essential prek information

essential prek information

By Joyce Szuflita
Here is what you need to know about placement:
You will be ranking up to 12 choices on your MY SCHOOLS application through March 16, 2020. Don’t wait until the last min., the website often gets glitchy. Take screen shots of any trouble you have and of your final list, just in case you have difficulty. You can always fix it at the Family Welcome Center if you tell them of your troubles in a timely way.

  • The biggest misunderstanding about prek is that you will be attending at your zoned school. There are about 75,000 kids on a grade in NYC. There are around 30,000 prek seats in public schools. Those seats, depending on the neighborhood, will go first to siblings of zoned students and then occasionally to some zoned students. The other 40,000 seats will be in a variety of places; NYCEEC’s, Prek Centers, a few Un-zoned schools and a few Charter Schools.

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How do I find universal prekindergartens?

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By Joyce Szuflita
Where are the free preks in Brooklyn?
You can search on the DoE’s MY SCHOOLS platform (“browse” the directory at the bottom of the page), but it doesn’t show you zone lines which are important priorities for some programs. It will only show you schools within a mile of your house, unless you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the search and click the forward arrow. That shows you schools within two miles, but doesn’t include the previous search, so you can’t see schools in context.

Do you want a simple map that lays out the options in one place? Here is last year’s Prek Directory. I have edited and condensed it to fit in this blog.

Why don’t they publish this online? I can’t tell you. Call 311 and complain.

How to find your zoned school, 2.0

How to find your zoned school, 2.0

Updated 12/22
By Joyce Szuflita
You are not necessarily zoned to the elementary school that is closest to you. Almost everyone only has one zoned school. There are many zoned schools within a district, but you don’t have the same priority access to all of them. You are not guaranteed a seat in your zoned school at kindergarten. That is too strong a word, although the DoE will make every effort to place you in your zoned school and in most cases it is wildly likely that there will be a seat for you.

The DoE’s website is here. I recommend that you use Google Chrome (seems to be the least glitchy search engine for this).
Most parents will start and end with the “Enrollment” tab, although there is a wealth of information buried in here in many different tabs. I particularly like “About Us”: “Insights and Reporting” and “School Planning”.

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More about rezoning in D15

By Joyce Szuflita
First, as many of you know, the rezoning plan for Bococa including PS 15, 29, 32, 38, 58, 261 and 676 has been postponed to distribute information more deeply and engage the community in the planning. As far as we know the current zoned lines will be in place for 20/21 admission season. So all of you with 2015 bday kids applying for kindergarten - it will be business as usual.
Any changes will be made in the fall/winter of 2020 and take effect for kids entering the schools in fall of 2021. Any students currently attending the school at that time in K-5th grade will be unaffected by the rezoning and can remain in the school even if their home zoning status changes.

The District has announced that there will be a new rezoning effort made in Sunset Park

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the latest on the D15 rezoning

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By Joyce Szuflita
First, this map, which you can see in detail in the presentation materials is NOT final. It is very much a work in progress and may have little to no bearing on the final proposal. There are two proposals being floated; rezoning with set asides for accommodating economic diversity, and a non-zoned ‘sub-district’ plan. There is also still room for other options. The timeline is also in question.

To make this work for kindergarteners who have to apply to programs by mid Jan. the DoE has to really get moving. After they present a final plan there needs to be a little over a month of public discussion before the D15 CEC will vote to approve or not. There has been talk of a possible temporary plan (PS 32 will have capacity for an additional 436 seats in their new addition beginning in the 2020-21 school year). There has also been talk of continuing the community outreach and debate about the best way to accomplish the goals and put off the rezoning until next year.

I stayed for the break out discussions and my group was solidly advocating for the unzoned subdistrict plan because of their passionate support of the need for diversity. I think the discussions in the room were very wide ranging. You can read Chalkbeat’s very good article on the meeting here.


Ah Prek, where for art thou?

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by Joyce Szuflita
If you are looking for Prek information now and not finding it, your problem is that you are being too proactive.

Touring season for public school doesn't usually start until late Oct. The application for prek may not open until Feb. and application deadline may be in March. We don't know yet because the DoE only works in the present tense and that is too far away.

Touring the public school options will likely go through March.
Touring the NYCEEC's (preschools, Head Starts, daycares that have done the paperwork to run a UPK location) are something that will probably end in Dec/Jan.

The DoE is also moving away for their very thorough printed directories (saving trees is a good thing) to their glitchy on-line search functions (which is not such a good thing). I find the search parameters very confusing and unsatisfying. Search on a laptop if you can, use Google Chrome.

To get on the DoE’s email blasts, go here.
To scan the information currently available go here.
To browse the glitchy search function go here. Scan down to the very bottom of the page and follow the prompts.

I searched a random address and it gives me a narrow grouping around a mile radius, but I can't expand the radius. It doesn't make distinction by district, where there is priority for public schools and prek centers according to zone and/or district. When I screened for the subway line, it left off very important options. The fact is that I know the schools exist and had to click many different parameters to actively find schools that I knew I was looking for. If you are not in this position, you would miss important options. If I didn't know they existed I might never have found them

When you click on the program (by the star at the bottom of the listing). It doesn't give you any information about admissions priorities - which I know the different kinds of schools have. You have to dig into the Quality Snapshot to see how many seats are available, to give you an idea about whether you have a chance of getting in or not. Enrollment, if you are reading, these are some of my concerns.

I am hoping that when we get closer to application time, that more information will be available.

D15 rezoning and diversity- listen up

D15 rezoning and diversity- listen up

By Joyce Szuflita
Those of you who live in the part of Brooklyn Heights located in D15, Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens and Red Hook, you need to be aware of this now (zones 261, 29, 38, 58, 32 15 and 676). I don’t want to hear -and I will- about how you were surprised by the rezoning plan in the fall and how fast this went down. It is way more transparent than I have seen with previous rezoning, with much more attempt at public engagement. Engage now! When you drag your feet, it is not their fault. There have been three public meetings so far (since April) and there will be several more, gathering parent feedback as well as informing the neighborhood. If you aren’t participating or staying aware, I don’t want to hear complaining.

Whether you are there or not, one of these things is going to go down. It would be better if you had a say. You may not get what you want, but you may get what you need - Mick Jagger

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fall is the season of misinformation and conspiracies

fall is the season of misinformation and conspiracies

By Joyce Szuflita
Misinformation:

It is becoming common practice during the NYC High School admissions process (and in District 15, also at the middle school level) for schools to widely and openly advise students to rank their school #1 on the application to gain a placement to that school. This is a blind match. The schools never know how a student has ranked them and it is in the student's best interest to rank schools in order of their true preference without being disadvantaged. When the schools advise families to rank them #1, they are giving misleading and frustrating advice that takes the student's power away and advantages the school.

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Moving? You need to read the Chancellor's Regulations

Moving? You need to read the Chancellor's Regulations

By Joyce Szuflita
From time to time, the Chancellor's Regulations are adjusted, and they make for pretty interesting reading (at least to me). I am interested mainly in Volume A which addresses student-related issues, from admissions to promotion. Issues covered range from safety, behavior and discipline, flea markets, transportation and naming public schools.

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"kindergarten connect" conspiracy theories

By Joyce Szuflita
It is beginning.

I am starting to hear the inevitable creative, crazy, uninformed ways to strategise the Kindergarten Connect process to totally mess up the ranking of your potential kindergarten options. Can we all stop and take a breath? If the city wanted to create an elaborate, passive-aggressive algorithm that was designed to screw you, why would they go to all this trouble? Couldn't they just do that on their own? Frankly, if they were that diabolically dedicated to ruining your life, the whole city would run way better. See this for what it is - a very blunt instrument that assigns seats with certain priorities by random. Do you feel lucky? The vast majority of zoned kids will have a seat in their zoned schools if they want them. Most of you looking for out of zone seats will be lucky if you just keep your heads and stay in the game until the last wait list placements are made.

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Don’t shout “algorithm conspiracy!” in crowed middle school

It has been brought to my attention that there is a belief among 8th grade parents that the students who score into the specialized HS get their pick of the high schools and the rest of the students get their left-overs.

To the best of my knowledge this is untrue. I have been chasing the details of this process for years, and here is what I understand from talking to the people who understand the algorithm, the timing of the running of the algorithm and the people at the DOE who work in the secret magic cave where the computers do their work.

First, just to throw a trickle of water on this fire, the DOE can be accused of a lot of things but no one can doubt that they go to crazy lengths to try to be fair and whether they succeed or not (and often they don’t), the conspiracy theorists can calm themselves knowing that this is one of the DOE’s first mandates.

  • Central enrollment receives everyone’s application in Dec.

  • The schools do not know how you ranked them (and they will never know). The schools look at all the students that have placed them on the app somewhere and they internally rank them. All schools “over offer” on their private wish list of students, because they know (from vast past experience) the percentages of students who will opt out for a specialized hs choice. If there is a discrepancy from year to year, there may be some overcrowding in the specialized hs or the 1in12 list school. It happens.

  • The algorithm is run for everyone in the beginning of the year and it is designed to benefit the student and their preferences. Really, I had a guy from Harvard explain it to me. It goes down the student’s list and matches them with their highest choice school that has put them on the school’s internal student wish list (plus the location priorities – that was Millennium’s fatal flaw last year) and places everyone – it doesn’t care or know who took the SHSAT, what score they got or who their favorite Beatle is.

  • In January the DOE opens new schools. It is possible for all students to resubmit an application to include a new school or two. It is an opportunity for students who have moved into the city after the app deadline and independent school students who have lost their placements to try for a seat.

  • In a totally separate process, the SHSAT is scored and the students are placed into the specialized hs by their test score. Then the DOE sends out a letter with the specialized hs seat and the 1 in 12 hs seat for the student to decide which one they would prefer. Remember, all the other students are already placed, they just don’t hear about their seat early. I know for certain that there are students who are placed in specialized high schools who do not get their first choice. I know for certain that there are occasionally some kids who are offered a seat in a specialized hs who don’t receive a 1in12 placement at all. Bad luck, just like the approx.8% of students who aren’t placed in the main round. Lucky for them that they have a specialized or Laguardia as a safety. Here’s where people feel that the specialized students are getting an advantage, in very rare cases the numbers are tweaked slightly if a 1in12 school’s popularity with specialized students will cause an unusual overcrowding, but this is very, very rare because the DOE is already very good at predicting popularity from past numbers and the schools have already considered this in their "over offer" numbers.

  • The algorithm is run again for all remaining students to include these changes, but it is not a giant reshuffle, just fitting in students here and there (do you know anyone who ever resubmitted an app in January?) There would be very little movement if any at the selective school level. It seems that what happened at Bard last year was when the second algorithm was run there was a glitch that said it was full and the previously placed students were dropped. When it became clear, those students where offered seats at Bard even though they had been placed elsewhere.

Note: I asked the guy from Harvard about this scenario about ranking your choices on the app.:

Me: What if a student ranked their 12 choices and put Beacon as #12, and for some reason his 1 to 11 choices didn’t have him on their wish list but Beacon did.

Harvard Guy: He would be placed in Beacon.

The reason that doesn’t happen is only because of the large numbers of eager applicants trying for a small school placement. A small school with many hundreds of qualified applicants placing it as their first choice will likely fill the school before it can reach a lower choice. It is not that the school is being exclusive, it is just that they are lucky to be popular, and we all know that being popular is a big deal in high school.