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As Lehman students walked to school this morning, many noted that they'd likely spend the day waiting for class schedules.

Scheduling snafus are an annual rite at city schools during the first week back. But those problems have been magnified at Herbert Lehman High School, where computer glitches and failed planning have left students sitting in the auditorium rather than in class.

Teachers and students said that since school began last Wednesday, hundreds of students haven’t known where to go or what classes to attend. Instead, many of the school’s 4,000 students have been told to sit in the auditorium while guidance counselors sort out the problem. Many have simply gone home.

Most schools work on students’ schedules over the summer and make adjustments the first week back when a glut of new students arrive on their doorsteps. But teachers said Lehman administrators hadn’t done this.

“The principal is blaming some computers going down, but in your average decent school this is addressed over the summer. The students deserve an education from day one,” said a Lehman teacher. “It’s never been this bad.”

On her way into the building this morning, Stephanie Caceres, 16, said she expected another day of waiting to get a class schedule.

“I haven’t been to class since the first day,” she said. (more…)

Lehman High School has metal detectors this year and a new neighborhood business: a phone storage truck. (via Twitter)

Someone must have tipped off this phone storage business to Lehman High School’s new metal detectors.

As of today, any of the Bronx high school’s several thousand students hoping to sneak their cell phones into the building will be out of luck. Though many schools ignore the city’s cell phone ban, those with scanners are often more severe, causing students to turn to bodegas and local businesses for storage space.

In the words of whoever posted this photo on Twitter: “Look who’s making 4,000 dollars today in front of Lehman High School!”

Even with names like “Pure Loyalty,” underground storage businesses are often unreliable and some students choose to evade the scanners through various and complicated forms of trickery.

As the city’s investigation into grade tampering by a high school principal enters its second year, morale at the school has taken a turn for the worse.

A majority of teachers at Herbert Lehman High School who took the city’s annual survey said they don’t trust the school’s executive principal Janet Saraceno. And 81 percent said the principal is not an effective manager.

Results from the survey of teachers, students, and parents also show that in the “safety and respect” category, Lehman is getting poor marks. In total, 23 percent of the school’s teachers and 63 percent of students took the survey, which is below the city’s average participation rates.

Lehman has struggled with student safety this year and is likely to have full-time scanners installed by next fall. While most teachers said they feel safe at the school, a majority also said that crime, violence, and gang activity are a problem.

After I reported on teachers’ complaints that Lehman’s principal was changing students’ grades, Department of Education officials responded by threatening to investigate the teachers. Since then, teachers report that the DOE has not contacted them, nor has the Office of Special Investigations, which is tasked with following up on complaints. (more…)

For its size, which is colossal, Herbert Lehman High School has been one of the Bronx’s safest high schools for years. But recent changes and a spate of fights have put the school on track to get permanent metal detectors next year.

If Lehman does get scanners, it means there will be no large, comprehensive high schools in the Bronx without them.

Department of Education spokesman Marge Feinberg said the city’s police department has yet to decide whether to install permanent scanners next year, but students and teachers at the school said they’ve been told to expect scanners in September.

Metal detectors in airports and government buildings are standard fare, but in the city’s public schools, they’re still a source of controversy. While some parents don’t feel comfortable sending their children off to school every day without the scanners, others believe the devices cause minority students to be treated like criminals.

Every morning, about 4,500 students walk through the doors of Lehman’s campus — a school building so large, it looks like a beige space station has landed on East Tremont Avenue. Roughly 4,000 students attend Lehman High School itself, while 500 go to the other school in the building, Renaissance High School for Musical Theater and Technology — a combination that has put the total enrollment well over the building’s capacity of 3,500. (more…)

Here’s a sign that our reporting on a grade-changing scandal and the intense pressure on schools to perform or shut down have entered the public consciousness: Law & Order used the storyline last night.

Returning to NBC’s 10 pm spot, the series debuted “Boy on Fire” last night, a story that (judging by the sudden flood of emails I got) seemed to strike a chord with the city’s public school teachers. I didn’t catch the episode, but those who did report that it bore some similarities to the case of grade-changing at Herbert Lehman High School in the Bronx, where the executive principal who was hired with a $25,000 bonus  is still under investigation for changing grades in order to boost the school’s graduation rate. (more…)

Teachers at a high school under investigation for grade-changing were surprised to receive the school’s yearly progress report this week. The report was supposed to be under wraps until an investigation into the school’s grading process ended.

But a bureaucratic mistake at the Department of Education led to the letter grade being released and folded into a report that was given to the school and posted online.

Last year, when the DOE published schools’ grades, Herbert Lehman High School was left off the list. Allegations that the school’s executive principal, Janet Saraceno, was changing dozens of grades to boost the school’s graduation rate, were serious enough that the progress report data couldn’t be published, officials decided. The report, which is based on Regents passage, credit accumulation, and graduation rates, heavily relies on data that could be compromised by Saraceno’s alleged actions. (more…)

Progress reports for the city’s roughly 500 high schools are slated to be released this month, but grades for two Bronx schools will not be among them.

One is Herbert H. Lehman High School, where executive principal Janet Saraceno is under investigation for grade tampering, as I reported last month. The Department of Education also may not release the progress report for John F. Kennedy High School because of missing information and inconsistencies in the data it sent to the department, said DOE spokesman David Cantor.

If the problems with Kennedy’s data are resolved by the time the department releases the reports, the school’s report card will be made public on schedule, Cantor said.

Several other high schools are being examined by the Office of Special Investigations for tampering with students’ Regents scores or inappropriately changing students’ grades after they passed the exam, but their report cards are on track to be released. (more…)

Click here to view Lehman transcripts and school records. Multimedia feature by Maura Walz.

The Bloomberg administration will investigate the whistleblowing teachers at Herbert Lehman High School who are accusing the school’s principal Janet Saraceno of tampering with students’ grades.

The teachers approached GothamSchools with students’ transcripts after some of them had submitted the same transcripts to the Office of Special Investigations, but had not heard back for months and assumed the investigation was dead. A spokesman for the DOE, David Cantor, said the investigation into the alleged grading manipulation is still open.

The city now plans to investigate the teachers as well.

Students’ education records are protected under the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act Regulations, commonly known as FERPA. Transcripts can be shared provided that “personally identifiable information” is not transmitted.

“All I can say is we are going to investigate the release of the student records publicly to the press,” Cantor said. (more…)

The principal of the Bronx's Herbert Lehman High School is charged with changing students' failing grades to passing.

Teachers are accusing a Bronx high school principal hired with a $25,000 bonus to improve the school’s academics of instead transforming the school into a “diploma mill.”

Transcripts given to GothamSchools by current and former teachers show that in the last year, dozens of students at Herbert Lehman High School have been given credit for courses they failed or never took.

In some instances, a student failed a class, passed the Regents exam by a slim margin, and then had his failing grade overturned. In others, students were given two credits for a class they passed once, or for classes that never appeared on their schedules.

Click here to view Lehman transcripts and school records. Multimedia feature by Maura Walz.

Changing students’ grades is commonplace in the city’s schools and is often done by principals and teachers for legitimate reasons. In some cases, students are given credit recovery, meaning they complete a project, make up work, or re-take part of a class in order to get a passing grade. Other times, students who are on the cusp of passing a class can receive a boost from a Regents exam they passed by a substantial margin.

But teachers said that at Lehman, students are getting credit without doing any work. Dozens of students have had their failing grades overturned without their teachers’ knowledge.

“The Office of Special Investigations is investigating allegations of grading improprieties at Lehman,” said a spokesman for the Department of Education, David Cantor. “We’ll comment once we have findings.”

Lehman’s principal, Janet Saraceno refused repeated requests for comment. (more…)

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