GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

P.S. 9, a Prospect Heights elementary school, faces a sudden budget shortfall.

The city’s annual calculation of schools’ enrollment of poor students has at least one Brooklyn elementary school on the wrong side of an unyielding line.

The city gives extra federal funds to schools where 60 percent of students are eligible for free lunch. P.S. 9, which hosts a gifted program in gentrifying Prospect Heights, has received the funds in the past, but now its enrollment of poor students has dropped — to 59.1 percent.

That means the school won’t get the Title I funds, even though it has virtually the same proportion of eligible students as many other schools that will receive them.

“It’s sounds great that we’re coming out of a Title I position but we still don’t have enough resources,” said Christine Scalon, secretary of the school’s parent-teacher organization.

Scanlon and other parents are leading a frantic push to raise $160,000 by the end of the school year, the amount they have calculated the school is losing. (more…)