GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• A principal said she’d rather reopen in a flooded school than lose transfer students. (She is.) (Hechinger)
• A teacher at a Brooklyn private school says after Sandy, students need compassion. (Motherlode)
• Across the city, parent-teacher associations are pitching in to raise hurricane relief funds. (SchoolBook)
• ConEd says it will take a week to restore steam heat to Lower Manhattan and its schools. (The Lo-Down)
• A mother says getting constant updates on her son’s grades is annoying, and helpful. (FreeRange Kids)
• A marine-themed New Haven school is squatting in temporary space where it started out. (Independent)
• Hoboken schools might reopen on Thursday, but they also might not, after much damage. (Patch)
• A teacher offers personal and professional reasons why he braved Friday’s commute. (NYCDOEnuts)
• After praising her Friday workday, a teacher shares the resources her colleagues compiled. (Finkfinity)
• An analysis of tomorrow’s national and state elections leads to an ESEA in 2015 conclusion. (Rick Hess)
• Arthur Goldstein: “If I ran my … classes the way Walcott runs the school system, I’d resign.” (SchoolBook)

Flanked by city officials, Mayor Bloomberg updated reporters on the hurricane relief effort from P.S. 195 Manhattan Beach, a South Brooklyn school that was damaged in the hurricane.

Today marked the first day back to school for most city students, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg championed their attendance rate. But the figure he cited — 85 percent — didn’t count the 75,000 students who weren’t in attendance because their schools were temporarily closed, or hundreds of schools that did not report their attendance in time for his press conference.

Despite lingering complications from Hurricane Sandy, including power and transit woes, the majority of students and teachers invited to return to school today for the first time in a week made it. And several buildings reopened this morning despite sustaining massive damages a week ago.

For the site of his daily update on the city’s hurricane relief effort, Bloomberg picked one of those schools — P.S. 195 Manhattan Beach, a southern Brooklyn school that flooded and originally seemed unlikely to reopen to students today.

Flanked by other city officials, Bloomberg and Chancellor Dennis Walcott said the number of closed schools is shrinking as more schools that were damaged or lost power slowly receive the repairs they need.

On Sunday, buildings too damaged to reopen contained 57 schools; Bloomberg said that number is 48 today. And just 19 schools remain without power, he said, down from more than 100 over the weekend.

One of the schools to which teachers will return on Tuesday is John Dewey High School, which Walcott cited last week as one of the most severely damaged in the city after an electrical fire during the storm. Department officials said the School Construction Authority had been able to install a generator and get Dewey’s boiler to work, obviating a planned three-building co-location. (more…)

Michael Mulgrew, Christine Quinn and Dominic Recchia toured schools in southern Brooklyn that were ravaged by Hurricane Sandy and discussed concerns they faced in the coming week. (Video below)

Elected officials and teachers union president Michael Mulgrew this afternoon expressed caution for the city’s ambitious plan to re-locate 40,000 students from dozens of storm-battered schools.

But no matter how daunting the project facing the city is, they said it should — and could — work, with their help.

“We will find ways, working together, to make it work,” Speaker Christine Quinn said. “There will be bumps in the road.”

“Shifting thousands of students to different schools two months into a school year is a massive undertaking,” Mulgrew said. “It’s never been done before.”

“It’s going to be tough, but it’s going to work,” he added.

Quinn and Mulgrew toured two schools scheduled to take in students on Wednesday for what could be an extended period of time. They visited New Dorp High School, which will get a thousand students from Staten Island’s I.S. 2 students, and Gravesend’s P.S. 212, set to take in about 600 students from P.S. 188.

Neither said they disagreed with any of the planning decisions so far made by the Bloomberg Administration. But Quinn said she had concerns about the Department of Education’s ability to execute on those plans. (more…)

A screenshot from the website of Future Leaders Institute Charter School shows that the school had planned to hold classes tomorrow even though Department of Education schools are closed. It no longer has permission to remain open, following two back-to-back policy changes by the city.

Reversing a decision made late last week, the Department of Education will provide school safety agents and other supports to dozens of charter schools that want to hold class on Tuesday.

But the reversal came too late for some schools that had already canceled classes.

On Friday, Chancellor Dennis Walcott decreed that no school housed in public space could remain open on Election Day because school safety agents were needed to fill in for other city workers pulled away to help with Hurricane Sandy relief.

“For all schools in DOE space, regardless if you have applied/have a permit, no students may be in the building and no classes may be held on Election Day,” Sonia Park, head of the department’s Charter Schools Office, told school leaders on Friday afternoon. “Because of the storm, significant resources across the City will continued to be deployed for recovery efforts and therefore can not be available for schools in DOE buildings.”

The decision brought charter schools housed in district buildings into line with the rest of the city’s schools, which were already scheduled to have the day off so that 700 schools could serve as polling sites.

But it also snatched away a key element of the privately managed schools’ autonomy: the right to set their own calendars. Dozens of charter schools were planning to hold classes to avoid a midweek interruption — particularly after Sandy caused them to miss five days of classes. (more…)

A sign on the door of the Spruce Street School today alerted families to cold conditions inside.

For dozens of schools, the first day back after Hurricane Sandy is turning out to be a chilly one.

The Department of Education estimated that three dozen schools would have electricity but no heat today, and during a news conference on Sunday, Mayor Bloomberg encouraged families to dress their children for the chilly weather.

“Some of the buildings may not have heat, some of the school buildings, and they’ve been without heat for a while, so please dress your children with that in mind,” he said. “If the schools were dangerously cold we obviously wouldn’t open them, but if they’re chilly, extra sweaters for the kids is something that should make some sense.”

Almost all of the schools the department warned would be without heat are in Manhattan, where power was restored over the weekend.

Sixth-grader Jaeda Barreto donned a pink, fur-lined coat this morning that she planned to wear even after completing her commute from Harlem to the School for Global Leaders on the Lower East Side. Her mother, Stephanie Brooks, said one of Barreto’s teachers had called on Sunday to say that the school might be without heat today, so the family made sure to dress extra warmly. (Global Leaders is not on the department’s list of schools likely to be without power.)

After a week cooped up at home, which Barreto passed by reading “The Hunger Games,” even the prospect a chilly school was welcome, Brooks said. (more…)

District 15 Superintendent Anita Skop waited outside of the temporarily shuttered P.S. 15 in Red Hook this morning in case parents and students showed up. None did, she said.

District 15 Superintendent Anita Skop spent four hours this morning huddled in her car outside of P.S. 15 in Red Hook.

Her mission: to send away any families who brought their children to the school.

P.S. 15 is one of 57 schools so damaged by Hurricane Sandy that they cannot reopen this week in their own buildings. It is set to reopen on Wednesday at the P.S. 27 building, half a mile away.

In addition to the schools that will open in other buildings on Wednesday, 16 schools remained closed today because their buildings are still being used as shelters and 29 were shut because they still did not have power. For all 102 schools, the city has gone to extensive lengths to inform students and families to stay away today. (more…)

The auditorium at P.S. 195 in Manhattan Beach was flooded last Wednesday. Today, the school opened its doors to students and Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Walcott plan to visit and welcome them back.

As more than 90 percent of city schoolchildren head to school today for their first day back after Hurricane Sandy, some with extra sweaters to ward off cold, Department of Education officials will have their sights set on the 102 schools that still cannot reopen.

The number of school buildings unable to accommodate students fluctuated over the weekend, but by Sunday night, department officials determined that 57 schools were so damaged that they must be relocated and 29 schools still lacked power, down from nearly 200 at the beginning of the weekend. Another 16 schools are housed in eight buildings that have for the last week been used as shelters for New Yorkers displaced from homes and hospitals by the storm.

The roughly 73,000 students who attend the schools are expected to return to classes on Wednesday, after the entire city takes another break for Election Day on Tuesday, when many schools will function as polling centers.

In the next two days, officials aim for power to be restored to schools that lack it, shelters  closed and cleaned, and damaged schools shoehorned into other locations. But Mayor Bloomberg said the transition back to school — coming after students and teachers alike have had their homes and neighborhoods disruption — would likely be rocky.

“We just can’t predict who’s going to show up where … and we’re obviously going to have problems,” Bloomberg said during a news conference on Sunday. “We’ll just have to bear it, but we’ll have a day between the first day and the second day of school – namely Tuesday – and we’re going to use that day to straighten things out to the best of our ability.” (more…)

• About 90 percent of city schools are set to open normally today. (GothamSchools, Post, NY1, Daily News)
• Here’s a map of the 10 percent of schools that suffered damage and won’t reopen normally. (WSJ)
• Some schools that are opening will not have heat on the coldest day of the year so far. (Post 1, 2)
• The city changed its plans so no building will simultaneously hold schools and shelters. (WSJ, HuffPo)
• With many schools still damaged, the week is likely to be rife with logistical challenges. (Post, Times)
• Some teachers whose houses were destroyed in the storm are eager to return to school. (Daily News)
• A Queens family is suing after their daughter was allegedly burned during lunch at M.S. 137. (Post)
• Mitt Romney is talking about education again as the presidential election enters its final days. (HuffPo)