GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• A Staten Island teenager documented on radio her Sandy experience after not evacuating. (SchoolBook)
• Here’s a flashback to what schools might have worried about this week if not for Sandy. (GS Archives)
• Last week, long before the storm, some city students took field tests, and here’s a guide. (Daily News)
• A review of “Black Swan Green” says the novel should replace “Catcher in the Rye” in schools. (Slate)
• A city teacher and parent argues that teenagers should read more non-fantasy fiction. (Insideschools)
• A teacher laments putting students’ writing style and structure before their content. (Urban Teacher’s Ed)
• Are free online courses the biggest innovation in education in 2,000 years? Some say so. (Tech Review)
• Los Angeles applied for Race to the Top-District even though its union isn’t on board. (Politics K-12)
• More singing charter school students say they don’t care who you vote for if you just vote. (YouTube)
• Despite what Mitt Romney says, education spending has grown least under Barack Obama. (Rick Hess)
• We still need teachers to volunteer to present their students’ work. (Now details really are coming soon!)

On school staff members' first day back after Hurricane Sandy, Assistant Principal Todd Gerber was one of several staff members at Brooklyn's William E. Grady High School to help custodial staff assess damage to flooded classrooms and offices. (Courtesy of Grady)

The Department of Education is on track to open all but 65 schools in their regular locations on Monday, one week after Hurricane Sandy hit the region, Chancellor Dennis Walcott said this afternoon.

But 65 schools are in buildings so severely damaged by the storm that the department must engineer co-location plans for them in just days, he said. The approximately 38,000 students in those schools, which the department has not yet named, will not begin classes until Wednesday.

Tonight, department officials said, teachers and principals at the schools would learn where they will reopen, and on Monday, school staff will work to prepare the new sites, all located inside other schools. Between now and then, officials will create new bus routes, sometimes to transport students great distances; move equipment and books; and negotiate space-sharing arrangements among schools that had until last week thought they had things figured out.

“Normally what we do over the course of over say a few months [is being] done over a few days,” Walcott said in a phone call with reporters this afternoon.

“This is something that normally we don’t turn around in this quick a fashion at this level,” he added. “This is a major turnaround in a very short period of time.” (more…)

Teachers from schools in Chelsea relocated to LaGuardia High School's auditorium on the Upper West Side this morning.

For most city high school teachers, today was a lesson in how to make do with less.

All were asked to return to school for the first time since Hurricane Sandy hit, in order to prepare for the schools to reopen to students next week. But many did so without their usual subway routes, and without internet or access to their classrooms or school buildings.

And for the ones who were not told to relocate to other school buildings, the task of the day was to decide which parts of the curriculum to re-arrange or cut to make up for five days worth of instructional time, and how to address the emotional needs of students effected by the hurricane. Some school communities were organized and had ambitious plans for the day, but others were more scattered.

The education department’s last-minute instructions to displaced staff did not include specifics on what today would look like. After commuting for up to three hours on foot, bus or by bike this morning, many teachers arrived at schools uncertain of how they should use their time.

Hundreds of teachers were relocated to large school buildings like LaGuardia High School for Music and Art and the Performing Arts and the Martin Luther King campus because their schools lacked electricity or experienced flooding. Some said they tried to make the most of their first day back to work in a week, even though the vast majority lacked the supplies they needed.

“We have no access to computers, and no materials here,” wrote one teacher who was relocated to Art and Design High School in Midtown East on twitter. “Our principal and my AP won’t make it in today.” (more…)

Students and teachers arrived at Brooklyn Prospect Charter School in Windsor Terrace early this morning for their first day back since Hurricane Sandy.

Not all city schools lost a full week of classes because of Hurricane Sandy.

Because of storm damage to hundreds of city school buildings, students who attend school in one of the Department of Education’s buildings were told to stay home this week and not return until Monday at the earliest. But in privately owned buildings, some charter schools were up and running today with regularly scheduled classes, tutoring, and college prep courses.

At Brooklyn Prospect Charter School in Windsor Terrace, which was relatively unscathed by Hurricane Sandy, school resumed Friday and settled back into an almost regular schedule.

Classes started later than normal and teachers planned to assign students classwork related to the ongoing crisis that hundreds of thousands of residents are dealing with in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. But Executive Director Daniel Rubenstein said he wanted to open the school as soon as possible to restore a sense of normalcy.

“After a time of trauma, what students need is to get back to routines,” Rubenstein said.

Many students at the District 15 school live in Red Hook, the riverfront neighborhood where some residents are still without electricity and some residents are still bailing water out of their basements. But Rubenstein said none of his students or their families experienced severe upheaval. (more…)

Julie Cavanagh and her husband prepare to pass out supplies to Red Hook residents affected by the storm.

City teachers were told to stay home from school this week until today because of damages and disruption wrought by Hurricane Sandy. But staff working in one of the city’s worst-hit areas showed up anyway.

A group of teachers and aides from P.S. 15 in Red Hook met on Wednesday, just a day after the storm ended, hoping to distribute supplies to residents from the nearby Red Hook Houses, a sprawling campus of public housing where many of the school’s students live.

“P.S. 15 has always kind of been a hub for the community and in the absence of that hub, we wanted to try and do something,” said Julie Cavanagh, a special education teacher who invited families via email to meet at the school on Wednesday afternoon.

Cavanagh bought $200 worth of supplies — water, food, batteries, and even som Halloween candy — at Costco that morning, and said her plan was to give it away at the school, which was also badly damaged from the storm that flooded the rest of the neighborhood on Monday night.

But few people showed up at the scheduled meeting time on Wednesday. Some families had likely evacuated, and Cavanagh said she knew of some co-workers and families who stayed put but weren’t able to receive calls or emails. (more…)

On the UFT's Facebook page, teachers expressed frustration Thursday night at the pace of information coming out of the Department of Education about logistics for today's post-hurricane teacher workday.

The good news came by email: Teachers facing snarled commutes and logistical headaches in the wake of Hurricane Sandy would not have to report to their schools today, the first workday after the storm, until 10 a.m.

The bad news was that the information did not arrive until nearly midnight on Thursday, long after many of the teachers had gone to bed.

For thousands of teachers who work in schools that were damaged by the storm, the late-night email also contained instructions about where they should report today for a workday that Chancellor Dennis Walcott said was meant to let them “reacclimate to their buildings” after a traumatic week.

“I’d like to plan my commute tomorrow, esp if I have to cross boros. Would be nice to know before I go to bed pls?” high school teacher Binn Thai wrote on Twitter shortly before 10 p.m. Thai’s school is on the Lower East Side, which is still without power.

Mayor Bloomberg announced midday on Wednesday that today would be a workday for city teachers. But nearly 200 school buildings were so heavily damaged by the storm that they still cannot be used. In an email to principals sent Thursday just before 6 p.m., Walcott promised principals that information about alternate locations for storm-affected schools would come “later this evening.”

But when the department informed principals at 10 p.m. about the delayed start time, it did not include a list of relocated schools. (more…)

• The city is pressing on with plans to reopen schools post-Sandy. (GothamSchools, Schoolbook, Times)
• Starting next week, students in eight high schools will share space with Sandy evacuees. (NY1, Post)
• Many schools that were heavily flooded were still being pumped free of water on Thursday. (SchoolBook)
• Parking lots for school buses were flooded in the storm, but the city says buses will be ready. (NY World)
• Like everything else, city high schools’ sports schedules have been majorly disrupted. (Daily News)
• The city wants students to keep studying during the week off, which some have done. (GothamSchools)
• In New Jersey, many districts that Sandy hit have no idea when classes can resume. (Star-Ledger)
• Indiana gave each of its schools a New York City-inspired letter grade this week. (Indianapolis Star)