http://www.publicadvocatescorner.com/advocates_corner/2009/01/guest-post-liz-rosenberg-on-prek-admissions.html Today, Liz Rosenberg is a featured guest blogger on the DOcentralized 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. en-us http://www.typepad.com/ http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification Tue, 06 Jan 2009 13:40:48 -0500 http://www.publicadvocatescorner.com/advocates_corner/2009/01/guest-post-liz-rosenberg-on-prek-admissions.html?cid=6a00e5522f7f0b8834010536ffb819970b#comment-6a00e5522f7f0b8834010536ffb819970b Online poker http://www.publicadvocatescorner.com/advocates_corner/2009/01/guest-post-liz-rosenberg-on-prek-admissions.html?cid=6a00e5522f7f0b8834010536ffb819970b#comment-6a00e5522f7f0b8834010536ffb819970b Sun, 01 Feb 2009 17:34:03 -0500 <p>Oh, its great!</p> http://www.publicadvocatescorner.com/advocates_corner/2009/01/guest-post-liz-rosenberg-on-prek-admissions.html?cid=6a00e5522f7f0b8834010536be40e1970c#comment-6a00e5522f7f0b8834010536be40e1970c Dorit Sasson http://www.publicadvocatescorner.com/advocates_corner/2009/01/guest-post-liz-rosenberg-on-prek-admissions.html?cid=6a00e5522f7f0b8834010536be40e1970c#comment-6a00e5522f7f0b8834010536be40e1970c Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:54:37 -0500 <p>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.</p> <p>Dorit Sasson<br /> Creator of the New Teacher Coaching Club<br /> &quot;Become a More Successful and Confident Teacher in 2009!&quot;<br /> www.newteacherresourcecenter.com </p> http://www.publicadvocatescorner.com/advocates_corner/2009/01/guest-post-liz-rosenberg-on-prek-admissions.html?cid=6a00e5522f7f0b8834010536ae7ed0970b#comment-6a00e5522f7f0b8834010536ae7ed0970b Joyce Szuflita http://www.publicadvocatescorner.com/advocates_corner/2009/01/guest-post-liz-rosenberg-on-prek-admissions.html?cid=6a00e5522f7f0b8834010536ae7ed0970b#comment-6a00e5522f7f0b8834010536ae7ed0970b Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:09:11 -0500 <p>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 <a href="http://mysidewalkchalk.blogspot.com/2008/05/pre-k.html" rel="nofollow">http://mysidewalkchalk.blogspot.com/2008/05/pre-k.html</a><br /> I am happy to see that some changes were able to be implemented.<br /> </p>