PS 20 and Sean Keaton

Inside schools just reported,

"Sean Keaton, former principal of PS 20 in Fort Greene, was acquitted in a Brooklyn court last week of "menacing in the third degree," a charge stemming from an altercation with a teacher in the principal's office in 2009, Department of Education officials confirmed. But the DOE would not say whether Keaton would return to his post or whether the interim acting principal, Lena Barbera, would stay.

 Go to insideschools.org for the rest of the story.

PS 110 in Greenpoint

By Joyce Szuflita
PS 110 in Greenpoint is a wonderful school.

Why?

• an experienced and gifted principal who has been a teacher in the school for decades. She fosters collaboration with her talented staff and is very receptive to parents.

• a beautiful new yard and computer lab

• an energetic and creative science teacher who loves her subject and translates it to the kids. The first day they play with the materials to get familiar with them and guess what they may be about. The next day they start to work with the FOSS curriculum.

• a long standing partnership with Mcgolrick Park where the students do planting and supplement their science curriculum.

• music teacher who starts teaching with recorders, then the kids move to Music and the Brain on keyboards and then guitars

• great dance program that includes ballroom dance, African dancing and drumming, Mark Morris and square dance

• integrated art in the classrooms and a partnership with VTS (Visual Thinking Strategies) which used fine art to teach critical thinking skills

• a new dual language French program starting in 2011 (4/29/11 - PS 110 has found a French teacher but there were not enough fluent French speakers to create a dual language classroom. They are currently working on making it a French enrichment)

ps 9 fights city hall and wins

By Joyce Szuflita
PS 9, located at 80 Underhill Ave. has spent the past several years rallying the community and becoming the "go to" program in Prospect Heights for new families. All of this momentum seemed to be doomed when the city announced that they were phasing out MS 571, colocated in the building (not bringing in a new 6th grade in 2011), and adding Brooklyn East Collegiate Charter School from outside of the district to the building. Since schools need to share facilities but don't use them at the same time, it would mean that strained facilities would now need to be shared between 3 programs, instead of 2. The DOE's plan was a very strangely inequitable allocation of space. From what I saw, the time allocated to the common spaces didn't correspond in any way to the numbers being served. What followed was months of contentious meetings.

A few days ago a group of parent advocates from PS 9 won an appeal to the New York State Commissioner of Education, David M. Steiner, requesting an annulment of the vote by the Panel on Education Policy (PEP). "The Commissioner found that the DOE did not comply with NY Education Law, and ordered that 'the resolution of the PEP approving the co-location of the Brooklyn East Collegiate Charter School in the K009 building is annulled.' The Commissioner further ordered the 'DOE to be prohibited from moving forward with any aspect of the proposal regarding the co-location until the DOE complies with the requirements of the NY Education Law. Specifically, the Commissioner found that the DOE's Building Utilization Plan for the co-location failed to address 'how the proposed allocation of shared spaces ensures equitable and comparable use of impacted students.'"

Essentially, the DOE is back to square one. It would have to substantially revise its Building Utilization Plan and hold a new vote for proposal, which could still happen. What PS 9 now needs to do is to complete their plan for a k-8 expansion.

update on PS 133

By Joyce Szuflita
I have been anxiously following the progress of PS 133. A new building is going up to accommodate the 300 seat K-5 school as well as 600 additional seats on 4th Ave. and Butler St. It is very unusual for the School Construction Authority to be late with a project, but the bad winter weather as well as drastic capital funding cuts have conspired to delay the opening until fall of 2013. This is a grave disappointment for the neighborhood which desperately needs more seats in both District 13 and 15 (the School Districts which provided the capital funds to build the school).

PS 133 is currently being housed in the St. Thomas Aquinas School building on 4th Ave. and 8th St. The good news is that the Archdiocese which had not been willing to discuss extending the lease on the St. Thomas Aquinas School building has agreed to extend the lease for an additional year. They have also said that they will negotiate for an ongoing lease to the building. Parents - now is the time to lobby for this building to become the Prek/Kindergarten Early Childhood Center that the district so desperately needs!

You should also contact the District 15 and District 13 CEC (Community Education Council). These are the community organizations that control zoning and are the parents' official voice to the DOE.

107 wait-list

By Joyce Szuflita
Parents of prospective PS 107 kindergarteners in the south slope have been waiting on pins and needles to find out if their children will have a seat in the school in fall of 2011. There has been a wait-list of over 40 families who have actively been lobbying for relief and assistance in finding appropriate seats for their kindergarteners. Parents feel that they were blindsided and weren't able to prepare for this last minute wait-listing. If they had some warning, they could have gotten on the wait-lists at nearby programs (which are currently closed), applied for lottery or independent programs and lobbied for changes that could helped the population at the school. They are not the only ones, according to different reports, PS 39 and 196 among others are over capacity with in-zone families. In the past the children from PS 196 have been the only District 15 population that the DOE has had to place in other schools. Last year they were sent to PS 172, PS 124, PS 32 and PS 94.

One of the points that the community has been making is that the school had petitioned to remove the one prek class in the building to accommodate the k overflow with a new kindergarten classroom. The request was denied, but it appears now that it may be moved to a separate location. There was movement a couple days ago when 25 children came off the list. Reports are unclear about whether the school consolidated an upper grade class to open up a new classroom or whether the prek will be moved. So far there has not been much movement from parents enrolling their children in private school. There may be some relief when the gifted and talented placements as well as lottery schools (BNS, the Children's School and the Charter schools) are made.

Because of capacity laws (only 110 children can occupy the cafeteria at a time) the kindergarten classes will eat lunch in their classrooms. Lunch shifts run from 10:30 to 1:10. Unfortunately, this is not unusual.