“I ask that you immediately initiate a bedbug treatment contract to deal with this issue before the start of the school year,” Brewer wrote to Chancellor Dennis Walcott last month.

Brewer penned the letter in response to a GothamSchools report that showed a tripling in the number of bedbugs cases found in schools last year, to 3,590.

The surge of cases has placed strain on the Department of Education’s pest management division, which is required to treat every case of bedbugs. Normally, that work is handled by a private pest management company, but schools have been without a specialized contractor for nearly a year.

Bidding on the new contract began nine months ago, but the DOE has yet to award it, spokeswoman Marge Feinberg said. Feinberg said that the city planned to respond to the letter, which also requested a list of the schools that were treated for bedbugs, but had not yet done so.

Brewer, who has traced the rise of bedbugs in New York City for years and was one of the first officials to enact legislation to fight them, said that further delay would only exacerbate the problem.

“We used to get 10 calls a day from people in my district who found it all over,” Brewer said. “Luckily we’re not getting them anymore because the hotels and stores and theaters have figured out how best to treat it. It’s only the cheap people who aren’t doing it right, like the DOE.”

Brewer acknowledged that schools face a “terrible challenge” to completely eradicate bedbugs because the majority of the cases come from students who bring them from their infested homes.

The DOE has made strides to raise awareness with parents and school staff, publishing comprehensive guides for how to prevent home infestations. Staff who find bedbugs can also now email pictures of the bugs to health officials in a change meant to speed up the process for treating schools.

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Frank McCourt High School, which will have a writing and communications focus, is highly anticipated by middle and upper-middle class families on the Upper West Side who want a selective school close to home. But McCourt is also one of the small schools replacing Brandeis High School, a large school that has served needy students from Harlem. Some advocates fear these students will be displaced as the school phases out.

The challenge, those who’ve been involved in the school’s development say, is building a school that attracts both sets of students.

“You can’t change the quality of the program and not offer it to the same kids who have always gone to Brandeis High School; it’s a cruel joke,” said Michelle Fine, a professor of urban education at the City University of New York.

Fine is part of a group of parents, activists and academics who arrived at a meeting for the school on Tuesday night armed with ideas for a new kind of admissions policy that they say will not give preference to either set of students.

Fine and several neighborhood parents have spent the past few months working on a draft vision statement outlining a proposed admissions strategy. Chief among their suggestions is that a writing sample carry significant weight in the school’s admissions.

Fine said the goal would be to find students with “a spark for writing,” but that an admissions committee must consider students with talents for writing in a variety of forms. “So we’d be looking for students who do scientific writings and journalism as well as students who write poetry and hip-hop,” she said.

Equally important, Fine said, is that applicants be judged on a range of criteria, with no one standard like test scores trumping all others. Fine said that rather than admitting all students who score above a certain bar on a numerical scale, students could be considered in a more holistic fashion.

Donna Nevel, an Upper West Side parent and advocate at the Center for Immigrant Families, emphasized that an equitable and inclusive admissions process was just one part of a plan for building a diverse school. A plan for recruiting students from the neighborhoods that Brandeis High School historically served is also crucial, she said.

“You need both,” she said. “If you do the outreach, but admissions policy isn’t equitable, then the kids don’t get in. And if you have the policy but not the outreach, then you don’t get the applicants that you’re looking for.”

Nevel stressed that school planners and activists need to ensure that once a successful admissions process is created, it stays that way over time.

“We have all seen schools that begin in a positive way and, before too long, end up privileging white, upper income families over others,” Nevel said.

City Councilwoman Gale Brewer, who organized this weeks’ school planning meeting, said that she was gratified that the school’s principal, Danielle Salzberg, attended and jumped into the conversation about what the student body should look like. In an interview last month, Salzberg said that she was eager to incorporate community feedback into the school’s planning and was already working on ways of getting neighborhood groups involved in outreach.

Ultimately, the design of the school’s admissions process will be up to Salzberg, said DOE spokesman Will Havemann. Brewer said that neighborhood activists and elected officials are still working with the DOE to determinze the size of the school and whether or not admissions preference will be given to students who live on the Upper West Side.

Meanwhile, word of the school is spreading. Several members of the summer planning committee reported fielding phone calls from parents asking how their children can apply.

“There’s just a real buzz around this school, which makes me happy,” Brewer said. “I heard students leaving the meeting saying, ‘I want to go to McCourt. I want to go to McCourt.’”

Havemann said that students can apply to McCourt during the second round of the high school admissions process. Students who apply and are accepted to other selective schools in the first round will not be forced to commit to another school before hearing from McCourt, he said.

The next meeting on Frank McCourt High School is a space utilization hearing at Brandeis, scheduled for December 8, Brewer said. The Panel on Educational Policy will then have to grant the final approval for the school to open on the Brandeis campus.

Members of the NYC Coalition for Educational Justice, a group that focuses on educational barriers facing low-income and minority students, will debut their new PAC tomorrow on the steps of City Hall. At this point in the campaign season, the group is supporting four challengers and nine incumbents — among them Speaker Christine Quinn and Education Committee chair Robert Jackson — for City Council.

The PAC is “really designed to support those candidates who we have goals in common with,” said Victoria Bousquet, a coalition parent member. The PAC is technically independent from CEJ.

“It’s really a matter of when we interviewed them, the general feedback – how they felt about English Language Learners, about middle schools, about the new Regents requirements, and parental involvement,” she said, adding, “No one’s perfect. We know that none of them are going to be infallible.”

The list includes incumbents Helen Diane Foster, Gale Brewer, Charles Barron, Julissa Ferreras, Letitia James, Rosie Mendez, and Melissa Mark Viverito.In one of the most competitive races in the city, the fight for Councilman John Liu’s seat, the coalition is supporting S.J. Jung, a board member at the Young Korean American Service and Education Center. It is also backing Brad Lander, who is running for Councilman Bill de Blasio’s seat, as well as Mark Winston Griffith, and Daniel Dromm.

Members of CEJ have donated $250 to each of the incumbents’ campaigns, with the exception of Brewer, who did not want a contribution, according to Barbara Gross, a coalition parent leader. Lander’s campaign also did not accept the group’s donation, but Jung received $750; Griffith, $500 and Dromm, the maximum allowable, $2,750.

Bousquet said the group has done the bulk of its fundraising from parents, soliciting average donations of about $40.

The coalition has yet to decide whether to weigh in on the mayoral, comptroller, and public advocate races, she said.

Correction: A previous version of this post incorrectly stated that all candidates had received $250, based on information provided by CEJ.