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Chancellor Dennis Walcott responds to District 2 Community Education Council member Tamara Rowe's questions at a town hall meeting.

Parents in Manhattan’s District 2 came to a town hall meeting Wednesday night with Chancellor Dennis Walcott with one item at the top of their agendas: plans to manage school crowding.

But Walcott wanted to talk about other things. He opened his remarks by talking about the city’s scores on a national exam, then segued into announcing that the Department of Education would soon name the schools it wants to close.

No District 2 schools are on the city’s shortlist for closure. Three high schools located in the district, but not administered by it, are on the list.

Walcott was tight-lipped about which schools would receive closure notices over the next two days. But he said department officials had been considering whether the shortlisted schools “have the capacity to improve.” And he told reporters that the decisions would support the middle school reform initiative he announced earlier this year.

“I made a commitment around middle schools and I intend to adhere to that commitment,” Walcott said. “I want 21st-century middle schools that are meeting the needs of our students.”

Most of the roughly three dozen parents who braved heavy rain to attend the meeting wanted to talk about the demand for new neighborhood elementary schools and the city’s recent rezoning proposals. (more…)

The State Education Department is considering relaxing some requirements for how students with special needs are served, a cost-cutting bid that has advocates worried.

The state has asked the Board of Regents to approve a slate of “mandate relief” measures at its monthly meeting next week. The measures that SED wants lifted include the requirement that a psychologist weigh in every time disabled students’ individualized education plans are changed and the prescription of specific tests when a student who is suspected of having a disability is first evaluated.

Currently, school psychologists are full-time members of special education committees that make all decisions related to a student’s IEP, but the new regulation would only require them to consult on initial IEP meetings.

In addition, the new regulations would no longer require psychological evaluations, speech and language tests and assessments from therapists, all of which are currently conducted when a student is first diagnosed.

Such services are costly and districts complain that the mandates go above and beyond what is required for many of their students. New York, the country’s top-spending state in per-pupil special education services, has about 200 more special education mandates in place than the federal government requires, and SED argues that the extra requirements are restrictive for local districts.  (more…)