Clownmommy

Red and white peppermint-striped fingernails.

Mistletoe.

Elf hat.

Green eye-shadow.

Red lipstick.

Frown.

I came home really excited tonight.  Two reasons.  One; the character I am doing at the New York Downtown Clown revue is coming along and has potential, if only for that one particular venue–which is all I ever envisioned for that particular character…

Also,

In the bar after, a long and involved conversation with someone who has recently discovered clown.  And, somehow, I felt like an elder statesman imparting the knowledge from my years of experience…

Hmmmm….

I wonder what that could mean.

Am I smart or am I just old???

I read CORNER OFFICE: CATHLEEN BLACK by Adam Bryant in the New York Times this morning.

“I am direct and I’m decisive.  I think being decisive for an executive is important.  It doesn’t mean that if it’s not my idea, then it’s a bad idea.  But I believe that most people want clarity from their boss or their manager, and they want decisiveness.

“So we don’t need to debate something endlessly.  Maybe we can talk about it more than once, maybe more than twice, if it’s something really important.   But, let’s make a decision and move on.”

I have noticed a certain controlling tone in the words chosen by Cathie Black.  Maybe that’s her reality.  It’s not mine.

Here in Brooklyn, children are assigned to middle schools in much the same way that medical students are matched with hospitals around the country for their residencies.  The students rank their choices.  The schools rank the students.  When there is a match the student goes to the middle school he or she was hoping for.  When there isn’t a match, or when 5000 students put down a particular school as their first choice and that school only has room for 100 incoming 6th graders.  Well then, 4900 families are disappointed.

To win a seat in a charter school is a child takes a number and plays the lottery.

A game of chance.

Ten-year-old 5th graders do not learn about diligence, goal setting, hard work and fair play.  They learn about odds and chance, winning and loosing.   They learn about playing a numbers game and they are gambling with their educational lives. Playing craps.

Crap.

This was the day, December 17, the day that the NYCDOE Middle School applications were due.

There was a 5th grade performance that I just found out about yesterday so I didn’t get an e-mail out about it until 10:30 last night.  Too late for parents who work regular jobs.  Bad class parent.

The parent coordinator said he’d send out an e-mail about it but he didn’t.

The kids did dramatic words and movement to go along with the monsters they painted under the direction of the Guggenheim artist-in-the-schools, Miss Jenny.

It was fun.

I feel guilty.

As class parent it was my job to get the word out.

Aghhhh!

TODAY WAS THE DUE DATE FOR THE MIDDLE SCHOOL APPLICATIONS.

One of the dads at the performance said his wife had been going crazy;

“It’s good now that that’s done and we’ll get a break.” He said innocently.

Ha!

Not likely, the interviews and auditions and testing part of the selection process begins in January and may go into March.

The not knowing to which public middle school the NYCDOE computer will assign our child will hang over our heads like the Sword of Damocles until May (!!!!!!!) when the NYCDOE Decision Letters will be distributed to families informing the children and their parents to which public middle school they have been assigned.

Meanwhile the work does not end.

There are charter school lotteries to enter.

There are private schools to apply to and/or write deposit checks for.

Cultural Catholics will dig through back closets looking for the Baptismal certificates which they possess due to a gesture of goodwill towards the parents or in-laws after the baby was born.  Now it’s capitol.  It has value because it proves their kids are eligible to take to attend parochial school– which is yet another option if the public school thing doesn’t work out.

There are out-of-district public schools targeted for letter writing and personal “please-oh-please-let-my-kid-into-your-school-please” campaigns.

Even in the school office, after the morning 5th grade performance, a cluster of parents were gathered around the counter with their applications anxiously making last minute changes.

What school did you put as your first choice?

Over the weekend I learned of a friend who found out her father had cancer and her sister has cancer within a 24-hour period which kind of puts all this stress about the middle school search to shame.

And yet there it still is.

My friend still has to turn in the triplicate computer application to the elementary school guidance counselor ranking the schools in order of preference by Friday December 17 just like I do.

But, she doesn’t even have the life she was living just last week.  Her family situation may change so dramatically over the next few months that the middle school choice process that was making her go grey in October may be completely irrelevant by March.

One would think that if a person moved in the spring or summer of their child’s 5th grade year they would be set up to attend middle school in September.  Not so in New York City.

Maybe we should move.

Over the weekend, we also saw friends who left Brooklyn for the suburban life in New Jersey.  Their daughter will transition easily next September when she advances, along with most of her friends from elementary school, to the local middle school.  They have only 3 schools to choose from.  The one big school with lots of extras like band, drama, science and art, that most of the local kids want to go to and will go to and then there are just two smaller specialized schools.  That’s it they’re done.  Their daughter will continue on to middle school with most of her classmates from elementary school, joining with the kids from a couple of other elementary schools to make up the population of the local middle school.

I heard that of last years graduating 5th graders at my daughter’s elementary school,  14 was largest number of kids who went on together to the same middle school.  A group of about nine was the second largest group.  Other’s transfered to new schools along with only 2 or 3 familiar faces.  Some bravely walked into an unfamiliar building last September as the sole representative from PS 8.  That’s a lot to ask of a 6th grader whose family didn’t move over the summer.

I am reminded of that popular Judy Blume book from my adolescence; Are You There, God?  It’s me Margaret.  As a tween, I read that book primarily for the information about puberty.  As a parent, I am aware of a thru line which completely escaped my notice when I first read that book.  Now I know why Margaret’s parents left their Manhattan apartment and moved to a house in the suburbs during the summer before Margaret entered 6th grade. Growing up in Montana where everyone graduated from 8th grade and went en masse to the same high school it never even entered my mind that the parent’s decision to move might have everything to do with the New York City Department of Education.

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.