Guest Post: Liz Rosenberg on Pre-K Admissions

Today, Liz Rosenberg is a featured guest blogger on the DOE's centralized admissions for Pre-Kindergarten programs in NYC.

Liz Rosenberg said, "Late in February 2008, the DOE announced they were ending schools-based admissions for early childhood programs. Pre-K admissions would be centralized immediately; kindergarten would follow in 2009. This meant that parents would now fill out a single application, on which they would rank their school choices, and mail it to a PO box in Pennsylvania, where the DOE had outsourced the data-entry work. For its part, the DOE was supposed to take the application and measure the family’s preferences against its own ranked criteria to come up with a single school to assign the child to.

With some trepidation, I dutifully mailed out my daughter’s pre-K application. Knowing that there were fewer seats than four-year-olds in my zone, I’d chosen to put my zoned school first. (Any seats remaining after sibling assignment—the DOE’s first priority of admission—were to go first to children residing in a school’s geographical zone.) It seemed silly to even write any more choices, since all of the other schools in my area—including those that I preferred— would fill up with the zoned kids who chose them first.

In late May, the horror stories started.

People were saying (and posting to listservs) that children who should have had priority spots in their older siblings’ schools had instead been denied entry altogether.  Others reported out-of-zone kids admitted ahead of in-zone residents. Some people simply got no response at all. To add insult to injury, there was no one to turn to for help. Schools said the centralized process left them as out of the loop as parents; central office email went unanswered and voicemail boxes—if you could figure out a number—were full.

As I heard more and more of these anecdotes, it became clear that we parents needed to let the DOE know that the process had not worked this year. In fact, it needed to be stopped. With assistance from my good friend and fellow parent of a four year-old, Kemala Karmen, I wrote a petition (later posted on insideschools.org and on various listservs) holding the DOE accountable for its mistakes and demanding that the process be handed back to the schools. (It should be noted that the petition acknowledged flaws in traditional school-based admissions as well—and suggested avenues for improvement; our point was to hold onto the benefits of school-based admissions while making the process more family-friendly.)

Once we had garnered 500 signatures, I approached Liz Sciabarra, head of the DOE’s  enrollment office (OSEPO). Before sending the petition directly to the Chancellor, I wanted to see if she would be willing to meet and discuss what had gone wrong. To her credit, Ms.Sciabarra responded immediately, inviting me to gather a group of 5-10 parents for a meeting. I searched the web and contacted parents who had posted about their frustrations relative to their own child’s seat or who had concerns about families with even less information or access than they did. In the end, 7 parents from 6 different districts formed our core group. We each researched our local schools to find out how centralization had impacted our various communities.  Among our findings: the number of English Language Learners applying for pre-k vastly declined in some schools, while other schools that normally had full rosters were missing more than a class-worth of kids. Clearly, many parents had simply been shut out of the process.

As the date for the Sciabarra meeting approached, we prepared an outline of talking points via conference calls and email. These helped us stay focused in our meeting and showed the DOE that we were not just angry parents who wanted pre-k slots for our kids, but a group of parents who had evidence that the process had not been fair, especially to students who need pre-k the most. We expected change and action on their part.

To make sure that our group was representing a spectrum of stories, we reached out to the Office of the Public Advocate and others who had been collecting parents’ complaints. For our group of parents, who are mostly new to parent advocacy, it was great to talk to folks who knew the players, the history and the impact of the policy. Our strategy was to try to be as direct as possible by going straight to the source – the DOE. Newspaper articles on the issue had been written, but it seemed clear that without understanding the real impact of this policy on families, change would not occur. This was not just about the DOE’s errors, this was about which policy is best for most NYC public school parents. Do we want more options, or fewer? Do we want to deal with a big bureaucracy or our local school?

Fast forward to November 2008.

Liz Sciabarra and her colleagues have now met with us three times. We have become her go-to group to talk about improving pre-k admissions. Joel Klein initially declined a meeting with us, then requested one, and ultimately made a decision about the future of pre-k and kindergarten admissions without speaking to us. He assured us he would hear our views as represented by Ms. Sciabarra.

The DOE announced it would not go forward with centralizing kindergarten admissions this year–a big victory for parents of 4-year olds. Centralized pre-k admissions will continue, something that was clear to us from our first meetings with Sciabarra. However, that process promises to be far better than last year’s fiasco because 1030 parents signed a petition and enabled a smaller group of parents to influence policy.

We owe a special thanks to Tomas Hunt of the Public Advocate's office, Margaret Kelley of the Brooklyn Borough President's office, and to a number of parent coordinators (keeping their names confidential is probably best). Our members, Dionne Grayman, Angela Pruitt, Jeffrey Ng, Irene Guiter-Mazer, Kemala Karmen and Donya Rhett will continue to advocate for fair and equitable elementary admissions."

Liz Rosenberg has worked inside and in support of the New York City public schools for 13 years. For the past 6 years her work has focused on new school design and support, specifically professional development of teachers and school leaders. Her specialty is reading and writing instruction. As a teacher to 9-12th graders she designed units and lessons that helped students examine and explore issues of democracy and social justice in literature and the humanities. She fights for change in the public schools because she believes so deeply in their ability to ignite imaginations and create steps to success for the families who most need them.  

Comments

[Joyce Szuflita]

Thanks for this post. It was extremely informative on the progress of parent involvement in the process. Thank you to the parents for their advocacy. As an early reporter on this story http://mysidewalkchalk.blogspot.com/2008/05/pre-k.html
I am happy to see that some changes were able to be implemented.

[Dorit Sasson]

This is a very important story with lots of lessons and reasons to take proactive measures. Shame to hear though that the parents of preK ELLs who needed the services were denied the most. At there are some people behind public policy doors who care.

Dorit Sasson
Creator of the New Teacher Coaching Club
"Become a More Successful and Confident Teacher in 2009!"
www.newteacherresourcecenter.com

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