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Members of the Community Education Council for District 1 prepared for a meeting last night with Chancellor Dennis Walcott by compiling a 6-page list of questions about the most pressing issues facing the Lower East Side school district. They got few answers.

The council’s questions addressed space allocation in local school buildings, the implementation of new “common core” standards, and District 1′s unique all-lottery enrollment model, among other issues.

Their questions went largely unanswered in part because of a scheduling mishap: Walcott told the council on Monday that he would leave the meeting early so he could celebrate his daughter’s birthday. Having billed the meeting as a town hall conversation with the chancellor, the council decided to devote the entire hour to public comment instead of their own questions, according to Lisa Donlan, its president. About a dozen people asked the chancellor questions that were mostly personal, rather than policy-oriented.

Donlan said the Department of Education still could have addressed the council’s concerns more fully. Department officials came to the meeting with a 2-page response to their questions, which had been submitted earlier in the week.

“Clearly this was not a good faith effort to answer the CEC’s questions,” Donlan said.

The council’s questions and the department’s response are below. (more…)

Lower East Side parents who want to ensure their pre-k students stay in the same school for kindergarten will now be able to do so, though a citywide policy bans schools from giving admissions preference to their own pre-k students.

Parents in Manhattan’s District 1 have been lobbying for the exemption for more than a year. The district’s parent council, elected officials and the Department of Education have hammered out a nearly-final deal, presented to parents at a public meeting last night.

Last school year the DOE began barring schools from giving admissions preference to students already enrolled in their own pre-k programs.

Lisa Donlan, the president of the parent’s council, said that the policy ran counter to the district’s historical commitment to having full-day pre-k programs that are considered fully integrated into the school’s culture, whereas many districts have half-day pre-k programs that are almost considered separate from the school itself. (more…)

Parents and students rallied outside P.S. 20 to protest plans that would require them to share space with a growing charter school.

Parents at Lower East Side schools that may soon be asked to share building space told DOE officials last night that a charter school expansion could not come at the expense of successful district schools.

Hundreds of parents packed into the auditorium of P.S. 20 last night to protest three proposed scenarios that would allow Girls Prep Charter School to grow its middle school program by re-arranging building space at neighboring district schools.

All of the proposals would require district school students to give up resource rooms like art and music rooms or science and computer labs, parents told DOE officials and members of the District 1 Community Education Council.

Parents speaking at the meeting repeatedly characterized that loss as a civil rights issue, charging the DOE with removing resources from predominantly poor and immigrant students. (more…)

In a move that could shake up the debate over school space, a mix of charter and district parents is pushing to bring charter school parents into local school districts’ parents councils.

Such a change would mark a significant departure from charter schools’ separation from the traditional school district. It could also change the dynamics of the thorny debate over school space. Last year, a group of community education councils sued the Department of Education for trying to convert a district school into a charter school.

Members of District 1′s Community Education Council said at their meeting last night that they would welcome a charter parent representative onto the board, even though there is no formal mechanism for doing so.

“We consider ourselves representatives of all of the parents in the schools,” council president Lisa Donlan said in an interview today. “It’s really all about building bridges and finding common ground and finding ways to work together.” (more…)