Month: December 2010

After a program at the school where the children performed their Greek Mythology/Greek Salad dances they had created with a visiting artist, I joined a group of mothers who were driving to another part of Brooklyn to drop off packets containing copies of report cards, standardized test results and letters of recommendation for their children because they had heard that this “good” school might have some seats available for out-of-district students.

Then we drove past some schools that we hadn’t yet had time to visit.

Some of the moms were joking that the PTA should sell knee-pads as a fundraiser because they could sell them to parents willing to do “anything” to get their child into a good school.

Ha, ha.

We’re not really affected because we weren’t considering the Brooklyn middle school that is on the DOE’s list of a dozen schools set to close. And yet it hit home because the name is so familiar.  It’s on our list of school choices we are meant to consider for our child.  I have studied the Department of Education website looking at the statistics for all the schools the computer tells me are middle school options for my daughter.  The code is not hard to decipher.  There are exceptions but in general a high percentage of children eligible for free lunch indicates a lower performing school and a high percentage of white students indicates a high performing school.  (Those are the students who have parents who can donate time and money to the school and who make sure their children are able to read and write and excel on standardized tests even if they don’t learn anything during the school day.)

There was an excellent article about this in the Village Voice last April 6.  In, “Rich School, Poor School”  Kate Pastor described two schools in the Bronx that have PTA’s able to raise between $3,000 and 5,000 or enough to pay for part of graduation decorations and school dances.  MS 51 in Park Slope, Brooklyn and PS 41 in Greenwich Village on the other hand annually raise over $500,000 which is enough to pay for playground and teacher’s aides and arts and sports programs.  At my daughter’s school, parents raised enough money to install air conditioners in all the classrooms.  In the article I read about PS 375 in East Harlem where 90% of the students were or below the poverty line. That school lost all of it’s teachers aides in a round of budget cuts.  By contrast PS 6 on Madison Avenue was hiring 17 aides all paid for by parent association money.

Looking at My Kid’s application and after eliminating the boys schools; the small schools that offer extra help for low performing students who live in projects and the Arabic language school there are about half a dozen schools left to consider.  Then after we eliminate those with performing arts focus because My Kid doesn’t want to be on stage at all ever, our choices are even fewer.

I am worried because the school that we liked when we toured it, with an impressive principal which seems like a good fit for our child doesn’t come up in conversation on the playground among the Alpha parents at my daughter’s school.  We really don’t have much more than gossip to go on when looking at schools, which is why some schools are hot and others are not.  Every parent I’ve met since my daughter’s toddler playgroup days seem to have their hearts set on their kids attending one of three schools which combined do not have room for every 6th grader I’ve seen on the tours much less the ones who toured the schools on the days when I wasn’t there.

The printed material from the Department of Education says that we have options and choices.  But, when we go on a school tour with a hundred other people and know that the school scheduled eight or ten such tours and will only be able to accept 6o incoming 6th graders we know our chances of having that school as an option are slim to none.

Other schools offer even less hope.

On paper the Bergen Upper School sounds like a viable option.  Upper School has a private school sound to it and so one might expect a rigorous college prep program.   It’s on the top floor of an elementary school I know by sight from the stroller days when we stopped to play at every playground we passed.  But it’s not on the radar of anyone at my daughters school.  I hadn’t heard anything at all about the school until I read local politician/PTA parent made a negative comment about the school in his most recent e-mail blast.

If only I had faith in the process.

SCHOOL CHOICES BASED ON THE DISTRICT IN WHICH YOU ATTEND SCHOOL OR RESIDE

The schools for which you are eligible are pre-printed on this application.

Rank your school/program choices in preference order by placing a number in the box next to each school/program.  Please see the sample below for how to rank the schools listed on this application.  Write “1” next to the school/program that you want to attend most, “2” next to your second choice, “3” next to your third choice and so on.

After completing the rank order, your parent/guardian must sign and date Section 6, “Parent/Guardian Name & Signature.”

Any student who does not receive an offer to attend one of the schools ranked on his or her middle school application will receive a placement in either: (1) the district where the student attends pubic elementary school; or (2) the district to which the student is zoned to attend middle school.

ELIGIBILITY FOR ADMISSION TO MIDDLE SCHOOL

Students are eligible to apply to the district middle schools in their district of attendance and, when different, the district to which they are zoned to attend middle school.

Additionally there may be schools on your application which are located in a different district but to which students from a number of districts (including  yours) may apply.  Note that the application lists the district in which each school is located.

If a school is not listed on your application, this means that you are not eligible to apply OR that the school runs its own admissions process.  Please review the list in the back of the Middle School Directory to identify those schools that have a school-based admissions process.  Do not write-in schools.  –write-ins will not be considered.

Eminent domain or the take over of the public services like schools and streets for the purpose of private gain.

I saw the New Civilians production, IN THE FOOTPRINT, The Battle Over Atlantic Yards at the Irondale Center this evening.

While I watched the actors portray the struggle of ordinary Brooklynites against the bulldozer that is Forest City Ratner, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s appointment of his friend Cathie Black to continue the “improvement” or privatization of the New York City public schools and how much money can be made by private companies opening charter schools, selling computers, testing supplies and other necessities to the largest school district in the country if only the parents and teachers unions would get out of the way.

I couldn’t help but remember the Cathie Black interview I watched today and how she’s rolling up her sleeves and is raring to go.  She said in answer to the reporter’s question about the words “three years” used in connection to her tenure as Chancellor of Education:

“A lot can be done in three years.  Sometimes I think less time to do something makes people really focus, makes them focus on the priorities.  You don’t have eight years to think about something.  We want to get this done now.”

I wonder what is it exactly that she and Mayor Bloomberg have in mind to shake up the entire education system during the next three years, the only three years that my daughter will ever be in middle school.

I kept her in the elementary school where she started kindergarten through 5th grade because I wanted her to feel secure.  I remembered from my childhood moving the summer between 2nd and 3rd grade from a school in one state where cursive was taught in third grade to a school in another state where it had already been taught in second grade.  I had to catch up on my own and and good penmanship became a lost cause for me. I didn’t want to uproot my daughter if I didn’t have to.  Other parents pulled their kids out of one elementary school and put them in a different elementary school where as the new kid they have to make an entirely new set of friends just so that they would have a chance to apply to a different set of middle schools.  Of course those with enough money aren’t tempted to play those kinds of games with their children’s social lives.  They just put their kids in private schools.

Are her middle school years going to be marked by having the rug pulled out from under her on a regular basis by game changing choices implemented by the same education administration that gave her elementary school wildly fluctuating annual letter grades based on surveys and comparisons to a set of “similar” schools that changed every year?  Her school experience has been unremarkably consistent and positive since kindergarten.

I have spent the past 3 months visiting a random assortment of middle schools and learning about the Orwellean “choice process”.   My daughter just brought home the Official Application for Middle School on Friday.  And now today, Monday –not even three days later, it was announced in the press that one of her “choices” on that application has been placed on the list of schools slated to be closed because they’re so bad that anything or even nothing is better than going to THAT school.

It’s not for nothing that I lack confidence in the New Schools Chancellor who was apparently chosen from an array of the mayor’s wealthy business associates.

A palpable sense of doom descends.

A sense of resignation

All hope is gone

Last night at Girl Scouts, Stay-at-home-mommy said;

“We’ll apply everywhere.”

“Charter schools?”

“N0.”

They’ve given up hope on charter schools.  There’s such a small chance of getting in.

Today Ad-Mommy called me to get homework assignment from my daughter for her daughter.

We talked for almost an hour about what a horrible unfair process it is.

She said her daughter didn’t like one of the “best choices” the same school that one of the lawyer-mommies likes best of all.

I still haven’t looked at the form.

I know it’s there.   The computer printout from the DOE is in My Kid’s backpack.

The parent coordinator from her school sent out an e-mail telling us to look for it.

I am afraid to look.

If I don’t actually read the black and white list of limited choices, I can still believe that a beautiful world of unlimited possibilities awaits my child.

The YouTube upload of “Bernie Sanders Amazing Speech” is making the cyberspace rounds this week.  He speaks passionately about the war on working families and the shrinking by the wealthy and powerful.

By contrast, I happened upon the Cathie Black who, if not a billionaire herself, is at least on a first name basis with Mike and Rupert said in an interview that one of her favorite books is Hot, Flat and Crowded.

I haven’t read that book, but I did go to Amazon and looked inside.  I read;

The core argument is very simple:  America has a problem and the world has a problem.  America’s problem is that it has lost it’s way in recent years–partly because of 9/11 and partly because of the bad habits that we have let build up over the past three decades, bad habits have weakened our society’s ability and willingness to take on big challenges.  The world also has a problem, it’s getting hot, flat and crowded.  That is global warming, the stunning rise of middle classes all over the world, and rapid population growth have converged in a way that could make our planet dangerously unstable.

I can’t help but think some people think that the world is a better place if the wealth and resources are controlled and enjoyed by a few instead of wasted on the bad habits of the destructive middle classes.

What does your child’s school tell her?

How do you think she feels?

Why should she stay for seven more years?

No wonder the drop out rate is so high.

I have Cathie Black’s book, Basic Black, The Essential Guide for Getting Ahead at Work (and in Life) on my Kindle and read it, while riding the subway each afternoon, on the way to pick up my daughter from her public elementary school.  It makes me nauseous.

The thing about Cathie Black, the former President and Chairman of Hearst Magazines, is that she was successful in a very specific corporate culture of money, status symbols and posturing.  She came out of college during the era depicted on the television show, Mad Men. She rode the wave of the Feminist Revolution as the advertising manager for Ms magazine (where she clashed with Gloria Steinem over Phillip Morris Virginia Slims cigarette ads; “she felt strongly that accepting them would compromise our mission and our ethics.  From a business perspective I didn’t much care for her decision.”).  She helped to dismantle the craft and culture of local journalism while promoting USA TODAY.  She lives alongside executives, like those portrayed in the movie, Wall Street, in a Park Avenue apartment and a house in the Hamptons.  Her children attended boarding school in Connecticut.

I don’t see how her appointment as Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, the largest public school system in the country, can possibly play out well for anybody.   Two-thirds of the public school children in New York City are eligible for free or reduced price lunch.  (Full price lunch is $1.50 including milk!)  Forty percent of the public school families speak a language other than English.  One third of the students were born in another country and only 15% are Caucasian.  Think Jonathan Letham’s Fortress of Solitude, Spike Lee’s Brooklyn movies or any book by Jonthan Kozol.

Although she mentions her first year of work after college and the financial difficulties of Ms magazine, most of the anecdotes Ms. Black has chosen for inclusion in her book (intended for a young woman fresh out of an MBA program and entering the corporate world) are patently offensive to anyone who has ever tried to live on a budget.

For example: When Cathie Black felt the need to find something to energize the executives at the company’s management conference, something –in addition to the resort location.  She paid whatever it took get Bill Clinton as a speaker and felt the cost was justified even though it was so much money that she refused to ever tell her boss how much she had spent.  She said, “The benefits our company got from having one hundred employees rush home to tell their friends and loved ones, ‘I got to meet Bill Clinton!’ was worth every penny we paid.”

If this woman continues to think in this vein and decides to spend several million dollars to energize one hundred specially selected students, teachers or administrators, or if she opens one perfect school while the rest of the million-plus students lose teachers; after-school programs; librarians; books; computers; sports teams; playground aides; music; art; science and janitors, in order to pay for it…  Things could get really ugly.  She’s in a position to cause a great deal of damage.

For another executive retreat, Cathie Black selected the Deleno Hotel in South Beach Miami, Florida “…a vision in white.  With it’s sleek furniture, polished mahogany floors, open spaces, simple elegance, and crisp white color scheme, it’s a monument to cool, modern design.  But, the best feature of all is the profusion of sheer, billowing, white linen curtains”…There’s something about removing yourself from the traditional setting and being in a place where the visual cues are powerful that really serves to reinforce a simple message…that I was the change agent.”

The current rate for a suite at the Delano Hotel in Miami is $885 to $1400 per night.

In the last two years New York City Schools have already suffered a number of across the board cuts resulting in the loss of many teachers and educational programs.  Yellow bus service has been cut.   Many schools have infrastructure concerns such as asbestos, loose bricks, broken windows, exposed wires, and toilets that don’t work.  Not to mention over-crowded classrooms.

I’m pretty sure there aren’t any public school teachers using white linen curtains to communicate leadership strategies.

Basic Black contains numerous anecdotes involving private corporate jets.  Coded messages are sent from one executive to another when someone is invited to take the corporate jet and someone else is not.   Oh, and it is a major faux pas to bring carry-out barbecue ribs onto a private jet if the owner is particular about his white leather upholstery –just in case you couldn’t figure out that one on your own.

On the topic of first impressions, Ms. Black quotes a colleague’s advice to a young executive on preparing to attend “the company’s lavish Christmas party,” at which she might have a chance to be introduced to the cosmetics company founder, Estee Lauder:  “go shopping at lunch today and buy yourself the most fabulous, most expensive dress you’ve ever imagined buying.  You have to be prepared.”

Where I live –in the world of most people who send their children to public school– even a bride choosing her wedding dress is on a budget and can’t play fast and loose with a credit card.  That kind of thinking has no place in our lives.

How will Cathie Black and her new constituency ever understand each other?

In her book, she suggests tailoring the message to the audience.  For example, if you’re pitching a magazine concept to television personality Oprah, why not show her a video you’ve had your people produce.

Another one of her pieces of advice happens to be “Seize the moment”.

“More often than not you get only one real chance to make your pitch–so make it count.” she said.

Apparently this advice was not taken by Mayor Michael Bloomberg when he introduced her to New York.

So now, I don’t trust her.

Our first impression of her was mishandled…

…blown!

…as it were.

The message wasn’t tailored to the audience of taxpayers, teachers and parents.

As far as I can tell, Cathie Black and Michael Bloomberg know each other socially.

She’s 65 years old and over the summer she was replaced as President of Hearst Magazines by David Carey of the Condé Nast group and she became Chairwoman which everybody knows is a retirement position.   So she was knocking about looking for something to do.

I imagine that one evening over dinner, or maybe at an equestrian event, Mike Bloomberg leaned over and said to her:

“You know, Cathie, Klein is ready to make some real money again and he’s got an opportunity he can’t pass up developing business strategies for the educational marketplace.  So he’s going to be working with Rupert Murdoch at News Corp and we’ve got an opening.  Why don’t you come on board as our new Chancellor of Education?”

And she answered:

“Yes!  Retirement seems boring to me.  I like a challenge, something I’ve never ever done before.  Education sounds like fun!  Lots of my peers have expanded their horizons during their golden years. Let’s do it!”

Did Mayor Bloomberg neglect to tell her that the New York City Department of Education has no use for private jets and that meetings are never held at 5-star resorts?

In the public education culture such things are considered criminal behavior on account of the whole that-would-be-stealing-from-the-children concept.

Just sayin’…