Chancellor Klein offered small consolation today to the 66,000 eighth-graders anxiously awaiting news about where they’ve been admitted to high school.
Asked about the legal battle holding up admissions decisions during a City Council hearing this morning, Klein offered only a rough estimate of when decision letters would be released. “We don’t expect it to be months,” he said.
The judge assigned to the teachers union’s lawsuit over 19 school closures has barred the city from sending out the letters because students weren’t allowed to choose schools slated for closure even though a final decision about the closings hadn’t been made when applications were due.
Last week, schools officials were telling GothamSchools that they thought the judge would recognize the urgency of the situation and issue a ruling by now. Even this morning, the city harbored hope that the judge would release the letters today. “We were hoping to have different news by this time,” wrote Liz Sciabarra, the DOE’s head of enrollment, in an e-mail to principals instructing them to pass out a letter to eighth-graders explaining the situation.