

But each school has a different story to tell, with some poised to shift their incoming sixth grade classes dramatically and others more likely to remain mostly the same. These early numbers could change, however: Families still have to decide whether to accept their child’s admissions offer, or choose to enroll elsewhere.

Here’s how admissions offers have shifted from year to year in the neighborhoods spanning Park Slope and Sunset Park in Brooklyn, and the Upper West Side and part of Harlem in Manhattan.

As New York City pre-K teachers weigh a strike, new estimate puts cost of pay boost at $438 million

2019-04-05T20:17:49+00:00

With a potential strike looming, the first estimate for what it would cost to boost salaries for pre-K teachers who work in community centers has been put on the table: $438 million.

That’s what the Day Care Council of New York estimates it would cost over the next five years to bring pre-K teachers who work in community organizations on-par with their counterparts who work in public schools. The figure also includes an increase for center directors to make sure their pay keeps up at the same pace as the teachers they oversee.

It’s the first time an estimate has been made public and could be an opening salvo for negotiations. The Council represents nonprofit operators who rely mostly on city funding to run their programs.

“If you want a strong foundation for our youngest citizens in early education, you have to create a strong infrastructure,” said Andrea Anthony, head of the council. “And to have the professional staff to do that, and the support staff, you have to be willing to pay for it.”

The union, however, appeared ambivalent about the estimate, only commenting that that it does not include the cost to raise pay for all childcare workers.

“Parity should be inclusive of every category, from a certified teacher to a custodian,” District Council 1707 spokesman Jason Urgiles wrote in a text message.

Pre-K teachers who work in community organizations have threatened a single-day strike in May to demand higher pay, casting a harsh spotlight on Mayor Bill de Blasio’s signature political achievement at the same time he is considering a presidential bid.

The mayor has made free pre-K available for every 4-year-old in the city at breakneck speed, an accomplishment made possible by the very pre-K teachers now weighing a walk out. In order to serve so many children, the city relies on community organizations, which enroll almost 60 percent of the students in universal pre-K. The rest attend public schools.

Teachers employed in community centers have a starting salary around $42,000. Those employed by the education department, represented by the United Federation of Teachers, have salaries that start around $59,000. The yawning gap has made it a struggle to recruit and retain teachers, community operators say.

The Day Care Council’s figure includes boosting pay only for certified teachers, which they estimate make up about 3,000 educators, or about half of those in the classroom. (Teachers can begin working at a community organization without certification while they earn their credentials, and operators say many of their teachers are on study plans because those with certification leave for the higher salaries offered at public schools.)

Also included in the estimate is a pay boost for center directors so those employees will continue to earn about 23 percent more than teachers, and an annual compounded 2.8 percent cost of living increase.

But these raises would not keep teachers totally on pace with the United Federation of Teachers, whose members are eligible for longevity pay that are not factored into the Council’s cost estimate.

Operators, teachers, and advocates say the time is ripe to move towards salary parity: The city has just released its latest round of contracts for early childhood education services, which providers are getting ready to bid on as part of a massive overhaul of how the city oversees care for its youngest residents. Advocates say now is the time to build additional funding into those contracts. The city is also in the midst of negotiating its budget, with the city council expected to soon unveil its response to the mayor’s proposals.

The city is projected to spend almost $900 million on universal pre-K next year, and the council’s estimate would add $83 million to that figure. Councilman Mark Treyger, head of the education committee, called the number “doable” and “reasonable” despite the fact that de Blasio has called for cuts amid anticipated reductions in income tax collections.

“We have to get this right,” he said. “We cannot hold onto quality educators because of this parity problem, and it has a destabilizing effect for the instruction of children.”

The union has indicated it wants to see a bigger investment in its workforce. While DC 1707 has pushed for a salary increase for support staff as well — custodians, cooks, bookkeepers and the like — the council recommends putting that off until the next round of contract negotiations. The council also leaves assistant teachers out of the calculation.

It’s unclear how far the mayor might be willing to go in the negotiations, but in a Medium post published Friday afternoon, city spokeswoman Jaclyn Rothenberg suggested the city is weighing the potential for raises.

“We agree that we must do better and improve the overall parity, since we want those community organizations to continue to grow and be able to provide support for two-year-olds and one-year-olds too,” she wrote. “There’s still more work to be done and we’re engaging them in that conversation.”

Ahead of first anniversary in office, Carranza talks SHSAT, a pre-K strike and his turnaround strategy

2019-03-26T22:26:27+00:00

A week after new enrollment data laid bare the stark segregation that continues at the city’s specialized high schools, Chancellor Richard Carranza said he now sees “a lot of movement” on the city’s proposal to overhaul their admissions policies — an issue others thought was “dead in the water.”

In an interview with Chalkbeat marking his first year in office, Carranza said he isn’t disheartened by the lack of support for Mayor Bill de Blasio’s proposal among politicians who ultimately control the plan’s fate and that he will continue to make the “moral argument” for integrating city schools.

“I understand elected officials have their constituencies, and they have to weigh the political politics of changing. I get that,” he said. “I have a constituency, too: 1.1 million kids who I want to make sure do not have obstacles in the opportunities that they’re going to pursue.”

In a 25-minute conversation, Carranza addressed a range of issues beyond the specialized high schools: A looming strike among some pre-K teachers, whether he will offer any public criteria for measuring his new school improvement model, and programs for English Language Learners.

Here’s a transcript of the interview at the education department’s headquarters, lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Christina Veiga: You’ve made integration a key talking point of your chancellorship. But what we’re hearing is that it’s now been a year, and it’s more talk than action. What is happening in schools right now that you can point to as a rebuttal?

It’s been [more than 60 years] since Brown vs. Board of Education. I don’t think anybody can point to a lot of action. So c’mon. Give me a break.

Equity, from the very beginning that I got here, has been something that I’ve not only championed but talked about. I’ve been able to sign off on two community education district plans, District 3, which sets aside a certain percentage of seats for underrepresented students, and then most recently, District 15, where they are taking on screens (selective admissions criteria used by some schools) in a very different way. So there’s action.

I would also say that, when’s the last time that they remember a chancellor actually taking this on, right from the beginning? The very fact that I’m using the word ‘segregation,’ using the word ‘integration,’ is action.

I would also point to the fact that the mayor and I have put forth a very specific proposal on specialized schools. Talk about the marquee portfolio of schools, that we call them specialized schools, but those are kind of screened schools.

Now, in a perfect world that would have already been approved in Albany, and we would have already been on our way to implementing the plan. But obviously there’s conversation that comes from that. Now you have something to talk about. People have very strong opinions both ways. At the start of this legislative session, people said, ‘It’s dead in the water. No one’s going to talk about it in Albany.’ Well, now we have a senator, Sen. [John] Liu, who I give a lot of credit to, who has said, ‘Yep. We’re going to hold [community meetings] on this.’ You have the speaker of the Assembly who has said, ‘We’re going to hold hearings on this.’ So I think that there’s a lot of movement in that particular area.

I would also say that there are, aside from Districts 1, 3, and 15 that have integration plans, there are also a number, six or more, community education councils and districts that want to start an engagement process as well. We’ve provided funding for them to be able to do that process.

So I think that objectively when you look at it, there is movement, but I think people just want an ‘OK, you have authority, so just change something and then we can move on.’ That’s not the way change actually happens.

CV: With integration, you have started with schools the city needs legislative approval to change. Why, especially when that represents such a small sliver of the system?

Actually, we didn’t start there. I approved District 3’s plan before we ever put forward a proposal for specialized schools.

CV: Parent leaders were working on that plan well before you got here.

Absolutely, but I could have said, no. The mayor could have said no to that plan. There were things that we engaged with that group on, some things that I asked to take a different look at. When you’re dealing with these really big kinds of issues, there ultimately has to be a bottom-up and a top-down approach.

Probably the elephant in the room are the specialized schools. Had we been talking about and moving towards removing some of the barriers in the system, and not ever mentioning specialized schools, the criticism would have been, ‘Well, why don’t you talk about specialized schools? Are they too politically toxic? Are you afraid of taking that on?’

Now, that being said, you mention in your question, why are you taking on specialized schools when it’s something the city doesn’t control? I think that’s an issue. I can’t think of one other state, one other system where the legislature has come through multiple layers down to local governance and said, ‘For this set of schools, you will have, by state law, a certain process for admitting students.’ I think that’s an issue.

CV: Some people disagree, at least for five of the schools, that it is solely up to the state legislature.

Legally, it’s not a settled question. That aside, I think just operationally, how can you have eight schools that have a single admissions policy, and then say for some of them you’re going to have a different policy, and for others you’re going to have another kind of policy? What you’re going to do is you’re going to create another tier of schools. I don’t want to create more tiers.

CV: Like it or not, there is a law currently in place. You haven’t been able to convince the speaker of city council, chairman of its education committee, leaders of either legislative chamber in Albany, the teachers union president, many of the borough presidents to be big allies in this fight — why do you think there’s so little political support for this plan?

It’s a tough issue. And you have very distinguished alumni from that portfolio of schools. But I was a history teacher and I want to remind us of the history. In 1971, Hecht-Calandra [the bill requiring a single test determine admissions for specialized high schools was passed in Albany.] Chancellor Scribner and the board of education were concerned about the lack of black, and at that time, the lack of Puerto Rican students in the specialized schools, and were engaging in and embarking upon a way to diversify those specialized schools. So what did we get? We get Hecht-Calandra: A state law that memorializes into law a specific process for admitting students to those schools, which in essence, stymied desegregation efforts.

My question to anyone who’s opposed to taking a look at this issue is, ‘Why are you supporting that law?’ I say the status quo is unacceptable.

I’ve been through two admissions cycles now and the results are getting worse. And we’ve increased what we’ve done with the Discovery program (which offers admission to students who scored below the exam cutoff and attend a summer program). We’ve increased our outreach (to boost the number of students taking the test). We’ve increased and we’re continuing to really shore up a lot of the educational opportunities for kids, and the results are getting worse.

CV: Politically, the support is not growing even as the results get worse.

Well, I would disagree. The chattering class would tell you that there’s no support for that. But I’ve got to tell you — I’m in the community a lot. And the people who don’t get interviewed — the English Language Learner parent who only speaks Spanish, the cab drivers, people on the subways on the weekends, the people who would recognize me in the corner bodega say, ‘Keep fighting. We support you.’

CV: Those people don’t vote in Albany. I agree there’s a lot of support in the community that goes unreported. But ultimately, this is a political issue.

You’re right. And I think, my role as chancellor is to continue to raise the moral argument and to remind us of our ethical ‘where do we stand?’ We say we stand for certain things yet here you have a clear example that I don’t think aligns to what we say we believe in. That’s why I keep reminding people, ‘What was the intent of this law?’ And if you support the law — that’s not for me to decide, that’s up to whoever has a vote to decide — are you going to continue to support the intent of the law?

I understand elected officials have their constituencies, and they have to weigh the political politics of changing. I get that. I have a constituency, too: 1.1 million kids who I want to make sure do not have obstacles in the opportunities that they’re going to pursue.

Alex Zimmerman: You’ve talked a lot about how your new approach to school improvement is not an explicit program with a defined number of schools and a defined menu of supports. I’m wondering how you’re going to measure this new approach’s success, whether you’ll make the standards you’re using to decide whether it’s working public?

I don’t want to be flippant ‘cause it’s going to sound a little flippant. What’s the purpose of school improvement? Is the purpose of school improvement to have a scorecard where then you can measure results and then make a determination as to what are good schools and what are bad schools? Is that a purpose? Or is the purpose of school improvement to continuously improve what the school is doing to serve the kids it has? I think the latter.

So if you have a program, you can design it with the metrics you’re going to use. And then you can measure the investment versus what your outcomes are and then you make decisions as to — or the body politic makes decisions as to — whether that’s successful or not. That’s not how schools actually operate, though. Even schools that by most outward facing metrics would say ‘this is a good school’ then you get into the school, and you realize that, well, students with disabilities are not doing well in that school.

Or you get into that school and you realize that ‘oooh, multilingual learners are not being served very well in that school … or a number of things. Then is that school really a good school if it’s not serving all of its students? So again, I use the analogy in my testimony before the City Council, that Renewal was important, you had to do something for the portfolio of schools that everybody recognizes are not performing well.

But Renewal was a diet. It was a moment in time there were specific things you wanted to change, and you changed what you ate. Right, so you changed the inputs, you changed the leadership, you changed the instructional focus, and you give it a certain period of time.

What we’re transitioning to is taking the lessons that we learned and transitioning to a lifestyle and comprehensive school supports. How do you continuously look at a number of indicators and continuously drive to improve those indicators in a broader range of schools?

So to your question, is that going to be public? Of course it’s going to be public. Because schools should have a really transparent way of describing how we’re doing with their communities that doesn’t in any way marginalize that school community as saying, ‘you’re a good school or you’re a bad school.’

AZ: So what are the specific measures that you think the public can use to decide whether this “lifestyle” change, as you put it, is working?

First and foremost, I think people need to stop making decisions on schools based on test scores. I mean, that in and of itself, and I know this is motherhood and apple pie, right. Like ‘yeah right, Carranza.’ But look, it’s really damaging to our schools where people will open up the newspapers in August, look at the test scores, and then make a decision based on test scores — this is a good school, this is a bad school.

We know that schools are much more dynamic than that. Do you have a learning environment that is supported? Who are the students that are going to that school? So we have some schools that have incredible percentages of students that are in temporary housing, yet do remarkable things with those students every single day.

But then I think we as a system have to look at lots of different indicators. Academics is important, I don’t want to downplay that. But you also should look at what kind of school climate is there. We should also look at what kind of programming is in the school, what opportunities do kids have for accelerated learning, how are all of the subgroups of students doing, students in temporary housing, foster care children. So you have to look at a wide variety of indicators and then measure are those indicators going up or in the right direction, and if they’re not, then what are we doing as a system to help them get better?

AZ: You have suggested that a big reason we have high-performing and low-performing schools has a lot to do with how we assign students to schools. So most struggling students are clustered together, and then the school is labeled as failing. Do you think that admissions changes — the way that students are distributed across the system is part of your idea about what school improvement looks like?

Well it’s an ecosystem. It’s an integrated system. So yes it’s about the academic program, yes it’s about the climate and culture, yes it’s about the wraparound services, yes it’s about the physical environment, yes it’s about the food they eat, yes it’s about the transportation. But it’s also about who gets to go to which schools, and how do they get to go to which schools.

And then it’s also about how do we talk about traditional public schools writ large in our city. And by that I mean the coffee shop conversations, right. And the coffee shop conversation is the one that says if you want to go to an elementary school, you don’t even consider going to the public schools unless you go to X, Y, Z elementary school, right? Those are the kind of coffee shop conversations that I think are detrimental to public education without having ever stepped into one of those schools. So it also is about the enrollment processes.

Part of the reason why I talk so much about the screens and how we screen students and the set asides that we have for certain groups of kids is because that creates less of a portfolio of opportunity for all the kids in the city. I’ve been quoted, or misquoted in some places, by saying I’m against all screens. I think you have to be very thoughtful about how you implement screens.

So for example if you have a performing arts high school, LaGuardia for example, or Frank Sinatra, and it’s a performing arts high school so you audition for your particular major, I think that’s totally okay as long as it’s a fair process and it’s a juried process. That’s fine because that’s the purpose of that school. But by and large, where kids get to go to school should not be a matter of whether you pass a screen or not. It should be a matter of what is the opportunity based on your interest to go to that particular school.

Reema Amin: I talked to advocates who work on policies for English Language Learners. They were really encouraged by your early rhetoric but now they’re anxious to see change, especially where older ELLs are concerned. What concrete changes do you think you’re going to be rolling out in the coming months regarding older ELLs?

Remember this is less than a year, a year. So I’ve reorganized the system. And the way we were set up was siloing the work we were doing around multilingual learners. We weren’t set up to do the right work. In some cases, we had some really, really hardworking people that didn’t have the kind of expertise that we need to make these kinds of policy shifts and structural shifts. That’s different now. We have a new deputy chief academic officer who has a track record working with older ELLs in having them earn Regents diplomas, right? So part of that is structure, part of that is leadership.

The other thing that’s important is multilingual learners department is no longer a siloed department. Multilingual works with special education, works with teaching and learning. So they’re working across divisions now so that everyone owns all of our students. So what you’re going to see is more rigorous programming for our multilingual learners. What you’re going to see is more opportunities, especially for older multilingual learners, to have access to the rich curriculum — advanced placement courses, dual credit courses, multiple language courses.

CV: We are potentially looking at a strike among preschool teachers who work in publicly funded, community run centers. One of their main concerns is pay. Many of these teachers are women of color, and they’re paid significantly less than pre-K teachers who work for the education department. Some people say that this creates a two-tiered system in the city’s universal pre-K program. Can New York City afford Pre-K for All and pay parity?

Yeah, so, and you realize those teachers don’t work for us.

CV: I realize that, but most of the funding comes from the city.

But you realize they don’t work for us? They have a union, and the union is negotiating with those operators. I want to be really clear about this.

CV: The city holds the funds basically — the purse strings.

The mayor and I very much want to make sure that anyone working with children has the pay to make it reasonable and probable that they will continue to work with those children. They are in the process of negotiating, so I have to be careful of what I say because I can’t negotiate in public. But I can tell you that to the greatest extent that we can, we are weighing in with our values. Our values are that anyone working with children should be paid commensurate to the responsibilities that they have. And that means that I think people should be paid a good, decent living wage.

New York City mistakenly told parents at struggling schools they could transfer out

2019-03-22T22:34:41+00:00

New York City’s education department erroneously sent letters to some parents telling them they had the right to request transferring their children to higher-performing schools, Chancellor Richard Carranza acknowledged in a Friday afternoon tweet.

The letters were sent to parents at schools that were recently designated as struggling by the state, but the students won’t actually be able to transfer purely because their school is low performing, city officials said. It was not immediately clear how many were sent out.

“We know the way to lift up students is to invest in schools & keep communities strong — not to discourage enrollment,” Carranza wrote. “We apologize to families who recently received a letter that incorrectly suggested otherwise.”

Carranza added that “families who received this letter will hear from us again very soon.” Officials said resources would be available to help parents take advantage of different transfer options if they are interested.

This is not how you support a school. You need to do better by our children and our schools! My child is thriving here and we will be staying!! @333MNBO @CarryChan12 @DOEChancellor @UNMSRocks @naomi325 pic.twitter.com/CD8yNgwb7j
— alex (@alexandralozada) March 21, 2019

Under the state’s new rules governing struggling schools, local districts were given more flexibility about whether they had to give parents at low-performing schools the option to transfer to more successful ones.

Districts are only required to offer parents this option if they attend one of the state’s lowest-performing schools and the school sees student achievement slip for two consecutive years, according to the state’s plan under the federal Every Student Succeeds Act. It was not immediately clear why the letters in New York City went out.

Emily DeSantis, a spokeswoman for the state’s education department, declined to comment Friday.

Historically, few New York City parents have taken advantage of their right to request a transfer out of struggling schools. Will Mantell, an education department spokesman, said 200 students transferred using that option last school year, or about 1 percent of those who received letters.

Driving families away from certain schools can have long-term consequences, since the education department has previously cited low enrollment as one reason for school closures.

‘Everything is on the table’ — Carranza talks budget cuts to NYC schools at City Council hearing

2019-03-20T18:07:20+00:00

During a whirlwind budget hearing, Chancellor Richard Carranza said he is considering a wide range of budget cuts, defended staffing schools with more safety officers than counselors, and said a long-awaited agreement with the police department on school safety is being “finalized.”

Wednesday’s budget hearing comes as the education department is being asked to find $104 million in budget cuts, partly the result of a projected shortfall in income tax revenue.

Those cuts represent a small fraction of the department’s nearly $27 billion preliminary budget, but Carranza said no program is completely safe, including core initiatives such as expanded AP classes, literacy coaches, and even individual school budgets.

“Everything is on the table,” he said, adding, “schools are last.”

But the chancellor’s testimony touched numerous hot button issues beyond funding. Here’s what else we learned at Wednesday’s City Council hearing:

Carranza supports more counselors for students in temporary housing… but doesn’t explain why it’s not in the budget

As the city faces a record number of homeless students, Mark Treyger, chairman of the council’s education committee, pressed Carranza on why the mayor left out $14 million in funding for current social workers working with students in temporary housing.

“We are very supportive of those resources” Carranza said, adding that the city is using $12 million in federal funds to support 100 “coordinators” for homeless students. Still, he did not say why the social workers were left out.

The issue has puzzled observers. The funding has been initially left out in previous budget cycles, but is typically added back at the last minute.

this has weirdly become a ‘budget dance’ issue for de Blasio, aka something he doesn’t really plan to cut but seemingly cuts to have the fight https://t.co/OPIfnCvzoc
— Ben Max (@TweetBenMax) March 20, 2019

‘Counselors not cops’ is a rallying cry among advocates. Carranza calls it a ‘false narrative.’

Student justice advocates have repeatedly pointed out that there are more school safety agents, employed by the police department, in schools than guidance counselors, social workers, and psychologists combined. Dozens of students attended the hearing wearing green T-shirts that read “counselors not cops.”

But Carranza said that is a “false narrative.”

“I think it’s the wrong conversation to have about the number of safety agents you have. It’s not an issue until, God forbid, something happens in our schools,” he said.

Students silently protest during Wednesday’s City Council hearing.

The comments are surprising given Carranza’s commitment to policies that are designed to reduce suspensions, student arrests, and summonses. Still, Carranza emphasized that he is generally supportive of hiring more counselors in schools.

Carranza had a hand in delaying a new agreement between the police and education departments

For more than a year, top city officials have said they are close to releasing a new agreement between the NYPD and education department — a document that has not been updated since Rudy Giuliani was mayor.

Carranza said he took issue with an earlier draft. “I was not satisfied with what I saw was developing,” he said. Asked about his objections, he said, “There was a lot in that [agreement] that was very much law-enforcement centric. We’ve been pushing back and we’ve actually been having great conversations with NYPD.”

Advocates who played a role in crafting a new agreement have also said an earlier draft appeared to strip their recommendations that would have limited police activities in schools.

On Wednesday, Carranza said the agreement is in its “final stages.”

No specifics on how the department is measuring the impact of core initiatives

How is the city measuring its “Equity and Excellence” initiatives, the backbone of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s education agenda, including computer science, literacy coaches, and expanded AP classes?

Carranza did not offer details, beyond test scores, graduation rates, and college enrollment — generally considered indicators of the school system’s overall health, but tricky measures of specific programs. In recent years, the department has struggled to articulate coherent metrics for some of its biggest programs, while others have yielded disappointing results.

Treyger suggested a more systematic review to “see whether these investments are having their intended impact.”

Did opt-out land some New York City schools on the state’s struggling list? Carranza says yes

2019-03-05T22:56:49+00:00

When state officials announced a new set of struggling schools in January, they insisted that high rates of students boycotting state tests could not be the only reason a school could be slapped with a low-performing label.

But Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza is now publicly challenging the state’s narrative, arguing that at least two of the 124 city schools labeled as struggling were identified specifically because students opted out of state exams.

“When we previewed that list and saw that there were several schools that were designated because of their opt out numbers – there was no other category, no other metric except their opt out numbers — we actually appealed for those schools, we appealed on their behalf and our appeal was denied,” Carranza said at last week’s Panel for Educational Policy meeting.

Carranza’s comments are in tension with the state’s assertion that its new accountability system, implemented for the first time this year, does not penalize schools solely because students boycotted the exams. And his remarks bolster the claims of testing critics, who have been suspicious that schools were placed on the list because students sat out the tests and have successfully pushed the state education department to minimize punishments for boycotting the tests.

“We feel strongly that the tests are not an accurate assessment,” said Kaliris Salas, a parent at Central Park East I, one of the schools on the state’s list, a designation the city appealed. “We stand by our decisions.”

Although one of the measures used to rate schools does take test refusals into account, state officials maintain that schools were not placed on the struggling schools list solely because of their opt-out rates.

The city’s Department of Education disagreed, and appealed on behalf of two schools that were identified among the lowest performing in the state and which have high opt-out rates: Central Park East I, where 80 percent of students sat out at least one test, and P.S. 15 Patrick F Daly, where 26 percent of students sat out a test. Officials did not provide copies of the city’s appeals or the state education department’s response to them.

It’s not clear whether those two schools would have been identified as struggling if their opt-out rates had been lower. In a letter to parents, Central Park East principal Gabriel Feldberg argued that the school’s opt-out rate had torpedoed the school on the state’s rankings, noting that the schools reading scores among students who took the exams beat the city average.

“Students who don’t take the exam are counted as scoring at the lowest level,” he wrote.

State officials disputed that characterization. “It is inaccurate to say that the school was identified due to the inclusion of non-tested students,” a spokesperson wrote in an email.

Still, there are not steep consequences of being considered a “Comprehensive Support and Improvement” school, the official title for the state’s lowest-performing schools. The schools are required to craft improvement plans with “evidence based” approaches but will not be required to fire staff or principals.

In theory, schools could be subject to closure or takeover if they do not improve after five years, though state officials have been reluctant to take harsh action. Schools with high opt-out rates are also required to come up with plans to boost student participation in the tests.

“I know the state does not have a process for closing or taking over schools within the first few years of CSI status,” Feldberg wrote in his letter to parents. “I’m not at all worried about that right now.”

Ian Rosenblum, executive director of The Education Trust-NY, noted the state is required by federal law to include test refusals into its accountability system and struck a “reasonable balance” between the concerns of the opt-out movement and the need to create an incentive against keeping certain students from taking the tests at all.

The federal law governing the state’s accountability system “is a civil rights law,” Rosenblum wrote in an email. “And that is why there are protections in place to prevent schools from systemically excluding historically underserved groups of students from state assessments.”

New York City ends controversial Renewal turnaround program — but the approach is here to stay

2019-02-27T00:23:29+00:00

After making an ambitious promise to rapidly turn around nearly 100 of New York City’s lowest performing schools, Mayor Bill de Blasio acknowledged Tuesday that after four years, almost $800 million, and a mixed record of success, a new approach is needed.

That new approach, it turns out, looks a lot like the old one.

City officials said its latest school-improvement strategy will borrow from many of the elements of the Renewal turnaround program, one of de Blasio’s highest-profile and most controversial education initiatives.

Renewal paired struggling schools with a slew of social services, including partnerships with non-profit organizations, extra mental health counseling, and dental clinics — in addition to academic help such as teacher training, longer school days, and new curriculum.

Under the new approach, called Comprehensive School Support, any city school could theoretically be eligible for similar help, though what that looks like could vary by school and there would be no guarantee of dedicated social services. At first,124 schools identified as struggling by the state and 71 previous Renewal schools will get extra support.

For now, things won’t change for the schools that have been part of the Renewal program. Those schools will “indefinitely” continue their non-profit partnerships, with the extra funding they received through Renewal intact. Programs extending the school day will continue as well, though they may be phased out in one or two years.

Big news in NYC today: the city is ending its Renewal program for struggling schools: https://t.co/CKtBd2y0ex

But how much will @NYCSchools change its approach? I made this chart to help myself understand (asterisks to follow) pic.twitter.com/400hefxO8G
— Philissa Cramer (@philissa) February 26, 2019

At a press conference, de Blasio acknowledged some of Renewal’s shortcomings, which were outlined in a separate city report released Tuesday, including delays installing capable principals, confusing lines of authority, and the stigma associated with being labeled failing.

“I am convinced it was the right road to go down,” de Blasio said Tuesday. “We did not say everything would be perfect.”

Unlike Renewal, officials stressed the new approach to school improvement won’t be part of a formal “program.” There will be no official list of participating schools or public performance criteria for measuring their success. Nor will there be a specific budget (which ballooned from $150 to $773 million over 4 years under Renewal). And there won’t be a separate staff dedicated to managing it; that responsibility will fall to newly-minted executive superintendents and borough-level offices.

School officials said the idea is to move toward a more “fluid” support system that can give all schools assistance when they need it instead of just to those schools identified as the lowest-performing schools

“The art and the craft of school improvement is not a program,” schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said. “You don’t pull it off the shelf.”

Schools will be identified for extra support partly through a data system called EduStat, still in development, that is meant to give officials a real-time sense of school performance.

Adopting a similar — but less defined — version of Renewal will allow the city to continue its basic strategy without some of the pressures (and accountability) that came with a formal program. Education officials struggled to manage the expectations tied the mayor’s soaring rhetoric, which suggested low-performing schools could quickly improve within three years.

Critics regularly blasted de Blasio for keeping students in schools that were improving only modestly, if at all. Research has shown the program’s impact has been limited, though city officials have pointed to rising graduation rates, test scores, and better attendance. (De Blasio and Carranza took questions about Renewal after touting an increase in students taking AP exams.)

At the same time, the education department has repeatedly declined to release findings of an analysis conducted by the RAND Corporation on the Renewal program, though it reportedly showed disappointing results. Of the original 94 schools, 14 have been closed, nine have left the program after being merged with other schools, and city officials said 21 have shown sufficient progress to slowly ease out of the program.

Months before Tuesday’s announcement, Robin Veentstra-VanderWeele, the chief program officer at Partnership with Children, said it would make political sense for the city to abandon the idea of running a formal turnaround program (The Partnership organization is a nonprofit partner in eight city turnaround schools).

“If you don’t tell anyone what the target is they don’t know what to shoot,” she said.

Still, New York is not alone in finding turnarounds of existing schools challenging. School districts from Rhode Island to Tennessee have struggled to find surefire approaches to improving schools that have underperformed for years.

Some experts noted that the latest iteration of school turnaround does not explicitly address one of the main reasons there are low-performing schools in the first place: Intense academic segregation spurred in part by admissions methods that sort students based on ability. Students who are less likely to pass state tests or graduate from high school are far more likely to be clustered together.

“These are problems that schools have been facing” for years, said Aaron Pallas, a professor at Teachers College who has studied the Renewal program. “It’s not as if what’s being proposed is a sharp break from what’s been tried before.”

New York City officials plan to spare Renewal turnaround schools from closure this year

2019-02-26T06:38:46+00:00

After considering a new round of school closures, Mayor Bill de Blasio and schools Chancellor Richard Carranza are preparing to announce that they will not shutter any schools in the city’s Renewal turnaround program this year.

A formal announcement is expected soon and would come after some officials believed additional closures were all but inevitable. Now, according to a senior department official who has been briefed and a portion of an internal document reviewed by Chalkbeat, no schools appear slated for the chopping block.

The apparent shift in thinking comes after a recent review, ordered by Carranza, of the 50 remaining Renewal schools and 21 Rise schools, which included visits from executive superintendents, the source said.

Education department spokesman Will Mantell declined to comment.

De Blasio’s turnaround program has sparked controversy since it launched in 2014. Officials sold Renewal as an alternative to closures, and argued that the city’s lowest-performing schools could rapidly improve with an influx of additional social services and academic supports over just three years. But more than four years and nearly $800 million later, the program has achieved results far short of the mayor’s promise of “fast and intense” improvements.

Although officials have always maintained closures were a “last resort,” some Renewal schools began closing within a year of the program’s launch. Of the original 94 schools, 14 have been closed, nine have left the program after being merged with other schools, and city officials said 21 have shown sufficient progress to slowly ease out of the program.

The plan to keep all of the remaining schools open raises questions about what the education department’s strategy will be to ensure those schools are viable. Officials have indicated that many core elements of the turnaround program will persist, including partnerships with nonprofits that help provide services such as mental health counseling and dental clinics. They will also keep their current funding levels, which were increased in many cases.

But Carranza has not offered a complete vision for school turnaround after Renewal, which he questioned early in his tenure as chancellor as not having a clear “theory of action.” Last October, de Blasio said the program was reaching its “natural conclusion.”

City officials have declined to explain exactly what will happen to schools that are currently in the turnaround program, whether they will launch a new effort, or even if a specific program of school intervention will gain traction in Carranza’s administration.

“The chancellor hasn’t said much of anything that is suggestive of a comprehensive strategy,” Aaron Pallas, a professor at Teacher College, previously said.

The politics of the Renewal program dogged de Blasio during much of his first term. The mayor’s critics have argued the program trapped students in schools the city knew were failing, while it gambled on unproven interventions. Research on the program has given those critics some ammunition. One analysis found the program did not seem to have a meaningful effect on graduation rates or test scores; another found only slight gains on tests. And behind closed doors, city officials were much less optimistic about the school’s chances of swift progress.

Supporters of the program have privately acknowledged Renewal was oversold and that dramatic improvements at struggling schools were always unlikely to happen on the mayor’s aggressive timeline. Still, many argue that flooding schools with resources is preferable to shutting them down and opening new ones, the favored strategy under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Some research has found that approach showed promise, but it also drew fierce protest from teachers who worried about shuttering key community institutions in predominantly low-income neighborhoods.

Experts have not settled on a single set of surefire approaches achieve rapid school turnarounds; even dramatic overhauls and handing management over to charter operators have shown mixed results.

Carranza unveils capital plan with $750 million in fixes for disability access

2018-11-01T18:11:54+00:00

Heeding calls from advocates, schools Chancellor Richard Carranza proposed Thursday a $750 million plan to improve accessibility for students with disabilities at a third of the schools in every district.

The announcement comes after months of urging from advocates over the lack of access for students with disabilities in a majority of school buildings.

About 80 percent of New York City’s public schools are not completely accessible. Last budget cycle, the city committed $150 million to improve access over the next three years. But in order to make just a third of school buildings accessible, advocates estimated a cost of another $750 million.

Officials said that, under the new plan, they expect half of elementary school buildings will be partially or fully accessible.

Advocates for children with disabilities applauded the news. The plan will “literally open the doors to inclusion,” said Kim Sweet, executive director for Advocates of Children New York, in a statement.

“We have been pushing for improved accessibility since we did the math a few years ago and in speaking to families,” said Maggie Moroff, special education policy coordinator for Advocates for Children, at the news conference. “And it’s become clearer and clearer that we needed more accessible options at every school level.”

Accessibility projects will range from “really easy fixes,” such as adding ramps for wheelchairs, to “very big overhaul projects,” such as building access to a second-floor gym, said Karin Goldmark, deputy chancellor for school planning and development.

But the city won’t focus right now on buildings that have zero access, Goldmark said, who noted that many of them are a century old and have certain structural challenges that would require complete demolition.

“You would have to tear down and start over in order for it to be a project that’s really meaningful, and that’s not contemplated in this $750 million,” Goldmark said. “What we’re looking at it is all of the schools that we can really move along, continue accessibility so that we can get schools that are partially accessible to fully accessible, we can get some schools that have some potential to (become) partially accessible in a meaningful way.”

Carranza’s announcement — which came during a visit to P.S. 11’s new school building in Queens — is part of a proposed $17 billion five-year capital plan, which he said was the largest proposal of its kind in the school system’s history.

“You see, ladies and gentleman, when I first came to New York City a little over six months ago and I engaged in my tour to listen to communities across all five boroughs, and to listen to parents and community members and staff members and students, the three things they said to me that were loud and clear were, no. 1, we want more technology —it’s in this plan,” Carranza said. “The next thing they said to me was, ‘We want permanent classroom facilities’ — it’s in this plan. And the other thing they said to me was, ‘We want to have air conditioning in our schools’ — it’s in this plan.”

Carranza toured what he called a “state-of-the-art” building. He visited art and English classes, where children described their projects to him. He credited the new building with engaging the students.

“The facility (at P.S. 11) not only enables but allows students to unleash their creativity,” Carranza said. “What is so clear here today is that when we give students these kind of state-of-the art — and I’m going to underline ‘permanent’ — facilities and resources, we’re helping them to achieve.”

The plan also includes new funding for 57,000 student seats to fulfill a commitment to reduce overcrowding that officials made about two and a half years ago by building a total 83,000.

These seats won’t necessarily be ready to go in the next five years, officials said. Rather, they will all be “sited” — in some design or planning phase.

Those 57,000 seats include 14,000 that were rolled over from the current capital plan, said Lorraine Grillo, president and CEO of the school construction authority.

Those seats will be added into new buildings or will be additions to existing schools, Carranza said.

The plan also calls for air conditioning for all classrooms by 2021 — a year earlier than previously planned.

About $750 million of the capital plan will go toward increased internet bandwidth and cybersecurity upgrades in schools. A “vast majority” of this funding will go toward upgrading the networking equipment in schools so they can access increased bandwidth, Goldmark said.

Another $550 million will create new pre-K and 3-K seats.

A report from a City Council working group in May found that 54 percent of elementary and middle schools and 47 percent of high schools are “over-capacity.” And 80,000 more students are expected in the city by 2040.

The capital plan will be sent to the Panel for Educational Policy following a public comment period in March and requires final approval from the mayor and city council.

A ‘chilling effect’: Immigrants may decline school-based health services if proposed rule is adopted, advocates say

2018-10-18T17:33:03+00:00

One student stands out in Dr. Viju Jacob’s mind when he thinks about all the patients he’s seen in his 15 years at school-based health clinics: a Central American immigrant enrolled at a Bronx high school in 2012.

The student did not have insurance, which Jacob said is common for new immigrants, but the clinic offers free care regardless of a student’s immigration or insurance status. That’s thanks to Medicaid funding from other students’ claims.

Over the next four years, the student returned to the clinic, located in his school, when he needed a physical or simple treatment. But it wasn’t just his physical health that improved.

“He got a lot of soft emotional support,” Jacob said. “Coming to us, having people who spoke his language or his native language to sort of encourage him, help him with filling out forms.”

Jacob and immigrant advocates worry students like this may not get the support they need under a new federal proposal that would make it tougher for immigrants to successfully seek green cards if they rely on public benefits.

“Especially in New York City and in the New York City public school system, a large portion of the student population in some shape or form is on Medicaid or Medicaid managed care,” Jacob said. “That is such a large pool that could be affected if this rule gets implemented.”

To receive a green card, immigrants currently have to prove they won’t be a burden on the government, so officials already consider the cash benefits that they receive when reviewing applications. But now, for the first time, the Department of Homeland Security wants to expand the rule so that green cards can be denied to immigrants who rely on benefits such as non-emergency Medicaid, Medicare Part D, food stamps or forms of housing assistance.

Researchers and immigration advocates believe that even though a final decision on the proposal is months away, news of this rule could persuade large swaths of immigrants to halt their public benefits, out of fear it will affect their ability to become permanent U.S. residents — even if that’s not the case.

For example, the proposal currently includes an exemption for Medicaid benefits used by school-based health services, an official from the city’s department of education said. But with uncertainty remaining about how the rule change might be enforced, or additional changes that could occur in the future, many advocates for immigrants worry that those applying for green cards may decide it’s better to avoid Medicaid altogether rather than risk utilizing benefits that could create problems for them down the line.

In a recent analysis, the city estimated that 75,000 New York City immigrants may decide to choose between benefits and a green card.

And fewer Medicaid enrollees would mean fewer dollars rolling into clinics that serve at least 387 schools across the system, since they operate through partnerships with healthcare providers and depend, in part, on Medicaid funding that students may claim. It’s too early to tell what the impact might be, but advocates, analysts, and even the federal government have acknowledged that the rule change could result in a drain on funding.

“It’s bad enough for the families, and it’s even worse for us because we rely heavily on that funding stream,” said Jacob.

Clinics were a big part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s first-term education agenda, which involved providing more schools with wrap-around services.

“Taking away services that keep children well-fed and healthy is wrong,” said Jaclyn Rothenberg, a spokeswoman for de Blasio, in a statement to Chalkbeat. “We’ll continue to ensure that our children, regardless of their and their family’s immigration status, have the resources they need to succeed in and out of the classroom.”

It’s not clear how many children are enrolled in the school-based clinics or how many, on average, use them. At first the city’s Department of Education didn’t respond to requests for comment about the rule change, including what portion of Medicaid funds buoy school health clinics, which are run by medical centers, local hospitals and community organizations.

Two days after an initial version of this story was published, a department of education spokesman noted that the rule exempts school-based services that are reimbursed by Medicaid, but did not comment further.

According to Jacob, who is also board chairman of New York School Based Health Alliance, it’s typical for clinics to receive between two-thirds to half of their funding from Medicaid. The rule is expected to threaten the livelihood of similar clinics in other states, such as Colorado.

If enough people pull out of Medicaid, clinics could seek specific grant funding instead, Jacob said.

This is the latest immigration issue that New York City’s top education officials have had to grapple with. In the past, they’ve been quick to respond, such as reassuring families that their information is safe with the school system. Last year, a school in Queens turned federal immigration agents away after they showed up and asked about a fourth-grader. (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said it was an administrative inquiry.)

Last March, the school system updated guidance for principals on immigration issues, stating that only local law enforcement can enter a school unless they have a warrant or unless imminent harm is expected.

The Department of Homeland Security touts its proposal by saying its primary benefit would “help ensure that aliens who apply for admission to the United States, seek extension of stay or change of status, or apply for adjustment of status are self-sufficient, i.e., do not depend on public resources to meet their needs but rather rely on their own capabilities and the resources of their family, sponsor, and private organizations.”

In addition to the carve-out for school-based health services, the rule change wouldn’t affect free and reduced-price lunch, which is universal in New York City. The rule also wouldn’t apply to families making less than 15 percent of the federal poverty level, refugees, asylum-seekers, legal immigrants in the military or immigrants who receive assistance after natural disasters.

Still, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that a “chilling effect” could even dissuade people who are enrolled in the Children’s Health Insurance Program, also known as CHIP, from continuing to receive the benefit. CHIP is not currently included in the proposed rule change but may be added at a later date; the Department of Homeland Security has invited comment on this possibility. Other analyses come to a similar conclusion, including a June report from the Migrant Policy Institute.

“In theory people should understand that they don’t need to disenroll their child from benefits because that’s not going to affect them,” said Mike Greenberg, a senior fellow at the Institute, which did an analysis of the “chilling effect” the rule could have. “In practice it may still have that effect because this is very complicated, and we’re operating in an environment of so much fear and uncertainty.”

Beyond clinics losing funding, immigrant parents might be too scared to let their children go to an in-school clinic. Advocates said there is a fear among immigrants over what information government institutions are collecting and how it could be used against them.

Christina Samuels, manager of education policy at the New York Immigration Coalition, said her organization has raised these concerns with the education department, which has said it would protect families’ information. School health clinics don’t ask about immigration status and are exempted from the current proposed rule change.

In Jacob’s experience, students of different ages use the school health clinics for different reasons. Elementary-school students tend to show up because their parents’ work hours are at odds with doctors’ appointment times, and they can’t afford to take a day off. Those children may have an injury looked at, receive treatment for a stomach ache, or get an immunization.

Middle-schoolers usually get their shots or physicals, and some start to ask about reproductive health. And in high school, students receive a number of services, and preventative and emergency contraception may be addressed.

Outside organizations help staff counselors and social workers at some city schools, which staffers say are already stretched thin. Those, too, could also see more demand as students lose reliable access to food and healthcare, Samuels said.

She also pointed to the mental stress on immigrant students digesting another immigrant-related proposal out of Washington, such as the proposed ban on travelers from certain Muslim countries.

“Now we’re getting into a period where we’re really concerned about the mental health and behavioral health of students,” Samuels said.

City Hall officials have blasted the proposed rule but have also cautioned that no changes have gone into effect. In a recent press conference, De Blasio said President Donald Trump is trying to “hurt the very people who are contributing to our economy and our future. It makes no sense and we are going to fight it.”

Last week, the federal government opened a 60-day period that allows public comment on its rule. After that, officials will take another 60 days to make a final decision.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article suggested that school-based health benefits were subject to the proposed rule change. Under the proposal, these benefits are exempt.

Four things New York City schools chancellor Richard Carranza says he’ll focus on this year

2018-09-14T23:34:50+00:00

Richard Carranza spoke before an influential group of business and education leaders Friday morning to reiterate his vision for New York City schools in what has become a rite of passage for new mayors, new chancellors, and other top city officials.

His appearance before the Association for a Better New York was Carranza’s first since arriving as chancellor last April.

The group’s high-profile breakfasts are a frequent forum for city leaders to announce bold new initiatives, and in his first five months on the job, Carranza has captured plenty of headlines with pointed critiques of the school system he inherited. On the morning after a state primary that may have reshuffled the political deck in the city and state, he didn’t introduce any grand new plans, but kept to a muted stump speech as he introduced himself and his philosophy.

Carranza described the four pillars that he hopes will lift the system to greater heights. These priorities include supporting top-notch instruction, empowering parents, investing in the workforce, and making the school system more fair.

David Bloomfield, a Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center professor of education who was at the breakfast, called the chancellor’s priorities “generic and vague” and questioned whether the bolder changes Carranza embraced soon after his arrival in New York — such as shaking up the department’s leadership structure — will pan out as expected. But Richard Buery, a chief policy director for the KIPP charter network and former city deputy mayor, jumped to his feet in a standing ovation for Carranza at the end of his speech. (Carranza has taken a less antagonistic position towards the sector than his predecessor sometimes did.)

“Creating the political will for change is key, and I am confident that he can be the leader who brings the will to change,” Buery said.

Demanding and supporting top-notch ‘instruction’

The first pillar of any school system, Carranza said, is focusing on what happens inside classrooms, calling teaching and learning “our bread and butter.” With so many schools under his watch, Carranza said one way to better instruction was to introduce better leadership.

Carranza has already overseen a shake-up at the district’s central office, where he reinstated a chief academic officer and added nine new executive superintendents. The new structure, he said, will “bridge the divide” between schools and Tweed, where the education department is headquartered.

The other key aspect of this pillar, he said, is setting high expectations for students — for example, by providing anti-bias training to their teachers. Since arriving, Carranza has accelerated the timeline for teachers receiving this training and made it mandatory.

Empowerment — not engagement

Carranza’s second pillar has to do community “empowerment” — a concept he prefers to mere “engagement,” which he called “a very low bar” for schools and families to clear.

The education department, Carranza said, should be dedicated to arming families with the kind of information that only some parents have access to now. He wants all families to be equipped with the resources necessary to navigate a vast school system, especially one that relies heavily on parent and student choices.

“Privilege isn’t a bad thing — as long as we share it,” he said.

This summer, for example, the city hosted its first specialized high-school fair entirely in Spanish, as debate raged over how to integrate the city’s sought-after schools.Families packed the auditorium of Bronx Science to learn all about the admissions process, entrance exam, and key deadlines.

‘Develop our people’

Carranza’s third pillar, he said, is investing in the district’s “most important asset”: its workforce.

“If we expect our students to achieve excellence,” he said, “then we must support our teachers and leaders, and all our staff members to that end.”

Carranza’s predecessor, Carmen Fariña, also cared deeply about training teachers and thought it was central to boosting student achievement. But professional development is notoriously difficult to get right, and under Fariña’s leadership, some principals and teachers complained that the support they received was far removed from what was really needed.

Mark Cannizzaro, the head of the principals and administrators union, said school leaders are hopeful the new executive superintendents will draw clearer lines of responsibility. Cannizzaro says his members are waiting to see how the changes play out.

“The real hard work is getting not only the message down to the ground, but filtering back up so the implementation is there,” he said.

Advance equity

Carranza said these three pillars can’t stand without a fourth: creating a school system that is fair to all students.

“We cannot have excellence, we cannot improve outcomes without tackling the inequities that exist in our system,” he said.

His approach, he says, will be two-pronged: not just investing in schools but also integrating them.

Echoing his boss, de Blasio, Carranza has called for more “resources, time, attention, and direction” for underserved schools and their students. That might mean making sure that all high schools offer advanced placement courses, as the city’s AP for All program does.

But, for Carranza, creating a more equitable school system also means explicitly pursuing integration. In the country’s most segregated school system, this is a massive undertaking full of political perils, and de Blasio has appeared less eager to embrace this goal.

Since arriving in April, Carranza has taken a much more blunt approach to naming the problem and promised to spend the next year looking at admissions policies from pre-K through high school that may disadvantage certain students. Hinting at the furor that’s erupted over admission to the city’s specialized high schools, Carranza was adamant that integration “is good for every child.”

While Carranza has been eager to raise critical questions about the way the school system works, he has also said that will take time and lots of feedback to implement large-scale changes. But now that many in the city have heard his vision, some are eager for action. Others are watching intently to see whether his priorities become a reality — not just when it comes to diversity, but system-wide.

“I think that people are hopeful,” Cannizzaro said. “I think they recognize the fact that this has to be implemented, and things trickle down.”

Richard Carranza’s back-to-school checklist: less paperwork, clearer lines of responsibility, and a hard look at gifted programs

2018-08-20T22:06:18+00:00

Richard Carranza jokes that his colleagues must be tired of hearing him ask the same questions.

Four months into his role as New York City’s schools chief, Carranza has had a chance to get under the hood of the country’s largest school system. And for each policy the city pursues, Carranza wants to know: “What’s our return on investment? How do we know? How do we prove it?”

His attention to hard numbers is just one of the ways that Carranza’s tenure promises to be different from that of his predecessor, who favored stories over statistics. He has charted his own course in other ways, by tackling school segregation head-on, and shaking up the leadership structure for how schools are supported. (Still, he’s not going at it totally alone: Carranza said he grabs coffee periodically with former chancellor Carmen Fariña, whom he called a “great lady.”)

Carranza’s new approach will get tested this September when more than a million students head back to school — ushering in his first full school year as chancellor.

In an exclusive interview with Chalkbeat, Carranza made it clear that he enters the year with more big questions on his mind, like whether New York City’s approach to gifted admissions is fair. He’s also finding some things he likes about the current system — toning down some of his early criticism of the city’s controversial Renewal school turnaround program. And he’s already thinking about what he wants his legacy to be in New York City.

Here are highlights from our Friday interview, condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

How have you been spending your summer? What have been your priorities and who have you been meeting with?

This summer has been super busy. I spent a lot of time, obviously, with the reorganization. (Carranza pared down his executive staff and added new roles, including executive superintendents and a Chief Academic Officer. Read more here.) I’ve been interviewing and hiring people. We’ve been also doing some reconfiguration with how the Department of Education is organized so that we’re better able to function on delivering what we’ve promised. I’ve been spending a lot of time still — it’s a big city — meeting people.

I’ve been spending a lot of time in professional development with principals and teachers and central office people. One of the things I really try to do is not just drive by, “Hey everybody. It’s nice being here.” And then I’m out. I try to actually spend time, and preferably at least half a day — which is really hard to do, and sometimes I can only spend an hour or two. I really want to get a flavor: What is it that we’re doing in terms of professional development?

What I’ve also been doing is, as I learn more and more and more about the DOE and what the initiatives have been over the last four of five years, trying to understand where we are with them. I think people are kind of sick of me around Tweed, because I keep asking, ‘So what’s the return on investment? How do we know? How can we prove it?’

One of the things that I’ve heard a lot of comment about from folks in the department and school-based folks has been the weight of bureaucracy on the day-to-day work. By that I mean the paperwork that people have to do or the processes to get stuff done that may not make sense. One of the directives I’ve given to the folks is “weeding the garden.” We need to weed the garden of stuff that’s just a time suck or it’s not helpful to the work that we do.

What specifically do you think should happen at schools that are low performing? When you took the job, you meet with people around the city and produced a report where you talked about schools needing more support. But what should happen after schools have received support and improvement isn’t clear?

I believe that when you look at improving schools or empowering schools to improve, one of the things that you can’t do is just looking at that on a short-term basis. By that I mean: You can name the schools, you can put them in a group of schools, you can invest resources, and then once they get better, you take away the resources. Well guess what? They’re going to go right back.

A much better approach is to really look at the conditions. Do a root cause analysis. What are the challenges that schools face — and not just the school, but the community? You also have to do a systems scan, and by that I mean: Are there policies, are there decisions that are made that are not inside their control? For example, have we changed a boundary line? Have we implemented a screen somewhere? Have we implemented a specialized program somewhere that impacts, negatively, this school that we’re looking at? Then the third thing you have to do is then align resources based on that needs assessment — not for a certain amount of time but as a way of doing business.

We’re in the process of doing that analysis right now with all of our schools. Obviously, schools that had previously been named as Renewal schools and even the schools that have moved into a Rise status, they’re part of that list. But there are other schools as well.

But after you’ve done those levels of analysis and you feel like schools have been given adequate time, is there an end point? Do you believe in school closures at all, after all those things have been tried?

I think we have to be able to serve students. I don’t talk about school closures because when you start talking about, “The end is going to be the ax,” then that’s never been very motivating for anybody. What I talk about is what we’re going to do in advance, and the process. But I guarantee you in every school I’ve ever worked with, when you’re really clear about that needs assessment, you’re really clear about the current condition, you’re really clear about where you want to get, the process itself will make it very clear: If we’re not able to do this, then we have to do something different for the students we serve.

But I really don’t talk about school closures because that’s really not a goal.

But even if it’s not a goal, is it a policy tool that could be used?

Let me be clear: I’m not scared of closing a school if it’s not serving the needs of the student. My experience, nine times out of 10, has been that we haven’t done all we can do, to actually give schools that are struggling to improve, the right conditions, the right resources, and the right support to actually improve.

When we first sat down, one of your initial critiques of the Renewal program was that there hadn’t been a clear “theory of action” and that “makes it difficult” to talk about what outcomes to expect. You said you were working on this “very, very quickly.” So what is theory of action now, and what are the outcomes we should be looking for?

When we met, I hadn’t yet had a deep dive with the person who had taken over Renewal, Cheryl Watson Harris. I was extremely impressed by her strategic way of looking at the work. It coincided almost perfectly with the way I look at the work. You have to have great leadership. You have to empower. And you have to train teachers for the students you have. You have to have a strong curriculum. You have to have systems and structures in schools that replicate good practices. You have to have a social-emotional community schools approach, and you have to empower communities and parents. That’s why she’s now the senior deputy chancellor, in charge of all of the supervision of all of our schools.

So my theory of action is: If we take the time to do a root cause analysis, and understand all of the facets involved with a challenging school, if we align resources to meet those root cause issues, if you have the right people in place and if you are persistent over time, you will be able to turn around a school and make it a good academic learning environment.

Renewal was supposed to be a three-year program that’s now going into year four. What’s the plan after this year? Are there any changes in the works?

We’ve learned lessons from the Renewal implementation over the first three years. As you know, we’re about to announce nine executive superintendents, which will have a very strong academic leadership role in the geographically based field service centers in the city. Those executive superintendents will take on much more responsibility for those previously called Renewal schools And those nine executive superintendents will be networked, working as a group, around supporting the schools that are in their areas.

You had three and sometimes three or more people giving direction to Renewal schools. It was a little chaotic.

Now you’re going to have a very clear line of accountability. You’re going to have an executive superintendent working with the superintendent, supported horizontally by our school improvement strategies and teams. We’re going to have a much more coordinated way of not only doing the needs assessment that I talked about, but also making sure that we’re providing the appropriate supports and then holding ourselves accountable for what we say we’re going to do.

When you say “previously labeled Renewal schools,” do you imagine these schools will shed that label, and under this new structure, they will just be schools that get targeted support through that? Or is that a decision that’s not been made yet?

I don’t refer to them as Renewal schools, only because — not that that program has gone away, not that that focus has gone away — I just look at the work of improving schools in a little bit of a different lens. I call them “schools of opportunity,” because this is our opportunity to do some very specific, strategic work within schools.

What problems are the reorganization solving?

Part of my analysis, which was then confirmed when I did my listen and learn tour, was that it was confusing where accountability lied in the organization. So as principals worked to meet the needs of their schools, they often found it confusing as to who they went to, to get support.

In addition, it was very difficult for us to actually coordinate with agencies in the city or community-based organizations wanting to do work on a number of different issues like homelessness or foster care kids, because components of what we did to support those kinds of students were in various departments across the DOE. It was very hard to build a strategic way of doing the work. What the organizational shift did was solve for a lot of those issues. Like strands of work are now in like structures, led by someone who has a very clear line of accountability.

In the case of our academic program, what I found was that you had some really hard working people in Teaching and Learning doing a lot of great work around curriculum, coaching, leadership development, you name it. I had great, hard-working people working on issues relating to English Language Learners. Great, hard-working people in special education. But rarely did they work across each other’s silo to actually have an integrated way of doing the work. That’s why I created the Chief Academic Officer position. The Chief Academic Officer will be responsible for those three strands of district work.

I think a cabinet of 22 people, which is what I inherited — great people — it’s unwieldy. So the cabinet is shrunk to nine. My cabinet touch every aspect of everything that happens in the district. It’s my way of being able to not only collaborate but to give direction, hold accountable, and also be clear about implementation of initiatives that we have in the district.

Final thing I’m going to say: One of the biggest complaints that I heard from parents was, who do I go to? I have a problem in my school — who do I go to? And that’s why they ended up emailing me. So with the executive superintendents, there’s an executive superintendent for Staten Island who has the authority to make decisions for what happens on Staten Island, who has the responsibility for addressing and working with parents and community members on Staten Island, who is going to be intimately knowledgeable about what happens on Staten Island. In other words, it’s bringing the decision-making and accountability closer to the ground.

Heading in a different direction: What did you make of your visit to a Success Academy school? Eva Moskowitz, who runs that network, said that you seemed more friendly to charter schools. Is that an intentional shift?

I like to think I’m a collaborative guy. I think I’ve met pretty much all of the charter school leaders in New York City by now. My approach is always to talk about the work from the perspective of, “What’s good for kids and what’s the educational value in us working together?” I don’t go into those meetings assuming that I’m going to have an adverse reaction or an adverse relationship with anybody in the meeting. I never do that any way.

I’ve also made the effort to actually go into charters — Success Academy being one of them.

I will continue to look to find places where we can actually do collaborative work together if it’s going to help kids in New York City.

We want to talk about specialized high schools. You and the mayor have proposed a plan to admit more black and Hispanic students at the schools by eliminating the test that serves as the sole admissions factor. But the rest of the school system is also segregated, and many of our readers have asked whether you plan on taking an active role in desegregation efforts beyond specialized high schools.

Let’s go over the record. Within months of getting here, the mayor and I have now proposed a plan. Is it a perfect plan? Some people say yes, some people say no. But we’ve proposed a plan that’s never been proposed before around, ‘How are we going to create more opportunities for students in specialized schools?’

I think it’s also important to understand that when you talk about diversifying schools, you obviously are talking about not only diversifying the students who go to the schools, but then from the school improvement perspective, being really clear about what are the components that we want to make sure are working well in every school. As we work to improve schools that have historically not done well, you’re going to see more and more opportunity for students. But you can’t do that with just talking about integration. You also have to talk about curriculum. You have to talk about instruction. You have to talk about leadership. You have to talk about resource allocation.

And then you have to talk about systems and structures that advantage some schools and disadvantage other schools. That’s where the hard rub is because people will always equate that to a zero-sum game. I don’t think that anyone can deny that there are structures in our system that advantage some schools and disadvantage other schools, I’m asking the question: Is that ok? I think it’s a worthy conversation to have.

What personal role did you play in pushing for admissions changes at the specialized high schools?

The mayor and I, when we spoke about my coming to New York City, knew what he was getting. He knew how I grew up, where I grew up, what my educational pathway way was, what my leadership pathway has been.

So all I can say is that, in all of the conversations I’ve had with the mayor prior to my arrival and since my arrival, I can tell you the mayor is passionate about making sure that our schools are just as diverse as our city. He’s passionate about making sure that students, in the communities where they live, have great options for going to school. He has never bridled me and he has never told me not to talk about this, and he’s never told me what to talk about.

But he and I have had, like two grown men, lots of great conversations about this.

Was it already on the table when you came in, or was it something that developed after you got here?

I did my homework when I was going to come to New York City. So I had a working knowledge of what the big issues were, and given my background, we talked about it.

One of the things that I appreciate is, what the mayor hired was an educator to be the chancellor and he lets me do my job.

The proposal has been met with backlash, particularly from parents in the Asian community. Do you wish you would have done anything differently in the roll-out to announce the admissions changes?

There always is an opportunity for more input and buy in. But I think subsequent to the roll-out, where some aspects of the community have balkanized and sort of taken a stance, that wouldn’t have been any different had we done more robust engagement process up front. Since that roll-out, though — and nobody really writes about it, and that’s good — but I’ve been meeting with folks. I’ve been starting to have some really substantive conversations.

We have a very similar model for admitting students to gifted, and a similarly segregated population. Is that acceptable, and what do you think education should look like? Should we have it at all?

We probably should be really clear about what we mean about truly gifted. The student that is doing algebra in the third grade, that’s a gifted kid. But are we really talking about that when we talk about gifted and talented programs? I don’t know. I think sometimes it’s ironic where folks will say, “Oh, if you’re going to identify a student for gifted and talented it shouldn’t be just one test.” Kids are kids. It should also be teacher observation. It should be all these other multiple measures, which I think is a good idea. But then it comes to specialized high school admissions and we all say, ‘Oh, no. No, no. It’s just one test.’

But that’s largely not how it works in gifted right now. Largely, it’s just one test.

And I think that’s not a good idea. here is no body of knowledge that I know of that has pointed to the fact that you can give a test to a 4-year-old or a 5-year-old and determine if they’re gifted. Those tests — and it’s pretty clear — are more a measure of the privilege of a child’s home than true giftedness. We should really have those conversations — including, “What is gifted and talented?” If you’re going to assess for gifted and talented, how do you do that? When do you do that? And what makes sense?

When you look at the disparities in representation across this system, you have to ask the question, do we have the right way of assessing and making decisions about students?

The mayor wants to make sure every second grader is reading on grade level and has placed literacy coaches in high needs schools to help reach that goal. Some recent research shows the program hasn’t had a positive effect, but the city is adding more coaches. What will be different this year?

When it comes to universal literacy, keep in mind that it’s pretty nascent in its implementation. We’ve changed the assessments we’re going to be using because I wasn’t satisfied in the assessments we were going to be using. It didn’t give us an ability really to compare across the system or even to other systems. I can tell you that the professional development that our coaches are going to be providing to teachers and the coaching is going to be much tighter and much more aligned. For example, if you’re doing a balanced literacy approach, and kids come around a kidney table with a teacher, there are certain protocols you should follow and certain information you should be gathering that helps you then makes the decision about what the next instructional practice is. As I looked at some of the evidence, it wasn’t always clear to me that we were really clear about what that looked like.

When you’re done here, in maybe three years, how are you going to measure your own success? What do you hope to have accomplished, especially within the specific issue of segregation?

My goal is that I’m not going to be done here for another 20 years — that the results are going to be so good in three-and-a-half years that whoever is the new mayor is going to say, “Why are we going to change this?” That’s my goal. But I will tell you that whenever we’re done here, I’m going to be able to look back in three very general areas where I would like to have liked to have seen us really move the needle.

First and foremost is around curriculum and instruction — that we will have a curriculum that is tight. It’s going to be inclusive of all students — all ethnicities, all gender identification types, LGBTQ, everybody is seen in their curriculum. That we’re going to have great implementation, that we’re going to have great professional development for teachers that’s embedded. And we’re also going to have great supports around teaching in a very restorative way so that we have good systems and structures around that.

The second one is going to be around equity, that we will have moved the equity agenda in New York City so that we’re actually leading the nation. It gives me chills in a bad way every time I hear somebody reference the fact that we’re the most segregated school system in America. So I would hope to say that in the equity front, that we’ve actually dealt with our issues.

And then the third area I think is really, really important as I look back is that I want to make sure that we’ve done the work to empower parents and communities where they are. I’m not convinced, despite our best efforts, that we’ve actually met communities where they are. And we’ve not done that in people’s native languages.

Is there anything we didn’t ask you about that you want us to know?

I was at a meeting this morning and then when I got done with the meeting I walked into a coffee shop. I bought a cup of coffee and as I was standing there getting ready to pay, a gentleman comes out from the back with his apron on. He comes over and shakes my hand, and he says, ‘Thank you. My kids are so proud. I tell them, look. He didn’t speak English. Look what he’s doing.’

It’s occurred to me that I get stopped on the street a lot by taxi drivers who’ll lean out of the window and say, “Keep doing it!” Construction workers, people who work in restaurants. And it feels good to me because I think maybe what I’m talking about, in the way that I’m talking about it, is not high-falutin. It’s in the people’s language. And I think that’s a good thing.

Alex Zimmerman contributed reporting.

After hearing from educators across the city, Carranza outlines his ‘bold, progressive’ to-do list

2018-06-27T18:49:22+00:00

Over his first two months as chancellor of New York City schools, Richard Carranza embarked on a listening tour that introduced him to 2,125 students, 1,876 parents, 2,984 teachers and employees, and 336 elected officials and community partners.

As he announced a major reorganization of the Department of Education Wednesday, Carranza also released a report detailing his takeaways from all he heard.

“I am excited to work with our Mayor on a bold, progressive agenda, that embraces diversity and is committed to making New York the fairest, most enlightened big City in America,” he concluded.

“The last four years gave us a strong foundation,” he said in reference to the work of his predecessor Carmen Fariña. But the reports suggests he will have some different priorities from the chancellor he replaced, including his push to increase integration in the city’s schools. “Now, we are laser focused on equity, because you cannot have excellence without it.”

Here are the highlights of the report, which introduces the system’s successes first and then addresses some of the challenges that Carranza hopes to address.

He wants to expand arts instruction. Carranza, who credits his experience in a mariachi band with keeping him focused and out of trouble as a teen, applauded the art and music education he witnessed on his school visits. And he wants to see more of it.

He believes in adding counselors and social workers. The chancellor said he will expand resources to support students facing trauma and other stressors “to achieve a socially just school system.” This is in line with the city’s budget deal earlier this month, which provided a modest increase to hire social workers in schools with high concentrations of students living in temporary housing.

The first challenge he notes: “Desegregating Our Schools.” That’s notable language given that the previous chancellor and mayor have shied away from the word segregation, though it’s not new for Carranza. “I am fully committed to investing in and expanding programs to desegregate our schools, and will work with communities to tackle this challenge head on in order to create a more fair, equitable, and just system,” he writes.

He wants to confront broader racial disparities. Carranza specifically cites gaps in student discipline rates and access to Gifted & Talented programs, and mentions the importance of culturally relevant curriculum. “Throughout our system, I will continue to ask tough questions, and work with our staff and community partners to ensure we address disparities, deconstruct inequitable systems, and build more equitable future for every child.”

He addresses charter schools directly, keeping focus on partnerships. “For me, the politicization of education is a red herring—we must make sure that each child in our City has an excellent education. When we focus on collaboration, we can better serve all students,” he writes.

He’s committed to the schools in the Renewal turnaround program. He says struggling schools should be called “schools of opportunity,” and investing in those schools can help change the national narrative about urban schools. But he doesn’t get into specifics.

He’s reworking the bureaucracy. He says principals have complained about receiving mixed messages from multiple offices in the education department. He announced a staff shake-up attempting to fix that this morning.

What’s not here: Concrete, academic challenges like getting more students to graduate. Carranza does say he is focused on improving math and reading instruction, and offer this academic vision: “We must ensure that every student knows how to write well, think like a scientist, understand history, and learn computer science. The diploma they leave our schools with should also say that they are critical thinkers (and know how to discern news), have a digital identity (because that will follow them for the rest of their lives), are articulate (so that they can express ideas), and that they can work in teams and collaborate.”

New York City schools Chancellor Richard Carranza on segregation, national politics, and being Mexican-American

2018-06-22T19:16:10+00:00

In his two months on the job, Chancellor Richard Carranza has left little room to doubt how he thinks and feels about school diversity — or the lack of it.

He tweeted a blunt criticism of middle-class parents who protested an integration plan for Upper West Side middle schools. He questioned a fundamental way that many New York City schools admit students: by screening for academic achievement, which critics say exacerbates segregation. And he has unflinchingly described the school system as “segregated” and pushed for “integration,” two words that his predecessor never uttered publicly.

And then there is this fiery speech that he’s been delivering at meetings across the city.

After tracing the history of school segregation, Carranza dives into national politics — praising the presidency of Barack Obama while lamenting the racial divisiveness that mars the current political climate. He talks about being Mexican-American, and what he hears when dissenters tell him — “Go back to Houston,” where Carranza briefly served as the head of schools.

He gave a version of this speech at a recent town hall in Brooklyn’s District 15. The speech reprinted here was delivered at a different town hall: A meeting in Harlem of the mayor’s School Diversity Advisory Group, which is tasked with forming recommendations to spur school integration.

This speech has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Let me give you the broader context of why this is important, beyond just the New York City Department of Education or our schools. I want you to think of three numbers: 64, 10, and 17. Why is that important? Sixty-four years ago the question of diversifying schools, integrating schools, was definitively settled by the United States Supreme Court in Brown vs. Board of Education. They said that separate is never equal, and especially as it pertains to educational outcomes, it is not equal. The question I have for all of us tonight is: 64 years later what do we — the collective we — have to show for that? I will tell you that in communities across America, the answer is, not much. In some cases we’ve become more segregated. In some cases the intractableness of integrating schools and opportunities, and the gentrification that has happened with that, and the Balkanization that has happened around the racial divide, has become even more intractable. The fact that we’re gathered here today shows me that this community is willing to have tough conversations. Then what does 10 have to do with 64? I don’t know if you remember where you were 10 years ago, but I will never forget where I was 10 years ago on a November night. Ten years ago, this country elected the first black man president of the United States. We thought that would never happen, in at least our lifetime, with our history and what’s happened. That we would elect a black man president of the United States was in many cases, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King said to us, we have reached the mountaintop, and we have now seen over that mountain top. We were jubilant. I was jubilant. And we lulled ourselves into a false sense of complacency because we had entered a post-racial society. We elected a black president. Regardless of your politics, he did a good job for two terms. He didn’t embarrass us. He didn’t rip babies from mothers’ arms. He didn’t make fun of disabled people. When his words needed to lift us up, he lifted us up. When his words needed to motivate us, he motivated us. We elected a black man and we thought we had seen the mountaintop. We’re there. So 64 and 10 gets you 17. Because that false sense of complacency has given us the last 17 months of a very different perspective on what it is to be an American, and a very different perspective on who has access. What has that 17 months taught us? That if we are not vigilant, that if we do not continue to live, and speak, and act upon the very foundation of what America is, then we will continue to drive that divide wider. The only way to move that conversation, is to have that conversation. When I have my urban chancellor suit on people say, ‘Oh, Mr. Chancellor, let me tell you this, or let me tell you that.’ Well, when I don’t have the urban chancellor suit on, I’m in jeans and tennis shoes, or I have my Yankees baseball cap and a T-shirt, I guarantee you that I get followed in certain department stores. It’s happened everywhere I ever lived. When people don’t agree with what I have to say, and they say to me, ‘Go back to Houston,’ don’t make any mistake about the coded language. It’s really, ‘Go back to where you came from.’ I’m keeping it real: Were I a white man saying the same things, would they say go back to Europe? Someone who, my generation, generations of my family, never ever crossed the border? The border crossed us. It’s important that we are in a room and we get past the micro-aggressive conversations that we have. It’s important to call it when we see it. It’s important that we put the real issue on the table, and the issue on the table is this: In one of the most diverse cities — not in America, in the world — in the largest school district in America —a school district that is a public school system — do we really provide opportunities for everyone? When we talk about issues of how we screen students, we talk about who gets to go to what schools, and what’s the mechanism by which we decide that, so people can go to certain schools and not go to certain other schools. If we think about who’s being privileged — and I’m not talking about race, I’m not talking about money, I’m talking about opportunity — who’s being privileged with opportunity and who’s not? We, who own the schools, we who are the taxpayers, we who are New Yorkers, have to have this conversation.

As historians and New York City educators, here’s what we hope teachers hear in the city’s new anti-bias training

2018-05-17T22:10:47+00:00

New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza and Mayor Bill de Blasio just committed $23 million over the next four years to support anti-bias education for the city’s teachers. After a year in which a white teacher stepped on a student during a lesson on slavery and white parents used blackface images in their PTA publicity, it’s a necessary first step.

But what exactly will the $23 million pay for? The devil is in the details.

As current and former New York City teachers, and as historians and educators working in the city today, we call for the education department to base its anti-bias program in an understanding of the history of racism in the nation and in this city. We also hope that the program recognizes and builds upon the work of the city’s anti-racist teachers.

Chancellor Carranza has promised that the program will emphasize training on “implicit bias” and “culturally responsive pedagogy.” These are valuable, but insufficient. Workshops on implicit bias may help educators evaluate and change split-second, yet consequential, decisions they make every day. They may help teachers interrogate, for example, what decisions lead to disproportionately high rates of suspension for black children as early as pre-K, or lower rates of referrals to gifted programs for black students by white teachers.

But U.S. racism is not only split-second and individual. It is centuries deep, collective, and institutional. Done poorly, implicit bias training might shift disproportionate blame for unequal educational resources and outcomes onto the shoulders of classroom teachers.

Anti-bias education should lead teachers not only to address racism as an individual matter, but to perceive and struggle against its institutional and structural forms. Structural racism shapes the lives of students, families, and communities, and the classrooms in which teachers work: whether teachers find sufficient resources in their classrooms, how segregated their schools are, how often their students are stopped by police, and how much wealth the families they serve hold. Without attending to the history that has created these inequities, anti-bias education might continue the long American tradition of pretending that racism rooted in capitalism and institutional power can be solved by adjusting individual attitudes and behaviors.

We have experienced teacher professional development that takes this approach. Before moving to New York, Adam taught in Portland, Oregon and participated in several anti-bias trainings that presented racism as a problem to be solved through individual reflection and behaviors within the classroom. While many anti-racist teachers initially approached these meetings excited to discuss the larger forces that shape teaching students of color in the whitest city in America, they grew increasingly frustrated as they were encouraged to focus only on “what they could control.”

Similarly, at his very first professional development meeting as a first-year teacher of sixth grade in Harlem, Brian remembers being told by his principal that neither the conditions of students’ home lives nor conditions of the school in which he worked were within teachers’ power to change, and were therefore off-limits for discussion. The only thing he could control, the principal said, was his attitude towards his students.

But his students were extremely eager to talk about those conditions. For example, the process of gentrification in Harlem emerged repeatedly in classroom conversations. Even if teachers can’t immediately stop a process like gentrification, surely it is essential for both teachers and their students to learn to think about conditions they see around them as products of history — and therefore as something that can change.

While conversations about individual attitudes and classroom practices are important, they are insufficient to tackle racism. Particularly in one of the most segregated school districts in America, taking a historical perspective matters.

How do public school teachers understand the growth of racial and financial inequality in New York City? Consciously or otherwise, do they lean on tired but still powerful ideas that poverty reflects a failure of individual will, or a cultural deficit? Encountering the history of state-sponsored racism and inequality makes those ideas untenable.

Every New York City teacher should understand what a redlining map is. These maps helped the federal government subsidize mid-twentieth century white suburbanization while barring African American families from the suburbs and the wealth they helped generate. These maps helped shape the city, the metropolitan region, and its schools – including the wealth or poverty of students that teachers see in their classrooms. This is but one example of how history can help educators ground their understanding of their schools and students in fact rather than (often racist) mythology.

And how well do New York City educators know and teach the histories of the communities they serve? Those histories are rich sources of narratives about how New Yorkers have imagined their freedom and struggled for it, often by advocating for education. Every New York City teacher should know that the largest protest of the Civil Rights Movement took place not in Washington D.C., not in the deep South, but right here. On February 3, 1964, nearly half a million students stayed out of school and marched through the city’s streets, demanding desegregation and fully funded public schools. Every New York City teacher should know about Evelina Antonetty, a Puerto Rico-born, East Harlem-raised advocate who organized her fellow Bronx parents to press for some of the city’s first attempts at bilingual education and just treatment for language minority students in school.

Even if they don’t teach history or social studies, educators can see in the 1964 boycott and in Antonetty’s story prompts to approach parents as allies, to see communities as funds of knowledge and energy to connect to and build from. The chancellor’s initiative can be an opportunity to help teachers uncover and reflect on these histories.

Ansley first taught at a small high school in central Harlem, in a building that earlier housed Junior High School 136. J.H.S. 136 was one of three Harlem schools where in 1958 black parents protested segregation and inequality by withdrawing their children from school – risking imprisonment for violating truancy laws. The protest helped build momentum for later educational activism – and demonstrated black Harlem mothers’ deep commitment to securing powerful education for their children.

Although she taught in the same school – perhaps even the same classroom – where boycotting students had studied, Ansley didn’t know about this history until a few years after she left the school. Since learning about it, she has often reflected on the missed opportunities. How could the story of this “Harlem Nine” boycott have helped her students learn about their community’s history and interrogate the inequalities that still shaped their school? What could this story of parent activism have meant for how Ansley thought about and worked with her students’ parents?

Today, teaching future teachers, Ansley strives to convey the value of local and community history in her classes. One new teacher, now working in the Bronx, commented that her own learning about local history “taught me that we should not only think of schools as places of learning. They also are important places of community.”

The history of racism and of freedom struggles needs to be part of any New York City students’ learning as well as that of their teachers. Some of the $23 million should support the work of local anti-racist educators, such as those who spearheaded the Black Lives Matter Week of Action last February, in developing materials that help teach about this history. These efforts align with the chancellor’s pledge for culturally responsive education. And they offer ways to recognize and build on the knowledge of New York City’s community organizations and anti-racist education networks.

Attitudes matter, and educators – like everyone – can learn from the psychology of bias and stereotype. But historical ignorance or misrepresentation has fed racism, and history can be a tool in its undoing.

That would be a good $23 million investment for New York and all of its children.

Ansley Erickson is an associate professor of history and education at Teachers College, Columbia University and a former New York City high school teacher.

Brian Jones is the associate director of education at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library and a former New York City elementary school teacher.

Adam Sanchez is a teacher at Harvest Collegiate High School in New York City and an organizer and curriculum writer with the Zinn Education Project.

About our First Person series:

First Person is where Chalkbeat features personal essays by educators, students, parents, and others trying to improve public education. Read our submission guidelines here.

Asked about a ‘divisive’ tweet about segregation, Carranza directs an Upper West Side parent to implicit bias training

2018-05-07T18:27:46+00:00

After inserting himself into a contentious debate about school segregation, schools Chancellor Richard Carranza heard directly from an Upper West Side parent Monday who said his role in the debate has been “divisive.”

The mother was referring to a late-night tweet in which Carranza shared a headline accusing “wealthy white Manhattan parents” of angrily ranting against a plan to promote diversity among the Upper West Side’s middle schools. Under the proposal, each middle school in Manhattan’s District 3 would offer a quarter of its seats to students who haven’t passed state exams.

“I have to say chancellor you stunned me because what I heard loud and clear — me as a white parent in P.S. 199, I am not part of your constituency,” said the parent, who also identified herself as a “career educator.”

But during his first appearance on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show, Carranza did not back down from the debate or apologize for his tweet — and even suggested the parent “avail” herself of implicit bias training.

“The video speaks for itself,” Carranza said of the now-viral New York 1 segment, which shows a group of white parents objecting to the plan. “If that’s the kind of dialogue we want to have about very difficult conversations, I will never support that kind of dialogue in a public meeting — I just won’t.

“We’ve just secured in the budget millions of dollars for culturally relevant pedagogy training. I hope you will avail yourself of that training,” Carranza added. “We’re also going to be funding and we’ve secured millions of dollars for anti- implicit bias training. Again, I hope you will avail yourself of that.”

The exchange is notable because top city officials — including Mayor Bill de Blasio and Carranza’s predecessor Carmen Fariña — have been careful to avoid alienating middle class families. In his first month in office, Carranza has been more willing than Fariña to step into the spotlight and offer critiques of the system he now oversees.

But Carranza’s posture could also complicate his efforts to generate support for integration efforts, a task the chancellor has said depends in part on community support and input.

You can read the full exchange here:

Caller: Hi Brian, huge fan. I try to call all the time; delighted to be on the program. Hi chancellor, I’m also a career educator and I’m a parent at P.S. 199. And I wanted to see your comment [on the matter]. A lot of us are very supportive of this initiative, but with limited faith in the efficacy of the DOE to carry it through. For example, no extra money is going to be allocated to the schools that will be affected. I wanted ask you the motivation behind your late-night tweet. It was divisive, in my opinion. Again, I do support this initiative. And knowing that probably my kids will probably not get a seat at one of the very few decent middle schools, I want to know why the question wasn’t, ‘why aren’t there more stronger middle schools in District 3’ instead of blaming the parents in a very divisive way? Was it possibly that becomes a setup for when this doesn’t work out as well as people are gonna hope it is — that simply the parents can be blamed: Those Upper West Side parents are the reason that this initiative isn’t working? Brian Lehrer: Debra when you say when it ultimately doesn’t work out as well as people hope, what are you anticipating? Caller: I hope, I really hope there can be some changes. But I don’t see without funds for teacher development, I don’t see that space is an issue — everybody is just elbowing to get their kids into a good school. All the parents in District 3, not just the parents at P.S. 199, which is why I think such initiatives should be put forward. But to just shift the kids around without putting significant funds behind it, I’m skeptical. I’m still vocally supportive of it, but I have to say chancellor you stunned me because what I heard loud and clear: Me as a white parent in P.S. 199, I am not part of your constituency — my family, my children. Richard Carranza: Yeah, so Debra first and foremost for the Teacher Appreciation Week, thank you for your service. It’s important — the work that you do each and every day. Again, I’ve been really clear — the video speaks for itself. If that’s the kind of dialogue we want to have about very difficult conversations I will never support that kind of dialogue in a public meeting, I just won’t. And I think it’s important we shine the light of day when we have these kinds of conversations. Now that being said, there’s some assumptions in what you said which are not true. So as we support our most historically underserved communities and schools, what we’re going to do is we’re going to put resources behind that. We’ve just secured in the budget millions of dollars for culturally relevant pedagogy training. I hope you will avail yourself of that training. We’re also going to be funding, and we’ve secured millions of dollars for anti- implicit bias training. Again, I hope you will avail yourself of that. In our community schools, we’ve set up opportunities for partnerships with local community-based organizations, non-profits, as well as governmental agencies that can provide the supports to students that are historically underserved in our cities and our communities. As I’ve gone around for this first month of my tenure here, I’ve spoken in every borough and every community about an equity lens to make sure that we are prioritizing resources to students and communities that have historically not had that kind of support. The students that would take a seat in these schools if they come from those kinds of communities, those kinds of backgrounds, they have those kinds of needs — under a community schools approach we’re going to have resources there to serve them. So again, a lot of assumptions in the question. And you know Brian, I’ve been asked a lot about, ‘well what are you doing tweeting at one in the morning?’ The honest truth is I’ve been working till 1, 2 in the morning. I spend my day out in the community. And I spend my evenings reading briefings about the DOE. So again I just want to make sure that we’re all part of the conversation and every parent, every community member that has a student in the New York City public schools is one of my constituents. You all matter.

A month into the job, it’s clear Chancellor Carranza isn’t Carmen Fariña version 2.0

2018-05-04T18:52:47+00:00

When Mayor Bill de Blasio explained what he was looking for in a new schools chief, he offered one primary goal: Find someone in the mold of outgoing Chancellor Carmen Fariña.

So when the mayor settled on Richard Carranza — a man with a background, resume, and educational philosophy that look a lot like Fariña’s — it seemed he had found her mirror image.

But Carranza has already shown his approach to running the nation’s largest school system will not simply reprise his predecessor, who spent a half-century working in the system, rarely spoke publicly about its flaws, and preferred to avoid the spotlight.

Carranza has shown he isn’t afraid to elevate problems that his predecessor rarely addressed publicly: lack of diversity at the city’s elite specialized high schools, broad patterns of academic segregation — even the quality of the school system’s food.

In his first month on the job, the new chancellor offered a blunt assessment of the mayor’s high-profile and expensive turnaround program, telling Chalkbeat it doesn’t have a clear “theory of action.” And, most notably, he inserted himself in the white-hot politics of school segregation, pushing back against some parents who don’t support a plan to increase academic diversity at middle schools on the Upper West Side.

“His status as an outsider grants him some license to say things that someone who lived in the system as long as Carmen did had not chosen to,” said Aaron Pallas, a professor at Teachers College. “I don’t think he’s burning any bridges by doing so — yet.”

Unsurprisingly, Carranza has spent much of his first weeks making it clear there’s “no daylight” philosophically between his views and de Blasio’s education agenda. His first school visit, a Bronx elementary school, centered on de Blasio’s expansion of free pre-K — by far the mayor’s most celebrated education accomplishment. In his opening speech to teachers, Carranza said he still considers himself to be one of them at heart — a clear nod to Fariña, who frequently emphasized her teaching roots.

And much like his predecessor, Carranza often references his modest upbringing when speaking with parents and students, including his experience as a non-native speaker. The son of a sheet-metal worker and hairdresser who spoke Spanish at home, Carranza learned English in public school.

That message has resonated with some parents, whom Carranza has made a point of meeting as part of his inaugural “listening tour.”

“It just makes you feel as a person that he can understand what your needs are because he seems to have come from similar background,” said Clemence Williams, a parent who attended one of Carranza’s recent town hall meetings in Queens, which began with an impromptu mariachi performance. “He feels very approachable.”

But in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, the new chancellor has already departed from Fariña’s worldview. While Carranza has vowed to keep up Fariña’s regimen of frequent school visits, which became legendary for her detailed feedback on everything from hallway decorations to teaching strategies, Carranza prefers to hang back and listen.

When he does speak, it’s often a question to understand a new piece of the massive system he now oversees. On a recent visit to M.S. 137 in Queens, an assistant principal eagerly explained that the school had expanded the number of students who were each given an iPad for schoolwork. Carranza followed up with a question about whether school had bandwidth issues — and the assistant principal acknowledged they had.

“Everywhere I go where there’s technology I ask a question about bandwidth,” Carranza explained.

Those differences aren’t just about temperament: They signal a shift in management styles.

Fariña believed in improving the system by identifying best practices at individual schools and replicating them, which supporters pointed to as its own type of innovation. But critics said she was too content with small-bore programs and modest changes — and that she missed the forest for the trees. Perhaps picking up on that criticism, Carranza has said he wants to take a wider lens, tackling systemwide challenges with “urgency.”

“He seems to be more concerned about the overall system,” said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, the city’s teachers union. “The missing piece here is still the management of systems.”

In the process of raising questions about the system at large, Carranza has won praise from advocates frustrated with the administration’s approach to school diversity, who have argued the city has not been aggressive enough to integrate one of the most segregated school systems in the country.

Unlike Fariña and the mayor, Carranza routinely uses the words “segregation” and “integration” and appears comfortable criticizing a constituency the administration has been careful not to alienate: affluent white parents.

Last week, Carranza dove head first into a debate playing out on the Upper West Side, tweeting out a headline critical of “wealthy white Manhattan parents” who are resistant to a plan requiring the neighborhood’s middle schools to admit a certain proportion of students with low test scores.

After the tweet generated backlash, Carranza told reporters that he stood by the sentiment and emphasized his own perspective as a “man of color.”

“The criticism of my predecessor Chancellor Fariña was that she didn’t do anything about this,” Carranza said. “And here I am in my first month actually engaging in this conversation.”

Matt Gonzales, who heads school integration efforts with the nonprofit New York Appleseed, said Carranza’s rhetoric has been a welcome surprise.

“This is what the leader of the largest urban school district in the country should be talking about,” he said. “That tweet activated a lot of parents of color I work with.”

But despite Carranza’s promise that he will not “be so busy keeping my job that I’m not going to do my job” and challenge the mayor, it’s unclear whether acknowledging broader problems like school segregation will translate into significant shifts in policy — or even what those shifts could look like.

In Houston, where he was superintendent before taking the job in New York, he showed some willingness to propose systemic and controversial changes, including an overhaul of the district’s magnet programs and school budget allocations.

Still, Carranza left that district before many of those proposals took effect, and in New York, he will have to persuade de Blasio — a mayor who has not previously worked with a schools chancellor who has publicly pushed him on policy issues.

“I’m obviously not getting my hopes up for everything to transform overnight,” Gonzales said. “I’m excited about where this is going to go.”