Clownmommy

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’…

We toured another public middle school in Brooklyn this morning.  The principal spoke of how privileged the school is to have obtained a grant to buy one portable cart of laptop computers to be shared by all of the children and smart boards for some of the classrooms.  Not every school is given so much.  The amount of the grant for which the principal, teachers, parents and students are so very grateful for is $50,000 —or about what Cathie Black paid annually as tuition for each of her children to attend private school.

That’s what I learned today:

“Technorati Media is going after lady tech geeks.”

And it’s news to me.  Good news!

I went on vacation this summer and unplugged for a while and didn’t even know that the blog I wrote for had ceased to exist.  I found out from a stranger on an elevator at the BlogHer conference in Manhattan.

It made me sad because I’d come home from vacation with half a dozen blog posts for the New York Moms Blog audience outlined in my head and only to discover I had nowhere to post them.

According to Mediaweek:

Technorati plans to use SV Moms, which consists of 400-plus bloggers, to kick off a women’s channel—technorati.com/women. The idea is to expand the company’s surprisingly large footprint among women. In addition, Technorati hopes to open the eyes of advertisers who associate the company with male geeks. For example, though the group started in 2006 under the moniker SV Moms was founded in March of 2006 with the site Silicon Valley Moms Blog, SV Moms blogs now cover topics ranging from parenting to fitness to spirituality.

“This lets us talk to more female-oriented brands,” said Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra.

Additionally, Jalichandra believes his team can expand the reach of the SV Moms content via its existing network of sites (which already reach 90 million women, per comScore), as well as the company’s unique social advertising platform. Technorati’s patented content and social media ads (CMADs) blend advertising and content distribution.

As part of the acquisition, SV Moms founder Jill Asher has been named editorial director of Technorati and Blogcritics. Also, two top bloggers from SV Moms, Akemi Bourgeois and Vanessa Druckman, will stay on and will become the editors of the new women’s channel.

How ironic for me. The Husband’s job with Oxygen, the new women’s channel, brought us to New York in 2001 in the first place.

So last night I glued on some long silver mylar zebra print fingernails as a special effect for the New York Downtown Clown Revue in the East Village.

And

This morning I still couldn’t get them off.

So

I cut them short with nail clippers.

But

I’m a little worried about the impression I made on the principal of the prep school I toured this morning in Brownstone Brooklyn.

Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg named as his next New York City School Chancellor, a woman who has had the privilege of sending her two children to a boarding school in Connecticut at a cost of over $45,000 per student per year–which is more than the median household income for a family living in Brooklyn.  It’s equivalent to the entire salary of an entry level New York City public school teacher with a bachelor’s degree.  In her storied career as a media executive Cathie Black (who as far as I can tell only has a bachelor’s degree) readily admits to never having had to deal with unions.

And I’m sure that as a mother of children who went to private school in Connecticut, she will have a great deal of empathy for the parents and children who went, last night, to the informational meeting about the Brooklyn Prospect Charter School because they believed it to be a viable middle school option despite the fact that the entering class of one hundred 6th graders will be chosen by lottery.

Priority is given to students residing in District 15 and last year there were over 700 students from District 15 who applied to this particular charter school.  No one from outside of District 15 was considered.

Another charter school, Community Roots, which is open to any child eligible to attend public school in New York City placed 420 names into the lottery for 37 available kindergarten seats in 2009.

At a meeting of 5th grade parents at PS 8 (in District 13) the prinicpal said the long term survival of that good elementary school is dependent on good middle school choices.

The parents of children who attend PS 8 in Broooklyn Heights are hard put to come up with more than three District 13 schools to which they are willing send their children, after taking into consideration the commute using public transportation (bus and subway), the diversity of the student body, and the academic offerings.  Most of the middle schools to which PS 8 Brooklyn Heights parents would send their children are also open to applicants from Districts 14, 15, 16 and 17 if not all of Brooklyn.  At the same time, there are no schools in District 15 which are open to the children of District 13.

One of my mommy friends who moved to Brooklyn from Canada five years ago, with a toddler, a preschooler and a kindergartner bemoans the fact that if only they had chosen an apartment a few blocks away from the one where they live now, their children would be able to apply to the more academically challenging and diverse middle schools of District 15.  As residents of District 13, they are shut out of middle schools within walking distance of their home.

This is crazy-making.

We are like many Brooklyn parents who send our kids to public school because we attended good suburban public schools.  We found progressive schools and we think we are giving our children an enriching urban experience because they attend school with children of color whose parents are professionals with advanced degrees.  Then they get to middle school.  We don’t have a zoned middle school.  We go out and visit as many middle schools as we can.  We discover we have been sheltered.  We discover that our schools are selective.  We suddenly think we have gifted children and scramble to get them into one of the gifted and talented schools that look an awful lot like ordinary high quality suburban schools.  The ordinary urban public schools aren’t good enough for our kids because they already know they’re going to college.  As parents, we fear our own children will be ill-served by a school that aspires to attain standards.

Our children are not cans of soup.  We are not looking for efficiently produced consistency of quality in test results.  We want our children to go to a school where they will be inspired to learn.  We want them to discover and nourish passions that may lead to career paths.

If I give a school a 10-year-old girl who self-identifies as a geek and plans to become an engineer, I want her to come out of middle school ready, willing and able to do advanced math and science in high school even if she switches her passion to fashion in the 7th grade.  I don’t think that’s too much to ask since there are schools which do exactly that.  But, there seems to be a shortage of these schools and an abundance of the soup can model.

If a child doesn’t win a lottery to get into a small charter school or test in the top half of the top one percent in order to get into gifted program and is assigned by the NYCDOE computer to a random school where they are uncomfortable and is hard to get to using public transportation, that child might start staying home from school and fall so far behind they begin to fail thereby further limiting options for high school.  Eventually that child becomes demoralized and drops out.  That’s how it happens.  It’s a track that starts in middle school just as straight as the one that propels a different set of kids from good middle schools into one of the selective high schools and on to a universities like MIT.

Our 10-year-olds are young, passionate and impressionable.  We parents are filled with dread because we know the least consistent, most interesting kids are the ones who could go either way.

The father of one of My Kid’s friends has gone completely grey since school started in September.  He’s not the only one.  Another mom I know said her hair is falling out and I have lost weight.

The man at the podium boasted about the charter school’s diversity with children from 40 different Brooklyn elementary schools.

I don’t think that will be the case for the incoming class.  My daughter, who was with me at this open house, was sent to the gym for activities with the other children.  When she came back, she reported that the kids were asked which elementary school they attended and volunteers were all chosen from among those who had said either PS 321, PS 29, or Brooklyn New School.

At  the tender age of 10, My Kid is beginning to suspect that she does not go to one of the “good schools”.

But, good press is a fickle mistress.

When My Kid was 6-years-old her school was “so good”  that Chancellor Joel Klein showed up with his attendant media circus for The First Day of School.  They were so busy putting on a big show for the morning news programs that they didn’t even notice that they were scaring some of the first graders who were afraid to go into a classroom full of cameras and microphones and grown men in suits.

The New York City Department of Education had recently abolished the districts by merging them into larger regions when my friends and I were looking for kindergarten placements for our children.  Districts 13, 14, 15, and 16 became Region 8.  We were told that there was no longer a separation between Districts 13 and 15.  We were sold magnet schools and told that the old school district boundaries didn’t matter.  We were told that it wouldn’t make any difference wether our kids attended PS 11 or PS 261 or PS 29 or PS 8 or BNS.  In 2007 after my daughter was settled into her elementary school, the regions were dissolved and the gerrymandered segregated districts reinstated.

This morning I ran into the parents of one of my daughter’s classmates.  They were with a real estate agent looking at apartments in District 15.

I suspect Cathie Black author of Basic Black: The Essential Guide for Getting Ahead at Work (and in Life) would approve.  But what about Cathie Black,  the next Chancellor of New York City Department of Education?

She’s made a career out of not being afraid to lay people off.  She must realize that as Chancellor of the New York Department of Education, she will be responsible for educating all of the children of more than a million New York families, not just those with the means to navigate the system.

http://video.forbes.com/fvn/ceo/cw_black121108

Following at a semi-invisible distance behind the costumed girls, The Husband and I had time to talk to each other.  We wondered if this was our last year of trick-or-treating.  Next year she will be in middle school and may want to attend a party instead.

All the little kids were so cute, there were lots of babies dressed as chicks and ducks and toddlers dressed as dragons and dinosaurs, many princesses and super heros and of course many kinds of vampires, witches and monsters.  But our girl has never yet worn anything scary  for Halloween.

When My Kid was a baby we put her in a red chili pepper bunting

When she was one she was a ladybug.

When she was two she was a puppy.

When she was three she was a frog

When she was four she was Spider Man

When she was five she was Greg Wiggle

When she was six she was Belle

When she was seven she was a cheerleader-spy

When she was eight she was Hannah Montana

When she was nine she was Alex from “Wizards of Waverly Place”

This year she was a girl robot.

Sigh.

LOVE THE NEW VENUE–Dixon Place–STATE OF THE ART–sweet!!!

I heard that  Jim Moore was the matchmaker who introduced Dixon Place producers to Downtown Clown Revue producers as the run was ending at the old space.  If so, he’s even cooler than I thought.

At the bar afterwards that several people said they’d read my blog.  That surprised me, I thought only my mother and Adam Gertsacov read my blog.

Anyway.

CC Classmate Kevin Carr  Loved his hobo clown!

Nina Levine, didn’t know her before, happy to know her now.

Jef–being Jef

Hillary giving birth again…

So happy to see Coney Island Chris and his home grown stage crew (I wonder how much I would have to pay My Kid to sit through my gigs.. she ran so fast out of the rehearsal studio that last time…)

I hope I haven’t forgotten someone.

Oh

and

there is a role for me to play…

…besides psycho mom

I was kind of mortified  when I realized as I was chatting with another clown mommy, in the bar after the show,  all I could talk about was the middle school search…

This evening I picked up My Kid from her afterschool First Lego League Robotics program and called a car service to take us to the Planet Green,  Dean of Invention launch party for the new TV show, debuts next Friday at 10 pm as a hip bowling alley in Williamsburg.

There was a cute robot there.  Remote controlled.  I loved him on sight.  He talked to My Kid,  But, she wouldn’t talk back.  She hid behind me.  She wouldn’t shake hands with it.  She wouldn’t ride on it.

She ate slider burgers.

We bowled a few games.

My Kid did speak to Jon Dudas (former Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the U. S. Patent Office, the new president of FIRST) after he had been introduced by Dean Kamen inventor of the Segway, founder of FLL.  They spoke of Lego Robotics. He also has a 10-year-old daughter on a FLL team.

My Kid’s future should be assured.  But, it’s not!

If only I knew now that I could get My Kid into a middle school that would be both inspirational and encouraging to a girl, who at the age of 10, is beginning her 4th year as a member of an official First Lego League team, (solving the problems of the world with laptops and toy plastic bricks) and who thinks that she wants to become either an engineer or a physicist.

If only I knew she would be going into the hands of teachers who would encourage her to dream big, then, I wouldn’t be so stressed that my Pilate’s teacher asked me today if I’ve lost weight?  No.  Yes.  Maybe. I don’t know.   It’s the middle school search–not really a search, more of an exercise in accepting diminished expectations.

We live in a school district where the best middle schools are proud of teaching kids that college is an option at all!

How can I get My Kid into a middle school that will take the fact that this 10-year-old thinks she likes math and science and wants to be either an engineer or physicist and run with it???

Where do I find a school like that?

I am beginning to suspect that the middle school search process is designed to keep out the wrong sort of people.

We are the right sort of people, the sort of parents schools actively recruit;  a married couple, one in the arts, the other an executive (a potential volunteer AND a potential donor).  We have one child, a half White, half Asian Girl Scout who plays soccer and is on her school’s First Lego League Robotics team.  She has a dancer’s physique and takes piano lessons.  She said she might like to become a physicist.

Let me rephrase that.  My Kid is “the right sort of people”.  Myself–not so much.

Her life may be about to be ruined by her mother who has two university degrees that are apparently obsolete because she is stymied by some of the online registration forms required not to apply–but just to take a tour of a public middle school.

For example;  The night after the elementary school guidance counselor made her presentation on “Middle School Choice” to the 5th grade parents assembled after upper grade (by which we mean 3rd, 4th and 5th grade at our school also known as 7, 8, 9 and 10 year olds) curriculum night, I went on-line, in the middle of the night, which is when I do most of my on-line research.  I found the website for a middle school I’d heard other parents talk about.  I followed the links to sign up for a tour. Half of the tour dates were already full.  The rest linked to a page that said “It looks like the form M___ tour is turned off.

So, I assumed that meant that the administrators of that school had decided they had enough applicants after the October tour dates filled up and decided to cancel the November tour dates.  Remember this was the day after the school guidance counselor held her first public meeting of the school year.  Right before the meeting, I was told by one of the Alpha Parents that I had just missed the only tour for the most selective middle school in Brooklyn;

“That tour was yesterday.  You missed it.  I’m pretty sure it was the only one.”

I was primed to believe that a well known selective public middle school had already closed its doors to potential 2011 entering 6th graders by September 30, 2010.

It was only after I talked to another parent later that I tried again.

When I tried again, I saw the small print telling me that the school tour online registration forms were only available between the hours of 9 am and 3 pm Monday through Friday.

Who are these people who fill out online forms about their kids activities during the day?  Isn’t everyone at work?  Doesn’t everyone do that sort of thing in the middle of night after all the children are asleep?  I don’t think we’ve ever gone on the AYSO website while wearing anything but pajamas.

What do the other people do, the ones who have to go to the library for access to a computer?  What about people who don’t work in the kinds of offices where they have enough autonomy that they can google random school webpages while at their desks.  What if the parents aren’t white collar middle management?  How do they get their kids into selective schools that only consider kids who’ve visited the schools and the visits must be reserved online and hurry they fill up quickly.   What about the children of construction workers and people who work in retail?  What about people who have other children with physical needs or urgent problems that are more compelling in the moment to a caregiver than who will go to which school a year from now?  What about their gifted children?  How will these schools even know these children exist?  They won’t.

There are parents who believe that their children are special and gifted.  Some of these parents also believe that all parents believe their children are special and gifted.  They believe that if their child is really so special and gifted compared to the other children then the school with tell them and then transfer them into a class for gifted children.  Unfortunately, in New York City the gifted classes are completely full of gifted children before the first day of kindergarten so the only children who end up in the gifted programs are the children who were gifted with the kind of parents who navigate the maze to get them there.  The gifted children without parents to advocate for them don’t have a chance.

Oh and when I did fill out the form it was tricky like a standardized test.

They asked for the name of the child’s elementary school and then the next blank was for “middle school zip code” like the test makers were setting it up a trick question.  If you weren’t a careful reader you might put in the zip code of the elementary school. That’s the wrong answer. Buzzzz. You just failed our hidden IQ test!

Even now, having, according to the computer, successfully registered to take the tour I wonder… Did they really mean for me to go back to the home page and copy down the zip code of the street address of the middle school on whose website I was in the process of asking to visit their school or were they looking for a different answer?  I’ll never know.