Chalkbeat

As NYC eyes more mergers, one Upper West Side middle school navigates a newly combined community

2024-02-15T18:18:45+00:00

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Walking through the halls of Lafayette Academy, an Upper West Side middle school, Principal Brian Zager greeted each student by name.

The building on West 93rd Street was especially quiet that November morning, with seventh graders out on a field trip to Central Park.

In classrooms, eighth graders worked on finishing their high school applications. On the third floor — a space shared with the Manhattan School for Children — students in the dual language program practiced their French.

Lafayette Academy, where Zager has served as principal for the past decade, has prided itself on its small school community, allowing students and staff to develop close bonds. This year, the school saw its student body grow by roughly a quarter to about 200 students as Lafayette merged with West Side Collaborative, a small progressive middle school serving higher shares of students of color and students from low-income backgrounds. The move spurred ample protest from both school communities last year, even as officials said it could shield them from the negative effects of shrinking enrollment.

But in the halls of the newly merged school, that tension was no longer palpable. Each class has a mix of students from the two former communities, Zager said.

Lafayette Academy has about 200 students after its merger with West Side Collaborative.

Leadership at the school has remained optimistic about the outcome of the merger, praising the benefits of bringing staff and students from disparate communities together. But some families expressed concerns over whether the city’s Education Department provided adequate funding to support the larger and more diverse student population, while others continue to protest the decision to merge the schools at all. Some West Side Collaborative families remained unhappy that Lafayette kept its building, principal, and name.

Morana Mesic, a parent and former PTA president of West Side Collaborative, transferred her son to another school after the merger was approved — calling it a closure.

“We’re at a point where we wish that we never stepped into West Side Collaborative,” Mesic said. “Because it hurts that much more to be back in the same old public school system.”

Trying to stave off enrollment losses before a merger is needed

As the city continues to grapple with steep enrollment losses suffered during the pandemic, officials have warned more school mergers may loom ahead. At least half a dozen more proposed school mergers will be considered by the city’s Panel for Educational Policy over the next two months, according to its website.

“It’s hard to figure out how people can run a full comprehensive high school with 80 kids as your entire school,” schools Chancellor David Banks told Chalkbeat in November. “And we have schools with those numbers.”

West Side Collaborative had just 75 students last year, less than half of Lafayette’s roster. About 46 of its students moved into Lafayette’s building this year along with eight staffers, making up about a third of the newly merged school’s employees. (Others from West Side Collaborative’s 20-person staff were transferred to other schools or retired, according to the city’s Education Department.)

Despite its dwindling size, West Side Collaborative fostered a passionate community over its years in operation. Amy Stuart Wells, dean of the Bank Street Graduate School of Education, said there was a disconnect between outside perceptions of the school and the quality of education it provided.

Despite the enrollment losses the school was facing, it had strong support for students and a robust project-based, student-centered approach to learning, said Wells, who studied West Side Collaborative as part of a project on diverse public schools. Wells worked with the school to help shift the narrative by developing promotional materials like brochures, but she said it can be challenging to combat outside perceptions.

“In the school choice processes, sometimes schools get labeled as ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ particularly in the parent networks,” she said. “It’s hard to change that narrative and that framing, even if there’s some really, really good work going on within those schools.”

With time, the losses became especially steep. In the five years preceding the merger, West Side Collaborative had seen a 58% decline in enrollment.

Still, community members sought another solution. In the months leading up to the merger, parents and staff at West Side Collaborative fought against the proposal, arguing that its approval would in effect see their institution closed.

The school served overwhelmingly Black and Latino students, with more than 80% of students living in poverty, according to city data. Some community members felt uneasy about merging with Lafayette Academy, a school with a higher share of white students and fewer students from low-income backgrounds.

In some ways, the merger served a goal that has proved elusive in one of the nation’s most segregated school systems. It provided a path toward further integration in District 3, which encompasses both schools. The district is one of a handful in the city that has remained focused on integration. Last year, the school district won a federal grant to help foster diverse schools.

Meanwhile, some parents at Lafayette expressed concerns over the lack of concrete details on how staffing and other decisions would shake out.

Despite the pushback from families at the time, Superintendent Kamar Samuels said he viewed the schools as a good fit to merge because they shared “a student-centered approach” to instruction.

“Both schools had staff that cared deeply about the progress of all students, but in particular, the most marginalized students in the school,” he said.

Finding a balance when schools join together

The Upper West Side merger isn’t the first time two demographically distinct schools were joined together. In 2020, for example, the city approved a proposal to move the Academy of Arts & Letters, a disproportionately white school in Fort Greene, into P.S. 305, a majority-Black school in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Pilar Ramos, principal of the merged school, said it took time for the two communities to come together as one, particularly as the onset of the pandemic turned classes virtual. To avoid privileging one school over the other, the communities worked together to come up with a new name, referring to themselves as “Arts & Letters 305 United,” Ramos said.

“When people feel like they’re going to be included — that we’re together for something that’s going to be greater than what it was on its own, I think that’s an important part of a merger,” she said. “We’re not going to be just one school or the other, or just as good as one school or the other. We’re going to be better than both of them.”

At Lafayette, Zager said his work began even before the merger was approved. He met with parents and students from West Side Collaborative before the vote and in the months leading up to the school year, trying to alleviate any concerns or anxieties they might have about the move.

Families from both schools were afraid of losing their school identities, he said. But months into the school year, Zager noted the students haven’t had trouble acclimating. A few former West Side Collaborative students were even elected to student council, he said.

“When it comes down to the kids, there’s this innocence that just finds its own way to fly,” he said.

Although it was controversial, the merger also created more integration in District 3 by bringing together the two school communities.

To Shawn West, a dean at Lafayette, the small school environment has allowed the merged community to develop bonds quickly.

“We feel like we’ve known these kids for two years,” he said.

Staff came together ahead of the school year to build team cohesion, swapping best practices and working to align their approach for the coming year, Zager said. He’s hoping to incorporate further elements from West Side Collaborative into the school, pointing to student-led conferences as one example.

“It’s been a great experience,” Zager said. “When it comes to it, I now have more children, and I have more staff, all of which I love. I think they are great additions to the community.”

But some parents at the school raised concerns over whether the city’s Education Department had allocated enough resources to properly support the newly merged community, and alleged communications at the time of the merger had been misleading.

Last spring, district officials indicated the merged school might be eligible to receive federal dollars to support low-income students, depending on its combined enrollment. But this year, when parents learned the school didn’t qualify — and that the federal funds were allocated based on enrollment numbers as of October in the prior school year — they questioned why district officials hadn’t made it clear from the outset. Parents also argued those figures didn’t account for newly arrived migrant students that both schools had taken in during the year. (During the last school year, West Side Collaborative qualified for the federal funds, but Lafayette didn’t.)

One parent at the school, who requested anonymity, praised the principal and his staff for “working hard with everyone to make both student bodies feel as one,” but worried the school might not have sufficient funding to support its increased enrollment, particularly as the city’s Education Department faces significant budget cuts.

“The challenges come with the fact that there are now larger classes, and more students at more diverse levels from both communities,” the parent said. “What I’m concerned about is that the DOE has taken the approach that once the merger is approved, they can move onto the next agenda item.”

Mesic, the former West Side Collaborative parent, transferred her son to West End Secondary School, though she said it has paled in comparison to the community they lost. She also helped other families navigate the transfer process, as unhappy parents sought to leave the merged community ahead of the school year.

In total, about 17 students from the former West Side Collaborative did not enroll in the merged school this year — or about a quarter of the incoming seventh and eighth grade classes.

Despite the challenges in the months that led up to the merger, Samuels believes it has been successful so far. He noted his office is in the same building as Lafayette, meaning he can watch students and staff interact each day.

“In a perfect world, we’d have had more time to engage,” Samuels said. “But the process and the outcome that we have had has really been a model for other people possibly to look at.”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Public school enrollment in Colorado: Here’s what you need to know

2024-02-02T20:42:30+00:00

Leer en español.

As migrants continue to arrive in Colorado, many schools are seeing a record number of students enrolling in the middle of the year.

School enrollment liaisons are trying to reach families to offer help enrolling students, but as the number of migrants and shelters grow, their ability to connect quickly with everyone is slowing down.

In the meantime, you or someone you know might have questions about the process of enrolling a child in a Colorado public school. Here’s what you need to know.

Where do I start to enroll my child in school?

The first thing to know is that public schools have an obligation to enroll and educate students regardless of their immigration status, income, or housing situation. Public schools are free in Colorado for children ages 5 through 18 and in some cases, through age 21.

The first step is to identify which school district you are in and which schools are nearest to you. If you know what district you’re in, you can often use that school district’s website to find the schools closest to you and to learn about their programs.

If you aren’t sure where to start, walking into your nearest school is an option. Many schools have bilingual staff in their offices, and if they don’t, you can ask for an interpreter. You can ask for the name of the district you’re in, and tell them you need help enrolling.

“Language should never be an intimidation point,” said Frida Rodriguez, a student and family advocate in Adams 12, a district north of Denver largely covering Thornton.

Many school districts, including Denver and Aurora, will ask parents to make an account online and fill out forms through their website. The websites are available in Spanish, and the districts can provide assistance if you need help walking through how to fill the forms out. After you submit the forms, it may take a few days to hear back on next steps.

When should I enroll my child?

Educators suggest you enroll your children in school as soon as possible.

If the semester is about to end, there’s a possibility your child will need to wait to start attending until the following semester, but you won’t be turned away from enrolling, and you may be able to connect to other resources through the schools in the meantime.

To enroll in kindergarten, children must be at least 5 years old by a certain date. Different districts have different dates, but it’s usually near Oct. 1 of the school year in which they’re enrolling. Some children wait to start kindergarten until age 6.

Colorado has also started free preschool for four-year-olds, but enrolling in preschool requires a different process. Some public schools offer preschool, but not all do.

What documents will I need to submit?

There are requirements for enrolling in schools, but district enrollment leaders say it’s important for parents to know that they will work with you if you don’t think you have all of the necessary paperwork.

“We are committed to finding ways to make it work,” said Laurie Premer, director of enrollment services in Denver.

Schools may ask for a birth certificate or other official document like a passport that shows a child’s date of birth. They may ask you for a document that shows your address and where you are living. If you are staying with friends or family, a letter from the homeowner stating that you and your children are living with them can work.

Colorado law also has some vaccine requirements for children to enroll in school, so you may be asked to provide proof of those vaccines. If you don’t have proof, or have decided you do not want to vaccinate your child, you may need to fill out opt-out forms or get your child re-vaccinated. Schools often have clinics and can point you to where to get any missing vaccines for free or at low cost.

If you are living in a shelter at the time you enroll, districts have different policies and will be able to enroll your children with fewer required documents.

How long will it take to enroll in public school?

Typically, enrollment can take just a couple of days. But in districts like Denver where the number of new students each week is growing, enrollment leaders say families should be prepared to wait longer. Currently, it may take a week to hear back from the district before you’ll be able to complete enrollment and registration.

Sary Portillo, manager of multilingual family engagement in Denver schools, is one of the specialists who visit migrant shelters to help families enroll children in schools. She goes out once a week, but now that there are more shelters, her team is only able to visit each shelter every two weeks.

Once you’ve filled out the enrollment forms, district administrators will let you know if there is space at the school you requested or will work with you to place your children at a school with space. If your child needs Spanish language support, they will try to enroll your child in a school that meets that need.

What is school choice?

Because of a Colorado law, you can choose schools outside of your neighborhood or district. Schools will usually give priority to the kids who live nearby, but if they have space, they will accept families from elsewhere who want to attend that school.

While this allows families to find a school with the programming that is the best fit for their children, you should know that using school choice could make your children ineligible to ride the school bus, so you would need to take them to school or arrange transportation. Some rules for transportation are different for students living in shelters.

In some parts of Denver, school choice is always part of the process, because no school has a neighborhood boundary. That means students are not automatically assigned to schools based on their address. In the far northeast, for example, all families must choose one of the many area schools.

Will public schools help my child learn English?

There are federal requirements for how schools must support students and families who don’t speak English. While not all schools are prepared to do this well, the federal government requires that schools help students learn English and that students will be able to access their learning. There are different variations of what this might look like. In Denver, some schools are set up specifically to provide this type of support and have staff that teach in both Spanish and English.

You can always ask how the school you want to enroll in will support your child.

What is a newcomer center?

Many districts have schools that are designated as newcomer centers. Denver and some other districts have added new centers to accommodate the growing number of immigrant and refugee students. These schools provide more support to newcomers — students who have been in the country less than a year or two. In Denver, some students admitted to newcomer centers have also had interrupted schooling and have limited literacy skills in their primary language.

The newcomer center schools may have more staff that are bilingual, more accelerated support for high school students who need to get caught up to meet Colorado graduation requirements, and have social workers who understand other needs newcomer families might be facing. Students may also feel more comfortable attending school with other students who are also new to the country.

You can ask your district if enrolling in a newcomer center is an option for your children.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

MSCS’ building strategy in the works: See which schools may be affected

2024-01-29T12:00:00+00:00

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Nearly 50 Memphis-Shelby County public schools would receive new investments for their physical buildings or their academic programming under an ambitious plan that district leaders are developing in an effort to improve learning experiences for children.

Another 21 school buildings could close under the plan, district documents show, meaning their students would have to go to school elsewhere.

In all, nearly half of the district’s buildings, and their communities, could be affected if the district follows through on the plan.

The facility plan is described in general terms in draft documents and maps compiled by Memphis-Shelby County Schools that Chalkbeat obtained through open-records requests. Chalkbeat used further research to identify the specific schools targeted for new investments or closure. (To learn more about how Chalkbeat reported this, see below.)

The broad plan has been shown to select community members convening for early rounds of input, along with maps showing the school locations, but the documents haven’t been shared in any public forum. Chalkbeat’s analysis of the documents provides the general public with the first look at which schools the district is considering for possible closure or consolidation, all identified by name.

The plan is still in the draft stage as district leaders collect feedback from some community partners. But as described in the documents, it represents an effort by district leaders to formulate a comprehensive strategy to tackle a complex set of problems: academic struggles that undermine faith in public schools, persistent funding shortages for capital projects, enrollment shifts, and the high cost of maintenance for aging buildings.

“I think it’s appropriate to have an investment discussion before you have a closure discussion,” interim Superintendent Toni Williams recently told a group gathered at Colonial Middle School to discuss the draft plan.

In touting their approach over the past year, school district leaders have said they want their infrastructure vision to stand out from previous ones in key ways: They want the community to feel involved in the decisions. They want to play a more active role in facilitating redevelopments when schools close, so that neighborhoods aren’t left with empty buildings.

And they want the plan to stick.

Community partners are helping to shape the facilities plan

In presentations in the fall and winter, officials have suggested that a first round of building changes would take place over the next five years, with more to come. Board policy describes a set of community meetings and reports that must take place by the end of February for any school to be closed by the following fall.

The district has been active in engaging community partners, and has convened one steering committee and nine neighborhood-based subcommittees to solicit input on the general draft plans. Many of the roughly 100 people across those committees — comprising school board members, other elected and government officials, plus business leaders, community leaders, parents, and students — have already received the district’s early proposals, which include the maps that show where major changes would take place.

The maps produced by the district use color-coded dots to show the locations of schools targeted for investment or possible closure, but the district documents don’t identify the schools by name. Using other public records, Chalkbeat was able to connect the dots with the school names to give Memphians a clearer picture of the proposals the school district is making.

Chalkbeat’s review did not include preschool locations or administrative buildings, which are also set for changes.

Chalkbeat gave the district an opportunity to review the matched data that it compiled based on the district’s documents, to check its accuracy, correct any discrepancies, and provide updates. District officials did not dispute the specific information we shared.

The district responded with a copy of a statement from Williams that was published to social media on Jan. 24 and distributed to district employees. The statement broadly dismissed any reporting about plans for Memphis school buildings.

“Any potential changes to our educational landscape will only be brought forth after thorough evaluation, community engagement, and formal board approval,” the statement said.

Several MSCS board members contacted by Chalkbeat said that figuring out how to deal with the district’s building issues is a critical step, but stressed that the plan is still being worked out with the community.

“We need probably fewer schools so we can offer more things to the schools that we have,” board member Mauricio Calvo said. He said he recalled a school visit where students without desks were seated on filing cabinets, and their librarian was wearing multiple scarves to stay warm.

He said that difficult conversations about how the district uses its resources can lead to better learning experiences but that any board decisions about closures are still months away.

Board member Michelle McKissack said, “It’s going to take an entire community” to figure out how to deal with the legacy of decades of deferred maintenance and declining conditions in school buildings. “So that’s where we are right now.”

In an email to Chalkbeat, board member Amber Huett-Garcia said she was concerned that publishing the names of schools that may close could be “destabilizing” to communities amid district efforts to “build a culture of trust, safety, and achievement.”

“Nothing is decided right now,” she wrote, “and words such as draft or pending community input can be lost.”

Board Chair Althea Greene, pointing to the community meetings that are underway, said in a statement: “Our goal is to continue to be transparent throughout this process.”

How the Memphis district is analyzing schools

To sort out which schools would be affected and how, the draft proposal looks at a combination of criteria describing a school’s academic performance, enrollment, capacity, and facility needs. The district has said it analyzed those factors alongside how the school fits into district feeder patterns — the set of schools that students in a particular community are assigned to — and other neighborhood zoning and development trends.

Selected slides from a Memphis Shelby County Schools presentation on infrastructure planning discussions. The presentation explains the criteria and process district officials will use to make decisions about buildings.

Some 80 district schools would not see changes, and the district’s draft plan does not directly affect buildings or academic programs at most charter schools, which are managed by their own operators.

Many of the schools that stand to receive investments under the draft plan are ones that could get new students from other schools targeted for closure or consolidation. That means that the plan envisions reassigning some students to different schools based on where they live.

Some of the proposed closures and consolidations shown on the district’s map are expected, including six school buildings the district has said it expects to replace or sell. Another four are former MSCS schools that are currently operating as charters as part of the state-run Achievement School District. Some of these schools could remain open if they successfully apply to continue as charter schools after their 10-year terms in the ASD expire.

Delano Head Start, a preschool building, and Raineswood Residential Center, which has most recently been a service hub for students with disabilities, could also be closed.

The district has two new high schools in progress, in Cordova and in Frayser. The draft plans suggest a new Treadwell K-8 school, as well as a new Orange Mound elementary school, similar to the proposals for new school buildings made by former Superintendent Joris Ray’s administration in 2021.

Story continues after the table.

Success of new facilities plan depends on sustained support, funding

Williams has talked about a comprehensive facilities plan for a year now, and has just months to go in her term as interim superintendent. For her vision to materialize, the facilities plan her team is working on will have to survive the transition to a new superintendent, who is expected to take over this summer. (Williams’ contract allows her to stay on as finance chief or a consultant for one year after her superintendent term ends.)

It would also have to transcend any changes in the composition of the school board after this August’s election, when five of nine board seats will be on the ballot.

In her recent visit to Colonial Middle School, Williams met with a subcommittee of people representing school board District 9′s Orange Mound and Parkway Village neighborhoods. The interim superintendent criticized past facility plans that looked only at numbers.

Those plans erred in not incorporating the community, she said, and inflamed tensions between the district and neighborhoods — and, in some cases, among neighbors themselves.

Williams acknowledged that the district has left neighborhoods with vacant school properties, and that when closures happened, officials neglected to invest in schools that would be gaining additional students.

Shelby County leaders have also been talking about a comprehensive facilities strategy for a long time, and even considered setting up a separate agency to oversee school building construction projects across the county.

Williams thinks her vision will help rewrite the current dynamic where the district continually appeals to county commissioners for “piecemeal” funding for specific projects, or makes large capital budget requests that commissioners have been reluctant to grant.

A comprehensive plan that pitches investments in schools alongside redevelopment of old school buildings, she has said, could even bring access to new, nontraditional funding streams.

To that end, the district has been working on the plan with More for Memphis, a $100 million community development initiative spearheaded by the education-focused nonprofit Seeding Success.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Fewer students are enrolled in Colorado schools again this year

2024-01-17T17:00:00+00:00

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The number of students in Colorado schools continues to drop and is now lower than it was after the large decrease in enrollment at the start of the pandemic.

In October 2023, 881,464 students were enrolled in public schools, down 1,800, or 0.2%, from October 2022, according to official enrollment counts released by the Colorado Department of Education Wednesday.

Before the pandemic, enrollment numbers in Colorado had been increasing every year since the 1980s. But in fall of 2020, after months of mostly remote learning, enrollment sank by about 30,000 students from the previous year. In fall of 2021, enrollment went up slightly, but has been falling again since.

State Demographer Elizabeth Garner told the State Board of Education last week that the decline in enrollment is due partly to decreasing birth rates, but also to a slowdown in migration and mobility.

“We are forecasting that total school-age population to decline basically through 2028-2029, then start to increase, but not get back to levels that we saw in 2019 until about 2035,” Garner said.

She said the trend is statewide.

“Forty-three of the 64 counties had an absolute decline in the under-18 population over the last decade,” Garner said. “It doesn’t matter where you were — Eastern Plains, San Luis Valley, West Slope, Denver metro.”

In a statement, Colorado Education Commissioner Susana Córdova noted concern about the drop in enrollment among the youngest students.

“We know that pre-kindergarten and kindergarten are where students build critical foundations for life-long academic success including language development, early literacy, and social skills,” she said.

Still, she said, “we are encouraged by the state’s commitment to early learning through the Colorado Universal Preschool Program.”

The universal preschool program provides free preschool to all Colorado 4-year-olds and some 3-year-olds. This year, about 50,000 students are enrolled in various types of public and private preschools across the state. Public school districts’ pre-K programs have 32,060 students, slightly fewer than a year earlier.

First grade and kindergarten saw some of the largest decreases in enrollment this year. First grade enrollment declined by 3.91%, or 2,478 students, compared with the first grader group of 2022. Kindergarten had 1,068 fewer students, a 1.79% drop. Eighth grade and ninth grade also had large enrollment declines.

Only five grade levels saw an increase in students compared with last year. The largest increase was among second graders, up by 5%, or more than 3,000 students.

Other segments that grew included those who are home-schooled, and those who are enrolled in online programs.

Enrollment in charter schools decreased by 1.8% to 135,223.

The number of students identified as experiencing homelessness statewide went up by 1,570 compared with last year.

Last school year only one district in Colorado, Adams 12, had more than 1,000 students identified as needing services related to homelessness. This year, there were four such districts — Aurora, Adams 12, Jeffco, and Poudre.

By percentage, the tiny district of Sheridan continues to have the highest proportion of its students experiencing homelessness in the metro area, but the number has dropped over the years. This school year, 149 Sheridan students, or 14.1%, are experiencing homelessness, down from 205, or 18.2%, last year.

Broken down by race, white students had the largest decreases in enrollment, while Hispanic or Latino students had the largest increases. Schools counted 312,687 Hispanic or Latino students in October 2023, up from 308,739 the year before.

By percentage, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander students had the largest enrollment jump: 9.18% more than last year. These students make up a tiny proportion of all Colorado students.

Among the state’s largest districts, just a handful recorded more students than last year. They include Aurora Public Schools, which had a slight increase, and Denver Public Schools, which gained 371 students. Denver has attributed the increase to an influx of migrant students, many from Venezuela.

Among the metro-area districts, School District 27J in Brighton had the largest growth in enrollment. It gained more students than Denver, Aurora, or any of the large districts. Meanwhile, Sheridan, Westminster, and Adams 14 had the largest decreases in the metro area.

The state’s data reflect official student counts in October, and those are the counts typically used to determine funding levels.

But the state’s release acknowledged that several districts have seen a large number of students who are new to the country arriving throughout the school year.

“CDE is committed to working with districts and school teams to ensure they are supported in serving these multilingual learners,” the department’s statement notes.

Look up enrollment changes at your district in the table below:

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Three things to know about the Chicago Board of Education’s resolution on school choice

2024-01-03T12:00:00+00:00

Chicago’s Board of Education made waves last month when officials revealed a vision to move away from its school choice system and boost neighborhood schools.

The declaration, included in a resolution the board passed in December, lays out priorities for the district’s five-year strategic plan, which will be finalized this summer. Any resulting changes will depend on feedback from the community, board members said.

But the board’s new vision immediately sparked misinformation. Here are three things to know about the board’s resolution.

Will schools close?

No. Not yet, at least.

The resolution does not say anything about closing schools. State law put a moratorium on school closures in Chicago until Jan. 15, 2025, the same day a new 21-member, partially-elected school is set to be sworn in. The current seven-member school board, appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson, would not be able to close schools of any type – charters, magnets, or neighborhood schools – until that time.

School board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland did indicate the board is scrutinizing charter school performance through the usual renewal process and questioned whether poor-performing operators should “continue to exist.”

But even a recent board decision to revoke a charter agreement with Urban Prep did not ultimately mean those schools closed. First, the district proposed operating the two campuses as district-run schools. But after a court order, the board extended Urban Prep’s charter until June 2024.

Will I have to go to my neighborhood school?

No. The resolution does not say anything about requiring families to attend their neighborhood schools.

The closest it comes to addressing enrollment policies is a bullet point about a “reimagined vision” that includes a “transition away from privatization and admissions/enrollment policies and approaches that further stratification and inequity in CPS and drive student enrollment away from neighborhood schools.”

Any school-aged child living in Chicago is guaranteed a spot at their zoned neighborhood school. Additionally, board policy amended as recently as last summer, allows families to apply to a myriad of selective, magnet, charter, or other speciality programs that admit students from across the city. Some schools require a test for admission, while others are a straight lottery.

These policies have not changed, but could after community feedback sessions.

“There likely will be policies that need to be revised and changed,” Todd-Breland said. “The admissions and enrollment policy is on the table.”

Data shows half of elementary school students attend their zoned neighborhood school and only a quarter of high school students do. These numbers shifted over the course of the past 20 years, when roughly 75% of elementary school students went to their local school and half of high schoolers did.

What do parents and students think?

It varies greatly.

Chalkbeat Chicago asked readers for their thoughts on school choice and got nearly 80 responses from families across the city about how they’ve navigated the system. Five families shared more about how — and why — they chose their schools.

The wide range of responses could be a bellwether for the kind of debate or disagreement that could emerge during community feedback sessions.

The Board of Education was awarded a $500,000 federal grant to create socioeconomically diverse schools. The district said it plans to use the money to engage the community on how to draw more families into neighborhood schools. Their application included a goal to reduce the percentage of families attending a school outside of their regions by at least 3%. The district did not answer questions to clarify their definition of region or why 3% was their goal.

The district is already collecting feedback on the next five-year strategic plan through an online survey and community meetings for the next Educational Facilities Master Plan. Officials have said they will host in-person and online meetings in February to gather feedback on the strategic plan.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Tres escuelas de Denver cerrarán al final del año escolar

2023-03-20T20:54:10+00:00

Debido a la reducción en las inscripciones, las Escuelas Públicas de Denver cerrarán al final de este año escolar dos escuelas primarias, la Fairview Elementary y la Math and Science Leadership Academy, y una escuela intermedia, la Denver Discovery School.

La junta escolar tomó la decisión en una reunión celebrada el 9 de marzo. Algunos miembros de la junta se sintieron tristes durante la votación. El Vicepresidente de la Junta, Auon’tai Anderson, dijo que estaba votando “con el corazón encogido”. El miembro de la Junta Scott Esserman calificó el cierre de la Denver Discovery School ”un fracaso institucional”.

Varios miembros de la junta lloraron después de la primera de las tres votaciones. El fiscal del distrito repartió pañuelos desechables para secarse los ojos. La Presidenta Xóchitl “Sochi” Gaytán pidió un receso.

Carrie Olson, miembro de la Junta, dijo que le costó preparar los comentarios para la reunión del jueves “porque es muy difícil hablar del cierre de una escuela.”

“Son decisiones realmente difíciles y ninguno de nosotros las toma a la ligera”, dijo Olson.

La votación se celebró un día después de que la recomendación formal del Superintendente Alex Marrero se hiciera pública en una presentación de diapositivas publicada en línea. La junta se estaba reuniendo para tener un retiro de todo el día. Aunque los retiros están abiertos al público, normalmente la junta no vota en estas reuniones.

Marrero dijo que el personal de la escuela le urgió que le presentara la recomendación a la junta antes de la reunión de votación regular programada para el 23 de marzo.

A los estudiantes de Fairview se les garantiza inscripción y transporte a la Cheltenham Elementary, a menos de 1.5 millas de distancia. Al personal de Fairview se le garantiza un empleo en Cheltenham. Las dos escuelas ya comparten un director ejecutivo que supervisa ambas, dijo Marrero.

La Autoridad de la Vivienda de Denver resistió el cierre de Fairview, argumentando que las viviendas económicas que pronto estarán disponibles en la comunidad de Sun Valley podrían representar cientos de estudiantes más. Pero Liz Méndez, directora ejecutiva de inscripción y planificación de campus de DPS, dijo que las proyecciones del distrito son más bajas.

Todos los votos de la junta fueron unánimes, excepto el voto para cerrar a Fairview. Anderson votó en contra. Marrero dijo que el distrito podría reabrir y “reimaginar” a Fairview si aumenta la cantidad de niños en edad de primaria en esa comunidad.

En el momento de la votación solamente había entre el público un padre de los estudiantes de las escuelas que se van a cerrar. Najah Sabu Serryeh, cuya hija menor cursa el primer grado en Fairview, se enjugaba las lágrimas.

“Es tan injusto”, dijo ella después. “Fairview no es solamente una escuela para nosotros. Es como una comunidad”

Dominic Díaz, padre de Fairview, vio la reunión virtualmente.

“Voy a recoger a mi hija dentro de una hora y 20 minutos, y estoy pensando cómo voy a compartir esta noticia con ella, o incluso si quiero hacerlo”, dijo Díaz, cuya hija está en preescolar.

La presidente del Consejo Municipal de la Ciudad de Denver, Jamie Torres, también criticó la decisión en una carta que le envió a la junta y compartió en Twitter. Ella dijo que el distrito había tomado esta decisión cuando la escuela estaba en “su estado más grave de transición” y que no se había tenido en cuenta a las familias que se mudarán dentro de poco tiempo a esa comunidad.

Los estudiantes de la Math and Science Leadership Academy (MSLA) serán inscritos automáticamente en la Escuela Primaria Valverde, justo al lado, pero Marrero prometió que el distrito se comunicará con cada familia para preguntarle si eso es lo que quieren. Las familias podrían elegir otras escuelas.

Al personal de la MSLA se les garantizará un trabajo en Valverde. Marrero dijo que Valverde está feliz de incorporar parte del currículo de matemáticas y ciencias de la MSLA el próximo año.

Los estudiantes de la Denver Discovery School (DDS), una de las varias escuelas de un área grande que el distrito llama un área de inscripción, no serán inscritos automáticamente en otra escuela intermedia. En vez de eso, el distrito ayudará a las familias de DDS a conseguirles lugar a sus hijos en otra escuela secundaria de su preferencia. El distrito también ayudará al personal del DDS a encontrar otro trabajo.

Las tres escuelas tienen lo que Marrero llama “inscripción críticamente baja”. Las proyecciones del distrito muestran que la DDS tendría solamente 62 estudiantes el próximo año, la MSLA tendría 104 y la Fairview tendría 118.

“El sistema no puede seguir funcionando así”, le dijo Marrero a la junta escolar. “Es una difícil realidad. Tiene que pasar algo”.

El distrito financia sus escuelas asignando una cantidad de dinero por estudiante. Las escuelas con pocos estudiantes tienen dificultades para contratar suficiente personal, lo que a menudo lleva a combinar los salones y reducir las clases electivas como arte y música.

La inscripción en las Escuelas Públicas de Denver está disminuyendo, y las reducciones más drásticas ocurren en los grados de primaria. Las Escuelas Públicas de Denver (DPS) informan que tienen 6,485 menos estudiantes de primaria que en 2014 y proyectan que perderán otros 3,000 estudiantes de kindergarten a 12º grado en los próximos cinco años.

La junta escolar rechazó una recomendación previa de Marrero en noviembre para cerrar la DDS y la SLA. Originalmente él había recomendado cerrar 10 escuelas, incluida la Fairview, pero revisó su recomendación a solamente las dos escuelas después de una fuerte resistencia por parte de la comunidad y la junta escolar.

Los miembros de la junta elogiaron el jueves la forma en que el distrito trató al personal, a las familias y a los miembros de la comunidad en las escuelas Fairview, MSLA y DDS. Dijeron que fue un trato muy diferente al que DPS tuvo con las 10 escuelas cerradas este otoño, que en su opinión fue deficiente.

Melanie Asmar es reportera senior de Chalkbeat Colorado y cubre las Escuelas Públicas de Denver. Para comunicarte con Melanie, escríbele a masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Charter authorizer rejects bid from Indianapolis school with rocky academic, attendance history

2023-12-13T22:02:46+00:00

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The Genius School in Indianapolis has lost its bid for a charter from a second authorizer, after the Education One board at Trine University rejected its application Wednesday, citing concerns with inflated enrollment targets and financial projections.

The 3-0 vote creates uncertainty about the future of the troubled Genius School on the eastside of Indianapolis. The small school, which is co-located with GEO Next Generation High School, has a charter with the mayor’s Office of Education Innovation that expires at the end of this school year.

The Education One board on Wednesday also voted 3-0 to revoke the charter for Thea Bowman Leadership Academy in Gary, citing ongoing struggles with staff turnover, declining enrollment, and academic underperformance. The school is in the second year of a three-year charter extension set to expire in June 2025.

Without a charter, Thea Bowman’s roughly 850 students could be forced to look for new schools in June, when the revocation takes effect. However, the school is seeking approval from Calumet College of St. Joseph, another charter authorizer. In a press release after the vote, Education One’s executive director expressed disappointment that the school has decided to seek approval from another authorizer rather than rectify its deficiencies.

The votes follow a Chalkbeat analysis of Marion County charter schools that found a lack of guardrails in state law to ensure that charter schools and their authorizers are held accountable. State law provides little oversight of schools seeking approval from a new authorizer after facing scrutiny from their existing one.

The Genius School renamed itself after Indianapolis Public Schools removed it from the district’s network of autonomous Innovation schools. In its decision to sever ties with the school, which used to be called Ignite Achievement Academy, the district cited high staff turnover, poor academic results, and low attendance.

The school, which was placed on probationary status by the Office of Education Innovation around January 2022, withdrew from the renewal process with the authorizer earlier this year.

The Genius School’s head of school, Shy-Quon Ely II, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Chalkbeat’s analysis also found that roughly one-third of brick-and-mortar or blended-model charter schools in Indianapolis have closed since the passage of the state’s charter school law in 2001.

Education One staff also cited concerns with the school’s ability to implement a multi-faceted model focused on the whole child.

Staff also had concerns with the Genius School’s ability to hit projected enrollment targets. State records show it had an enrollment of 74 students last school year. In its application, the school set a goal of reaching 150 students in 2024-25.

Staff also cited an insufficient timeline for its facility plans, and noted that the proposed budget would put the school in a deficit within its first two years.

Education One Executive Director Lindsay Omlor said that staff shared their feedback with the school.

“I don’t know if they’ll apply to us again in the spring, if they’ll shoot for another authorizer, if they’ll just call it a day,” Omlor said.

Thea Bowman Leadership Academy’s charter revoked

Meanwhile, staff cited ongoing struggles with staff turnover, declining enrollment, and academic underperformance at Thea Bowman Leadership Academy.

This isn’t the first time a charter authorizer has spurned the school. In 2016, Ball State University declined to renew the school’s charter. That same year, the school sought authorization from the Indiana Charter School Board, but that board also declined to sponsor the school. Eventually, Education One authorized the school in 2016.

The school was able to rectify organizational concerns and greatly improve academic performance within its first two years at Trine, Omlor told board members at the meeting. But things have gone downhill since then, she indicated.

She said Education One staff have had “had really strong ongoing concerns related to both academic and organizational performance” over the last three years.

But in a statement, the school argued that the revocation was retaliation for seeking authorization from Calumet College of St. Joseph, which it pursued beginning in March because a “disconnect” had developed between Education One and the school. The school said it notified Education One of intent to change authorizers on Oct. 30.

The concerns cited in Education One’s notice of revocation are present in other urban school districts and said the authorizer has had “little to no in-person contact”, the school argued. “The challenges are real and require real time and real attention.”

Phalen Leadership Academies, which manages the school, referred comment to the school.

This school year alone, staff turnover at Thea Bowman is the highest it’s been for the school at over 50%, Omlor said. Enrollment has also declined from over 1,200 students seven years ago to 850 this year, she said.

The school also underperforms on state tests compared to some similar nearby schools, according to annual performance reviews — most notably at the high school level. It has consistently failed to meet overall academic standards in such annual reviews.

The school has also not set performance goals with Phalen Leadership Academies and has failed to communicate with stakeholders such as Education One, Omlor said at Wednesday’s meeting.

“Today’s difficult decision was made first and foremost with the interests of students, families, and taxpayers in mind,” Omlor said in a statement after the vote. “While we never set out to close a school, it is our obligation to ensure our schools are upholding their duty to provide high quality educational options for kids and communities across the state.”

This article was updated to include a statement from Thea Bowman Leadership Academy.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

How does it feel to apply to high school in Chicago? Four eighth graders share their experiences.

2023-12-11T11:00:00+00:00

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Chloe Athanasiou was rippling with nervous energy. It was Oct. 11 and they — and 28,000 of their eighth grade peers — were about to take Chicago Public Schools’ High School Admissions Test, or HSAT.

“Everybody’s so nervous. Either everybody’s really quiet or screaming their heads off,” Chloe said. “I was one of the people who was screaming their heads off to try to feel better. It actually worked, strangely.”

The test would be a crucial factor in determining the next stage in their lives: where they will go to high school.

In Chicago, every eighth grade student is guaranteed a spot at their local neighborhood school, but according to data from previous years, about 70% of high schoolers attend schools outside their neighborhood.

What was once an effort to desegregate Chicago Public Schools has turned into a fiercely competitive process to get a seat at top-performing, well-resourced high schools. Admissions decisions are still based on a “tier system,” which assigns every student’s address in the city a “tier” based on the socioeconomics and educational attainment of people living in the census tract and admits a mix of students living in different tiers.

Applicants spend months attending open houses, researching schools, and ranking them in order of preference. Next, they take the HSAT. When their scores come back a few weeks later, students have a chance to re-rank their school choices — a new twist added this year.

Then, everybody waits — until May, when admissions offers are made.

The whole process, as eighth grader Elias Gray put it, causes “mostly anxiety and fear.”

CPS made some changes to this year’s test meant to help alleviate stress, said Sara McPhee, executive director of the CPS Office of Access & Enrollment. After feedback from families, for example, the HSAT was shortened to one hour instead of two-and-a-half and reduced from four sections to two.

But the anxiety is deep-seated because what’s at stake, these students say, are their futures.

Chalkbeat followed four eighth graders from different parts of the city and different types of schools through this year’s enrollment process – which came with some changes and a test day glitch. Here’s what it’s like to go through Chicago’s high school enrollment process.

High school is one key to unlocking dreams

Many students begin thinking about where to apply to high school well before eighth grade.

That’s partly because students’ grades in seventh grade factor into admission at the city’s selective enrollment schools. The other half of a student’s overall score is based on their HSAT results.

Students try to prepare however they can, including by shelling out for private tutoring – even though CPS warns that it has seen no correlation between test preparation and acceptance rates.

Katherine Athanasiou (left) and Chloe Athanasiou (right). Chloe is in eighth grade in Chicago Public Schools and hopes to one day help to repair some of the flaws in the youth mental health system.

Chloe Athanasiou wants to be a therapist when they grow up. In their own personal experiences with therapists, Chloe has seen many ways that mental health treatment for young people, especially queer youth, needs to be improved.

That is why Chloe hopes to attend a high school that offers an Advanced Placement Psychology course, something available at the city’s top selective enrollment high schools.

In order to make that hope a reality, Chloe began preparing for the admissions process in the spring, but it’s been in the back of their mind for years.

“You start thinking about it in sixth grade a lot, because you’re like, ‘Okay, next year is the year that I have to get all As,’” said Chloe. “And then in seventh grade, you’re like, ‘Okay, [now] I have to get all As. So how am I going to do that? How am I gonna accomplish that with the amount of homework and the different really big projects?’”

To prepare, Chloe did test prep courses, took practice tests, and participated in a Test Anxiety group offered through their school. Despite all of the preparation, said Chloe, the anxiety and stress remained.

“Logically, I know that really all that’s at stake is the next four years of my life. But mentally, it turns into this gigantic thing,” said Chloe. “It turns into a bigger thing than it actually is because of peer pressure and parent [pressure] just evoking a lot of anxiety.”

Nicole Watson (left) and Daniel Watson (right), a CPS eighth grader who is applying to career-focused high school programs. Daniel said he leaned on art techniques to help manage his stress during the enrollment process.

Art helped Daniel Watson ease some of the pressure of going through the admissions process, but his interests in science and technology are driving his and his family’s choices about high school.

His mother, Nicole Watson, began looking into Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs at local high schools as a strategy to counter the high competition of selective enrollment high schools.

“It’s just another way of potentially having my child at a high-performing school,” she said. “I’m looking at all of the options because I think we all know that selective enrollment schools only have so many seats.”

For admission to high school in the 2022-23 school year, 6,239 students ranked Lane Tech, which has about 1,200 seats for incoming freshmen, as their top choice school.

Whitney Young and Jones high schools were the second and third most frequently ranked as student’s top choices, with over 3,400 students ranking them as their first choices.

Nicole Watson wants to give her son more options, but as a social worker she worries about the kids who don’t have “parents or community that’s invested in their education and don’t have access to programming that can make up and fill in those gaps.”

Shayna Gray (left) and Elias Gray (right) outside of Kellogg Elementary in Beverly on Chicago’s South Side. Elias is eyeing high schools with strong STEM programs, but the application process has him thinking even further into the future.

Eighth grader Elias Gray let out a long sigh and shook his head before describing his feelings about the impending HSAT last month.

“This test basically decides the next course of your life in education,” he said.

His mother, Shanya Gray, admitted to feeling just as nervous. A few days before the test, she took the day off from work just to help her son study and try to ease the anxiety for both of them.

“This whole thing is very new to me, because I didn’t grow up in the US. I grew up in the Caribbean,” said Shanya Gray. “So I’m learning as I go along, learning about this process here in the U.S., and there are, even now, some things I wish I knew a year ago.”

She was surprised that there was not more preparation for the test built into the CPS curriculum. She ended up paying for tutoring and a test prep workshop to help her son prepare, but she’s keenly aware of the fact that such preparation isn’t available to everyone.

Elias says he wishes there was more preparation and support from CPS and within the classroom in the form of practice tests and lesson plans specifically targeting the HSAT.

While Elias is hoping to attend a school that can best support his interests in engineering, his goal is simply to attend “an actually good school.”

This whole process, he says, forces students to look forward, even beyond high school, and consider how the choices they make now will have a significant impact on where they go to college and their entire future.

Selah Zayas (left) hopes to follow in her mother Andrea Zayas’ (right) footsteps and attend her alma mater: Lane Tech College Prep.

Selah Zayas looked on as her grandmother evaluated her little brother’s vital signs this summer. He had started having difficulty breathing and Selah’s grandmother is a nurse. Watching her jump into action, she saw how important that kind of knowledge can be, and she wants to help people in the same way some day.

Following in the family’s footsteps is kind of a thing in the Zayas family. All of Selah’s siblings attend the same public charter school where her mother teaches fifth grade, and Selah’s sights for high school are set on Lane Tech, which her mother attended.

After her older brother went through the high school enrollment process last year, Selah went in with eyes wide open. Plus, her school has a High School Placement Manager who prepares students for high school and the enrollment process.

Even so, Selah and her mother had some concerns.

Selah learned some of the foundational math skills tested on the HSAT when schools were fumbling with virtual learning during the pandemic. Studies show that students have had significant and lingering learning loss due to the pandemic, and as a teacher, Selah’s mom, Andrea Zayas, has seen some of these impacts first-hand.

This, she said, is part of what makes the enrollment process inequitable.

“I feel like this system is unfair,” she said. “It’s one test, one day. It’s an hour of their life to determine the high school that will lead to their college.”

In addition, Selah learned math at her dual-language school entirely in Spanish, and while CPS offers the opportunity to take the HSAT in Spanish, Selah feels she is stronger at reading in English. So she opted to take the test in English.

These concerns compounded the pressure, said Selah, because the stakes are so high.

It’s about “who I’m trusting to take the next four years of my life at school [and who] will help guide me,” she said.

Chicago Public Schools canceled and rescheduled the High School Admissions Test after technical problems caused problems on the original date all eighth graders were scheduled to take the exam.

Glitch adds to test day stress

On HSAT test day, the test that 20,000 eighth graders had spent months worrying about malfunctioned. Some students had been able to complete the test before the system crashed, others had completed half, some had never even been able to log in.

Meanwhile, at schools across the city, cell phones were buzzing as eighth graders texted friends about what was going on – discussing questions they remembered from the test, telling friends what to expect, and maybe freaking out a little bit.

CPS decided to reschedule the test, allowing those who finished the chance to keep their scores from this session or retake it at a later date.

Before scheduling a retest date, CPS worked with the vendor to make sure the test wouldn’t crash again. The new testing dates were finally set for Oct. 24 and 25.

Chloe

“I thought the stress would be totally gone, the stress of actually counting down the days until the test,” said Chloe Athanasiou the day after the initial test. “It’s not gone, it’s still there, because nobody knows what’s going on.”

Although Chloe was able to finish the test before the system crashed, their mother was incredibly frustrated by the technical issue.

“It really feels like a nightmare. The kids who are in tier four and have supportive parents and have resources, their parents are going to be able to navigate this in one way or another,” said Katherine Athanasiou.

Families with means, she said, might leave CPS altogether, “and then it’s just inequity upon inequity upon inequity.”

Daniel

Daniel completed the reading section on Oct. 11 and finished the test “with one minute to spare” when he retook it on the 25th. Knowing he had cut it so close made it more stressful as he awaited his scores

He had more anxiety leading up to the retake than he’d had for the initial test, he said, because there was less information available about when the test would be rescheduled. So he didn’t know how to schedule his studying time.

Elias

When Elias Gray sat down on Oct. 11 to take the test, he said all “the questions were in Spanish, and there were numbers all over the screen.”

After hearing the district would cancel and reschedule the exam, Elias felt “shock and relief at the same time.”

No one at his school was able to finish the test, he said. The principal shut down the test once malfunctions started. Knowing that kids at other schools were able to finish the test, Elias felt that the whole testing situation this year was compromised.

“That was unfair because kids at our school are friends with kids at other schools and they might use the answers there to try to [do better] on the test,” he said.

Selah

At Selah’s charter school, students were able to complete the reading section, but when they came back from break, the test was no longer working.

The whole situation had her feeling “a little bit salty,” she said.

For her, there had been more surprises than just the technical difficulties. While she had signed up to take the test in English, she found out on test day that students taking the test in Spanish were allowed to use a dictionary.

Knowing that, she said, might have changed her mind about taking the test in Spanish.

In addition, Selah was particularly put off by the timer that pops up in the corner of the screen as a warning that time was almost up.

“It was very stressful to have to keep seeing that,” she said. “I kept checking in, seeing how much time I have left.”

In the end though, Selah was mostly relieved to have more time to study and go into the test with a little more knowledge about what it would look like.

Selah Zayas is currently in eighth grade at a public charter school where their mother teaches.

After scores come back, reality sets in

After HSAT scores were released just before the Thanksgiving holiday, families had a week to re-rank their school choices if they wanted to. McPhee said people are encouraged to rank by their preference, not by where they think they have the best chance of getting in.

Many seats go to students who have ranked a school second or third, she said. “The seats aren’t gone because we filled them up with the kids who put them first.”

“If school A is your dream, always put your dream at the top of the list.”

But McPhee, a mother of two CPS students herself, hopes families will consider their neighborhood schools and realize that there are more than just a few good options for their soon-to-be high school students.

Chloe

After watching Chloe waiting for their scores and seeing the stress this process has caused, Katherine Athanasiou can only think of two words to describe the process: “developmentally inappropriate.”

“You think these kids can handle so much,” she said. “Now you turn around and you’re like … ‘they are just brand-new teenagers.’”

Despite Chloe’s high scores, the Athanasious have begun an application process for a local private school just to keep their options open. Both were disappointed by the way CPS handled the system malfunction in October.

“I really believe in public education, and I’m still hopeful that it will work out – we’ll get into either the top choice or the second choice,” said Katherine Athanasiou. “But I also want to think about a place where the application process sees a child for not just test scores and grades but for all of the things that make the child who they are.”

Chloe feels pretty good about their chances at one of their top choices and excited that their friends received similar scores so they might attend the same selective enrollment school together.

Chloe switched schools in the middle of elementary school and it made a significant difference in their mental health and happiness.

“It really makes you see that school environments can be really different,” said Chloe. “You have to find the one that’s right for you and that’s not so easy to do.”

Daniel

Daniel’s test scores – in the 90th percentile – were almost exactly what his mother expected. She feels that gives him a good chance at getting into some of the selective enrollment schools on his list.

They evaluated last year’s cutoff scores for each school and decided to re-rank his top three schools, believing he had the best chance to get into Brooks or Lindblom – both selective enrollment schools on the South Side.

While they wait for offers to be made in the spring, she plans to help her son prepare for the Algebra Exit Exam. If he passes, he’ll be able to take geometry as a freshman.

But Daniel’s mom also hopes for broader improvements for all public schools.

“The fact that there are selective enrollment schools shows us CPS knows how to create high-performing schools,” she said. “There needs to be some more equity, so that we have high-performing neighborhood schools.”

Elias

While waiting for his scores to come in, Elias went to a second open house at Gwendolyn Brooks High School, a selective enrollment school in the Pullman neighborhood. The first visit was with his class earlier in the year. This time he was impressed, and it prompted him to re-rank his top school choices – his number one is now Brooks.

Now he’s nervous again. He did well on the test, but the few Bs he got in seventh grade brought his overall score to only a little bit above last year’s cutoff score for Brooks.

He’s trying not to think about what-ifs. Instead he’s reflecting on the process so far and thinking about where he can improve. He’s already thinking about how his experience with the high school enrollment process might prepare him for four years down the line when he’s applying to college.

Selah

When Selah’s scores came in at slightly above average, she was crushed. She had expected to do better.

Her dreams of attending one of the top selective enrollment schools in the city suddenly felt out of reach and she decided to readjust her rankings during the re-ranking period. She began to think her best option might be the charter school her brother attends where sibling preference guarantees her a seat.

Her mother, on the other hand, was baffled. The scores, she said, were inconsistent with her daughter’s grades and how she performed on other standardized tests throughout the year. It made her rethink everything. Is the school not adequately preparing her children? Was there a problem with the test? Did she miss something?

This isn’t the first admissions rodeo for Andrea Zayas and it likely won’t be the last. Her eldest son went through the process last year and did not get an offer at his top choice school.

“That was a disappointment for him and it wasn’t just one day; that disappointment lingers, you know?” she said. “I really feel like it impacts how they see themselves.”

Zayas has two younger children as well – a second grader and a sixth grader – and after seeing the ways this process has impacted her two older children, she isn’t sure if it’s worth it to put her youngest two children through it too.

Her focus now is making sure her daughter understands that “a person is not one thing.”

“A person is many things all at once and there are different strengths” she said. “What is that famous quote? If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will spend its whole life believing it’s stupid.”

Why does this West Side high school have only 33 students?

2023-12-01T18:51:50+00:00

Dismissal time at many high schools is often a crowded scene, with school buses and parents jockeying for parking and kids spilling out in every direction.

But at Frederick Douglass Academy High School, 543 N. Waller Ave. in Austin, just 33 students emerge from the school when classes wrap at 3 p.m. A student body that’s roughly the size of a single English class roams the campus briefly before heading home.

“This is so boring. There is nobody in here,” one student said after leaving Douglass on a recent school day.

At one point a beacon of academic excellence and point of pride for West Siders, Douglass’ low enrollment is now unsurprising to students and neighbors, they said. It’s indicative of the disinvestment West Side residents have suffered for generations, which has led to an exodus of local kids going elsewhere for school.

During the 2007-08 school year — when Douglass converted from a middle school to a high school — there were 561 students, Chicago Public Schools historic enrollment data shows. By the 2015-16 school year, enrollment dropped to 234 students, a nearly 60 percent decrease.

Since 2007, enrollment at Douglass has dropped about 94 percent.

The only community member or parent on Douglass’ Local School Council is Catherine Jones, leaving six open seats for parent representatives and one for community members.

Jones, an Austin resident, has watched the school’s enrollment diminish but said she would not stop advocating for the school’s improvement as it falls into decline from a lack of students and needed repairs.

“These kids deserve a good school, and it feels as if nobody hears us,” she said. “I won’t stop fighting for it.”

Chicago Public Schools said Douglass is not in jeopardy of closing, and efforts are underway to boost under-enrolled schools.

Douglass Principal Michael Durr did not respond to repeated requests for comment, nor did other staff and faculty at the school.

Front entrance to Frederick Douglass Academy High School in Austin.

Ongoing fallout of Chicago’s closed schools

Statistically, the low enrollment means Douglass has some of the highest per-pupil spending in the district.

The high school is spending just over $68,000 per student compared to the district average of $18,287, statistics from the Illinois State Board of Education show.

Douglass’ spending per student is up 20 percent this year, according to the state.

The only CPS school to spend more on a per-student basis is Simpson Academy High School for Young Women, a small alternative high school on the Near West Side. Simpson Academy has 27 students and spends over $94,000 per student, state records show.

Though graduation rates are up in recent years, the increase in funding hasn’t led to the expansion or creation of certain advantageous programs for students, such as STEM classes and extracurricular activities, said Hal Woods, chief of policy for education nonprofit Kids First Chicago.

The school’s lack of resources, plus the decline in the city’s Black population, have led to fewer students attending neighborhood schools, according to neighbors and statistics.

Fifty-eight percent of West Side high school students attended school outside of the district’s West Side region in the 2022-23 school year, according to the Chicago Public School’s Annual Regional Analysis.

Of those leaving the West Side for high school, the majority head to the Far Northwest Side and Near West Side, according to the CPS regional analysis.

Bradley Johnson, chief community officer for youth development group BUILD Inc., said many of the problems with Douglass extend to inequalities the West Side has faced for decades. These include drug arrests, the savings and loan crisis of the ‘90s that lost billions for bank customers, the 2008 financial crash, and the closure of 50 schools in 2013 under Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Four of the closed schools were in Austin, including Key Elementary, just across from Douglass. CPS sold the building in 2018 to The Field School, a private Christian institution.

Emanuel justified the closings by saying under-enrolled, low-performing and crumbling schools did not best serve kids.

A WBEZ-Sun-Times investigation showed the closures largely did not deliver on its promises that students would be better off elsewhere, their new schools would be improved, and their old school buildings would be overhauled.

A Chalkbeat investigation showed that roughly one-third of the students who attended closed schools transferred out of CPS entirely. Those families who left CPS after their schools closed dried up pipelines for local high schools. Families and advocates worried the school closures would exacerbate displacement and disinvestment in segregated Black neighborhoods.

An Austin native, Johnson said access to local resources begins to decline after elementary school, and high school recruitment is lacking due to the absence of things such as advanced placement classes and afterschool programs like sports or music.

“You have vastly different outcomes in life and in your education based on your ZIP code. They aren’t recruiting because of their reputation as a school without resources,” he said. “Equitable access to resources is the key, and this is a citywide issue.”

Banner of Frederick Douglass Academy High School.

If attendance at Douglass doesn’t improve, Jones and others fear that the school could be forced to close, a prospect that has concerned parents at the school since at least 2017.

Ald. Chris Taliaferro (29th), whose ward includes Douglass, acknowledged the lack of students as a problem but said closing the school would only exacerbate the situation and further remove resources from the neighborhood.

“Closing schools is never good for the community. Doing so would only further disrupt the education of the students,” he said.

Asked about the low attendance of the school, a CPS spokesperson said the district would abide by the moratorium on closing public schools, a state mandate that expires in January 2025.

“We would avoid speculation on hypothetical future closures that have not been proposed and are not up for consideration by the Board [of Education],” the spokesperson said.

CPS is increasing the Equity Grant program from $50 million in this year to $55 million next year to stabilize funding for smaller and under-enrolled schools, mostly on the South and West sides.

The district also plans to update its Opportunity Index, a formula used by CPS to identify barriers to success such as race, income, education, health, and other factors when making certain funding and staff allocation decisions, the spokesperson said.

“By applying the updated Opportunity Index to allocate additional teacher positions, instructional coaches, counselors and other staff positions, the District can ensure that the families who are most impacted by inequity have additional support to create strong, vibrant and healthy school communities,” the CPS representative said.

The issues that have led to the situation at Douglass have unfolded for years. It will take a long-term strategy to fix it, Woods said.

“This is not a problem you can’t solve in one year,” Woods said. “The schools are still dealing with the fallout of the school closures a decade ago. CPS should listen to the broader community for what their needs are.”

This story was originally published by Block Club Chicago.

Essays, tests, auditions, frustration, stress: What it’s like to apply to high school in NYC

2023-11-30T21:24:27+00:00

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One mom called it hell. Another felt like she was drowning in information. Some stretched their budgets to pay for test prep and coaches for their children’s art portfolios and auditions.

Welcome to New York City’s high school application process, where parents — often moms — take on what amounts to part-time jobs to help their 13-year-olds find the “right” school.

Families have until Friday to rank their 12 choices from among 700 programs in 400 schools. Despite the vast array of options, families feel like they’re fighting for seats.

In many ways, they are. In talking to more than a dozen families of eighth graders about their admissions journeys, Chalkbeat found a handful of coveted schools repeatedly came up. And admissions data confirms that a small number of high schools are ranked on an outsized number of applications.

The top 15 schools represented about 20% of all the choices that eighth graders picked on their applications in 2021, according to an analysis by Sean Corcoran, associate professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt University.

And this data doesn’t include the eight prestigious specialized high schools, like Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech, that require the Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT, or LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, which requires auditions. Thousands of students apply to those schools through a separate process.

“When people are confronted with an overwhelming amount of information, they want to simplify things as much as possible. You start with the schools that everybody knows, with the best reputation,” said Corcoran, whose research focuses on how to provide information to families to help them expand their choices.

The odds can feel overwhelming. At Manhattan’s Eleanor Roosevelt, there were 37 applicants for every general education seat, according to stats from the MySchools directory. There were 27 applicants per seat at Bard Early College High School in Queens. (This school was the 18th on the popular schools list.)

As with so many things in the public school system, those with time and means often have an advantage, contributing to New York having among the most segregated schools in the nation. Families jockey for limited spots on tours. They go down rabbit holes in Facebook groups to figure out their children’s odds. And a whole cottage industry has developed around the process, including consultants advising on a good fit.

Below are stories from six families from across the city reflecting on the lengths they’ve gone to figure out their school rankings.

“It’s just like the college application process,” said southeast Queens mom Trina Mitchell. “But it’s high school! It’s insane.”

The experienced project manager

Carina Li, left, with her mom, Karen Li.

Karen Li is hedging her bets.

The day after Li’s daughter Carina finished seventh grade, Li enrolled her in an SHSAT prep course. Carina studied all summer and took the prep course until Nov. 8, when the Education Department administered the test in public middle schools across the city.

Carina also took the Test for Admissions into Catholic School, or TACHS, and will sit for Catholic school scholarship exams on Saturday.

Then there’s the application for LaGuardia High School. Carina started planning her visual art portfolio in July and was still working on it four months later. She needed to submit eight pieces (including a still life that she redid three times) and make a video explaining her choices.

Even with help from an artistic aunt, the process is a lot. In fact, it’s all a lot.

Studying for the SHSAT was “terrible,” and the practice tests were “horrible,” said Carina, who lives in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn. The art portfolio was “very demanding.”

“People always think that you have to spend money to pay for SHSAT prep,” said Li, who works in tax reporting. She now realizes that many kids vying for arts schools have to work just as hard as those studying for the SHSAT, plus they’ve been taking pricey arts classes for years. “They dance when they’re in diapers.”

Li said she has felt like her daughter’s “project manager,” reminding her to study, keeping track of due dates, and obtaining transcripts and recommendation letters for Catholic schools.

She has had practice: She went through the high school application process a few years ago with her older daughter, who went to Brooklyn Tech. So Li knew she had to start researching high schools for her younger daughter in seventh grade.

Carina, a competitive swimmer, would also like to go to Brooklyn Tech, especially for its swim team. But the family isn’t pinning its hopes on one school.

On top of it all, Li sees her daughter feeling overwhelmed and tries not to add stress.

“All this will be over by Dec. 2,” Li said.

The community activist

Jason Sosa spent months on SHSAT prep.

Expensive SHSAT courses were out of reach for the Sosa family of Sunset Park, Brooklyn. But they still managed to find creative ways to get their son Jason test prep.

Jovita Sosa recently got a grant that helped fund a six-week summer SHSAT test prep course through the literacy-focused nonprofit she started 10 years ago, Grupo Juego y Lectura. Jason was one of roughly six students who met twice a week for the course.

The Sosa family also received study materials from an acquaintance who got into Stuyvesant after completing the city’s DREAM program, offering free test prep. Sosa was amazed at how much more detailed the study materials were than the free materials the Education Department offers.

“I can’t afford the prep that some other people are getting,” said Sosa, a paraprofessional.

Jason, who attends a Catholic school, had been studying independently about 20 minutes a day this fall using the DREAM workbook. He worked with a high school senior on math for an hour every Saturday and Sunday. He also signed up for a free TACHS test prep program through his school. Though Sosa said she can no longer afford to pay for Catholic school, Jason wanted to take the test in case he got a scholarship.

“I found the SHSAT as expected, challenging, but not out of my grasp,” Jason said. “I feel like I could’ve done a better job with taking more time to understand the questions, but being under pressure blurs your thinking.”

The experience brought out the activist in Sosa.

She wrote to her state senator who had boasted in a constituent email of securing millions of dollars for SHSAT prep, asking for help to make free DREAM workbooks widely available to children who can’t afford test prep.

Sosa is trying to remain grounded.

“I lived it with my oldest child. We stressed him out when he was younger,” she said. “You learn it’s not the end all.”

One family. Two kids. Many art programs.

The Doucette family on a recent trip to Walt Disney World. Zach and Lexie's older brother (standing behind the twins) went to LaGuardia High School.

“It’s hell.”

That’s how Upper East Side mom Caren Doucette describes the application process for her twins.

Lexie — who has ADHD and dyslexia — is looking at visual arts. Zach is interested in performing arts. While there’s some overlap between their schools of interest, Doucette estimates that she devotes at least two hours daily to the process (and more on weekends). She’s researching websites, comparing notes with other parents, sending questions to schools, and attending tours.

“If you don’t sign up in the first 24 hours, you miss a spot,” said Doucette, a tutor with a flexible schedule. “My days are spent on the computer scouring all of this, and my husband will take the kids on evening tours.”

Doucette is especially concerned about whether her daughter, who has specific learning needs, will land at a school that can support her.

Lexie bonded with her visual arts coach, who also has dyslexia. Zach, who enjoys musical theater, had a drama coach and a voice coach, who each charge about $150 an hour. He also completed a free bootcamp in August through the Education Department’s Summer Arts Institute, where he studied with an acting coach.

“It’s a financial commitment,” Doucette said. “It straps us, but we can figure it out.”

Lexie is in “priority group 3,” because of a low grade she got last year in math from an unsupportive teacher, according to her mom, who has complained to their middle school, Wagner. Zach is in “priority group 1,” but didn’t have a high lottery number — a reality she wanted to shield him from.

Lexie and Zach went on all of the school tours as well. Even though it can be hard for her 13-year-olds to focus during the tours, they “get a vibe” being in the schools, Doucette said.

But that means they’ve missed about five days of eighth grade so far. One week they had five tours in three days, and now they’re wrapping up auditions and interviews and writing essays.

“It’s really annoying and unnecessary and stressful and time-consuming and set up awfully,” said Zach. “We have multiple things that cut into our school hours.” He wasn’t excited about the 7 p.m. open houses either.

“It’s annoying,” Lexie agreed.

A mother and daughter navigate language barriers

When Nancy Sagbay enrolled her daughter Jaleen in kindergarten nine years ago, her main priority felt clear.

Sagbay, who emigrated from Ecuador before Jaleen was born, didn’t want her daughter to lose her native tongue. So Jaleen attended P.S./I.S. 218, a dual-language K-8 school near their home in the Highbridge neighborhood of the Bronx.

Nancy Sagbay, left, with her daughter Jaleen Sagbay.

Now Jaleen can read, write, and speak in Spanish and English, and averaged above a 90% in her classes last year, to Sagbay’s great pride.

But as Jaleen turns her sights towards high school, the choices — and the application process — feel a lot more complicated.

“No one is ready for so much information,” said Sagbay, who still struggles with English.

Sagbay works at a barbershop and is constantly asking colleagues and clients for school recommendations and advice, which she relays to her daughter, Jaleen said.

As Jaleen finalized her list, she crossed off some she’d initially been eyeing once she saw their four-year graduation rates on MySchools. The 13-year-old hasn’t been on any school visits, and three of the schools she’s considering — Columbia Secondary, her top choice, Bard High School Early College in Manhattan, and Beacon, which one of her teachers recommended — require essays and other prompts.

With just a week left before the due date, Jaleen still hadn’t started them and was getting “stressed and anxious,” she said. But teachers at her middle school gave her time during the school day this week to work on them.

“I feel like I could do it,” Jaleen said of the selective schools. “I like competition. If there’s competition for it, it must be a good school.”

Sagbay, however, is worried about commuting to Manhattan.

“I didn’t want it because the trains can be dangerous,” she said, “but she wants to explore, to see people outside (her neighborhood).”

For now, they’re compromising: Jaleen is including some schools closer to home on her list.

They’re also compromising on academic focus. Jaleen is interested in art, but her mom has encouraged her to consider schools with a technology focus, since Jaleen is strong in math.

“One way or another,” Jaleen said, “she would … put that pressure on me to do better.”

The fierce parent advocate

Justin Mitchell playing drums for the NY Alliance Drumline.

What if a child’s performance in seventh grade did not reflect their abilities because of a series of extenuating circumstances?

Trina Mitchell demanded answers to that question on behalf of her son Justin.

Despite other public schools reopening after COVID shutdowns, Justin’s charter school in St. Albans, Queens, remained remote during his sixth grade year because of a problem with its roof, Mitchell said. Upon returning in seventh grade, his school lacked sufficient staffing to provide services mandated by his Individualized Education Program.

Mitchell’s letter to the Education Department through MySchools explaining the situation went unanswered until she brought it up again at an October high school admissions forum for families of children with disabilities.

The department agreed to rank Justin based on his GPA from the first semester of eighth grade.

“I didn’t give up,” said Mitchell, who works as a court clerk in Queens.

She was not able to prevail, however, in her quest to get a hard copy of the high school directory. She wanted it to mark up with sticky notes and carry around with her on tours for note-taking, “like a little bible.” She hoped it would help her discover new options.

The Education Department no longer prints hard copies.

Mitchell wished that things were easier, and that her son could just go to a zoned high school, but District 29 no longer has one. Nearby, the campus that housed Andrew Jackson High School — her husband’s alma mater — has been carved up into several small schools.

These schools read like a “country club” to Mitchell, boasting of tennis courts, football and soccer fields, and a track. Digging deeper, Mitchell said she found most students aren’t on grade level.

In general, she was concerned about the overcrowding of many Queens high schools and also was perplexed by all of the specialty programs, like law and STEM. Her son does well in science and is a good writer, but doesn’t have a career path in mind. He’s interested in being on the drumline and football team.

“For your average kid that doesn’t have a clue what they want in life, how do they lock into a program at 12 or 13 years old?” Mitchell asked. “The system is designed to cater to a kid who has it together and knows what they want to do.”

To stay or leave Staten Island?

Miles Curatolo-Boylan, left, and his mother, Lucia Curatolo-Boylan.

In drawing up their list of high schools to rank, Staten Island mom Lucia Curatolo-Boylan and her son Miles have been studying MTA schedules. By ferry or bus, he would commute more than an hour each way if he chooses a high school outside the borough.

Miles, the oldest of four, expressed an early interest in Staten Island Technical High School, a specialized school. But they’re casting a wider net.

They’ve toured schools across the city, including some Miles wasn’t thrilled about. They’ve considered Catholic high schools, too.

His deep love for illustration and drawing cartoons, as well as his interest in engineering, have helped inform the search.

But with some of his choices comes added stress — the anxiety over competition for coveted spots, the pressure of standardized tests and portfolios, as well as the reality of a long commute.

Curatolo-Boylan said she and her husband consider themselves lower-middle class, but still invested in getting Miles a tutor shortly before the SHSAT and TACHS, as well as paying for a few classes to help him strengthen his art portfolio. The standardized tests aren’t something that kids learn to tackle organically in school, she added.

“That’s a really difficult thing to stomach,” said Curatolo-Boylan, a private music teacher and acting and vocal coach who is also president of her local Community Education Council. “Knowing that there are kids that could really use that leg up in our community, especially here in Staten Island, and they’re never going to be able to afford that.”

Curatolo-Boylan said getting into public school here has always been stressful, but the “constant run-around of open house after open house” has been particularly grueling.

“So much of his life would change if he chose the city,” she said, referring to Manhattan.

With such a long commute, she knows he’ll leave early in the morning and return late in the evening. In a sense, this would mean letting go of him earlier than she anticipated, she said.

“It would be so exciting for him, and I would be so excited for him,” she said. “But at the same time, I think my heart might break a little.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Jeffco’s Moore Middle School, Pomona High School to merge into 6-12

2023-06-23T22:55:27+00:00

The Jeffco school board voted unanimously Thursday night to approve the closure of Moore Middle School, which will merge with Pomona High School to form a 6-12.

This move comes as part of the district’s efforts to address declining enrollment and make better use of resources. While Moore Middle School will continue its operations for the 2023-24 school year, its doors are set to close permanently after the spring term.

Moore Middle School is the first school to close under the second phase of Jeffco’s Regional Opportunity for Thriving Schools plan. The first phase of the plan was completed in November when the board voted to close 16 elementary schools. The second phase will focus on consolidation recommendations for K-8 and middle schools with possible additional closure recommendations starting in August.

With the merger of sixth, seventh, and eighth grades from the middle school into Pomona’s building, the high school will need to undergo renovation and expansion. The construction is estimated to cost the district between $1.8 million and $2.5 million.

The construction plans call for the creation of a wing for sixth and seventh grades on the second floor of the existing building, separate drop-off entrances for younger students, space for incoming staff, additional security measures, and an expanded cafeteria to accommodate more students who eat lunch on campus.

After discussions with community members, Pomona Principal Pat Rock and Moore Principal Brenda Fletcher brought a request to the Jeffco school board in March to combine both the middle school and high school in Pomona’s building.

The closure of Moore is unique in the way that this was requested by the Jeffco community and not by the district administration or the board of education, officials said.

“I think this is a really great example of an idea that came directly from the community to solve a challenge that they feel every day, and they wanted to get ahead of the district in terms of coming up with their own solution,” said Lisa Relou, Jeffco’s chief of strategy and communications.

Community forums were held at both schools before the proposal to close Moore was brought before the board.

According to district data, Moore Middle School uses 46% of its building capacity while Pomona High School uses 57% — the plan to merge facilities aims to maximize resources, which, according to the district, will save over $1 million a year.

The two schools are not far apart, with just a 5-minute drive between them.

The district’s recent work has been spurred by years of declining enrollment. Even though the number of residents in Jeffco increased over two decades, the population of school-age children decreased by 29,918 from 2000 to 2020.

Fewer children are being born. According to the district, 2020 marked the lowest number of births recorded in 15 years.

Most Jeffco middle schools are losing more students than they attract through school choice. State law allows students to enroll in any district that will accept them. Meanwhile, about 12% of Jeffco families enroll their students in charter schools.

Even though she voted for the merger, board member Danielle Varda said she hopes the district takes a careful approach to issues such as helping families transition and integrating younger students with the older grades.

“I want to make sure we’re still creating a really great experience for them and their families,” Varda said.

Clarification: This story has been updated to reflect that the next phase of school consolidations will affect K-8s and middle schools. While the district website originally said secondary schools would be included, a district spokeswoman said no high schools are being considered for closure. The district website has been updated as well.

Sara Martin is an intern with Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Sara at smartin@chalkbeat.org

CUNY sees ‘enormous’ October application spike, as efforts to boost enrollment continue

2023-11-20T21:47:21+00:00

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An effort to bolster enrollment numbers at the City University of New York is seeing early signs of success, as the number of prospective students applying to schools in the system more than quadrupled last month.

Applications for the fall 2024 semester reached nearly 41,000 in October — a roughly 386% jump from the same time last year, when 8,420 students had applied, CUNY officials said last week.

Of those, more than 34,000 applications — or roughly 83% — came from New York City public school students.

The figures come as both city and state officials have worked to increase enrollment in the city’s network of public colleges, which saw dramatic downturns in student numbers during the pandemic, like many institutions across the country.

Systemwide, the number of enrolled students at CUNY schools fell about 17% over the course of the pandemic, with even steeper losses at the network’s community colleges. Overall, the number of students dropped from roughly 271,000 in the 2019-20 school year to about 226,000 last school year, though preliminary enrollment data shared last month indicated that decline had begun to level off.

To combat those trends, officials sent each senior expected to graduate from one of the city’s public high schools a personalized acceptance letter indicating they had a spot at CUNY and encouraging them to apply.

CUNY’s community colleges have open admissions for high school graduates, and the letters aimed to motivate those on the fence about applying to the network’s schools.

The college system also waived application fees for all NYC public school students for the entirety of October, while eliminating the cost for other high school seniors in the state between Oct. 16 and Oct. 31. The personalized letters included information about the fee waivers, which were also promoted via social media and an ad campaign, officials added.

About 88% of applicants during October received a fee waiver, up from about 52% at the same time last year, officials said.

It isn’t the first time the city’s network of public colleges has waived application fees for local students, but this year, the move came much earlier in the application process.

Schools Chancellor David Banks said he was “thrilled” by the application figures.

“The dramatic increase in applications tells us that our students heard the message: higher education is within their reach, and we have a place for them at our city’s university,” he said in a statement. “We look forward to seeing the impact of a CUNY education on the long-term outcomes for both our students and our city.”

CUNY application spike ‘an outlier,’ expert says

Though college applications have risen across the country this year, CUNY’s October jump in applicants was “enormous, and absolutely an outlier,” said Joshua Hyman, an economics professor at Amherst College who has studied higher education.

The two policy changes at CUNY appeared to complement one another, potentially amplifying the impact that either could have on their own, he said.

“The massive outreach in the letters by themselves would have had some impact,” Hyman said. “But there would have been those students who would have been excited about this, but for whom the application fee is a real barrier.”

And even among those who can afford them, fees can discourage potential applicants, said Philip Oreopoulos, an economics professor at the University of Toronto.

“Even a small fee, where you have to whip out your credit card or you have to get your parents to do that, can cause delays, can cause like, ‘Oh, I’m going to do this later,’ and then it just never happens,” he said.

Applications were up last month even when compared to pre-pandemic figures, with the network receiving roughly 18,000 applicants as of the same time in 2018 and 2019, according to officials.

Any efforts to streamlining the application process can have significant impacts.

“When you make the process of applying easier, it can make the difference between someone going and not going,” Oreopoulos said.

Still, Hyman added, “There’s a big difference between applying and then ultimately enrolling.”

Though he expects to see enrollment increase next year after the spike in applications, Hyman said any growth would likely occur at a smaller scale.

Affordability can be major draw on whether to enroll

For students deciding whether to enroll in the network’s colleges, affordability can be a major draw.

Tuition at CUNY costs about $3,500 a semester for state residents at four-year colleges and $2,400 a semester for New Yorkers at community colleges, though roughly two-thirds of in-state students pay no tuition because of a combination of state and federal financial aid, according to the university.

Among graduates, 75% leave with no debt, officials said. CUNY forgave roughly $100 million in debt accrued during the pandemic.

With more students potentially enrolling next year, experts said it’s critical to ensure new students receive the support they need. Across the country, colleges saw more students dropping out since the onset of the pandemic, and traditionally disadvantaged students who may have been swayed to apply by CUNY’s outreach efforts could be at especially high risk.

Oreopoulos pointed to CUNY’s Accelerated Study in Associate Programs initiative as one example of strong support systems. The program offers additional financial resources, academic structure, and direct support services to students seeking associate degrees within the network — aiming to help them graduate on time.

“It’s nice to see that CUNY is doing this combination of not only trying to help more get in, but also help more stay,” he said.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

With influx of migrants, NYC school enrollment ticks up for first time in 8 years

2023-11-15T20:36:46+00:00

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The number of students attending New York City’s public schools increased for the first time in eight years, a sign that enrollment may be stabilizing in the wake of deep declines during the pandemic.

About 915,000 children from 3-K to 12th grade enrolled this year, up 0.9% from last year, or roughly 8,000 additional students, according to preliminary Education Department data released Wednesday.

Still, city schools enrolled about 92,000 fewer children compared with the year before the pandemic hit, a decline of roughly 9%.

An influx of asylum-seeking families appeared to be a major factor in reversing the yearslong trend of declining enrollment. About 13,000 migrant students have enrolled in the city’s schools since June, city officials said.

Mayor Eric Adams has previously taken a harsh posture on the wave of arriving asylum seekers, saying, “This issue will destroy New York City.” He traveled to the border last month to persuade migrants not to come. Meanwhile, to finance services for migrant families, the mayor has ordered funding reductions elsewhere — including up to $2.1 billion from the Education Department’s budget.

In a joint press release with schools Chancellor David Banks, Adams celebrated the rise in enrollment and some of the city’s efforts to welcome new arrivals in the city’s public schools.

“Chancellor Banks and our administration are focused on delivering the best education possible for our young New Yorkers by cutting through bureaucracy, expanding outreach, and making enrollment easier,” Adams said in a statement. “New Yorkers are voting with their feet, and we are excited to see funding increase for so many of our public schools.”

City officials cautioned that the enrollment figures are preliminary and will likely fluctuate as students continue to enter or leave the system midyear. (The numbers do not include charter schools.)

Enrollment is a key issue because the lion’s share of school budgets are determined based on how many students are on their registers. Over the past few years, the Education Department avoided some enrollment-related cuts to individual schools by using hundreds of millions worth of one-time federal relief funding as campuses recover from the pandemic.

That money is dwindling, though, which means schools face growing budget pressures.

For the first time since the pandemic hit, the Education Department is forcing schools to return money in the middle of the year if they end up enrolling fewer students than the city projected.

Because of higher than expected enrollment, about 57% of schools will see midyear funding bumps, averaging about $209,000 per school, officials said. The remaining 43% of schools will see midyear cuts averaging $167,000.

Declining enrollment can pose other significant problems for schools. As the number of students on a given campus dwindles, it typically becomes increasingly difficult to fund a full range of programs and extracurricular activities. The number of schools with tiny enrollments has grown in recent years, prompting questions about whether city officials may propose a wave of mergers or closures.

In a recent interview with Chalkbeat, Banks said district leaders are planning to have “community conversations” this year about potential mergers.

“Some level of consolidation is something that I think we would be irresponsible if we were not looking at that,” Banks said, “particularly in light of the fiscal challenges that we’re having.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

NYC high school applications are due next month. Here are 5 tips for navigating the process.

2023-11-03T22:06:46+00:00

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With a month left to go in New York City’s notoriously complex high school admissions process, families are striving to determine which of the city’s more than 700 programs across 400 schools will be a good fit for their students.

Families have until Dec. 1 to submit high school applications in a process that can be daunting for the tens of thousands of eighth grade families applying to public high schools. It can also feel inequitable, with some parents feeling that families who have more time and resources to devote to the process have an upper hand.

The process can take a lot of work. Schools across the city hold open houses, inviting families to tour the facilities and better understand what each institution offers. The city also offers other resources, like virtual admissions events and school fairs. Online resources, like InsideSchools, further help families assess their options.

At one recent city event — a fair held at George Westinghouse Career and Technical Education High School — Brooklyn families browsed dozens of options in their local community, chatting with current students and staff about what makes each school unique.

Mink Chung, a Brooklyn parent and a teacher at P.S. 20, The Clinton Hill School, said the process so far has been both “overwhelming” and “exciting.” For his son, he’s looking for a school with a wide range of programs for students with different interests.

“We don’t know what we’re looking for right now,” he said. “I mean, he’s 12 years old. So it’s a lot to be like, ‘Do you want an engineering school? Do you want a performing arts school?’”

Meanwhile, many schools at the fair highlighted their career and technical education, or CTE, programs, emphasizing to families that their schools could prepare students for a career after high school. Those programs have become increasingly popular, according to school representatives at the event.

For families still considering their options, here’s some additional advice from those who have gone through the process before, as well as those who help guide families through it:

Focus on fit, not names

“Everybody applying to high school is looking for that undiscovered gem,” Pamela Wheaton, an admissions consultant who runs SchoolScoutNYC, told Chalkbeat earlier this year. “Every time I work with parents, I try to make sure that they really explore beyond the ‘it’ schools, the schools that people are talking about.”

While many families know name-brand schools — especially the specialized schools like Stuyvesant or Brooklyn Tech, or some of the city’s selective schools like Beacon or Townsend Harris — there’s a lot more out there.

Admissions experts urge families to cast a broad net and focus on finding the right fit over gravitating toward schools that may already be on their radar.

Some schools, including large, comprehensive ones like Bayside, Francis Lewis, and New Utrecht, have “educational option,” or “ed opt” programs that admit students across academic levels to promote academic diversity. There are “consortium schools,” where students focus on project-based learning instead of Regents exams. The city’s “community schools” provide wraparound social services, often for the entire family, and other schools might have school-based health clinics, while some are dedicated to working with newcomer immigrants or kids who might be over-age and under-credited and have not been successful in other school settings. And there are a range of CTE programs, from ones that focus on health professions to robotics to food.

“Your child does not have to be in the school that gets 40 applicants per seat,” Wheaton said. “There are many other good options, and even if your child is waitlisted at 11 out of the 12 schools on their list, chances are that at the 12th school, they’ll be very, very happy.”

Ask questions at open houses

When touring many schools, it can sometimes become difficult to distinguish between them, said Queens parent leader Deborah Alexander, who went through the process three years ago with her son and is now doing it again with her eighth grade daughter.

She likes to ask students and educators, “What makes your school unique,” as a way that lets them share something that’s likely not in the official presentation. At one school, for instance, a student talked about how they had a teaching assistant program, where students worked for teachers and developed meaningful mentorships.

“It’s those little things that spark something,” Alexander said. “Otherwise these presentations run into each other.”

Other helpful questions include asking about advanced coursework, typical daily assignments, and whether students can leave campus for lunch, she added.

While some families focus on Advanced Placement, or AP courses, many schools offer other options. At some schools, there are International Baccalaureate programs that offer advanced coursework — and many students can enroll in College Now, which allows them to take CUNY courses.

Also, at some small schools that can’t offer a plethora of AP courses, they might participate in an initiative allowing their students to take online courses taught by public school teachers in other parts of the city from the comfort of their own school buildings and with supervision from an on-site staff member.

Stay organized

Elissa Stein, an admissions consultant who runs High School 411, recommends being organized, urging parents to take notes on tours, have a calendar, and save information schools may hand out.

“By the time that you’re done touring and have to revisit things in your minds to rank schools, it will all get mushed together into something you can’t decipher,” she told Chalkbeat earlier this year. “Being organized as you go will help you tremendously.”

Know the commute

Whether a family is willing to take public transit to commute to school, and how far they’re willing to travel, are some of the first questions that Sindy Nuesi, director of the Middle School Student Success Center at the Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation, asks in her work.

“If you don’t feel comfortable with your child going on the train or the bus, then it really limits your options,” she previously told Chalkbeat. “I don’t encourage that necessarily, but I am going to support whatever the family decides.”

Families can also test out the commute to potential schools before applying to better understand what day-to-day travel to and from school would look like.

A 30-minute subway commute with a transfer in Times Square, for example, might feel more stressful for a kid than a one-seat, hour-long bus ride, Alexander said.

“The question isn’t how long is the train ride, but it’s about the ease of the commute,” she said.

Consider starting early

For seventh grade families, the admissions process can also offer an opportunity to learn more about schools ahead of the application cycle next year.

Parents often say the two-month window from when applications open and close is too tight to pack in enough research and open house visits.

Attending open houses or high school fairs, or compiling an early list of schools of interest, can give families more time over the summer to consider programs, test commutes, and think through all their options.

Moreover, seventh grade is a critical year: Selective high schools use seventh graders’ GPAs to determine admissions.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC families push for special education open houses as high school admissions season heats up

2023-10-31T19:24:47+00:00

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Manhattan dad Tom Fiorella wanted a public high school that could challenge his child and accommodate learning disabilities. He spent countless hours scouring websites, attending open houses, and emailing parent coordinators in search of answers.

Does the school integrate students with disabilities alongside typically developing children in classes at all grade levels? Is support available for students who could handle advanced coursework but, like his child, also have a language-based learning disability? Would the environment feel welcoming?

“It’s complex – it’s a lot of work,” said Fiorella, whose child began ninth grade this year. “It was hard to get solid information.”

Now, a group of parent advocates is pushing for more high schools to offer open houses specifically geared toward students with disabilities. They’ve sent a flurry of messages to school leaders to persuade them to roll out the information sessions more widely.

That advocacy effort, which began last year, is already starting to bear fruit, said Jenn Choi, a special education advocate who created an email template and encouraged parents to send it to school leaders and superintendents.

The Brooklyn North high school superintendent has required all of the 47 campuses under her supervision to offer special education information sessions. And two other district leaders have been receptive or encouraged principals to offer them, including those who represent Queens North as well as the superintendent responsible for schools that use alternate graduation assessments, international schools serving recently arrived immigrants, and Outward Bound schools, messages sent to parents show.

Open houses are an important way for families to narrow down which 12 high schools to list on their application out of more than 400 options. All families, including those with disabilities, are welcome to attend those sessions. But parents and advocates say the traditional open houses may fill up quickly, gloss over special education, or wind up with little time for families to ask questions about whether the school is prepared to offer the services their child needs.

The city’s online high school directory makes it simple to filter schools by a wide range of categories — from sports teams to uniform requirements. Still, clear information about what types of special education classes are typically offered, what types of therapists are on staff, and even information about school building accessibility for those with mobility issues can be difficult to come by. Officials have improved access to information about physical building accessibility in recent years.

Using the city’s directory, “a parent can find the 30 high schools with girls’ golf teams in NYC in under 8 seconds,” Choi wrote in a guide for school leaders who want to offer special education open houses. If a parent wants to find schools that regularly provide a certain type of special education class, “they will have to pick up the phone and start calling over 500 schools, one school at a time.”

Although some schools have offered special education open houses for years, it’s unclear how common they are. An Education Department spokesperson could not say how many schools offer them now or in recent years.

Choi, who runs a special education consulting business and also navigated the admissions process as a parent of two children with disabilities, said they are relatively rare. Requiring all schools to offer them would help make the high school process friendlier to students with disabilities, she argues. Plus, they can serve an important accountability purpose, as school officials may commit to providing a range of services during the sessions.

“Parents are going to expect that promises are going to be kept,” Choi said. “And that’s how change happens.”

Even as some schools are embracing special education open houses, it can still be tricky to find basic information about them. For some schools, the city’s centralized directory lists whether a school offers such a session. In other cases, that information appears to be missing and individual school websites don’t always list them.

Education Department spokesperson Nicole Brownstein emphasized that “open houses are organized at the school level” and did not indicate whether the city would consider requiring all high schools to offer them. She also did not respond to a question about how families can find out about them given some of the inconsistencies in where they’re posted.

Maggie Moroff, a special education policy expert at Advocates for Children, said she felt torn about special education open houses. In an ideal world, information about specialized services should be woven into traditional sessions, she said, though that can be a challenge.

“You don’t want it to be siloed, but you want to make sure the right attention gets paid” to students with disabilities, Moroff said, adding that in practice she supports more special education open houses.

Specialized open houses can also make it more difficult for schools to hide that they’re not actually set up to support students with a variety of news, advocates said.

“You can have a school that can check off all the right boxes on paper,” Moroff said, “but when a family gets there, the way they are welcomed is quite different. You can glean a lot from that.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

NYC schools with enrollment shortfalls face cuts; more budget losses loom

2023-10-25T23:00:06+00:00

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New York City schools with lower than projected enrollments will see their budgets slashed midyear for the first time in four years.

School and Education Department staffers said the move comes as little surprise given the city’s bleak fiscal situation and dwindling federal COVID relief funds. City officials had used federal funding the past three school years to avert the midyear cuts and hold schools “harmless” if their student rosters fell short of the Education Department’s estimates.

“As NYCPS navigates the current fiscal landscape, we’ve made the necessary decision to revert to our pre-COVID-19 budgeting process,” said Education Department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer.

Schools get money in the summer based on the city’s projections of how many students are expected to fill their seats. After the final tallies are taken on Oct. 31, the Education Department adjusts school budgets, clawing back money from schools that enroll fewer students than anticipated. Schools with higher than projected enrollment will still get additional money, similar to past years, though administrators have said it can be difficult to spend the sudden influx of cash effectively in the middle of the school year.

Calee Prindle, an assistant principal at the Facing History School in Manhattan, said her school stands to lose about $160,000 if no more students enroll before Oct. 31.

“Losing that money, it sucks, but for us it’s not going to be wildly detrimental,” she said. “For me, it’s always about the communication, and I’m glad we know now.”

Still, the return to midyear cuts deals a significant blow to schools that may already be reeling from years of shrinking budgets due to enrollment losses and heightened needs in the wake of the pandemic.

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew argued that the increase in state funding in recent years should be enough to continue the policy of propping budgets up even if schools miss their enrollment projections.

“It is unacceptable for NYC to cut funding to its public schools especially when the state has made such a strong financial commitment to our students,” he said in a statement.

Education Department faces major budget strain

Even with an increase in state aid, it’s a particularly precarious financial moment for the Education Department and the city as a whole.

More than $7 billion in federal relief funds that the Education Department has received since the beginning of the pandemic expires next September. The city has used that money to fund summer programming and social workers, along with propping up school budgets amid enrollment losses.

On top of that, Mayor Eric Adams earlier this fall ordered all city agencies to cut 5% of their budgets in November, an additional 5% in January, and another 5% in April in response to rising costs as the city faces an influx of asylum-seekers.

The three rounds of cuts would slash a total of $2.1 billion from the Education Department’s budget, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute. It’s an enormous sum that schools Chancellor David Banks has said will likely “affect every aspect of what we do.”

The Education Department has not made final decisions about what to cut in the first round, and the decision to reinstate the midyear adjustment was not related to the budget cut mandate, Styer said.

Officials didn’t say how much the Education Department will save in the cost-cutting move. Last year, the Education Department spent $200 million to avert the midyear cut.

Fiscal belt-tightening plays out in other ways

As part of the Adams administration’s budget cut mandate, the city’s Office of Management and Budget imposed a hiring freeze, according to Education Department staffers and budget documents.

The hiring freeze doesn’t apply to school-based staff, but affects many other positions, including central personnel tasked with supporting schools and specific student populations, such as those who live in temporary housing and children with disabilities, according to staffers and advocates.

“Hiring for each position is going under a lot more scrutiny, and we realize that some may end up getting delayed for some period of time — and we don’t know for how long,” said one central staffer familiar with the budget, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

A plan to hire more than a dozen temporary staffers to support kids in shelters with educational needs was delayed because of the freeze, and vacant positions on the teams that ensure students with disabilities get necessary services have gone unfilled, according to Advocates for Children, a group that supports vulnerable students.

“We have seen significant delays in students in shelter receiving the school placements and transportation they need,” said Randi Levine, the policy director at Advocates for Children. She noted that some of the Education Department’s federal relief money is earmarked to support students in temporary housing and can’t be spent on other things.

“We don’t want the DOE to squander the resources it has available given the huge need we’re seeing on the ground,” she added.

The worst is likely yet to come. Another central staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity said teams in central offices have been asked to start preparing for significant cuts – far deeper than in past years.

And while the cuts to the Education Department’s central offices are likely to be the steepest, that division only accounts for between 1-2 % of the Education Department’s overall budget, meaning cuts outside of central offices will almost certainly be necessary.

Two areas likely to get spared: Banks’s signature NYC Reads initiative, which seeks to revamp elementary school literacy instruction by forcing districts to adopt one of three pre-selected reading curricula, and his FutureReadyNYC program, which funds schools to expand career-connected learning, according to the chancellor.

“The reading work that we’re doing and the pathways work that we’re doing is going to be prioritized,” Banks recently told reporters. “That’s where we’re going to be making sure that the investments are still there.”

Alex Zimmerman contributed.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

How to navigate IPS’ school reorganization and new enrollment policies for 2024-25

2023-10-25T21:24:16+00:00

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Thousands of Indianapolis Public Schools students will see big changes next year when the district splits up more than a dozen schools, gives families a wider choice of schools, and expands the reach of its specialized academic programs.

The changes are the second part of the district’s massive Rebuilding Stronger reorganization, which seeks to bring more diverse academic programming and extracurricular activities to more students in a push for equity. The plan also seeks to stabilize enrollment amid growing competition from charter schools.

The plan could have a big impact on where families choose to enroll.

Starting in 2024-25, the district will break up 17 K-8 schools into 16 standalone elementary schools and one middle school. Other schools will switch from serving grades K-6 to K-5, and from 7-8 to 6-8.

The district is organizing its schools into four new enrollment zones encompassing different educational options. Families can apply for a spot at any of the schools located in their zone, rather than being restricted to their neighborhood school or to old school-choice boundaries.

Each zone has a mix of schools that specialize in different subjects or programs, such as arts, STEM, Montessori, International Baccalaureate, dual language, high ability, or the Reggio-Emilia approach. Some schools that do not have these specific programs are “exploratory” schools. The plan also assigns new feeder schools for these specialized schools, guiding students from elementary to middle school.

Some schools serve multiple zones.

High schools will serve all zones and will still be open to all students in the district, no matter where they live.

The first enrollment period for 2024-25 runs from Nov. 1, 2023, to Jan. 24, 2024, with results of the lottery released on Feb. 22. The second enrollment period runs from Jan. 25 through April 19, with results released on May 16.

The district has held school tours and open houses every weekday for the past month, and plans a showcase event Nov. 1 from 4 to 8 p.m. in which every school will be open for families to visit.

Here are answers to some of the big questions inspired by Chalkbeat Indiana readers about the upcoming enrollment process:

What is the easiest way for me to enroll?

The district encourages families to enroll online through Enroll Indy, which runs the lottery for IPS. Families who visit a school to enroll will still use Enroll Indy’s online application.

Will my child get transportation to any school in our zone?

Yes, families who choose a school in the zone where they live will receive transportation to and from that school. However, families who live close enough to the school to be classified as a “walker” will not receive transportation. See if you qualify as a “walker” here.

Families can apply to a school outside their zone, but IPS gives preference to students who live in the zone. Families must also provide their own transportation to a school outside of their zone beyond the 2024-25 school year.

Schools in the IPS Innovation Network may not offer transportation through IPS, and may require families to contact the school directly for transportation.

The proposed new enrollment policy talks about ‘priority groups.’ What are those, and how will they affect my chances of getting into the school I want?

The lottery gives certain groups of students preferences that can increase their chances of getting a spot in the school they want. Priority is given, in this order, to:

Students living in the IPS district
Siblings of a current student at the school
Families who live in the same zone as the school
Students who attended a closing school
Students with a guardian who is an IPS employee

My child is attending a school that will be in our zone next year. Do I need to do anything to reenroll them?

If families are happy in their current school and plan to stay there for the 2024-25 school year, they do not need to reapply or reenroll, according to the district.

What happens if the school I want in my zone is at capacity?

Families can select another school in their zone, according to the district.

When IPS unveiled the plan last year, Evan Hawkins, school board president at the time, said the district has not historically seen families crowd any one school.

My child’s new zone is different from the one in which their current school is located. Can they stay at that school next year?

Yes, families can remain at their current school until the student graduates from the school’s highest grade, according to the district.

If families are eligible for transportation at the school this year, they will be offered transportation in 2024-25, but not after that.

What happens if I want or need to transfer to another IPS school midyear?

Families who move in the middle of the school year to a different zone can apply for a seat at a school in their new zone through Enroll Indy, according to the district. Or the student can stay at their current school, provided they have their own transportation.

But students won’t be permitted to switch schools midyear for a personal preference. They would need to wait until the next enrollment period to apply to a different school.

There are exceptions, though, for students who:

Need special medical services offered by the desired school
Experience bullying at their current school
Are in physical danger due to documented issues with other students at the current school
Have a sibling who attends a special education program in the desired school

How can I easily compare school options?

IPS advises visiting Enroll Indy to preview school options.

Have a question about IPS enrollment that’s not answered? Email us at in.tips@chalkbeat.org.

Corrections and clarifications: This article has been updated to correctly note transportation options and clarify that some schools serve multiple zones. The accompanying map has also been updated to correct information on schools and add schools that were omitted.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Shaped by pandemic hardships, more Colorado college students are sticking with school

2023-10-20T01:03:46+00:00

Stephanie Araiza tries to keep the tough days at the University of Colorado Boulder in context.

Her parents struggled to earn money during the pandemic because they weren’t getting as many hours. Unlike many who could do their jobs remotely or whose work was considered essential, they didn’t have a college degree.

That’s helped Araiza, 20, a junior who is studying integrated psychology and wants to be a doctor, keep her goals in mind. It’s also helped her keep her struggles to acclimate to the academic demands and find a community at CU Boulder in perspective — none of them can compare to the difficulties her family endured during the pandemic. She wants to graduate for her family, and also to ensure she can always find work.

“I personally want to pay them back back for all the sacrifices they made, especially during the pandemic,” said Araiza.

Araiza is one of a record number of students this year sticking with school from year-to-year at CU Boulder.

In the wake of the pandemic and deep disruptions to education, fewer graduating high school students have gone to college. But recently released retention numbers show that the share of students who are sticking with college is on the rise. The improvement reflects the ways institutions like CU Boulder have put more priority on supporting students, especially students of color. It also reflects the resilience of students like Araiza after enduringing pandemic hardships.

“I do feel like they’ve done better,” Araiza said of the school.

This year, 89% of CU Boulder students stayed enrolled into their second year, according to school numbers. And 81.7% of students entered into their third year. Each are all-time highs for the school.

The focus on retention, or the ability of schools to keep students enrolled on a yearly basis, has become crucial for CU Boulder and nearly every school in the state.

College leaders worry about an upcoming enrollment cliff, or the dropoff in college-aged students that would impact enrollment numbers. Keeping students on campus keeps enrollment up. Some college leaders in Colorado also worry about competition from other universities, especially out of state, impacting their pool of applicants.

But when school leaders like those at CU Boulder focus on retention, the benefits don’t just go to the institutions.

Retention efforts most benefit students, especially students of color and from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Graduating opens up higher paying job opportunities. And students who only have some college are saddled with debt and federal labor data shows they make far less than graduates. Statewide, Colorado has over 700,000 residents with some college, but no degree.

Despite the positive overall trend at CU Boulder, the numbers show the university still hasn’t bridged the gap between students of color and white students, although the numbers improved for both groups.

About 82% of Black freshmen persisted into their sophomore year, up by 1.2 percentage points from the 2021 freshman class. Hispanic freshmen students stayed on campus into their sophomore year at a rate of 85.9%, up 4.3 percentage points from the previous class.

Meanwhile, about 91% of white students stayed enrolled into their sophomore year.

Retention rates were lower among freshmen during the 2021-22 academic year who are now juniors and spent most of their high school senior year in remote learning. About 69% of Black students and 74% of Hispanic students made it to their junior year. That’s compared to 84% of white students.

Luis Licon, a junior studying political science who is also running for CU System regent in 2024, said the school does a lot of general outreach to help students, although sometimes it’s not targeted enough to individuals who might be struggling. He’s felt the school has done a better job at recognizing the cultural backgrounds of students and making them feel like a part of campus.

“But I do feel like I can manage this, because I’ve experienced much worse,” Licon said, who at one point lived in his car.

Efforts to retain students focus on mentoring, housing

CU Boulder leaders began to take a deeper look at undergraduate retention about two years ago, because the school hadn’t historically helped enough students return every year, said Katherine Eggert, senior vice provost for academic planning and assessment.

The committee, called the The Buff Undergraduate Success Leadership Implementation Team, got school leaders talking for the first time to understand how best to support students from year to year, she said.

The committee has made some changes and plans for others. Changes in the spring included a published directory of tutoring resources and inclusive spaces. Priorities for this fall include streamlining academic advising and improving campus tutoring.

The committee also wants to make it more affordable for students from low-income backgrounds, and to refocus some support programs to provide consistent help to some students.

“The goal is just to serve our students better and that includes closing the gaps between student populations who need more help,” Eggert said. “We want everybody to have the same opportunities to succeed and if we’re not making those opportunities real we need to figure out why.”

Other Colorado schools have also increased student retention.

Fort Lewis College increased student retention from 59% last year to 63% this year among its freshmen. CSU’s retention is up by 1.4 points to 84.9%, and made strides retaining more students of color and those who are the first to go to college in their family.

Like CU Boulder, the University of Northern Colorado has also posted some of its strongest numbers. The school’s fall 2023 retention rate of 74.5% is its second-highest ever.

The school has focused heavily on student-to-student mentoring in recent years to help students with questions they have about college and how to get help, said Cedric Howard, Northern Colorado’s vice president for student affairs and enrollment services.

The school has also tried harder to address food and housing insecurity, as well mental health and anxiety, Howard said. The school wants students to feel like they belong on campus.

“I think all that has allowed students to feel that UNC is not just a place for them to learn, but it is actually a place for me to grow and develop as a person,” Howard said.

At CU Boulder, Paola Medrano, 19, a sophomore studying political science, said a sense of belonging has helped her feel like she can get to graduation. With the help of staff, she has participated in specialized programs on campus such as the McNeill Academic Program, which helps a cohort of about 400 students get academic advising, and Por La Cultura for Multicultural and Latinx students, where she’s made friends.

Like Araiza, Medrano also said the pandemic has had a big impact on her motivation to stick with college.

She watched as her parents struggled, especially her dad, who couldn’t get consistent work farming. She wants the security a college education can help provide. The pandemic made her determined to persevere.

“If I can go through that I can go through anything,” she said.

Jason Gonzales is a reporter covering higher education and the Colorado legislature. Chalkbeat Colorado partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage. Contact Jason at jgonzales@chalkbeat.org.

At one magnet school, Chicago’s bus crisis has parents grasping for options — or leaving

2023-10-13T18:14:26+00:00

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Mónica Meléndez spent the first half of the last school year driving her three kids at least an hour each way to Inter-American Magnet School in Lake View.

She felt she had no choice after the district said it would not provide transportation at the beginning of the year for two of her children.

By the time all her kids got bus service in the second semester, Meléndez was exhausted — especially on days she spent another hour driving to work.

So shortly after Chicago Public Schools announced this summer that it wouldn’t provide busing to about 5,500 eligible general education students, largely those in gifted and magnet programs, Meléndez and her husband pulled their two youngest children out of the school. It was a wrenching decision: The Spanish dual language school felt perfect for the couple, who are originally from Puerto Rico and want their children to be bilingual.

Meléndez recalls telling her husband: “Sweetie, I can’t do this anymore.” Their oldest, a seventh grader, now takes a CTA bus two hours each way.

The family’s decision illustrates one way Chicago’s school bus crisis could impact enrollment and the socioeconomic and racial diversity of the city’s magnet and gifted programs. Many of these schools were created under a federal desegregation consent decree, but have been criticized for lacking diversity and enrolling larger shares of white and Asian American students since federal oversight ended in 2009. As working-class families find it difficult or impossible to take their children far distances to school, the absence of a transportation option could segregate the schools even more.

Parents at Inter-American are looking for solutions, as other gifted and magnet programs have also sought their own alternatives to the lack of busing.

Inter-American is already seeing the impact and some families have left.

“I would be really worried about what this change would mean for the demographics for these schools and for the goals of magnet schools in Chicago more generally,” said Halley Potter, an expert on school integration policy and a senior fellow at The Century Foundation.

Parents share transportation challenges

Citing a severe driver shortage, Chicago Public Schools announced in late July that it would limit bus transportation this year to students with disabilities and those who are homeless, both groups which are legally required to receive transportation. The district is currently under state watch to make sure it’s meeting those legal requirements.

The district said it has pursued several solutions to hire more drivers, including boosting driver pay rates by $2 – to $22 to $27 an hour – and hosting hiring fairs. But as of late last month, the district still had only half the number of drivers on hand and announced that busing would not be extended to more families for the rest of the semester. The district offered CTA cards to the 5,500 children who lost busing, but as of late last month, just about 1,600 took that option.

In a statement, CPS spokesperson Samantha Hart said the district is “acutely aware” of the challenges families are facing with longer commutes.

“We are committed to continuing to work with our vendors, City partners and our families to identify solutions and ensure every eligible student has safe, secure, and reliable transportation to and from school,” Hart said.

The transportation crisis has already had a small impact on enrollment at Inter-American, where nearly half of the school’s 641 students come from low-income families. Fifty-three families were eligible for transportation at the school. As of Oct. 2, six children have transferred out of the school due to the lack of transportation, according to the district.

At least two more children transferred out after Oct. 2 because of transportation issues, said Maria Ugarte, chair of Inter-American’s Local School Council. Ugarte has also heard from many parents who are considering leaving, and she wonders how lack of busing will impact next year’s enrollment.

At a meeting last month with the school’s principal, one parent said he wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep up the commute to school. A mother shared that her commute involves taking the CTA with her three children, including a 2-year-old, every morning and evening— and doing that daily is becoming stressful.

Alexis Luna, who lives in Belmont Cragin, splits dropoff and pickup responsibilities for her third grade daughter with the girl’s father. But her daughter may have to miss school on days that the girl’s father is out of town for work, since Luna’s work schedule is inflexible and she can’t take days off.

Luna “lost everything” when her business closed during the pandemic, so she cannot afford to miss work or quit. She said she is struggling to pay for the increased gas costs.

For Rocio Meza, the lack of transportation means she can’t search for a job this year as she handles the hourlong pickup and dropoff each way at Inter-American for her 12-year-old daughter. She’s also responsible for driving her older son with disabilities to doctor’s appointments on some mornings, which sometimes makes one of the children late.

She and her husband have discussed transferring their daughter out of Inter-American – two other schools are within a few blocks of their house – but the family loves the school.

”Do I really want to do this and give up the education and experience she’s getting at Inter-American to go to another school?” Meza said.

Some attempts to find solutions at the school level haven’t come to fruition.

The school’s principal, Juan Carlos Zayas, launched a voluntary task force with parents to look for ways to ease the transportation issue. Ideas included a rideshare app and hiring a bus company on their own, according to recordings of the meetings. Both options would likely be too costly for parents, task force members said. For example, one parent found a company that would charge $158 per child this month — if the bus was full with just a couple of stops.

The district granted the school $157,000 in funding to host before- and after-school programs to accommodate more flexible pickup and dropoff times. The principal recently surveyed families for their interest and expects programming to start Oct. 23, a district spokesperson said.

Last month, Luna tried to distribute a survey to arrange carpooling for interested parents. The survey asked for information such as where their child’s old bus stop was and how many children they had. Zayas emailed Luna and several other parents that the “attempt to collect personal information” was a “clear violation” of district policy and that it was circulated to teachers without his knowledge.

District officials pointed to a CPS policy that prevents anyone from circulating ads, subscription lists, meeting invitations, books, maps, articles, or other political or commercial materials among school employees or students without approval from the principal or other district officials.

Still, some parents are trying to figure out carpool arrangements, Luna said.

Transportation woes could decrease diversity in magnet programs

During CPS board meetings, parents at magnet and gifted programs have said they are worried that the lack of transportation will most greatly impact children whose parents don’t have flexible work schedules to take young children on lengthy transit commutes or the money and time to drive them. That could force less-resourced families to transfer out of magnet programs or gifted programs or choose not to apply for them for next school year.

Once seen as a solution to the city’s segregated schools, the city’s magnet, gifted, and selective enrollment programs have been criticized for failing to achieve their diversity goals. A 2019 WBEZ analysis found that just 20% of these schools met the definition of racial diversity embedded in a now-lifted court order for Chicago to integrate its schools.

CPS uses a lottery for enrollment in magnet programs like Inter-American. Seats are offered based on the socioeconomic status of the neighborhood a student lives in. Sometimes priority is given to siblings or to students living close to the school.

Inter-American lacks racial diversity — 85% of its students this year are Hispanic, and 10% are white, according to district data. However, the school is more socioeconomically diverse, with 47% of its students coming from low-income families, still far below the district’s average of about 71%.

During one of the task force meetings, one parent expressed concern that working-class families would leave, and more local families from the surrounding affluent Lake View neighborhood would get seats — changing the face of the school.

At the same time, less transportation for magnet and gifted families could mean more students enrolling in their neighborhood schools. Bolstering neighborhood schools is a priority for Mayor Brandon Johnson.

After pulling her daughter and son out of Inter-American, Meléndez enrolled them in her local neighborhood school, Canty Elementary. There, about half of the students are Hispanic, 44% are white, and about 2% are each Black and Asian American. Just over 43% come from low-income households.

Her daughters like the school so far, Meléndez said. Canty, which is not a dual-language school like Inter-American, is just a five-minute drive away from home. But the outcome of their story is likely not the norm: In a city as segregated as Chicago, more integrated neighborhood schools like Canty are a rarity.

Potter, from The Century Foundation, said Chicago Public Schools has done “really important work” in finding ways to spur diversity in selective and magnet schools. The district’s lotteries that try to enroll students from different socioeconomic backgrounds often result in more racial diversity, too, she said.

But, Potter said, “without transportation support, a lot of that can fall apart.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools facilities proposals envision $215 million in savings

2023-10-13T11:30:00+00:00

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Draft plans from Memphis-Shelby County Schools for overhauling its aging facilities include proposals to save the district more than $200 million by repurposing 20 academic buildings and consolidating administrative offices.

MSCS officials shared the plans on Wednesday during the first meeting of a new steering committee that’s helping the district develop its buildings strategy and generate community support for it. The committee is made up of a school board member and other elected officials, and leaders from government agencies, local nonprofit organizations, and community groups.

The final plan will include school closures and consolidations. But MSCS wants the committee to help the district broaden the scope of the plan to determine new uses for the buildings that will close, improve academic programming at existing schools, and enhance the role of schools as community centers. Such an overhaul could affect students in almost every MSCS school in some way over the next 10 years.

It’s a big, complex task that will have to navigate Memphis school traditions and overcome the controversial legacy of previous consolidation plans. Success will depend on the district’s ability to build support among school board and community members, find new funding sources, and see its plan through a leadership transition that will begin next spring, when interim Superintendent Toni Williams’ tenure winds down.

For months, Williams has been promising a comprehensive facilities plan to deal with underused buildings and a growing list of deferred maintenance projects. Previous district leaders made the same promise, but their plans never fully materialized.

Williams hopes the involvement of the steering committee will set the latest effort apart. She reminded the members that they weren’t there to create “Toni’s plan.”

During the closed-door meeting Wednesday, district officials avoided naming specific schools targeted for closure, consolidation or redevelopment, concerned that doing so would provoke “emotional decisions” rather than strategic ones, Williams told the committee.

“Let’s do this together,” she said.

MSCS proposes $215 million in savings from closures, consolidations

The draft proposals shared Wednesday broadly outline a first round of potential closures and investments over the next five years, affecting some 50 schools and administrative buildings. If additional funding comes through, the impact could spread to a total of 110 buildings and properties over the next decade, or roughly half of MSCS’ sites.

The most specific elements of the district’s proposals so far involve efforts to reduce costs upfront — before seeking new funding — which the district projects would produce a saving of $215 million.

The bulk of that would come from repurposing — likely closing — 23 buildings, and eliminating nearly $110 million in estimated deferred maintenance costs. The move would free up $24 million annually in operating funds.

District officials described these plans as “academic spaces for reuse,” rather than “school closures.” No one identified the proposed 23 sites by name.

District officials offered an overview of how the broader strategy could produce changes in different parts of town. The district has used a combination of factors — enrollment, building utilization, proximity to other schools, demographic trends, deferred maintenance needs, and feeder patterns — to determine which schools to consider for proposed closure or consolidation.

Schools that are set to receive new students would get new investments, as would schools with historically low academic performance.

For the buildings that do close, the district envisions being more engaged in determining what happens to them afterward, including vetting redevelopment proposals.

“You all have an opportunity to really ask for proposals that specify impact,” said Ernest Strickland, a steering committee member who heads the Black Business Association of Memphis.

The chair of the committee, school board member Kevin Woods, added that MSCS should consider ways that reusing closed schools could generate revenue and create excitement in the community, rather than leaving a blighted, vacant site.

“I think too often, the reason that these meetings aren’t often as courageous as we need them to be is because anytime you lead with the idea of closing schools, that’s the only image” shared by news media, Woods said.

John Zeanah, director of the Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development and a former employee of the Memphis City Schools’ planning office, suggested that the district start earlier to find ways to reuse buildings, as enrollment drops below capacity.

“Let’s not wait until a building is ready to be closed to be thinking about adaptive reuse,” Zeanah said.

Another chunk of savings would come from consolidating nine of the district’s administrative buildings. This is what the district had in mind when the school board approved the purchase of the Bayer Building at 3030 Jackson Ave. in 2018 as a new district headquarters.

The consolidation would free up an estimated $65 million, counting savings on maintenance costs and proceeds from the sales of the administrative buildings. The plans did not make clear which buildings would remain, but suggested some 1,700 staffers would relocate. Currently, most of the district’s central office staff work from 160 S. Hollywood St., about 3 miles south of the Bayer Building.

Facilities overhaul hinges on funding

To execute the kind of broad, long-range strategy that it envisions, the district will need steady cooperation from the school board that carries through the expected superintendent transition this spring and summer. It will need the steering committee to remain engaged and united behind the broader objectives of optimizing the way the district uses its space. And it will need members of the community to buy in to a plan that is certain to disrupt routines and traditions in neighborhoods across the city.

But more than that, it will need money.

This summer, the Shelby County Commission approved a tax increase to help fund two new high schools in Frayser and Cordova, but those projects account for just a fraction of the district’s building needs. And the commission in recent years has approved only half the district’s requests for capital funds.

On Wednesday, Williams repeated calls for new funds from the federal government, plus the City of Memphis. Neither source is a sure bet.

The federal COVID relief aid that has helped many school districts around the country fund their construction projects is about to run out. And in Tennessee, a legislative panel is actually exploring whether the state can feasibly forgo federal education funding altogether rather than submit to the regulations that come with it.

Mayor-elect Paul Young has said he would support city funding for improved school buildings, but that would require support from the City Council. Council Chairman Martavius Jones is a former school board member who sits on the steering committee. But because of term limits, he won’t be on the council next year when Young takes over as mayor.

The district could benefit from private support through its collaboration with More for Memphis, a community development initiative spearheaded by the education-focused nonprofit Seeding Success.

“Our unique opportunity is to position this infrastructure plan at the heart of our total community redevelopment,” said Mark Sturgis, the CEO of Seeding Success. Sturgis explained how federal infrastructure goals align with the local incentives within the More for Memphis plan for community redevelopment.

More for Memphis is a five-year, $100 million investment that can be applied to this work, Sturgis said.

The final MSCS plans will reflect the results coming from an updated facilities assessment the school board approved last month. The district says its current estimate of deferred maintenance costs is $458 million, a figure that hasn’t budged much despite years of investments from Shelby County and the district.

“All this is simply a dream if we don’t have the proper resources to make it a reality,” Woods said.

Steering committee will meet again Oct. 31

The committee’s suggestions will inform meetings of subcommittees, groups that will include other board members, plus people from school campuses and the communities, MSCS leaders said.

Another steering committee meeting is set for Oct. 31. MSCS board members will be updated on the draft proposals and suggestions during a retreat scheduled for Nov. 3 and 4.

Wednesday’s committee meeting, facilitated by former politician and public relations professional Deidre Malone, was not open to the public. But a Chalkbeat Tennessee reporter learned of the meeting and attended it. No other media or members of the public were present.

Deborah Fisher, executive director for the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, said that whether the committee is subject to open-meetings laws depends on how it was created and what it’s being asked to do.

Williams announced the steering committee during a school board meeting last month.

Documents associated with the committee should be public records, Fisher said.

“Closing schools is a big deal, and sometimes needs to be done. It’s a hard decision that school districts make,” Fisher added. “So it needs to be a transparent process.”

Committee members have access to additional information that wasn’t included in the district’s slide presentation Wednesday, and will receive more data and draft proposals. Williams cautioned them against sharing details of what they received.

Who is on the Memphis-Shelby County Schools facilities steering committee?

MSCS tapped a group of 14 people to help develop its plan for improving the district’s aging buildings. They are:

Kevin Woods, Chairperson: Memphis-Shelby County Schools board member
Raumesh Akbari: State senator from Memphis and minority leader of the Senate
Darrell Cobbins: President of Universal Commercial Real Estate, Tennessee State Board of Education appointee
Miska Clay-Bibbs: Chairperson of the Shelby County Commission
Martavius Jones: Chairperson of the Memphis City Council
Reginald Milton: Deputy administrator of the Shelby County Office of Education and Youth Services
Keith Norman: Vice president of governmental affairs for Baptist Memorial Hospital
Greg Spillyards: CEO and managing director of real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield Commercial Advisors
Ernest Strickland: President and CEO of the Black Business Association of Memphis
Michelle Stuart: Director of facility planning for Memphis-Shelby County Schools
Mark Sturgis: CEO of Seeding Success
Ted Townsend: President and CEO of the Greater Memphis Chamber
Toni Williams: Interim superintendent of Memphis-Shelby County Schools
John Zeanah: Director of the Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Jeffco board votes to close two more schools amid enrollment decline

2023-10-13T02:00:20+00:00

Jeffco’s school board voted 4-1 Thursday night to close two district K-8 schools that together serve more than 500 students and have nearly 100 staff.

The two schools, Coal Creek Canyon K-8 and Arvada K-8, are the smallest of five K-8 schools in Jeffco Public Schools. Board members said that although closing schools is difficult, they worried that not closing schools would just kick the problem down the road instead of solving it.

“When you spread too thin then you leave an articulation area with just a little bit here and there, rather than really being able to concentrate those resources to the benefit of the whole area,” said board member Paula Reed, who voted in favor of closing the schools. “I believe in the end it serves the greatest good to the greatest number.”

Arvada K-8 will close at the end of this school year. When Coal Creek Canyon K-8 closes depends on whether the school board approves a charter replacement this January.

The closures, which the school district recommended in August, come amid a long-term decline in enrollment in Jeffco schools. Colorado funds school districts based on student count, and districts like Jeffco, in turn fund their schools based on enrollment as well, but small schools require extra money to maintain the basics. The district closed 16 elementary schools last year, and earlier this year approved a plan for a middle school to close at the end of this school year and merge with a high school.

Parents have publicly opposed closing Coal Creek and Arvada K-8, citing concerns about longer drives to school and the district’s budget strategy.

School board member Danielle Varda voted against the closures. Varda called the plan into question and asked for better solutions for these two schools.

“What I see is a need for a comprehensive plan for this area,” Varda said. “I lost sight of the urgency.”

The moves to close more schools at once are meant to prevent surprises, like when the district announced the closures of Allendale and Fitzmorris elementary schools in 2021 and 2022, respectively. Families had just months of notice before those closures.

The vote brings the total number of school closures in Jeffco — Colorado’s second-largest district — to 21 since 2021. Jeffco’s official enrollment last school year was 77,078 students, down from more than 86,000 in 2017-18. Additionally, the district notes that their buildings had space to serve 96,000 students, but were only serving 69,000 last year.

There are currently no plans to close any Jeffco high schools.

The resolution approved to close the schools also included an update on a plan to try to replace at least the elementary portion of Coal Creek Canyon K-8 with a charter school.

District leaders have said that although they believe it is not sustainable for them to continue operating that school, which is currently serving fewer than 100 students, they think a charter school may be more successful. They are also considering a charter school because the community in the canyon, and against the border with Boulder County, wouldn’t have many nearby Jeffco schools as options if Coal Canyon closes.

If one is approved, the district may allow the charter school to operate out of the Coal Creek Canyon building, at least to begin with. It’s rare in Colorado, outside of Denver, for a school district to share space with a charter school.

So far, the district has received letters of interest from three applicants: Jefferson Academy, Compass for Lifelong Discovery, and Sojournings Academy. All three of the applicants are proposing schools that would serve multiple grade levels beyond elementary school.

In an accelerated timeline, the board would be able to vote on whether to approve a charter application on Jan. 10 — just two days before the district’s choice enrollment window closes.

As a result, the district is suggesting that current families of Coal Creek Canyon K-8 use the choice enrollment form to select an option the district will create for a “Charter school serving Coal Creek Canyon - pending board of education authorization.” If the school board approves one of the charter applicants, then families can receive an offer from the approved school and can decide whether to accept it.

In that scenario, the district would change the attendance boundaries so that families in the canyon would otherwise be assigned to Three Creeks K-8, a 1,000 student school about 10 miles away.

If the school board doesn’t approve a charter school for Coal Canyon, then the district will delay the closure of the school’s elementary grades for one more school year. Middle school students would be educated through the district’s remote learning program during the next school year; they would have the option of being in the Coal Creek Canyon building with a staff member supervising the online learning.

Arvada K-8, one of two schools the Jeffco school board voted to close on Oct. 12, has approximately 560 students. Of those, 86% qualify for free or reduced-price lunch based on their household income.

Lawmaker makes last-minute plea for community school

Parents have spoken out against the closure of the two schools in past meetings. There were also designated hearings this month that allowed for one hour of public comment about each of the two closed schools.

In past meetings, one mother talked about how the additional 10-mile drive to another school during winter weather conditions would require a lot more than 15 minutes.

Another parent questioned the board and district’s stance that it can’t afford to subsidize or give extra money to support Coal Creek Canyon K-8, while still spending much more on increasing salaries and other projects.

The district has countered that the challenge isn’t exclusively about the district’s budget, but the resources and opportunities that schools can or can’t offer when they’re too small.

While the small schools may have some benefits that appeal to parents, Superintendent Tracy Dorland said at a previous meeting that the fewer staff a school can afford, for example, the staff who do work at them have to wear multiple hats, such as when secretaries also serve as school nurses.

Families against the closures were in attendance at Thursday’s school board meeting, but did not sign up to speak again.

Colorado Sen. Rachel Zenzinger, a Democrat, did attend Thursday and asked the school board not to close Arvada K-8 and instead to consider turning it into a community school. That’s a school model that partners with nonprofit organizations to address external factors — such as poverty, hunger, or medical issues — that affect families and children’s ability to learn.

Zenzinger pointed out that about 15% of the students at Arvada K-8 are learning English as a new language, and that the school serves as an informal newcomer center for new immigrant students in the area.

Varda noted that although the district is committing to hire bilingual staff at the schools that will receive Arvada K-8 students, that staff could be used to strengthen the school instead of closing it.

This fall, Arvada K-8 learned that it finally earned a state rating that would be high enough for it to avoid state intervention. Board members said that while they would still have to close the school, they acknowledged it’s unfair that Arvada K-8 won’t be able to truly celebrate the achievement.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools cancels this weekend’s High School Admissions Test for non-district students

2023-10-12T21:52:35+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools is canceling this weekend’s High School Admissions Test for students who are not currently enrolled in the district but are planning to apply for the city’s selective and magnet high schools.

District officials cited ongoing technical difficulties with the vendor’s testing platform.

The cancellation comes after similar issues forced the district to pause testing Wednesday, when all CPS’ roughly 24,000 eighth graders were supposed to take the exam in school.

“We are working now to reschedule all students who were scheduled to test this weekend and will share updates to families as soon as possible,” district spokesperson Samantha Hart said in a statement.

The district said it is working with the vendor, Riverside Assessments, LLC, to solve the technical problems and to provide new testing dates “for students who were impacted by the vendor’s technical issues.”

In July, the Board of Education authorized a $1.2 million no-bid contract with Riverside, in part to provide testing materials for the HSAT.

The vendor’s website Thursday included a note that it was aware schools in several regions were unable to log in or complete testing and that a team is “working around the clock to resolve this issue.”

Applications for next school year are currently due Nov. 9. In previous years, CPS has extended the deadline.

The glitches Wednesday prevented students from logging into the testing platform to take the exam, school leaders told Chalkbeat. Some students at one North Side school also encountered some Spanish words on their exam and needed teachers to translate, according to an administrator.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

As NYC middle school applications open, selective programs surge in one Brooklyn district

2023-10-11T22:51:31+00:00

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The number of middle schools across New York City using academic screens to sort fifth grade applicants continues to remain well below pre-pandemic levels — but in one Brooklyn school district, they’re growing dramatically.

This year, 78 middle school programs across 69 schools will screen applicants based on their academic records, according to Education Department data.

That was up from last year, when 59 of the city’s more than 470 middle schools selected at least some of their incoming sixth graders using their fourth grade academic performance. But it was still down when compared to pre-pandemic admissions cycles. For the 2020-21 academic year, 196 middle schools across the city screened at least some of their applicants.

The latest figures come as middle school applications opened on Wednesday.

Families and parent leaders have fiercely debated whether and how academic screens should play a role in middle school admissions. While some have called for more screened options and the inclusion of other measures of student performance, like state test scores, others warn the practice harms integration efforts in a school system that is already among the most segregated in the nation. Integration advocates add it is unfair to sort students as young as nine based on their grades.

The tension follows several years of pandemic-spurred changes to admissions, with academic screens initially paused, then brought back in some districts at the discretion of each of the city’s 32 local school district superintendents.

This year, District 20 in Brooklyn, which covers Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Borough Park, and part of Sunset Park, will more than quadruple the number of middle schools with academically screened programs. Alone, the district will be home to more than a quarter of the city’s academically screened middle school programs.

It will offer 23 academically screened programs across 14 schools — up from the three middle schools that offered screened programs last year.

Academic screens fuel debates across the city

Deciding to reinstate academic screens, or drop them, can be controversial. Debates across the city have sparked controversy this year, with parents split on many facets of the process.

District 20 is one of several across the city where the group Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, or PLACE, has established a stronghold on local parent-led Community Education Councils — with endorsed candidates winning all elected seats in the district. The group advocates for test-based and other selective school admissions.

Stephen Stowe, president of the District 20 CEC, praised the local expansion of screened programs.

“There is high demand for these programs,” he said, adding that many parents complained about long waitlists at the three district middle schools that used academic screens last year.

The “Superintendent’s Program,” a screened program adopted by about a dozen schools in the district, will align with the state’s new learning standards and offer accelerated learning in core subjects, Stowe added.

Others expressed concerns about the surge in screened programs. Nyah Berg, executive director of New York Appleseed, an organization that advocates for integrated schools, called District 20’s decision “an egregious policy to implement.”

“It’s literally a step back in time,” she said. “Trying to return to a status quo that was exclusionary and discriminatory for some of our most marginalized student groups in the city.”

“I’m enraged for the students and families in District 20 that have had opportunities potentially taken away from them, and access taken away from them, when they had just gained it for a couple of years,” Berg added.

Other districts have made smaller changes.

In District 2 — which covers broad swaths of Manhattan including TriBeCa, Greenwich Village, Gramercy, and the Upper East Side — screened programs will return to four zoned middle schools. It’s a reversal of a move last year to drop academic screens in the district, and the first time middle schools in District 2 will screen applicants based on their fourth grade academic performance since the onset of the pandemic. (Prior to the pandemic, about 18 out of 23 middle schools in the district screened at least some of their applicants.)

Schools using academic screens in admissions rank applicants based on their fourth grade GPAs in core subjects.

Families have until Dec. 8 to submit their middle school applications. Offers are expected to be released in April.

Here’s how many academically screened programs each district’s middle schools will offer. The data, provided by the city’s Education Department, does not include several arts programs across the city that rely on auditions, nor other programs that use “talent tests” to screen applicants, like computer and math, creative writing and journalism, and science programs at Mark Twain.

District 1: 1

District 2: 4

District 3: 1

District 4: 2

District 5: 3

District 6: 1

District 7: 1

District 8: 0

District 9: 1

District 10: 4

District 11: 0

District 12: 0

District 13: 0

District 14: 0

District 15: 0

District 16: 0

District 17: 4

District 18: 1

District 19: 0

District 20: 23

District 21: 0

District 22: 1

District 23: 1

District 24: 3

District 25: 3

District 26: 5

District 27: 2

District 28: 1

District 29: 5

District 30: 5

District 31: 4

District 32: 2

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools pauses High School Admissions Test amid technical problems

2023-10-11T21:43:28+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools paused the High School Admissions Test that was underway Wednesday morning due to technical problems on the testing platform, officials told principals.

“For any students currently testing successfully, they can continue and complete,” Peter Leonard, executive director of student assessment for CPS, wrote in an email to principals. “In any other case, schools should stop testing today.”

Students take the HSAT as part of admissions requirements for the city’s selective-enrollment high schools and to enroll at some schools outside of their neighborhood boundaries. On Wednesday all eighth graders were set to take the exam on computers in school. This year’s exam was set to last an hour instead of the previous 2½ hours. CPS made the change in order to “reduce anxiety for students” and increase accessibility, a spokesperson said last month.

In his note, Leonard said students who finish the test today can use their scores as they apply for high schools in GoCPS. For students who couldn’t finish, the district will share alternative testing dates “as soon as possible,” Leonard wrote.

District spokesperson Samantha Hart said in a statement that the district is working with the testing vendor to resolve the technical problems. They don’t expect any changes to this weekend’s scheduled HSAT testing for non-CPS students, Hart said.

“We recognize the stress many students and families experience when it comes to admissions testing,” Hart wrote.

The district authorized a $1.2 million no-bid contract over the summer with Riverside Assessments LLC to provide test materials for high school admissions and other placements, including gifted programs.

At one North Side school, students received error messages as they tried to log in to the testing platform, even after refreshing the page, according to an administrator at the school, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press. The school’s testing coordinator tried to call a help desk for the testing vendor but got a busy signal.

Similar problems cropped up at Brentano Elementary Math and Science Academy in Logan Square, said the school’s principal, Seth Lavin.

“They came in anxious and focused, and then they sat down, and for about an hour and a half, proctors tried to log kids into the test and they could not — and nobody knew what was going on,” Lavin said.

By the time CPS notified schools at 10:30 a.m. that it would pause the test, a handful of students were able to complete the exam at both Brentano and the North Side school.

Other students at the North Side school were finally able to log in by that time, the administrator said. But there were other issues. Some students saw words in Spanish pop up and had to ask teachers to translate, the administrator said. This is the first year the test is being offered in Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, Urdu, and Polish.

The North Side administrator called the glitches a “gross oversight” by the district, and said that it should have ensured that the system could handle tens of thousands of students taking the exam on the same day. CPS enrolled nearly 24,000 eighth graders this year, district data shows.

The administrator said all students — not just those who weren’t able to complete the exam — should be allowed to retake the test, since the process was so stressful. Students were already “very anxious” about the HSAT, this person said.

Asked about the testing issues at an unrelated press conference Wednesday, Mayor Brandon Johnson said the public school system should “not reject the hopes and aspirations and desires” of families — Black families, in particular.

“The ultimate desire is to actually build a school system that no matter where you are in the city of Chicago, that you have access to a high quality education,” he said. “I’m committed to doing just that.”

Lavin, who has criticized the district’s selective-enrollment system for being inequitable, said Wednesday’s problems underscore that the admissions system “is so fragile and arbitrary.” The exam accounts for 50% of the admissions rubric for selective-enrollment high schools.

“Kids who are 13 years old should not have a 60-minute experience that decides so much about the next four years of their life,” Lavin said.

He added, “If we are going to let some kids into some high schools and not let some kids into some high schools, we have to find a better way to do it than this.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Detroit special ed aides call for increased hourly pay

2023-10-11T15:40:40+00:00

Special education aides and paraeducators in the Detroit school district are calling for higher hourly wages as demanding workloads, staff vacancies, and inflation amid the pandemic have taxed support staff.

Members of Local 345 of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees came to Tuesday’s school board meeting to criticize the Detroit Public Schools Community District’s offers in its current negotiations with the union.

“Despite the love and passion that we all share for our students, our wages remain mediocre,” said Sheila Wilson, a special ed paraeducator at Moses Field Center. “On any given day we perform multiple roles, from being a security guard to a substitute teacher. We desperately need a raise to support ourselves and our families.”

The board on Tuesday approved contracts with other employee unions representing security officers, office employees, and school administrators. District officials also reported improvements in the number of students enrolled in college courses, and encouraging enrollment trends following Count Day last week.

Special ed aides call for increased wages

In 2021, AFSCME and DPSCD agreed to a two-year deal that increased hourly wages to roughly $15 to $17.66 for the union’s district employees, who include trainable aides, custodians, bus attendants, and food service workers. Special ed aides currently make $16 an hour.

Michelle Lee, president of AFSCME Local 345, said union members “expect the recognition of our sacrifices and dedication. However, all the district can offer us is a mere 3% to 5% increase.”

“When the world faced the daunting challenges of the COVID pandemic, it was the members of Local 345 that stepped up,” Lee said. “We put our lives and our family’s lives on the line.”

DPSCD and other Michigan school districts have struggled to recruit and retain school employees in light of statewide staffing challenges and budget cuts. In recent years, the district has hosted monthly hiring fairs for hard-to-staff positions such as security guards, cafeteria workers, and bus attendants. This past spring, the district moved to cut and consolidate hundreds of positions due to enrollment losses and the loss of federal pandemic aid.

The district has about 20 special ed paraeducator vacancies, according to Superintendent Nikolai Vitti. The district employs roughly 400 special ed paraprofessionals and aides.

DPSCD’s negotiations with AFSCME come on the heels of a one-year contract the board approved with the Detroit Federation of Teachers in September. The contract raised pay for senior teachers by 6% and provided retention bonuses to all members. In recent years, the district has prioritized improving teacher salaries to compete with neighboring districts.

In the past several weeks, the board also approved contracts with other unions for hourly employees.

AFSCME members “deserve a fair contract, or the district will continue to shed staff,” said DFT Vice President Jason Posey, and AFSCME members’ duties will fall on the shoulders of DFT members.

Crystal Lee, a DPSCD special ed teacher, said that when she was a paraprofessional at Wayne Regional Educational Service Agency 25 years ago, she made $14.51 an hour, only a dollar less than what district employees currently earn.

“That is not a livable wage for no one,” Crystal Lee said.

Vitti said the district remains committed to increasing salaries and wages for teachers and support staff. Hourly wages for special ed aides, he added, have improved from $13 at the beginning of his tenure in 2017.

Vitti did not say what the district’s current offer for special ed paraprofessionals and aides is, but said it is above Michigan’s livable wage. That would be $16.27 for an adult with no children according to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator.

“That offer is there and could possibly increase,” he said. Another bargaining session between AFSCME and DPSCD officials will take place Wednesday.

More DPSCD students flock to college-level classes

College-level course enrollment in DPSCD is back to pre-pandemic levels, following a sharp increase in the number of students seeking credit recovery over the past several years.

Fifty-five percent of high school students are currently enrolled in college and career-prep courses this year, the same percentage as the 2018-19 school year. During the 2021-22 school year, only 39% of students were enrolled.

“We’re starting to make inroads in the damage that was created by the pandemic when students were losing credit,” said Vitti.

The number of DPSCD high school students enrolled in credit recovery programs jumped from 2,742 in 2019-20 to 4,901 the following year. By 2021-22, credit recovery enrollment was 7,480, over half of the roughly 14,000 high school students the district enrolls each year.

School districts have long used credit recovery programs to give students another chance to earn course credits. However, the numbers increased in Detroit and around the country as schools tried to recover from pandemic-related disruptions that left many students off track for graduation due to failing grades, absences, and challenges with online learning.

“As we have more students catch up and (get to) where they should be as far as credits by grade level, then we opened the schedule up for more dual enrollment, more advanced placement, more international baccalaureate classes, more JROTC and general elective classes,” Vitti said.

District enrollment trend looks positive following Count Day

DPSCD student enrollment is projected to be up from this time last year, Vitti said.

The district reported that it has 47,843 students, roughly 350 more than last October. DPSCD schools, however, are still struggling to keep students. The district’s re-enrollment rate has remained roughly 70% since before the pandemic.

“We’re bringing in new students to the district, the lower grades and ninth grade in particular, which is again positive,” Vitti said. “What’s happening, though, is we’re not retaining students that are already in the district from year to year.”

That’s primarily due to the “high transiency rates of our families just moving around the city and out of the city,” he added, as well as competition with city charters and neighboring school districts.

Despite that, Detroit-area charters have consistently reported greater enrollment losses than DPSCD in recent years.

Vitti said he will give a more detailed account of the district’s enrollment trends at the November board meeting.

Ethan Bakuli is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering Detroit Public Schools Community District. Contact Ethan at ebakuli@chalkbeat.org.

Micah Walker is a reporter for BridgeDetroit, where she covers arts, culture, and education. Contact Micah at mwalker@bridgedetroit.com.

Thrival Indy Academy Innovation school to close after 2023-24 amid low enrollment

2023-10-07T00:43:55+00:00

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Thrival Indy Academy, designed to offer study abroad opportunities to students as an Indianapolis Public Schools Innovation Network high school, will close at the end of the 2023-24 school year after failing to meet enrollment targets.

The school’s board of directors voted on Friday to not renew its Innovation agreement with IPS once it expires at the end of this school year. The high school, located within Arlington Middle School, has 107 students this year who will have guaranteed spots at an IPS high school in 2024-25, according to the district.

Year after year, Thrival could not meet the enrollment targets set forth in its latest Innovation agreement, signed in 2019. This year, that target was set at 300 students.

“When we look at student numbers and enrollment, we have to ask ourselves the question of what student experience can we really give the students?” Julius Mansa, Thrival’s board chairperson, said during the meeting.

The Thrival board also voted to offer retention stipends of $10,000 for teachers and support staff and $12,000 for administrative staff who stay through the end of the school year.

“This is always the hardest decision to share as a superintendent, but I am committed to getting this transition right for Thrival students, families, and staff,” IPS Superintendent Aleesia Johnson said in a statement. “My pledge to Thrival families is that IPS will have your back every step of the way by helping you find a great IPS high school for your child next school year.”

The high school is one of the few IPS Innovation Network schools that is not a charter school. It is run by a nonprofit organization and a board of directors.

Thrival opened in 2017 as a small pilot program within IPS that allowed students to study abroad in Thailand for free. It later grew to a one-year school that only enrolled juniors.

But the school paused operations for one-year in 2019-20 as officials figured how to help students fit the one-year opportunity into four years of high school. Thrival relaunched in 2020-21 as a four-year high school, after signing a new Innovation agreement with IPS that allowed it to start with ninth graders and grow by one grade each school year.

Students were unable to travel for two school years after the pandemic, Mansa said. Last school year, students took a domestic trip. A Puerto Rico trip is planned for some students this year, he said.

Loki Lavin, a sophomore at the school, expressed concern about the transition of Thrival students into much larger schools after Friday’s meeting.

“This school is small and we’re very close-knit like a family,” Lavin said. “And I think that’s part of what makes us different.”

Mansa said he was unsure if the pandemic caused the school’s low enrollment.

“I know it’s a tough enrollment environment in general,” he said. “There’s a lot of options. Students have a lot of choices.”

The district will offer enrollment sessions for each Thrival family, IPS said in a statement.

Enrollment at IPS schools for next school year begins Nov. 1, and families can apply to schools at enrollindy.org/apply. All IPS school buildings will be open for families to visit during a showcase of schools from 4 to 8 p.m. Nov. 1.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Selective middle school admissions return to one Manhattan district after fierce debate

2023-10-05T20:16:00+00:00

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A Manhattan school district is reversing course, allowing some schools to screen middle school applicants for accelerated programs in the upcoming admissions cycle, according to a letter its superintendent sent to families this week.

It’s the first time middle schools in District 2 will screen applicants based on their fourth grade academic performance since the onset of the pandemic, when the city paused academic screens for middle schools.

Selective admissions for New York City’s 10-year-olds were later reinstated for this year’s incoming sixth graders in some districts, but at dramatically reduced rates.

Instead of a blanket approach across the city, schools Chancellor David Banks last year tasked superintendents of the city’s 32 local school districts to work with their communities to decide their middle school admissions guidelines. Manhattan’s District 2, along with about nine other districts that previously used selective admissions at some of its middle schools, opted to ditch screens.

This year, once again, the chancellor tapped superintendents to choose their admissions policies. The Education Department has yet to share the decisions of districts across the five boroughs.

Changes to middle school admissions have sparked debate across the city, particularly in District 2 — one of the city’s most affluent school districts, spanning such neighborhoods as TriBeCa, Greenwich Village, Gramercy, and the Upper East Side. Some families argue the elimination of screens reduces academic rigor in some classrooms, while others say practices like screened admissions harm integration efforts in a school system that remains among the most segregated in the nation.

District 2’s decision to drop screens last year spurred some ire in the area, where the group Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, or PLACE, has a foothold on the district’s parent-led Community Education Council — with endorsed candidates winning seven of the 10 elected seats. The group advocates for test-based and other selective school admissions.

For this year’s admissions cycle, which starts next week, District 2 will offer programs that select students based on grades at four zoned middle schools, Superintendent Kelly McGuire said in the Oct. 3 letter to families.

The four schools are the Sun Yat Sen Middle School (M.S. 131), Wagner Middle School (M.S. 167), 75 Morton (M.S. 297), and Baruch Middle School (M.S. 104), according to the letter.

“Over the past several months we have spoken with District 2 parents and families about middle school admissions,” McGuire said in the letter. “While there is a wide diversity of perspectives across our district, we have developed a plan that offers pathways for accelerated learning through screened programs, maintained sibling priority, and ensured that all students have access to every District 2 middle school.”

The programs would offer accelerated learning in core subjects, McGuire said. Several non-zoned schools in the district also offer accelerated academics and a pathway to Regents-level coursework, he added.

Students applying to the four schools can include the general program and/or the screened program on their child’s middle school application, according to the letter.

Schools using academic screens in admissions rank 10-year-olds based on their fourth grade GPAs in core subjects.

Parent council pushes for more academic screening

During a September meeting, some members of the district’s Community Education Council urged the district to reinstate academic screens at middle schools that had used them prior to the pandemic. About 18 out of 23 middle schools in the district screened at least some segment of their applicants for the 2020-21 school year, according to city data.

Leonard Silverman, president of the council, called the district’s decision “a good start.”

“If it comes down to four over nothing, we’ll take four,” he said. “This was the culmination of a lot of advocacy, and fighting, and pushing, and prodding, and parents letting their voices be heard.”

Some details about the screened programs remained unclear, he said, like how many seats they’ll have.

“I hope we’ll continue to expand these types of programs to meet the needs of all students — not just the higher performing students, but to slot kids into where they are academically,” Silverman said.

Silverman said he wished there had been more engagement with families in the district, adding he worried some parents had left district schools over a lack of screened middle school options.

A letter the education council sent to the superintendent last month also called for state test scores to be considered in the admissions process, arguing grades are too subjective a measure. But others contest the claim that state test scores are an objective measure.

Nyah Berg, executive director of New York Appleseed, an organization that advocates for integrated schools, said the district’s decision was “disappointing.”

“You’re talking about judging the educational attainment of students that are as young as 9 years old,” she said. “To narrowly put them on a track at that age, I think, is just fundamentally inappropriate for learning, for teaching — and it’s essentially a gatekeeping tool that can create haves and have-nots.”

Though just four schools in the district will see academic screens reinstated in this year’s admissions cycle, Berg remains concerned about its potential impact, particularly as it can take years to understand the effects of a policy change.

“I’m very wary of chipping away at progressive policies,” she said. “Whether we’re going backwards at a lightning speed or at a slower pace, it still means that we’re going backwards.”

The city’s Education Department has said middle school admissions will broadly operate the same as last year, though this week declined to provide specific information for each district.

Applications open on Oct. 11, giving families until Dec. 8 to submit. Offers are expected to be released in April.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

CUNY sees slight enrollment uptick, but big challenges remain

2023-10-03T22:49:28+00:00

A yearslong pandemic-fueled enrollment decline at the City University of New York may finally be starting to level off, according to preliminary figures released Tuesday.

Enrollment in the city’s network of public colleges — like that at many colleges across the country — had been in freefall since the start of the COVID pandemic, dropping 17% from roughly 271,000 in 2019-20 to about 226,000 last school year, according to city figures.

The losses in CUNY’s community colleges, which enroll greater shares of low-income, Black and Latino students, have been even steeper, falling by 26% over four years.

But that trend may finally be tapering off. Overall undergraduate student enrollment is up about 2% from last year, with the new freshmen classes bigger than last year’s counterparts, according to preliminary enrollment data from CUNY.

“Enrollment might just sound like a lot of numbers, but it’s fundamental,” said Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez during his State of CUNY address Tuesday. “It’s a tangible measure of how well we’re delivering on our core mission of providing access to a first-rate education to everyone in our city.”

He added: “We have a reason to believe we have turned a corner.”

But even with the modest increases this year, CUNY’s enrollment remains far below pre-pandemic numbers, reflecting a seismic shift in recent years in college enrollment across the country.

The economic pressures of the pandemic, the ongoing burdens of student debt, and shifting perspectives on the value of college have combined to take a massive bite out of college enrollment nationwide.

New York City hasn’t escaped that pattern.

After a decade of rising college enrollment rates, the percentage of New York City public high school graduates entering college or other postsecondary programs dropped from nearly 81% in 2019 to 71% in 2021, the most recent year for which data is available.

The declines were even steeper for Black, Latino, and male students, who enrolled in college at a lower rate to begin with.

“I’m definitely also noticing a rise in interest in non-college options,” said Danielle Insel, the director of postsecondary readiness at Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women in Brooklyn. “I definitely think there’s economic pressure, and I do think there’s some kind of societal shift in what their futures can look like… I think they’re so exhausted by school, so drained that the idea of more college is overwhelming to them.”

Enrollment in the city’s public universities is an important indicator of the city’s overall economic health. CUNY’s colleges are unusually effective at lifting students from low-income families into middle class jobs, and the majority of jobs posted in New York City still require a bachelor’s degree.

More than 80% of CUNY freshmen are New York City public high school graduates, making the relationship between the two systems a critical part of any effort to boost college enrollment.

CUNY, NYC’s Education Department seek to strengthen partnership

The day before his speech, Matos Rodriguez and Banks touted a joint initiative to send each senior expected to graduate from a New York City public high school a personalized acceptance letter indicating they had a spot at CUNY if they wanted it and inviting them to apply.

That’s not a change in admissions policy — CUNY’s community colleges have long had open admissions for high school graduates — but it could help give a recent graduate waffling about starting college an extra bit of motivation, the two leaders argued.

Multiple experts who have studied similar interventions said the effort will likely have a small impact, at best. But given the ease of distributing the letters, even a tiny bump could be worthwhile. Guidance counselors began handing them out this week, and students may also receive them via email.

“A lot of these types of nudges are cost effective not because they’re hugely effective but because they’re low on cost,” said Philip Oreopoulos, an economics professor at the University of Toronto who has studied similar efforts. “I think for some [students] it’s likely to make a difference.”

Other experts noted that the effectiveness of the letters hinge on the specific barriers students face.

“Maybe a small piece of information can be really motivating, particularly for families who are unaware this [admissions] guarantee already exists for them,” said Oded Gurantz, a professor at the University of Colorado–Boulder who studied an unsuccessful effort by the College Board to reduce roadblocks in the college application process. “If the barrier is costs, then sending the letter is unlikely to produce a big benefit.”

CUNY is also waiving application fees for New York City high school seniors, a move that is immensely helpful in convincing reticent students to submit CUNY applications, said Insel, from the Brooklyn high school.

Affordability takes center stage

For students who do decide to enroll in CUNY, the system’s affordability often takes center stage in their calculations.

CUNY’s tuition runs just under $3,500 a semester for state residents at four-year colleges and $2,400 a semester for New Yorkers at community colleges. Roughly two-thirds of CUNY students pay no tuition because of a combination of state and federal financial aid, and 75% graduate with no debt, according to the university. CUNY forgave roughly $100 million in debt accrued during the pandemic.

For recent Queens high school graduate Paul Blake, enrolling at CUNY’s Queensborough Community College was a way to enter a nursing program while avoiding the extra costs of room and board.

“I always knew I didn’t want to go out of state, it costs a lot and I felt with CUNY, I’d be closer to home,” said Blake, who hopes to either transfer to a four-year college or transition directly into work after completing his nursing program.

Elizabeth Nicotra, who graduated from Tottenville High School in Staten Island last spring, got into SUNY Cortland — the school that was initially her top choice — but ended up choosing Macaulay Honors College at CUNY’s College of Staten Island because it offers free tuition.

“Why would you choose debt over free college, especially when the program at Macaulay is so amazing,” said Nicotra, who hopes to be a physical education teacher or physical therapist.

CUNY officials are trying to spread the word about the affordability of their programs, and recently launched an ad campaign called “Degrees Without the Debt.”

CUNY’s recent expansion of online programs could also be a helpful way to lure in students not ready for a traditional college experience, Insel believes.

“I think now they’re recognizing that people want to do college in different way,” she said.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Migrant students boosting Denver Public Schools’ enrollment after years of declines

2023-10-03T21:17:52+00:00

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Newly arrived migrant students are boosting Denver Public Schools’ enrollment this fall, especially at the elementary school level.

The spike follows a years-long decline in enrollment in DPS, which is still Colorado’s largest school district with about 89,000 students last year. The enrollment decreases have been so steep that Superintendent Alex Marrero recommended closing 10 schools at the end of last school year, though the school board agreed to close only three.

While this boost in enrollment will mean more per-pupil state funding for DPS this year, and likely more funding targeted to help English language learners next year, district staff and school board members acknowledged the enrollment increase could be temporary.

“We don’t know how many of these students are going to stay for how long,” board member Scott Esserman said at a meeting of the board’s finance committee Monday.

More than 1,470 new students from another country enrolled in DPS between July and September this year, according to a presentation by district staff at Monday’s meeting. That’s 76% more students from other countries than last year.

Elementary schools are receiving the most students, with 747 new elementary-age students coming from other countries to DPS this summer and fall.

About a third of all the new students are from three countries: Venezuela, Mexico, and Colombia. That aligns with the increase in new migrants arriving by bus in Denver this fall, many from Venezuela. Over the past week, an average of nearly 300 migrants have arrived in the city each day, according to a press release from city officials Monday.

City officials are working to temporarily house newly arrived families, and DPS teachers have been scrambling to help when families’ assistance runs out. On Monday, Denver Human Services extended the time that migrant families can stay in city-provided shelter to 37 days, a week longer than before. That change takes effect Wednesday.

Some DPS schools, especially those with dedicated programming and classrooms for Spanish-speaking students, are receiving more newly arrived students than others.

The schools that have received the most are Lena Archuleta Elementary, Ashley Elementary, Bryant Webster Dual Language School, McMeen Elementary, Place Bridge Academy, Denver Green School Southeast, Hamilton Middle School, George Washington High, Thomas Jefferson High, and Abraham Lincoln High, according to the presentation.

Russell Ramsey, the district’s executive director of enrollment and campus planning, told the committee Monday that the boost in students has swelled some class sizes.

“As classes get close to the red alert of 35 or 36 (students), this is when we’re taking schools within the (enrollment) zone or schools nearby and trying to really assess where we have a place and space to make sure our classes are not getting too big,” Ramsey said.

Even though school budgets are based on enrollment projections made by DPS the previous spring, schools that are unexpectedly enrolling more students this fall are getting extra per-pupil funding through a budgeting process DPS calls its fall adjustment, district officials said. The official student count day for state funding was earlier this week.

School board member Scott Baldermann noted that migrant students may need extra support in school to deal with the trauma they’ve experienced or to learn a second language. District staff said state and federal funding targeted at helping English language learners is a year delayed, meaning that this year’s funding is based on last year’s student counts.

“I’m incredibly proud of the district for supporting the students new to the country,” Baldermann said.

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Michigan school districts brace for Count Day ahead of ESSER spending cliff

2023-10-02T21:31:14+00:00

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Wednesday’s official student headcount for Michigan schools could be more crucial than ever, as districts where enrollment has declined since the pandemic began are now facing the expiration of federal COVID relief.

The federal aid known as Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER, helped schools weather the pandemic in several ways. Some districts used a portion of that aid to cushion the fiscal blow from enrollment losses. But ESSER funds will run out in September 2024, and in response, districts could be forced into some budget cuts in the near future as long-term enrollment drops persist.

The stakes are high across the nation, including in Michigan, where the pandemic accounted for more than half of the 9% decline in statewide student enrollment over the past decade, according to a Chalkbeat analysis. In Michigan, where enrollment is tied to school funding, each student leaving local public schools could cost a district nearly $10,000 in annual funding without the backstop of COVID aid.

The end of ESSER funding could be especially challenging for high-poverty districts, which have typically received more federal relief and spent their funds at a slower pace than their more affluent counterparts.

And the end of federal COVID relief is approaching as students continue to struggle, both academically and emotionally, from the pandemic.

The end of ESSER money could on its own drive down funding significantly in many districts in Michigan and elsewhere. A national analysis estimates that on average, the loss of the federal pandemic funding will cause a drop in revenue of about $1,000 per student.

“There’s certainly more question marks than there are exclamation points at this point when it comes to where this is going to go,” said Robert McCann, executive director of K-12 Alliance, an organization that represents school superintendents across Michigan. “Every superintendent right now is looking at their budget, and trying to figure out how to best maintain some of those programs that were created during the pandemic.”

Michigan enrollment declines exacerbate spending cliff

School systems across Michigan were provided roughly $6 billion through ESSER that districts used for a variety of programming families wanted. Districts like Flint Community Schools that lost students throughout the pandemic also used ESSER funding to counteract the loss of state aid that followed enrollment declines.

No more ESSER dollars means Flint and other districts can only rely on that strategy for so long. Although that funding hasn’t run out yet, districts will use Wednesday’s student count to help determine their budgets for the 2024-25 school year.

COVID funding “has allowed us to have a fund balance to cushion us for the next couple of years,” said Kevelin Jones, Flint’s superintendent.

“We need every dime that we can get our hands on,” Jones said. “When you’re losing 50 to 100 students every year, it means that we can not properly staff and meet the needs of every one of our scholars.”

Jones added: “Once this fund balance is gone, we are back in the same situation that we were in prior to the pandemic of being in the red.”

The district has lost 66% of its student population, or roughly 5,700 students, in the past decade.

Alena Zachery-Ross, who has led Ypsilanti Community Schools since 2018, said high-poverty districts like hers are in dire straits. Ypsilanti saw a 280-student dip in K-12 enrollment at the start of the 2020-21 school year. The district is also still making up for the loss of students who left for neighboring districts in the wake of a district consolidation in 2013.

“For those of us who really need that additional support, who benefit by having social workers in every building, instructional coaches in every building, climate and culture coaches in every building, we use those [Count Day] dollars to provide those extra supports that are needed,” said Zachery-Ross.

Michigan counts students on two official days during the school year, this Wednesday and Feb. 7. District principals have led a daily attendance campaign in anticipation of Wednesday, and have sent letters home to families reminding them of Count Day’s significance.

Budget cuts can be especially challenging in districts that used ESSER money to maintain staff and programming that they would not have been able to afford otherwise.

This summer, the Detroit Public Schools Community District, Michigan’s largest school district, moved to cut and consolidate central office and support staff to make up for a loss of 2,000 students during the pandemic. DPSCD enrolled roughly 50,000 students pre-pandemic.

Heading into Wednesday, DPSCD is budgeting for at least 48,200 students, according to Superintendent Nikolai Vitti. The district is tasking its principals with creating their own Count Day plans, and they have received additional funding for those activities.

“You really go to any school during Count Day, you will see something different happening,” Vitti said at a DSPCD meeting on Monday. “We have to be realistic with how that drives funding and to make that a unique type of day for students.”

In some places, the cuts could extend beyond staff and programming. Districts like Flint and Grand Rapids Public Schools, where there’s been a 20% drop in enrollment over the past decade, have recently weighed whether to close underutilized schools in the coming years.

Some school leaders with rosier enrollment statistics or projections argue the ESSER spending cliff is no more daunting than the challenges cash-strapped districts have contended with before.

For the first time in over a decade, Coloma Community Schools may see a bump in enrollment according to preliminary figures ahead of Count Day, said Superintendent Dave Ehlers, who leads the rural, high-poverty school district on the shore of Lake Michigan.

The end of ESSER, he said, won’t come as much of a loss for his district, which enrolls roughly 1,300 students. Most of the district’s dollars went toward providing new technologies and social-emotional learning.

“I think we’re gonna be in a good spot,” Ehlers said. “We’ve invested well and made sure that we did good things with it, but we’re prepared to go with our regular school budget and be okay.”

Stiles Simmons, superintendent of Westwood Community Schools outside of Detroit, said financial belt-tightening has kept the district of nearly 1,500 students afloat amid previous enrollment losses. This past year, when the district gained 91 students, the district’s corresponding increase in state aid went directly to build up the district’s general fund balance.

How badly districts are faring enrollment-wise may also guide lawmakers’ decisions regarding next year’s school aid budget.

This summer, lawmakers approved a $21.5 billion budget that raised the state’s per-student allowance by nearly $500 and boosted funding for at-risk students and special ed services.

“What we’re hoping is that the legislature is going to look at that budget that got passed this year and say ‘That needs to be the baseline going forward, not an exception that we’re going to start scaling back from,’” McCann of K-12 Alliance said.

Ethan Bakuli is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering Detroit Public Schools Community District. Contact Ethan at ebakuli@chalkbeat.org.

Denver teachers scramble to help as migrant students face loss of housing

2023-09-29T20:50:43+00:00

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Editor’s note: On Monday, Denver Human Services extended the time that families can stay in city-provided shelter to 37 days, a week longer than previously. The change applies to people who arrive on or after Oct. 4. However, due to the large number of people arriving daily, individuals without children will get to stay in city-provided shelter for just 14 days, a week less than before.

As the number of migrants arriving daily in Denver rises, schools are starting to see a significant number of new students. And educators are worried about how to help them as migrant families encounter the limits of official support.

At Denver’s Bryant Webster Dual Language School, some teachers report classes of 38 students — a lot higher than last year. A teacher who screens students for whom English is not their home language has had to screen 60 students this year — up from a handful in typical years. And they’re trying to help students as they’re dealing with trauma, learning how to navigate a new country and a new school system.

“You work the whole day and you just want to make sure you do the best with the resources you have and so you build relationships with kids, and you have the connection to them,” said Alex Nelson, a fourth grade teacher at Bryant Webster. “Then you find out their story.”

Students who arrived near the start of the school year and were starting to settle in are facing a new challenge and a new trauma. Families get just 30 days in either a hotel or shelter paid for by the city. But then they have to find another place to live. In a city with soaring rents where many longtime residents also struggle to find housing, new arrivals sometimes find themselves with nowhere to go.

The first time a migrant family with children at Bryant Webster ran out of time on its housing voucher, teachers and a school intern spent hours calling shelters and everyone they could think of to try to find a place for the family to stay. They encountered waitlists and a lot of dead ends.

“We didn’t know what happened after the voucher expired until one of the new families said ‘our stay is up, and we don’t know where to go tonight,’” Nelson said. “We’ve never been prepared so we didn’t know how to handle it.”

The family ended up leaving to spend the night in a car, though Nelson said district officials were able to connect with them later that evening. Still, Nelson said it was really hard on the entire school to end the day that way.

Like in New York City schools and other districts nationwide, Denver school officials are on the frontline receiving requests from migrant families for help. In Denver, some teachers are just starting to connect their efforts with nonprofits, through the teachers union, and with other organizations, but coordination is still sporadic.

And even when working together, there are daunting obstacles. After the limited duration of city vouchers for migrants, the different social services available have different rules that can create confusion about what might jeopardize migrants’ legal standing. And the potential overlap between help for migrants and support for the city’s homeless population is something Denver officials are trying to avoid.

After helping the first Bryant Webster family, teachers heard from more families in the same situation. Some organizations are helping, but each time a new family comes forward, teachers worry if they’ll be able to find them assistance. At least three more are slated to lose their shelter this weekend.

“You can just feel the kids are stressed. It disrupts everything,” said Cecilia Quintanilla, an early childhood teacher at the school.

Denver has seen up to 250 migrants arriving per day this week, but it’s unclear how many are children.

Schools join Denver effort to help migrants find stability

Right now, it’s hard to track how widespread the surge of migrants in schools really is.

District officials in Denver did not respond to requests for comment. Teachers at Bryant Webster believe they’ve had around 60 newcomers arrive after the first day of school and counting. Other school districts in the state are also reporting surges of newcomers, the term schools use to refer to students arriving from outside the U.S., in the last few months.

The Colorado Department of Education doesn’t track those numbers and officials said they have not been asked to provide support to schools dealing with these surges.

Denver officials said that as of last week the city was currently sheltering 456 children under age 16. The city has seen up to 250 new individuals arriving per day this week, but numbers for children aren’t available for this week.

At another Denver school, Escuela Valdez, teacher Jessica Dominguez estimates they’ve received about 20 newcomer students this year. This week, they learned about a family that had already been sleeping outdoors after losing their shelter. Educators stayed up late into the night trying to find them a place to stay and ultimately were successful. But that may not always be the case.

“Kids are being involved now,” she said. “That puts a different face to what we might think is homelessness.”

Dominguez isn’t the only person who feels that way. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, a former educator, said at a press conference Thursday that he has seen kids sleeping under blankets with families outside the city’s Wellington Webb building as they wait for staff to show up so they can ask for help.

“No kid should be in that context,” Johnston said.

Early that same day, at a migrant reception center in northeast Denver, a steady stream of men, women, and children arrived for processing. The official hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., but staff often start earlier and stay until everyone has somewhere to go.

Some arrivals have family in the Denver area and ask to come here or even make their own way. Others get on buses in El Paso regardless of destination and then need to make a plan.

They’ve already made a hazardous journey and overcome many obstacles to leave behind dangerous situations in their home countries.

Jon Ewing, a spokesman for Denver Human Services, said the arrivals are smart, resourceful, and well-organized.

City workers collect basic information about the new arrivals, provide contact information for relevant social services and direct them to shelter. Individuals are eligible for 21 days of free shelter and families are eligible for 30 days. The city isn’t tracking what happens after that.

“Thirty days is not a long time to sort out your life, and we get that,” Ewing said. “But we have to move people through. There is a limit to what we are able to do.”

Ewing said city staff are working to coordinate as best they can between nonprofits, city services, and the school district — there are large group chats buzzing all day.

Ewing said the city tries to make sure people understand how expensive Denver is so they can make informed decisions. But they may have good reasons for wanting to stay here.

Ewing said the migrant and homeless populations are very different and face different challenges. New arrivals are never directed to homeless shelters, and many services are provided through different channels in order to be responsive to each group’s needs.

There are also different funding sources with different rules, when it comes to providing services for U.S. citizens and residents experiencing homelessness, versus migrants seeking asylum or another protected status.

Then there are legal concerns. Cathy Alderman, chief communications and public policy officer for the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, said that organizations like hers are also concerned about inadvertently providing resources that would then make people ineligible for earning legal status — a common worry they hear from migrants, and one that Alderman and her team don’t have enough expertise to help navigate.

Still, she said that some of the migrant families might qualify for housing assistance from the coalition, but qualifying takes time.

“The problem is we have so many in the system right now waiting for housing,” Alderman said. “That system makes housing matches based on vulnerabilities. It’s a process. It certainly doesn’t move fast.”

She said that another problem for families is finding affordable housing with multiple bedrooms. Longer term vouchers, such as Section 8 vouchers, often don’t cover a large portion of the rents people might encounter in Denver.

“In Denver specifically we have a very, very, very minimal stock of really affordable housing,” she said. “We have a lot of market rate and luxury units that are sitting empty.”

With all the challenges migrant students and their families are confronting, teachers say they appreciate that so many are working to help. But they also wish they were more prepared to help students and families who come to them with such big worries.

“We don’t have what we need to welcome these families to the better life that they were searching for,” said Nelson, the teacher at Bryant Webster. “It’s just really hard to see the consequences of that.”

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Bureau Chief Erica Meltzer covers education policy and politics and oversees Chalkbeat Colorado’s education coverage. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Applying to NYC’s screened high schools? Selection criteria remains unchanged

2023-09-28T17:04:08+00:00

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Eighth grade families eyeing New York City’s selective screened high schools take note: Applicants will once again be sorted into different priority groups based on their seventh grade GPAs in core subjects.

This year’s groupings are nearly unchanged from last year’s, according to the Education Department’s website.

The updated guidance, released Thursday, comes just days before applications open on Oct. 3.

The city’s months-long high school application process is notoriously complex, often spiking anxiety and confusion among families. It can at times feel inequitable, too, as families with more time and resources are able to better navigate the more than 700 programs across New York City’s 400 schools, parents say.

The criteria used to determine priority groups has been the subject of some controversy, with some families pushing for state test scores to be reinstated in sorting the city’s 13-year-olds. But test scores will continue to be excluded from the process.

This year, the process for screened schools will operate much the same as the last cycle, though the citywide grade averages required to sort students into each group are slightly different. Applicants can qualify for a group based on either a citywide or school threshold.

Here’s how students will be grouped this year:

Group 1: Those with final seventh grade course grades with an average of at least 94 qualify for the citywide threshold, as do students who are in the top 15% of their school, with an average of at least 90.
Group 2: Those with an average of at least a 89.66 average qualify for the citywide threshold (if they’re not in Group 1), as do those in the top 30% of their school with an average of at least 80.
Group 3: Those with an 82.75 average qualify for the citywide threshold, along with those in the top 50% of their school with an average of at least 75.
Group 4: Those with a 76.33 average qualify for the citywide threshold, along with those with seventh grade course grades in the top 70% of their school with an average at least 65.
All others will be in Group 5.

When there are more applicants in a priority group than seats available at a particular school, admissions decisions will be made based on each applicant’s random number — often referred to as a lottery number.

Those numbers will be available to families in their MySchools account on or after Oct. 3. Admissions consultants have warned against placing too much weight on them.

“Your lottery number isn’t your fate,” said Joyce Szuflita, a Brooklyn-based admissions consultant who runs NYC School Help.

Instead, it’s one part of a complex matching process with many variables, she said. And a worse lottery number doesn’t necessarily equate to not getting into a school an applicant might prefer.

“Somebody’s number eight choice is somebody else’s number one choice,” she added.

Some high schools may also require applicants to complete an additional assessment, like an essay. At such schools, the impact of the random number on admissions is further reduced.

Screened schools also set aside a number of seats for students with disabilities. Those seats are filled separately from the general education pool but follow the same priority groups among applicants with disabilities.

More than 40 selective schools also participate in a diversity initiative, setting aside a certain number of seats to students who are low-income, English language learners, or live in temporary housing. Again, those seats are filled following the same priority groups among applicants who qualify for the seats.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

To boost public school enrollment, NYC proposes $21 million ad campaign

2023-09-27T22:32:13+00:00

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New York City’s Education Department is seeking approval to spend $21 million over the next two years on an ad campaign to give families information about enrolling in public schools amid a steep decline in student headcount, according to city records.

The proposed contracts, which the city’s Panel for Educational Policy is expected to vote on Thursday, would pay an estimated $10.6 million a year over the next two years to four separate companies to create ads posted in buses and subways, bus shelters, phone kiosks, and small businesses.

The contract proposal cites systemwide enrollment losses due to the COVID pandemic and says “the advertising campaign aims to ensure that families are fully aware of the available enrollment options from 3K through High School.”

Paid ads also provide critical information to families about free meals programs, Summer Rising, and how to access information in languages other than English, said Education Department spokesperson Chyann Tull.

The city’s K-12 public school enrollment fell by more than 120,000 over the past five years, according to city figures. Enrollment in pre-kindergarten classes is also down significantly, and the city’s program for 3-year-olds has thousands of empty seats.

Schools Chancellor David Banks has repeatedly said that “winning back” families is a priority of his administration, and an Education Department spokesperson said “our communities called on us to do more marketing to get more families back into New York City Public Schools.” But some members of the Panel for Educational Policy are raising concerns about the effectiveness of ad campaigns as an enrollment strategy — and whether they’re the best use of city funds.

“I think it’s outrageously wasteful in terms of the money,” said panel member Effi Zakary at a Sept. 18 meeting of the contracts committee. “We need to at the very least see what was the effectiveness of previous advertisement efforts.”

Ad campaigns have been a staple of the city Education Department’s outreach efforts for years. Many private schools and charter schools, which have also struggled with enrollment during the pandemic, also aggressively advertise.

The department previously inked upwards of $13 million in contracts with the same four companies between 2019 and 2021, according to a review of city contracts. An Education Department spokesperson didn’t say exactly how much the city spent on the previous round of ad campaigns.

When the Education Department began rolling out its universal pre-K program in 2014, ads for the new program were ubiquitous, recalled Gregory Brender, the chief policy and innovation officer at the Day Care Council.

Education Department officials say ad campaigns are “both cost-effective in their outreach” and “quantifiable” in their impact, according to the contract proposal.

But they didn’t share such data publicly, and panel members said they’ve received few concrete details to indicate how effective those campaigns were.

“I have a hard time with the fact we’ve never really reviewed what our marketing, communication, advertising, has actually impacted in results,” said Sherée Gibson, a Queens panel member with a background in marketing, at the contract committee hearing.

Education Department officials told the panel members they would offer a special briefing on the contract before Thursday’s meeting, panel members said.

Jasmine Lake, a representative from the Education Department’s Family and Community Engagement office, or FACE, said the agency receives some high-level data from vendors on metrics like how many people walk by a given bus shelter where an ad is placed. The department is working on getting more granular data, including how many people used a QR code from a specific ad, as a way to target the ads more effectively, she said.

The goal of the upcoming ad campaign is to “increase in-person and digital traffic at enrollment centers and continue to provide greater admissions transparency,” according to the proposal.

FACE, the office that will largely coordinate the ad campaigns, has been roiled by internal tensions following its administration of the recent elections for Community Education Councils, which yielded a voter turnout of roughly 2%.

The enrollment challenges facing the city’s public schools are stark: in addition to the K-12 roster declines, enrollment in the widely lauded free pre-K program has shrunk by roughly 11,000 students over the course of the pandemic, and the recently expanded 3-K program had roughly 16,000 unfilled seats as of last year, according to Education Department estimates.

Many of the forces driving the enrollment declines are likely outside of the Education Department’s control.

The city’s birth rate began dropping long before the pandemic. Nearly 60,000 public school students left New York City altogether during the 2021-22 school year, a far greater number than in previous years. Many of those families departed for areas with far lower cost-of-living, according to Education Department data.

The agency’s official account on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, sent out a message Tuesday warning that “if people can’t afford to live in New York City, they can’t send their kids to New York City Public Schools.”

Still, spreading the word about how to enroll in city schools can be a helpful first step, especially at the early childhood level where some families may still not know about the city’s free options. The city is also receiving an influx of asylum-seeking families, some of whom may not know they have the option to enroll their kids in school or how to do it.

“Generally, I think you need to approach it in multiple ways and advertising is one of them,” said Brender of efforts to boost enrollment in early childhood programs.

But he cautioned that the city will need to expand its efforts far beyond advertising in order to improve the enrollment process. Brender’s organization has recommended empowering community-based organizations that have existing relationships with families to enroll children in pre-K, rather than managing the process centrally.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

NYC’s complex high school admissions process opens Oct. 3. Here’s what families should know.

2023-09-28T17:09:08+00:00

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The new school year has barely begun, and already New York City’s notoriously complex (and often controversial) high school admissions process kicks off next week, lasting through early December.

The process can be daunting for the tens of thousands of eighth grade families applying to public high schools, and economic and racial diversity concerns remain at the city’s most selective schools.

Last year, nearly half of the city’s eighth grade applicants were admitted to their top choice school, while about 75% were admitted to one of their top three picks. About 95% of applicants were admitted to one of the 12 schools they ranked in their application, according to city data.

The months-long process can lead to heightened levels of anxiety and confusion for families. It often feels inequitable, with families who have the time and resources to devote to the process having an upper hand, parents say.

Details about tours and application requirements can vary from school to school, and information posted online can at times be slow to update. Meanwhile, the roughly two-month timeline and wide array of options, with more than 700 programs at over 400 schools, add further stress to the equation.

Joyce Szuflita, a Brooklyn-based admissions consultant who runs NYC School Help, called it “a scavenger hunt with too little time.”

For families who are going through the middle and high school application process simultaneously, it can feel even more overwhelming. “How can those families not blow a gasket?” she said.

When do applications open? What is the deadline for high school applications in NYC?

The city’s high school application process is expected to open on Oct. 3.

Registration opens the same day for the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test, or SHSAT — the sole metric by which eight of the city’s prestigious specialized high schools admit students.

The test will take place during the school day at public schools, with additional weekend test dates available for public school students, 9th grade testers, and charter/non-public school testers, according to Education Department officials.

Families will have until Oct. 27 to register for the SHSAT.

High school applications will remain open until Dec. 1, with offers set to release on March 7.

Meanwhile, middle school admissions are staggered by about a week, with applications opening Oct. 11 and closing Dec. 8. Middle school offers are expected to be released on April 3.

The city’s Education Department will hold several virtual admissions events in October. Many schools list their open houses and tours on the city’s MySchools directory. High school fairs are listed there as well.

How did NYC high schools admit students last year?

Schools across the city employ different methods of determining admissions, with various application requirements specific to each.

For admissions to the city’s selective screened schools, this fall’s incoming ninth graders were sorted into four different priority groups based on their seventh grade GPAs in core subjects. In cases where there were more applicants in a priority group than seats, selections were made based on a random number assigned to each applicant, often referred to as a lottery number.

Some schools also required admissions essays or auditions, which were further used to make determinations.

Other schools used open or educational option admissions, which primarily used an applicant’s random number for admissions, though some took into account additional criteria to create priority groups. (Educational option programs set aside seats for students at different academic levels to promote academic diversity.)

Will this year use the same application guidelines?

Screened schools will follow the same admissions process as last year, according to the city’s Education Department — though the grade averages for each priority group have shifted slightly.

Middle school admissions will also follow the same broad format as last year, officials said.

What do experts recommend to get started?

Sindy Nuesi, director of the Middle School Student Success Center at the Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation, recommends families start by narrowing down the vast field of possible schools.

Nuesi advises families and students to first decide how far they’re willing to commute to school, or whether there are specific neighborhoods in which they’d like to attend school. From there, they can look for programs that fit their child’s interests.

“Even though a lot of students are still not too sure what they want, if they do have some particular interest that they really like, it narrows down the options,” she said, adding families can filter searches based on interest areas. “That makes it less overwhelming.”

Nuesi also suggests developing a relationship with your school counselor, who can help at each step of the admissions process.

Elissa Stein, an admissions consultant who runs High School 411, urges parents to look at the process holistically and not become fixated on a particular school or program.

“I always tell families that they should be taking things into consideration based on their child,” she said. “So think things through in terms of the size of the school, the things that they offer, the academic ranges, the commute, the building, the neighborhood — there are so many things that will make a school a good fit for your child or not.”

Opening your mind to exploring schools you’re not as familiar with also aids in the process, she added.

“There are schools that everybody knows by name and reputation,” Stein said. “But there are a lot of other schools that aren’t as well known that could be wonderful fits.”

What are some tips to avoid getting overwhelmed?

Staying organized, keeping track of important dates, and taking notes can help ease the process, Stein suggested.

Pamela Wheaton, an admissions consultant who runs SchoolScoutNYC, suggested families cast a wide net in their applications and take advantage of resources like InsideSchools, which posts information about schools across the city.

Families should also find ways to tap their communities. Parents can team up with other families to coordinate school visits, allowing them to cover more ground in the condensed timeline, Wheaton said.

What does your high school lottery number mean for admissions?

Last year, for the first time, the Education Department sent all families their lottery numbers — a string of 32 numbers and letters — at the beginning of the application process. Many families on Facebook groups sent around tip sheets on how to interpret the number to figure out where students fell to gauge their odds.

Education Department officials said families will be able to see their random numbers when they start their high school applications in MySchools on or after Oct. 3.

Szuflita warns against worrying too much about the number.

“Everybody calls this the lottery,” she said. “It’s not a lottery. It’s a match.”

Though the random number can be consequential, at many schools it is just one of many factors, Szuflita said. At some schools that require applicants to write essays, for example, the number is less likely to play a major role. And at the city’s eight specialized high schools, the number isn’t considered at all, Szuflita added.

“Your random number in this process is a tiebreaker,” she said. “When there are candidates of equal priority, then the random number comes into play.”

Ultimately, admissions consultants and counselors say to take a deep breath and trust that your student will land somewhere they can be successful.

“Be fluid, be calm, because everything will come in good time,” Szuflita said. “It will all be fine. There are so many great schools. There are so many worthy programs.”

Are you applying to high school this year? We want to hear from you.

If you are a NYC parent whose child is applying to high school this year, Chalkbeat wants to hear from you.

We’re interested in hearing about any concerns you may have as you embark on this process, and what kind of information would be helpful for your family in making decisions.

Please fill out the form below to let us know what’s on your mind as this year’s admissions season approaches.

If you are having trouble viewing this form, go here.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools shows off training program for students with disabilities — and considers opening more

2023-09-25T22:20:04+00:00

Mary Fahey Hughes, a member of Chicago’s Board of Education, went into mom mode Monday during a tour of her son’s former South Side school, which provides work and life skills training to older students with disabilities.

Standing to the side of a horticulture classroom at Southside Occupational Academy High School, Hughes smiled as she snapped photos of Aidan next to Mayor Brandon Johnson, who was also on the tour. Aidan has come far from when he was diagnosed with autism as a child — and Hughes was unsure what his future would look like, she said.

She credits the Englewood school — from which Aidan graduated in June — with giving him the confidence to chat up the mayor and show off his alma mater.

“He just gained so much independence,” Hughes said in a hallway at Southside. “The thing I love about this place is there is so much respect for students where they’re at.”

Chicago Public Schools officials are considering expanding the model at Southside and a handful of other so-called specialty schools, which are meant to help students with more challenging disabilities transition into the real world, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez said Monday.

Monday’s tour was the district’s opportunity to show off the model to Johnson and a slew of other city and district officials. If the district decides to grow the program, it would need to lobby the state for more funding, Martinez said.

“We’re having the conversation internally about, how do we look at these programs, build on their strengths and potentially expand them,” Martinez said.

The district has seven specialty schools that together enroll about 1,800 students with mild to moderate cognitive disabilities, said Sylvia Barragan, a spokesperson for Chicago Public Schools. Three schools are early childhood programs that serve younger students with disabilities. The remaining four — including Southside — are for older students and have a focus on vocational and life skills.

Unlike traditional high schools, the district assigns students to these schools, Barragan said.

Some students with disabilities who look for work after graduation may benefit more from going through a specialty program first, Martinez said. He believes the need is enough to warrant doubling the number of specialty schools.

Other districts, such as New York City, have similar programs where students with disabilities learn vocational skills.

These programs, however, have drawn some criticism for segregating students with disabilities, instead of allowing students to build skills next to peers who don’t have a diagnosed disability.

Southside Principal Joshua Long has said his school model allows students to have the specialized attention they need.

At Southside, nearly 88% of students came from low-income families last year. Asked if schools like Southside limit students to low-paying jobs, Hughes said the programs hone skills that these young adults may otherwise miss out on, potentially leaving them stuck at home without work. Hughes noted that the schools serve students with a variety of strengths, and some graduates go on to community college.

“The problem is that a lot of jobs are low-paying, despite the amount of work that needs to get done,” Hughes said.

High school students can attend Vaughn Occupational High School and Northside Learning Center High School, both on the Northwest Side. Southside, in Englewood, and Ray Graham Training Center, in the South Loop, serve students who have met graduation requirements but still need “transition supports and services,” as determined by the team that creates their Individualized Education Program, according to the district. At these two schools, students are typically ages 18-22.

At Southside, where 360 students enrolled last year, students learn about various potential jobs and responsibilities they will need in the real world. Most students are exposed to every class, and some do internships, such as with the Museum of Science and Industry, said Kristen Dimas, a teacher at the school.

Long led the mayor and other officials through several different rooms that simulate a different career or life responsibility. Among the classrooms they saw were a horticulture class, a mock grocery store, a broadcast studio with a green screen, a garage where students learn to wash cars, and a café — complete with a bakery display case.

A group of students stopped by the horticulture room to ask if they had laundry. They would eventually go to the laundry room, where they learn how to wash clothes but also learn a mental checklist on basic hygiene.

“Smell your armpits. Do they smell fresh?” said a laminated list in the laundry room. “If not, put on deodorant.”

In a supply room, where a laminated document listed rules for folding a T-shirt, a student carefully practiced folding. Long gently asked her to get the mayor’s T-shirt size, but the student was shy. The mayor, who used to be a teacher, ultimately revealed he’s an extra large.

Mayor Brandon Johnson watches a student practice folding a T-shirt at Southside Occupational Academy High School in Englewood.

“But here’s the thing — you don’t have to tell everybody that,” he said to the student, who laughed and handed him a T-shirt.

The café and laundry classes are favorites of 18-year-old Josiah Hall, who enrolled at Southside in August. He especially enjoys spending time with the teachers, he said. He hopes to attend a four-year university, such as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The school works to help students understand the career options that are right for them and to reach those goals, Long said.

For Aidan, Hughes’ son, that path has led to a new transition program for adults age 18 and older at Daley College. He’s also taking EMT classes and dreams one day of being a firefighter like his father.

Correction: Sept. 26, 2023: A previous version of this story said the program at Daley College is for people age 22 and older. It is for people age 18 and older.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Detroit schools are struggling with enrollment. Here’s what they’re doing about it.

2023-09-21T17:05:41+00:00

As students returned to the classroom this fall, early data from Detroit’s public schools showed another enrollment decline — a consistent trend for the last three years.

Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said this month that about 51,600 K-12 students were enrolled in the Detroit Public Schools Community District, a decline from about 52,300 enrolled at the same time last year, and roughly 53,000 at the start of 2021-22.

The exodus of students during and since the pandemic underscores the need for the district’s continued focus on strategies to boost enrollment such as marketing campaigns, back-to-school fairs, and neighborhood canvassing.

Detroit’s charter schools are also working to recruit new students after seeing their enrollment decline. Grand Valley State University, which authorizes over 25 charter schools in Detroit, including networks such as University Prep and Covenant Schools, has reported a drop of roughly 800 students in its city charters since the pandemic began, according to a university spokesperson. That’s nearly a quarter of their enrollment: In the 2018-19 school year, the university’s charters had about 31,000 students.

District’s enrollment strategies are a mix of old and new

During a summer school board meeting, Vitti laid out district efforts to increase enrollment. During the height of COVID-19, DPSCD lost 3,000 students. But with federal relief aid, the district expanded outreach, home visits, and door-to-door canvassing strategies using staff and parent volunteers. Those efforts resulted in a gain of 1,000 students.

Vitti said the primary strategy DPSCD is implementing is its new pre-kindergarten expansion, which will add 17 pre-K classrooms at 12 schools across the city this school year, including Barton Elementary, Garvey Academy, and Nolan Elementary-Middle School. While the district does not offer transportation for pre-K, families can arrange to have their children ride the bus with an older sibling who is eligible for transportation, Vitti said.

During a June board meeting, the superintendent said the district will annually monitor its preschool expansion “over the next three to four years” to determine whether actual enrollment numbers match projections, and whether it sees high reenrollment rates from pre-K to kindergarten. DPSCD’s K-12 enrollment is projected to remain constant next year, according to Vitti, with a potential bump of 335 pre-kindergarten students.

Vitti told BridgeDetroit this month that the district is already seeing growing demand for pre-K classrooms.

“As they move into kindergarten, most DPSCD pre-K families choose to continue their education in the district,” he said. “We’ve also seen that students who participate in our pre-K programs perform better academically. This year, students who were enrolled in our pre-K classes scored higher on math and reading tests in kindergarten than those who did not participate in our pre-K programs. By expanding our pre-K programs, we can engage more families early, find them a home in the district, and help them to build foundational academic and social-emotional skills that support them through their K-12 journey.”

Other methods include continuing with radio, TV, and billboard marketing campaigns as well as canvassing schools with low enrollment, Vitti said.

DPSCD also hosted Back-to-School Expos at dozens of schools, with most offering enrollment opportunities, school tours, food, and games.

Wanda Walker was among the caregivers who attended an expo at Marion Law Academy last month, a K-8 school on Detroit’s east side.

Walker’s 4-year-old great-grandson Noah Walker is a kindergartner at the school, while her 12-year-old granddaughter Autumn Walker recently started seventh grade.

While her grandchildren could have gone to a charter school or a school outside the city, Walker said having Marion Law located across the street from her house makes it convenient.

Detroit’s roughly 100,000 public-school students are widely dispersed across a mix of charters, traditional neighborhood schools, and application schools, with nearly 50% of children attending charter schools. Students from the city are also attending neighboring school districts through Schools of Choice of programs.

Walker said she’s active in the school community as a member of the parent-teacher association and has gotten to know the teachers and families at the school.

“Being a part of the community, I feel like I’m giving back,” said Walker, who is the primary caregiver for her grandchildren.

Major cities nationwide see decline in school enrollment

As of the end of 2022-23, DPSCD had a little more than 48,000 students — down from 51,000 before the pandemic.

Cities across the country, including New York, Chicago, and Denver, have lost enrollment in their public schools, too. This decline may well continue and even accelerate in coming years because of demographic trends, Chalkbeat has reported.

Between the middle of 2020 and 2021, large urban areas experienced a 3.7% decline in the number of children under age 5 and a 1.1% dip in the number of children 5 to 17 years old, according to a 2022 report from the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan public policy organization.

Each year, DPSCD officials share enrollment and attendance data from the first couple weeks of the new school year. These numbers provide an early gauge of enrollment patterns ahead of Michigan’s two official Count Days, in October and February, when the number of students attending school is tallied for the purposes of allocating state funding.

Enrollment numbers can fluctuate over the course of the year as families move into and out of the city, or send their children to different schools, even after initially enrolling in DPSCD. The district’s K-12 enrollment of about 48,000 at the end of last year was about 4,000 below the figure of the start of the year.

Recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau found Detroit lost roughly 8,000 residents from 2021 to 2022 — a figure Mayor Mike Duggan has publicly contested, suggesting the city’s population has been undercounted.

The city’s population decline and decrease in school enrollment affected DPSCD’s budget for this school year, which saw more than 300 job cuts for central office positions and support staff including deans, assistant principals, college transition advisers, school culture facilitators, and kindergarten paraeducators. However, most people in those support staff jobs were able to transfer to a different position in the district.

Vitti said budget cuts were necessary due to many challenges the district is facing in addition to enrollment, such as the end of federal COVID relief funding, increases in employee salaries, health care costs, and inflation.

Canvassers worked through the summer

DPSCD is also targeting schools with low enrollment, such as Carstens Academy of Aquatic Science, Nolan Elementary-Middle School, Mark Twain School for Scholars, and Detroit International Academy for Young Women. The district’s Office of Family and Community Engagement has been leading the canvassing efforts. FACE Assistant Superintendent Sharlonda Buckman said canvassing was a key strategy during the pandemic and one that the department continues to use.

“For us, it’s about maintaining relationships with our families over the summer, giving new families an opportunity to court us, and take a look at all the programs and services that we have to offer and know about the schools in their neighborhoods,” she said.

FACE mainly does canvassing through its annual Summer on the Block series, which has been happening for the last six years, Buckman said. Trained canvassers — DPSCD parents, alumni, partners and neighborhood leaders — host community events at schools to connect students and their families to information throughout the summer and school year. The canvassers go door to door within a 5-mile radius of the host school and are paid $25 an hour over the summer, Buckman said.

FACE also invites agencies to its events to assist families with non-school-related topics such as job opportunities, household resources, and tax information.

This summer, FACE hosted 10 Summer on the Block events and had around 20 canvassers. The department also organized the district’s Kindergarten Boot Camp from June to August. The four-week camps prepare children and parents for kindergarten.

By the end of summer, the district enrolled 5,000 new students, which was 500 more new students than DPSCD had enrolled at the same time last year, Vitti said.

But FACE isn’t all about recruiting new students, Buckman said.

“It’s also about retention,” she said. “It’s about helping our families that we have over the summer with resources. There are a number of families already in that school that we also want to engage with over that summer period.”

Incentivizing staff members to recruit potential families could be a strategy to increase DPSCD enrollment, Vitti said during a July board meeting. Incentives could include bonuses for principals, assistant principals, and teachers if select schools meet a certain percentage of new students, or individual staff members could receive a bonus for recruiting a parent or a student to the district.

“In years past, we have considered different incentives for staff to reach out to families and try to increase enrollment, so that’s something that would have to be bargained,” he said during the meeting, referring to agreements with labor groups. “The best way to increase enrollment is at the school level and so, I think incentivizing at the school level would help in that area.”

However, the incentive plans won’t happen anytime soon, Vitti told BridgeDetroit in an email. He said he doesn’t see it being implemented this school year — at least not for the fall.

Detroit charters find barbecues, word of mouth effective

BridgeDetroit and Chalkbeat Detroit contacted several charter schools in the city, but only one, Detroit Innovation Academy, responded to questions about enrollment.

Principal Marina Hanna said 356 students are enrolled for this school year. That’s a little lower than the 375 students the K-8 school had before the pandemic, but Hanna said the school is enrolling new students daily.

“After COVID, we’ve maintained steady at around 350, and that’s typically because a lot of families now are choosing virtual options,” she said.

The small, West Side school is recruiting new students by hosting events, such as a recent back-to-school barbecue. Hanna said the event gave her a chance to invite academy partners and community members out to tour the school and meet the staff.

Detroit Innovation also attends community events such as the family fun day hosted by the Cody Rouge Community Action Alliance. The school also is working on expanding its social media presence.

But the most effective strategy Hanna has seen has been simple word of mouth.

“Word of mouth is honestly huge for us,” she said. “We’ve built a strong reputation in our community and with our families, so they often refer their friends and their neighbors to join our DIA family.”

Chalkbeat reporter Ethan Bakuli contributed to this story.

Micah Walker is a reporter for BridgeDetroit, where she covers arts, culture, and education. Contact Micah at mwalker@bridgedetroit.com.

Correction: September 25, 2023: This story has been updated to correct the number of student enrollees city charters authorized by Grand Valley State University lost since the pandemic began.

IPS superintendent highlights ‘excellent choices for everyone’ in State of the District speech

2023-09-21T01:20:55+00:00

Aleesia Johnson, superintendent of Indianapolis Public Schools, said she’s never been as excited for the State of the District speech as she was on Wednesday, when she invited all Indianapolis families to see the options IPS offers.

Her speech touted options available to students, largely through Rebuilding Stronger, the district’s overhaul plan, as the district aims to attract students and families.

The plan was unveiled at the State of the District last year, and this year’s speech is about keeping those promises, she said.

Johnson expressed her gratitude to the Indianapolis community for answering requests from the district including passing a capital referendum, sharing ideas, and giving the district grace and patience as changes were implemented, which included closing and merging some schools.

Johnson called the offerings now available to students “historic.”

“For as long as I can remember, our most exciting and comprehensive offerings were concentrated in neighborhoods that were whiter and wealthier,” she said. “Now, for the first time, every family in our city can access our best stuff. What was once a privilege is now a right.”

Here’s what to know from Johnson’s speech:

IPS is ‘making up ground’

Johnson highlighted the district’s recent academic gains. In 2023, a greater share of the district’s students scored proficient on both the reading and math sections of the state ILEARN test than before the pandemic in 2019. (Passing rates on IREAD declined from 62.8% last year to 60.6% this year.)

“While much of the country is still experiencing major academic setbacks, we at IPS are already making up ground. We now have a greater share of students at or above pre-pandemic performance in both reading and math, and we’re the only district in Marion County that can make that claim,” she said. “This is a nationally significant achievement.”

Additionally, Johnson said the graduation rate has grown to 80%, which cut in half the gap between IPS and the state graduation rate, which was 86.61% in 2022.

That is “a direct reflection of the work our team began in 2018 to reinvent our high schools and transition to college and career pathways,” she said.

District extends an invite to ‘every family in Indianapolis’

Every family with school-age children will receive an invitation in the mail, Johnson said. That invitation, expected in two weeks, asks families to “choose your IPS” that is “tailored to your child’s needs, interests, and hopes.”

In addition to the mailer, Johnson said IPS will have a “showcase of schools” in early November where all schools will be open for families to visit. Plus, school staff will reach out to current families to answer questions; there will also be open houses and information sessions.

This “whole new chapter” is the payoff for doing hard things as part of the district’s reorganization, she said. And it’s ending ways that “reinforced old patterns of haves and have-nots, of segregation, of intentional disinvestment.”

“Every family in Indianapolis is invited,” she said. “Every family.”

Offerings reflect that students’ ‘talent is everywhere’

Johnson said options available to students previously varied from neighborhood to neighborhood, meaning some students and families were left out.

“The way we did it before would have made perfect sense — if all the future violinists were born in one neighborhood, and all the computer coders in another,” she said. “But I’m pretty sure talent is everywhere so we need to make sure opportunity is as well.”

The new approach includes more pre-K options and more high-demand instructional models for elementary school such as Montessori, dual language immersion, and others. For older kids, all middle school students now have access to band and orchestra, world language, algebra I, computer science, and music, she said. This is a change from the past, when not all schools offered these programs.

At the high school level, options continue, Johnson said, listing choices from “Law and Public Safety to Media Arts and Design to Computer Science and Advanced Manufacturing.”

Plus, she said programs in health care, IT and cybersecurity set students up for internships, industry certifications, and dual credit programs.

Beyond academics, Johnson said athletic offerings are expanding, including girls flag football at all four district-managed high schools as well as more elementary and middle school sports camps and clinics next year.

Investments also include updated buildings – by the end of September, 30 schools will have updated HVAC systems and design work is underway for other buildings, she said.

Nearly $100 million of capital referendum projects will be facilitated by a minority-, women-, or veteran-owned business, she added.

Johnson looks to the future needs

While Wednesday’s speech largely centered on touting exciting parts of the future, Johnson said she knows she’ll likely have speeches where she’ll have to make tough asks.

She also acknowledged that she’d likely have to make more tough requests of the community. And she called for the community to come together more for students.

She noted that resources are needed for students who are non-native English-speaking learners, students with disabilities, and 3- and 4-year-old early learners.

“We can invest in solutions that make it possible for working parents to support their families while their children learn,” she said, adding that investing in students is also investing in a strong economy of the future.

“It’ll take all of us, fighting for what our students need. But there are solutions and, together, we have them,” Johnson said. “Indianapolis has shown me that time and time again.”

Chalkbeat reporter Aleksandra Appleton contributed to this article.

MJ Slaby oversees Chalkbeat Indiana’s coverage as bureau chief and covers higher education. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools enrollment is stable for first time in more than a decade

2023-09-20T02:26:40+00:00

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Enrollment in Chicago Public Schools is flat for the first time in more than a decade, according to preliminary data obtained by Chalkbeat.

New preliminary numbers for this school year show just over 322,500 students are registered at CPS schools. The data represents enrollment as of the end of the day Monday, the 20th day of the school year, when the district traditionally takes its official count. On the 20th day of last school year, 322,106 students were enrolled according to official data.

CPS enrollment has been in decline for 12 years, so this year’s shift is significant.

In the past decade, the district’s student body shrunk by 20%, with the district seeing multiple year-over-year declines of roughly 10,000 students. The dramatic contraction began after the 2011-12 school year, which was the last year CPS saw a bump in enrollment, from 402,681 to 404,151 students. Last year, Chicago lost its standing as the nation’s third largest district.

Enrollment now appears to be leveling off in Chicago. In the past year, the city has welcomed thousands of migrant families from the southern border and in July, a top mayoral aide suggested that newcomers were boosting enrollment in schools.

A district spokesperson, however, said enrollment changes are due to multiple reasons and cautioned against attributing the shifts to “any one group of students.”

“We will offer more analysis and context to our enrollment figures later this month,” CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said in a statement. “We are honored and privileged to serve each and every student.”

It’s too early to tell if this is the start of a new trend, said Elaine Allensworth, who studies education policy and is Lewis-Sebring Director of the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research.

“If it’s just a one-time pause in the trends of declining enrollment, it might not have a big overall long-term effect, but it’s really just hard to say right now since we don’t know what will happen in the future,” Allensworth said.

Thinning enrollment was driven by factors such as dipping birth rates and other population changes. With the onset of the pandemic, districts across the country enrolled fewer students, with more than 33,000 students falling off Chicago’s rolls since the fall of 2020.

Shrinking schools have left CPS officials and mayors to contend with how to best fund classrooms, especially as student needs grew during the pandemic. Enrollment has long been a determining factor for how much state and federal money a district gets. Mayor Brandon Johnson has been an outspoken critic of tying enrollment to funding, but past mayors have funded schools within CPS based on how many kids they serve.

Even with fewer students, the district’s budget has grown to $9.4 billion. That’s roughly flat compared to last year’s budget, but up from a decade ago when it hovered around $6 billion. A new state funding formula and a wave of pandemic recovery money have helped offset enrollment declines. Though state money is increasing, the district has recently seen fewer dollars than expected due to lower enrollment and increased property wealth.

According to preliminary enrollment data analyzed by Chalkbeat, there are 5,767 more students learning English as a new language this school year than last year. That’s a sizable jump: CPS has historically enrolled an average of 3,000 new English learners annually, a district spokesperson said.

CPS officials said they do not track immigration status of students. They have pointed to the growth in English language learners as one sign of newcomers, but emphasized that not all English language learners are newcomers.

The district enrolls migrant students in three ways. First, like any student, migrant children can enroll directly at schools. They can also make an appointment at the city’s new welcome center housed inside Roberto Clemente Community Academy High School on the West Side.

Finally, enrollment teams are going to families’ homes, after receiving information from the city’s Department of Family and Support Services about those in need of help who can’t make it to the welcome center, said Karime Asaf, chief of the district’s Office of Language and Cultural Education.

Schools across the district have historically struggled to meet state regulations for providing proper support for English learners. When finding a school with the right program for English learners, officials try to stay within a two-mile radius of the child’s home, Asaf said.

Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, which provides extra support for kids and families at a handful of Southwest Side schools as part of the district’s sustainable community schools initiative, said they’ve noticed an increase in migrant families among the parents they serve who don’t have stable housing.

Last year, the organization placed a case manager part-time at a high school in Back of the Yards that needed extra help with parents as they enrolled more migrant students, said Sara Reschly, deputy director of the group’s community services division.

At Brighton Park Elementary School, case manager Lupe Fernandez said newcomer families currently have very basic needs, such as undergarments and help navigating the CTA. The school is planning to create a free “closet” where families can pick up things they need for free.

“If there are schools that have those strong community partnerships, you know, like that would be a place to start because then you can wrap services around the whole family,” Reschly said.

Asaf, with the district, said they are processing more school transfers among newcomers as those families find new homes or more permanent housing.

Preliminary data analyzed by Chalkbeat show this school year, nearly a quarter of Chicago Public Schools students are learning English as a new language — a figure that trumps other large districts. For example, 14% of students in New York City public schools, the nation’s largest district, were English learners last school year.

The preliminary data signals the continuation of another trend over the past decade: a decline in the share of students from low-income households. Preliminary data indicate that number is 67%, down from 73% last school year.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Applying to Chicago Public Schools? Here’s a guide to the 2024-25 application process.

2023-09-13T15:22:45+00:00

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It’s that time of year again: Chicago Public Schools opened its application Wednesday for elementary and high school seats for the 2024-25 school year with a deadline of Nov. 9 — about a month earlier than usual.

Families use the application for entry to a variety of schools, including selective test-in schools and neighborhood schools outside of their attendance boundaries. Sixth graders can also use the application for seven advanced middle school programs.

For high schools, there are several changes to this year’s admissions process:

The High School Admissions Test, or HSAT, will last an hour instead of the previous 2 ½ hours. This shorter test “allows CPS to get the information needed on student performance for the admissions process while helping reduce anxiety for students and increasing accessibility,” a district spokesperson said.
In addition to English, the HSAT this year will also be offered in Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, Urdu, and Polish.
The district has created a single admissions scoring rubric for all programs. Previously, there were multiple rubrics.
High schools will no longer have additional admissions requirements, such as interviews, essays, or letters of recommendation. Such a requirement “added to the complexity of the process and was burdensome for families,” according to a district spokesperson.

Students will find out their HSAT score in mid-November. After that, students can re-rank the programs they chose in GoCPS until 5 p.m. November 22, district officials said.

About half of elementary school students attend a school outside of their neighborhood, and roughly 70% of high schoolers do the same.

For the second year, families of preschoolers won’t have to apply until the spring. The city is working toward providing universal preschool for 4-year-olds. Last year, officials said there were enough seats for all children who wanted one.

For elementary school and the middle school programs, families can apply online or over the phone. For high school, they can also submit a paper application. Most charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately managed, can also be applied to through GoCPS and students are offered spots via lottery.

The application process for all students, which can involve ranking school choices and taking entrance exams, can be cumbersome for many families to navigate. The later application deadline “may catch people off guard,” said Grace Lee Sawin, co-founder of Chicago School GPS, an organization that helps families navigate admissions.

“I think that will throw off a lot of people who think they had the month of November” to explore their options, Sawin said.

In recent years, CPS has extended the application deadline. Results are expected to be released next spring. The district will hold weekly online informational sessions about GoCPS in English and Spanish starting Sept. 19 at 9 a.m. The sessions will continue until early November. Families should register online here.

Here’s what you need to know.

Families can apply to several types of Chicago elementary schools

Families can use the application for entry into several types of elementary schools.

They can select up to 20 magnets and neighborhood schools outside of their own attendance boundaries. Families can also choose from more competitive, selective enrollment schools, which require a test to get in. Those include the city’s gifted programs and classical schools, both of which offer more accelerated curriculum.

The tests can be scheduled once you submit your application. For these schools, families can choose up to six programs. Families can choose up to three gifted centers that are specifically for English learners.

For neighborhood schools, families don’t have to rank their choices, since they will be entered into the lottery for each program on their list and may get multiple offers.

For the test-in schools, applicants must rank their choices. They are eligible if they score high enough on the entrance exams, but the district does not publish what the cutoff scores are. Thirty percent of seats are reserved for the highest scorers. The remaining offers go to the highest scorers across four socioeconomic tiers that are based on where students live, as an effort by the district to more equitably admit children to selective schools.

Each city neighborhood is assigned to one of four tiers, with the first tier representing the lowest-income areas, along with other factors, such as less education attainment. (You can look up your tier using this map.)

Students who choose magnet programs are entered into a lottery. Schools set aside remaining seats for students from each tier. There are also preferences given to siblings and in some cases, students who live within a certain proximity to the magnet school.

CPS offers admission to 7 accelerated middle school programs

Sixth graders can use the elementary application to apply to the city’s seven Academic Centers, which offer accelerated middle school programs. They are located inside of high schools — some of which are the city’s selective programs, such as Whitney Young — allowing these middle schoolers to take high school level courses.

Students must have at least a 2.5 GPA to apply and must take an entrance exam that can be scheduled through GoCPS. They can choose up to six school options, and must rank their selections. Students are admitted based on their score, with the highest scorers offered seats first. Last year’s cutoff scores can be found here.

All 8th graders encouraged to apply for a variety of Chicago high schools

The first step for eighth graders seeking a high school seat is taking the high school admissions test, or HSAT.

Due to a change last year, the exam is now given in school to all eighth graders at the same time. This year it’s scheduled for Oct. 11. Private school students can take the test on Oct. 14, 15, or 21, according to the district’s website.

Students can enroll in their neighborhood high school or they can use the application to rank up to 20 other high school programs. Schools may have multiple programs, such as one in fine arts and another in world language.

While many of these schools admit students via lottery, they may also have various preferences, such as for kids who live within the attendance boundary or those who earned higher math scores.

Students can also choose from the city’s 11 selective enrollment programs and can rank up to six of them. These schools are more competitive and admit students based on a rubric that includes their HSAT results and their GPA. Last school year, the first 30% of seats went to students with the highest scores on the rubric. The rest of the seats are split up among the highest scoring students across the four socioeconomic tiers. Last year’s cut scores for selective enrollment schools can be found here and for other high schools, they can be found here.

Selective enrollment schools have been criticized for enrolling larger shares of affluent, white, and Asian American students versus Black and Latino students who make up more than 82% of the district. Officials promised to overhaul the system last year in order to make it more equitable, but none of the promised changes have been made.

Students can receive up to two offers — one each for selective enrollment and CHOICE. If they get just one offer, CPS will automatically add them to waitlists at schools they ranked higher than where they got in. If the student doesn’t receive any offers, they can join waitlists for schools they want to attend or they enroll in their neighborhood school.

What is the application process for children with disabilities?

Students with disabilities can apply to any program. No matter which school they end up in, the district is legally required to provide any services that a student may need, according to their Individualized Education Program, or IEP.

For admissions exams, students should be afforded any testing accommodations listed on their 504 plans or IEPs, according to the FAQ page.

However, students with disabilities may face a more complicated school assignment process. For example, if a child is physically impaired and is offered a seat at a magnet elementary program that is not accessible, the district will offer transportation to a “comparable” magnet program that has the proper accommodations, according to a district FAQ about the admissions process.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Denver school board wants public feedback on proposed school closure, declining enrollment policies

2023-09-11T23:13:08+00:00

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Rather than closing schools with enrollment below a set number of students, the Denver school board is considering a new approach. A pair of policy proposals would cap enrollment at some schools, adjust attendance boundaries, and set other rules and a timeline for school closures.

The goal is to be more transparent and equitable in deciding which schools to close in the face of declining enrollment in Denver Public Schools. But the policies wouldn’t stop the closures. A district analysis found that achieving the enrollment levels envisioned in one of the proposals would require the district to have 15 fewer elementary schools than it has now.

Earlier this year, the board balked at closing more than three.

The Denver school board is inviting feedback on the two proposals during the public comment portion of its meeting Sept. 18, but it has not yet set a date to vote.

Some board members said they’re eager to get a policy in writing after a flawed school closure process this past spring. Others want to take it slow.

“We need to be very, very cautious moving forward here and not move too quickly, and take into consideration what the potential unintended consequences are,” board member Scott Esserman said at a school board work session last week.

One of the proposed policies, known officially as Executive Limitation 18, says school closure decisions should not be based on a school’s low test scores or low enrollment.

Instead, it says the superintendent should “propose schools for consolidation and unification that equitably distributes the burden of declining enrollment across all of Denver.”

A proposed timeline would have the superintendent announce any schools recommended for closure in September. The board would invite public feedback from families at those schools in November and then vote in January, a much longer timeline than happened this year. Students impacted by school closures would have priority enrollment into all other district-run and charter schools in DPS, the proposed Executive Limitation 18 says.

In the past, nearly all of the public feedback has been against closing schools. But the proposed policy makes clear that closures are coming.

“Due to the declining enrollment expected for at least five more years, the Board of Education believes it is necessary to consolidate and unify schools to maintain the financial viability of the district,” the proposed Executive Limitation 18 says.

The other proposed policy, known as Executive Limitation 19, would require the superintendent to maintain “financially stable enrollment” at each elementary school. The proposal defines that as enrollment of “300 students (two classes of 25 students per grade), 450 students (three classes of 25 students per grade), or 600 students (four classes of 25 students per grade).”

Enrollment at any elementary school should not exceed 600 students, the proposed policy says. Board members have said that capping enrollment at popular elementary schools could bolster enrollment at smaller schools that are losing students. Executive Limitation 19 also proposes the superintendent analyze and adjust school boundaries every four years or less.

Four DPS elementary schools had more than 600 students last school year, according to state data. Thirty-six elementary or K-8 schools had fewer than 300 students, the data shows.

In order for each DPS elementary school to have at least 300 students by the year 2027, DPS would need “15 fewer elementary schools across the system,” according to a memo from DPS officials in charge of finance and enrollment to Superintendent Alex Marrero.

Having 15 fewer elementary schools could save DPS $14 million, the memo says, which could be “reinvested in other programming, compensation for educators, and other expenses to improve the student experience within DPS.”

But to achieve that, the proposed Executive Limitation 18 says DPS should “not use enrollment minimums (e.g., 215 students) as bright line criteria for consolidation.

“Schools of any enrollment size are eligible for consolidation,” it says.

The two proposed policies were first floated in April, a month after the board voted to close three DPS schools with very low enrollment. The process was full of fits and starts, with the board rejecting the superintendent’s initial school closure recommendations and then reversing itself four months later with only a day’s notice to the public.

Proposed Executive Limitation 18 acknowledges that most under-enrolled DPS schools serve a disproportionate number of students of color, students from low-income families, students learning English as a second language, and students with disabilities.

It says DPS should hold regional meetings “to help inform and co-create future recommendations for addressing declining enrollment.” The meetings should convey information about demographic trends in the region, as well as “the positive implications of proceeding and the negative implications of not proceeding” with school closures, it says.

DPS schools are funded per pupil, and schools with low enrollment often have to cut art or music programs or combine different grades into a single classroom.

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Detroit school district enrollment figures dip as year begins

2023-09-11T22:28:57+00:00

Early attendance and enrollment data show a steady decline in the number of students in the Detroit school district, adding to pandemic-related enrollment losses.

About 51,600 K-12 students were enrolled in the Detroit Public Schools Community District as of Friday, Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said at a school board academic committee meeting Monday. That’s down from about 52,300 at this time last year, and roughly 53,000 students at the start of the 2021-22 school year, according to district reports.

Of the 51,600 enrollees, roughly 88%, or just over 45,000 students, had attended school for at least one day; a year earlier, that figure was 47,000, or about 90%.

“As of right now, I’m not concerned by these numbers,” Vitti told committee members Monday, noting that two early dismissals last week for extreme heat affected the 2023-24 attendance numbers.

“I think this week will give a better indicator of where we are,” he said.

The school year began Aug. 28.

Enrollment numbers can fluctuate over the course of the year as families move into and out of the city, or send their children to different schools, even after initially enrolling in DPSCD. At the end of last school year, K-12 enrollment was 48,000, well below the figure of the start of the year, and down about 2,000 students from before the pandemic.

Improving student attendance and enrollment has been a major priority for officials in DPSCD and districts across Michigan, especially in recent years given the pandemic’s impact. The district used part of its federal COVID relief aid to expand its family outreach and door-to-door canvassing initiatives.

But as that aid dries up, DPSCD plans to spend less money this year on enrollment strategies. Instead, it will use a smaller budget to market specific schools with available seats and promote the district through school employees and families.

DPSCD’s average daily attendance and chronic absenteeism figures improved last year, inching toward pre-pandemic figures.

In 2022-23, the district’s average daily attendance rate was 81.6%, up from 76% the year before, compared with 83.1% before the pandemic. The chronic absenteeism rate was 68% at the end of the last school year, down from 77% the year before.

But that still means more than two-thirds of DPSCD students missed 10% or more of the school year.

Ethan Bakuli is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering Detroit Public Schools Community District. Contact Ethan at ebakuli@chalkbeat.org.

5 things we’re watching this school year in NYC

2023-09-07T10:00:00+00:00

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More than 900,000 New York City public school students are slated to resume classes on Thursday with the customary mix of excitement, jitters, and joy.

In recent years, one acute crisis after another has overshadowed the start of classes, from chaotic efforts to restart in-person classes during the height of the pandemic to a bruising battle over budget cuts and an influx of asylum seekers that began last summer.

This year is proving to be no exception in the nation’s largest district: Families and educators are bracing for a school bus driver strike that could affect some 80,000 students, including many of the city’s most vulnerable. Union officials promised that the first week of service would not be interrupted, but the threat of a strike still looms.

Climate-related issues also affected this year’s start, just as they impacted the end of last school year. The National Weather Service issued a heat advisory for Thursday, forcing schools to limit outdoor activities between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m, school officials said.

But it’s not just acute challenges facing the city as the school year resumes.

Thorny long-term enrollment and budget issues that have been simmering for years could also come to a head this year with a fiscal cliff looming.

It will also be a pivotal school year for schools Chancellor David Banks, as his signature initiative to overhaul literacy instruction starts rolling out.

Here are five big issues we’ll be watching closely as this critical school year begins:

Asylum seekers continue arriving

The influx of asylum seekers to New York City that began last summer has shown no signs of abating. The Education Department has enrolled an estimated 21,000 newly arrived students since last summer, including 2,500 since this July.

There’s plenty of room in city schools: K-12 enrollment has fallen by more than 120,000 over the past five years.

And educators and families across the city have mobilized over the last year to welcome the newcomers with everything from basic needs to language support.

But lingering challenges continue to undercut the city’s efforts to support the newcomers, starting with gaps in the process for quickly enrolling them in school.

And once they arrive, many won’t attend schools with bilingual teachers. A report last year from the Independent Budget Office found that under half of the schools that enrolled asylum seekers last year had a certified bilingual teacher on staff, reflecting a long-running shortage.

Banks has said new efforts are in the works to step up recruitment of bilingual teachers.

A fiscal cliff looms

New York City schools have been profoundly reshaped by an infusion of $7 billion in federal COVID-19 relief funds meant to help school districts climb out from under the shadow of the pandemic. Among the big ticket items entirely or largely funded by that money are:

Summer Rising, the city’s free summer school program combining recreation and academics for roughly 100,000 kids each of the last three summers. The program has proven so popular that 45,000 families were turned away this year.
500 new social workers spread across the city to help address mounting mental health challenges.
A program to shore up school budgets after enrollment losses. Prior to the pandemic, when schools lost students, their budgets were slashed accordingly. But the city has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid to blunt the impact of those budget cuts.

All of those programs and more will be on the chopping block next school year, since the federal relief money must be spent by October 2024. That will likely spur some fierce and thorny battles over prioritizing existing money, or finding new sources of funding.

Banks’ signature initiative takes off

Banks has largely defined his tenure around a single goal: improving the teaching of literacy.

At the center of that goal is a sweeping initiative to overhaul the curriculum that schools use to teach reading in an effort to standardize practices across schools and abandon approaches that have been increasingly discredited. Fifteen of the city’s 32 community school districts will start this year using one of the three new pre-approved curriculum options, with the rest following next year.

But mandating new curriculums is just the first step. Changing something as deeply ingrained as how schools teach reading will require buy-in from staff and ongoing supervision and training. Officials have promised a robust training plan, but recently scrapped the department’s large in-house literacy coaching program and have so far largely outsourced professional development to curriculum publishers and other outside groups.

It’s not just elementary literacy in Banks’ crosshairs: the Education Department is also mandating a ninth-grade algebra curriculum at some high schools, as well as an early childhood curriculum, and First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg said Wednesday that the agency plans to look “very, very closely” at the curriculums used in all core classes across all grades in the coming years.

Teachers: We want to hear from you about what kind of training you are receiving — and need — to effectively use the new curriculum.

Enrollment and attendance challenges linger

The influx of asylum seekers over the past year helped slow the enrollment bleeding, but the long-term trends are unmistakable: New York City’s public schools are losing students.

The reasons are complex, including a drop in young students entering school during the pandemic, and a surge in families leaving New York City for more affordable destinations.

But the impact for the school system is profound. As of last year, the Education Department had 201 schools with fewer than 200 students. That’s more than twice the number of tiny schools 15 years earlier.

Since school budgets are largely tied to enrollment, ultra-small schools often struggle to offer enough courses and extracurricular variety to function. In the long run, there will likely be increasing pressure on the city to consider closures or mergers.

It’s not just enrollment patterns reducing the number of children in city schools on any given day: Chronic absenteeism has also spiked, jumping from an average of around 25% before the pandemic to 36% last school year (down slightly from 41% the year before), officials said. Chronic absenteeism is closely linked to adverse academic outcomes, and the city’s efforts to improve attendance could be a core part of efforts to recover from pandemic losses.

NYC students, staff face ongoing academic, emotional challenges

The ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and disrupted years of schooling continue to reverberate, touching everything from standardized test scores, to elevated levels of absenteeism, to teachers’ and students’ mental health, to spikes in youth violence.

The city has launched a grab bag of both big ticket and smaller scale programs to address those sweeping challenges, some of which will be at risk when federal stimulus money expires next year.

But others are still getting off the ground, including a telehealth initiative to expand therapy access to teenagers. Banks said Wednesday that the program will roll out by the end of 2023 and will be free and open to all city teenagers ages 13 to 17.

In many ways, all of the city’s big educational initiatives, from the literacy curriculum overhaul to efforts to preempt and prevent youth violence can be seen through the lens of addressing the lingering scars of the pandemic — and recovery remains a core challenge for the school system.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools is becoming less low-income. Here’s why that matters.

2023-09-06T22:09:52+00:00

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About six years ago, Lori Zaimi’s daughter told her mom that another longtime friend was leaving their elementary school in Edgewater on the North Side. The friend’s apartment building, she explained, had been sold to someone who was going to renovate it.

Zaimi recognized the familiar story of gentrification, when higher-income families move into a working class neighborhood and drive up property values. She’d seen property demolitions and pricey single family housing go up across Edgewater, the formerly working class neighborhood where she grew up.

She has also seen the impact in her daughter’s school, where Zaimi became principal in 2015. These days, she said, rent is “unaffordable for many of our families.”

A decade ago, nearly 73% of students at the school, Helen C. Peirce School of International Studies, came from low-income households, according to district data. Last school year, that figure was just over 34%.

Zaimi’s school is not alone. Ten years ago, 85% of Chicago Public Schools students came from low-income households. Now, that figure is 73% — a 12 percentage point drop — according to district data from the 2022-23 school year. Chicago Public Schools considers a student “economically disadvantaged” if their family’s income is within 185% of the federal poverty line. This year, that threshold is $55,500 or less for a family of four.

The drop, experts say, is driven by several factors, including gentrification, population and enrollment shifts, as well as a potential dissatisfaction with district schools.

Even though the number of students from low-income families has dropped, nearly three-quarters of the district’s student body is still considered “economically disadvantaged.” But if the downward trend continues, Chicago schools could continue to see fewer dollars than expected from the state, which funds districts in part by considering how many students from low-income families are enrolled.

For individual schools, such as Peirce, the decline has led to the loss of Title I money, federal dollars sent to schools with high shares of low-income students. But as the school has become more mixed-income, it has also become more racially diverse: Last school year, Peirce was 47% white and 32% Hispanic, compared to 17% white and 62% Hispanic 10 years ago.

As the district enrolls a smaller share of students from low-income households, Chicago’s schools continue to look different from how they did a decade ago, especially in rapidly changing neighborhoods. That shift raises questions about who schools are serving, how they should be resourced, and what the district — and the city — can do as it continues to lose students.

Low-income drops happening across Chicago, but steeper in some neighborhoods

Peirce is one of more than 200 schools that have seen their share of students from low-income families drop by more than the districtwide decline of 12 percentage points, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of the district’s public school enrollment data from the 2022-23 school year.

The analysis of the past decade also found:

While overall enrollment has also fallen, it’s still outpaced by the loss of students from low-income families. The district enrolled 31% fewer students from low-income families than in 2013, as the district’s overall enrollment dipped by 20%.
When looking at neighborhoods, schools in Lincoln Square and Irving Park, on the North Side, and West Elsdon, on the Southwest Side, saw a median 20 percentage point drop or more in students from low-income households since 2013. That’s more than any other community area.
Nine of the top 10 schools that lost the largest shares of students from low-income households were located on the North Side, across gentrifying neighborhoods.
Half of them enrolled more children last school year than they did 10 years ago, bucking citywide trends.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, 73 schools saw increases in their share of students from low-income families. One-third are on the South and West sides — regions that have also lost the most residents between 1999 and 2020, according to a 2022 report from UIC.

CPS officials use two methods to find out which students are from low-income households. They automatically count students who receive certain government aid meant for low-income families, such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits. And they collect forms handed out at the start of the school year that ask families to report their income, which in the past helped the district determine students who qualified for free or reduced price lunch.

In 2014, CPS became eligible for the federal universal free meals program for districts that serve at least 40% students from low-income families. With less pressure on schools to collect the forms, which are not mandatory, some have suggested that the district may be collecting fewer of them, potentially skewing the data about low-income families.

A CPS spokesperson said it could be “one of several reasons” behind the drop in the district’s share of low-income students. However, district officials declined to share the rate at which forms have been returned over the past decade, instead asking Chalkbeat to file an open records request for that information.

There’s some evidence that those forms do not get filled out, particularly among new students, said Elaine Allensworth, who studies education policy and is Lewis-Sebring Director of the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research.

In the 2014-15 school year, 86% of preschoolers and 81% of kindergartners were listed as coming from low-income families, on par with children in other grades, district data show. The next school year, after the district became federally eligible for universal free lunch, around 62% of preschool and kindergarten students came from low-income families, while figures in older grades shifted just a couple percentage points from the previous year.

“That says to me new families that are coming into CPS are not signing up for free lunch,” Allensworth said, who added that population shifts are also a likely contributing factor.

The current data for early grades could also signal that CPS is likely to see its low-income population decline further. Last school year, nearly one-quarter of preschoolers and close to half of kindergarteners were from low-income families, compared to more than three-quarters of students in nearly all of the older grades.

Multiple principals told Chalkbeat they don’t believe missing paperwork is a big contributor — or that it is a factor at all — since their funding heavily relies on collecting those forms.

Another factor in the drop of low-income students could be a slight uptick in families seeking out private schools. Of Chicago’s low-income families, 10% were enrolled in private school in 2021 — an increase of 3 percentage points from 2019, according to an analysis of Census data by Jose Pacas, chief of data science and research at Kids First Chicago. That’s after little change since 2012, the last time there was a similar increase.

That coincides with the COVID pandemic when CPS switched to virtual learning, as well as the launch of Illinois’ tax credit scholarship program, which began in the 2018-19 school year. The program grants tax credits to people who fund scholarships for low-income students who want to attend private schools. That program is expected to sunset this year.

Some low-income parents, like Blaire Flowers, say they’re frustrated with the lack of good school options available in the neighborhoods they can afford to live in. Her daughter takes two buses to a charter high school miles away from their home in Austin on the West Side because Flowers wasn’t able to find a school she liked in their own neighborhood.

West Side parent Blaire Flowers, pictured in the center, is surrounded by four of her five children.

The mother of five also fears that CPS won’t provide her 4-year-old son who has autism with an adequate education. She’s already struggled to secure bus transportation for him this year, and she’s heard frustrations from parents of older students with disabilities who have had trouble securing services they’re entitled to.

If Flowers left Chicago, she’d follow in the footsteps of many friends and family members, some who found the city too expensive, she said.

“Everyone I know, that I was close to, has left the city,” Flowers said.

As neighborhoods gentrify, schools face stark choices

The demographic changes in Chicago Public Schools are largely a reflection of a changing city, experts said.

From 2010 to 2020, Chicago’s population grew by 2%. The median household income also grew by more than $20,000, according to U.S. Census estimates. But during that time, the school district saw enrollment decline by 60,000 students. In recent years, the city’s population has dipped by 3%, driven in part by an exodus of working class families.

“The share of working class families in Chicago is decreasing with time, as its industry and economy shifts toward white collar jobs that skew upper class, college educated,” said William Scarborough, the lead author of the UIC report, who is now an associate professor of sociology at the University of North Texas.

School closings, including the mass closures under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, may have also pushed some working-class families to leave the city if they lost a beloved neighborhood school, Scarborough added. More people left the majority Black census tracts that experienced those 2013 school closures versus similar areas that did not, according to a WBEZ/Chicago Sun-Times investigation.

As schools lost students, some principals doubled down on enrolling the kids who lived in their neighborhood.

That’s what happened at Alexander Hamilton Elementary School in Lake View on the North Side, which saw one of the biggest drops in the share of students from low-income families. In 2013, Hamilton enrolled nearly 40% of children from low-income households, according to district data. That dropped to roughly 9% last school year.

James Gray, who was the principal from 2009-17, inherited an enrollment crisis when he took over Hamilton, which had narrowly escaped closure. The school enrolled 243 students when he arrived – roughly half of the almost 500 it served in 1999. He set out on what he called a “guerrilla effort” to sign up more neighborhood children, offering tours of the school, hosting weekend events and open houses, and even venturing to the park to chat up parents of toddlers — or potential future students.

Gray was successful. By the time he left, enrollment had jumped back up to about 480 students. He noticed that his students were increasingly coming from wealthier families. They were also more white. But that’s who lived in the neighborhood.

In 2013, the school was 47% white, 12% Black, 30% Hispanic and 4% Asian. Last school year, 73% of students were white — on par with the racial makeup of Lake View — while just 3% were Black, just under 13% were Hispanic, and nearly 4% were Asian American. (Hamilton’s current principal did not respond to a request for an interview.)

Though the shifts at individual schools can be stark, the racial breakdown districtwide has only changed slightly. As of last school year, the district’s students were 4% Asian American, 11% white, 36% Black, and 46.5% Hispanic. Ten years ago, 3% were Asian American, 9% were white, 40.5% were Black, and close to 45% were Hispanic.

Research has shown that students in diverse schools, both socioeconomically and racially, perform better academically than schools that are not integrated.

At the same time, families who become the minority may not feel as included or even shut out from their schools. As more neighborhood white families enrolled at Hamilton, Gray said, he received an anonymous note that said he had “driven Black and brown families away.”

It also stung when former students would visit and notice improvements at the school — bankrolled, in part, by parent fundraising efforts — such as new hoops and backboards in the gym and a new science lab.

They would say some version of, “Oh Mr. Gray, I wish you could have done this while I was here,” he recalled.

“They realized their experience was different from the kindergarteners or first graders’ experience over time,” Gray said.

While the demographic shifts have led to more income and racial diversity at some schools, that diversity could be fleeting as gentrification continues to push longtime neighborhood families out.

John-Jairo Betancur, professor of urban planning and policy at UIC, said as property values “dramatically” increase, families — and their children — leave for other neighborhoods or the suburbs, causing enrollment in the local schools to drop. At the same time, birth rates are declining in Chicago and more households do not include children, Betancur noted.

That has happened in Logan Square, home to Lorenz Brentano Math & Science Academy elementary school.

Similar to Hamilton, Brentano was at risk of closure due to low enrollment in 2013. Principal Seth Lavin’s priority when he became principal in 2015 was to bring in more students. He, too, was successful through various efforts, giving more than 100 school tours his first year, he said.

Today, the school enrolls almost 700 children, a 62% increase from a decade ago. But the school looks different. Roughly 39% of students come from low-income households, a nearly 50 percentage point drop from 2013 when 88% did. The school has also become more diverse: Half of Brentano’s students are Hispanic, just over a third are white, and about 5% are Black. A decade ago, 85% of students were Hispanic, while 5% were white, and 4% were Black.

Lavin said he is worried that gentrification has already “pushed out a lot of families” and will continue to do so, leading to a “great sense of loss” for families who have long called Logan Square home, and believe Brentano is at the heart of their community.

“It’s heartbreaking that even as we grow, and there’s expansion and the programming and things we didn’t have before that we’re able to get because of enrollment growth, that we’re losing families that should have those things, too,” Lavin said.

‘We have to keep kids in neighborhoods’

Lavin can spot six buildings outside of Brentano that have been renovated and hiked up rent prices in the last several years. He said the city “desperately” needs affordable housing and a pathway to home ownership.

“If we want to keep kids in neighborhood schools, we have to keep kids in neighborhoods,” he said.

Mayor Brandon Johnson has said that building more affordable housing and boosting neighborhood schools are priorities for his administration. Specifically, the mayor wants to grow the district’s Sustainable Community Schools model, which provides extra money for wraparound support and programming.

Separately, Johnson’s vision for school funding would alleviate pressure on principals to enroll more children in order to have a well-resourced school, or even to avoid closure. Though in the past more students meant more funding, CPS officials have been shifting toward funding schools based on need, not just enrollment. But that comes as the district stares down financial challenges, including a fiscal cliff as COVID relief dollars are set to run out.

If the city does nothing to address issues such as affordable housing, Chicago will shift toward “a city that primarily serves elites,” said Scarborough, the author of the UIC report.

District officials have not yet researched the trend around losing students from low-income families, a spokesperson said.

But many principals have noticed these shifts for years.

Even with how her community has changed, Zaimi’s school has two counselors and more staff focused on academic intervention. Still, she wishes she had more funding to hire a parent resource coordinator who could work with families, as well as instructional coaches who could help new teachers or those using new strategies in the classroom.

After all, she emphasized, her students have a lot of needs, regardless of their income. And, last year, more than one-third — about 370 — came from low-income families. That’s larger than the enrollment of entire schools in Chicago.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Thomas Wilburn is the senior data editor for Chalkbeat. Reach Thomas at twilburn@chalkbeat.org.

As asylum seekers continue arriving in NYC, some face school enrollment delays

2023-08-29T23:06:57+00:00

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As scores of asylum-seeking families continue arriving in New York City, the city’s efforts to quickly enroll their children in public schools are often failing to keep pace, according to families, advocates, and education department staffers.

The mammoth task of managing the new arrivals’ school enrollment has been hampered by insufficient staffing, inexperienced shelter operators, and gaps in language access, people familiar with the process said.

That’s left some families waiting weeks for school placements or without seats at all yet, sparking concerns that some kids won’t have their school plans finalized by the start of classes on Sept. 7, and that schools won’t have adequate time to prepare for new students before the year begins.

“Even prior to all this there was a tremendous need” for education department staffers working directly in homeless shelters to help families with school-related issues, said Jennifer Pringle, a project director at Advocates for Children, an organization that advocates for children in shelters, among other groups.

Advocates for Children had pushed the education department to hire 150 full-time shelter-based staffers before the influx of asylum seekers began, and last year, the city committed to hiring 100. But advocates say that number is insufficient to address the current needs.

“You’ve opened dozens and dozens of new shelters with no additional staff,” Pringle said. “To me, it’s utterly not surprising that there are enrollment delays, and in fact, I would be shocked if there weren’t.”

New shelters spark staffing concerns

More than 100,000 asylum seekers have arrived in New York City since last summer, with many taking residence in a rapidly expanding network of homeless shelters. An estimated 19,000 children so far have enrolled in the city’s public schools, with around 500 registering since July, according to an Education Department spokesperson.

The volume of the influx has sparked dire warnings from Mayor Eric Adams, who has said that city services are strained to capacity and that the city needs additional help from the state and federal governments.

Job one for the Education Department is identifying the new arrivals and getting them appropriate school placements – meaning, among other things, that the family has a way to get there and the school offers the necessary language support.

Staffers from the department’s division of students in temporary housing, including the 100 community coordinators hired last year, are tasked with fanning out to shelters, talking to the new arrivals about school enrollment, and helping them fill out registration forms, which are then delivered to the Education Department’s family welcome centers.

But a staffer involved with the process said employees are struggling to keep up with the ever-increasing number of shelters and new arrivals.

“They don’t have enough staff, they’re working like dogs, and it’s a bit of a disaster,” the staffer said.

In some cases, single employees are covering multiple shelters at once, handling case loads of between 250 and 500 kids, the employee said.

“The number of people is outrageous,” the staffer said. “There are so many children. If you go into a shelter … and the family is out that day, you don’t get registered. … Those kids are getting missed.”

Another roadblock is that many of the new emergency shelters the city has opened to accommodate the influx are operated by relatively new providers without experience helping families with school sign-ups.

“I just think everyone is stretched really thin, there’s a lot of new kids on the block … and in the meantime, children and families are not going to have the experience we believe they should,” said Catherine Trapani, the executive director of Homeless Services United, a coalition of 50 of the city’s long-running homeless shelter operators.

Dan Weisberg, the first deputy chancellor of the Education Department, said enrollment for the new arrivals has generally “gone smoothly.”

But he acknowledged the speed at which the city has had to open new family shelters has been “challenging. It means that we then have to scramble to assign somebody to go talk to the families about enrollment. So as long as that dynamic is happening … it will take a little longer for us to get help there.”

Education Department spokesperson Nicole Brownstein said “Project Open Arms,” a blueprint released last year for educating migrant children that emphasized interagency communication, remains in effect.

Families face waits for school placements

Norberto Priceño arrived from Venezuela in June with his wife and three children, and the family has been living in a shelter in Far Rockaway, Queens. Priceño said he’s received virtually no information from the shelter staff about how to access city services, and only found out how to enroll his kids in school from other families in the shelter.

He took his kids to a family welcome center last month and was told he’d hear back about school placements in 15 days, but so far has only gotten confirmation that one of his kids is registered.

“School starts next week, and we only have one confirmed to start school, we haven’t gotten an answer for the other two,” he said. “I’m worried for their education,” he added, noting that he doesn’t want any of his kids to miss class time.

One staffer at a family welcome center, who declined to give her name, said that enrollment with the new arrivals is proceeding as normal and that families generally only have to wait 24-48 hours.

But another agency staffer involved with enrollment said the wait times for the newly arrived families have been significantly longer this summer than in past years, sometimes taking several weeks.

An Education Department spokesperson said that the average turnaround time is about a week, and that the agency makes sure enrollment letters are sent directly to families at shelters, so they don’t have to return to the family welcome centers.

Deputy Chancellor Carolyne Quintana said staffers from the Education Department’s multilingual division and other central offices have been posted at family welcome centers throughout the summer to lend additional support.

Even after enrollment assignments are confirmed, some newly arrived families are still struggling to figure out how to make the school placements work.

Jenny Lozano and Andres Yara are Colombian immigrants who arrived earlier this summer and have been living at a shelter in midtown Manhattan — where the family of four is currently sharing one queen-sized bed. They said they had to wait about a month after first handing in their form to get a school placement for their 12-year-old daughter.

When they finally got their daughter’s school assignment, it was a school in Harlem roughly 80 blocks away from their shelter. Lozano said she was told that because of all the new arrivals, schools closer to her shelter were all full.

Younger students living in shelters are eligible for yellow buses if their schools are far enough away, but that access ends after sixth grade, just shy of covering Lozano’s daughter. Lozano is fretting about sending her daughter on the subway in a new city and country.

“She’s too small to send her alone on the train,” Lozano said.

Language gaps persist

Some advocates say the city is especially ill-equipped to work with the increasing number of families whose languages aren’t as commonly spoken in the city as Spanish.

Arash Azizzada, the founder of Afghans for a Better Tomorrow, which supports Afghan immigrants and refugees, said many of the Farsi- and Pashto-speaking families he works with have lots of questions about how to enroll kids in school, and are often going weeks without support at shelters.

“They aren’t pivoting fast enough to accommodate this population,” he said.

Trapani said staffers in her coalition of shelter operators use a city-contracted translation phone service, but often experience long waits and don’t have printed materials they can distribute to families who speak languages not included in the city’s list of the 10 most-spoken dialects.

It’s not just families affected by enrollment delays. Schools need as much lead time as possible to plan for students, especially if they want to take advantage of the precious few days with staff in school before students arrive. Any lags in the enrollment process could undermine schools’ planning efforts, advocates warned.

“We need clear data about where the asylum seekers are going to be concentrated so that those schools can get ready now,” said Dia Bryant, the executive director of Ed Trust-New York. “It’s not going to be enough in two weeks to say, ‘Oh no, this school has 60 asylum seekers.’ We need support with actually assessing their strengths and thinking about how to support their families.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Homeless students needed help. Schools showed them the door.

2023-08-29T09:00:00+00:00

This story was published in partnership with the Center for Public Integrity, a newsroom that investigates inequality.

The two boys should have been in elementary school. But for 71 days, the Bristol Borough School District in suburban Philadelphia would not enroll them.

Attorneys for the students later explained they were newcomers. They first lived with a relative in New Jersey but couldn’t stay without risking her Section 8 housing voucher. They next moved into Bristol Borough’s district boundaries, the attorneys said, where the boys shared a single room with their mom in a family friend’s home, without a lease or a legal right to remain.

Twice, their mother visited Bristol Borough offices to enroll. Twice, district staff turned her away: Without proof of age, immunizations and address, they said, the boys could not attend.

On the third try, she named the federal law that guarantees equal educational opportunities to children without stable housing, including those without normally required paperwork. “My boys should be protected under the McKinney-vento act,” she emailed.

The district advised her to enroll elsewhere.

The Bristol Borough case is one of dozens reviewed as part of a Center for Public Integrity investigation that shows the federal law promising to provide homeless children with equal access to education, while ironclad in theory, can prove paper thin in practice.

Public Integrity obtained nearly 1,000 pages of documents, exchanged between 2019 and 2023, that provide a revealing window into a rarely discussed component of the law: the homeless enrollment dispute process. They show families wrestling with Pennsylvania school district personnel over where children have a right to enroll and which services they ought to receive.

Nationwide, there’s little information about how schools settle disagreements over which students qualify for aid. That can include transportation from outside of district boundaries to ensure students have stable schooling even when they lack stable housing.

The Pennsylvania records reveal the tension between the generosity of the education provisions in the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act and the constraints on local officials ultimately in charge of implementing a law that comes with minimal funding — and no teeth.

The law urges public schools to embrace homeless students, regardless of whether they reside within a school district’s boundaries. But when families say they don’t have a permanent home, some school district officials suspect residency fraud.

When those arguments escalated, certain districts doubled down, deploying a private investigator or school police to rebut the families’ version of events.

Suburban school districts in particular can be quick to interpret the law narrowly and to expend resources investigating whether families who seek help are opportunists or fakers, a review of dispute records and internal emails from the Pennsylvania Department of Education suggests. Many conflicts unfolded in Philadelphia-area schools, which are among the country’s most segregated. On average, the spending gap between wealthy and poor districts in Pennsylvania is among the widest in the nation.

Families caught in several disputes alleged their children were locked out of school for weeks, even months.

“I am appalled!!” one woman wrote to state authorities after she learned her grandson would be disenrolled from Abington School District in suburban Philadelphia. “How does sleeping on someone’s sofa and your children sleeping on air mattresses or paying your last dollar at a hotel, considered stable living conditions. I believe having a permanent address would be stable living conditions.”

A letter from the district argued her grandson experienced “no causal event that caused homelessness” but simply moved out of the district when a lease ended.

In a statement, district spokesperson Allie Artur wrote that Abington is “confident that its professionals comply with applicable laws with respect to homeless students” but declined to comment on specific cases due to privacy laws.

In the Bristol Borough case, the district argued that the information they received about the family’s living situation led them to believe that the students had stable housing.

Michael Santos, who serves on the board of the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth, said Public Integrity’s reporting surfaces rarely-discussed problems in how school districts implement McKinney-Vento, signed into law in 1987.

“You have to basically pull teeth to get these cases,” he said. “It’s not easily available, precisely because it does shine a light on some of the noncompliance issues that may be in violation of federal law.”

Hidden hardships

What Public Integrity found in Pennsylvania is likely the tip of the iceberg there.

Federal figures suggest more than 27,000 students experienced homelessness in Pennsylvania during the 2020-2021 school year. The state education department estimates that thousands of them encounter a barrier to their enrollment, attendance, or educational success” each school year, but the agency refused to answer questions about how it defines barriers or calculated that figure.

Disputes over homeless education services are not unique to Pennsylvania.

Public Integrity obtained summaries of roughly 20 concerns about homeless education that families brought to the attention of Maryland education officials in the 2022-2023 school year. Those records show Maryland students also missed school days, experienced difficulty arranging transportation and faced suspicions of residency fraud.

Across the nation, families filing paperwork to dispute district decisions likely represent the minority of those experiencing barriers at school.

Advocates said they suspect homeless families prioritize urgent needs like earning money over complex administrative appeals. Others may feel ashamed to admit they struggle with housing or fear that self-reporting as homeless could invite unwelcome scrutiny.

Nonetheless, Pennsylvania families can escalate concerns unresolved at the district level to state officials or homeless education specialists known as regional coordinators, who can play a pivotal role in the lives of students seeking McKinney-Vento protections.

Records show coordinators sometimes urged school districts to enroll students they initially rejected. Other times, they sided with district administrators who deemed kids ineligible.

Documents obtained by Public Integrity describe fewer than 60 disputed cases that reached state officials from 2019 to 2023.

Eric Hagarty, who served as acting secretary of education in Pennsylvania from April 2022 to January 2023, thinks lack of power is the reason relatively few families appeal McKinney-Vento disputes.

“Students experiencing homelessness don’t have lobbyists and high-paid attorneys who can spend their time trying to work the system,” he said. “And it’s those vulnerable populations that are not best served, even though everyone has the best intentions of serving them.”

Legal aid groups have long argued that the need for their services far outstrips their capacity to provide them. And families who advocate for themselves may not receive consistent treatment from schools.

Federal homeless education guidance recommends general processes rather than mandating specific steps. Who decides disputes, which evidence to consider and how to compensate families whose rights are violated — all of that is left up to states and schools.

When the process fails, children pay the cost.

“Students experiencing homelessness don’t have lobbyists and high-paid attorneys who can spend their time trying to work the system.”

Though federal policy requires schools to keep children enrolled while disputes are considered on appeal, in at least six instances Public Integrity reviewed in Pennsylvania, parents and other concerned adults said children missed days, weeks or even months of classes because districts did not enroll them or arrange transportation to school during periods of housing instability.

In one dispute, a teenager was alleged to have missed about three months of school when the Sharon City School District, where he resided temporarily with an aunt, did not enroll him.

A school principal wrote that he would be “more than willing” to enroll the student once his relatives completed enrollment paperwork — a requirement that McKinney-Vento specifically says cannot be used to keep homeless students out.

A regional coordinator questioned why the district in western Pennsylvania thought a teenager forced to move between relatives’ homes in search of a safe place to live was not covered by the law.

“If this 14 year old who was unstable in his living situation and fleeing an abusive and unsafe home was not an ‘unaccompanied homeless youth’ last spring — who would be?” the regional coordinator, Wendy Kinnear, wrote to the principal.

The Sharon City School District did not answer Public Integrity’s questions about the dispute.

A delayed enrollment is exactly the scenario federal law is seeking to prevent, said Santos, who used to work as a legal aid attorney representing homeless families.

“The law is very clear: While the dispute resolution is pending, you’re supposed to keep the child enrolled. The whole idea is to provide school stability, so that the student doesn’t lose school days,” Santos said. “So if they’re actually refusing, from the get go, and not telling the families that they have the right to appeal, that’s a problem.”

The district was not alone in doubting if students experienced homelessness. Local educators regularly marshaled district resources to argue students were stably housed.

Public Integrity identified 11 cases in which districts subjected students who claimed they were homeless to residency investigations. District officials tasked school safety officers to make phone calls or pay visits to shared residences, hired a private investigator, filmed daily routines, interviewed temporary hosts or tracked a family using a license plate reader.

The Cheltenham School District north of Philadelphia hired a private investigator and conducted “comprehensive surveillance (multiple locations, multiple days of the week over the course of different weeks, before school, after school, etc.)” to investigate where one family resided, according to the dispute record. State officials reviewing the case agreed the family lived out of district and was not homeless.

Surveillance often targets students who say they are “doubled up” — that is, sharing a friend’s or relative’s housing for lack of better options.

Those children are deemed homeless under McKinney-Vento, which covers students “sharing the housing of other persons due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or a similar reason.” The law places no time limit on how long a student may be eligible for federal protections.

Still, disagreements over this definition are the root of many conflicts. Advocates for homeless youth say the law is inclusive, shielding students regardless of their specific situation. But some school districts see room for argument. Is a family still homeless if they are not seeking permanent housing? What if there’s no record of an eviction? Districts peel off families around the edges of the federal definition — and a few squarely covered by the law.

Public Integrity’s reporting relies primarily on public records. We were unable to contact many of the families who disputed homeless education services. We withheld the names of families we could not reach or who did not consent to be interviewed.

Documents show school district personnel also sometimes struggled to contact students’ guardians and then faulted families for the lapsed communications. School staff may not have full understanding of their students’ housing and, even when well-informed, may find that a given situation is not easy to categorize.

Most dispute records either provided some evidence to suggest a student might be experiencing homelessness or revealed too little information to judge the student’s eligibility.

A handful of disputes reviewed by Public Integrity described disruptions to housing that seemed to fall outside the scope of McKinney-Vento, such as a family who said they sold their home voluntarily rather than due to hardship.

Most districts declined to discuss specific disputes. Regional coordinators, who investigate disputes on appeal, referred questions to state officials when reached for comment. The Pennsylvania Department of Education also would not discuss specific incidents or make Storm Camara, the state’s homeless education coordinator, available for an interview.

Taj Magruder, a spokesperson for the state Department of Education, said in a statement that the agency is “committed to providing equitable and inclusive educational opportunities for students experiencing homelessness” and has “a robust and groundbreaking set of standards and practices that ensure the highest level of quality.” The statement also touted an independent monitoring system and said districts out of compliance with federal law must implement a correction plan by the next school year.

But Hagarty, the agency’s former acting secretary, said the department has limited levers to compel compliance. School systems, he and others interviewed for this story said, exercise local control of education.

Doubled up, shut out

A 2022 Public Integrity investigation added to long-standing evidence that many students who qualify for federal homeless education programs at school likely aren’t receiving those services, in part due to misunderstandings about the definition of homelessness itself.

The analysis estimated that 300,000 students annually may have met the U.S. Department of Education’s definition of homelessness but went uncounted in pre-pandemic school years. Identification is critical because it’s a first step that might have allowed those students to remain in school systems where they no longer had a permanent residence, get tutoring or receive referrals to agencies that provide housing and medical care.

Advocates for homeless youth said confusion about McKinney-Vento eligibility — such as when a student is considered doubled up and when they should be categorized as an unaccompanied homeless youth — are major reasons children slip through the cracks. Available data in Pennsylvania shows that school administrators categorize about two-thirds of homeless students as doubled up.

In western Pennsylvania, the family of a middle school student protested when the district he attended balked at keeping him enrolled after he was forced to relocate following his mother and stepfather’s divorce.

The boy, who has autism, oppositional defiant disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, temporarily moved in with his grandmother in a neighboring school district.

An aunt, Jenny Minchoff, wanted him to remain enrolled in the Greenville Area School District, where he received full-time special education services and had long-standing relationships with staff members.

“Moving into another school district and all of the accompanying changes would be incredibly disruptive to [his] well-being,” Minchoff wrote to the district homeless student liaison in August 2021.

Under the McKinney-Vento Act, the family made the case for him to stay as a doubled-up student. But Greenville staff did not see it that way.

District staff determined he had stable housing and contacted the neighboring school system to begin the enrollment process there. The family didn’t know until the new district called the child’s grandmother, asking her to pick up an enrollment packet, Minchoff said.

With help from an outside education consultant and intervention from a regional coordinator, Minchoff was able to re-enroll her nephew. But, frustrated by the experience, she switched him to an online charter school months later.

In a statement provided to Public Integrity, the Greenville district wrote that staff adhere to McKinney-Vento guidelines, and that “on occasion, this involves consulting our Regional Coordinator for additional guidance and clarification regarding homeless situations.”

“I feel as though they withheld a lot of information,” Minchoff said of the district. “It makes me wonder how many other kids are not getting the treatment that they legally deserve.”

Surveilling students

When families try to explain they are sharing housing temporarily, some district officials react by screening for fraud.

Records show school districts regularly interview guardians about where they are living and require families to submit documentation to prove it.

Administrators at Southeast Delco, a suburban Philadelphia district in a county crisscrossed by about 20 local school systems, said their concerns about residency fraud are the product of geography. A single multi-building apartment complex may span more than one school system. Brenda Wynder, the district’s superintendent, said families sometimes list a relative’s address on enrollment forms to move a child into their preferred district.

District staff were adamant that they do not investigate a student’s residency once they say they are experiencing homelessness. But the district requires families to prove where they live and why because it is a “resources issue,” said Jeffrey Ryan, the district’s McKinney-Vento liaison.

“We obviously have district taxpayers who want the district’s funds expended for district students,” Ryan said, “not, in this example, the Philly kid who’s just using the address.”

In addition to hiring private investigators and interviewing parents directly, the Cheltenham School District outside of Philadelphia also contacts parents’ landlords or employers and maintains “a residency information line for members of the community to leave tips regarding possible non-resident students,” Cheltenham spokesperson Kevin Kauffman said in response to an emailed list of questions.

Cheltenham opened 26 residency investigations in the 2019-2020 school year at a cost of about $2,500, he said. The same year, the district spent $5,000 on homeless education services.

Kauffman said residency investigations are not used to screen students for homelessness. But Public Integrity reviewed records on one case where the district used surveillance techniques on a father who thought he and his children could be eligible for homeless status.

The family had been living with his mother, whose home was in the school district. He said it was a burden for her, and so the family relocated to a girlfriend’s apartment in Philadelphia, where he worried they could not stay indefinitely because of her Section 8 voucher.

The district didn’t want to let the children remain at their schools. Camara, the state coordinator, reviewed the case and agreed with the officials.

“He wants a better school district for his kids; so do many folk,” Camara wrote in early 2020. The family’s living arrangement, “from what you’ve stated here, is by choice!”

A 2018 WHYY investigation of residency enforcement by suburban Philadelphia districts found evidence that poor children and students of color were most affected. Attorneys with the Pennsylvania-based Education Law Center said that also plays out for families experiencing housing instability: School systems, they contend, selectively target families for residency investigations based on their class and race, especially Black students in mostly white schools, and demand families submit multiple documents to prove where they live.

School districts “are not putting families who own single family dwellings through the same hoops,” said Paige Joki, an attorney with the Education Law Center, which advocates for equal public education. “It’s anti-poor. It’s that you live in a shared dwelling.”

Magruder, the state Department of Education spokesperson, did not answer a question regarding whether Black students in Pennsylvania are more likely to be the subject of residency investigations or challenges to their McKinney-Vento status. Public Integrity was unable to determine whether the state requires school districts to report any demographic data about the residency investigations they conduct.

When McKinney-Vento ends

Families who initially receive McKinney-Vento services may later find themselves at odds with a school system that previously welcomed them, even if their housing remains tenuous.

Public Integrity reviewed at least seven cases in which districts contended that families who previously received McKinney-Vento now had stable housing, even as the families argued they should be eligible for services.

Meghan O’Connor, a mother of four in suburban Philadelphia, experienced this challenge firsthand. In 2018, she and her family were displaced from their rental in the Colonial School District by an oil accident that ruined virtually all their possessions, she said.

The O’Connors struggled to find a new place amid rising home prices and a lack of rentals for larger families. They moved in with one relative, then another in an adjacent district.

O’Connor’s two older boys, Colonial students since they were kindergarteners, were deemed eligible for McKinney-Vento and continued attending their schools. Her oldest thrived. Once a shy child, he gained confidence, O’Connor said. She credited his success to devoted teachers and an individualized education program that accommodated his stutter.

But in May 2022, a notice on district letterhead told the family their residence was now considered permanent. It didn’t feel that way to O’Connor: Her husband sleeps on a couch most nights, she said, while she shares a bed with her three youngest children. Only her oldest has his own bedroom, a holdover from before the accident.

“It’s not a permanent solution at all,” she said.

A statement the district sent to Public Integrity said the decision “had nothing to do with the amount of time they had not lived in the District, but rather that the circumstances no longer met the standard of homelessness under state law.” The statement argued the O’Connor family chose to live with family in order to save money although their previous home was repaired and available to rent.

O’Connor said the landlord did not offer her family the rental after repairs made it livable and there was nowhere else her family could afford to go.

The family appealed the decision, but in August the state sent word that officials agreed that the children were not eligible for McKinney-Vento. O’Connor enrolled her younger son in Catholic school, funding tuition with financial aid from the school and support from relatives. Her oldest now attends school online.

The boys have not transitioned easily. Her oldest son’s teachers tell her he speaks constantly of missing friends in the Colonial school system. She is less familiar with his new individualized education program and worries it might not be as thorough. Her younger son has struggled to catch up to the Catholic school curriculum; he’s switching to the online charter her oldest attends.

A Colonial School District statement said the school system “strictly adhered to the law.”

“The district understands and is empathetic to the educational challenges homelessness creates,” according to the statement. “While we favor removing as many barriers to education as possible, we must balance this approach with our responsibility to the taxpayers who fund that education.”

‘Being punished for poverty’

The Pennsylvania Department of Education’s 2023 report on the matter estimates that 4,544 students — 17% of all homeless students for whom data was available — experienced “barriers to enrollment, attendance, and/or academic success” in the 2021-2022 school year.

State officials declined to answer questions about how to interpret the data.

According to a brief methodology, the estimate relies on reports from local, regional or state staff who “worked to resolve a barrier situation,” such as missing immunization records. The document does not cite specific barrier incidents or explain when they are deemed to be resolved.

But the report does explain that some barriers are “actually rights regarding school enrollment for students experiencing homelessness,” a shortcoming the report said would be addressed “via ongoing professional development, on-call [Local Educational Agency] technical assistance, and annual monitoring visits.”

Other documents reveal the limitations of those methods to reform schools.

The Montour School District in the suburbs of Pittsburgh disenrolled or denied enrollment to an average of 20 students per year because of residency issues, district staff told an independent state monitor evaluating McKinney-Vento compliance in 2023. While turning those families away, the monitor said the district “failed to follow through with nearly every recommendation” from a previous audit.

The Montour district also did not conduct staff training about the law’s requirements and provided scant evidence that it properly notified families of their right to dispute the rulings, the audit found.

The monitor wrote that they were “very concerned that there will be little or no follow through to demonstrate program compliance.”

In November 2019, according to a dispute record Public Integrity obtained, a mother wrote a letter pleading with the Montour district to continue enrolling her children. The family shared housing with friends or stayed in hotels when money allowed, she said.

District staff used a license plate reader to identify a property the mother leased in a neighboring school district. The mother said she used the address for mail but didn’t live there.

“My children have had a very rough year, and right now their only sense of security is in Montour,” she wrote.

“Being punished for poverty just does not seem right,” she added.

It’s unclear how the case was resolved. In an email exchange, a regional coordinator said she believed the family was not homeless, but state coordinator Camara suggested an eviction from 2019 made the family McKinney-Vento eligible.

Neither the Montour School District nor the state Department of Education responded to multiple requests for comment about the monitoring report and the dispute incident.

“If the process is so convoluted, most families just give up,” said Santos, now associate director of U.S. policy at RESULTS Educational Fund, a nonpartisan anti-poverty group. “They’re like, ‘We honestly do not have time for this. I’m barely getting by. I have to go to work. I cannot take time off work to actually talk to the school and deal with this.’”

Despite this, records show that students’ guardians seeking McKinney-Vento assistance tried to parse the plain language of the law for themselves, without attorneys or advocates.

A mother explained to the state Department of Education that she withdrew her children from their current school because the family planned to enter a shelter east of Pittsburgh. But when the shelter gave those rooms to someone else, she said, her family was instead left sleeping in the parking lot of a Burlington Coat Factory. The mother enrolled her children in the Gateway School District, but received a form arguing they had “no right to enrollment” due to “lack of any evidence” of residing within its boundaries.

“We are basically being denied enrollment due to not having a physical address and can’t get an address until we get into a shelter or into a section 8 house,” she wrote to the state. “I thought homeless laws and disability laws protected children and made it to where they could continue going to school no matter my situation however I guess that’s not the case.”

Aaron Smith, a social worker in the Gateway School District, said he sent the family the state’s “Procedural Safeguards Notice of Denial of Enrollment” form because staff wished to clarify whether the children should remain in a previous district. The form said the children could attend Gateway pending a final decision, not that they were disenrolled immediately.

“I don’t like the form either, but it’s just the standard form we’re supposed to use,” said Smith, who recalled that area shelters were at capacity when he started working with the family. “If I got that [form], I’d be upset because it looks kind of legal. It’s kind of threatening and intimidating.”

Smith said the incident had a positive resolution: The children continued attending Gateway, and the family later transferred to a charter school in another district when they found permanent housing.

‘The kids are not the only priority’

In Bristol Borough, where the two boys missed more than 70 days of school, their mother asked a district administrator to reconsider enrolling them. “If the school district does not agree with me you must give me something in writing that says that I have a right to appeal the school’s decision,” she wrote in an email.

Bristol Borough did not enroll the children. Instead, the small school system overlooking the Delaware River border that divides Pennsylvania from New Jersey sent a uniformed school officer to the address where the parent said her family was living — a move that could threaten a temporary living situation.

What happened next is disputed. An attorney for Bristol Borough wrote that the apartment’s resident at first denied that the newcomers lived with him, then confirmed that they paid him rent. Attorneys with the Education Law Center, which represented the family in a complaint to the state against the district, said the friend in fact confirmed their clients lived with him temporarily due to economic circumstances. They maintained their clients did not have a lease.

What is certain is the outcome. It was not until January 2020, after the boys’ mother enlisted the help of Education Law Center attorneys, that the two children enrolled in Bristol Borough.

The attorneys argued Bristol Borough should provide $21,300 in educational services to each child to compensate for missed school days.

An attorney for the district replied his client was “led … to believe that the children were not homeless” but were leasing a property. Plus, he argued, Bristol Borough did not violate federal law by choosing not to enroll the children because it “cannot be considered to be omniscient about a family’s living situation” and “can only be aware of the information presented to it.”

It is not clear from records shared with Public Integrity whether Bristol Borough ever awarded the children compensatory education services. Asked for comment, the district’s superintendent said he was not a district employee during the dispute and had no knowledge of it.

Camara, the state’s homeless education coordinator, reviewed the case and concluded that Bristol Borough had already met its obligations under McKinney-Vento.

In a case summary, Michelle Connor, a regional coordinator, wrote that the district official who initially did not enroll the family “looks out for fraud as much as the well-being of the students.”

“This is not to say she does not care; but she cares equally for both,” she continued. “The kids are not the only priority.”

Jeffco is recommending closing two K-8 schools this year in second round of closures

2023-08-24T23:00:26+00:00

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Jeffco, Colorado’s second largest school district, is recommending the closure of two K-8 schools as the district continues to address the decline in student enrollment.

Sixteen elementary schools were closed last year in the first round of the district’s closure plan.

The two schools, Coal Creek Canyon K-8 and Arvada K-8, are the smallest of five K-8s in Jeffco Public Schools. Coal Creek, which is located near the Boulder County border and has fewer than 100 students, is also smaller than any of the district’s 17 middle schools.

The proposed closure of Coal Creek K-8, however, will include a search for a charter school provider that may reopen in the community.

The Jeffco school board received the recommendation Thursday, but will vote on the proposed closures at its Oct. 12 meeting. There will be four school-based community meetings and two formal one-hour public hearings with the school board before the vote.

If approved, the latest closures would bring the number of schools closed in Jeffco to 21 since 2021.

Before last year’s elementary school closures, the district said their buildings had the capacity to serve 96,000 students, but were only filled with about 69,000. With the closures to date, the district now has the capacity for about 88,000 students, and is currently serving about 66,500.

Due to declining birth rates and fewer children living in the area, the number of students entering elementary schools is not replacing the larger group of students graduating and exiting the district.

As the district considers secondary school enrollment, the board has already decided to close Moore Middle School at the end of this school year. The school will merge with Pomona High School, which will serve students in grades six through 12.

The two K-8 closures would impact about 524 students and 97 staff members. The district estimates 26 of the students impacted have also been displaced by a previous school closure.

District leaders say they’ll need to closely continue to monitor enrollment trends, but so far, aren’t planning for a third round of closures next year. A moratorium on high school closures is still in effect until June 2024.

A more complicated proposal for Coal Creek

Lisa Relou, chief of strategy and communications for Jeffco, said this round of recommendations was more complicated, in part because these secondary schools are not located as close to each other as elementary schools.

District leaders said they visited the Coal Creek Canyon community in the spring and heard that families are interested in small schools within their close-knit community. Currently, the closest Jeffco school, Three Creeks K-8, is more than 10 times larger with more than 1,000 students, and approximately 10 miles, or a 15-minute drive away. The school does have room for the Coal Creek students.

But, “it’ll be a significant change for these families,” Relou said.

The district plans to search for charter providers willing to open a school in the area. Regardless, the middle school grades will close at the end of the school year, if the closure is approved. But if the district receives interest, then the closure of the elementary grades will be delayed for another year while the charter application is considered.

Coal Creek Canyon K-8 has fewer than 100 students.

If no viable providers show interest in the next month, then the full school will close at the end of this school year.

Coal Creek’s building can accommodate 200 students, but in that canyon community, Relou said, a school likely will never have that many students. The highest enrollment the district has on record for the school was in 2013-14 with 159 students.

“There are charter schools out there designed to serve a small number of students,” Relou said. “It’s just not sustainable as a Jeffco traditional school.”

As a traditional school, Jeffco not only gives Coal Creek the highest funding per student of any school in the district, but has also subsidized the school with an additional $469,468 in the last year.

In the meantime, district leaders are also researching how other districts subsidize small schools, and say they’re open to considering a transportation arrangement with neighboring districts that may have a more attractive school option for Coal Creek families.

Last school year, more than a third of Coal Creek’s students came from outside Jeffco boundaries.

The proposed Arvada K-8 closure

Arvada K-8 was told last school year that it was being considered for closure because it is on the state’s watchlist for years of low performance, but ultimately it was selected because of its low and declining enrollment, and complicated boundary placement, district officials said.

Currently, Arvada K-8 has approximately 557 students. Of those, 86% qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a measure of poverty.

Last year, the school had 550 students including 351 who lived in the neighborhood. But another 581 K-8 students who lived in the school boundary chose to go to a different school. Of those, 135 went to charter schools, while the majority went to other Jeffco schools.

Arvada K-8 is the only K-8 in the district that has separate boundaries for elementary and middle school students.

However, the school isn’t even within its own elementary boundary.

And, because it has separate boundaries, the school also serves as a separate middle school, instead of a K-8, meaning that it takes a significant number of new students at sixth grade who have been through traditional elementary schools.

If the school is approved to close, the district would redraw the area boundaries allowing North Arvada Middle School to take in all of the sixth through eighth grade students, and elementary students would be redrawn into a boundary to attend Lawrence Elementary. The district also notes that nearby Swanson and Secrest elementaries have space to accommodate students who instead want to use the choice enrollment process to attend those schools.

Students in the special needs program, called the Significant Support Needs Center Program, would be relocated to the Pomona 6-12 in the 2024-25 school year.

The district is estimating there will be renovation costs of up to $500,000 at North Arvada Middle School, and about $675,000 at Lawrence Elementary if the latest proposed closures are approved.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

After her old Denver school was closed, one 7-year-old was excited and nervous to start anew

2023-08-21T18:48:08+00:00

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Just before 7 a.m. Monday, the first day of school in Denver Public Schools, 7-year-old Sara sat on her family’s couch, velcroing brand-new sneakers so glittery that when she ran her hand over the outside, sparkles clung to her fingertips.

The sneakers were the same powder blue color as her favorite cartoon character, Stitch from the Disney movie “Lilo & Stitch,” who also adorned her T-shirt and backpack.

Sara woke up early, with minimal prodding from her mother. She is one of more than 87,000 students heading back at approximately 200 schools in DPS.

Sara was excited despite a big change. Her old school, Fairview Elementary, was one of three schools closed by DPS this past spring because of low enrollment — a persistent problem caused by lower birth rates and high housing prices that have pushed families out of the city.

DPS’ decision to close small schools sparked pushback from families, accusations of a rushed process, and clashes between district and city officials. After the decision was made, the district reassigned Fairview students to Cheltenham Elementary less than 1 ½ miles away.

“Mama, do you know where Cheltenham is?” Sara asked when they got in the car.

Her mother, Najah Abu Serryeh, put the school’s address into her phone’s GPS. It said they would arrive in 10 minutes. From the back seat, Sara was a mix of nerves and enthusiasm.

“I couldn’t sleep because I was so excited to go to school,” she said.

Then, the second-grader added: “I was scared that people will be mean to me.” Two of her friends had moved away over the summer, one to the city of Aurora and the other to California.

“But you have a good principal,” her mother said. “She will not let anybody be mean to you.”

Abu Serryeh had opposed the closure of Fairview, a big brick building in Denver’s Sun Valley neighborhood. She testified before the school board last November when Fairview was on a list of underenrolled schools facing closure. She told the board members that when her kids — Sara and her sister, who is now in middle school — heard about the possible closure, they cried.

Sara stands outside Cheltenham Elementary, waiting for the school doors to open.

“Fairview for them, it’s not just a school,” she told the board. “It’s like their second home.”

The Denver Housing Authority also opposed the closure of Fairview, arguing that its redevelopment of the subsidized housing in Sun Valley would bring hundreds more elementary-age students to the neighborhood and boost Fairview’s enrollment.

Despite those projections, the school board voted in March to close Fairview and two other schools: Math and Science Leadership Academy and Denver Discovery School. The vote took place with almost no warning — and Abu Serryeh was the only parent in the audience.

“It’s so unfair,” she told reporters afterward.

But after touring Cheltenham and meeting the principal in the spring, Abu Serryeh said she now feels differently. Combining students from the two schools means Cheltenham will have much higher enrollment — and the per-pupil dollars that come with it.

DPS had projected Fairview would have just 118 students this year if it had stayed open, while Cheltenham alone had 286 last year. Although Fairview students could choose to attend a school other than Cheltenham, it’s likely Cheltenham will have more than 300 students this year.

With more funding, Cheltenham will be able to offer programming that small Fairview could not.

“My daughter will have more opportunity and learning in Cheltenham, more than she was being offered in Fairview,” Abu Serryeh said in an interview. “She will have more classes like music, science, and dance. More than what she had at Fairview.”

And the sense that Fairview was like a second home? That may still exist at Cheltenham. Fairview teachers were guaranteed a job at Cheltenham if they wanted it.

When Sara and her mom pulled up Monday, the 7-year-old immediately recognized several staff members who were standing outside with walkie talkies, greeting families.

“Hiiiii!” one said, enveloping Sara in a big hug. “Happy first day of school!”

Even Sara’s second-grade teacher is a former Fairview educator. After walking to her new classroom, Sara let go of her mom’s hand, eager to start the school day. Her mom had to stop her to remind her to take a carton of cereal from the breakfast tray before Sara bounded to her seat.

“Byeeee,” her mother called after her.

Najah Abu Serryeh walks hand-in-hand with her 7-year-old daughter Sara to Sara’s second-grade classroom.

Outside, a yellow school bus full of kids pulled to the curb. The district had promised Fairview families transportation to Cheltenham, but Sara wasn’t able to ride the bus Monday because her family moved out of Sun Valley when their home was demolished as part of the redevelopment. Abu Serryeh watched the students stream off the bus. One little girl caught her eye.

“This is the friend she asked about,” Abu Serryeh said — the one Sara thought had moved to California. “She will be so happy when she sees her friends.”

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

First day of school: Chicago Public Schools reopens under a new era of leadership

2023-08-21T21:28:02+00:00

Chicago Public Schools is officially back in session.

Mayor Brandon Johnson, the first Chicago mayor in recent history to send his children to public schools, kicked off the first day of classes by joining educators, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez, and Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates outside Beidler Elementary School on the West Side.

Under a sweltering sun at 8:30 a.m., Johnson greeted parents and children in front of a chorus of reporters and cameras, before ringing the ceremonial bell to start the school year.

The joint appearance with Davis Gates, Martinez, and other district and union officials was unsurprising for the union-friendly mayor who came up through the CTU’s ranks, but still a break from the past when the union and City Hall officials would visit schools separately.

Despite the district facing a number of challenges ahead, including unreliable bus transportation, ongoing enrollment shifts, and an influx of immigrant students, Johnson focused on a new era of collaboration at the city’s public schools.

Later in the morning, after touring two other campuses, Johnson visited Kenwood Academy, where his son is now a sophomore.

Speaking to a history class, he likened the first-day icebreakers the teacher was doing to what he’s doing as the city’s new mayor.

“I hope that you will lean into the collaborative approach that your teacher is taking, because that is what we’re doing as a city,” Johnson told the students. “We’re building relationships, we’re collaborating so that we can make collective decisions together that ultimately can help transform people’s lives.”

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, CTU President Stacy Davis Gates, and other city hall, school district, and union officials pose for a photo inside a classroom at Kenwood Academy on the South Side.

CPS claws back from enrollment losses

Visiting Beidler was a symbolic choice for the mayor. The school narrowly escaped closure about a decade ago and is now part of a program Johnson wishes to expand: the Sustainable Community Schools initiative, which aims to provide wraparound services and more programming for students and families.

But Beidler is among several other schools in the program that have lost at least a quarter of their enrollment since the initiative started.

The official enrollment count will not be known until after the 20th day of school in September. But last year, 80,000 fewer students were enrolled in Chicago Public Schools than there were a decade ago and it is now the nation’s fourth largest school district. Chicago’s declining enrollment predated the emergence of COVID-19, but continued during the pandemic.

And for many parents and kids arriving at Beidler Monday morning, more pressing thoughts — like wishing for a great year — were at the forefront. Dondneja Wilson hoped that her daughter, who started preschool, would “grow, and learn, and have fun.”

“She likes kids a lot, so I feel like that’s going to be her favorite part,” Wilson said.

Dondneja Wilson and her daughter pose for a picture outside of Beidler Elementary School.

Last year, data from the last day of school in June obtained by Chalkbeat showed little change in overall enrollment. However, the number of English learners grew by more than 5,000 students. District officials have pointed to the increase as an approximation of how many migrant students have arrived on buses in the past year.

Chicago is seeing an influx of newcomers, many of whom are seeking asylum, arriving by bus from the southern border in Texas.

The number of bilingual teachers in CPS has dipped since 2015, even as the English learner population has grown, according to a recent Chalkbeat analysis. While 6,900 teachers have earned bilingual education endorsements — more than ever before, according to the district — it’s unclear how many are actually assigned to teach bilingual education.

Educators and immigrant advocates have expressed concerns about whether schools can properly support these new students. Jianan Shi, president of the Board of Education, said the city’s new welcome center for migrant students on the West Side has enrolled “hundreds” of newcomer students. He’s requested more information on the system’s overall strategy for supporting newcomers.

A classroom door welcomes students in Spanish at Kenwood Academy in Hyde Park.

Outside Beidler, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez told reporters that “the biggest challenge” is ensuring that all newcomers are registered in school, but he said the district is well-positioned to serve them, noting that Chicago has one of the largest bilingual and dual language programs in the nation. About one-fifth of the city’s students are English language learners.

“The challenge we have right now is, again, keeping up with all the new asylum-seekers that are coming in, going to them, making sure that we’re able to register them, assess them,” Martinez said. “But we’re doing that as we speak now.”

Transportation woes continue on first day

Transportation woes that have plagued the district for the last few years also cropped up on the first day, as parents reported problems with bus routes and trips that took more than an hour.

Laurie Viets, a CPS parent of three children – two of whom have transportation written into an Individualized Education Program – said the district promised to have all transportation issues resolved by last Friday.

However, Viets found out on Friday that one of her children, a seventh grader, was not going to have transportation and another child, a first-year high school student, would have a long bus route. Today, it took 70 minutes to get to school; it’s normally a 12-minute car ride, Viets said.

Viets said she wished Chicago Public Schools would have given her more time to prepare for changes in the transportation plans. Now, she won’t have transportation for one of her children for up to two weeks and she is concerned that her other child will be on the bus without air conditioning in extreme heat until they shorten his route.

The district’s bus problems stem back to 2021, the first year back to full-time, in-person school after COVID forced CPS to close buildings in March 2020. Students were left waiting on the first day and beyond for buses that never showed. In emergency mode at that time, the district began offering $1,000 stipends for rideshare services such as Lyft and Uber. But the transportation troubles continued well into the school year.

Last year, some 365 students were waiting for bus routes the first week of school and in September, district officials said they were still working to reduce 90-minute rides for some students.

The district has blamed and continues to point to a nationwide bus driver shortage as causing the transportation troubles. It signed a $4 million contract with a longtime vendor and bus-routing software company to try to fix the issues.

But last month, on July 31, district officials announced that it would not be able to transport roughly 8,000 students on the first day of school. They offered $500 monthly stipends to families of CPS students with disabilities or those in temporary living situations. Both groups are legally entitled to transportation. The district said at the time that 3,000 students had chosen the stipend option.

Davis Gates called the transportation troubles “a disaster” and a “failure of privatization.” CPS contracts with private bus companies to provide students with transportation. Davis Gates said she would like to see the district bring busing “in-house” and experiment with having its own fleet of buses that could start small by covering field trips and sporting events and then grow.

“These are Band-Aid approaches. I have not seen anything transformative or revolutionary in this space. And again, three strikes you’re out,” she said. “This isn’t a good way to start the school year with respect to transportation.”

The district has previously increased pay rates for bus driver companies, and is hoping to do so again this year. Martinez said he hopes that will help fill the driver shortage.

Viets, the parent worrying about her children’s transportation, said more needs to be done.

“Next year, if CPS is going to start by Aug. 21, by Aug. 1 they should know what the routes are,” said Viets.

If Chicago finalizes plans the Friday before the start of school, she said, the district is “not giving parents any kind of respect at all. They’re not giving us an opportunity to make other plans when they mess up.”

As Viets noted, the extreme heat also adds to worries about long bus rides. The weather also raises concerns about conditions inside buildings once students arrive.

Air-conditioning, aging buildings prompt push for green schools

With temperatures expected to reach 100 degrees this week, Martinez said his team worked “around the clock” to ensure classrooms are equipped with air conditioning this week.

Martinez said every classroom has at least a window unit, a key union demand during the CTU’s 2012 strike that was implemented a couple of years later by then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Still, in some cases, hallways are not air-conditioned, Martinez said.

Johnson has touted “climate justice” as a key focus of his administration and reiterated Monday that includes schools.

“Having buildings that are retrofitted, as well as an economy that’s built around green technology, some of that is top of mind,” he said.

Davis Gates used this week’s weather forecast to illustrate climate change’s impact on the city and why it underscores the urgent need for a new CPS facilities master plan, which hasn’t been updated since 2018. She added that building greener schools will be one issue the union will bargain over ahead of its contract expiration in 2024.

The school calendar’s pre-Labor Day start is an issue Davis Gates would immediately bargain over, she said. The late August start date began in 2021, matching up with many suburban districts.

The union was not able to bargain over the school calendar in 2019, Davis Gates said. But the passage of a 2021 state law reinstating some of the CTU’s bargaining rights could allow the calendar to be back on the table. The union’s contract expires next June and it’s likely the district and new mayor will begin negotiations with the teachers this winter.

The larger issues that officials highlighted were likely not top of mind for many students, such as 5-year-old Pierre, who started kindergarten at Beidler.

Asked what he was most excited about this school year, Pierre replied, “Playing.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Samantha Smylie is the state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering school districts across the state, legislation, special education, and the state board of education. Contact Samantha at ssmylie@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago’s first day of school is almost here. Here are five things we’re watching this year.

2023-08-18T20:42:43+00:00

Chicago Public Schools’ estimated 320,000 students will head back to class Monday for a school year that will be marked by old issues — and some new concerns.

The district’s enrollment has been dwindling for at least a decade, raising questions about how to best fund schools still recovering from the effects of the pandemic.

Funding overall has become more complicated as the city’s federal COVID relief dollars dry up. Much of that money has been used for supporting existing and additional staff, many of them providing extra academic support for students.

As the district decides on how, if at all, to continue funding some of those programs, it must also contend with the continued enrollment of incoming immigrant students.

Here are five issues Chalkbeat Chicago will be watching this school year:

A fiscal cliff is approaching

This is the last full school year before Chicago must earmark how to spend what’s left of nearly $3 billion it received in COVID relief aid from the federal government. The deadline is September 2024.

That means the district will soon be staring down a financial hole that has been filled by that influx of federal funds since the pandemic.

The district spent a large share of pandemic relief money on staff salaries and benefits. The district also spent hundreds of millions of dollars on academic recovery efforts, including after-school programs, an in-house tutor corps, and more counselors, social workers, and other support staff.

District officials have projected a budget shortfall of $628 million by the 2025-26 school year, raising questions about how Chicago will sustain any programs and services supported by the federal dollars.

A financial analysis released under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot noted that CPS “will not have a funding source” to keep up these academic recovery and social-emotional learning efforts.

As the district’s financial picture is becoming more precarious, Mayor Brandon Johnson has shared lofty plans for schools, including expanding the Community Schools model — leaving complicated financial decisions ahead.

The district’s state funding could also be in jeopardy if it fails to comply with a state law requiring that at least two staffers at each school are trained on the use of student restraint and timeout. The deadline for that, coincidentally, is the first day of school.

Student academic needs persist

Three years since the onset of the COVID pandemic, there are still signs Chicago students need extra help in the classroom. Students appear to be improving in reading achievement, but they’re gaining less ground in math, according to recent state test scores obtained by Chalkbeat.

As the district’s COVID dollars fade out, questions remain about how district officials will approach academic recovery, and whether there will be efforts to keep any of the extra support CPS has funded with the federal dollars.

Some of those COVID dollars went toward the creation of a $135 million universal curriculum called Skyline, which has received mixed reviews. The district has pressed schools not yet using the curriculum to prove they’re using another high-quality option, so it’s possible more campuses will use Skyline this year.

Additionally, Illinois’ General Assembly passed a new law requiring the State Board of Education to create a literacy plan for schools, which is due by the end of January 2024.

District grapples with continued dipping enrollment

Chicago’s public school enrollment has dipped by 9% since the pandemic began — a trend also seen among other big-city school districts — and is almost one-fifth smaller than it was a decade ago. Last year’s enrollment dip of 9,000 students was enough to push the district’s ranking from the country’s third largest public school system to the number 4 spot.

This year’s enrollment figures won’t be publicly released until later this fall.

As the district’s student body has thinned out, funding has grown — to $9.4 billion for the upcoming school year. Still, as the district has logged fewer students — including those from low-income families — CPS has in recent years received less state funding than it has projected. And with COVID aid running out, officials must grapple with how to fund schools serving a fraction of the kids they used to. (There is a citywide moratorium on school closures until 2025.)

Some advocacy and interest groups, including the teachers union, believe funding should be divorced from enrollment, in part because investing fewer dollars will only encourage more families to leave or to never enroll in public schools. Just over 40% of new budgets for schools this year was determined by student enrollment, with the rest accounting for other factors, such as student demographics.

Still, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez has emphasized that the district can’t factor out enrollment.

“In a large school district where schools serve 40 students, 400 students, and even 4,000 students, enrollment simply has to play a role in our funding formula,” Martinez previously told reporters.

Increase in migrant students poses new challenges

Last year, Texas officials began busing newly arrived migrants to Democratic-led cities, including Chicago. Since then, an estimated 12,000 migrants, many of whom are fleeing economic and political turmoil from South and Central American countries, have arrived in Chicago, While the district won’t say how many such students have enrolled, CPS saw roughly 5,400 new English learners last school year, Chalkbeat found.

Most Chicago schools have previously struggled with providing adequate language instruction for English learners. And with the city expecting more newcomers, educators and immigrant advocates recently told Chalkbeat that schools are not adequately resourced to serve these new students.

Some of these children may arrive without years of formal education and, if they’re learning English as a new language, are legally required to receive extra support.

The district’s number of bilingual teachers has dropped since 2015 even as the English learner population has grown, according to a Chalkbeat analysis. More teachers have earned bilingual education endorsements, which allows them to teach, but it’s unclear whether any of those educators are using those endorsements in the classroom.

District officials will be tasked with how to properly support these students. Officials had previously promised to release a formal plan by the first day of school but have not done so yet.

No district maps yet for the elected school board

As Chicago prepares to begin electing school board members next fall over the next two years, lawmakers have yet to approve maps that would designate which districts each board member would be elected from in the first round of elections. Ten members will be elected in November 2024, while the rest will be elected in November 2026, for a total of 21 members.

Illinois state lawmakers are in charge of approving those maps. In May, they extended their deadline to April 1, 2024, after concerns over whether the maps would match the makeup of the district’s student body or the city’s overall demographics.

Some observers cheered the extension. However, the delay presents new complications. If maps are not approved until April, the campaign season for the first set of districts would last just seven months, making it potentially challenging for candidates to prepare and for voters to have enough information ahead of Election Day.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Get free school supplies, food, and more at these 42 back-to-school events in Chicago

2023-08-14T17:55:28+00:00

Chicago Public Schools students head back to class Aug. 21 — parents, hold your applause — and many community groups, churches, businesses, and schools are pitching in to prepare students for the school year.

School supplies can be expensive, so many families rely on events where organizers give away notebooks, pens, pencils, crayons, and other essentials.

Our partners at Block Club Chicago rounded up more than 40 giveaways or fundraisers you can check out in your area before the first day of school.

Is there an event missing? Email newsroom@BlockClubChi.org with the info!

The Emamifard family picks out new backpacks for the school year during a back-to-school backpack giveaway and fair event at Eugene Field Elementary School in Rogers Park on Aug. 5, 2022.

South/Southwest Side

Gary Comer Youth Center Greater Together Community Block Party

4-6 p.m., Aug. 11

7200 S. Ingleside Ave.

The Gary Comer Youth Center will have live music, dancing, games, art, resources, barbecue food, and giveaways of school supplies.

Break Bread Back-To-School BBQ

4-7 p.m., Aug. 12

1615 W. 79th St.

A free back-to-school barbecue.

Back-To-School Bash at Stoney Island Plaza

Noon-3 p.m., Aug. 12

Stony Island Plaza and 95th Ave., parking lot near DD’s Discounts and Oak Street Health

South Siders can check out this event with face painting, music, balloon artists, bubbles, games, crafts for kids, and free hair styling.

Kids Off The Block Back-To-School Event

1-5 p.m., Aug. 12

11618 S. Michigan Ave.

Neighbors are invited to join Kids Off The Block for free food, music, raffles with prizes, a backpack and school supply giveaway, and more.

Back-To-School Health Fair

Noon-4 p.m., Aug. 12

Allen Metropolitan C.M.E. Church, 10946 S. Lowe Ave.

Vision screenings, and eyeglass cleaning and repairs from The Eyebar Optics, plus dental supplies, scholarship resources, community resources, free school supplies, music, raffles, food, local vendors, and more will all be part of this event.

The Nurmukhamedou family receives free backpacks.

Brightpoint and One Summer Chicago Mural and Back-To-School Block Party

1-4 p.m., Aug. 12

5958 S. Marshfield Ave.

Brightpoint, formerly known as Children’s Home and Aid, is unveiling a mural painted by One Summer Chicago youth at its South Side office. The event will also have games, music, free lunch and snacks, prizes and giveaways, a petting zoo, community resources, dental, health and wellness information, and free backpacks with school supplies and hygiene kits.

Community Resource and Back-2-School Fair

3-6 p.m., Aug. 12

Parking lot of Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church, 7851 S. Jeffery Blvd.

The Central South Shore Area Council is hosting a free fair with food, music, games, and giveaways.

Crandon Community Garden Back-To-School Backpack Bash

12:30-3:30 p.m. Aug. 13

71st Street and Crandon Avenue

The Crandon Community Garden will have food, games, activities, and a backpack giveaway. Children must be present to receive a backpack.

3rd Annual 114th and Forrestville Almost End of Summer Block Party

11 a.m.-4 p.m., Aug. 13

114th Street and Forrestville Avenue

There will be face painting, a bounce house, jewelry making, music, games, and a school supply giveaway.

Kids rock free backpacks they received during a back-to-school backpack giveaway in 2022.

CROC Center Back-To-School Health Fair

1-5 p.m., Aug. 16

The Salvation Army Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center Chicago, 1250 W. 119th St.

This event will include food, games, school vaccinations and physicals, dental exams, a farmers market, and more.

Englewood Back-To-School Bash

2-6 p.m. Aug. 17

Former Englewood High School Campus, 6201 S. Stewart Ave.

This event from Chicago Public Schools and Englewood Community Action Council will have food trucks, ice cream, pony rides, a petting zoo, aviation bus, creativity bus, inflatables, NASCAR RC racing, and more. There will also be school supply and laptop giveaways, music and entertainment, free school physicals, and driver’s licenses and state ID services. Children must be present to receive school supplies.

This is Life Back-To-School Event

4-7 p.m., Aug. 18

Salvation Army Adele Red Shield Center, 945 W. 69th St.

This event will have games, music, free haircuts, giveaways of backpacks and school supplies, and more.

Back-To-School Event at McKay Elementary School

10 a.m.-Noon., Aug. 18

6938 S. Washtenaw Ave.

This event will have food, music, and backpack giveaways.

Back-To-School Party from Free Street

11 a.m.-3 p.m., Aug. 18

Davis Square Park, 4430 S. Marshfield Ave.

Davis Square Park will have live music and poetry, local vendors, and a school supply giveaway of free backpacks, notebooks, and more.

Juana picks out a new backpack.

62nd Annual Englewood Back 2 School Parade

10 a.m.-2 p.m. Aug. 19

Ogden Park, 6500 S. Racine St.

At this free event, community members can enjoy a parade with bands, organizations and dancing teams, inflatables, water slides, food, giveaways of book bags and school supplies, entertainment, and a yoga demonstration.

L.Y.D. Back-To-School Bash

11 a.m.-2 p.m., Aug. 19

6033 S. Cottage Grove Ave.

At this event from the Live Your Dreams Foundation, there will be food and a first-come, first-served backpack with school supplies giveaway. The giveaway will start at noon and continue until supplies are exhausted.

Back-To-School Skate Party

4-6 p.m., Aug. 19

The Rink, 1122 E. 87th St.

The Rink is hosting a skate party to celebrate back-to-school season. Tickets are $15 and include a complimentary skate rental.

Back-To-School Celebration

10 a.m.-2 p.m., Aug. 19

Mahalia Jackson Court, 1 E. 79th St.

Food trucks, music, games, and a school supply giveaway will be part of this South Side celebration.

Back-To-School Party

2:30-5 p.m., Aug. 19

Archer Dental, 5200 S. Archer Ave. #3

Enjoy popcorn and slushies, games. raffles for electric toothbrushes, a Waterpik, and free exams and X-rays; meet the Archer Dental team and more.

5th Ward Office Back-To-School Bash

1-4 p.m., Aug. 20

63rd Street Beach, 6300 S. Lake Shore Drive

Ald. Desmon Yancy (5th) is hosting this South Side event with food, inflatables, activities, and a backpack giveaway. Children must be with an adult to participate.

Ald. Michelle A. Harris 2023 Back-To-School Jamboree

10 a.m., Aug. 26

Jesse Owens Park, 8800 S. Clyde Ave.

Eighth Ward residents can attend the alderwoman’s jamboree with food, music, haircuts and hair styling, games, and giveaways of backpacks and school supplies.

Veteran’s Back-To-School Picnic

11 a.m.-3 p.m., Aug. 26

11901 S. Ashland Ave.

Multi-Faith Veterans Initiative at Christ Universal Temple is hosting an event with food trucks, games, activities, a backpack giveaway (children must be present), as well as physical and dental exams.

Back-To-School Block Party

11 a.m. Aug. 26

5349 S. Wabash Ave.

Families can learn about fire safety at this back-to-school event from the Black Fire Brigade.

School buses and an American flag at the front of North-Grand High School in Chicago. Photo by Stacey Rupolo / Chalkbeat —May, 2019 photo—

North/Northwest Side

Helendora Samuels Picture Framing Back-To-School Drive

Ongoing through end of August

1736 W. North Ave.

This Wicker Park framing shop is collecting school supplies for the community throughout August. Backpacks filled with lined paper and notebooks, two-pocket folders, pencils, pens, crayons, and colored pencils can be dropped from 1-4 p.m. Monday-Saturday at the shop.

Annual Back-To-School Fundraiser

The Honeycomb Network, 2659 W. Division St.

4-7 p.m., Aug. 12

The Human Values Collective is hosting a fundraiser to support its operations.

Four Point Play’s 3rd Annual Back-To-School Basketball Clinic

1-4 p.m., Aug. 12

Moody Bible Institute (Solheim Center), 900 N. Wells St.

Four Point Play is hosting a basketball clinic for youth to practice their playing skills, with activities, drills, and more. There will also be special guests with presentations, a school supply giveaway, raffles of gift cards, and Chromebooks.

Back-To-School Fair + Mercado at Kelvyn Park

10 a.m.-1 p.m., Aug. 12

Kelvyn Park, 4438 W. Wrightwood Ave.

Free school supplies and backpacks, a vendor fair, food, raffles, face painting, kids’ activities, COVID-19 and flu vaccinations, and more will all be part of this event from the Kelvyn Park Advisory Council.

Hameedah picks out a new backpack for the school year.

The Near Northside 4TH Annual Back-To-School Drive

Noon-4 p.m. Aug. 13

Near North (18th) District police station, 1160 N. Larrabee St.

Jalisa Ford is hosting a back-to-school drive in honor of her son, 9-year-old Janari Andre Ricks, who was fatally shot in 2020. School supplies, book bags, snacks and beverages, and gift cards are being collected through Aug. 12. There’s an online Amazon registry and GoFundMe campaign for monetary donations. Donors can receive the drop-off location by emailing 1jarfoundation@gmail.com.

Second Annual Back-To-School Block Party

3-6 p.m. Aug. 13

4444 N. Milwaukee Ave.

This event from The Made Shop, Chicago Music and Acting Academy, Downstage Arts, and local officials will have free food, ice cream, school supplies, and backpacks, plus activities and a karaoke competition. RSVP online.

Back-To-School Carnival

10 a.m.-3 p.m. Aug. 13

Building Blocks Toy Store, 3306 N. Lincoln Ave.

The event at Building Blocks Toy Store will have face painting, games, prizes, and more. Those who reserve a spot online can get five complimentary tickets for games and activities.

Back-To-School Bash (Rogers Park)

10 a.m.-2 p.m., Aug. 15

Field Elementary School, 7019 N. Ashland Blvd.

CPS parents can meet teachers, staff and other families, learn about resources, get questions answered, and receive free school supplies.

The Howard family wears their new backpacks and enjoy snacks at a back-to-school event in 2022.

26th Ward Back-To-School Fair

3-5 p.m., Aug. 16

North Grand High School, 4338 W. Wabansia Ave.

This free event hosted by Ald. Jessie Fuentes (26th) and Rep. Lilian Jiménez will have a backpack and school supply giveaway, free haircuts, food and beverages, games, resources, and more.

CTU Back-2-School Summer Jam

3:30-7 p.m., Aug. 18

1901 W. Carroll Ave.

The Chicago Teachers Union will have free school supply and backpack giveaway, haircuts, medical and dental checkups, and more. Parents can RSVP online.

Youth For A Better Future Back-To-School Event

10 a.m.-Noon, Aug. 19; 10 a.m.-2 p.m., Aug 20

Wild Mile Chicago, 1550 N. Kingsbury St.

Families can get active through this Zumba- and yoga-based event on Saturday. On Sunday, families can participate in kayaking.

Free backpacks passed out during a giveaway.

West/Near West Side

John Walt Foundation “Feed the Westside” 4th Annual Back To School Event

Noon-5 p.m., Aug. 12

La Follette Park, 1333 N. Laramie Ave.

This event will have giveaways of backpacks with school supplies and free groceries, a DJ, free haircuts and hairstyling (including braids and loc retwisting), games, and more. Children must be present to receive a backpack and children must come with their hair shampooed and dried to receive a haircut or styling.

Bricktown Square Back-To-School Bash

10 a.m.-2 p.m., Aug. 12

Bricktown Square, 6560 W. Fullerton Ave. (parking lot near Ald. Gil Villegas’ 36th Ward office).

Families can enjoy face painting, balloon artists, music, costumed characters, and more.

ITAV Back-To-School Block Party

10 a.m.-2 p.m. Aug. 19

4000 W. Division St.

The It Takes A Village family of schools will have a back-to-school block party with live entertainment, food, bounce house, DJs, and local vendors. There will also be dental and physical examinations available.

I Got Da Juice Chi Back-To-School Event

2422 W. Roosevelt Road

1-6 p.m., Aug. 20

There will be food, music, activities for kids and a giveaway for all registered attendees. Giveaway prizes will include sneakers, book bags, gift cards, and more. Raffle tickets for the giveaway are $1.

Chicago students walk through the halls at Lake View High School.

Back-To-School Bash (Little Village)

10 a.m.-2 p.m., Aug. 15

Finkl Elementary School, 2332 S. Western Ave.

A CPS event for La Villita neighbors.

Back-To-School Bash (Near West Side)

10 a.m.-2 p.m., Aug. 16

Crane High School, 2245 W. Jackson Blvd.

Parents can meet teachers, staff and other families, learn about resources, get questions answered, and receive free school supplies.

H&K’s Back-To-School Fest

Noon-3 p.m., Aug. 18

5655 W. Fillmore St.

This event will have food, giveaways, and more.

Downtown

Back-To-School with the American Writers Museum

4-6 p.m., Aug. 16

American Writers Museum, 180 N. Michigan Avenue, 2nd Floor

Attendees can explore the museum’s offerings, including exhibits for students grade 6th-12th. There will also be a presentation by museum staff and curricula designer, Critical Learning Collaborative. Complimentary snacks plus non-alcoholic and alcoholic beverages will be served.

This story was originally published in Block Club Chicago.

Chicago will get smaller share of state’s increased K-12 education budget for second year in a row

2023-08-09T19:28:21+00:00

Chicago Public Schools will once again get less state education money than officials anticipated, according to new data released by the state on Tuesday.

Although Chicago will still see an increase in state education funding, a drop in the percentage of students considered low-income and a bump in property wealth in the city means the district is not getting the largest share of the new money.

In May, state lawmakers passed a $50.6 billion state budget that allocated $10.3 billion to education. That included a $350 million increase to be distributed to K-12 school districts through an evidence-based formula.

Chicago was expecting to get $27 million of that increase. But new calculations posted on the Illinois State Board of Education website show that the state is allocating $23.3 million of the increase to CPS.

The largest share of the state’s new K-12 funding – $35 million – will go to Elgin U-46, Illinois’ second largest district. Plainfield School District 202, the state’s fifth largest district, will receive $13.1 million of the increase.

In all, Chicago will get $1.77 billion in K-12 funding, up from $1.75 billion last year. The amount doesn’t include millions it gets for things such as pre-K and transportation. The new state data indicates CPS is now getting more than $17,000 per student from the state and is considered 80% of the way to “adequately funded.”

A district spokesperson did not say how the change might impact the already-approved $9.4 billion budget. In a statement, they said the district is “eager to work with the General Assembly toward increased and targeted State funding that more equitably supports the students most in need in Chicago and across Illinois.”

Last year, Chicago Public Schools planned on getting $50 million in new state money, but instead received a little more than $27 million after losing 10,000 students and seeing an increase in property wealth.

Funding for public education has been steadily increasing in Illinois since 2017, when state lawmakers overhauled the formula used to distribute tax dollars to school districts. The goal was to add more money over time to bring all districts to a level of “adequacy” and shed Illinois’ reputation as a state that ranked near the bottom when it came to support for public education.

“When you consider how much progress Illinois has made in the last five years, it’s nothing short of remarkable,” said Robin Steans, president of Advance Illinois, a nonprofit advocacy and policy organization based in Chicago that focuses on public school education. “But that does not mean our work is done.”

Steans said the latest calculations make her hopeful that the state can fully fund schools in the next five years, but there is still a need to increase state funding for schools by at least $550 million a year to reach that goal.

Lawmakers have increased education funding every year since 2018, with the exception of 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

State education officials calculate how much each school district gets based on a number of factors, including the needs of the students enrolled and a local district’s ability to fund schools using local resources such as property taxes. For example, districts that serve more students from low-income families or English language learners get more state money.

Chicago Public Schools is facing a looming deficit when federal COVID recovery money runs out next fall. District officials and school board members have said they hope for more state funding to fill the gap.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago public schools run by principals given more independence saw better student achievement: study

2023-08-03T21:55:39+00:00

Eight years ago, Chicago Public Schools launched a program that gave certain principals more control, such as more flexibility over budgets and being freed of extra oversight from district leaders. It was an effort to reward effective veteran school leaders with “more leadership and professional development opportunities.”

Now, a new study by a Northwestern University professor shows that the initiative — known as the Independent School Principals program, or ISP — resulted in better test scores and school climates and could be a cost-effective way to improve schools.

The analysis looked at 44 elementary schools that joined ISP between 2016 and 2018. Those schools saw pass rates for state reading and math tests grow, on average, by about 4 percentage points more than similar schools that weren’t part of ISP, according to the study. (Comparison schools were chosen based on things like demographics and test scores.)

The findings suggest that schools can benefit from more empowered principals, who are “closer to the ground” and may have a better sense than district leaders of what their students need, said C. Kirabo Jackson, an education and social policy professor at Northwestern who conducted the study.

But there are some caveats, Jackson said. The ISP schools with the best test score results were also run by principals who are considered “highly effective,” as determined by teacher ratings and other evaluations. Less effective principals saw test scores grow at a slower rate. Other studies have found mixed results when giving schools more autonomy, Jackson noted in his study.

The benefits of such a policy depend on “the capacity of the leaders to manage on their own,” said Jackson.

Test scores don’t show the full picture of how well students are doing, Jackson said, and his study found mixed results in other areas. For example, ISP schools on average had better ratings for school climate. But he found no evidence that these schools saw better student or teacher attendance.

The ISP initiative was launched under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel as part of an effort to pair principals with “more leadership and professional development opportunities,” according to the district.

Currently, district leaders identify veteran principals to apply for the program and then evaluate them based on several criteria, including their school’s test scores, their “five essentials” survey data and a series of interviews, according to the district.

A spokesperson did not respond in time for publication on whether there were minimum test scores that schools had to meet in order to be eligible.

Jackson noted that nearly all of the elementary schools he evaluated were highly rated by the state. In all, 86% of the city’s current 63 ISP schools — which also include middle and high schools and one early childhood education center — were rated either commendable or exemplary by the state, according to the most recently available Illinois Report Card information.

In addition to less oversight and more budget flexibility, ISP school leaders also have more power over professional learning for their staff and more flexibility over principal evaluations. In exchange, principals must meet several requirements, including maintaining or improving school performance, remaining compliant with district wide policies, and remaining as the school’s principal for at least two years.

Having more power over professional learning was among the biggest boons for Patricia Brekke, principal of Back of the Yards High School, who joined the ISP program in 2016. Her school, like others, used to spend time addressing student needs in ways that district leaders recommended.

While she considered those good strategies, her staff didn’t have extra time to focus on other issues they believed to be important, such as drilling down on students’ analytical and essay writing skills.

For the past seven years, she and other teachers have created their own professional development sessions to, in part, improve kids’ analytical skills. Her team draws on good examples from their own classrooms, including taking videos during the school day, so that teachers can see how their own colleagues are approaching instruction, Brekke said.

“I’ve got a lot of brilliant teachers, and their ideas really pushed me, I think, to be a better principal, you know?” Brekke said. “And it was really important for me to have them around the table and identify our problems of practice.”

Jackson only studied elementary schools, so he doesn’t know the program’s impact on high schools.

SAT scores at Brekke’s school were within five percentage points of the district’s. But Brekke said she’s noticed her students demonstrating “elevated” writing skills that go beyond a classic five-paragraph essay response.

“They’re really starting to think more deeply about text,” Brekke said.

Jackson found another bonus of the program: Principals “tend to remain in their schools” even after the two-year requirement. That is by design, said Jerry Travlos, a former ISP principal who now works as a district leader.

Travlos conducted a study, which Jackson cites, and found that ISP principals largely preferred the autonomy they got under the program. Extending more power to veteran principals is also a “retention strategy,” he said, at a time when school leaders are heading for the door.

Brekke, who has been an educator for 32 years, said she sometimes misses the camaraderie that comes along with a traditional network like most of Chicago’s public schools. But she loves being able to “geek out” and customize instruction for her students.

“Having those kinds of conversations are really just so refreshing and encouraging and motivating,” Brekke said. She paused and added, “Maybe it’s contributed to why I’m still here.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago opens school enrollment center for migrant children and families

2023-07-17T20:28:56+00:00

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Recently arrived migrant families on Chicago’s West Side will get help with enrolling in school, receiving free school supplies, signing up for public benefits, and getting vaccinated at a new “welcome center” run by Chicago Public Schools and the city.

Mayor Brandon Johnson and city and district officials unveiled the new center at Roberto Clemente Community Academy, a high school in the city’s Humboldt Park neighborhood, on Monday. Officials said the center is a pilot effort — possibly the first of several such facilities across the city.

They also called it a centerpiece of a broader plan they have promised for better serving migrant families across the city, though the center will only help smooth the transition into the district for those living in the Humboldt Park and West Town neighborhoods.

The center, which will work with families by appointment only starting later this week, is estimated to cost roughly $750,000, according to CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, who described it as a “very small investment” from the district’s operating budget.

More than 10,000 migrants have arrived in Chicago since August, many sent on buses from Texas by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. Roughly half are staying in temporary shelters, including police stations. Hundreds of school-aged children are among the new arrivals, though the school district has not shared exact numbers. Helping these families find permanent housing and easing children into local public schools are key challenges facing the Johnson administration.

The Chicago Teachers Union, which helped carry Johnson — a former union organizer — to victory in April, had criticized district officials for not doing more to support newly arrived migrant students. Union leaders said some schools were overwhelmed by an influx of such students and scrambled to provide translation and other basic services.

District leaders have said they were working on a detailed, comprehensive plan for helping migrant students, to be released before the first day of school on Aug. 21. That bigger plan is still to come, Martinez said Monday.

Johnson said the area around Clemente was one of the city’s most densely populated with newcomer immigrants.

“We’re going to stand on the shoulders of our ancestors, and we’re going to bring people closer together to make sure that the families who have been here have the full force of government and families who wish to call Chicago their home also have the full force of government,” Johnson said at the Monday press conference.

Martinez balked at saying exactly how many migrant students enrolled in the district this past school year — it’s in the thousands, he said — or how many the district expects to serve in the fall. That latter number is too fluid, he said, but he promised to have an update at the start of the school year.

Johnson said his office will track “outcomes with this center” in order to improve how it operates and also use it as a model to potentially expand to other neighborhoods.

At the new “welcoming center” on the high school’s second floor, families will make their way through several classrooms to get a string of services, officials said. Children will get an English language screening, receive free supplies, and get assigned to a school.

Martinez said the high school students will be assigned to Clemente while younger children will be enrolled at one of eight nearby elementary schools — Chopin, De Diego LaSalle II, Mitchell, Moos, Pritzker, Sabin, and Talcott.

“These are migrant families who come here to seek their dream, and we’ll be part of that dream,” said Martha Valerio, the community coordinator at Clemente, standing in front of a table piled with coats, running shoes, and backpacks. “We are all going to receive them with a warm smile.”

Families will meet with a social worker and get help signing up for medical, dental appointments, and public benefits, such as food assistance and Medicaid.

“These are the types of services we have to provide across the entire city,” Johnson told journalists in front of the center.

According to WBEZ, some migrants are now living in tents, rather than police stations or crowded shelters, as they wait for permanent housing. School-aged migrant children are eligible to be classified as Students in Temporary Living Situations – a status that protects children without permanent housing.

Meanwhile, some teachers have been volunteering their time this summer to get students ready for school.

Earlier this month, the police department opened an investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against officers, including one accused of impregnating a recently-arrived teen, at a west side police station. The investigation prompted city officials to move migrants out of police stations.

Johnson said at the Monday event that the investigation is ongoing, with an update slated for Tuesday.

Reema Amin contributed.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Sheridan teacher pay negotiations stall amid tight budgets, sinking enrollment

2023-06-22T20:00:48+00:00

Teachers in the Sheridan school district south of Denver are concerned about pay. While neighboring districts are offering double-digit percentage salary increases to their educators, Sheridan teachers have been offered just 2%.

District officials are concerned about declining enrollment, which they say is affecting district revenues. Last year alone, the district, which served 1,125 students, lost 476 students to other districts.

The teachers union sees it all as part of the same cycle: Low pay prompts teachers to leave, creating turnover and instability. Frustrated families leave the district for schools that can provide more stability. Enrollment declines, the district loses revenue, budgets get tighter, and raises require tough trade-offs.

But the two sides aren’t talking anymore. Negotiations stalled over the pay issue, and the district and the union are headed for mediation beginning July 28, a schedule that leaves teachers uncertain about their pay well into the summer.

“It’s causing me a bit of anxiety,” said Kate Biester, a high school teacher and union leader.

The stalemate over teacher pay points to a larger question for districts like Sheridan: What happens when a district that’s already small keeps shrinking?

Other Denver metro districts facing enrollment and revenue declines are closing or consolidating schools, which creates disruption but helps free up some money for the students and schools that remain.

But in Sheridan and other small districts, the limited number of schools leaves fewer options for closing buildings.

Sheridan district leaders declined to talk about the negotiations or the impact of enrollment declines on district finances. They said that there were no documents about the salary offer that they could release as public records, and that they don’t have recorded video of the negotiations. Under Colorado law, negotiations between teachers unions and school districts are public.

Biester said the teachers’ position in the negotiations was met with a lack of compassion.

“We did not feel that our story was listened to,” she said. “We were told several times to hurry up and stop being repetitive about things that are really close to home. I work 16-hour days often, and I might not be able to afford my rent next year.”

Enrollment declines are accelerating

The enrollment declines in Sheridan are real: The district had 1,125 students enrolled in the fall of 2022, down nearly 20% since 2017. The overall population of children in Sheridan has dropped as well, census data shows, but not as fast.

Arapahoe County’s birth rates have dropped since 2000 but are projected to rise in 2025.

According to district budget presentations, the district is projected to receive about $13.5 million in funding for the 2023-24 school year, up from last year. The district presentation states that last year, the district received about $12.8 million, although state calculations put last year’s revenue at closer to $13.4 million.

The district has five schools: an early childhood center, a K-2 elementary school, a middle school for grades 3-8, a high school, and an alternative secondary school.

Merging those schools hasn’t been a part of discussions, district leaders say.

“I don’t know the physical space would allow it,” said Superintendent Pat Sandos, who retired, but will return in July for a one-year transition. “It probably would cost us money to do that.”

Instead, district documents show the board had pressed the superintendent and district leaders to come up with a marketing plan to keep students from leaving the district.

Sandos, who received a 17% raise in 2021, said the district has focused on developing a training program that partners with trade unions in the area to create a path for students to work in the trades. The district has spent millions in remodeling a building for that program.

The district has offered teachers a 2% raise. The school board president said raising pay beyond that would require cutting staff.

With high turnover, students are ‘used to their teachers leaving’

Even with the threat to revenues, teachers say the district can do better. They started out wanting a 12% raise, in line with a projected increase in state per-pupil funding to districts.

By the end of negotiations this spring, they had come down to requesting a 10% increase.

Teachers say the district needs to focus on what they see as the cause of the accelerating enrollment declines: Families are tired of long-term substitutes, a decrease in program offerings, and staff turnover.

Sheridan teachers say it’s easy to make more money by moving to nearby districts that have been giving teachers larger raises.

Currently the starting salary for teachers in Sheridan is $50,991, and the average is $64,813. Both of those figures are lower than in neighboring districts. In Denver, the average salary is $66,141, and in Littleton, it’s $75,434.

In the last school year, teacher turnover in Sheridan was at almost 40% — one of the highest in the state. The number of teachers in the district has dropped from about 100 in 2017 to 75 in 2022.

“I had a kid say to me on my first day, ‘Mrs., you’re not going to be here next year. That’s just how it goes here.’” Biester said. “They’re just used to their teachers leaving.”

Teachers also say offerings for extracurricular activities and electives like music, art, and shop are being cut.

Sandos said that’s not a district decision, but said he allows principals to make program cuts to fit their budget, as they see fit.

Sharena Del Brocco, a middle school teacher who has worked in Sheridan about 10 years, said it all contributes to why students leave the district.

“Kids are getting subs, we’re not retaining high quality teachers, and people keep leaving,” Del Brocco said. “So the kids feel abandoned.”

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Detroit’s student enrollment strategy meets board scrutiny in light of state population decline

2023-06-02T21:04:08+00:00

Detroit schools finance committee members expressed concern Friday that recent city and state population declines will invalidate the district’s strategies for beefing up enrollment, which rely heavily on expanding preschool programs for the city’s young families.

“I am a touch more pessimistic about student enrollment,” said board member Sonya Mays at the Detroit Public Schools Community District finance committee meeting. “And my viewpoint is almost entirely rooted in what is going on with the greater Detroit population and less specific to what’s happening with the district’s attempts to increase enrollment.”

“I don’t see any sign that Detroit’s population is going to do anything other than continue to decline on a sort of relatively predictable flow.”

Much discussion has circulated around Michigan’s population losses in recent weeks as local and state leaders have drawn up potential solutions and strategies to mitigate further declines. Over the past two years, the state has seen a decline in residents, in addition to lower birth rates. DPSCD’s current enrollment is hovering around 48,000 students, down from 51,000 students prepandemic.

Recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau found Detroit lost roughly 8,000 residents from 2021 to 2022 – a figure Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan has publicly contested, suggesting the city’s population has been undercounted.

At the Mackinac Policy Conference this week, Duggan urged state legislators to reform Detroit’s property tax system to drive growth in Michigan’s largest city, which has shrunk in population over the past seven decades since its peak of 1.8 million people in 1950. Simultaneously, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced a statewide council to develop strategies to reverse Michigan’s population woes.

A recent poll from the Gallup Center on Black Voices listed a lack of educational opportunities and safety as some of the main reasons Detroiters have left.

“If you were faced with the prospect of bleeding a couple hundred students year after year, what would you do now to get in front of that?” Mays asked DPSCD Superintendent Nikolai Vitti.

DPSCD plans to spend less money next year on enrollment strategies due to budget restraints. Instead, it will use a smaller budget to market specific schools with available seats and continue to emphasize canvassing through school employees and families.

Among its other strategies, Vitti pointed to the district’s facility master plan, which prioritized facility upgrades at schools with projected neighborhood resident increases, as well as phasing out schools with low student enrollment. Moving forward, he noted, the district would determine whether its smallest high schools are needed in certain neighborhoods.

“We’ve given them six years to grow in enrollment,” he said. “Some of them are definitely doing well, from an improvement of academics and climate culture. But that’s the other area that I would look at is…how many high schools do we really need?”

The district, Vitti said, is looking to increase enrollment over time by expanding pre-kindergarten programs across the city. As part of its facility master plan, the district will house those programs at vacant or underutilized school buildings.

“There are pockets of the city with younger families that are looking for options. And the pre-K option, I think, is a strong one versus others in the city because you have certified teachers,” he said. “That’s just something that we have to market more and then if they have a positive experience in pre-K, I think it’s likely that they’ll stay (for kindergarten).”

Board member Misha Stallworth West suggested district officials “err on the side of caution” when projecting future enrollment gains from pre-K expansion.

“Birth rates are down statewide,” Stallworth West said. “So even trying to capture students from other communities in early ed is tricky.”

Vitti said the district will annually monitor its preschool expansion “over the next three to four years” to determine if actual enrollment numbers match projections, and if they see high reenrollment rates from pre-K to kindergarten. DPSCD’s K-12 enrollment is projected to remain constant next year, according to Vitti, with a potential bump of 335 pre-kindergarten students.

“What I also don’t want to do is just be a provider of pre-K for middle class and upper middle class families,” he said, adding that one of his main concerns is that those families may wind up using the district’s pre-K programs, only to enroll their children in kindergarten outside of DPSCD.

District updates board on status of laid-off employees in the proposed budget

The finance committee also OK’d adding to the agenda for the next full board meeting an amendment to this year’s budget, as well as the district’s proposed budget for the 2023-24 school year. The full board meets again on June 13.

Community information meetings will be held virtually and in person next week to share the details of next year’s budget as well as answer questions from community members.

Vitti estimated that roughly 90% of school culture facilitators and kindergarten paraprofessionals have moved into alternate positions. Under the district’s proposal, those employees, in addition to college transition advisors and administrators at small schools, could be laid off as the district moves to balance its budget following the end of COVID relief funding.

The district, however, has said that some employee groups could still apply for other positions at equal or similar wages. For example, school culture facilitators and paraeducators could apply for positions as cafeteria workers, day-to-day substitutes, or special ed paraprofessionals, among other roles.

The committee approved adding to the full board agenda an amendment to the district’s lease agreement with Marygrove Conservancy, which would extend the district’s lease to 2029 and expand the lease space for its upcoming sixth- to eighth-grade classes. Since 2019, the district has used the conservancy’s Liberal Arts Building to house high school students at the School of Marygrove.

Ethan Bakuli is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering Detroit Public Schools Community District. Contact Ethan at ebakuli@chalkbeat.org.

NYC won’t slash school budgets at first, but mid-year cuts are still possible

2023-05-22T22:33:01+00:00

New York City schools won’t have to brace for budget cuts next school year — at least at first.

All schools will receive the same amount of money or more at the start of the 2023-24 academic year as they did this year despite some of the “fiscal challenges” facing the city, Chancellor David Banks announced on Monday during a City Council hearing about the education department’s proposed budget for next fiscal year.

But school budgets may not need the extra cushion this year. Unlike the significant drops over the past few years, the education department is projecting enrollment to largely hold steady next year, dipping by less than 1%

The move represents a shift from what happened last summer, when budget cuts tied to declining enrollment, sparked severe backlash, including a lawsuit, and forced schools to shrink staff and programming.

It also comes as Mayor Eric Adams has proposed cutting the education department’s budget by 3% next fiscal year, which begins July 1. That $30.5 billion budget is expected to include less spending on fringe benefits and cut a previously announced expansion of preschool for 3-year-olds.

The decision to start the new school year with steady budgets, however, doesn’t mean schools are completely immune from cuts. Banks said the city hasn’t yet decided whether schools will see cuts during what’s known as the “mid-year adjustment”— a practice put on pause this year using $200 million in federal COVID relief dollars.

Schools get money in the summer based on the city’s enrollment projections, and when the final tallies are taken on Oct. 31, schools could lose money mid-year if they’ve enrolled fewer students than projected — or get extra money if they have more children.

“If a school has 500 students, but by the middle of the year, they’ve dropped down to 200 students, we’re not going to make the commitment today to say, ‘No matter what, there’ll be no adjustment even at that point,’” Banks said during the hearing.

That might leave some school leaders with tough decisions. While principals might get the same amount of money as last year, they may be hesitant to hire more teachers or create more programming in anticipation of losing money during the school year.

One the one hand, some city principals said they understand the city’s desire to bring funding more in line with enrollment to avoid big disparities in per-student spending between schools.

“There are schools that are serving many fewer students than they were five years ago, and the city can’t afford to just fund those schools endlessly,” said a Brooklyn principal who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

But on the other hand, the principal wishes that the education department would make it easier for schools to plan by promising budgets will not be cut more than a certain percentage in a given year rather than having to make educated guesses.

And even if a school does not have to return money later in the year, it can be difficult to use before the spending deadline, especially to hire staff. If a school has an unexpected surplus in January, “all of a sudden there’s a spending spree and it’s not effective and efficient,” the principal said. “It doesn’t help to get money in November or January if you needed to hire a teacher in September.”

Schools are expected to receive their budgets by the end of this month, said Emma Vadehra, chief operating officer for the education department. When principals receive those budgets, Vadehra said, they might notice cuts to individual funding streams, such as Fair Student Funding, which is the city’s main school funding formula. (Schools with higher needs and higher enrollment get more money under the formula.)

Such drops will be backfilled with “other funding streams” to hold budgets steady, Vadehra said. However, officials did not clarify how schools will be able to use those funds. While Fair Student Funding can be used to hire teachers, money from other pots can sometimes be restricted for other uses.

The education department plans to use funding from multiple sources to keep budgets level at the start of the school year, Vadehra said. That includes a $160 million in federal stimulus funds that had been announced previously, as well as money from the state, which has boosted dollars for districts through its own school funding formula, known as Foundation Aid.

Several council members raised concerns about education department programs that are relying on expiring federal stimulus dollars, including preschool programming and expanded summer programming. Vadehra acknowledged that the education department does not yet have a plan on how to fund these initiatives once the money runs out in 2024.

“This is a major challenge,” Banks said to council members. “I mean, there’s a lot of great programs — even as we came on board — that have been built off of access to these stimulus dollars. The stimulus dollars are going away. We’re going to have to work very closely together to try to figure this out.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Detroit school district’s budget cuts bring back memories of past fiscal crises

2023-05-22T17:12:34+00:00

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As Reianna Willis looks ahead to starting her senior year in high school in the fall, the thought of losing her college adviser frightens her.

College advisers and guidance counselors, Reianna said, are the people who provide teenagers with the extra motivation they need to stay on track in school. But her school, East English Village Preparatory Academy at Finney, stands to lose these professionals, along with other support staff and administrators, as the Detroit school district trims its budget to align with declining revenue.

“If there were cuts at my school I feel as if our students would be lost,” she said, adding that students would miss out on critical relationships with staff members. Cutting advisers may improve the budget picture, Reainna said, “but it will worsen our students.”

Nikolai Vitti, the superintendent of the Detroit Public Schools Community District, has tried to reassure community members that the cuts he’s advocating will help ensure the district’s financial stability over the long term. “The staffing reductions are less than a financial necessity but more of a necessary strategic decision to sustain and protect our improvement,” he said.

But for some families and district employees, the latest round of cuts have provoked anxiety, rekindling memories of the deep, devastating cuts the district made during past fiscal crises and the era of state control. Those cuts, including the closure of nearly 200 schools between 2000 and 2015, only ended up compounding the district’s financial problems, leading to plummeting enrollment, an exodus of staff, and even larger deficits and debt.

The fears have surfaced in gatherings of the district’s Executive Youth Council of student leaders, and in the monthly school board meetings, where students, parents and employees of the district have come forward to warn officials against cutting professionals who are seen as critical to students’ success and the district’s goals.

What prompted DPSCD’s proposed budget cuts?

The specter of a return to spiraling cuts is especially worrisome in a district that has achieved six years of relative financial stability after it returned to local control in 2017, thanks to a state legislative initiative that granted the district a fresh start.

The state-appointed emergency managers who ran the district in the past relied on “deep spending cuts (including staffing and teacher salaries), long-term debt to cover annual budget deficits, and delaying required payments,” said a 2019 report from the Citizens Research Council of Michigan detailing the district’s roughly 20-year span of state oversight.

But they had “virtually no success tackling the underlying structural deficit,” the report said.

After 2017, until the pandemic struck, DPSCD began to see rising enrollment and balanced budgets — enough progress that the Detroit Financial Review Commission released DPSCD from state oversight in late 2020, a milestone in the district’s quest to control its budget and finances.

Then, in the midst of the pandemic, the federal government came through with $1.27 billion in aid for the district, buoying its revenue for three years. The added funds made it possible to hire more contracted staff; expand after-school, summer school, and tutoring programs; and take care of long-overdue construction and renovation projects.

But moving into the 2023-24 school year, Vitti said, the district will have to balance its budget relying on recurring revenues, and not one-time federal funding. It will also have to account for the impact of inflation, which has cooled over the past year but remains above historical levels. So instead of being able to fund all of its priorities, and then some, DPSCD will have to pick the ones that it can afford and that will make the biggest impact in the classroom.

“Managing the finances of a steep, long-running enrollment decline is hard enough,” said Bruce Baker, a professor at the University of Miami who focuses on public education financing. But the steep cut in federal funding, coupled with higher costs for maintenance and supplies, compounds that challenge.

In assessing the tradeoffs, DPSCD has chosen to prioritize raising teacher salaries in order to recruit and retain staff and avoid the huge teacher vacancies that it experienced during emergency management.

To satisfy that need, Vitti’s proposed budget would eliminate or shift roughly 300 school and central office positions, including the counselors and college advisers at Reianna’s school. It would also create a $4.2 million budget surplus to address district emergencies, enrollment shifts or other unexpected spending throughout the school year.

“I do not foresee the need to close or consolidate schools in the future for budget reasons,” Vitti said.

Vitti said he believes the district can stick to its priorities and continue to offer what it has promised families in spite of the staffing reductions, and without a hit to enrollment. School principals can choose to fund those positions using Title I money, he noted, and college transition advisers, kindergarten paraprofessionals, and school culture facilitators will have the option to stay with the district in a different role that might be understaffed, such as building substitute, security guard, cafeteria worker, or pre-K paraprofessional. An increase in state per-pupil funding could also help protect some jobs.

On the other hand, if the salary increases go ahead without the staff cuts, the district projects it would swing to an annual deficit and drain its unrestricted funds. And persistent deficits could trigger a return of financial scrutiny from the state.

“If you don’t want us to go back into emergency management or financial review every week, then let us make the necessary budget adjustments so that there’s long term durability and consistent continuity in our district,” said DPSCD board member Corletta Vaughn.

Lisa Card, a DPSCD parent and 20-year veteran educator, said the latest proposed budget cuts reflect a familiar pattern. Initially an art teacher, she went back to school for a master’s in special education when it was clear to her that the district under emergency management was going to cut student programming, including art and music programs.

“We go through these cycles often, and when something is wrong with the budget, it’s always like they go through cutting staff,” Card said. “But I don’t think that that’s the solution.”

Financial goals hang on enrollment numbers

District officials recognize that they can’t merely cut their way to financial stability. The district’s financial strength depends on its ability to rebuild enrollment, which is not even a third of what it was in 2000.

In the past, the district has employed aggressive marketing campaigns in a bid to shore up enrollment and avoid closing school buildings, laying off teachers, and cutting academic programming and support services.

Those campaigns took on increased significance in the wake of the pandemic, during which the district lost 3,000 students. Using its federal COVID relief aid, DPSCD expanded its outreach, home visits and door-to-door canvassing strategies using staff and parent volunteers.

Those tactics enabled the district to bring in 1,000 students, Vitti said.

“Clearly, we are doing something right,” he said.

But there’s still a lot of ground to make up. And now, DPSCD plans to spend less on enrollment strategies. Instead, it will use a smaller budget to market specific schools with available seats and continue to emphasize canvassing through school employees and families. The district is looking to increase enrollment over time by expanding pre-kindergarten programs across the city. As part of its $700 million facility master plan, the district will house those programs at four vacant or underutilized school buildings.

DPSCD’s K-12 enrollment is projected to remain at 48,000 students next year, with a potential bump of 335 pre-kindergarten students, according to Vitti.

Without big enrollment gains, to avoid further budget cuts, Vitti said, the district would have to see an annual increase in per-pupil funding, as well as more equitable state and local school funding. School aid budgets moving through the state Legislature would provide those increases.

“I think we will continue to improve our enrollment but not completely rebound in overall enrollment since the pandemic overnight,” Vitti said.

Vaughn, the school board member, said she thinks the district needs to be more aggressive with its marketing campaign.

“Budgetarily, we’re going in whatever direction the population is going to go,” she said. “If we don’t increase the population, we’ll be right back here next year.”

How will budget cuts affect long-term reforms?

Another key question is how the cuts will affect the district’s progress on its long-term academic goals, which were also thrown off by the pandemic and the shift to online learning. Federal COVID relief aid provided only temporary support, funding tutoring, summer school, and reduced class sizes.

One of Vitti’s long-term reform plans in his first year as superintendent was to hire master teachers to support and coach teachers in math and literacy. He also envisioned having one guidance counselor, college adviser, school culture facilitator, and attendance agent per school.

The aim was to offer broader academic programming and support services that families would otherwise have to leave the district for.

With those positions now threatened, the district says it will look to spread out college advising and school culture and climate work to other school administrators and staff. Guidance counselors for example will take on more work with FAFSA and college applications, while grant funding from the Michigan College Access Network will help ensure that five DPSCD high schools and one career and technical education center can participate in regional college access events.

But some students are skeptical the expanded roles for other educators will provide the same quality and relationship students have with their teachers.

“I truly believe that this would affect students — mostly ninth and 12th graders — because they guide you into the steps right before college,” said De’Loni Perry, a senior at Osborn High School. “It’s not only their help just guiding us but also for the fact that they actually teach us and show us the steps on how to prepare for life after high school. That’s the biggest step you take and most important.”

Asked about that risk, Vitti said: “I do value and understand the relationships that students have with the staff at their school. This is not easy. However, I am confident that the outcomes that matter most for students districtwide will continue to improve with these changes.”

Jaquitta Nelson, a parent and school volunteer at Paul Robeson/Malcolm X Academy, worries that budget cuts will place further pressure on staff members who are already overwhelmed.

Paul Robeson/Malcolm X, according to DPSCD budget documents, could go without its school culture facilitator, dean, and a paraprofessional next school year.

This year alone, Nelson said she’s seen at least four teachers and school administrators at her son’s school retire, some citing burnout. Now she’s bracing for the impact of the district’s cuts on the school.

“How can we help them going forward?” Nelson said.

Ethan Bakuli is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering Detroit Public Schools Community District. Contact Ethan at ebakuli@chalkbeat.org.

NYC drafts plan to shrink class sizes, but changes won’t start next school year

2023-05-19T22:43:25+00:00

Many education advocates cheered when Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law last September a five-year plan to reduce class sizes in New York City’s public schools.

For the first year, however, the city’s education department plans to make no changes, according to a draft plan shared with reporters on Friday.

Under that plan — which is supposed to spell out how the city will meet the law’s new requirements — class sizes will remain the same in September. That’s because the education department says that enough of its core classes — an average 39% — for K-12 exceed the requirements in the law for the first year of the plan. (The plan only affects city-run schools, not charters.)

But, for future school years, education department officials are bracing for some big expenses to comply with the law. They estimate it will cost $1.3 billion a year for new teachers when the plan is fully implemented as well as about $30-$35 billion in capital expenditures to construct new spaces or reconfigure old ones.

The education department said it would gather feedback from the public and educators to determine the best way to shrink class sizes by 2028, when state law requires that the entire school system meet the new requirements.

The city teachers union — one of the entities that must approve the plan — blasted the education department’s effort, emphasizing that they will work with the state to ensure the city “fulfills its obligations” of the law.

“Meeting the new class size standards is going to require a real plan — and so far, the DOE hasn’t managed to create one,” said teachers union president Michael Mulgrew in a statement. “This document is missing a strategy for implementation and a targeted proposal for where and when new seats should be built.”

Education department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer responded in a statement that the draft was created after consulting “extensively” with the unions, and they will continue to be able to share feedback.

“The tradeoffs involved in implementation are too important to be made behind closed doors and our entire community must be involved in informing these decisions,” Styer said.

The education department will begin collecting public comment on the plan, which is posted online, in June. Within two weeks of the end of that process, officials must submit the plan to the state education department for approval.

Here are seven things to know:

What are the new class-size caps?

Kindergarten through third grade should have no more than 20 children.

From grades four through eighth, classes should have no more than 23 students, while students in ninth through 12th grades can have up to 25 students.

That’s down from a previous cap of 25 students for kindergarten, and 32 students in the rest of elementary school grades, according to the teachers union contract agreement. Middle and high schools were supposed to be capped previously at 33 and 34 students, respectively, with a 30-student limit in Title 1 middle schools (where at least 60% of students are from low-income families).

What will change next year in terms of class-size reductions?

Nothing. State law requires 20% of the city’s classrooms be in compliance with the new state law each year, reaching 100% by 2028. According to the education department, an average 39% of classes meet the new requirements, meaning they expect to meet the state’s requirements for next school year. This includes elementary school homerooms, where children receive their core instruction, and core subject classes for grades 6-12 — meaning math, science, social studies, and English courses, including gifted and talented, integrated co-teaching, which includes a mix of students with and without disabilities, and accelerated courses.

Ninety-one percent of performing arts and gym courses are in compliance.

In year two, 40% of classes must comply, then 60% and 80% until the final year when all classes are expected to meet the targets (unless they get exemptions).

How will the education department shrink class sizes by 2028?

We don’t know the details yet, but the education department offered some clues in its plan.

From May to October, the education department plans to meet regularly with a working group that it convened this spring to gather feedback on how to meet the law’s new requirements.

Officials wrote that they will identify additional classrooms for space; work with the city’s School Construction Authority on the next capital plan, which lays out building plans for the school system; and would focus on high-poverty schools not meeting requirements, as required by the law.

Starting in November, officials will begin changing policies “and reprioritization of programming” in order to meet the class-size mandates. Officials did not immediately explain what sort of policies or programs would change. But before the law passed, Chancellor David Banks warned that the law could mean a cut in school services or programming because of the cost of creating more classes.

Who will be exempt from the class-size law?

Any exemptions must be approved by the chancellor, as well as the heads of the teachers union and the union representing principals and other administrators. Disagreements will head to arbitration, the law mandates.

Schools might be exempt because of space limitations, but the education department will have to show that they are working to resolve the issue through their capital budget plan. Schools that are overenrolled or ones in which they would face severe economic hardship to comply might get exemptions. (The plan offered no other information on this.) There might be exemptions for schools where they have insufficient numbers of teachers in subjects that are hard to fill, like bilingual math; the teachers union can negotiate higher class sizes for electives and specialty classes if the majority of a school’s staff approves the increase.

Does the law prioritize any particular schools in regards to meeting the new class-size mandates?

The law requires the education department to start with schools with high shares of students living in poverty. In its plan, the education department said that schools with the highest numbers of low-income students are more likely to have smaller class sizes.

Fifty-nine percent of classes meet the new requirements at schools with the most students from low-income families, according to education department data shared in the plan. In contrast, schools with the fewest students living in poverty have just 23% of classes meeting the new requirements.

Where else are schools more — or less — likely to meet the class-size mandates?

Schools with larger classes also hew closely to racial demographics. Roughly 54% of classes already meet the class-size targets at schools with the highest percentage of Black students compared to schools with the highest percentage of Asian and white students, where only about a quarter of classes meet the targets.

Three Brooklyn districts — Ocean Hill/Brownsville’s District 23, Crown Heights’ District 16, and District 18 in Canarsie/East Flatbush had the greatest share of classes at or below the caps, according to the education department data. These three districts have among the highest shares of Black students in the city.

Two Queens districts — Bayside’s District 26 and Flushing’s District 25 — along with Staten Island’s District 31 have the lowest share of classes that meet the targets. District 25 and 26 have the city’s highest share of Asian students, while District 31 has the highest share of white students.

Of the five boroughs, the Bronx might have the easiest time meeting the class-size caps, with 50% of its schools already hitting the targets. Staten Island could have the most challenges, with only 22% of its schools meeting the class size requirements.

Schools that have grades 6-12 or 9-12 are more likely to have smaller class sizes, the figures show, with about 44% of these schools already meeting the new class-size mandates. Only 30% of standalone middle schools meet the targets, followed by K-8 and K-5 schools.

What happens next?

The education department must collect public comments on the plan and then submit it to the state education department for final approval. The teachers and principals unions must also sign off on the plan, which must go into effect in September.

Next month, city officials are holding online public hearings for each borough via Zoom on the following dates, starting at 6 p.m.:

Staten Island: Friday, June 2

Queens: Tuesday, June 6

Brooklyn: Thursday, June 8

Manhattan: Tuesday, June 13

The Bronx: Thursday, June 15

The city will have two weeks to analyze the public comments before submitting its final proposal to the state.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Takeaways from Jeffco K-8 and middle school enrollment and choice numbers, ahead of school closures

2023-05-17T22:07:26+00:00

Jeffco school leaders have said identifying middle schools to close will be more complicated than it was with elementary schools.

That’s a daunting challenge for a district that voted to close 16 elementary schools last fall.

Leaders plan to recommend to the school board in August which schools to close, and to redraw some attendance boundaries and redesignate feeder schools in summer 2024.

A look at enrollment, school spending, campus utilization levels, and family poverty gives a glance at some of the data that may inform Jeffco’s decisions.

The district’s work has been spurred by years of declining enrollment. Even though the number of residents in Jeffco increased over two decades, the population of school-age children decreased by 29,918 from 2000 to 2020. Fewer children are being born. According to the district, 2020 marked the lowest number of births recorded in 15 years.

The district has not yet identified the criteria to determine which middle and K-8 schools to close or consolidate. In one exception, district leaders have told the Arvada K-8 school community that if it earns a low state rating this fall, triggering possible state action, the district will recommend closure. The school is the only one that is nearing state action for low performance.

The district describes its work as data driven, and has published some school data that it may consider in deciding on closures.

With elementary schools last year, the district identified for closure or consolidation schools that had fewer than 220 students, or were occupying less than 45% of the capacity of their building, and had another elementary school within 3.5 miles that could absorb displaced students.

Compared with elementary schools, Jeffco’s 22 district-managed middle and K-8 school facilities tend to be in better condition, and have a narrower range of enrollment and utilization. Some regions, or articulation areas as the district calls them, have only one middle school fed by all the elementary schools, further complicating closures.

Here are some takeaways about middle schools in Jeffco:

Most middle schools are losing more students than they attract through school choice.

Of 22 neighborhood middle schools and K-8 schools in Jeffco, 18 are losing more students through the choice process than they attract, and only four schools gain students through that process. Colorado law and Jeffco’s system allow families to send their children to any school in the district or to transfer to schools in other districts that will accept them.

Of those 18, four schools lose more students than remain enrolled. Carmody Middle School, for example, had 892 students choose to attend different schools, according to district data, leaving only 626 students at the school.

A similar out-migration of students was one of the factors the district cited in emergency school closures including one two years ago.

About a third of these district schools are projected to have fewer than 500 students next year.

Nearly all of the Jeffco-managed middle schools and K-8 schools are projected to lose students. According to district figures, seven middle or K-8 neighborhood schools will have fewer than 500 students next school year, and three of those schools are already occupying less than 50% of the capacity of their school building.

Those three schools are: Coal Creek Canyon K-8, Moore Middle School, and North Arvada Middle School.

Coal Creek Canyon K-8 is projected to have 91 students next fall. The school currently serves 100 students.

Moore Middle School is already being considered for consolidation. The school’s principal partnered with the principal of Pomona High School in asking the district to approve a plan to consolidate the schools and turn Pomona into a sixth grade through 12th grade school instead. The school district is expecting estimates of the cost of required building upgrades, before taking a vote this summer.

At the other end of the range, one Jeffco middle school is over capacity. Three Creeks K-8 in Arvada enrolls 1,112 students. About 8% of the students there qualify for subsidized lunches, a measure of poverty, much lower than the district average. This school is the only one currently projected to have significant student enrollment growth next year.

Schools with lower utilization are more likely to have more students living in poverty.

Among the seven middle and K-8 schools in Jeffco that occupy less than 60% of their building’s total capacity, the schools average nearly 50% of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunches, a measure of poverty.

The district’s overall average for all middle and K-8 schools is 36%.

The five schools that occupy more than 80% of their building average 25% of their students as qualifying for subsidized lunches.

Also, schools that have faster enrollment declines are more likely to have more students living in poverty. For example, among 10 schools with projected enrollment declines of more than 5%, an average of almost 42% of students qualify for subsidized meals, compared with about a 32% average at schools that have a small decline or that are projected to be growing.

The K-8 schools on average spend more than middle schools per student.

Since schools are funded based on the number of students enrolled, schools with fewer students end up with smaller budgets and aren’t able to provide as many resources or learning opportunities as schools with more students.

Among the middle schools and K-8 schools that the district is considering closing or consolidating, K-8 schools on average spend more than middle schools per student. One school, Coal Creek Canyon K-8, which is serving about 100 students, is spending $21,994 per student, more than 28% over the average per student cost at the district’s other K-8 schools.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Jeffco considers middle school closures as it moves to next phase of consolidations

2023-05-09T21:38:48+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to keep up with education news from Denver and around the state.

Jeffco Public Schools is laying out a roadmap for the next phase of school closures and consolidation in anticipation of fewer students enrolling next year and for several years to come.

Recommendations for middle school closures could come as soon as August under a resolution the school board is expected to approve this week. The resolution would put a moratorium on any high school closures while the district works on other plans around the future of high school.

Jeffco is planning to take a more comprehensive look over the next year at enrollment patterns, school boundaries, and feeder zones, as it considers which schools to close and where to consolidate. The resolution also lays out unsustainable enrollment as a factor for middle school closures, as well as one new factor: the accountability clock.

Being on the state’s accountability clock — the name for when schools have recorded low state ratings for many years in a row — could lead to a school closure. The state gives schools limited time to improve academic performance before it steps in and can order a plan for improvement, which can include turning a school into a charter school or closing it.

Until now, academic performance has not been part of the school closure conversation in Jeffco.

In Jeffco, Arvada K-8 is the only school close to reaching the end of the clock. The school had reached its fourth year of consecutive low ratings before the pandemic caused the state to pause testing and ratings. In the most recent rating, Arvada K-8 improved, but the school needs two years in a row of improved ratings to be off the clock.

If the next rating this fall is again low, that would be treated as the fifth year of low ratings and trigger state action. But often hearings are held in the spring after ratings are finalized and after the state has a chance to send in an independent panel of experts to evaluate the school and make a recommendation on next steps.

The district has already told the school that if the ratings this fall don’t improve, the district will ask the state to close the school, moving up the decision from the spring of 2024 to this fall.

Lisa Relou, Jeffco’s chief of strategy and communications who is overseeing the plan, said waiting for the State Board to take action in the spring would be too late for families trying to make decisions about where to send their children to school the next year and for staff who need to find other jobs.

“So, we’re not going to take our chances,” Relou said.

And while the school could earn a higher rating based on state tests from this spring, Relou said Arvada K-8 also has low enrollment and a complicated feeder pattern, which are also factors that may end up putting the school on a closure list anyway.

Arvada K-8 has a capacity for 920 students, but only has 554 students this school year, about the same as last year. The school, which is expected to continue to see declining enrollment in the coming years, is also listed as having a 62% choice out rate, meaning many more students in the school boundary leave to attend other schools, compared to the average rate of 42% at other schools.

Schools with low academic performance won’t automatically be considered for closure, Relou said, only those that are near the end of the accountability clock.

District expects to consolidate resources and improve school budgets

The pandemic has accelerated previously declining enrollment in Jeffco, as in other metro area districts in the state and other large districts across the country. In November, the school board voted to approve a plan to close 16 elementary schools at the end of the school year.

The enrollment declines have been most stark in elementary schools where lower birth rates have contributed to smaller kindergarten classes. As those classes move up, the lower student counts will reach secondary schools as well.

By closing schools, the district expects to save money and be able to consolidate resources in fewer schools. But as the district also works on smoothing out the transition for families displaced by the closures, it is spending more than $32 million in one-time expenditures to update buildings that will receive displaced students. School board members were initially shocked by those price tags, which were presented after the closure vote.

At the middle school level, Relou said the public can expect fewer school closures than there were at the elementary level.

“With elementaries, there were so many, and so many close together, but when you look at middle schools, it gets more complicated,” Relou said.

One school consolidation plan under consideration was developed by school principals. They are proposing that Pomona High School be turned into a school serving sixth through 12th grade and that Moore Middle School’s building be closed, with the students moving into the space at Pomona. Principals say they believe consolidating their resources and aligning the experience of students from middle grades into high school can allow for better outcomes.

The plan requires some building upgrades to allow for separate entrances for younger students and for older students, and to accommodate a part of the building to be a wing specifically for the sixth and seventh graders. A cost estimate of those changes is expected next month, ahead of a board vote on the plan June 22. The changes would take effect for the 2024-25 school year.

The district also is emphasizing collaboration with municipalities in the county. In November, some of the opposition against the elementary school closures came from city council members who felt that their plans for developing communities hadn’t been considered. This time, the board resolution directs the district to work with municipalities.

Relou said the governments and the school district need to be on the same page as they plan for the future of the communities and look at how more children in the area might be attracted to stay in Jeffco schools.

At the same time, as the district is looking at which criteria it will ultimately use to pick which schools to close, it has also commissioned a study of the school boundaries and feeder patterns in the district.

Relou has told the school board some of the feeder patterns are unusual. For instance, some K-8 schools have neighboring elementary schools that feed into their middle school or sometimes into seventh grade, creating a disproportion among grade level sizes. Some regions have multiple middle schools while others have only one.

The boundary study may also result in recommendations that could change the patterns of where students go from elementary to middle and high school. Sometimes, district leaders said, students don’t follow the district’s feeder patterns, and instead use the school choice process to go to other schools. The boundary study will try to make out whether other patterns make more sense.

At the high school level, the district is working on the “High School Reimagined” initiative, which includes work funded by state grants that aims to create partnerships between industry, higher ed, and school districts to increase the offerings of career and technical opportunities. Before the district considers school closures at that level, leaders want time to consider how extra space in high schools might be used toward those new learning opportunities.

Correction: May 10, 2023: This story has been updated to reflect that Moore Middle School would close and consolidate with Pomona High School under one proposal. An earlier version referred to Moore as an elementary school.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

NYC schools grasp for support as some migrant students miss out on mandated English instruction

2023-05-09T10:00:00+00:00

Miriam Sicherman looks at her Google Translate app or her pocket translator an average of 25 times a day while teaching fourth graders at the Children’s Workshop School in Manhattan’s East Village.

For a recent lesson on internet safety, she translated her presentation into Spanish and Russian ahead of time for her five newcomer immigrant students who speak those languages, but then used her phone to look up words like “password” or “email address” to respond to their questions. In an eight-hour school day, she repeats this process over and over again.

On top of the translation apps, Sicherman takes Duolingo Spanish lessons in her own time and accepts occasional help from a bilingual student and a Russian-speaking teacher at another school in her building.

Still, it sometimes feels impossible to explain in-depth concepts in a language other than her own.

An estimated 14,000 asylum-seeking immigrant students have enrolled in New York City public schools, city officials said last month. Teachers are finding that many of these children are learning English at the most basic level, and some hadn’t attended school regularly before arriving in the United States. The students are legally entitled to extra support, but some schools are struggling to provide it.

Failing to meet the needs of English language learners is not a new problem. Since 2016, the state has placed New York City on a corrective action plan because the district has failed to adequately support English learners, including not providing required services for those with disabilities. The plan, which has been extended multiple times over the past seven years, requires the city to gradually provide more of these services.

For Sicherman, it’s crucial that her English language learners get the support to which they are entitled. But there is just one part-time English-as-a-new-language, or ENL, teacher who provides this support to dozens of students at her school. That means Sicherman’s newcomers are getting a fraction of the extra help they should receive, she said.

“I can make them feel comfortable and safe — that I’m doing my best with, and I think I am achieving that — but they really are entitled to much more than that,” Sicherman said.

Sicherman’s concern is one that potentially many educators share, as thousands of new immigrant families have sought refuge in New York City this year, from Central and South American countries, as well as from Ukraine and Russia.

In anticipation of students’ arrival, the city launched “Project Open Arms” in the fall to send a total $12 million to schools that enrolled six or more newcomer students living in temporary housing. Officials also said schools that have enrolled more students than expected have received another $98 million this year.

Still, some teachers say their schools don’t have enough funding to hire more staff who are equipped to work with newcomer English learners. Some schools have the money, but have struggled to find teachers due to a long-standing shortage of bilingual teachers. That leaves teachers like Sicherman feeling overwhelmed and at times unequipped to properly help these students.

As the city expects another wave of newcomer immigrant families, teachers and advocates are worried it will become even more challenging to support English learners without more help from the city.

The New York Immigration Coalition has heard complaints throughout this school year that students aren’t receiving their required services, said Andrea Ortiz, senior manager of education policy.

“We shouldn’t be allowing students to be just housed in places where they’re not gonna be given the types of supports that they’re legally entitled to,” Ortiz said.

In a statement, education department spokesperson Nicole Brownstein said officials are working closely with schools to “assess any gaps in resources and to provide solutions as expeditiously as possible.”

‘It’s kind of demoralizing’

Sicherman’s school has been waiting months for more help.

Over each of the past five years, her school enrolled between six and 13 English learners, according to demographic records. This year, roughly 60 English learners enrolled, Sicherman said.

School leaders volunteered in January to accept more asylum seekers, the spokesperson said. A crush of newcomer immigrant students began coming in February, but even after the principal requested more staffing help from the education department, the school still had just one part-time ENL teacher, Sicherman said.

Budget records show that the school received about $64,600 in funding from Project Open Arms, which can be used to pay teachers overtime, cover teacher prep periods, and pay substitutes, among other uses related to communication with parents. It’s not clear when the school received those funds. The principal did not respond to a request for comment to discuss the school’s challenges this year or explain how that money was used.

As beginner-level English learners, Sicherman’s five newcomer students should each be receiving 360 minutes a week of extra help building English skills, per state regulations for grades K-8. But they are only getting 135 minutes, since the part-time ENL teacher can only work with them for 45 minutes during each of her three days at the school.

Officials did not answer why the school hasn’t received more staffing help. Superintendent Carry Chan, who oversees Manhattan’s District 1, where the Children’s Workshop School is located, has appealed for the school to receive another full-time ENL teacher, a spokesperson said. The spokesperson added that the school also has a classroom teacher licensed to work with English language learners, and suggested they could tweak programming and use that person so that students are getting more services.

Sicherman said she’s constantly trying to balance those students’ needs with those of the 16 native English speakers in her class. She translates many lessons and uses other tools, including donated Spanish flash cards. But it’s difficult to explain topics in-depth, such as the Irish potato famine, or have a conversation about it. She relies “completely” on Google Translate for her Russian student, with whom the language barrier is so thick that Sicherman worries the child won’t be able to tell her if she’s feeling unwell.

Even lighthearted moments are hard. Sicherman recently pulled up Google Translate to tell a few of her Spanish-speaking students that they were “being silly.” Her bilingual student stopped her: Using the app’s suggested word “tonto” would be like calling the children idiots, he said.

“It’s kind of demoralizing,” Sicherman said. “I wish I could be teaching these kids, and I’m really not teaching them.”

There don’t appear to be immediate consequences for schools or districts who are not providing legally required services to English learners. J.P. O’Hare, a spokesperson for the state education department, said the corrective action plan requires the district to submit multiple reports a year about how they’re improving support for these students. In response, state officials share “direction and guidance” on where city schools need to improve and meet regularly with district staff.

Some experienced ENL teachers are struggling this year

Even experienced ENL teachers say they’re overwhelmed by the arrival of thousands of new immigrant students.

Brooklyn ENL teacher Melanie is usually paired with middle schoolers. But this year, as more English learners enrolled at her Bay Ridge school and one of her ENL colleagues went on leave, she was also asked to work with children in grades 2-5.

Melanie, who asked only to use her first name because she was not authorized to speak with the press, found she was “really struggling” to help younger students, since she’s used to helping older children who know how to read and write at more advanced levels.

The school couldn’t find a replacement for the ENL teacher on leave, who returned a few weeks ago.

For most of this year, Melanie served roughly twice as many children in the “beginner” level as she usually does, many of whom haven’t attended school in a while and are learning various skills, such as how to use an iPad. She was providing the legally required amount of support to these children, but she doesn’t think they received enough individual help, she said.

“I know going into it, I am not meeting their needs,” she said.

One Brooklyn high school enrolled about 30 new immigrant students between February and April, causing classes for beginner-level English learners to fill up to the legal limit of 34, said Nathan, an ENL teacher at the school who asked only to use his first name.

The school, which is used to serving many English learners, is staying afloat for now. They’ve created new classes with existing staff, and they’re using some funding to pay one person overtime in order to be a “migrant students coordinator,” who is charged with creating resources for newcomer families.

But if they get another similar wave of students, he’s unsure if the school has enough funding to add another class for beginner-level English learners or even meet legal mandates.

“That would require a lot of creative budgeting,” Nathan said.

Asylum seekers are a ‘blessing’ for one Brooklyn school

Some schools, such as those with dual language programs, seem better set up to welcome newcomer immigrants.

Asylum-seeking families have “been a blessing” for one Spanish dual language program in Brooklyn, where the number of English language learners has doubled this year, said F.C., a teacher at the school who requested only her initials be used because she was not authorized to speak to the press. Typically, the school doesn’t attract many native Spanish speakers. This year, the surge in enrollment has given both English and Spanish speakers a chance to learn from one another.

As a former newcomer immigrant herself, F.C. has used her experience to connect with students. She comforted a student who would occasionally cry because he was struggling in class and missed home. She told him once, “I used to cry, too, because I didn’t understand what everyone was saying, and that motivated me to learn.’” He gave her a hug.

Most schools don’t have dual language programs. There are 245 such programs across all grades for general education students, covering 13 different languages.

While those programs are “set up well” for English learners, they don’t exist everywhere, said Councilmember Rita Joseph, chair of the council’s education committee, who used to be an ENL teacher. Looking ahead, she thinks the education department will have to “pivot” as more asylum-seeking families make New York City their new home.

“We’re gonna have so much that we can no longer have part-time [ENL] teachers,” she said. “That’s the only way you can stay in compliance.”

Sicherman’s school recently launched an after-school program for English learners, which doesn’t count toward their legally required support but is helpful, she said. Her principal also bought each teacher a pocket translator, which Sicherman has found more useful than Google Translate. Sometimes students use it to talk with each other while she uses her phone app.

Five days after Chalkbeat reached out to the education department about the issues at Sicherman’s school, she discovered that their part-time ENL teacher would soon be working with them full time.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

NYC school enrollment projected to remain steady after steep pandemic losses

2023-05-08T21:10:10+00:00

For the first time since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, New York City’s public schools expect student enrollment to hold mostly steady across the five boroughs in the coming year, according to education department figures released Monday.

Projected enrollment is expected to drop 0.6% in K-12 across many of the city’s public schools, down from a more than 2% decline in the 2022-23 school year and just under 6% drop the year before.

The figures are estimates and will likely differ from the actual numbers, but they hold significant implications for schools since they are a major measure to determine their initial annual budgets. These figures do not include students attending homeschools, charters, or schools in a few special districts that don’t operate under the city’s funding formula.

Overall, the education department expects just under 767,500 students, down from roughly 772,500 students this year. The relatively small projected enrollment decline will likely insulate individual school budgets from big cuts next year.

More than 320 schools are expected to see at least 5% fewer students in the coming school year, down significantly from the roughly 540 who lost at least 5% of their students this year. Meanwhile, 190 schools are predicted to have increases of at least 5% next year, down slightly from nearly 210 schools that saw those gains this year.

Whether a school’s student population rises or falls has major implications for how much it receives through the city’s Fair Student Funding formula, or FSF. That formula uses enrollment and student need to determine how much money schools receive. Roughly two-thirds of school budgets flow through the FSF formula, which the city plans to adjust to greater benefit schools that serve more vulnerable students.

A DOE spokesperson declined to provide the overall funding expected to be distributed through the FSF formula in the coming school year.

But even with fewer schools seeing enrollment declines, the city continues to use federal relief funding to offset student losses. If enrollment holds mostly steady, city schools could still face budget cuts as those funds dry up. And other changes could impact schools, too, as Mayor Eric Adams’ administration has planned a roughly 3% cut in the DOE’s budget.

Ana Champeny, vice president for research at the Citizens Budget Commission, said it was “heartening that the enrollment decline appears to be moderating.”

But, the long-term trend of declining enrollment is continuing, she said. “Schools have been largely held harmless for Fair Student Funding budget reductions due to enrollment declines during the pandemic. Despite this slowdown, schools will still need to adjust to FSF funding that aligns with actual enrollment.”

Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters and a longtime advocate for smaller class sizes who fought budget cuts last year, said the steadying enrollment figures meant further cuts were unnecessary.

“With this minuscule decline there is no excuse for any cuts to schools,” she said.

Since the pandemic hit, city schools have lost more than 100,000 K-12 students. Those declines came as the city and the nation faced an exodus of students from public schools.

The city bases its projections on fall enrollment, recent trends, principal feedback, and other factors. But the estimates can sometimes be off. Heading into this year, officials anticipated a 4% drop, but the actual decline was smaller at about 2%. The city has also seen its enrollment numbers bolstered in the past year as families seeking asylum have come to the city and enrolled their students in local schools.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

New York state budget boosts school funding and allows more charter schools

2023-05-03T19:44:20+00:00

New York’s state lawmakers approved a budget this week that will usher in record funding for schools and a controversial plan allowing 14 charter schools to open in New York City.

The budget, finalized more than a month past the April 1 deadline, will increase aid for schools by $3 billion compared to last year. That brings the total state support for schools to $34 billion, with more than a third of that going to the nation’s largest district, New York City public schools. (Even so, because of city and federal funding cuts, Mayor Eric Adams is proposing to slash the education department’s budget by nearly $1 billion.)

The late budget caused frustration among local lawmakers and education organizations. Even though there was no dispute over school funding this year, local leaders were still waiting to know final details, such as how much they could expect to receive, said Bob Lowry, deputy director for advocacy and communication at the state’s Council of School Superintendents.

“It’s been aggravating that it’s dragged on without any apparent urgency,” Lowry said.

Unlike past years, funding was not a hot-button issue since lawmakers had previously agreed to significantly boost dollars for schools. However, in a surprising twist, charter schools emerged as a sticking point in final budget negotiations.

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposal to open more than 100 charter schools across the five boroughs was one of the final issues that lawmakers picked apart. They reached a deal last week to open just a chunk of the schools Hochul had proposed.

The day after the deal was struck, Hochul announced that she and Democratic leaders had conceptually agreed to a final budget.

Here’s a look at two big education highlights from the state budget:

‘Zombie charters’ allowed to open in the city

In 2019, New York City reached a state-imposed cap of how many charter schools could open across the five boroughs. That cap included 14 “zombie” charter schools, which have either closed or never opened.

As part of the budget, 14 of those zombies will be allowed to open in New York City, while another eight will be allowed to open elsewhere. The city schools can only open in districts where the total charter school enrollment is 55% or less than that of education department-run school enrollment, according to budget records.

Hochul’s original proposal was pared down in the face of significant pushback from teachers unions, lawmakers, and advocates, who argued that the state needed to prioritize more resources for traditional public schools, which have struggled with declining enrollment.

Many charter advocates applauded the compromise, allowing the sector to expand its footprint in the city. Some operators, who were pre-approved to open schools in 2019 after the city had reached the cap, are expected to receive priority if they reapply now for a zombie charter, according to the SUNY Charter Schools Institute, one of two entities that can authorize charter schools to open. (The other is the New York State Board of Regents.)

Opponents to the proposal, including some local New York City officials, shared frustration.

“It took a month to convince the governor not to lift the cap on charter schools, which would pull vital funds from the traditional public school system, and even a month later, the governor insisted on reviving zombie charters,” Public Advocate Jumaane Williams said in a statement.

The city typically must cover rental costs for charters, but as part of the deal, Hochul agreed to use state funding to cover that cost.

School funding rises to record-high levels

The state’s $34 billion school funding plan includes a final, planned increase to Foundation Aid, the state’s main school funding formula that sends more money to higher need districts.

For years, boosting Foundation Aid was a contentious matter in Albany. While funding for schools increased under former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, he declined to fund Foundation Aid at the level the formula calculated for each district’s needs. After years of advocacy from policymakers, advocates, and lawmakers, Cuomo agreed in his final months in office to fully fund the formula over a three-year period.

Hochul agreed to stick to that plan, which was originally expected to boost Foundation Aid by $4 billion over that three-year period. That figure has grown by $800 million because of inflation.

New York City — which sends much of its Foundation Aid dollars directly to schools — will receive an increase of 5.5% in those funds compared to this current school year.

In total, New York City will receive $12.9 billion in funding for schools from the state — equivalent to 42% of what the mayor has proposed for the education department’s operating budget next year.

The mayor’s budget office projected receiving close to that from the state — about $12.7 billion — next year for city schools. But with drops in city and federal funding, Adams has proposed a nearly $1 billion smaller education department budget for next year.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Enrollment at NYC’s transfer high schools tanked during the pandemic. Can it rebound?

2023-04-28T21:22:08+00:00

Alyssa Cartagena stopped attending school after giving birth a year ago. She had no babysitter, and going back felt insurmountable.

But a small alternative high school on Manhattan’s Upper West Side helped pull her back in. The program, Edward A. Reynolds West Side High School, boasts an on-site day care center operated by the education department. She enrolled her two-month old son, Shawn, dropping him off each day before heading to class.

“I was nervous, but I was also relaxed knowing I was so close to him, and I can stop by anytime,” said Cartagena, now 19. “It was easier for me to focus in class.”

She’s now on track to earn a high school diploma later this year.

The city has nearly 60 transfer schools like West Side that focus on the students who struggled to succeed at traditional high schools and are at risk of dropping out. They pride themselves on offering individual support, small classes, and a suite of wraparound services to push students to graduation.

But the city’s transfer schools are in a precarious position, as enrollment across the sector has plummeted. The number of students attending transfer high schools fell 22% over the past four years compared with a 5% decline at traditional high schools, a Chalkbeat analysis found. Steep dips in enrollment can put schools in danger of being closed or merged.

Already, the education department has put forward a contentious plan for West Side, which shrank from serving about 500 students six years ago to about 200 this year. The proposal calls for West Side to swap buildings with The Young Women’s Leadership School in East Harlem, which is outgrowing its campus.

Community members have blasted the proposal because it would leave West Side without an on-site child care center or health clinic. Some have also warned students may face threats to their physical safety if they cross neighborhood lines.

The education department has argued the move, along with a new Spanish dual-language program, could help attract new students to West Side. After the department delayed the proposal earlier this month, the city’s Panel for Educational Policy is scheduled for a Monday vote that will be closely watched.

The battle playing out at West Side only represents the most high-profile example of the transfer school enrollment crisis that has been simmering below the surface. About 70% of the city’s transfer schools now enroll fewer than 200 students, up from about 26% in 2017. A handful have slipped below 100.

The enrollment drops are likely due in part to more relaxed academic standards at traditional high schools during the pandemic, observers say. Some of the sector’s leaders believe it will bounce back as regular grading policies — and state graduation exams — fall back into place.

But dwindling enrollment raises questions about the sustainability of a network of schools that exclusively serve students who are at risk of dropping out, including those who have been tangled in the criminal justice system, face difficult family circumstances, or may be parents themselves. Since schools are funded largely based on enrollment, shrinking rosters can make it difficult to offer a wide range of classes and extracurricular activities.

Manhattan’s Edward A. Reynolds West Side High School is at the center of a contentious proposal to move the school into a smaller space.

Education department officials did not respond to questions for this story, including whether they are considering merging or closing transfer schools.

Some leaders across the sector believe that enrollment will rebound, but there is lingering concern that a broader wave of restructuring could be on the horizon.

“It might have to be the reality — I don’t know that you can run a school with 100 students,” said one transfer school principal who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

“We’ve been sort of warned, in a sense: Keep your numbers up or that’s something that could happen.”

Why is transfer school enrollment dropping precipitously?

Transfer school leaders trace the steep decline in enrollment to pandemic-era policies that made it easier for students to stay on track at traditional high schools.

When the pandemic forced campuses to shut down in 2020, schools eased their grading policies. And state officials temporarily paused the Regents exams, typically required for graduation. Students only had to pass their courses to graduate rather than sit for an additional state exam.

Students may have been able to pass classes they would have failed in a typical year, said Jai Nanda, executive director of Urban Dove, which operates two charter transfer schools, one in Brooklyn and one in the Bronx.

Traditional high schools had incentives to hang on to more of their students, since many of those campuses were also experiencing enrollment declines. Plus, families may simply have been more reluctant to switch schools during such a chaotic time, even if a student was struggling.

“[Students] chalked it up to being remote rather than their school not being a good fit for them,” Nanda said.

Transfer schools may also have lost students who became disconnected from school due to growing mental health and anxiety problems, or because they needed to work to support their families. Some may have moved out of the city with their families because of rising housing costs.

Small-by-design schools are more vulnerable to enrollment drops

Whatever the cause, declining enrollment has an outsized effect on transfer schools, which are typically smaller to begin with to offer more individualized support than a traditional campus.

Shawn Henry, a director of high school programming at Queens Community House, helps oversee the organization’s partnership with three transfer high schools. The group ensures every student is paired with a counselor, conducts home visits if a student doesn’t show up for three consecutive days, and helps coordinate paid internship opportunities.

“The ideal model is a smaller environment,” Henry said.

But that size makes it difficult to absorb big enrollment swings — though so far the schools have been insulated by an influx of federal relief money.

At Urban Dove, which has seen enrollment dip, the school has a heavy focus on sports, with all students expected to participate on athletic teams with coaches who work with them multiple hours each day. “A great deal of that program is beyond the traditional school budget,” Nanda said. Emergency pandemic aid kept the program afloat.

Still, other campuses are beginning to feel the pinch — and relief money is beginning to dry up. One transfer school principal, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said their school has already reduced staff positions. That has limited the number of electives they offer. And it forced them to cut the number of classrooms with a mix of students with disabilities and general education students; those classes are typically staffed by two teachers.

Those types of cuts can prompt a downward spiral, where fewer classes and programs makes the school less attractive to prospective students. At the same time, shrinking rosters make operating the schools even more expensive on a per-student basis, creating incentives for city officials to consolidate or close them.

“As you contract, it becomes harder to even grow,” the principal said.

Some transfer school leaders predict a rebound

Despite the serious headwinds facing transfer schools, some of the school’s leaders believe demand for the schools will return.

As schools return to normal grading policies and Regents exams are back in full swing, there may be an even larger contingent of students who struggle to graduate without moving to a transfer school.

Nanda, the leader of two charter transfer schools, said he is already seeing signs of an enrollment uptick. “You’re going to have a lot of kids coming into high school in the next couple years that won’t have the fundamental skill[s],” he said, though he noted that it remains to be seen how many will wind up at transfer schools.

Transfer school staff also noted that the schools could be an asset to serving the growing number of asylum-seeking students arriving in New York, as alternative schools specialize in reaching students with interrupted educations.

Emma Lazarus High School, a transfer program on the Lower East Side, has long focused on serving students who are still learning English and has seen its enrollment snap back relatively quickly thanks in part to an influx of new arrivals.

“The uptake in immigrants has definitely impacted our enrollment upward,” said Principal Melody Kellogg, who retired this month. Education officials previously indicated that they planned to place some new arrivals at transfer schools, but officials have provided few details about the program.

Still, Kellogg and other transfer leaders said it can be difficult for other transfer schools to serve newly arrived immigrants, arguing that even with a boost in funding, it is often not commensurate with the need to hire new staff. Finding qualified educators, especially mid-year, is a major challenge.

“It’s nice to have a little extra money, but it’s not going to be enough to support them fully,” Kellogg said.

More broadly, Natalie Lozada, who works with four transfer schools through East Side House Settlement, worries that a focus on enrollment declines could jeopardize programs that are doing solid work. “Are we saying that because these numbers are low that we should discard supports for these students?”

Still, like many of the sector’s boosters, she anticipates a rebound is coming.

“I believe in my heart, and based on my experience, and all my years of doing this work, that it’s circular. Their numbers are going to come back up again.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

City education council elections bring polarizing national issues to local school districts

2023-04-28T15:31:42+00:00

This story was originally published on April 28 by THE CITY.

Starting last Friday and running through May 9, the city’s Community Education Council elections now underway give public school parents a chance to vote on district panels that will represent their interests to their local superintendent.

Parents, local residents, and business owners, and even high school seniors are eligible to run for positions on the 11-member CECs, which can weigh in on topics ranging from academics and budgets to accessibility and diversity.

This is only the second time that public school parents will be able to choose who will represent district interests to the superintendent — prior to 2021, only Parent Teacher Associations nominated CEC members. But only 2% of eligible voters participated in the last election for the volunteer positions two years ago, according to the Department of Education — and in the absence of individual involvement, well-organized networks of parents have increasingly exerted influence.

One such group, Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education (PLACE), has become particularly powerful — and polarizing.

The group formed in 2019 in opposition to former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s efforts to widen access to honors programs and selective middle and high schools. Now some rival parent groups say PLACE is skewing rightward, with members using their platform to compare critical race theory to Nazi ideology and accusing the administration of being “woke” oppressors.

On April 21, the first day of voting, PLACE recommended 175 candidates across the city in an emailed newsletter the organization says reaches nearly 10,000 parents.

But reached by THE CITY, several of those candidates distanced themselves from PLACE’s agenda as it ventures into issues beyond testing. Some endorsed candidates said they had never even heard of the organization.

CECs are composed of 11 members: nine are parents elected by other parents, and two are appointed by the borough president. Decisions are entirely advisory, with the exception of binding decisions issued about school zoning.

“For most parents, this is an obscure election. They look at those names and they don’t really recognize them,” said Reyhan Mehran, a parent and member of a group in Brooklyn’s District 15 that opposes PLACE. “It makes those of us who are paying attention nervous that this very vocal, right-wing small group of people have had an undue influence on public school policy.”

PLACE is trying to replicate its success from the last elections — where 60% of the 86 candidates that they recommended are still district CEC members. In Manhattan’s largest public school districts, 2 and 3, PLACE candidates represent a majority or all of the members sitting on the councils, according to THE CITY’s review of district rosters.

The group regularly reaches approximately 15,000 parents citywide through a combination of Facebook, Twitter, a newsletter and group chats on the messaging app WeChat, according to both its leadership and public follower tallies.

“It’s very difficult to motivate your average parent to take part in [CEC elections],” said Yiatin Chu, a public school parent in District 1 and co-vice-president and co-founder of PLACE. “The most active parents are the ones who have been burned by the [school] lottery system. The ones that aren’t really engaging with us may know someone who is — it’s like what marketing people call influencers.”

As parents cast their ballots over the next two weeks, members of rival coalitions are expressing concerns about PLACE’s influence.

Mehran is a member of District 15 Parents for Middle School Equity, which was formed in 2014 to advocate for and implement the district’s diversity plans — including removing admissions screens and prioritizing low-income students and English-learners for admissions in middle schools. For the first time ever on Tuesday, the group released a list of endorsed candidates citywide — an explicit effort to counter PLACE’s sway, Mehran said.

“By just recommending these candidates, PLACE has had a lot of influence,” said Mehran. “And we just felt like maybe we should put something out there that gives people other names to consider.”

Organized outreach

In only four years, PLACE has emerged as the foremost group pushing local district superintendents to preserve and expand gifted and talented programs and to reinstate admissions testing in certain high schools and middle schools.

They’re fighting officials and other parents who have blamed those programs for contributing to racial and economic inequality across the city — which has some of the most segregated public schools across the country, according to a study conducted by UCLA.

But PLACE insists that dismantling testing and accelerated programs would worsen academic standards and unfairly punish Asian students, who tend to be “overrepresented” in selective schools, compared to the city’s general demographic mix. Instead, the group suggests that the DOE correct the factors that might be causing Black and Hispanic students to fall behind in the first place.

PLACE’s most notable success in the last election was in Manhattan’s four largest districts, where every candidate it recommended in Districts 1, 2 and 3 won a seat. In District 2, representing 60,000 students and 121 schools, all but one of the seats was held by a PLACE candidate. Similarly, PLACE won a majority on the Citywide Council on High Schools — a board that represents 300,000 students citywide.

And PLACE’s 15,000-member following dwarfs that of other groups that offered endorsements — who aren’t as active outside of CEC elections, and told THE CITY that their listservs and online followings reach around 1,000 people a piece.

Unlike former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, which said it wanted to scrap the specialized high school tests open to students citywide, Mayor Eric Adams and Department of Education Chancellor David Banks have stressed that most admissions policies should be decided on by local superintendents — giving CECs a path to potentially influence these decisions.

CECs, for instance, made themselves heard on middle school admissions last year, after a two-year pause in academic-based screening for middle schools, related to both the pandemic and the de Blasio administration’s push to move away from grade- and test-based admissions.

In at least two districts, CECs recommended a return to screened middle school admissions. The results were mixed: over 100 schools have decided not to, according to an announcement made by Banks last October. But 60 middle schools have reinstated screened admissions based on course averages from the fourth grade.

Not ‘woke’ but awakened?

In addition to a robust parent network citywide, PLACE Co-president and co-founder Maud Maron attributed the organization’s success to a widespread “parent awakening” in the first year of the pandemic, at a time when the city’s school enrollment was rapidly declining, protests over racial injustice were spreading across the country, and parents debated about virtual schooling and mask mandates.

She suggested a correlation between declining reading and math scores and an increased focus on “social emotional learning” and an “ideological agenda” in schools — but acknowledged that the relationship wasn’t necessarily causal.

“Land acknowledgements don’t teach anybody more math,” Maron, a Manhattan mother of four, told THE CITY — referencing the practice of paying respect to the indigenous people who inhabited the land before European colonialism. “It’s just that this endless fixation on left-wing ideological indoctrination doesn’t do much to improve our nation’s report card.”

PLACE’s prominence in education politics has drawn local and national recognition, especially as a number of its members have aspired to higher office. That includes Maron, a former CEC member herself who ran in the crowded Democratic primary for a rare open seat in U.S. Congress District 10. That’s the area that covers much of school District 15 in Brooklyn, which led the way in removing middle school screenings in the de Blasio years. Maron won just under 1,000 votes, less than 1%.

Members of the Adams administration, including Banks himself, have consulted with PLACE directly, according to Chalkbeat and testimony from the Department of Education’s chief enrollment officer at a City Council hearing in January. Separately, a spokesperson for the DOE told THE CITY that the administration engages PLACE in the same way that it does with other groups representing parents, and continues to prioritize diversity in schools.

In District 2, the largest in Manhattan, PLACE candidates fill all but one elected CEC seat. Conversations about culturally sensitive curriculum and school diversity have caught the attention of national media outlets, while one CEC member there launched her own bid for state Senate.

And PLACE’s work has earned commendation from groups like Parents Defending Education, and leadership positions at the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), national organizations that largely advocate against what they describe as threats to free speech from the left. Chu and Maron made national news for founding FAIR’s New York City chapter.

PLACE leadership has leaned into national discourse online, comparing “critical race theory” (CRT) and “anti-Asian discrimination” in admissions to Nazi ideology, and warning parents of “poisonous” curriculum. In a tweet from March, Maron called city schools an “oppressor woke environment where DOE employees make them pledge allegiance to their LGBTQI+ religion.”

PLACE leadership echoes this in private discussion forums, according to screenshots from private discussion forums obtained by THE CITY, members have promoted local chapters of Mom’s for Liberty, a national group that decries “woke” education as an assault on parental control.

Guadalupe Hernandez, a mother of two who was appointed to District 2’s CEC by the Manhattan borough president and is running for re-election, was one of the candidates endorsed by D15 Parents for Middle School Equity. She said messaging from PLACE officials reminds her of red states.

“It’s so mind boggling,” Hernandez told THE CITY. “Sometimes even when I speak to residents that live in my building or just any New York City parents, and tell them what I’m going through, they’re just like, ‘We’re where? We’re not Alabama, we’re not Florida.’ They don’t believe me.”

Endorsement shuffle

PLACE’s leadership insists their official platform is solely about preserving selective admissions and gifted-and-talented programs.

“I tend to like to be vocal personally on all sorts of things,” Chu said. “But that’s not who I am when I’m advocating for PLACE.”

By and large, national hot-button topics didn’t feature in the 36 candidate forums hosted by the DOE. The vast majority of candidates spoke about supporting the district’s families, fighting school bullying, and promoting learning recovery after the pandemic.

But that hasn’t stopped endorsed candidates from putting distance between themselves and PLACE’s conservative affiliations.

Sarah Sharma, a CEC hopeful in Brooklyn’s District 14, is one of the 175 candidates that PLACE endorsed this year. Yet she says she had never heard of the group. After doing some research, Sharma asked to be removed from their list.

“When I found out about their endorsement, I poked around their website and realized I didn’t really want to be associated with them,” said Sharma, a former teacher and administrator in the district, which spans Williamsburg and Greenpoint. “Because I don’t feel like their views on education represent mine and who they’ve endorsed in the past for general elections.”

Sharma went on to specify that she was uncomfortable with PLACE’s endorsement of conservative candidates like Reps. George Santos (R-Queens/L.I.) and Nicole Maliotakis (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn), and gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin, who were among a bi-partisan slate of 18 statewide candidates PLACE endorsed last year.

Noah Harlan, a current CEC representative for District 1, was also endorsed by PLACE but emphasized that his agreement with organization’s leadership begins and ends with supporting selective admissions, rigorous testing, and gifted and talented programs.

“I think that I have more of a willingness than others to think about the systemic and structural issues that work against student achievement in various neighborhoods in New York, other PLACE candidates might be more dispassionate.” said Harlan, who added that he considers changes to admissions policies to be discriminatory against the Asian community.

Several other parents and CEC candidates who spoke with THE CITY and who favor preserving selective admissions said that they were not interested in national debates about race and gender — even those who have been endorsed by PLACE.

No magic bullet for parent engagement

Even with two years to drum up awareness, a high level of participation is far from guaranteed in this, the second round of parent-involved CEC elections.

Immediately after the 2021 elections, only five seats were unfilled across all CECs, after a 70% increase in the number of candidates from 2019. Today, however, 25% of seats are unfilled, as parents leave their elected positions.

Some districts in Brooklyn have gone months without the minimum six members required to reach quorum, and others have gone years without a designated English Language Learner representative, Bklyner reported.

In the past few months, the DOE has upped its outreach: sending postcards in the mail, making phone calls, emailing parents, hosting information sessions and virtual candidate forums for every district across the city.

But the engaged parents on the ground are still concerned.

“There isn’t a magic bullet,” said Stephen Stowe, president of the District 20 CEC and PLACE endorsed-candidate. “At the end of the day, you’re not gonna see the same kind of interest you do for City Council elections or state Assembly or state Senate because it doesn’t have a lot of power.”

Former CEC 20 president and PLACE co-founder Vito LaBella believes the issues that parents are concerned about don’t have anything to do with larger political discourse.

“Unfortunately is everybody inserting a political perspective in what should be a very simple market perspective: What is the demand for accelerated programs and what is the capacity?” said LaBella, who ran for State Senate in 2021 on a platform that prioritized protecting selective admissions and combatting critical race theory.

“And if we want to stop the bleeding of families leaving New York City, we need to increase capacity to meet demand, not get rid of it altogether.”

14 ‘zombie’ charters would open in NYC under Albany budget deal

2023-04-27T18:59:58+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to keep up with NYC’s public schools.

After a four-year halt on new charter schools in New York City, state lawmakers have reached a deal to open 14 “zombie” charters.

The deal, struck Wednesday night between Gov. Kathy Hochul and Democratic leaders, would allow charter school operators to open 14 zombies — schools that closed or were never opened. Additionally, the state would cover rent for these schools, relieving New York City of the cost, said state Sen. John Liu, who is the chair of the state senate’s New York City education committee.

Since the city is required to pay rent for charter schools, this deal would leave little incentive for the city to co-locate these zombie charters with traditional public schools. Such co-locations often drum up opposition from the public and the schools involved.

The deal is not yet law; it is expected to be part of the state’s final budget approval, which is now 27 days late. The governor’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

The state education department and the SUNY Charter Schools Institute have the authority to award charters to prospective operators in New York. Spokespeople for both said they needed to review the final proposal.

SUNY approved charters for six schools in 2019 that couldn’t open because the city had reached a state-imposed cap on charter schools in the five boroughs, said spokesperson Michael Lesczinski. If the deal goes through, SUNY would open a new request for proposals for newly available charters. While those six already-approved schools would have to submit updated materials including “budgets and evidence of ongoing community outreach, support and demand,” they would be first in line for consideration, Lesczinski said.

“I’m glad that the governor and the legislature were able to find some common ground on this,” said Arthur Samuels, who co-founded MESA Charter High School in Bushwick. The organization won pre-approval in 2019 to open a second high school in Brooklyn, but were blocked by the charter cap.

While overall enrollment in the charter sector has increased, many individual schools, including some of the biggest networks, are logging fewer students — meaning that opening more charter schools could lead to smaller budgets or even closures among traditional district schools and existing charters alike.

But Samuels said he will move to open a second school if possible and is waiting for guidance about how the approval process will work.

“There is a demand for the type of education we’re offering, which is responsive and community-centric,” he said. “We see that as something that people want even as the number of school-age children in the city declines.”

Hochul’s push for more charter schools in New York City emerged as one of the last items holding up the overdue state budget — and her keen interest puzzled many following the issue, given the significant opposition she has faced from the start. Her pitch, which was part of her budget proposal in January, came four years after the city hit the charter cap. At the time, a handful of charter operators were approved to open schools if the cap was ever increased, including the six by SUNY.

At first Hochul’s original proposal, which could have allowed more than 100 charter schools to open in New York City, seemed dead on arrival. It drew immediate backlash from Democratic lawmakers, unions, and advocates, who argued that city resources should be spent on traditional public schools, which are seeing enrollment declines and are still facing pandemic-related challenges.

Hochul has argued that she wants more school choice for parents, particularly those who are on waitlists for charters. She has also received campaign contributions from supporters of charter schools, and indirect support from former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the New York Times reported last month.

Hochul has also received donations from teachers and principals unions, which have strongly opposed the expansion of charter schools. In a statement, Michael Mulgrew, president of the city teachers union, accused Hochul of listening “to the demands of a handful of billionaires,” despite the charter sector’s enrollment challenges.

Last month, the state Senate and Assembly formally rejected the proposal in their response to Hochul’s budget plan, and even three weeks ago, the topic wasn’t a part of budget negotiations, according to multiple state lawmakers, who said the focus was on other hot issues, such as bail reform.

But this week, Hochul presented Democrats with a compromise: allow just the 22 existing zombie charters to open. Liu opposed that plan, too, largely because several of those charters were issued outside of New York City but would have been allowed to open within the five boroughs.

But on Thursday, Liu said he agreed to this latest deal because the 14 zombie charters in question all exist in New York City, and it would not involve lifting the charter cap.

“The firm agreement is no increase or no elimination of the New York City cap, which is clearly the right policy going forward because you have to strike the balance between the desire for some charter choice and the need for the city to keep public schools open,” Liu said.

In a statement, City Hall spokesperson Amaris Cockfield said, “As all New Yorkers, we are still awaiting final budget details, but we always appreciate and welcome Albany’s support to meet the needs of New York City’s children and families.”

Charter school advocates applauded the deal, which is significantly pared down from what Hochul originally proposed.

“[Hochul] understands that having both a strong and growing charter sector makes all of our public schools stronger and better able to meet the complex needs of our students and families,” said James Merriman, CEO of the New York City Charter School Center, in a statement. “For years, leaders, including many of color, have been on hold to open innovative new schools in NYC communities – this deal will finally allow 14 of them to open their doors.”

Crystal McQueen-Taylor, president of StudentsFirstNY, said in a statement that “the Governor’s tenacity and persistence made all the difference.”

But not everyone was pleased. Eva Moskowitz, the founder and CEO of Success Academy, the city’s largest charter network, called the deal a “travesty,” in a statement. Albany has “bargained away … access to high-quality schools,” for low-income students of color since the deal would open just 14 schools, she said.

Alex Zimmerman contributed.

NYC’s education budget could drop by $960M next year under mayor’s proposal

2023-04-27T00:19:25+00:00

The city’s education department budget would drop by nearly $960 million next school year under a more detailed budget proposal released by Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday, though city officials did not offer specifics about the impact on individual campuses.

Two-thirds of that cut, or $652 million, is the result of Adams’ decision to reduce the city’s contribution to the education department. Another $297 million is from a drop in federal funding, which is drying up as pandemic relief programs end.

Part of the city’s cut is tied to a mandate from the mayor earlier this month calling on city agencies to cut spending, including at the education department. That raised questions about whether schools would take a hit, but on Wednesday, Adams vowed that this specific cost-saving measure “will not take a dime from classrooms.”

Instead, that reduction — totaling $325 million — will largely come from recalculations on how much the city spends in fringe benefits, such as health insurance for teachers. (Officials emphasized this would not result in a loss of benefits or other services.)

“We had to make tough choices in this budget,” Adams said Wednesday. “We had to negotiate competing needs. We realize that not everyone will be happy but that is okay because that is how you get stuff done.”

The education department’s operating budget would total about $30.5 billion next year under the mayor’s plan, down by about 3%.

Some of the cuts were previously announced, including the elimination of a planned expansion of prekindergarten for 3-year-olds. Other impacts of the cuts may come into focus in the coming days as experts and journalists pore over reams of budget documents, which were released late Wednesday afternoon.

Adams has argued school budgets should reflect falling enrollment, but city officials declined to say what overall change they expect to individual school budgets next year. That question is likely to draw intense scrutiny after the City Council was heavily criticized last year for approving a budget that resulted in cuts to many campuses.

After the pandemic hit, Mayor Bill de Blasio used federal relief money to keep school budgets steady even as enrollment plunged. But as the spigot of federal money is drying up, Adams has started reducing budgets to line up with the number of students enrolled at each school, resulting in cuts on the majority of campuses. (Since the start of the pandemic, enrollment dropped about 11% in K-12.)

Next year, Adams plans to use $160 million of federal money to avoid deeper cuts to school budgets. Officials anticipate a much smaller enrollment decline than in recent years, which could insulate schools to some degree.

The budget is not final and must still be negotiated with the City Council. A final deal is due by July 1.

The proposed budget also includes funding for various other items, including services that advocates had been pushing for the mayor to include. Those are:

$3.3 million for keeping a chunk of the city’s new shelter-based coordinators, who are supposed to help families and children who are homeless navigate school enrollment and transportation. The funding for these coordinators was set to run out this June.
$9 million for a telehealth program for high school students who need mental health support.
$2 million for training up to 1,000 teachers in climate education.

The mayor’s budget received a mixed reception from advocates, union officials, and budget experts. Kim Sweet, executive director at the nonprofit Advocates for Children, praised the funding for shelter coordinators, but raised alarms about broader spending cuts — including to a program that provides extra mental health services to students at 50 high-need high schools, and another that provides free child care for undocumented families.

“We are concerned that the Mayor is proposing to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from our City’s schools at a time when there are so many unmet needs,” Sweet said in a statement, including high rates of chronic absenteeism and shortages in services for students with disabilities.

Still, Adams has argued that the city needs to tighten its belt due to costs associated with serving an influx of asylum seekers and potential economic headwinds.

Ana Champeny, vice president for research at the budget watchdog group Citizens Budget Commission, said her organization is worried the city isn’t properly planning now for big budget shortfalls that are expected in future years. That includes hundreds of millions of dollars of federal relief funding for the education department that will disappear in 2024 and could leave several programs and services unfunded.

“From our point of view there is still a major challenge fiscally for the city that’s not far off,” Champeny said. “We really should be taking action now.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Charter schools emerge as key issue holding up New York’s state budget

2023-04-25T22:14:53+00:00

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s controversial proposal to open more charter schools in New York City is one of the final issues holding up the passage of a state budget, officials said Tuesday.

The budget is nearly a month overdue.

Originally, Hochul wanted to allow more than 100 new charters to open in the five boroughs, by lifting a cap on such schools and releasing “zombie” charters for defunct or never-opened campuses.

After pushback from state lawmakers, Hochul floated a scaled back version, reviving just 22 zombie charter schools for the city, said Sen. John Liu, a Queens Democrat who is the chair of the state senate’s New York City education committee. Half of those zombie charters are located outside of the city, he said.

(Politico reported that the proposal also calls for the state to cover rent for newly released zombie charters.)

Even that proposal has been met with opposition. Hochul told reporters Tuesday that charter schools remain a difficult topic.

“I’m trying hard to overcome the objections, but this is a very challenging issue because of the emotions on both sides of the debate,” she said.

Lawmakers, union officials, and many advocates and families have argued that opening more charters will add to expenses for the city when it should be investing more in traditional public schools, which have lost enrollment. In March, both the Senate and the Assembly officially rejected the proposal.

Charter supporters, who have long pushed for the state to lift the cap in order to expand their footprint, cheered her idea. Hochul has emphasized that she’s attempting to offer more school options to families, including Black and Latino families who are on waitlists for charters.

Overall enrollment in the charter sector has ticked upwards, but it has dropped at many individual schools, including some of the biggest networks. That means opening more such schools could lead to smaller budgets or even closures within the charter sector.

The budget, which was due April 1, has been unresolved for weeks due to disagreements over various hot issues, including bail reform and affordable housing. Charter schools were not a focus of negotiations even three weeks ago, according to both State Senator Shelley Mayer, who chairs the Senate’s general education committee, and Assemblywoman Jo Ann Simon.

In an interview Tuesday, Liu said his committee reviewed Hochul’s new proposal, but it remains “a non-starter.” It would be reasonable “if there were absolutely no charter seats available in New York City,” he said, adding there is “no rationale” for it now.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

‘This would be a closure’: Two Upper West Side middle schools fight merger as city panel vote looms

2023-04-17T22:40:16+00:00

Two disparate small Upper West Side middle schools have found their fates intertwined as city officials seek to merge them, despite loud community protests.

One is a progressive institution serving overwhelmingly Black and Latino students, where more than 80% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The other is known for its French dual language program and has a significantly higher share of white students. Just under 60% of its students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.

Officials say the merger could help protect both schools, but to parents and staff at West Side Collaborative, the plan could mean a fatal loss of identity — as community members fear its leadership, approach to teaching, culture, and name could be washed away as it is absorbed into the larger school.

The progressive middle school has fostered a passionate community network, even as its size has dwindled to fewer than 100 students in recent years. The merger would see its students and faculty join Lafayette Academy, roughly half a mile away, in a move the city believes would shield students from funding concerns that stem from their smaller enrollment losses.

The merger comes as the latest sign that some of the city’s smallest schools are increasingly under threat even as families sing their praises, as the city faces steep enrollment declines and a looming fiscal cliff of federal relief funds. The Upper West Side fight follows a battle over a Washington Heights middle school earlier this year, and despite fierce pushback, the merged school may soon become a reality with the Panel for Educational Policy set to vote Wednesday.

Enrollment declines leave few options

Enrollment figures paint a stark picture. Over the past five years, West Side Collaborative has seen a 58% decline in enrollment, with further projected losses expected to shrink its current student body of about 75 students next year, according to city figures. Lafayette Academy, meanwhile, serves about 158 students. Because the city calculates school funding in part based on how many students enroll, a declining student population can mean a loss of funds, too.

“The merger is a reaction to a real trend — nobody will deny that enrollment across New York City is down,” said Paul Kehoe, a teacher at West Side Collaborative. “But in effect, this would be a closure.”

The school developed a set of progressive practices over decades, Kehoe said, like data-driven academic intervention services that catch students falling behind and a coaching period with student-led conferences to promote executive functioning and goal setting.

“The idea that you can pick up those practices and transplant them into another school and have them carried off with the same efficacy and deft touch that comes with experience is just not viable,” he said. “That’s just not a thing that happens.”

And at Lafayette Academy, community members said they were concerned by the lack of concrete details on how staffing and other decisions would shake out.

Stefania Puxeddu Clegg, a parent at the school, raised concerns about potential overcrowding with the influx of students a merger might bring, as well as the potential for Lafayette Academy to lose its small-school feel. And despite an email from the superintendent noting that Lafayette Academy’s principal would head the new merged school, Puxeddu Clegg and other parents remain concerned that such assurances were not included explicitly in the language of the proposal. (DOE projections also say the merger would not bring student levels over capacity in the school’s building.)

In a statement, a spokesperson for the city’s department of education said “meeting student needs” is at the “forefront” of any decisions.

“The district superintendent and his team have worked to engage the community in regards to this merger for months, and while it’s still in the proposal phase, if approved by the PEP, it is designed to give students the best access to new programs and additional supports,” the spokesperson said.

Tensions at both schools remain high

The clash between the school communities and the city surfaced at a public hearing this month, as parents from both schools repeatedly spoke against the merger.

“It was a disaster,” said Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, a member of the city’s Panel for Educational Policy. “I was so optimistic, and then everybody at the joint public hearing was like, ‘Yep, we’re in opposition.’”

Though Salas-Ramirez understood community concerns, she added she expected the proposed merger to pass. “In terms of the numbers, it’s just really difficult,” she said.

A merged school could see a jump in funding, as more students are housed under one roof, and as the demographic shift could bring federal funding for low-income students to Lafayette Academy. Still, staff members may be excessed in the move, and it remains unclear how many families from West Side Collaborative would choose to enroll at the merged school.

“None of our parents want to go,” said Morana Mesic, a parent at West Side Collaborative and president of the school’s PTA. “If the merger goes through, our parents want a transfer.”

The relationship between the two school communities has been fraught with tension among parents, she added. In a meeting, Mesic said she took issue with Lafayette parents stating that the higher needs and lower test scores of students at West Side Collaborative might affect current students at Lafayette.

As an alternative to a merger, West Side Collaborative parents and staff have pointed to recent enrollment gains due to new students entering the city as asylum seekers have flocked to New York as one possible avenue to bolster the student body. But officials noted during the public hearing that those gains may not persist as families find more permanent housing.

Jeanie Ahn, a member of the local Community Education Council and a liaison for West Side Collaborative, said parents she’s spoken to have been overwhelmingly against the merger. The difficulty of the situation has been intensified by the expedited timeline of the process, she added. The first community engagement meetings about the merger took place in January.

“We are listening to the families and their concerns, but also understand the realities of the situation at both schools,” Ahn said, adding it would be ideal to have more time to develop a proposal that at least some affected families approve of. “If every single voice you hear from in both schools says this merger is not the solution, it’s going to be a really tough vote for the PEP.

“When it comes to these small, close-knit communities that are so tight, it really does feel like you’re breaking up families,” she said.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

As NYC is expected to spend $38K per student, budget watchdog calls for prioritizing ‘critical services’

2023-04-11T04:01:00+00:00

Buoyed in recent years by billions in federal stimulus dollars, New York City is slated to spend about $38,000 per student next school year — the most in recent history — as enrollment is again expected to drop, according to a new report published Tuesday.

The report, from Citizens Budget Commission, or CBC, a budget watchdog group, comes as the education department faces 3% in cuts for next year. Mayor Eric Adams and the City Council are in the middle of budget planning for the next fiscal year, which begins on July 1.

Many of the CBC’s findings focus on the period from fiscal year 2016 through 2022, since the current fiscal year, 2023, isn’t over yet. Some of the report’s highlights include:

In that time period, the education department’s spending per pupil has increased by 47%, in large part due to the $7 billion in federal COVID aid the district received as enrollment has dipped. Three school years from now, in fiscal year 2026, CBC projects the city could be spending as much as $44,000 per student.
Spending grew the most in three areas: early childhood education, at 65%, covering private school tuition, such as for students with disabilities, by 79%, and for charter schools, by 84%. This was fueled by enrollment growth in these specific areas.
Spending related to schools, such as for instruction, grew by about 34%. Spending on school services, such as transportation, food, and safety, grew at a similar rate.
Spending on school support, such as special education instructional costs, grew by about 15%. And spending on central costs, including central administration, fringe benefits, pension contributions, and debt service, saw the slowest growth – by 8%.

CBC called for officials to prioritize programs and services for next year that are most effective and shed others. It also notes that the city faces financial pressures over the next several years, which the Adams administration has also emphasized as they’ve imposed stricter savings targets on city agencies. Those challenges include labor costs that will stem from new union contracts, including with the United Federation of Teachers, and a potential recession.

“We can’t do everything for everyone, so we need to start focusing on the most impactful interventions,” said Ana Champeny, the vice president for research at the Citizens Budget Commission.

New York City spends the most per pupil among the nation’s largest school districts. That cost grew as federal dollars were poured into the school system and enrollment dropped significantly after the onset of the pandemic. Dips in enrollment are likely due to several factors, including demographic changes and the cost of living in New York, which are leading many families to find homes elsewhere.

Roughly one-third of the department’s spending growth between 2016 and 2022 was due to federal pandemic aid, which is set to run out by 2024, CBC’s report found.

Advocates and educators have decried the potential cuts to the education department — amounting up to $421 million — as students continue to struggle with a host of challenges, including mental health, chronic absenteeism, and recovering academically after remote learning. Cuts to school budgets this school year resulted in some schools losing teachers, having larger class sizes, and cutting some programming, such as art and music classes.

Research has found that more money usually leads to better schools. New York, however, is in a puzzling situation: Despite being the leading state in spending per pupil, students score in the middle of the pack on national math and reading tests.

It’s possible to make cuts through central or support costs, such as through transportation contracts, and “avoid cuts to school budgets,” the CBC report notes.

While CBC doesn’t make specific recommendations, Champeny said such cuts could mean negotiating cheaper transportation-related contracts. The department could also look for ways to reduce private school placements for children with disabilities, commonly known as “Carter Cases,” a cost that ballooned under former Mayor Bill de Blasio and continues to grow.

More immediately, however, the group called on the department to be “transparent” about the future of a slate of programs that are currently relying on federal pandemic relief, which other organizations and advocates have also pressed for. These programs include expanded summer school, new prekindergarten seats for students with disabilities, and screening for dyslexia and other literacy programs – an area that Adams is increasingly making one of his signature projects.

Nathaniel Styer, a spokesperson for the Department of Education said, “This Administration has been open and honest about the long-term combined challenges of declining enrollment, programs funded by one-time federal stimulus dollars, and rising costs tied to unfunded mandates from the State.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Denver school board considering 600-student limit at larger elementary schools

2023-04-11T03:25:01+00:00

Amid ongoing enrollment decline, the Denver school board is considering capping the size of elementary schools at 600 students and requiring the superintendent to “analyze and adjust” school attendance boundaries at least every four years.

The proposed policy would also direct the superintendent to avoid creating attendance boundaries “that socioeconomically segregate schools” by creating inequities in funding, resources, programs, electives, or parent fundraising.

And it would direct the superintendent to ensure students can safely walk to school. Given the shortage of bus drivers, the proposed policy says schools should be close enough to students “to minimize the need for district-provided transportation.”

The board was set to discuss the proposal for the first time Monday. But at the end of a long meeting, it voted to postpone the discussion to a future meeting.

Four Denver elementary schools have more than 600 students this year in kindergarten through fifth grade, according to state enrollment data: Westerly Creek (680 students), Park Hill (676 students), Green Valley (660 students), and Maxwell (631 students). All are in northeast Denver.

While Denver students are guaranteed a seat at the school in whose attendance boundary they live, the school choice system allows them to enroll in any school that has room.

Capping enrollment at popular elementary schools could bolster enrollment at smaller schools that have been losing students. Board Vice President Auon’tai Anderson said Monday that he plans to add enrollment caps for middle and high schools to the proposal as well.

The proposal comes on the heels of a heated two-year process to close under-enrolled schools. After many starts and stops, the school board voted on March 9 to close three small schools at the end of this school year: Fairview Elementary, Math and Science Leadership Academy, and Denver Discovery School.

Board members are also considering a new policy on school closure, which they refer to as “consolidation or unification.” It says Superintendent Alex Marrero should “take reasonable steps” to not use standardized test scores or school ratings as a condition for closure.

The policy also says Marrero should avoid consolidating elementary schools that are farther than two miles away from each other. And it says he should avoid using enrollment minimums, such as 215 students or fewer, “as bright line criteria for consolidation.” A community committee recommended last year that Denver close schools with 215 or fewer students.

The policy references declining kindergarten enrollment and says “a stigma now exists for ‘small schools,’ which can accelerate the school’s enrollment decline.”

It’s not clear when the school board will vote on either policy. The board calls the policies executive limitations because they provide guardrails for the superintendent.

District enrollment projections showed Denver Discovery School would have had just 62 students next year, Math and Science Leadership Academy would have had 104, and Fairview Elementary would have had 118. All three had been publicly named as at risk for closure before families made their school choices for the next school year.

Denver schools are funded per pupil, and schools with low enrollment struggle to afford enough staff. That often means the schools have fewer electives like art and music, and must combine students from multiple grades in the same classroom.

Even as the board wants to avoid setting minimum enrollment floors, the proposed enrollment policy says the superintendent must “maintain financially sustainable enrollment for elementary schools.” The policy defines that as having approximately either:

300 students with two classes of 25 students per grade,
450 students with three classes of 25 students per grade, or
600 students with four classes of 25 students per grade.

“Enrollment shall not exceed 600 students for elementary schools,” the proposed policy says.

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Neighborhoods like Green Valley Ranch in northeast Denver are growing even as families move out of neighborhoods in other parts of the city. That has led to uneven enrollment patterns at district schools.

New poverty research could bring more clarity to charter school comparisons

2023-04-10T16:00:00+00:00

Thanks to Michigan’s robust school-choice policies, Detroit’s roughly 100,000 public-school students are widely dispersed across a mix of charters, traditional neighborhood schools, and application schools that select their students.

But efforts to understand how school and student performance compares across these categories have been snarled by a surprisingly hard-to-answer question: Which schools have the highest concentration of the poorest students — the ones who are at the greatest disadvantage before they enter the classroom?

A growing line of research aims to tackle that question, taking a closer look at family income data to uncover significant differences among students whose families fit the broad criteria for economic disadvantage. One such study found that the Detroit Public Schools Community District’s neighborhood schools have higher proportions of students in deep poverty, compared with the city’s charter schools and application schools.

The study captured only a subset of Detroit’s schools, over a brief period of time. Still, researchers say the quest for more detailed data on family income has the potential to shape how schools are evaluated, staffed, and even funded, since students who face more disadvantages at home need more resources to get an adequate education.

“The deeper someone is in poverty, the more challenges they face, and that has a huge impact on a child’s ability to participate in their education,” said Jennifer Erb-Downward, a senior research associate at Poverty Solutions, an initiative at the University of Michigan.

Study uses parent surveys to get detailed income data

To identify economically disadvantaged students for its data collection, Michigan infers family incomes based on eligibility for public benefit programs, such as free school lunch or food stamps. Those measures can be imprecise: Students labeled as economically disadvantaged in state data may have family incomes anywhere from zero up to $51,300 per year for four people.

Finer-grained measures of student poverty aren’t usually available in Michigan — or in most other states — because education data systems typically aren’t linked with family tax returns.

Jeremy Singer, a postdoctoral researcher at Michigan State University, sought to fill that gap with a more detailed picture of the challenges Detroit students face at home and the types of schools they attend. His work received an honorable mention for the outstanding education policy dissertation award given by the American Education Research Association, a prominent association of education scholars.

Singer drew on a survey of more than 1,700 families whose students attended a school in the city in January 2022. Parents were asked about their income, education, and employment, and Singer linked their answers to data on their students’ schools.

The paper claims that DPSCD neighborhood schools enrolled the most students in deep poverty — meaning they had less than $15,000 in family income. Overall, the survey found that 49% of students attending DPSCD neighborhood schools were experiencing deep poverty, compared with 31% of charter school students and 23% of students at DPSCD exam schools.

The study does not identify poverty rates at specific schools, or examine how those schools perform academically. It was complicated by the pandemic, whose economic effects may have influenced the family incomes reported in the survey.

The study was also limited by low participation by charter schools — just 40% agreed to join the survey.

Even so, by looking at school enrollment data with added dimensions to measure poverty, “the study makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of who is choosing schools,” Joanne Golann, a professor of Public Policy and Education at Vanderbilt University, said in an email.

“If charters are attracting low-income families that are more stable, more educated, and more involved, this has implications for how we understand their success and their impact on neighborhood schools,” Golann said.

Why do some schools enroll more high-poverty students?

There are nearly 190 schools in Detroit, almost half of them charters. Of the district’s more than 100 schools, roughly two dozen require an application or an admissions exam.

How students come to be distributed among these types of schools is a point of focus in the debate over the merits of charter schools, and school choice policies broadly.

Charter school critics in Detroit have sometimes accused the sector of “cream skimming,” or boosting their average test scores by recruiting higher-income students, who face fewer barriers to success at school.

But Singer said that’s likely not the main reason that deep poverty is concentrated in neighborhood schools.

In follow-up interviews with survey respondents, he found that limited transportation and economically segregated social networks helped explain the differences.

Parents with the lowest incomes were less likely to own a car and more likely to prioritize the nearest school in order to minimize their children’s commute. DPSCD application schools don’t offer school buses, and many charter schools don’t either.

“If families were interested in choosing a school farther away, they needed to have the resources to do so,” Singer said. “Otherwise they may not even have considered it.”

Those patterns were reinforced by families’ social networks. Parents with higher incomes were more likely to say that their family and friends recommended charter schools or application schools.

Poverty differences complicate school comparisons

Singer said his findings about where deep poverty is concentrated argue for reexamining the claim that charter schools in the city produce better test scores.

Factoring test scores alone, Detroit charters slightly outperform district schools on Michigan’s standardized exam. Still, students in Detroit generally score much lower than their peers statewide. Statewide proficiency rates in English and math were 41% for third graders in Michigan last year.

In Detroit charters, about 12% of third graders were proficient in English last year, while 10% were proficient in math.

In DPSCD, the third grade math proficiency rate was 10%, and English proficiency was 9%.

But such comparisons may need to be reconsidered if that broad measure conceals the district’s larger very-high-need population.

“There are news stories going back decades (arguing that) charter schools are better” using test score comparisons, Singer said. “But we don’t have the data to make that claim. We have not adequately accounted for meaningful differences in student populations.”

To account for those economic differences, researchers and policymakers have looked at charter school enrollment lotteries, where applicants are selected at random. That way, researchers could be confident that factors like family education levels or income aren’t at the root of any differences in test scores.

But enrollment lotteries are rare in Detroit, where schools of all types generally struggle to enroll enough students. One lottery study of National Heritage Academies, a for-profit charter network, looked at schools in Detroit and across Michigan and found that students who benefited most from attending NHA schools had higher family incomes and lived outside cities.

Attention to deep poverty could benefit Detroit schools

Educators in Michigan agree that it takes extra dollars to provide an adequate education to students facing economic disadvantages.

The state already provides some additional funding for these students, but in 2018, a team of nonpartisan experts recommended that the state sharply increase its funding for students considered economically disadvantaged — and provide even more money for students facing “high need poverty.”

Detroit schools, including charters, would likely be among the largest beneficiaries in the state of such a policy. Singer’s research suggests that DPSCD would receive the biggest boost of all.

Charter leaders, presented with study findings, argued that Detroit students are generally more similar than different.

“Every school in Detroit has a vast majority of students who live in economically disadvantaged conditions,” said Dan Quisenberry, president of the Michigan Association of Public School Academies.

Research could have other applications

Education researchers say more study of differences between economically disadvantaged students is needed — and not just to clarify debates about school choice.

For instance, efforts to measure teacher effectiveness often factor in broad measures of students’ economic advantage, such as their eligibility for free lunch. “This may ignore important differences among students who are all eligible” for free lunch, said Philip Gleason, an education researcher and senior fellow at the research firm Mathematica.

Within districts, the data could be used to distribute resources to schools with more severe poverty. Nikolai Vitti, DPSCD superintendent, said Singer’s research “reaffirms why we are shifting more of our limited resources to neighborhood high schools and larger neighborhood K-8” schools.

But getting the kind of detailed data on incomes that Singer cites will likely be difficult, as long as it requires using painstaking surveys.

Singer says Michigan policymakers could accelerate the process by linking tax data with education records. Doing so would require political support and could raise privacy concerns.

But it has been done: In 2021, New Mexico passed a law allowing officials to link education and tax data.

The new information will be used to increase funding to schools with higher rates of extreme poverty.

Koby Levin is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering K-12 schools and early childhood education. Contact Koby at klevin@chalkbeat.org.

MSCS construction plans would be governed by new Shelby County agency under proposal

2023-03-30T23:30:46+00:00

A Shelby County proposal would create a new agency to manage school building construction across the county’s seven districts, including Memphis-Shelby County Schools, whose buildings need hundreds of millions of dollars in repairs.

The proposal reflects calls from some Shelby County commissioners for a long-term plan to address Memphis’ school building needs. Those calls escalated in December when commissioners pledged funding for a new MSCS high school, with a caveat that sought to ensure the public that funds were spent efficiently.

In response, Danielle Inez, director of the county’s new Office of Innovation, proposed Wednesday that commissioners vote to fund a consultant to study the county’s school building needs, and create an advisory group of education and government officials to oversee comprehensive school construction plans.

“Everyone has talked about our blighted school buildings,” Inez told commissioners. “However, with all of that effort and heart, we have not found a path to move the needle on the school construction needs in our community.”

Inez did not consult MSCS in developing the proposal, she told Chalkbeat.

School buildings are the workspaces for one of the county’s largest employers. And they are the learning environments for more than 100,000 students who may face several obstacles to learning before they even walk in the doors. The condition of Memphis’ school buildings, and who controls them, have long been subjects of debate and conflict, both within Memphis-Shelby County Schools, and recently, between the district and municipal leaders.

County seeks long-lasting school building plans

In the decade since its formation, MSCS has moved in fits and starts on plans to close, consolidate, renovate, and build new schools, as county commissioners have approved only a fraction of the district’s funding requests. This year, commissioners are also considering funding plans, including increased taxes, for $350 million in updates to Regional One Health, the region’s level 1 trauma hospital.

Dorsey Hopson, the first superintendent of the new district, presented one facility plan and offered another as he resigned in 2018. His successor, Joris Ray, had initial plans derailed by COVID-19 and eventually produced a plan two years ago, which incorporated federal relief funding to pay down maintenance costs. Now Toni Williams, the interim superintendent, is talking about releasing her own plan.

County Commissioner Michael Whaley, who chairs the budget and finance committee, said building plans should not come and go with each superintendent.

“Both the school board (and) the county commission really ought to be the ones driving this,” Whaley said after Inez’s presentation. “And so if there is another plan that comes, it needs to be one that’s adopted by the school board, and that we can actually commit to, and should not change if the superintendent changes.”

Under Inez’s proposal, the county would first hire an expert in school construction, then create a school construction advisory group to determine next steps, and finally form a school construction authority that would oversee a comprehensive countywide plan. The authority would include representatives from the county and its school districts — and potentially the city.

As new capital needs arise, district revamps building plans

Tennessee school buildings need $9 billion in investments over the next five years, according to a new state report. MSCS accounts for $464 million of that, and the new agency would respond to an estimated $546 million in school needs countywide.

Examples of that need are visible throughout the district. Weeks into the new school year, the library ceiling collapsed at Cummings K-8 school, forcing students to relocate to another building. Four years ago, students at Kirby High School were forced to relocate for months while the district spent $3 million on renovations. The culprit? A rat invasion.

Inez says her own child’s MSCS school is missing privacy partitions in the bathroom.

“That’s a really, really small maintenance issue, but it drives him nuts,” Inez said.

The county’s new push for construction oversight accompanied its pledge to fund a new high school in Cordova, to resolve a longstanding dispute with Germantown and comply with a state law.

Meanwhile, MSCS hasn’t been able to secure enough county funding for its existing capital plans, including a new high school that’s now on hold in Frayser, a high-poverty part of town. It has moved forward on plans to make Shady Grove, a former elementary school, a preschool hub, but backpedaled on a plan to expand a middle school, Mt. Pisgah, to add more grades.

Commissioner Charlie Caswell, whose district includes Frayser, told Chalkbeat Wednesday he plans to ask the county to find new funding for the new high school in Frayser.

Williams, the interim superintendent, has said the district will work with other government officials to create a new facilities plan, but as of earlier this week, hadn’t asked anyone to be part of that committee.

When Commissioner Miska Clay Bibbs was chair of the MSCS school board, it was a point of pride to see a new elementary school built in her neighborhood, she said at the time. The school was the result of a consolidation proposed by Hopson. In January, she told Chalkbeat that a larger conversation about buildings was overdue.

On Wednesday, she appeared supportive of Inez’s proposal, but said officials should still consider the incoming plan from MSCS.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia schools chief announces changes to high school admissions after enrollment protests

2023-03-23T18:02:08+00:00

More than 100 students and some teachers rallied before the Board of Education meeting Thursday to protest how the lottery system for citywide and selective admission high schools is causing huge enrollment drops for many of next fall’s incoming classes.

The declines mean that schools will lose staff positions and many teachers will be reassigned, since teacher allotments are done in the spring based on anticipated fall enrollment. This will destabilize these schools, demoralizing both staff and current students, teachers said.

The centralized lottery system was imposed in 2021 due to concerns about equity and access for Black and brown students to some of the city’s most coveted schools. The lottery also represented an effort to address any “implicit bias,” officials said at the time. It replaced a longstanding process in which principals made the final admissions decisions from the pool of qualified applicants.

Officials said allowing principals to make those calls resulted in a preponderance of white and Asian students at schools like Central and Masterman, even though 80% of the district’s students are Black and Latino. The lottery system also gives preference to students from six ZIP codes that rarely send students to selective schools.

But this year, teachers say, based on current enrollment projections, the lottery process is having dire consequences for a group of themed and innovative high schools that serve mostly Black and brown students. Many of those schools have relatively small enrollments.

“How is this equity?” asked teacher Jessica Way, who runs a medical assistant program at Franklin Learning Center. At her school, there are slated to be 50 open seats in next year’s freshman class and enrollment is projected to dip from nearly 1,000 students in 2020-21 to fewer than 800 next year.

At Thursday’s protest, one student held up a sign referring to fears about staffing cuts at Saul High School. “Saul has no future with no teachers,” the sign said.

“We only have 55 new freshmen and we would normally have 150,” said Deonna Brown, a Saul sophomore.

In the wake of the protest, Superintendent Tony Watlington issued a statement — and then said at the Board of Education meeting Thursday — that the district will devote $3 million to ensure that no school will lose more than two staff members, “subject to principal discretion.”

Watlington also said the district will offer spots at schools with admission criteria to 316 students who qualify for one or more of the schools with admission criteria, but are currently slated to attend their neighborhood schools. He said at the board meeting that more eighth graders met criteria this year under the lottery system than prior to the pandemic, but added that “there are still kinks to work out.”

Board of Education President Reginald Streater, who with other board members watched the rally, said in an interview that the district plans to audit the lottery process and that it could change next year.

“Right now, we’re in Band Aid mode,” he said.

Before the intervention Watlington announced Thursday, the Franklin Learning Center was due to lose as many as nine staff members, Way said.

Elsewhere, teachers said that only 17 students are slated to enter ninth grade at Bartram Motivation, a small high school that offers research-based learning and dual enrollment with Harrisburg University, leaving it with 90 open ninth grade seats.

Other schools with severely under-enrolled incoming freshman classes include The U School, The LINC, Science Leadership Academy at Beeber, Hill-Freedman, and Saul, the state’s only high school that focuses on animal science and agriculture.

Because Saul was projecting such a small ninth grade class, it was slated to lose six teachers before Watlington’s announcement Thursday, and its agriculture program could be affected, teachers said.

At the same time, there are hundreds of students who are still awaiting school placements because they had no luck with the lottery and have shown interest in one or more of these schools.

For those criteria-based schools, in past years, school personnel would be able to interview students who may have fallen just short of qualifying — for example, they may have had good grades and attendance, but maybe two Cs instead of just one, or a score just below the cutoff on the state standardized test. This year, they cannot do that, Way said.

“Normally there was some wiggle room,” she said. “This year, there was no wiggle room.”

Several Saul students at the rally said they felt that low Pennsylvania System of School Assessment scores were the main reason for the low number of students in the incoming freshman class. Last year, the first time the lottery system was used, those tests were not a factor because they weren’t given due to the pandemic.

‘Kids are more than a number’

In the new, centralized selection process, eighth graders list five high schools and are entered into the lottery of all the schools for which they meet qualifications. Some students get into all five, some to none. The default for any student is their neighborhood high school.

The most highly selective, like Central and Masterman, have stringent grade, test score, behavior, and attendance requirements. The so-called citywide schools have less rigorous criteria regarding grades and test scores, but generally expect good attendance and behavior records.

Once students make their choices, wait lists are created and the process continues until all students are placed.

Some citywide admissions schools, like The U School, have no grade or test score minimums, but must build its class from students who show interest in its model and put it on their list.

Teachers say that the prolonged loss of in-person learning due to COVID is also contributing to the enrollment drop. For some small high schools like The U School, their very viability is threatened.

The U School was established in 2014 to serve students interested in an education that prioritizes personal relationships and real-world learning through internships and partnerships and has no academic cutoffs. The school’s pre-pandemic enrollment had been as high as 400. But based on current projections, the school could have fewer than 200 students when schools open in September and could lose four staff members.

“We rely a lot on school visiting and the [annual] high school fair, but all that stuff was shut down due to COVID,” said Donovan Hayes, a math teacher at The U School. “It’s hard to get kids to write down a school when they’ve never heard of it.”

He said that Principal Neil Geyette wanted to extend invitations to all the students who had put The U School down as one of their choices, about 137 additional students, but was told he could not do that.

Besides the medical assistant program, FLC offers a focus on dance, music, and other arts. Under the old system, principals could determine if students “had a natural interest in the majors at our school. We want kids [who can meet standards] of academic rigor,” Way said. “But kids are more than a number. If you take out the human equation, it takes away the ability to see our kids fully.”

Another repercussion concerns teacher recruitment and retention. The district opened the school year with at least 200 vacancies and is still struggling to hire enough teachers.

Sigal Felber has been working in the district for two years and teaches U.S. History to sophomores at FLC.

“One of the reasons I decided to come [to FLC] is its unique programs,” Felber said. Besides the medical assistant program, it also offers performing arts, visual arts, and business tracks. To Felber, it made sense to interview students to see if they were interested in what the school had to offer.

If FLC loses nine teachers, as was projected before Thursday, two of them will be from the social studies department. And because Felber is so new, “one of them will be me.”

This story has been updated.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

American Indian Academy of Denver charter school to close at the end of the school year

2023-03-20T21:04:19+00:00

A Denver charter school focused on serving Indigenous students will close at the end of the school year, according to a resolution passed by its board of directors.

The American Indian Academy of Denver, or AIAD, opened in the fall of 2020 with sixth, seventh, and eighth grades and a plan to build a high school one grade at a time.

Its founders hoped that a curriculum focused on science, technology, engineering, art, and math, coupled with lessons taught through an Indigenous lens, would be transformational in a school district where just 50% of Native American students graduated on time last year.

But three years later, AIAD is closing its doors. A resolution passed by the charter school’s board cites “significantly lower than expected enrollment of students, significantly lower than expected revenue, and significantly higher than expected costs.” The resolution also cites “challenges caused by the school being opened at the start of [the] COVID-19 pandemic.”

AIAD officials did not respond to a request for comment.

The Denver school board is set to vote Thursday on the surrender of AIAD’s charter. The vote is largely a formality. If the school board votes yes, AIAD will join two other charter middle schools that are closing at the end of the school year: STRIVE Prep - Lake and STRIVE Prep - Kepner.

A district-run middle school, Denver Discovery School, is also set to close at the end of the school year, bringing the total number of Denver middle school closures to four.

Enrollment in Denver Public Schools is declining. So is the number of independent charter schools, which are funded per pupil. AIAD will be the 14th Denver charter to close in four years.

In November, after DPS officials said they were considering the rare step of revoking AIAD’s charter, AIAD students and parents pleaded with the school board to keep their school open. At the time, AIAD had 134 students in grades six through 10. In its original charter application, AIAD had predicted it would eventually have 400 students in grades six through 12.

District officials never recommended revocation. Instead, the AIAD board “determined that, after exploring all potential alternatives and finding no viable options, it is their obligation and duty to close the charter school after the current academic year,” the AIAD resolution says.

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago mayoral candidates offer divergent paths on declining enrollment and small schools

2023-03-17T21:09:06+00:00

Chicago’s two mayoral candidates have starkly different visions for reckoning with the city’s steep enrollment losses and under-enrolled schools.

Paul Vallas has said these shrinking campuses could become or share space with specialized magnets, charter schools, or alternative high schools — the kinds of overhauls he oversaw during his tenure as Chicago Public Schools CEO from 1995 to 2001. The city should continue to give families more quality choices, he argues.

Brandon Johnson, on the other hand, says Chicago’s system of choice — in which families can pick from a myriad of district-run, charter, and private programs anywhere in the city — has created a “Hunger Games scenario” in which neighborhood schools lose out to better-funded competitors. The solution, the Chicago Teachers Union organizer says, is a major influx of resources for schools that already exist.

The divide between Vallas and Johnson — both Democrats facing off in an April 4 runoff — embodies the party’s swings and tensions on school choice and other education policies. And it comes at a pivotal time for Chicago, which will transition away from mayoral control to an elected school board in 2025 as a moratorium on school closures ends.

Both candidates’ plans raise questions. The approach of fully rebranding struggling schools Vallas champions has a checkered record, and it would come after three years of COVID-era disruption for students. He has called for expanding the city’s alternative high schools to reengage students who disconnected from school during the pandemic, but these campuses have no shortage of seats after massive enrollment losses recently.

Yet with leaner times looming after federal COVID relief money runs out, it’s tough to say whether the city can pull off the significant influx of resources Johnson wants to revitalize all of its shrinking schools. It would be up against demographic headwinds reducing the number of school-age children — and costs that have swelled to as much as $40,000 per student a year at some under-enrolled high schools, compared with $13,000 on average.

Kate Phillippo, a professor in Loyola University’s Schools of Social Work and Education, notes the city’s system of choice, where most students travel to magnet, charter, or private schools rather than attend their assigned neighborhood campus, is likely here to stay. But it’s also under pressure as the number of small schools grows.

“What we don’t need in Chicago is more schools, unless we are doing it with the goal of other schools going away,” said Phillippo. “I don’t know how much more choice we can introduce.”

More recently, the two mayoral candidates have walked a careful line on charter schools and school choice, with Vallas suggesting that the city actually doesn’t need more charters, and Johnson stressing that he doesn’t oppose them. But their platforms and records are illuminating.

Vallas, a well-known education reformer who helped to remake New Orleans as a charter-centric district after Hurricane Katrina, is a pro-school choice Democrat in the mold of former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, but he has also broken with the Democratic canon in backing an expansion of an Illinois program that pays for some students to attend private schools. Johnson, a Cook County commissioner and former teacher, is staking out a more traditional Democratic position, based on steering more money to traditional public schools.

Vallas argues expanding school choices remains important

If elected mayor, Vallas has made it clear that he would work to support the system of school choice that he promoted as the district’s CEO, when he touts presiding over the creation of 78 magnet, charter, and other schools.

His approach was a precursor to what became known as the “portfolio model” of managing districts — a decentralized, open-enrollment system where cities incentivize high-performing schools and close or restructure struggling campuses. The model was popular in the 2010s, but it has lost much of its luster in more recent years. Research has shown mixed results for students, and advocates have come to champion a less top-down approach based on trust and buy-in from local communities.

On the campaign trail today, Vallas has tried to reflect that shift. He said he wants to empower local communities to invite charter schools into under-enrolled or vacant buildings to take over or share space with traditional schools. Struggling schools could also be converted into magnets or other models, making them more attractive to students and families. He has singled out for expansion the Youth Connection Charter School, or YCCS, network of alternative charters that serve former dropouts and students at risk for dropping out.

At a Saturday mayoral debate hosted by the Chicago Women Take Action Alliance, Vallas — who helped engineer major, polarizing expansions of charters and school choice in New Orleans and Philadelphia — distanced himself from the unchecked growth of charters in Chicago under his successors. He said his administration only green-lit 15 such schools. His focus instead, he said, was on launching specialized magnet programs, such as International Baccalaureate and STEM, housed within traditional neighborhood schools. With enough charters in the city already, he will again focus on pushing for such programs.

“We were very cautious about not destabilizing communities by converting schools into charter schools,” he said. But, he added, “I think it’s very important to expand quality school choice.”

In some ways, Vallas’ comments echo a broader recent conversation about saving some shrinking campuses by rethinking their offerings in a way that can draw local families. His idea of remaking struggling high schools as career and technical academies is one the district’s current CEO, Pedro Martinez, has floated as well; Johnson is also advocating for more career and technical programs.

The tempering of Vallas’ position comes at a time when the city has cooled on charters, which are public schools run by nonprofits or other private entities but in Chicago are overseen and funded by the school district.

In its 2019 contract with its teachers union, the city agreed to extend an earlier moratorium on new charter campuses and limit charter enrollment. The district has also embraced much shorter contract renewals with many more strings attached for its charter providers — more stringent oversight championed by some school board members appointed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Member Elizabeth Todd-Breland, for instance, has questioned recently whether charters that haven’t delivered on a promise of innovation and superior student outcomes should continue to exist.

Others see Vallas as a potential ally for charters. Andrew Broy, president of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, said Vallas has a “long history of seeing charters as an integral part of the school system.” A Vallas proposal to do away with enrollment caps for high-performing charters resonates. But Broy said the group has not yet decided whether to endorse a mayoral candidate.

While the massive charter growth of 15 years ago is inconceivable today, Broy sees room for new innovative charters in pockets of the city with crowded schools, such as in parts of the Northwest Side. Broy, who has decried what he sees as cumbersome charter contract renewals, said his group hopes to work with the next mayor on creating a pathway to longer renewals.

Charters have also lost students since the pandemic began — though they have fared better than neighborhood schools. District-run schools lost roughly 10% of their enrollment since 2019, while charters lost about 6%. Alternative high schools — district-run, charter and for-profit — lost a fifth of their students, and the YCCS network that Vallas has touted was especially hard hit and forced to close two campuses.

Research by the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research has shown that the rapid expansion of charters in Chicago resulted in some high-performing schools. But student outcomes have varied greatly among charter campuses, said Elaine Allensworth, the consortium’s director. Ultimately, she said opening more than 100 schools as student enrollment was shrinking was bound to lead to under-enrolled campuses.

Johnson and his supporters have argued that Vallas’ approach would bring disruption to the district on the heels of COVID-era upheaval. At a recent press conference organized by the Chicago Teachers Union — a pioneer in unionizing some charter campuses in the city — charter school teachers said the city’s focus should be on steering resources toward its existing campuses. That includes charters that have lagged in beefing up their support staff and programs for students.

Ryan Lindburg, an educator at CICS Northtown Academy, said school funding in Chicago is already spread too thin, a sort of “Wild West situation.”

“What we’ve actually seen in the past is that a school opens up,” he said. “Two years later, we close it. We rebrand it. It’s a new charter. Two years later, it closes. We rebrand it. And you can’t get any stability that way.”

Johnson says neighborhood schools need major investment

Johnson believes some of the district’s enrollment challenges have stemmed from the very system of choice that Vallas champions.

He points to the closure of 50 traditional public schools a decade ago under then Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a move that was deeply controversial and, Johnson says, fed into an exodus of Black families from the city – flight that has contributed to today’s enrollment declines.

Programmatic missteps have added to the problem, he said, such as having an online preschool sign-up system that is difficult for some families to access.

But Johnson has largely refrained from bashing charters, whose parents make up a sizeable part of Chicago’s electorate. He said that families tend to love their schools regardless of the model. He has also spoken about his own family’s decision to choose public schools outside his Austin neighborhood, where he has said campuses did not offer the extracurricular and other programs his children sought.

Still, he said, “It is clear that charter school expansion forces competition for resources and ultimately harms all schools.”

He has held up the idea of making use of vacant space on under-enrolled campuses by bringing in services that their communities need — from health care clinics to child care centers.

Such steps don’t in themselves reverse flagging enrollment, and the scaling back of coursework, extracurricular options, and other resources for students it has brought. But, proponents of the idea argue, they can generate some revenue for these campuses as well as more community buy-in as they bring neighbors into the building, transforming schools into community hubs.

Johnson has also said he wants to steer resources to these small schools on par with what campuses with larger enrollments would receive: a school library with a librarian, counselors and other support staff, art programs, and sports teams. He sees these investments as part of a broader push to make South and West Side neighborhoods more attractive to families.

But that’s a heavy lift in a city where small schools are poised to play an ever more outsized role: Their number grew markedly during the pandemic, and now one in three elementary schools serves fewer than 300 children. Meanwhile, even as high school enrollment remained relatively stable, Chicago high schools that serve 250 or fewer students lost a third of their enrollments since 2019 on average. The gap between the cost of educating a student at tiny and larger campuses has grown dramatically, and Martinez has been blunt: The district is taking money from schools with healthy enrollments to subsidize its small schools.

Experts such as Phillippo are dubious that significant investments in staff and programming can counteract the effects of powerful demographic and immigration shifts that are shrinking the school-age student population across the Midwest.

Gary Miron, a professor of education leadership, research and technology at Western Michigan University who has critically examined the national growth of charters, says investing in struggling buildings can help address the central challenge of high teacher and administrator turnover they face. But the city would need a larger, coherent plan for better supporting its neighborhood schools.

“Throwing resources at these schools isn’t a good idea unless it’s part of an overall management strategy,” he said. “It’s a hard thing to do when you have a decentralized, free-market system of providing a public service.”

Sally Nuamah, a professor at Northwestern University and the author of “Closed for Democracy,” a book about the academic and other fallout from Chicago’s 2013 school closures, says it’s paramount that the next mayor seek solutions to enrollment and other challenges in tandem with local communities. When decisions take place without community input, as with the 2013 closings, they breed disillusionment and mistrust in public institutions.

Johnson recently described those closings, which disproportionately affected Black students, as “one of the most horrific acts done against a group of people in the history of the city of Chicago.”

“The next mayor needs to take seriously the potential consequences of making these decisions on the academic, emotional, and political lives of communities that have already experienced the loss of other important public institutions such as hospitals and libraries,” Nuamah said.

Lilia Guevara, a mother of three, says parents in particular are eager to be a partner in these conversations.

Guevara, who lives on the Southwest Side, has a recent graduate of a Catholic high school and twins with autism — one attending the charter Acero’s Garcia campus and another at a district-run high school. Each of those high schools has proven the right fit for the twins’ distinct needs, she said.

Guevara said she does not want to see the mayoral candidates politicize charter or other schools. Instead, she wants a commitment to appoint more parents to the school board ahead of a transition to an elected board — and to better incorporate parent voices in making decisions more generally.

“The officials are not always thinking about what we deal with as low-income parents raising human beings,” she said.

Ultimately, says Allensworth of the Consortium on School Research, schools are part of a broader, complex governance equation. Affordable housing, transportation, vibrant small businesses, and other factors influence whether families with children move to the city and stick around.

“The mayor is really the one person in a position to influence how different sectors in the city affect education,” she said.

Becky Vevea contributed to this report.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Dropout rates have ticked up in some states. How big is the problem?

2023-03-13T11:00:00+00:00

Just a few months into his senior year of high school, Niziere Clarke realized he wasn’t going to graduate on time.

He’d been struggling academically since COVID hit in the spring of his junior year. After an unsuccessful first quarter, Clarke, who lives in Toms River, New Jersey, started to spend more time doing freelance animation and digital art work and stopped engaging in his classes.

“Most of the time, I would log in, but I barely paid attention,” he said. When he finished the year without the credits he needed, he never returned.

Clarke, who is 21 and has since obtained his GED, is one of thousands of students who saw their time in high school disrupted by the pandemic. Those experiences have fueled concerns about a generation of students missing their shot at a high school diploma, especially as enrollment falls — and recently, several states have seen their dropout rates climb.

Colorado, Michigan, Illinois, and several other states reported jumps in their dropout rates this past year. This month, North Carolina officials said that the state’s dropout numbers were 17% higher than pre-pandemic.

But the scale of the problem remains hard to define. While a diploma is a definitive sign of high completion, classifying a student as having dropped out is a more ambiguous process that can take time and effort by staff — complicated by the fact that some students will take longer than four years to complete their requirements.

“We don’t really have a handle on the post-pandemic story yet,” said Robert Balfanz, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education. “A little bit of this comes down to how much administrative effort a school puts into keeping their data up to date.”

For that and other reasons, experts caution against focusing too closely on the specific dropout rates themselves, which can lag years behind more reliable measures. Instead, they said attention should be on earlier indicators of academic struggle — and helping students like Clarke get across the finish line.

Clarke, who had felt on track before the pandemic, said his motivation evaporated as his community faded and he lost touch with teachers and friends. Things about senior year that had excited him, like upcoming performances with his school’s dance team, were suddenly stripped away.

“There was so much stuff that I really wanted to do during that time, but ever since COVID, I got pulled away,” he said. “Everyone just disappeared.”

What we know about today’s high school completion rates

For years, America’s high school graduation rates have trended up. Between 2010 and 2019, the nation’s average graduation rate rose from 79% to 86%, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Meanwhile, the share of young people who were not in school and didn’t have a high school credential fell.

Across states, high school graduation rates held steady when the pandemic first hit, but dipped for the class of 2021. In 2022, states generally saw only slight shifts.

Dropout rates are messier. No recent federal data shows where the country’s dropout rate sits, and state and local district data reveals a varying picture. In Kansas, state reports show the dropout rate fell slightly in 2022, even as other areas saw upticks.

The numbers also don’t invite easy comparisons, as schools, districts, and states can use different criteria. In Michigan, for example, the dropout rate increased to 8.19% while Colorado’s went up to 2.2%, and the two figures are calculated differently.

Timelines for determining when a student has dropped out vary, too.

In Oregon, for example, education officials warned that an increase in its dropout rate from 1.8% to 4% last year came in part due to the suspension of a policy that saw anyone who missed 10 or more consecutive days automatically categorized as a dropout, the Oregon Capitol Chronicle reported. (Under the policy, students are only included in the dropout rate if they do not show up elsewhere by the end of the academic year, according to a state education department spokesperson.) When the policy was reinstated in the 2021-22 school year, the dropout rate included students who would have ordinarily been counted in the year prior.

And while a few states are seeing dropout rates inch upwards, that doesn’t necessarily mean fewer students are graduating. In fact, both Colorado and Michigan saw their graduation rates increase last year even as more students dropped out.

The seeming contradiction is due in part to how the figures are calculated. In Colorado, for example, dropout rates refer to how many seventh to 12th grade students disenroll from schools in a given year.

“The dropout rate gives us that pulse across a wider spectrum of kids, whereas the graduation rate is only giving us what happened to ninth graders that enrolled four years earlier,” Balfanz said.

Russell Rumberger, a former professor at the University of California Santa Barbara who studied school dropouts for decades, said indicators of students falling off course are more helpful.

Dropout rates, he said, are “not very good about telling the story,” he said. “The story is really about enrollment over time and attending school over time.”

Why students drop out

The dropout data may be unclear, but what is obvious is that the challenges of the pandemic threw some students off course. When classes became virtual in 2020, students suddenly needed a stable internet connection, a computer, and in many cases, an adult at home who could help keep them on track during the school day.

For students facing academic, mental health, or financial challenges, the situation became extremely difficult to navigate, said Megan Facer, a clinical assistant director at Youth Villages, a nonprofit that helps young people across the country experiencing emotional, mental, and behavioral problems.

“There just becomes this hopelessness,” she said. “They’re not incentivized to keep going to school, because it’s just too hard, and in fact they may never catch up.”

Those feelings met a job market that needed more workers, and some students found themselves entering the workforce — especially those who needed to support their families through an added income. And as some young people left education behind, it became harder to return.

“When we reopened, they had to decide, ‘Do I go back to school, where I wasn’t doing that great, and I don’t know what the relevance of it is anyway? Or do I stay in this $20- to $25-an-hour job?” said Steve Dobo, founder of Zero Dropouts, an educational social enterprise that works with school districts in Colorado. “A lot of them are choosing to stay in those jobs.”

Clarke, too, chose to prioritize earnings early in the pandemic, but he always wanted to continue his studies. He obtained his GED with help from LifeSet, a community program through Youth Villages and Preferred Behavioral Health Group that helps young people aging out of foster care or other children’s services. Now, Clarke plans to attend college in the fall to study computer animation.

But still, he admits that his plans were set back by the pandemic. Without the disruptions, Clarke knows he would’ve remained “dead focused” on reaching his goals.

“If COVID never happened, I would’ve graduated,” he said.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering national issues. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Denver board votes to close three small schools one day after recommendation made public

2023-03-09T19:37:17+00:00

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The Denver school board voted Thursday to close two elementary schools — Fairview Elementary and Math and Science Leadership Academy — and a middle school, Denver Discovery School, at the end of this school year due to declining enrollment.

Some board members grew emotional during the vote. Board Vice President Auon’tai Anderson said he was voting “with a heavy heart.” Board member Scott Esserman called the closure of Denver Discovery School “an institutional failure.”

Several board members cried after the first of the three votes. The district’s attorney passed out tissues that they used to dab their eyes. President Xóchitl “Sochi” Gaytán called a break.

Board member Carrie Olson said she struggled to prepare remarks for Thursday’s meeting “because it’s so hard to talk about a school closing.”

“These are really tough decisions and none of us are taking them lightly,” Olson said.

The vote was taken one day after Superintendent Alex Marrero’s formal recommendation was made public in a slide deck posted online. The board was meeting in an all-day retreat. While retreats are open to the public, typically the board does not vote at these meetings.

Marrero said school staff urged him to bring the recommendation to the board sooner than the board’s regular voting meeting on March 23.

Fairview students will be guaranteed enrollment and transportation to Cheltenham Elementary, less than 1½ miles away. Fairview staff will be guaranteed a job at Cheltenham. The two schools already share an executive principal who oversees both, Marrero said.

The Denver Housing Authority pushed back on the closure of Fairview, arguing that affordable housing set to be finished soon in the Sun Valley neighborhood could mean hundreds more students. But Liz Mendez, executive director of enrollment and campus planning for DPS, said the district’s projections are lower.

All of the board votes were unanimous except for the vote to close Fairview. Anderson voted no. Marrero said the district could reopen and “reimagine” Fairview if the number of elementary-aged children in the neighborhood grows.

Only one parent from the closing schools was in the audience when the board voted. Najah Abu Serryeh, whose younger daughter is a first grader at Fairview, wiped away tears.

“It’s so unfair,” she said afterward. “Fairview is not just a school for us. It’s like a community.”

Fairview parent Dominic Diaz was watching the meeting virtually.

“I’m picking my daughter up in an hour and 20 minutes and I’m thinking about how I’m going to share this news with her, or even if I want to,” said Diaz, whose daughter is in preschool.

Denver City Council President Jamie Torres also criticized the decision in a letter she sent to the board and shared on Twitter. She said the district had caught the school in “its most severe state of transition” and that families who soon would be moving into the neighborhood had not been considered.

Math and Science Leadership Academy students will be automatically enrolled at Valverde Elementary right next door, but Marrero pledged the district would contact each family to ask if that’s what they want. Families could still choose other schools.

MSLA staff will be guaranteed a job at Valverde. Marrero said Valverde is eager to incorporate some of the math and science curriculum from MSLA next year.

Students at Denver Discovery School, which is one of several schools in a big boundary area that the district calls an enrollment zone, will not be automatically enrolled at another middle school. Rather, the district will help DDS families secure their children a spot at another middle school of their choice. The district also will help DDS staff find another job.

The three schools have what Marrero calls “critically low enrollment.” District projections show DDS will have just 62 students next year, MSLA will have 104, and Fairview will have 118.

“The system cannot continue to function in this way,” Marrero told the school board. “That’s a hard reality. Something needs to happen.”

The district funds its schools per student. Schools with low enrollment struggle to afford enough staff, which often leads to combined classrooms and fewer electives like art and music.

Enrollment in Denver Public Schools is declining, with the sharpest drops at the elementary level. DPS reports having 6,485 fewer elementary students than it did in 2014 and projects it will lose another 3,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade over the next five years.

The school board rejected a previous recommendation from Marrero in November to close DDS and MSLA. He had originally recommended closing 10 schools, including Fairview, but revised his recommendation after fierce pushback from the community and school board.

Board members on Thursday praised the way the district engaged with staff, families, and community members at Fairview, MSLA, and DDS. They said it differed sharply from the community engagement DPS did with the 10 schools this fall, which they found lacking.

Correction: This story has been updated to correctly spell the last name of parent Najah Abu Serryeh.

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

As 3-K expansion pauses, NYC hires consultant to study where to move seats

2023-03-06T22:30:28+00:00

As Mayor Eric Adams has backpedaled a plan to expand free preschool for New York City’s 3-year-olds, officials have hired a consulting firm to figure out how many seats should exist in each of the city’s neighborhoods next year.

The city will pay consulting firm Accenture just over $760,000 to “map out needs and seats” because of thousands of vacancies in the program, Jacques Jiha, the city’s budget director, said during Monday’s City Council hearing on the mayor’s preliminary budget.

While Jiha said the city has about 19,000 empty seats this year, education department officials have pinned the number in recent months closer to 16,000. (Spokespeople for City Hall and the education department did not immediately clarify which number is correct.)

The study, which Jiha said has been underway for about a month, comes after Adams decided earlier this year not to expand the program for 3-year-olds as planned under former Mayor Bill de Blasio. De Blasio wanted to model the program on his universal preschool for 4-year-olds, estimating the city would need about 60,000 seats.

The city currently has about 55,000 seats, thousands of which sit empty. Adams administration officials argue that the system needs a close study to determine whether seats are currently in neighborhoods that need them.

“Once that study is completed, OK, we will have more insight in terms of how to allocate those seats and in which area to allocate them,” Jiha said during the hearing. Under de Blasio, city officials estimated that providing free preschool for 3-year-olds would save families about $10,000 in child care costs.

Officials did not immediately share the duration of the Accenture contract or when the study’s findings will be complete. Jiha said they’re pushing Accenture “hard” to issue its recommendations before the start of next school year — and in time for the city to incorporate changes in the upcoming budget, which must be adopted by the start of the new fiscal year on July 1.

Many city lawmakers and early childhood advocates have criticized the mayor’s decision not to add more seats to the program — a plan that relied heavily on COVID stimulus funds, which are set to run out next year. Some have argued that the city is not doing more aggressive outreach in many neighborhoods with vacancies — many of which are in low-income communities — thus failing to reach families who could benefit the most from free preschool programs. Advocates have also blamed the lack of enrollment on a cumbersome application process, Politico reported.

“My district is one of the areas and we had a huge vacancy issue, and there was no real outreach done,” Councilwoman Althea Stevens, who represents part of the Bronx, said during Monday’s hearing.

Revamping the city’s 3-K system is just one thorny early childhood education issue facing the Adams administration. The city had failed to pay preschool providers on time, leading some to shutter, while a separate plan to move hundreds of early childhood workers into new positions has been paused after it initially caused confusion and chaos across the division.

At the same time, the city announced an ambitious effort to provide preschool seats for every student with a disability, an issue that former Mayor Bill de Blasio was unable to solve.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Michigan preschool expansion hits a snag as some providers face funding cuts

2023-03-02T00:21:16+00:00

Last year, as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer touted the expansion of Michigan’s free preschool program, Beverly Hogan was among the child care providers preparing to open new classrooms.

Now Whitmer has announced an even more ambitious expansion of the Great Start Readiness Program, but Hogan had to close her new classroom in February, laying off two teachers and forcing families to search for another option for their 4-year-olds deep into the school year.

The problem? Hogan couldn’t find enough kids.

Only eight students were enrolled in a classroom designed for 16. At the same time, the state ended a pandemic-era policy of paying providers based on their classroom capacity, even if fewer were enrolled. So Hogan would be paid only for children who were actually enrolled, meaning she would lose half of her funding for the classroom this year, or $74,000.

The expansion is “taking away from our business,” said Hogan, director of Busy Minds Child Care Center in Detroit. “I feel they could have waited” to shift back to enrollment-based funding.

Low enrollment might seem like a counterintuitive challenge for a state that researchers say is in the grips of a full-blown child care crisis. Whitmer built her case for GSRP expansion on the premise that tens of thousands of newly eligible middle-income families would jump at the opportunity to enroll their 4-year-olds in free preschool, and that improvements to the program would entice already-eligible low-income families to join.

Indeed, GSRP enrollment grew statewide this year. And in Wayne County, enrollment rose 17% between 2019 and 2023, from 7,468 to 8,777, according to preliminary data shared by county officials.

But Hogan is not alone in struggling to hit enrollment targets, according to providers and early education experts in the Detroit area, who point to a number of reasons. They speculate that some new classrooms opened in areas where demand for GSRP was already met. At the same time, not enough newly eligible families know about the program. And a significant segment of families simply aren’t ready to join GSRP, because the program runs four days a week and only during the school year, leaving gaps in care.

These may ultimately prove to be manageable hurdles on the path to Whitmer’s ambitious preschool expansion goals. Indeed, Whitmer’s budget proposal includes substantial new funding for GSRP, including dollars specifically for publicity and for programming five days a week.

But for providers, these hurdles come at a substantial cost. The funding reductions are hurting child care centers right now, adding instability to a fragile sector that was already struggling with staff shortages and tight profit margins.

It’s an example of how the GSRP expansion can disrupt the rest of the early childhood ecosystem, a phenomenon advocates have warned about for years. The providers facing financial problems related to GSRP also serve children younger than 4 and offer before- and after-school care.

“This is what we’ve been trying not to do,” said Denise Smith, implementation director for Hope Starts Here, a Detroit-based early childhood initiative.

A Whitmer spokesperson did not return a request for comment.

Change in GSRP funding rules was a turning point

Enrollment fluctuations on their own wouldn’t normally be enough to destabilize child care providers. It’s the change in the funding policy that’s creating short-term problems.

For most of GSRP’s history, centers were paid based on the number of students they enrolled. The switch away from that policy dates to the early part of the COVID pandemic, when early childhood providers became the first educators to resume face-to-face work. Even as their return met the urgent child care needs of essential workers, many more parents opted to keep their children home, so enrollment didn’t come close to recovering to pre-pandemic levels.

To help providers stay open, the Legislature agreed to change its funding method for one year. The state would pay them as if they had 16 students in each classroom, or full capacity under GSRP guidelines.

A year later, recognizing that many centers were still struggling with enrollment, the Michigan Department of Education continued a similar policy for another year.

This year, as the pandemic emergency ebbed, the state opted for a full return to enrollment-based funding. At the same time, county officials were working to expand GSRP programming, asking providers across the state if they could add new classrooms.

The timing meant that providers would face the financial effects of any enrollment fluctuations that resulted from the expansion effort. By adding new classrooms, they were helping meet Whitmer’s goals, but they were also taking on substantial risk.

Hogan and other providers whose enrollment remained below capacity faced a cut in funding and had to consider closing classrooms.

“Everything was fine,” until the state changed the funding method, said Shirley Hailey, executive director of Little Scholars of Detroit. “That’s going to mess us up.”

Hailey closed one of her five GSRP classrooms in February due to low enrollment.

In a statement, MDE spokesperson William Disessa said the funding shift was due to the pandemic, not the GSRP expansion. While the Whitmer administration supported the continuation of the pandemic-era policy last year, the idea of extending it for another year “received no further consideration.”

MDE and Wayne RESA, the county education agency that administers GSRP in Detroit and surrounding communities, say they informed providers of the change at the beginning of the school year and gave regular reminders.

But some providers said they had no idea.

Denise Lomax, owner of Child Star Development Center in Detroit, added a classroom this year, bringing her total to three, but says she wouldn’t have done so if she’d known about the funding change. She has been able to fill only two-thirds of her 48 slots and plans to close one classroom.

“In the beginning, I told them, ‘Maybe I should do two classes because y’all have given this to everyone who wants it,’” she said. “They said … ‘Take the three, we’re going to work with you to make sure we get the children.’”

Where to open new classrooms is a complex question

The governor’s proposed expansion of GSRP beyond current income limits should increase both the supply and demand for preschool statewide. In an ideal world, those two variables would be aligned at the local level, with new GSRP classrooms concentrated in neighborhoods with lots of eligible, unenrolled 4-year-olds.

“What we don’t want to do is open a new program that’s going to compete with existing programs for the same 4-year-olds,” said Dawn Koger, director of early childhood for Oakland Schools, a county education agency north of Detroit. County agencies determine which programs receive GSRP funding.

Achieving that balance is easier said than done, Koger said, because existing GSRP programs are located with low-income communities in mind.

The expansion plans are based largely on increasing the income threshold for the program. A family of four making almost $70,000 can now qualify for the program, and Whitmer wants to push the threshold even higher. Given Michigan’s socioeconomic segregation, newly eligible middle-income families might want programs in different places.

Where to add the new classrooms is a difficult question, especially given a lack of current data on where 4-year-olds live and how much money their parents make.

“It would be wonderful if we had new census data every year,” Koger said.

Officials in Wayne County, which includes Detroit, say they studied the distribution of GSRP-eligible 4-year-olds by ZIP code, but ultimately didn’t factor that data into decisions about the new classroom locations, because it was both imprecise and out of date.

Candies Rogers, director of Circle Time with Friends, a center in Redford, says classrooms in Wayne County opened this year in neighborhoods where demand for GSRP was already met.

“When you put so many child care centers in the same area, it is hard to fill those slots up,” she said. “I believe they opened up too many GSRP classrooms.”

One of her classrooms has only eight students, meaning she too will lose about $74,000 in funding this year. She is keeping it open for the rest of the school year, covering the lost funds out of her center’s bottom line.

Koby Levin is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering K-12 schools and early childhood education. Contact Koby at klevin@chalkbeat.org.

Private school voucher and charter-friendly bills sail through Tennessee Senate

2023-02-28T01:34:39+00:00

The Tennessee Senate on Monday approved two Republican-sponsored bills that would expand and clarify eligibility for students to receive private school vouchers or enroll in charter schools.

Both measures passed 27-5 along partisan lines and now await action in House committees.

Sen. Jon Lundsberg, of Bristol, sponsored the bill to expand eligibility for Gov. Bill Lee’s education savings account program to students who attended private or home schools during the last three school years. The current law says a student must move directly from a public to private school to be eligible for the program, which launched last fall in Memphis and Nashville.

A second bill, sponsored by Sen. Todd Gardenhire of Chattanooga and Rep. Charlie Baum of Murfreesboro, would cap enrollment at charter schools — which are publicly funded but independently operated — at 25% for students who live outside the school district that authorized the charter. The House is scheduled to take up that bill on Tuesday in its K-12 subcommittee.

Meanwhile, House Speaker Cameron Sexton filed legislation that would let the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission approve charter schools to serve home school students, as well as residential boarding schools that are charters. Those charter applicants could apply directly to the state-appointed commission for authorization, without having to go through local school boards.

All measures seek to continue the Republican governor’s push to expand education choices for families. But critics say vouchers and charter schools are vehicles to privatize education at the expense of traditional public schools, which operate under stricter regulations, provide more transparency through their locally elected school boards, and serve the bulk of students who are disadvantaged or have special needs.

Under the education savings account bill, co-sponsored by Rep. Chris Todd of Madison County, voucher eligibility would be extended to students who did not complete a full year in public school after 2019, when the legislature approved the voucher law.

“The reason we’re doing this is because that legislation was locked up in the courts for a couple of years,” Lundberg said about ongoing litigation that halted the voucher program’s planned 2020 launch before a 2022 Tennessee Supreme Court ruling upheld the law.

Last week, Lundberg told the Senate Education Committee the change would open eligibility to many students who have applied to receive education savings accounts but were denied because they weren’t moving directly from public to private schools. So far, the state has approved 643 out of 1,273 applications, he said.

The voucher program, which provides taxpayer money for families to use toward private school tuition, is open to students in Memphis and Nashville but could be expanded to Chattanooga-based Hamilton County Schools under legislation approved by the Senate last week. That bill is scheduled for its first vote in a House subcommittee on Tuesday.

The charter school bill approved on Monday is backed by the Tennessee Charter School Center, an advocacy organization funded by pro-charter groups.

Currently in Tennessee, it’s generally up to the local school district that authorizes a charter school, as well as the governing body that oversees that charter school, to determine how many out-of-district students can enroll.

Gardenhire said his bill seeks to address confusion around those policies with a state law that would cap out-of-district enrollment at 25%, and give priority to students from within the school district.

Sen. Jeff Yarbro, who voted against Gardenhire’s bill, said local school districts should be able to control enrollment policies for the charter schools that they authorize.

“If they’re making that decision for the public schools in their district, that same policy ought to apply to the charter schools in the district,” said the Nashville Democrat. “I think that ought to be a uniform policy.”

Elizabeth Fiveash, chief policy officer for the Tennessee Charter School Center, testified last week that out-of-district student enrollment in charter schools isn’t an issue in the four cities that have charter schools. However, it could be in the future as the state’s charter sector expands.

She told members of the Senate Education Committee that charter schools statewide have a waiting list of over 10,000 students, most of whom come from within the authorizing district.

“This is not an issue that’s currently happening,” Fiveash said, “but we’re trying to make sure it’s clear going forward.”

Sexton’s legislation, which is co-sponsored by Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, would mark a significant expansion of Tennessee charter school law.

Under the proposal, the state could authorize charter schools to enroll homeschooled students from within any school district in Tennessee. Those schools would be required to provide classroom instruction at least three days per week, while parents providing instruction the other two days could use remote instruction provided by the charter school.

Lundberg and Rep. Mark White of Memphis, who chair education committees for their respective chambers, have signed on as co-sponsors.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with information about Sexton’s charter school legislation.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Denver school board wants better communication with parents as district weighs school closure

2023-02-24T05:14:23+00:00

Denver school board members said Thursday night that they expect better communication with parents and educators as district officials consider next steps — including possible closure — for 15 schools with low enrollment.

At the same time, board members who previously voted against school closures said they now believe some schools have such low enrollment that the situation is unsustainable.

Superintendent Alex Marrero presented an update on enrollment and possible steps toward closure at Thursday’s board meeting. He identified three schools with especially low enrollment that could close as soon as the end of the school year: Denver Discovery School, Math and Science Leadership Academy, and Fairview Elementary.

Marrero emphasized that he has not yet made a formal recommendation to close those schools or any others, and that he’s open to new ideas from the community. He said he is approaching the process differently than he did in the fall, when he made a recommendation to close 10 small schools and then directed school leaders to hold community meetings to hear from affected families.

The board rejected a narrowed down version of that recommendation in November, saying the process was rushed and didn’t give families enough of a chance to weigh in.

This time, Marrero is proposing meeting with the affected school communities before making a recommendation — a change that school board members said they appreciated.

“Yes, these three schools can be recommended for closure, and these 12 schools can be recommended for closure next year, but that’s not what I’m bringing forward today,” Marrero said in an interview after the board meeting Thursday night. “I want everybody to be prepared that that could be the case, but we’re also looking for creative solutions.”

Marrero said the process could move quickly for the three schools with “critically low enrollment.” He said district staff could begin engaging with families and teachers at Denver Discovery School, MSLA, and Fairview Elementary immediately, and he could bring a formal recommendation to the board next month.

Board Vice President Auon’tai Anderson, who was sharply critical of the school closure recommendation process this fall, said he feels differently now about the three smallest schools.

“I believe that we are at a point with the three schools that we need to take action immediately,” Anderson said. “I’m seeing a number of 62 kids at a middle school and it’s not feasible. And I think we have to have some tough decisions.”

Denver Discovery School is projected to have just 62 students next year, while MSLA is projected to have 104 excluding preschoolers. Fairview Elementary is projected to have 118. Denver schools are funded per student, and schools with low enrollment struggle to afford enough staff.

Anderson acknowledged that families may have avoided schools previously flagged for closure in the just-closed school choice window, leading to even lower enrollment at those schools.

“I do wonder if some parents were scared off from enrolling their kids because they saw these schools on a list before,” he said, referring to Marrero’s previous recommendations.

The process would move more slowly for 12 schools Marrero identified as having “concerning enrollment,” meaning they are projected to have fewer than 215 students next year.

A proposed timeline calls for district staff to meet with the 12 school communities from March to August, and for Marrero to present a formal recommendation to the school board in September. Any closures or other changes, which the proposal says could include revising school boundaries or co-locating one small school with another, wouldn’t happen until fall 2024.

The 12 schools are Ashley Elementary, Beach Court Elementary, Cole Arts and Sciences Academy, Colfax Elementary, Columbian Elementary, Eagleton Elementary, Hallett Academy, International Academy of Denver at Harrington, Kaiser Elementary, Palmer Elementary, Schmitt Elementary, and Whittier K-8. Projected enrollment ranges from 131 students excluding preschoolers at IAD at Harrington to 209 students at Cole Arts and Sciences Academy.

Board members offered suggestions Thursday for what they’d like the meetings with the school communities to look like. Anderson said Marrero should lead the meetings himself.

Families should be assured their children will get priority to enroll at other schools if their school closes, Anderson said, and staff should be assured they’ll get other jobs in the district. He also suggested the meetings be held both in-person and virtually so more families could participate.

Board member Carrie Olson said one of the most uncomfortable parts of the meetings this fall was when parents would ask questions that principals didn’t know the answer to. She requested that “people who can answer questions” be in the room at all community meetings.

“Clear communication with answers at meetings is going to be vital and imperative,” she said.

The board is considering a new policy that directs the superintendent on how to approach school closures. It acknowledges that district enrollment is declining and says the board “believes it is necessary to consolidate and unify schools to maintain the financial viability of the district and to maximize the resources, staff, and programs offered to students.”

Consolidation and unification are how Denver officials describe school closures.

The policy outlines a long list of information that the district should provide to families and educators at schools recommended for closure, including the “positive implications of proceeding” and the “negative implications of not proceeding.”

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

9,000 children don’t show up in Colorado school data. Are they missing or in private school?

2023-02-11T00:25:12+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Subscribe to our free Colorado newsletter to keep up with education news from around the state: ckbe.at/subscribe-colorado

Kindergarten enrollment is down. Dropout rates are up. Public school enrollment still hasn’t rebounded to where it was in 2019, before COVID turned education upside down.

Where have the kids gone? A new analysis by The Associated Press and Stanford University’s Big Local News project found an estimated 230,000 students in 21 states absent from publicly available data on public and private school enrollment and home schooling. That tally includes as many as 9,000 uncounted in Colorado, or about 1% of the state’s school-age children.

The uncounted likely include students learning in private school and at their kitchen tables who simply haven’t been reported, along with children who aren’t in school at all.

The findings further illustrate the pandemic’s profound impact on education, with some families rethinking their options and other students struggling to stay connected. They also demonstrate the difficulty of getting a full picture of where students have landed as a result of the upheaval.

States like Colorado where kindergarten is voluntary have many more unaccounted-for children than states where kindergarten is required, the analysis found. Birth rates have declined, meaning there are fewer 5-year-olds than even a few years ago, and thousands of families have moved out of state. But those changes don’t fully account for the decline in kindergarten enrollment.

More families could be keeping their 5-year-olds home even as Colorado prepares to launch a major expansion of public preschool.

“That’s important because kindergarten is the first experience kids have with a formal learning environment, and readiness to learn is really important as they move onto older grades,” said Thomas Dee, a Stanford University education professor who worked on the analysis.

At the other end of their school careers, more Colorado students are dropping out, state data shows, with 10,500 middle and high school students leaving the system in 2021-22, a 23% increase from 2019-20 and the highest dropout rate in four years.

Chronic absenteeism is up too, said Johann Liljengren, the state education department’s director of dropout prevention and student re-engagement.

“We definitely are seeing higher levels of disengagement across various measures, from attendance to dropouts,” Liljengren said. “What we’re trying to do is dig in and find out why and can we see some of those kids come back?”

The analysis used enrollment and U.S. Census data to look at changes from 2019-20 to 2021-22 and doesn’t include the current school year.

State data shows home school declining from its peak in 2020, and private school enrollment is nearly flat, raising questions about where other students who left the public system may have gone. But state education officials acknowledge their data on both student populations is “loose.”

Private schools don’t have to report enrollment, and more than 30% of 700 non-public schools in a state database report no information, potentially accounting for thousands of students. Home-school families are supposed to notify a school district every year of their intentions, but not all do.

Van Schoales, senior policy director at the Keystone Policy Center, said the gap is a symptom of Colorado’s lax approach to data collection. Without better information, it’s hard to know what’s happening or what to do about it, he said.

“We don’t know what the problem is,” Schoales said. “Is the problem that younger parents entering the school system during COVID had bad experiences and don’t trust the system? Or is the problem that high schools abandoned kids who were on the brink? Or maybe parents are making different choices.”

Kindergarten slide raises concerns

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis made improving early childhood education a centerpiece of his administration. He made full-day kindergarten free to parents in 2019 and enrollment surged, only to plummet the following year when many school districts started the year remotely.

Kindergarten enrollment rebounded somewhat in 2021-22 school year that was included in the Associated Press/Big Local News analysis — only to drop again this school year. But even in 2021-22, the share of 5-year-olds who weren’t in kindergarten was higher than before the pandemic. (Demographers caution that population estimates are imprecise.)

In 2019-20, fewer than 2% of Colorado 5-year-olds weren’t in public or private kindergarten. In 2021-22, roughly 4% were not enrolled.

The decline in participation is a concern, said Leslie Colwell of the Colorado Children’s Campaign. But without more information, it’s hard to know if vulnerable children are missing out on key early learning opportunities or if families with more resources are “red-shirting” or holding back their kindergarten-eligible children or enrolling them in private options, she said.

Complicating the kindergarten trends, enrollment in both preschool and first grade are up this year. The launch of universal preschool in August could bring thousands more children into the public school system with part-time free care.

Who’s not in school?

State data gives some insight into how public school enrollment is changing. The largest decrease is among white students. There are 30,000 fewer of them in Colorado public schools this year than in 2019-20. The largest percentage decrease is in Native American students.

Dropout rates increased among all student groups but increased most among Hispanic and Native American students. Hispanic students accounted for more than half of all Colorado students who left school last year without graduating. Some school districts have stepped up efforts to find and bring back students who left school to work or who just didn’t see the point.

Attendance advocates in the Greeley-Evans district go door to door in search of students who are missing school.

Liljengren said state education officials are also revamping how they do their work — bringing together sections that once worked in isolation to better use data to identify students in trouble and to support high schools in revamping their programming to keep students engaged, including with more pathways tied to career options.

But enrollment isn’t down everywhere. Alan Smiley, who heads the Association of Colorado Independent Schools, said the 39 schools his association accredits have seen enrollment grow between 1% and 3% a year since 2019, including families who have moved to Colorado as well as those switching from public school.

Families are attracted to small class sizes, specialized programming, and school environments that reflect their values, he said. Many start in preschool with the intention of remaining in one school for years. His members watch demographic trends just as other school officials do but haven’t seen the declines public schools report.

Regardless of the choices families make, public school enrollment is not expected to rebound anytime soon. There are 79,000 18-year-olds in Colorado, but just 67,000 5-year-olds, according to U.S. Census data provided by state demographer Elizabeth Garner.

Colorado home-school trends are hard to track

Joanna Rosa-Saenz was among more than 15,000 Colorado families who reported home schooling in the 2020-21 school year. She started out running a learning pod from her Denver home and continued after schools opened. She worried about vaccine mandates and wanted to be more hands-on with her children’s education, especially after her middle son fell behind when his school didn’t address his special education needs.

Her children are back in Denver Public Schools this school year. As a single parent, she couldn’t educate her children and support them financially and get more than a few hours sleep a night, she said. And she couldn’t afford tuition at the private Christian schools that most appealed to her.

The state’s official count of home-school students has gone down each of the past two years — perhaps reflecting parents like Rosa-Saenz who could not sustain it — but Stephen Craig, executive director of Christian Home Educators of Colorado, said his membership is holding steady after a notable increase in 2020.

Rosa-Saenz said she knows many home-schooling families that are still going strong. Some didn’t like what their kids were being taught or the political direction of their district. Others were frustrated by high teacher turnover and frequent leadership changes. Still others felt a public school education just wasn’t very good.

“Parents have a lack of trust and so they are pulling their kids out and seeing what they can do to really support them,” she said.

Public school approaches on everything from math instruction to gender have alienated conservative parents, Craig said. Families want an education tailored to their child and their faith.

“For too long we’ve put education in its own box and said 2 plus 2 is 4 and that’s not religious,” he said. “And that’s just not true. Our world view is in everything.”

Tracking these students is tricky. Some families may not report. The Christian home educators group advises families they are not legally required to report if their children are being taught by a parent who is a licensed teacher — an interpretation of the state’s compulsory attendance law supported by the Homeschool Legal Defense Association. State education officials told Chalkbeat they interpret the home-school statute to mean such families should still notify a school district.

Colorado’s public school enrollment data also includes thousands of home-school students who take a class or receive a service from a local public school. That means the real number of home-school students is higher and the real number of public school students lower than publicly available data suggests.

Fall 2020 saw hundreds of thousands of Colorado students learning at home. Some of them stayed there.

Enrollment declines are cause for concern

Regardless of the exact number, missing students and disengaged families demand attention, observers said. Schools connect students not just with education but also with meals, medical care, and community. Schools with fewer students also get less money. Many Denver metro area districts have closed schools or plan to.

Polling data that the conservative education group Ready Colorado expects to release this month shows a big increase in parents concerned that schools are on the wrong track. That aligns with a Magellan Strategies poll from last spring — though the reasons for dissatisfaction were diverse.

Ready Colorado President Brenda Dickhoner said she knows more families who thought private school was out of reach but re-examined their options as they grew less satisfied with their local public school.

“I’m less concerned with whether Joey is in private or public school, but I’m really interested in understanding the parent motivations,” she said.

Colwell of the Children’s Campaign said she worries that more families may be opting out — even though the vast majority of Colorado families continue to enroll in public school.

“We want kids to be connected to high-quality learning opportunities,” she said. “For families to make the choice that they’ll disengage entirely, to see an increasing number of families making that choice in the wake of the pandemic and the political environment, is concerning.”

Bureau Chief Erica Meltzer covers education policy and politics and oversees Chalkbeat Colorado’s education coverage. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Adams creates new City Hall office for child care, early childhood education

2023-02-10T22:19:43+00:00

This story has been updated to reflect Robin Hood’s involvement.

As New York City’s early childhood sector faces upheaval, Mayor Eric Adams announced Friday the creation of a new office to oversee child care and early childhood education.

The new office, which will be housed within City Hall, was months in the making. It’s charged with overseeing strategy and planning with city agencies that touch early childhood education, including the education department and the Administration for Children’s Services, officials said.

The office’s creation comes as the education department’s own early childhood office has faced intense scrutiny over the past several months under Adams’ leadership.

The city has failed to pay preschool providers on time, leading some to shutter, while Adams has shelved plans to further expand preschool for 3-year-olds as some programs have gone unfilled while others are oversubscribed. The shift spurred City Council hearings and backlash from elected officials and education advocates who had supported the push for universal pre-K for 3-year-olds.

Additionally, Chancellor David Banks’ plan last fall to move hundreds of early childhood workers into new positions — which has so far been paused — resulted in chaos and confusion across the division.

At the same time, the city recently announced an ambitious effort to provide preschool seats for every student with a disability, an issue that former Mayor Bill de Blasio was unable to solve.

The new office is meant to help child care providers cut through so-called red tape, according to a statement from Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright.

It will be led by Michelle Paige, who was chief program and equity officer for University Settlement, which focuses on creating programs, including daycares and preschools, aimed at fighting poverty and inequality on the Lower East Side and Brooklyn. Paige has also worked for Children’s Aid and was an early childhood teacher at the start of her career, according to city officials.

Asked how many people will work under Paige, a City Hall spokesperson said officials are still developing the office’s structure.

The plan to create this new office was nestled into Adams’ “blueprint” for early childhood education published in June. At the time, officials wrote that the office would create “responsive systems that are centered on parent choice, supporting providers, and delivering high-quality options for families” with support from Robin Hood, an anti-poverty nonprofit organization.

Last April, Robin Hood provided a 21-month, $847,000 grant that is supposed to help hire staff and cover other costs for this project, according to a spokesperson with the organization.

Early childhood education organizations applauded the decision to hire Paige and create a new office to oversee the sector.

“With this new office, we hope to see the long-waited-for thoughtful and effective coordination of New York City’s child care sector, ensuring responsive access and support for the city’s families and child care programs,” said Ramon Peguero, president and CEO of The Committee for Hispanic Children and Families, in a statement.

The idea to create the office is “very much needed,” according to a former staffer of the education department’s early childhood division. It’s important for city agencies to coordinate with each other to pull off successful early childhood education programs, since they intersect with multiple offices, said the ex-staffer, who requested anonymity.

Still, details remained murky.

“Obviously, all of us have read the blueprint, but I dont think it’s super clear,” the former staffer said. “What does ‘reaffirming New York City’s commitment to families’ mean? What does it mean for child care, what does it mean for universal child care?”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

COVID exodus: Where did 1 million public school students go? New data sheds some light.

2023-02-09T05:01:00+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Subscribe to our free newsletter to keep up with how public education is changing: ckbe.at/national

Until now, it was one of the pandemic’s great mysteries: Where did the missing students go?

When classes resumed in fall 2020, several months after COVID struck, enrollment in the nation’s public schools had plummeted by more than a million students. It was the largest single-year decline since World War II. And defying hopes of a rapid rebound, enrollment barely budged the following year.

There have been clues about where students went, such as the steep rise in homeschooling, but a full explanation of the public school exodus has been elusive. Now, a new analysis offers a more comprehensive accounting — though one of its most striking findings is that tens of thousands of students remain absent from the available data.

“It’s really been enigmatic,” said Thomas Dee, a Stanford professor who conducted the analysis in collaboration with the Associated Press and data journalists at Stanford’s Big Local News project. “Where have these children gone?”

The data the team compiled point to two main drivers of the public school enrollment plunge: family choices and population changes. After public schools went remote, a portion of families switched their children to private schools or homeschool. At the same time, immigration slowed and many families fled big cities, causing the school-age population in some places to shrink.

The schooling changes and population shifts explain most of the enrollment drop — but not all of it, according to the analysis. Dee offers some possible causes of the unexplained decline: unregistered homeschooling, families opting out of kindergarten, and students who simply stopped attending school.

For students’ whose formal education ceased or failed to start during the pandemic, the learning loss continues.

“These data are telling us that there are learning disruptions that go beyond who is simply sitting in public schools,” Dee said.

Yet the number of unaccounted-for students and their current status is unclear. Most states don’t track all the students who leave public schools, and oversight of non-public education is minimal.

The new analysis “is beginning to shed light on a very important topic,” said Richard Welsh, a public policy and education professor at Vanderbilt University who was not involved in the study. Still, “we don’t have the data to get the complete picture.”

Here’s the latest on what we know — and still don’t know — about where students went during the pandemic.

Public schools lost a lot of students.

Public school enrollment fell by 3% during the first year of the pandemic, according to federal data. The largest decline since 1943, it wiped out a decade of enrollment growth.

The decrease left public schools with 49.4 million students in fall 2020 — about 1.4 million fewer than the previous fall.

The steepest declines were among the youngest students. From 2019 to 2020, prekindergarten enrollment plummeted by more than 20% and kindergarten enrollment fell by 9%, according to a federal analysis of preliminary data, which found much smaller declines in the later grades.

The decision to keep school buildings closed drove some families away, according to a separate study by Dee. School districts that remained fully virtual in fall 2020 faced bigger enrollment losses, he found.

In fall 2021, public school enrollment was flat. Students had stopped fleeing — but they weren’t returning.

“There was no bounce back,” Dee said.

It’s too early to know whether the tide is turning. Federal data for this school year is not yet available, and the most populous states — including California and Texas — have not reported their most recent enrollment counts.

However, about two dozen states have, according to the data tracking firm Burbio. Thirteen of those states saw enrollment increases in fall 2022, while 11 saw declines.

Homeschooling surged, and private schools grew modestly.

During the pandemic, public schools’ loss was other schools’ gain.

The share of families choosing to homeschool their children doubled in 2020, according to a Census survey. By that fall, about 11% of households with school-age children were homeschooling, up from 5.4% that spring and about 3% in prior years. The shift was especially dramatic among Black families, whose share of homeschooling families grew fivefold in 2020.

In the 21 states and the District of Columbia that track homeschooling, enrollment soared by 30% from fall 2019 to fall 2021, according to the Stanford and AP analysis.

“It was a destination of choice,” said Welsh, the Vanderbilt professor, adding that the expansion of remote work enabled some parents to try homeschooling.

Private schools saw a smaller bump. Their enrollment climbed just over 4% during that period, according to the analysis, which included data from 33 states and D.C. (Non-public school data can be spotty even in states that track it. For example, Colorado, which is included in the analysis, does not require private schools to provide student counts, and nearly 30% of the 700 private schools in a state directory didn’t report any enrollment data.)

Notably, private schools’ first grade classes ballooned in fall 2021, the analysis found, suggesting that some families who opted out of public kindergarten in 2020 decided to keep their children in private schools.

How the local public schools responded to the pandemic appeared to influence families’ school decisions. In a study of Michigan’s enrollment patterns, researchers found that more families opted to homeschool in districts that resumed in-person learning in fall 2020; in districts that stayed remote, more families moved to private schools.

“No matter what choice the public system made,” said Andrew Bacher-Hicks, a Boston University professor who co-authored the study, “they were going to lose some set of families.”

In Michigan, about half the students who exited the public schools in fall 2020 returned the following year, Bacher-Hicks said.

Nationwide, whether families will stick with their pandemic school choices remains to be seen. The most recent national data on non-public school enrollment is from 2019, and the Stanford-AP analysis ends in fall 2021.

In a recent survey of about 300 private schools, 55% reported enrollment gains this school year and 20% reported losses. A few states that released fall 2022 homeschool data saw enrollment increases, while others saw declines.

Welsh said it’s likely that some families who decided to homeschool at the height of the pandemic will reconsider.

“I do think there could be some buyer’s remorse,” he said.

The school-age population shrank, and families moved.

While families ditching public schools drew headlines, a less visible change also drove the enrollment drop: In many places, there were simply fewer children around to enroll.

The school-age population shifted in two big ways during the pandemic. First, it shrank nationwide by some 250,000 children, according to the Stanford-AP analysis, which relied on Census estimates in April 2020 and July 2021. Birth rates that have fallen for over a decade and a sharp drop in international immigration during the pandemic drove the decline.

Second, many families with children relocated during COVID. They were most likely to leave cities, often due to housing costs or health concerns. They also moved between states: California and New York lost the most children, while Texas and Florida gained the most.

The school district in Brockton, Massachusetts, a midsize city south of Boston, was hit by both trends: a falling birth rate and out-migration.

“Many families lost their jobs and struggled to pay rent and now are facing eviction,” said district spokesperson Jess Silva-Hodges, adding that many moved in search of cheaper housing. “The affordability of everything has been a challenge for our families.”

Across the 21 states with full datasets in the Stanford-AP analysis, population shifts explain 26%-36% of public schools’ pandemic enrollment decline. (The size of the effect depends on the length of the population estimate.) The effect was bigger in states such as New York, which lost some 60,000 school-age children. Population loss drove at least 40% of that state’s enrollment decline.

“On some level, the reduction in public school enrollment wasn’t just a flight from public schools,” Dee said, “it was a flight from communities.”

Researchers expect the population downturn to continue, leading the National Center for Education Statistics to project a 4% decline in school enrollment by 2030. Such projections have “sobering implications” for school finances and operations, Dee noted, including possible staff layoffs and school closures.

Federal COVID relief money has buffered most districts from the financial fallout of the recent enrollment declines — but those funds expire next year.

“There’s going to be lean years ahead,” said Silva-Hodges, adding that all districts must soon start “taking a hard look at their budgets.”

Many students are still missing.

In the new analysis, one of the most startling findings is that the numbers don’t add up.

In the 21 states and D.C. that had data on each trend, up to a third of the public school exodus — some 230,000 students — can’t be explained by population changes or increased private school or homeschool enrollment. At least on paper, those students are still missing.

The report suggests a few possible explanations. Some of the unaccounted-for students could be in unreported homeschool. More troublingly, some students might have left school during the pandemic due to family hardships or dissatisfaction with remote learning and never returned. But the report makes clear that data on the number of such students “are not widely available.”

However, the report does provide indirect evidence of a third possibility: that some families kept their children out of kindergarten during the first two years of the pandemic. Among the 21 states in the analysis and D.C., the share of unaccounted for students was significantly higher in places where kindergarten is not mandatory.

In other words, many of the missing students might have skipped kindergarten. While national data for this school year is not yet available, some states that have reported their fall enrollment figures saw increases in first grade, according to Burbio — a possible sign that students who sat out kindergarten have returned.

A final possibility is that some of the unexplained enrollment decline reflects incomplete data or measurement errors.

While the analysis is limited to states that track non-public school enrollment, it’s possible that some of the homeschool and private school figures are undercounts. And a few demographers Chalkbeat contacted raised concerns about aspects of the analysis, including its comparison of Census estimates to actual enrollment figures.

Dee called the concerns reasonable, but said the size of the missing student group — including nearly 152,000 unaccounted for students in California alone — suggests more is at play than measurement error. He also analyzed earlier data in New York and California and did not find such large unexplained enrollment changes before the pandemic.

While better data is needed to fully understand how many students have fallen through the cracks, Dee added, the fact that any students are unaccounted for is concerning.

“We’re so focused on how districts are engaging the kids in front of them,” he said. “But we’re missing the fact that some kids aren’t sitting there.”

Due to an update to one state’s enrollment figures, this story has been corrected to change the estimated number of students who aren’t accounted for in the data from 240,000 to 230,000.

Erica Meltzer and Amy Zimmer contributed reporting.

Patrick Wall is a senior reporter covering national education issues. Contact him at pwall@chalkbeat.org.

NYC schools want to boost enrollment. It might prove a major challenge.

2023-02-09T05:01:00+00:00

New York City schools Chancellor David Banks wants to win students back.

The nation’s largest school district has hemorrhaged students since the start of the pandemic, with enrollment down about 11% to 813,000 students in grades K-12 since then.

Earlier this week, Banks even tweeted: “Increasing enrollment and boosting opportunity for all of our students is our North Star.”

But such an effort might not be so simple, according to a new analysis by The Associated Press, Stanford University’s Big Local News project, and Stanford education professor Thomas Dee.

Across 21 states, about 230,000 of the students who left the public school rolls from 2019 to 2021 cannot be explained by rising private school or homeschool enrollment or population changes, according to the analysis. A quarter of those children — roughly 60,000 — were in New York.

These students could have fallen off school rosters for various reasons, Dee noted, such as being homeschooled without registering with the state or skipping kindergarten. Other students might have disengaged during remote learning or amid mental health struggles.

But there could be other factors that complicate the chancellor’s goals of rebuilding enrollment. Besides a declining birth rate, immigration to New York City has slowed, and families are leaving New York for places like New Jersey and Florida — often in search of cheaper housing. Together, demographic change could account for at least 40% of New York state’s public school enrollment decline, according to the analysis.

“There’s growing evidence for how much domestic migration happened during the pandemic,” Dee said. That likely reflects “underlying structural factors,” he said, “such as the enduring nature of work-from-home arrangements that have allowed people to relocate, as well as the push-pressure from things like rising housing costs.”

He added, “On some level, that reduction in public school enrollment wasn’t just a flight for public schools. It was a flight from these communities.”

Enrollment losses mount in NYC

New York City school enrollment has been declining every year since 2016, due in part to declining birth rates.

Between the 2018-19 and the 2019-20 school years, for example, the city saw enrollment fall by 5,000 students. But the decline has accelerated. Three years later, there are 99,000 fewer kids in the city’s district schools, even as additional classrooms for 3-year-olds have been added to the system, according to preliminary education department enrollment data from October.

Where did they go? The picture is not entirely clear. During this time, the number of homeschooled students in New York state has gone up, though it still represents comparatively few children. The number of private school students statewide, however, dropped.

At the same time, the school-age population statewide fell by more than 60,000 children, according to census estimates.

After accounting for the non-public school increase and the population loss, that leaves just over 59,000 students whose exit from the state’s public schools isn’t explained. At least in theory, those students are missing.

But the census estimates used for the analysis have shortcomings, especially when it comes to counting children. The New York state census estimates, in particular, have been known to be off-base compared to the official 10-year estimates. Dee’s analysis notes that the enrollment data and census data are collected over different time periods, which could understate the role of population change.

Demographic experts warned against using a specific number for the state’s students missing from school rosters.

“The population estimates may not be the best basis for comparison in this case,” said Steven Romalewski, director of the CUNY Mapping Service at the CUNY Graduate Center’s Center for Urban Research. “You may be able to generally determine the direction of the gap,” he added, but cautioned against “calculating seemingly precise population counts representing the ‘gap.’”

Because of these limitations, Dee ran a similar analysis for pre-pandemic years in New York, which found a much smaller number of unaccounted-for students, pointing to something “out of the ordinary” during the pandemic, he said.

“Over the pandemic, we’ve seen this historically unprecedented exodus from public schools,” Dee said.

City officials said they have accounted for students who left the system, sharing a breakdown earlier this school year detailing the numbers of children who went to different parts of the state, the country, or left the U.S., as well as those who dropped out or transferred to charter or private schools.

“Like districts and schools across the county, our enrollment has been impacted by fluctuations resulting from the pandemic as well as long-term trends in birth rates,” Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg previously said in a statement.

The enrollment drop has real world consequences for schools. As students leave the system, the city is bracing for a dramatically smaller budget once COVID relief dollars dry up since schools funds are based on enrollment.

Grappling with students who left, and who are frequently absent

Banks, in prepared remarks for Wednesday’s Albany budget hearing, acknowledged that families left New York City public schools for various reasons, and he showed optimism for winning some back.

“The answer to declining enrollment is clear: we have to give our students and families the opportunities and experiences they want in the classroom,” he said, “and we must do a better job of showing them how our schools are giving students the skills and knowledge that will drive success in their lives after school.”

He added: “My administration is focused on rebuilding trust with our families and bringing families back to our schools.”

To that end, the city continues to open new schools. Two that include remote learning opened this year, along with a school focused on robotics. A school focused on design and social justice is expected to open next year. But it also remains to be seen whether the city will soon propose a rash of school closures or mergers. There are a couple of proposed mergers on upcoming agendas for the city’s Panel for Educational Policy.

David Bloomfield, a professor of educational leadership, law and policy at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, cautioned about using the big-picture “rough” data to make “finely tuned” policy decisions that affect individual students.

“It doesn’t get to the granular level of individual kids’ needs,” he said. “We know they’re not missing in a real sense. They’re just not on anyone’s radar. It’s the radar screens’ fault, not the kids’ fault.”

He compared the issue to the debate around learning loss, saying it’s “valid and important” to research the phenomenon, but that there are also so many variables and unknowns that are difficult to parse out.

“I think it’s much less important for the macro than the micro: For a given kid who’s not in school, it’s much more important,” he said.

Bloomfield remained more concerned about the larger number of New York City students who are chronically absent and might be enrolled but “alienated” from their schools. More than 30% of students this year are on track to have missed more than 18 days, or about a month, of school, city officials have said.

“The other piece is the in-school situation,” Bloomfield said, “The kids who can be found but are not being served.”

Correction: Due to an update to one state’s enrollment figures, this story has been corrected to change the estimated number of missing students in all states from 240,000 to 230,000.

This article is based on data collected by The Associated Press and Stanford University’s Big Local News project. Data was compiled by Sharon Lurye of the AP, Thomas Dee of Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, and Justin Mayo of Big Local News.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Anticipating challenges to NYC class size law, Banks will launch ‘working group’

2023-02-08T21:55:36+00:00

Chancellor David Banks plans to launch a “working group” of parents, school leaders, and others to share their opinions and concerns about a new state law that sets stricter limits on class size in New York City public schools.

Banks revealed the plan Wednesday while testifying during a state budget hearing focused on education. He outlined the potential financial costs facing the system in meeting the law’s requirements — an additional $1 billion — and suggested there are many New Yorkers whose concerns “were not heard on this as this law was developed” last year.

“But they’re going to hear from me, and they will absolutely be at the table alongside me as we figure out the best way to implement this,” Banks said.

The working group would have “parents, school leaders, and other interested parties,” Banks said.

Banks did not share more details about the group or what its goal would be. Nathaniel Styer, a spokesperson for the city’s education department, said, “We’ll have more to say soon.”

Last spring, state legislators overwhelmingly passed the class size law, which requires New York City to cap classes at 20 students in kindergarten through third grade, 23 students for grades 4-8, and 25 students for high school. The cap must not exceed 40 students for physical education and classes for “performing groups.” City schools must gradually meet these requirements by September 2028.

Officials are required to form a plan by this September, alongside the city’s educator unions. But the city’s teachers union has already criticized city officials for dragging their feet on the planning process.

In a podcast in December, union president Michael Mulgrew said he’s met with the city twice on the matter but no actual planning has started, and the city has not yet set a formal meeting to do so. (Late last month, an education department spokesperson told Chalkbeat that the city has been regularly updating the union on its progress.)

During Wednesday’s hearing, Banks said the city doesn’t anticipate any issues for meeting class size requirements during the first two years of the five-year timeline. The average class size this school year is about 24 students, according to the education department.

But Banks expects challenges later on, as class size requirements become more stringent and could lead to hard decisions, such as having to forgo hiring an art teacher because a school needs to create a new class when it’s “two students over” the limit. Budget cuts at most schools this school year led many to cut teachers, programs and services, sometimes resulting in larger class sizes.

While many schools may not have an issue meeting the requirements, other overcrowded and popular buildings may mean the city has to either limit enrollment at those schools or must build more seats.

The education department anticipates the need to hire 7,000 new teachers to comply with the law, according to Banks.

“In doing that, there are going to be other decisions that are going to have to be made by school leaders,” Banks said.

Queens Democratic Sen. John Liu, who oversees the Senate’s New York City education committee, took issue with the chancellor’s comments, emphasizing that the city should be working closely with schools in helping them comply with the state law, and that the city should be able to cover costs with the increase in Foundation Aid.

In the union podcast, class size advocate Leonie Haimson said she was pushing for a task force with parents, advocates, experts, and both teachers and principals unions to “work together toward a reasonable, rational, equitable, effective” plan.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Hochul’s proposal to lift NYC charter school cap faces uncertain fate in Albany

2023-02-01T20:22:46+00:00

Dozens of new charter schools could open in New York City under a proposal unveiled Wednesday by Gov. Kathy Hochul, a move that would allow new city charters to be issued for the first time since 2019.

The governor’s plan, which was tucked into her executive budget, would effectively abolish the local cap on charter schools in New York City, allowing charter operators to vie for about 85 charters that haven’t been used in other parts of the state.

In addition, the proposal calls for reissuing charters that were granted to schools that later closed or had their charters revoked, unlocking about 21 new so-called “zombie” charter schools statewide, according to the governor’s office. New York City operators would also be eligible to vie for those charters.

The statewide cap of 460 charter schools would not be raised.

The fate of the governor’s proposal is far from certain and will be subject to negotiations as part of the budget process, which is expected to wrap up by April 1. Unlike in 2015, the last time state officials increased the city charter cap, the legislature is squarely controlled by Democrats, many of whom are opposed to the sector’s growth. About 275 charter schools, which are privately managed yet publicly funded, currently operate in New York City.

It’s also unclear how much political capital Hochul, a Democrat, is willing to spend on a potentially bruising fight to lift the charter cap in New York City — a policy idea she was reluctant to embrace until the final days of her campaign. The governor did not highlight the proposal during a speech unveiling the executive budget.

Hochul received campaign contributions from major pro-charter groups but received even more from educator unions, which have been fiercely opposed to growing the number of charter schools, which are typically not unionized.

“Governor Hochul believes every student deserves a quality education, and we are proposing to give New York families more options and opportunities to succeed,” a spokesperson for Hochul wrote in a statement.

Adding new charter schools in New York City is complicated by dwindling student enrollment. The city’s traditional public schools have seen enrollment declines accelerate during the pandemic, and opening additional charter schools could lead to even more pronounced losses, threatening school budgets or even prompting school mergers or closures.

That dynamic could impact existing charter schools, too, most of which have also struggled with enrollment declines during the pandemic (although the sector has grown overall). Some of the city’s largest networks, including Success Academy and Uncommon Schools, are struggling to fill all of their seats.

Still, pro charter groups immediately praised the governor’s proposal. “A budget is a reflection of priorities — and with this budget proposal, Governor Hochul has proven that she prioritizes the voices and needs of students and families first,” James Merriman, CEO of the New York City Charter School Center, wrote in a statement. (The charter center offered slightly different tallies of the number of charters that would become available to the city. They indicated 84 charters are available outside New York City and 23 zombie charters could be reissued.)

Some legislative leaders immediately shot down the governor’s proposal. State Sen. John Liu said in a statement that allowing more charter schools to operate is a “nonstarter,” arguing there is “no justification” for risking the closure of district schools for the sake of the charter sector’s growth.

Michael Mulgrew, head of the city’s teachers union, also sharply criticized the governor’s proposal. “Public resources should go to real public schools — not to corporate charter chains that claim success by refusing to serve our most vulnerable children, that force out students who don’t fit their mold, and that refuse to permit independent audits of their spending,” he wrote in a statement.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie did not immediately reject the governor’s charter school proposal, though he hinted it may receive a chilly reception. “The Assembly’s focus really is about — has always been about — trying to take care of the needs of the traditional public schools,” he told reporters. “Charter schools has traditionally been a tough issue in the conference. But you know, with that being said, there are members who support charters.”

Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The governor’s proposal may receive a warmer reception from Mayor Eric Adams, who is generally more supportive of charter schools than his predecessor. Adams has previously said he supports getting zombie charter schools “back on line.” (An Adams spokesperson said the mayor is reviewing the governor’s budget proposal.)

The announcement was welcome news to Arthur Samuels, who co-founded MESA Charter High School in Bushwick. MESA’s leadership won “pre-approval” in 2019 to open a second Brooklyn high school, but were unable to do so because of the charter cap. If the governor’s proposal is approved, Samuels said MESA would “seriously consider” opening a second high school.

“We still don’t have enough slots at MESA to serve the students who apply,” Samuels said. Hochul’s proposal “says to me that the governor’s priority is trying to give a similar level of choice and access to families that have historically been denied it.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Illinois public school enrollment continues to drop, preliminary numbers show

2023-01-23T20:12:54+00:00

A first glimpse at public school enrollment in Illinois shows continued declines in the overall student population, but an uptick in the number of students learning English.

Preliminary data released last week by the Illinois State Board of Education shows overall enrollment dropped by about 31,000 students — or 1.7% — between last school year and the current one, according to numbers as of Dec. 14. Chicago Public Schools accounts for at least a quarter of the decline. The district lost 9,000 students and its place as the third largest school district in the country.

The overall enrollment decline for students between pre-kindergarten to 12th grade across the state matches the trend prior to the pandemic. After the pandemic hit, state data showed about 69,000 students leaving public schools – about a 3.5% drop – during the 2020-21 school year.

Even as overall enrollment is down, the number of English learners continues to grow. The enrollment of English language learners also held steady during the pandemic, with a less than 1% drop during school years 2019-20 and 2020-21. The preliminary data for the 2022-23 school year indicates a 4% jump — from 255,000 last school year to 266,000 students this year.

Rebecca Vonderlack-Navarro, director of Education Policy and Research at the Latino Policy Forum, said that as the state continues to see an increase in English learners there is a need to ensure those students are being taught by qualified teachers.

“Illinois has a good track record serving English learners and valuing bilingual education,” said Vonderlack-Navarro. “We need to maintain and grow our commitment to quality bilingual education and grow the future teacher workforce.”

She noted that the state has dedicated additional funding to increasing the number of bilingual teachers. The State Board of Education created a $4 million grant from federal coronavirus relief funds to help school districts pay tuition for current teachers who have a bilingual endorsement but want to earn professional licensure and for current educators who want to earn a bilingual endorsement.

The state also increased the Minority Teacher Illinois Scholarship by $2.3 million for a total of $4.2 million, which is aimed at increasing the number of teachers of color and especially bilingual educators.

The preliminary data released last week also shows that more Asian American students and students who identify as more than one race are attending Illinois public schools. However, the number of White, Black, Hispanic, Native American, and Pacific Islander students dropped, though not as much as it did during the 2020-21 school year.

Among students from low-income families in Illinois, there was a slight increase in enrollment after major declines during the past three years. State officials said that may have been because free meals were offered to all students during the pandemic, regardless of whether districts collected income paperwork from parents.

The State Board of Education said it will have a better picture of enrollment for the 2022-23 school year when it publishes the annual Illinois report card data in October.

State enrollment data shows fewer students in Colorado schools

2023-01-18T19:39:08+00:00

The number of Colorado public school students dropped this school year — for the second time in the last three years.

The first drop was in the fall of 2020, just after the pandemic had started. Last school year, enrollment seemed to recover slightly, though it remained below pre-pandemic levels. This fall, student enrollment again decreased to near 2020 levels, with a total of 883,264 students in preschool through 12th grade.

Previously, student enrollment had increased for about three decades, according to a state press release.

The Colorado Department of Education published enrollment data Wednesday morning from the fall’s official student counts.

According to the state, the largest declines this time were in kindergarten and middle school grades.

Year-over-year kindergarten enrollment declined in October 2022 by 2,373 students, or by 3.8%. The number of full-day kindergarten students in 2022 was 58,371, compared with 61,989 in 2019 before the pandemic. Preschool enrollment did go up in 2022 and is closer to its pre-pandemic levels.

Based on racial and ethnic breakdowns, white students had the largest change in raw numbers with a 7,673-student decline. Based on a percentage change, American Indian and Alaska natives had the largest decrease with 4.7% fewer students than in fall 2021.

Schools enrolled more students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a measure of poverty, last fall compared with the fall of 2021, though the number is still lower than in 2019. But with lower overall statewide enrollment, the percentage of students living in poverty out of all students was roughly the same last fall, 39.9%, as it was in 2019.

Families had to fill out forms this school year to qualify for free lunch. During the past two years, because of federal waivers, all students could eat school meals for free.

Among individual districts, a similar pattern emerged where most had proportions of students qualifying for subsidized lunches going up from last year, but not quite reaching 2019 levels.

However, a handful of districts had more students last fall qualifying for subsidized meals than they did in 2019. The proportion grew, for example, in District 49 to 34% from 32% pre-pandemic; in Jeffco schools to 32.3% from 31%; and in Adams 12 schools to 45.2% from 39%.

The number of students identified as English language learners held steady from the past year, though it still represents a big decrease from students identified pre-pandemic.

The overall enrollment decrease includes fewer students home-schooled and fewer students in online schools. A total of 8,674 students were counted as home-schooled in October, down from 10,502 in fall 2021. This year’s home-schooled count now nears the 7,880 enrolled in 2019.

In online schools, the state counted 30,799 students enrolled this year — 583 fewer than in 2021. Colorado only has limited data on private school enrollment.

Enrollment dropped in more than half of the school districts in the state.

In the metro area, that included the Mapleton School District, which until this year had held steady or grown while other districts lost students. The decrease was driven by its large online school Colorado Connections Academy moving to another district. In the metro area, the second largest percentage decrease in enrollment was in the Adams 14 school district, which counted 5,692 students, down from 6,114 last fall, and from more than 7,000 students in 2018.

While Adams 14 enrollment has steadily decreased over the years, the state’s orders last May to reorganize the district may have steepened the decline. It was the first time the state exercised its authority to order a reorganization, which could end in closure of schools or neighboring districts taking control of parts of the district.

School districts receive funding based on the number of students they enroll, so a decline in the number of students can also mean a drop in funding. Several school districts, including Denver, have been considering school closures. Jeffco voted to close 16 elementary schools at the end of this school year.

The Aurora school district, on the other hand, reported an increase in enrollment. Because of new housing development in its eastern sector, officials there had already expected their student counts to start increasing soon, but were unsure when it would happen.

Despite that expectation, Aurora officials have said it wouldn’t resolve the district’s enrollment and facilities issues. Uneven housing patterns have prompted school closures closer to the Denver boundary, while also requiring the district to construct new buildings near developments to the east.

Charter schools authorized under the state’s Charter School Institute grew enrollment slightly. Statewide, all charter schools enrolled about 2,500 more students than they did a year earlier, a 1.8% increase.

The state also recorded more students in state detention centers.

Other areas showing growth include Greeley-Evans District 6 and School District 27J based in Brighton, both north of Denver, District 49 in Colorado Springs, and rural parts of the state.

Look up enrollment changes at your district in the table below:

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

The proposed Near South High School has divided neighbors. Here’s your chance to weigh in.

2023-01-17T21:15:21+00:00

Residents who want to learn more about the proposed Near South Side high school will have several chances to weigh in at a series of six virtual meetings hosted by Chicago Public Schools beginning this week.

The first meeting runs from 6-8 p.m. Jan. 19 and will offer Spanish, Chinese, and American Sign Language interpretation. Subsequent meetings will take place Feb. 16 and March 16. Residents can register to attend virtually here.

Controversy has surrounded the plan since it was reintroduced by CPS last year. Early proponents like State. Rep. Theresa Mah withdrew support after accusing school officials and city leaders of not engaging the community in good faith. That led to a war of words between Mah and Ald. Pat Dowell (3rd), who accused the state representative of nixing the proposal because it isn’t in her district.

A coalition of residents and activists led by Lugenia Burns Hope Center and People Matter have held several community meetings — and protests outside City Hall — calling on Mayor Lori Lightfoot to come up with alternative plan. They believe the move will only further the racial divide by pulling students out of existing schools nearby and possibly result in additional school closures with the moratorium imposed by the state ending in 2025.

But advocates like freshman Ald. Nicole Lee (11th) say a new open-enrollment high school for the area is long overdue as families have been dealing with a “high school desert” for decades.

Of the three public high schools between Bronzeville and the South Loop — Jones College Prep (a selective enrollment school), Dunbar Vocational, and Wendell Phillips Academy — the latter two serve a high percentage of low-income students and rank in the bottom half of schools statewide based on standardized testing and graduation rates.

A map of where the proposed Near South Side high school would be built, which is adjacent to the Southbridge mixed-use development where 244 units would be set aside for public housing residents.

The $150 million school would be built on the former site of Chicago Housing Authority’s Harold Ickes Homes and serve 1,200 students living in parts of Chinatown, Amour Square, Bridgeport, Bronzeville, and the South Loop. Thirty percent of enrollees would be Black, the bulk of which would come from families residing in the Southbridge mixed-income development where 244 affordable units are in the process of being built.

The city council approved the use of $8 million in tax increment financing in December, several months after CPS entered a land lease agreement with CHA in July 2022. Under the agreement, the housing agency will lease 1.7 acres of the former public housing site near 24th and State Streets to the district for 99 years, reverting to CHA’s control in the event the school isn’t built.

Lugenia Burns Hope Center Executive Director Roderick Wilson told Block Club in a recent interview that the coalition will keep fighting. They’d rather see the money reinvested in existing schools.

“Neither CPS or CHA did any real community engagement to find out what the community wanted. If they were actually listening, they wouldn’t be pushing this,” said Wilson.

This story was originally published by Block Club Chicago.

NYC Mayor Adams reverses course on $80 million schools cut in preliminary budget

2023-01-12T23:35:12+00:00

After a bruising battle last year over school budget cuts, Mayor Eric Adams reversed course Thursday on a plan to slash an additional $80 million next year from the coffers of schools that lost students during the pandemic.

In his preliminary budget, Adams announced plans to delay the previously scheduled cut, giving a temporary reprieve to schools who lost students during the pandemic and are still struggling with the effects of last year’s cuts. Some families, educators and advocates, however, argue that Adams should have gone even further by restoring the cuts he made last year.

“We heard from families [that] some schools need more time to adjust in order to avoid disruptions to students,” Adams said. “So despite the fiscal challenges we face, we have added an additional $80 million to that funding pool for next fiscal year.”

In addition to the delayed cut, Adams announced a $47.5 million investment to help secure school buildings by ensuring that all the doors lock, and front doors are equipped with cameras and buzzer systems, a major priority of schools Chancellor David Banks.

The proposed $80 million cut that Adams reversed on Thursday ties back to a heated debate over funding and school enrollment that came to a head last summer.

Schools generally lose money when they lose students, but former Mayor Bill de Blasio paused that rule during the pandemic, using hundreds of millions of dollars in federal relief money to plug the gaps.

Adams began scaling back that extra financial support when he took office, cutting the pot by more than half this year, and planning to chop it in half again next year, before zeroing out the aid in fiscal year 2025.

But on Thursday, even as he warned of strong fiscal headwinds and cut agency spending, Adams announced that he’s planning to suspend the planned $80 million cut to school budgets next year.

Still, Adams emphasized that he believes it’s important to return soon to “developing school budgets based on the number of students enrolled in the school and the needs of those students.” Budget officials noted that federal relief money will run out next year, meaning the city will face critical decisions about spending.

Some advocates expressed relief about the decision to hold school budgets level. Others blasted the mayor for making cuts elsewhere, including rolling back a planned expansion of preschool for 3-year-olds.

“Mayor Adams continues to propose austerity measures that harm children, families, schools and communities,” said Amshula Jayaram, campaign director of Alliance for Quality Education, an organization that advocates for more school funding. “At a time when our children need intense social, emotional and academic support, Mayor Adams continues to trim services for students.”

An Adams spokesperson didn’t immediately say whether the administration is still planning to entirely cut the pandemic relief for schools with enrollment drops in fiscal year 2025.

The mayor will release an updated version of his $102 billion proposal in April, known as the executive budget. The City Council must approve a final budget by July 1.

Education department still expected to cut costs

Despite the temporary reprieve on enrollment-based school cuts, the education department, like agencies across the city, is still expected to slash expenses in order to help the city balance its budget.

Adams cited a “perfect storm” of financial challenges brought on by a slowing economy and lower tax revenues, unexpected expenses related to the arrival of tens of thousands of asylum-seekers, and additional costs that come with renegotiating contracts with labor unions.

In Adams’s November financial plan, he proposed diverting $568 million in federal COVID relief money originally slated to expand the 3-K program to cover other education department costs.

Adams and education department officials have argued that they are right-sizing the program, and shifting seats in response to 19,000 empty seats. On Thursday, budget officials said the city would open more seats if they found a need after their review of the program.

But the cuts have drawn criticism from members of the City Council, who will work with Adams in the coming months to agree on a final budget.

“The budget vision put forward by the Administration to cut funding for CUNY, libraries, social services, early childhood education, and other essential services for New Yorkers is one this Council cannot support,” Council Finance Committee Chair Justin Brannan and Speaker Adrienne Adams said in a statement Thursday morning criticizing the November financial plan.

Budget officials said the education department will be expected to eliminate 390 vacant positions, none of which include teachers or administrators.

Adams pledges $47.5 million to equip schools with locking front doors

The preliminary budget also includes a proposed $47.5 million to equip schools with locking doors and cameras that allow school safety agents to monitor who they’re letting in the front door.

Banks has raised the issue of locking front doors frequently in conversations about school safety and in the wake of last year’s elementary school massacre in Uvalde, Texas.

The number of guns confiscated from students at city schools jumped last year as teens expressed fears of dangerous commutes, though none of the guns were used in schools.

There have also been several reports of intruders getting inside city school buildings in recent months, putting families and educators on edge.

Adams said the new technology will “allow all the other school doors to be locked, but put a camera with a buzzer system on the front door that allows the [school safety agent] to sit there and see the person before they let them inside the school … we’re looking to put it in all our schools.”

An Adams spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a question about the timeline for rolling out the technology to all schools.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Detroit’s Frederick Douglass Academy looks to adopt a new identity. Will a name change help?

2023-01-05T18:39:21+00:00

In the main hallway of Frederick Douglass Academy for Young Men is a mural portrait of the school’s namesake. The painting, bordered with the school’s orange and green colors, showcases the famed abolitionist and journalist in a stoic pose looking across the 31-year-old school.

In classrooms, students say, screensavers on computer monitors bear images of the fiery orator. Following daily morning announcements, students recite an affirmation inspired by Douglass’ values: manhood, altruism, courage, scholarship.

That sense of brotherhood and mentorship was part of what Kamar Graves, a 2016 graduate, loved about going to the all-boys school. By the time Graves graduated, he had become valedictorian of both his eighth and 12th grade classes and earned a full-ride academic scholarship to Michigan State University.

But now, school leaders want to remove the singular name of this school near Midtown Detroit — and rebrand it in honor of Ernest Everett Just, an African American biologist and educator who pioneered cell research and was a founding member of the historically Black Omega Psi Phi fraternity.

The name change, they say, is part of a transformation designed to take Frederick Douglass from being one of Detroit’s long-standing alternative high schools to a STEAM-focused school, a learning approach that incorporates science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics.

“We want our students to have a name associated with the sciences,” said Douglass Principal Willie White.

Since taking leadership in 2018, White’s charge has been to revamp the school. But as Douglass staff meet with prospective students and parents, they repeatedly hear about the school’s poor reputation, not the robotics awards or science program.

White says the name change could help shift that perception.

“The stigma is that you shouldn’t want to go to alternative schools … that they are for bad boys,” White said. “We’re not a school for bad boys.”

The Detroit school board was initially set to approve the renaming process for Douglass at its monthly meeting in early December, but the board opted to delay a decision until the matter could be discussed by individual committees in the new year.

The proposal is the latest effort to rename a Detroit school this year, coming after three Detroit schools were earmarked for new or modified names: Detroit Collegiate Preparatory Academy at Northwestern (now Northwestern High School), Benjamin Carson High School of Science and Medicine (renamed Crockett Midtown High School of Science and Medicine) and East English Village Preparatory Academy (which added the phrase “at Finney” on the end).

The board actions resulted from recent efforts by district officials and community members to revisit naming decisions made — sometimes without community input — when the district was overseen by state-appointed emergency managers for much of the last two decades.

At Douglass, White is enthusiastic about the change. And some current students say it would mark a fresh chapter for the school.

“It’s a new name, a new building, new colors, new mascot,” said Douglass senior Naim Bellamy, “It’s going to be good to hopefully see the difference in everything.”

There are also plans to move the school to a different location, which Naim thinks may even attract new students.

But some alumni say the new name will erase a critical part of the school’s legacy.

“Detroiters are letting their history be washed out,” said Daivon Reeder, a 2012 graduate of Douglass, who opposes the alternative name.

The proposal to change the name of Frederick Douglass Academy comes amid larger national discussions of how to teach African American history and who should be honored with buildings, statues, and monuments.

It also raises questions about what it will mean for the school’s identity and legacy and whether a name change is enough to turn a school around.

Alumni remember school as ‘beacon of hope and light’

The origins of Frederick Douglass Academy go back several decades.

In the late 1980s, Detroit created the High School Development Center, an alternative high school that targeted ninth and 10th graders who were identified as struggling academically and behaviorally, according to a school statement.

Students were selected for the program by principals from some of the city’s major high schools, and could return back to their neighborhood school if they showed improved attendance and academic performance.

But in the midst of a rise in citywide school dropout rates, Detroit school officials proposed the creation of multiple all-male academies, which would be equipped with “specially trained teachers and curriculums emphasizing black achievements,” according to a 1991 New York Times article.

Frederick Douglass Academy for Young Men grew out of that concern.

To some alumni, the name change discussion would undermine decades of success among Frederick Douglass students both academically and athletically.

Douglass’ small class sizes, strict dress code, devoted teaching staff, and plethora of extracurricular activities offered students an opportunity to excel and shine away from distractions at other larger high schools, they say. Those qualities, coupled with the building’s namesake, left a mark on students.

In Graves’ experience, the school’s environment quickly eliminated distractions, namely girls. While he had been an honor student prior to attending Douglass, Graves said his mother was concerned about her son’s reputation as a class clown and “ladies man” and thought the school’s courses and leadership could offer him a unique experience.

In Reeder’s case, the dedicated class time his ninth grade English teacher spent on reading Douglass’ autobiography expanded Reeder’s understanding of manhood as well as the significance the orator had in the Black community.

Douglass escaped from a Maryland plantation to become a staunch opponent of chattel slavery, a newspaper editor, and a U.S. diplomat. At Douglass Academy, his life and words are impressed upon students, most notably in the famous quote, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”

Ryan Fielder, who graduated from Frederick Douglass in 2011, remembers the school went through a noticeable change when it first moved to the former Murray-Wright building in 2008. Under principal Berry Greer, the school transitioned from an alternative school curriculum to one that actively encouraged students to look toward higher education and beyond, Fielder said.

“What Frederick Douglass was trying to be was a beacon of hope and light, and also an educational opportunity for young Black men who, otherwise, probably would have just been sucked into the system some other type of way,” Fielder said.

Until the district regained local control in 2016, Douglass continued to accept students with behavioral issues, said White, the school principal. Since then, the district has redirected students with behavioral challenges to other schools. That’s given the school the opportunity to develop a new identity.

“Let’s just send all our behavioral boys to Douglass” is no longer a phrase used by other district principals, White said, but the school still fields multiple calls from parents in other district and charter schools inquiring about enrolling their recently expelled students.

An original proposal to change Douglass’ name was introduced in 2018.

Monique Bryant was president of Douglass’ parent-teacher association when the original proposal was introduced to the school board. She and other parents at the time opposed the name change.

“There was never a thought about changing it,” said Bryant, who feels district administrators failed to engage the school community in a timely and accessible manner.

The board ultimately dropped the proposal, citing a lack of support. This time around, the district says, parents, staff, and students seem to be behind a name change. White chalks that up to buy-in from current parents, with whom he’s made a concerted effort to collaborate with on the school’s new direction.

A new name “sets in motion a new legacy and an emphasis on science and technology,” said Keonda Buford, current president of Douglass’ PTA.

Renewed conversations over a name change began toward the beginning of the school year, Buford said, when White and other school administrators convened a meeting with the PTA where they suggested the school be renamed as Ernest Everett Just.

A video presentation was shared that detailed Just’s background and scientific contributions.

The parent group agreed that changing the name would be a good move, Buford said.

“I don’t think we would dishonor (Frederick Douglass) by not using the name, especially if we’re replacing it with another equally brilliant and excellent Black person,” Buford said.

“If we were changing it to someone that wasn’t Black, that didn’t have any type of contributions to science … that would be a different conversation.”

School leaders want a new name for a different time

Renaming the school after Just, a renowned scientist, would better market the school’s current science-oriented offerings to students and families across the city, White said. The school offers a program in geographic information systems and Advanced Placement courses, has an in-house weather station, and partners with Eastern Michigan University to offer dual enrollment classes.

With the school’s emphasis on a career pathway in GIS for students, White said, Just’s name better reflects the school’s long-term vision to encourage students to get into the sciences.

The name change discussion coincides with the district’s plan to renovate and rebuild school buildings across the city using federal COVID relief dollars. Douglass students are expected to move to the vacant Northern High School building at the start of 2023-24 school year. That move, according to DPSCD superintendent Nikolai Vitti, will be permanent until or if “enrollment dramatically improves” at the school.

Last school year, Douglass had 62 students enrolled, according to the school’s website. At its peak, the school enrolled roughly 300 students, in large part due to its requirement to accept expelled students from other schools.

As part of the district facility plan, students from three district alternative schools — Detroit Lions, Westside, and Legacy academies — will move into Douglass’s current location, which would become “a hub for alternative programming” in the district, according to Vitti.

A decision won’t happen until the new year, but it hasn’t deterred Douglass students from feeling optimistic about the school’s current plans.

For Naim Bellamy and other students, there’s little concern about the school’s identity drastically shifting.

“It’s still going to be a good school,” said 10th grader Dominic Hunt.

Jonathan Zook, another 10th grader, looks forward to the move. He first heard about the plans for a new building and a new school identity when he was a freshman.

“The name change wouldn’t really change anything,” Jonathan said, “as long as it’s still named after a Black figure who’s motivational.”

Now, he and other students are looking forward to learning more about Ernest Everett Just.

Ethan Bakuli is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering Detroit Public Schools Community District. Contact Ethan at ebakuli@chalkbeat.org.

Jeffco proposes $32 million in building upgrades to accommodate students from closing schools

2022-12-16T23:40:51+00:00

Jeffco Public Schools is beginning work on up to $32 million of projects to prepare buildings to receive as many as 2,600 displaced students from 16 schools closing.

The more than a dozen projects planned include renovating buildings to accommodate preschoolers and students with disabilities or adding more space for the increase in students.

The price tag is equivalent to about 2 1/2 years of savings from closing the under-enrolled elementary schools at the end of the school year. Most of the work is expected to be completed this summer.

Last week, school board members expressed shock at hearing the $32 million price tag, and Thursday decided they might downsize some of the larger projects once they have more accurate enrollment projections for the next school year.

The district assured the school board that it expects to be able to cover the cost of those projects with $12 million the board had already agreed to set aside from bond money for such work, and with the savings of about $17 million in bond projects that will no longer happen at schools that are closing. The district also expects the projects to likely come in under the estimated $32 million, which includes conservative contingency costs.

District leaders told the board that the project costs are onetime expenditures, and that the district will still see ongoing savings from closing those 16 schools.

“The consolidation decisions that this board had the courage to make are ongoing and cumulative savings that we will be able to eventually, once we get things settled with the budget, apply to our kids’ extraordinary experiences,” superintendent Tracy Dorland told the board at last week’s board meeting.

The district expects to save $12 million in operating expenses every year after those 16 schools close.

“This decision pays for itself and then some,” chief financial officer Brenna Copeland said.

The school board Thursday night considered pausing some of the work due to the cost and uncertainty about the need, but decided that it didn’t want to risk not having enough space for students when school starts next fall.

Instead, it approved contracts to begin the first project: an addition at Prospect Valley, which is receiving new students from Kullerstrand, including a special needs program. The board plans to revisit the scope of the contract early next year, when it has enrollment numbers from the first round of choice applications.

Currently, Prospect Valley is slated to get an addition that includes eight new classrooms, including two classrooms designed for the affective needs program. The addition is expected to increase the building capacity to 650 students, but currently the district projects the school will enroll around 560 students next year.

If the projection is correct, the current building’s capacity might already be enough, though district leaders cautioned that letting a school reach near full capacity limits how effectively principals can manage class sizes, especially when the number of students isn’t distributed evenly per grade level.

Still, some board members weren’t convinced the school needs eight new classrooms.

“Why are we even going that high right now for 650?” said board member Danielle Varda.

Board members also questioned how the district might examine costs to renovate receiving schools when it considers recommendations to close secondary schools next year. At the secondary level, the district has almost finished the planned projects.

Copeland said that although the district has limited funds, officials already have some ideas where it might get the money for retrofitting secondary schools after possible closures. By then, the district might have started selling or leasing some of the empty elementary buildings, making some capital funds available. The district also could use leftover unallocated bond dollars.

District leaders say they don’t yet know what factors they might consider when deciding which secondary schools to close.

With elementary schools, the district closed schools that had fewer than 220 students or were using less than 45% of their building’s capacity, as long as there was another elementary school within 3.5 miles that could absorb the students. Costs of renovations weren’t calculated until after the 16 schools were identified.

The district doesn’t yet know what enrollment or capacity thresholds it would set to close secondary schools, or if it would use different factors. Leaders said it was too early to say if building renovation costs could play into the decision.

But Copeland said the district is not interested in making the decisions primarily about money. District leaders have said that the problem with small schools is that education suffers when teachers have to be responsible for students of multiple grade levels within one classroom, when teachers can’t collaborate with colleagues who teach the same grade level, and when schools can’t offer after-school programs and other enrichment.

“Very consistently, parents told us ‘My student is not a number; please don’t make these decisions based on that,’” Copeland said. “I very much don’t want the financial calculation to be a primary driver.”

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

This virtual learning program has ‘changed the game’ for NYC’s small high schools

2022-12-14T15:32:16+00:00

As a student two decades ago at Brooklyn Tech, the city’s largest high school, Fuad Chowdhury marveled at the seemingly endless selection of courses at his fingertips.

Years later, when Chowdhury became the assistant principal of Bronx Compass, a small public high school, he was disheartened that he could only offer his students a small fraction of that variety. Bronx Compass enrolls roughly 400 students, and, like small schools across the city, doesn’t have the budget or manpower to offer a wide range of classes.

“I love small schools, unfortunately the drawback is I cannot necessarily have a music teacher and an art teacher and a computer science teacher,” Chowdhury said. “I’ve always felt it painful when I can’t offer a course that I know I have some students interested in, but not enough to rationalize a full course.”

So when Chowdhury heard about a new education department program that could expand his school’s course selection, he leapt at the chance.

Bronx Compass is now one of nearly 60 schools across the city participating in a fast-growing initiative that brings virtual courses to small schools without the bandwidth to run them in person.

The program, which launched as a small pilot in 2018, allows students to take online courses taught by public school teachers in other parts of the city from the comfort of their own school buildings and with supervision from an on-site staff member.

The initiative leapt in size this year with an infusion of federal relief funding, and now reaches roughly 1,500 students across 58 schools, with 23 separate courses taught by a mix of fully virtual teachers and in-person teachers who lead online courses outside traditional school hours.

At Bronx Compass, there are more than 20 students this year enrolled in a mix of virtual AP Computer Science, AP Art History, and AP Statistics courses.

“My larger dream for how I want to use virtual learning in our school community … is saying that we can offer any course,” said Chowdhury. “That’s a powerful statement.”

Educators see the expansion of virtual learning classes as an equity issue. The city’s smallest high schools are disproportionately concentrated in poor neighborhoods with higher shares of Black and Latino students, according to education department data.

“When I think about scaling this up, I think it all goes back to giving kids a voice in what they get to take, and breaking barriers that prevent an equity of access to coursework and learning,” Chowdhury said. “I think this could … I don’t want to say to break down those barriers, but at least to move them out, make them more malleable.”

NYC’s small schools are getting smaller

For decades, New York City has sustained hundreds of small schools, following a push by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg to break down dozens of troubled larger high schools into smaller ones.

The tiny school trend has accelerated in recent years as the city’s public school enrollment began falling before the pandemic and cratered over the past three years.

As of last year, the city had 201 schools with fewer than 200 students, and 638 with under 400 kids. Fifteen years ago, in 2007, there were 99 schools with less than 200 students and 420 with fewer than 400 kids, according to education department numbers.

At the high school level, where course variety is most important, there are 210 schools with fewer than 400 students, and 111 with more than 600. And the tiny schools aren’t evenly distributed: They’re clustered in the South Bronx, Upper and Lower Manhattan, and Central Brooklyn, according to the education department.

Many educators and students say they appreciate the tight-knit communities that form in small schools, and research points to some benefits, but the tradeoffs are clear.

“It was really painful to see how difficult it is for small schools to be equitable and offer things that some of the big schools can offer, just because their hands are pretty much tied,” said Jeffrey Ellis-Lee, a teacher at Maxine Greene High School for Imaginative Inquiry in Manhattan, which enrolled just 115 students last year.

Small schools have long looked for ways to pool extracurricular resources like sports teams, and some in shared buildings have experimented with combining academic courses with co-located schools, but that “only goes as far as what you have in the building,” Chowdhury said.

The virtual classes program started as a pilot in 2018 to try to change that.

Brian Nagy teaches a virtual class. The program leapt in size this year with an infusion of federal relief money.

The pandemic sharply accelerated the program’s growth — exposing the entire city to online learning in one fell swoop while accelerating the enrollment losses that squeeze small schools hardest.

The education department invested $2 million in federal relief dollars this year to fund a major scale-up in the initiative. The funding for the virtual teachers comes out of a central pot and is not deducted from schools’ budgets.

“The number of schools has gone up by leaps and bounds,” said Brian Nagy, a full-time virtual teacher who’s been in the program since 2019. “That was really the whole point: for us to be able to kind of spread the wealth.”

New initiative improves on pandemic remote learning

One of the biggest obstacles to generating interest in the new program was convincing students and teachers that this version of virtual learning would be more successful than the one they encountered during the pandemic.

Once teachers and students signed up, it didn’t take long to notice the differences.

“Pretty quickly I was like, wow this is very different,” said Ellis-Lee, who is teaching AP US History and AP Human Geography virtually this year. “The kids are in a classroom in their school, they’re not sitting in their bed. There’s none of that trauma that we had to go through, thank God. And they also have a live, certified teacher that they already know in the room with them.”

The partnership between the on-site and virtual teachers is a key ingredient, often amounting to a “co-teaching” relationship, even when the on-site teacher isn’t an expert on the specific content area of the course, educators say.

The on-site teacher can monitor behavior and engagement in real time, troubleshoot technology issues, check in on students having attendance or emotional challenges, and keep the virtual teacher looped in on the grading policies and scheduling constraints of the students’ home school.

“Having someone who can just go over and be like, ‘Hey, you doing okay?’ That’s really, really important,” said Nagy.

The other big thing that separates the virtual classes initiative from pandemic remote learning is the quality of the teaching and materials, students and staff said.

While schools experimented with different platforms during the pandemic, courses in the virtual learning initiative follow a stable format — with assignments posted on the platform iLearn, and a Zoom links for live instruction placed in the same place every class.

“Everything is organized,” said Taina Nieves, a junior at Bronx Compass taking virtual AP art history this year.

Teachers participating in the program are, by and large, veterans who have interest in and experience with remote teaching, said Shana Covel, the program’s director.

“I think my favorite part about it is the teacher,” said Alexis Frye, a 15-year-old 10th grader at Bronx Health Sciences High School who is taking Spanish 5 virtually this year. “She takes the time out to make sure everyone is on the same page.”

Alexis Frye, 15, is taking Spanish 5 virtually this year at Bronx Health Sciences High School.

That’s not to say there aren’t drawbacks. Tech issues still frustrate staff and students. Scheduling conflicts force some of the virtual courses outside of normal school hours, making it harder to sustain participation. And some teaching strategies — particularly involving group work — are harder to pull off virtually.

“I’ve had really great in-person debates,” said Ellis-Lee, but in the virtual setting “kids are still hesitant to turn on cameras and talk. Eventually we got around to having a really great debate … it just took a lot more support.”

Educators eye more growth

Virtual learning classes have already transformed the course catalog at Bronx Health Sciences High School. In the year-and-a-half that the school has been participating, administrators have been able to offer roughly 20 virtual courses, including AP Government and Politics, AP Environmental Science, and advanced Spanish and French courses. And 75 students are currently participating, according to Assistant Principal Brian Artzt.

Before the virtual courses, Bronx Health Sciences offered only two AP classes at a time.

“It changed the game of what we could even provide for our children,” Artzt said.

Supporting schools like Bronx Health Science takes a lot of behind-the-scenes logistical maneuvering from the DOE’s central office, including lining up the class periods of multiple schools across the city with different bell schedules and finding the teachers with the right qualifications.

“That’s my logic puzzle,” said Covel, the program’s director.

Educators hope those logistical challenges will become more manageable as the program grows.

“It’s like a business model: As it scales up you have more drivers for your trucks, you have more pallets to move your items, things are going to be easier,” said Chowdhury.

Just how big the program could get is still an open question.

Covel said, “We don’t have a quota or numbers attached to it. It’s very much just continuing to meet the needs of schools.”

Artzt, the Bronx Health Sciences assistant principal, thinks the program “should be across the city. It should be everywhere.”

Taina, the Bronx Compass student who’s taking AP Art History virtually this year, agrees.

“It opens that door to possibilities that a lot of kids may have thought were not possible,” she said. “If it was something to become bigger it would make a difference for a lot of other kids.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

I’m stepping down from the Chicago Board of Education. With change coming, some thoughts on its future.

2022-12-07T18:38:16+00:00

When I was appointed to the Chicago Board of Education in June 2019, I knew my prior experiences — as a teacher, a Chicago Public Schools employee, an educator collaborating with over 30 districts, a CPS parent, and a member of a Local School Council — still might not prepare me for the duties of effectively governing our large and complex district. What I didn’t know was what awaited us in the months and years to come, including a global pandemic.

The heroic efforts of educators and district leadership have kept our district running, and we’ve even made progress in some important areas. CPS launched its equity framework. The Office of Safety & Security reimagined an approach to whole school safety. The board livestreamed and recorded its meetings, and opened new and revised policies to public comment. We’ve engaged community members to inform policy on school programming, funding, and accountability.

Sendhil Revuluri

Today is my final board meeting. As I step away from the toughest and most rewarding volunteer role I’ve ever held, I want to share some reflections I have about the changes and challenges our district has in store.

Our educators focus on student learning outcomes. Our school board should, too.

School systems exist to improve student outcomes. Having great buildings, happy parents, balanced budgets, or satisfied teachers are incredibly important and valuable. But they are the means, not the ends.

Over the last few years, my fellow school board members and I have committed many, many hours to the role, far beyond those visible in public, holding office hours, attending events, visiting schools, talking with stakeholders. But the current reality is that much of our time, attention, and energy is spent not on student outcomes — what matters most to our students and their families — but on the methods used to get there.

Our educators focus on our students to guide their practice. But in some of our most contentious board discussions, on topics such as school reopening, COVID mitigation, or the role of School Resource Officers, the loudest voices often centered adult interests, values, or concerns.

The school board should represent the voice of our community.

Our role as a board is to represent the vision and values of the community. Our main duty as a board is to listen to the community, form a coherent vision, then set, resource, and monitor focused goals that advance that vision.

So while discussions and decisions about effective methods are essential, they’re not our job as a board, but the domain of district leadership. For example, if we hear our community say “it is important that our students read well,” our role is to set a clear goal about student literacy outcomes. What approach or curriculum to use, selecting staff, and so on — that’s the responsibility of district leadership. Then the board must monitor the progress toward that goal.

Our community has varied ideas about which student outcomes matter most, and which means should be used to achieve them. As board members, we have different experiences, opinions, and priorities. We may not agree on everything, including which student outcomes are the most important. As a fellow board member once told me, “if we all agree, then some of us are superfluous.” But when we find areas of broad agreement, we will know where to set our goals.

Whoever is on the board, however they’re selected, what matters most is how they work.

Many Chicagoans have (and have shared) strong opinions about how board members are selected. These discussions often focus on beliefs about what is more democratic, but it’s far less frequent that people ask what will most benefit student outcomes. I believe that the composition of the school board or the method of its selection is far less important than whether it is governing effectively.

Advocates of an elected board have embraced democracy and argued for parity with other Illinois school districts. One can agree with them on these beliefs — as I do — and yet push further, to ensure that the board, however it is selected, governs the district in a way that delivers educational experiences that work better for all of our students.

This is especially crucial right now. Recent results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that our students’ current achievement has been set back by the multiple effects of the pandemic. We must ensure this unfinished learning does not lead to a loss of future opportunity, especially given the challenges many of our students face accessing post-secondary education.

Our students need us to govern effectively, and there are tangible, evidence-based, and feasible steps to move in this direction. The steps are both well-defined and adaptable to local context, and with commitment and focus, can be accomplished in six months or less. We owe it to our students not to be distracted from these steps toward effectiveness by political preference, power dynamics, or adult needs.

Just as a classroom teacher assesses their students’ learning, the school board and the public will be able to see and monitor progress towards these outcomes in the whole district, allowing for adjustment and improvement along the way to deliver our students what they deserve.

We must ensure that board members, regardless of the selection process, are informed about their role, and skilled in how to govern to get results for our students. They must be ready to listen to the community, set clear goals, and be held accountable for student outcomes.

And the community must engage on the desired results — and not just at election time. Whether appointed or elected, I hope future board members will be selected based on their commitment, focus, energy, and ability to keep student outcomes first and foremost, rather than the opinions they embrace, the allies they bring, or promises to adopt specific methods.

If we don’t face facts about our buildings and budget, we will shortchange our students.

Like many large urban districts, our student enrollment has changed significantly — including an almost 20% drop in the last decade. While it’s helpful to understand the reasons for this decline, I believe it’s most important to best serve the students who are enrolled in the district now.

That won’t be easy with a finite and inadequate budget, as measured by the evidence-based funding methodology adopted by the state of Illinois. Data compiled by the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University shows that in some schools we spend far more per student while providing neither strong learning outcomes nor the rich and broad experiences they deserve. Our budget is currently balanced, thanks to a once-in-a-generation infusion of federal COVID relief. But as a recent report shows, in just a few years, continuing to do what we’ve always done will lead to annual deficits of hundreds of millions of dollars.

It is a time to choose: between preserving features of how the district has worked in the past and ensuring that our students’ futures are secure. We can’t move our buildings, but we can choose policies and spending to give our students the best possible educational experience we can with the resources and population we have.

At some point, choices to keep our existing buildings, addresses, or school names will impede the quality of students’ educational experience and their learning outcomes. While those spaces may have value to a person or a community, we can’t put that in front of whether our students are safe, learning, and thriving. We must look forward to their future.

One key lever that CPS could apply is making budget projections more visible. This form of long-term financial planning is a best practice recommended by the Government Finance Officers Association and is used by both the City of Chicago, under the direction of both Mayor Emanuel and Mayor Lightfoot, and Cook County.

When each of our students may be with our district for 14 years, a long-term perspective is essential. We are in a car heading for a fiscal cliff. While turning the car off our well-traveled road may be a bit bumpy, the reality of our finite resources means that the only alternative to making changes now is to turn abruptly in several years — causing nausea or injury.

Our choices will determine how well we deliver what our students need and deserve.

Like any big event in our own lives — a graduation, a wedding, or the birth of a child — this moment of governance transition may bring stress, but it also brings the joy of possibility. This is another opportunity to deliver what our students need and deserve. But if we don’t face and accept our current reality, it will be hard for us to change it.

To change, to adapt, to grow is hard — so hard most people don’t even try. But we can do hard things. And we owe it to our students to do so. Their futures, especially those most vulnerable and who are currently furthest from opportunity, are in the balance.

Sendhil Revuluri is a parent of two CPS students, a former teacher, and has served as vice president of the Chicago Board of Education since June 2019. He is stepping down this month.

58% of NYC charter schools shrank during COVID, even as the sector grew overall

2022-12-05T11:00:00+00:00

Before the pandemic, Principal Laurie Midgette’s Brooklyn charter school maintained a waitlist 300 names deep. But over the past three years, demand has receded, and her school’s enrollment has dropped by 16%.

It’s forced her to dial up recruitment efforts, advertising in movie theaters and on bus stops. With more open seats, the school is in the process of enrolling about 35 asylum-seeking students who recently arrived in New York.

“This is definitely, for us, a new phenomena,” said Midgette, who runs Cultural Arts Academy Charter School in Brownsville, referring to enrollment drops.

For years, New York City’s charter schools have been known for their steady growth and long waitlists. Even as the number of K-12 students in the city’s district schools plunged about 9% since 2019, charter schools grew by 8% over the same period.

But that overall growth obscures an important part of the story: 58% of the city’s charter schools shrank over the past three years, not including schools that opened or closed during that time. (The official enrollment data sometimes groups multiple campuses under the same charter school.) Some of the city’s flagship networks are also struggling to fill all their campuses, including Uncommon Schools and Success Academy, the city’s largest charter operator.

“There’s a misconception that charter schools aren’t getting hurt by enrollment during the pandemic. But we clearly, clearly did — no question,” said Ron Tabano, the principal and CEO of John V. Lindsay Wildcat Academy Charter School, which saw its enrollment decline 26% over the past three years. (Tabano said enrollment rebounded somewhat this year, though official counts are not yet available for the 2022-23 school year.)

The declines on many campuses also may complicate the sector’s push to lift the current state cap on charter schools in New York City, as new schools would compete to attract a shrinking student population.

The reasons for enrollment declines are complex, and there likely is not one cause. Multiple charter leaders said they’ve seen an increase in families leaving the city, a claim consistent with district data that showed a spike in the number of students who left last year. Others pointed to broader demographic trends, including falling birth rates, and even competition from new charters in certain neighborhoods.

Principal Laurie Midgette

Midgette, the charter school principal, said her staff surveyed the families who left during the pandemic. The same answer came up again and again: The high cost of living, especially rent, “is driving people away,” she said.

Still, the charter sector — which educates about 14% of the city’s public school students — is adding students overall. One source of that growth are grade expansions, such as a K-5 school that launches with kindergarten and adds a new grade each year. Charters that have added grades or opened have seen enrollment increase 37% since 2019, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of state data. About 4 in 10 charter schools expanded or opened over that period.

Among charter schools that are fully built out, however, enrollment has contracted by 4% over the same time frame. (Unlike charters, few district schools are adding new grade levels. But even among those that are, enrollment has fallen overall.)

Falling enrollment can have financial consequences — forcing staff layoffs or cuts to other programs such as clubs or extracurriculars. Charters are privately managed and typically fundraise, sometimes commanding hefty donations, but they depend on public funding that is largely tied to enrollment.

James Merriman, CEO of the New York City Charter School Center, said maintaining enrollment is crucial, noting that the city’s education department kept school budgets steady for much of the pandemic despite enrollment declines, a boost that charters generally did not have.

“Enrollment is especially important in the charter sector, because in our world there are no hold harmless clauses, supplemental appropriations and legislators won’t be riding over the hill to save us,” Merriman wrote in a statement. Still, he added, “despite the challenging environment, the fact is that charter enrollment grew overall.”

Some NYC charter school networks struggle with enrollment declines

Some of the city’s largest charter networks, which have helped propel the sector’s growth, are also grappling with cooling demand and enrollment declines.

Uncommon Schools, which operates 24 schools in Brooklyn, has seen its enrollment fall by nearly 4% since the 2019-2020 school year. Barbara Martinez, a spokesperson for the network, said that families leaving the city was a “primary reason” for the drop.

“We have seen declines in enrollment like most other NYC schools,” Martinez said in a statement. “We are hopeful that as the world returns to ‘normal,’ that we will see enrollment figures stabilize.”

Success Academy, the city’s largest network with 47 schools, saw enrollment dip about 1% last school year, a notable decline for a network that often boasts of its lengthy waiting lists and whose leaders have previously outlined ambitious plans to reach 100 schools. Still, Success’ enrollment over the past three years has increased nearly 12%, according to state figures. (Success officials said the state data differed from the network’s own enrollment tallies. The network’s data, which Chalkbeat could not verify in state or city reports, still shows a 1% enrollment dip last year and a 9% gain over the last three years.)

“We’ve seen demand slacken in some areas, but we have many schools that are wildly oversubscribed such as our schools in Queens, Bensonhurst and areas of the Bronx,” Ann Powell, a Success Academy spokesperson, wrote in an email. “We intend to expand in those areas.”

In a significant change, Success is also altering its admissions policies next year in ways that could help fill more seats. For the first time, officials are allowing new students from other schools to transfer to Success in the fifth and sixth grades. Network officials previously argued they could not accommodate new students beyond the fourth grade because they might be too far behind.

Powell said the network is making the admissions change because “we’ve gotten more skilled at remediating” and noted that the network has incrementally expanded its backfill policies, though Success remains an outlier as other networks typically backfill across most grade levels.

Ray Domanico, a senior fellow and director of education policy at the conservative-leaning Manhattan Institute, said tweaks to admission policies on top of aggressive recruitment weeks after the school year started indicates that charters are competing for a shrinking pool of students, especially as birth rates have declined.

“They’re getting fewer kids and they want to maintain the size of their network and they want to get the funding they need to keep their teachers in place,” Domanico said. “It suggests that something has changed in the environment, which is that there are fewer kids to go around.”

Enrollment drops raise questions about the NYC charter school cap

Loosening demand for seats complicates a long-simmering argument about whether charter schools should be allowed to continue adding campuses in New York City. Opening new charters while the number of students stagnates or shrinks could create significant financial pressure on existing schools or even lead to closures.

For now, the sector is constrained by a quota on the number of charters that can be issued — 290 — which was reached in 2019. But many charter leaders and advocates have pushed to raise the limit, arguing that families should have many schools to choose from.

“Our goal is to provide an excellent education to the highest number of students possible — and in order to do that, we need to lift the cap,” wrote Jane Martinez Dowling, a spokesperson for KIPP, which has seen its enrollment grow during the pandemic and opened three new schools last year that were approved before the cap was reached.

That argument recently gained a powerful ally: Gov. Kathy Hochul said during a gubernatorial debate in October that she supports raising the cap, a position also held by her (since-defeated) Republican opponent, Lee Zeldin.

Raising the cap may still be a longshot, as many Democratic state lawmakers, who hold majorities in Albany and must approve the change, have resisted the idea. A spokesperson for Hochul did not respond to a request for comment about whether raising the cap is a priority.

Meanwhile, others in the charter sector have been more circumspect, including some small charter operators.

Franklin Headley, the principal of VOICE charter school in Queens, said demand for seats has become less predictable than in the past. With less certainty that all seats would be filled, the school admitted about 70 asylum-seeking children after the school year started.

Headley said it’s important that new charter schools continue to take into account where there is the most desire for seats in the application process.

“Is there parent demand for this?” Headley said. “Anybody who is considering lifting the cap, that’s the question they have to ask.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Kae Petrin is a data & graphics reporter for Chalkbeat. Contact Kae at kpetrin@chalkbeat.org.

National charter school enrollment flat after early pandemic gains, according to report

2022-11-23T18:43:28+00:00

Earl Phalen was stunned when the first full pandemic school year brought more than 170 new students flooding into Phalen Leadership Academy, a charter school network that spans several states.

“That was not at all what we anticipated,” he said. “We weren’t doing the things that would get us [new] enrollment. We didn’t have student enrollment coordinators out at events — because there weren’t any events.”

What occurred at Phalen Leadership Academy in the 2020-21 school year followed a national trend: Charter school enrollment spiked in the early days of the pandemic. A year later, in the 2021-22 school year, national charter school enrollment numbers barely budged, according to a report from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

The steadying trend shows the initial enrollment jump was not just a “fluke,” as the hundreds of thousands of students who transitioned into charter systems did not exit en masse a year later, said Debbie Veney, one the report’s authors.

Veney believes the pandemic has “spurred parents to become more involved in the way that their kids were being educated.”

Between the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years, charter schools saw their enrollment jump more than 7% — an increase of nearly 240,000 students nationwide — at the same time that public school districts lost more than 1.4 million students. A year later, enrollment numbers at charter schools fell by just a fraction of a percent, representing a decrease of about 1,400 students, according to the report.

Across the nation, students have left traditional public schools for home schooling, charter schools, or other education options. Others have left for unknown reasons.

The NAPCS report looked at 41 states, isolating the sample to those with charter schools and data spanning all three school years. The national trend flattened even as individual states experienced dramatic rises and drops in enrollment.

In Oklahoma, for example, nearly 22,000 students left charter schools in the most recent school year — more than a quarter of the state’s overall charter school population and over half of the prior year’s enrollment spike. But that drop was offset by other states, like Florida, where just over 20,000 new students entered the charter system, increasing the state’s charter population by about 6%.

Some of the gains in charter school enrollment have been attributed to explosive growth among virtual charter schools, which have drawn some criticism and questions about their quality.

Veney pointed to Oklahoma as one state with a large virtual charter school enrollment, adding it was a place where the spiking pandemic gains “did some right sizing.” The NAPCS report did not compare enrollment changes between virtual and brick-and-mortar charter schools because not all states made distinctions in their data, she added.

In ten other states, virtual school enrollment continued to climb in the most recent school year, The 74 reported. (The report did not break out enrollment in virtual charter schools.)

Veney said the large number of students leaving public education altogether was alarming.

“The max exodus is an incredibly important indicator of where parents are sitting on the issue, and I think it’s incumbent on us in the public education space to create better options for students,” Veney said. “Because if we don’t, we’re just going to lose them.”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering national issues. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools’ application deadline is next week. Here’s what you need to know.

2022-11-30T00:49:11+00:00

Updated November 29, 2022 to reflect that Chicago Public Schools shifted the deadline back one week from Friday, December 2 to Thursday, December 8.

The deadline to apply for a public school in Chicago for next fall is fast approaching.

Chicago Public Schools has tried to simplify the process for going to a school that’s different from your assigned neighborhood school. Since 2017, there’s been a single online application known as GoCPS.

Still, the task of researching options, preparing required documents, and finalizing school choices dominates the minds of many parents and students every fall.

“It’s really confusing before you understand it,” said Grace Lee Sawin, founder of Chicago School GPS, which helps families navigate the public and private school application process in Chicago.

Whether you’ve been working on reviewing and fine-tuning your application since September 21 (when the portal first opened), or you’re just getting started, here’s what you need to know before hitting submit next Thursday, Dec. 8 by 5 p.m.

Preschool

If you’re the parent or guardian of a child who will be 3 or 4 next September, hang tight! You don’t need to worry about getting a spot in a public Chicago preschool until spring.

Chicago Public Schools used to require families hoping for a preschool seat at one of the sought-after public Montessori schools – Drummond, Oscar Mayer, and Suder – and Inter-American Magnet School to apply in December for the following school year. But now those schools will be part of the city’s universal preschool application used for all 4-year-old programs at neighborhood elementary schools and community-based preschools that serve mostly 3-year-olds.

While some programs may fill up quickly, officials have said there are now enough seats for all families who want a spot.

Elementary School

Half of all public elementary school students in Chicago go to a school that’s different from their zoned one. Chicago Public Schools has operated dozens of sought-after magnet schools for decades, most of which were created to promote integration.

Even after a federal judge ended the desegregation consent decree in 2009, CPS has continued to offer open enrollment. Families can choose from magnets, charters, gifted, and classical schools, and even neighborhood schools with space to take students who do not live in their attendance boundary.

A full list of magnet and neighborhood schools available online details any specialty programs offered, such as dual language and International Baccalaureate. Applicants can choose up to 20 of these schools and may get multiple offers next spring.

CPS also operates gifted and classical schools – also known as selective enrollment elementary schools – that require a test to get in. These tests are done in-person and can be scheduled once you hit submit. Families can rank up to six of these programs on their application.

Charter schools admit students via lottery. For magnet and selective enrollment elementary schools, students are admitted by a lottery that also takes into account the neighborhood a student lives in. This replaced race-based admissions. Every neighborhood is assigned to one of four socioeconomic tiers based on several factors, including median income and homeownership rates. You can look up your tier using the district’s school locator map. (Select “CPS Tiers” as an overlay.)

Middle School

Chicago sixth graders can apply to seven advanced middle school programs. These Academic Centers operate inside existing high schools, some of which are also selective enrollment: Brooks, Kenwood, Lane Tech, Lindblom, Morgan Park, Taft, and Whitney Young.

Students have to have at least a 2.5 GPA and take a test that is similar to – but not the same as – the high school entrance exam. Applicants can rank up to six of these programs and will get one or zero offers.

Once enrolled, students essentially work on their high school coursework beginning in seventh grade and can usually finish all their basic graduation requirements by the end of sophomore year. They also do not have to reapply in ninth grade to stay enrolled at the high school that houses the Academic Center.

High School

According to district enrollment data, 70% of teens in CPS attend a high school that is not their zoned school. This system of choice has been in place for many years and offers dozens of options from rigorous college prep programs to fine and performing arts to career and technical education.

Students used to have to sign up to take the high school entrance exam on one of several weekend dates. Now, all current CPS eighth grade students take the exam on the same day at their elementary school. This year, everyone took it on Oct. 26 and private school students took the test on one of two weekends in early November. Results started arriving in students’ inboxes last Friday.

At the 11 selective enrollment schools, students are admitted based on their score on the admissions exam and their grades in seventh grade. The first 30% of seats go to the top scoring students. The remaining 70% seats are divided among four socioeconomic tiers. Offers are still made to the top scoring students in each of the four tiers. The scores needed to get into each school last year are now posted online.

Earlier this year, CPS said it plans to overhaul the admissions policy for the selective enrollment high schools to make it more equitable. But the board of education has yet to vote on any changes.

Not all high schools require a test and, like elementary schools, students can choose to go to a neighborhood high school that’s not their assigned one. There is a list of all high school options and their admissions requirements online. Applicants can rank up to six selective enrollment schools and 20 other choices.

Come spring, eighth grade students can get up to two offers – one from a selective enrollment high school and one from among their other high school choices. It is possible they get no offers. A second application round occurs after offers go out in the spring, and students can always attend their zoned neighborhood school.

Transfers

While kindergarten and ninth grade are the main years when students enroll in a new school, students can apply through GoCPS at any grade.

“You are never stuck at a school,” Sawin, with Chicago School GPS, said. “If it’s not a good fit for whatever reason, then this is the beauty of Chicago, you have so many options.”

While fewer spots may be available in other non-entry grades, there are also fewer applicants.

“You’re never too late,” Sawin said. “There’s always attrition and people do make changes.”

For selective enrollment high schools, transfers can still be competitive, but students don’t have to take the high school entrance exam again. Usually, applicants are required to submit their transcript, a personal essay, and letters of recommendation. These schools, such as Whitney Young, post information about transferring in 10th through 12th grade on their websites.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Denver board’s inaction on school closures cheered, jeered

2022-11-19T00:48:44+00:00

To some, the Denver school board’s decision not to close any schools next year is a victory for the students, parents, and teachers who pleaded to save their schools and a rebuke of a process they said was top-down and rushed.

“The ‘no’ vote demonstrated the will of the community,” said Milo Marquez, a Denver Public Schools parent and co-chair of the Latino Education Coalition.

To others, the board’s action — or rather, inaction — is bad for students who will now remain in under-enrolled schools and amounts to kicking the can down the road.

“By not taking any action, I think they’ve put off the inevitable,” said Rosemary Rodriguez, a former board member and co-chair of EDUCATE Denver.

Either way, the decision marks the next stage of the journey rather than the end of a road that has been full of starts and stops and twists and turns.

First, a prior board acknowledged that declining enrollment is a problem and tasked the superintendent with consolidating small schools. The district released a list of 19 schools, but community groups reacted with concern and Superintendent Alex Marrero scrapped it.

Switching tactics, he formed a community committee to come up with criteria for which schools to close. He applied that criteria — schools with 215 students or fewer — last month and released a new list of 10 schools to close. After pushback, he narrowed his recommendation last week to five. He narrowed it again Thursday to two.

But the school board said no. In a 6-1 vote Thursday, they rejected Marrero’s whittled-down recommendation. They also revoked the prior board’s directive, sending Marrero back to the drawing board on addressing declining enrollment, which they all agree is a problem.

The superintendent said hard decisions are coming

In an interview Friday, Marrero said the ‘no’ vote doesn’t make the problem go away. Denver schools are funded per pupil, and he said some will still be too small to afford robust programming. The district will have to keep subsidizing them, which will eat at its budget. On Thursday, Marrero said the district is facing a $23.5 million deficit for next year.

“Will we go bankrupt next year? No,” Marrero said in Friday’s interview. “But anybody who has their eye on the prize is going to say, ‘That did not make financial sense.’ It doesn’t make educational sense, either.”

Marrero said as far as he is concerned, there are still 10 schools on a list. And it’s likely that he’ll soon come back to the board with a recommendation to close the two smallest of those schools — 115-student Math and Science Leadership Academy and 93-student Denver Discovery School — because they won’t have the budget to operate anymore.

“The reality is, at several points in the near future, we’re all going to have to make unpopular decisions,” Marrero said. “Voting no is easy to do. It’s a very popular thing to do.

“But sometimes we have to make decisions that are unpopular, misunderstood, or taken out of context in certain cases, and that comes with the territory.”

Marrero rejected an accusation made by at least one board member that he whittled down his recommendations in order to get a majority of the board to agree, though he said he assumed closing fewer schools “would be an easier thing to digest.”

“Under all likelihood, if it passed, I would have said, ‘We got two. Here come the next three.’”

Board and community criticize the process

In voting no, several board members criticized the process the superintendent used to arrive at his recommendations while at the same time praising him as the right person for the job.

Community members also criticized the process, saying the district did a poor job explaining to families the financial and educational reasons for the proposed closures.

“It doesn’t appear as if they understand what the problem is and why they’re doing this in the first place,” said Van Schoales, senior policy director at Keystone Policy Center.

In contrast, neighboring Jeffco Public Schools shared extensive information about each of its under-enrolled schools over the summer, then released a recommended closure list in August. Board members voted unanimously last week to close 16 elementary schools, overriding the pleas of some parents and teachers.

In Aurora, where the district has engaged in a multiyear process to close schools in regions with declining enrollment while planning for growth in other areas, the school board did vote down two recommended closures, only to approve them a few months later. Superintendent Rico Munn simply returned with the same recommendation, saying nothing had changed.

The Denver board’s main complaint was that the closure recommendations came from Marrero and not from the community. Marrero disagreed; he said community members from across Denver came up with the closure criteria. But board members said parents and teachers from the 10 under-enrolled schools should have been the ones brainstorming solutions.

“Today we have shown through our values that we don’t close schools without community leading us through this process,” Vice President Auon’tai Anderson said after Thursday’s vote.

Board pledges to give more direction

Several members said the board shares part of the blame. Scott Baldermann said he and others should have given clearer direction to Marrero on how to apply the school closure criteria — and, more broadly, on how to address declining enrollment — by adopting what the board calls “executive limitations,” which are policies that tell Marrero what is off limits.

In doing that, Baldermann said, “we can determine the following: Do we need to consolidate schools at all? Is the community content with smaller enrollment and fewer resources? I don’t believe the answer is yes. But we need to ask.”

Aside from closing schools, Baldermann floated other ways to address under-enrolled schools, including adjusting school boundaries and no longer funding schools per student.

Denver Board President Xóchitl Gaytán stops Vice President Auon’tai M. Anderson from continuing with his comments during a tense moment of debate Thursday.

Board President Xóchitl “Sochi” Gaytán said the district’s embrace of school choice, which allows students to apply to attend any school in Denver, has hurt district-run schools that lose students to independent charter schools with bigger marketing budgets.

“We all, as a board, need to look at, in terms of policy, how to protect our families and our students that are in these public elementary schools,” she said Thursday.

The ‘no’ vote creates uncertainty

Now that they’ve rejected Marrero’s recommendation, board members need to take the lead on what happens next, community members said.

“The board is going to have to, fairly quickly, set up a framework by which they’re going to ask the administration to act,” Rodriguez said. “Everybody is looking at DPS with concern right now.”

The next steps for the board, Gaytán said in an interview Friday, are to pass new executive limitations on declining enrollment and decide whether to pull money from the district’s budget reserves to fund the 10 under-enrolled schools for now.

“Right now, we’ve got this BAND-AID and the wound is bleeding,” Gaytán said. “We need to rip the BAND-AID off and get the surgeon to put in stitches to start the healing.”

Regardless of whether community members agree with the board’s ‘no’ vote or not, they said it has created uncertainty — not just for the 10 small schools that have been threatened with closure, but for every school in the district that could one day be in that position.

“You go from 10 schools being uncertain to now every school in DPS has to wonder how the superintendent and board is going to move forward on this and if it’s going to affect them,” said Clarence Burton, Jr., the CEO of Denver Families for Public Schools.

“That uncertainty is now spread throughout the district.”

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.