GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Kim Gittleson is a research assistant working with Ken Hirsh, a GothamSchools community writer and financial contributor.

The IRS recently posted the Form 990 filings for the 2007-2008 school year. This form is the required federal filing for tax-exempt organizations, which include charter schools, and contains data about fundraising, spending, and leadership compensation.

Since Form 990 filings are often difficult to find, I have compiled a database of the forms for 64 out of the 80 charter schools that were open in 2008. Of the 16 schools without Form 990s on record, fourteen are schools that opened in the fall of 2008 (and thus didn’t have a 2007-2008 report). One school, East New York Preparatory Charter School, was open during the 2007-2008 school year but had no form available as of this writing. You can view a spreadsheet of the schools, their grades, the years in which they opened, and whether or not they filed a Form 990 here. The full database of all of the Form 990s is located here.

Because these filings are often lengthy and complicated, I have attempted to analyze some of the information. (more…)

I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, and I hope I get a chance to sift through it on here over the next few days. In the meantime, there’s one incident stuck on my mind.

It happened the other day when one of my students got caught with his finger up his nose by the math cluster teacher. She sent him to wash his hands and I escorted him to the sink in our classroom to help him out. He’s a third grader who can’t tie his shoes and can’t really use scissors, so I figured he might need some help using the faucet and the soap.

As he was soaping up I thought it was a good opportunity for a quick hygiene tip: “Do you know a good way to know if you’ve washed for long enough? You can sing your ABC’s while you soap.”

“I don’t know my ABC’s.”

These are the kinds statements that slap you in the face and leave you stunned. I pointed him out the the alphabet hanging on the wall and helped him sing through the ABC’s. But I could barely think of anything to say.

This particular kid isn’t even the worst reader in my class. He knows his letters and sounds. So maybe knowing his ABC’s isn’t essential (?!), but it still kind of catches you off guard to hear that in a third grade classroom, and it leaves you wondering, how did a student get here with so much missing. It’s true of basic math facts (8+2, 12-5), basic spelling and a wide range of fundamental knowledge that’s just not there. It leaves you feeling frustrated and sometimes angry, but more often than not it’s just plain heartbreaking.

• Jamaica HS is one of four more schools the DOE aims to close. (GothamSchools, Daily News, NY1, Post)
• The DOE is warning that PS 234 in Tribeca might still have a waiting list next year. (Downtown Express)
• Millennium HS’s need for a gym could end up costing the school another room. (Downtown Express)
• D.C. charter schools feel like they’re being stymied by a need for space. (Washington Post)
• Arne Duncan’s vision for school turnarounds could require as little as changing the principal. (AP)
• Denver’s increasingly contentious school board is getting help from a psychologist. (Denver Post)
• The Gates Foundation is giving $13 million to community colleges to improve instruction. (AP)
• A new report highlights the college graduation gap for poor and minority students. (Washington Post)

• Last month’s Ed Sector report about charter schools’ scaling-up problem might have been watered down.
• American students don’t know much about the American Revolution.
• Here’s a state-by-state roundup of who’s doing what to get Race to the Top funds.
• Leonie Haimson says the newest school closures reflect the city’s failures, not the schools’.
• The actor who played Omar on “The Wire” used a fake address to get into Westinghouse HS. (Via Russo)
• A teacher at Manhattan’s PS 241 describes the current state of the embattled school. 
• Mildly Melancholy wonders if it’s not time for a December doldrums mental health day.
• A major anti-charter school effort is brewing in Buffalo, but Peter Murphy says the Regents will ignore it.
• New Action’s December position paper says recent years have been “a disaster” for UFT members.
• Too late for this year’s eighth-graders, the DOE is launching a “High School Ambassadors” program.
• Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer looks to be laying the groundwork for a big 2013 campaign.

James Eterno, Jamaica High School's UFT chapter leader. (GothamSchools Flickr)

The head of the union chapter at Jamaica High School said teachers there have been expecting the school’s closure for years and criticized the city for planning to open new small schools without offering help to the struggling large one.

James Eterno, a history teacher at Jamaica for 24 years, said teachers anticipated bad news after the school received a D on its progress report this year. But signs that the 1,500-student high school was in trouble had been apparent for years, he said.

In 2007, Jamaica was placed on a citywide list of schools labeled “persistently dangerous,” and letters were sent home to students and parents informing them of the designation. Enrollment dropped, Eterno said, and when Jamaica became the last choice of eighth-grade students applying to high schools, a new population of students who were less enthusiastic about school entered the school. (Eterno laid out this story in a community section post about Queens high schools back in September.) 

Of the school’s roughly 500 ninth grade students, slightly less than half did not apply to the school but were placed there after they moved to Queens, sometimes from other countries and knowing little English, Eterno said.

“What [the city] should have done and what they could have done was to give us the funding, let us lower class size, let us have reasonable guidance caseloads and let us see if it works,” Eterno said. “Then if it doesn’t work, then you can make the case to close us down.” (more…)

Jamaica High School, a long-beleaguered school in central Queens, is among four more schools the Department of Education today said it would phase out beginning at the end of the school year.

The other schools are the School for Community Research and Learning, a Bronx high school; the Academy for Collaborative Education, a middle school in the Bronx; and PS 332, a neighborhood K-8 school in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood. All four schools have poor state test scores and problems maintaining enrollment and discipline, according to the department. They join four other schools whose proposed closures were announced yesterday.

According to the school governance law passed in August, the proposed closures must be given public hearings and approved by the city school board, known as the Panel for Educational Policy. The panel has never rejected a DOE policy proposal.

At more than 1,500 students, Jamaica is the largest school the department has so far this year indicated it would close. It has jumped on and off of the state’s list of “persistently dangerous” schools, and its graduation rate has hovered below 50 percent. This year, it has more than 500 ninth-graders but fewer than 200 twelfth-graders, according to DOE enrollment data. (more…)

If you rolled your eyes after reading the title of this article, you are either an 8th grader, the family of an 8th grader, or a member of a high school admissions committee. While the gut-wrenching process of deciding where to apply will soon be coming to an end for current 8th grade students — at least on the side that you actually have some control over, the process is only intensifying for those of us in high schools.

When 8th graders turn their applications in to their guidance counselors in the next few weeks, it marks the beginning of a process that is as intimidating for the high schools as it is for those students awaiting the results. Over the next several weeks and months, we will continue to host tours and open houses to ensure that families that want to make changes to their applications have the information they need to do so. Simultaneously, we will begin to review applicants’ responses to our online admissions activity and establish the systems and meetings dates for our admissions committee, which will begin its daunting work after the holiday break.

Once middle school counselors have entered students’ choices, we will be able to view the students who “applied” to our school, by listing us anywhere — from first to twelfth choice — on their application. We will never know which students put us first and really want our school, and which put us on the list as a back-up, so our only way to assess students’ true interest in our school is through the online activity that we require. (more…)

• The city announced plans to close four schools. (GothamSchools, Times, Daily News, Post, NY1, WNYC)
• A pension reform bill is raising the retirement age for new NYC teachers to 62. (Bloomberg)
• The principal of PS 273 in Brooklyn says the only thing left for her to cut are school aides. (WNYC)
• Eligibility rules are thwarting some high schools’ basketball teams as the season gets underway. (Post)
• Jay Mathews examines why a suburban parent picked a D.C. school. (Washington Post)