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.