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Chancellor Walcott speaks to a parent on the first day of school

Between school visits today, reporters grilled Chancellor Dennis Walcott about the biggest issues the Department of Education faces today.

Most of his answers tread familiar territory: When asked about the pool of teachers without permanent positions, which has grown, he suggested the same policy solution that former chancellor Joel Klein called for on his way out the door.

But in a few cases Walcott broke new ground. Asked about the city’s testing of schools for toxic chemicals, which he vowed to accelerate after the city precipitously closed a contaminated Bronx school this summer, the chancellor said all schools have come back clean. But testing is still ongoing at the majority of leased sites, he said.

Read on for the highlights. (more…)

Students and the mayor showed up at PS 111 in Long Island City, Queens last year for the first day of school.

The first day of school is chaotic, stressful, and exciting — all ingredients for an excellent photo opportunity. Amid the tumult of tomorrow, please take a few seconds to capture your students and children at their finest. They and their schools won’t look so polished until next year the next quality review, so send us your photos!  Email your back-to-school photos to tips@gothamschools.org

The city’s move to delay the first day of school rather than interrupt the first week back with a religious holiday  comes after weeks of a sustained email campaign by parents.

Since late May, parents have been circulating an email to Chancellor Klein calling on the city to begin the school year on Sept. 13. The current plan is for the first day of school to be Sept. 8, the Wednesday after Labor Day. But because Thursday and Friday are Rosh Hashanah, a major Jewish holiday, the schools will be closed. Students wouldn’t see their new teachers and classmates again until Monday.

Michelle Chiulla Lipkin, the PTA president at PS 199 on the Upper West Side, drafted the letter to the chancellor after realizing what she had to look forward to in September.

“I can imagine it now. Summer is over. My kids are ready with their backpacks and new haircuts and they go to school excited and nervous about the year ahead. And then they come home and stay there for four days until they go back to school and do it all over again,” she said. “We all know they won’t remember anything that their teacher said on Wednesday.” (more…)

Scenes this morning from around the perimeter of Brooklyn Tech, the huge specialized high school located in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood, highlight the diversity of needs in the city’s schools.

From left to right: Parents and students without school assignments line up to wait for the borough registration center to open (more on the registration centers later today); a deliveryman unloads pallets of bottled water for sale in the school’s cafeteria; and a few of Tech’s 4,500 students, some accompanied by their parents and all with IDs in hand, stream from the subway to the school’s main entrance.