GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Even more anxious than teachers at schools without students for next year are the parents of students without schools.

We received a letter to Chancellor Joel Klein from Catherine Fleischmann, an Upper West Side mother whose eighth-grader still doesn’t know where she’ll attend high school. Fleischmann’s daughter is one of more than 6,500 eighth-graders who didn’t get into any of the schools they applied to. Unhappy with the second-round school options, Fleischmann filed an appeal earlier this month and will find out the outcome by mid-July.

“I can’t begin to tell you what a nightmare this has been for us,” Fleischmann told me. Here’s her letter to Klein:

Dear Chancellor Klein,

I am writing to seek your help.

My sweet, hardworking, dedicated daughter is an 8^th-grade honor student at Delta middle school, an academically accelerated middle school. She has had almost perfect attendance since kindergarten. Unfortunately, she was not matched to one of her first choice high schools, even though there were still openings in those schools. Her second-choice tier of schools consists of schools at which she will neither be safe nor academically challenged.

My daughter did not hear of this devastating news by way of a letter sent to our home but rather from her guidance counselor at school. An absurdity in and of itself! When she was told of this terrible situation, she was so distraught that she spent hours roaming the streets hysterically crying because she had no high school to attend. (more…)