GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Every year, the city’s schools chancellor takes a five-borough tour on the first day of school. Today is Dennis Walcott’s first time on the circuit, but it’s our third, and we’ll be chronicling his journey and the first day of school for the city’s 1.1 million students in 1,600 schools. Rachel, Geoff, and Jessica will be sending dispatches from around the city all day.

Want to add your own first-day-of-school stories or pictures? Email us.

Dismissal at Brooklyn's School for International Studies

5:32 p.m. It’s been a long day, and just like some teachers, we’re ready for a nap. (But don’t worry, we’ll post Remainders before we crash.) I’ll conclude with a note from the only school visit I managed today, a jaunt down Brooklyn’s Court Street to the low-slung building that houses two secondary schools.

One of them, the School for International Studies, made the news last week when the Post reported it was looking for a public relations professional to help improve its image and boost enrollment. Having more students would give the school more money and allow it to offer more to its students. But a student I met today cited the school’s small size as its greatest asset.

“I like that it’s small,” said the student, a 10th-grader who was scarfing down a lunch with friends while standing on the school’s front patio. “I want to keep it just the way it is.”

5:01 p.m. It was the beginning of the end for Christopher Columbus High School today, where students returned to class knowing that they would be among the last to ever attend the school.

Columbus is one of 22 schools the city started to close this year. It will phase out one grade at a time and close its doors for the last time when current sophomores graduate in 2014.

Two students set to graduate in Columbus's final class.

“Everybody is very upset. It’s depressing,” said a longtime special education teacher at the school, who said her department lost four teachers because the school does not have a ninth grade this year. “But we’re going to work just as hard, if not harder, to show that were a good school.”

That was the tone teachers were striking over the summer, when they told GothamSchools that they would revamp the curriculum despite knowing that the school’s days might well be numbered.

Two members of the sophomore class, Christopher Rivera and Lisa Budhwa, told Geoff today that they agreed the school should be closed. Rivera said one of his teachers told students they should feel special to be among Columbus’s final students.

“There’s just so many kids who don’t act the way they should,” Rivera said. “They’re always jumping around the hallway like they’re crazy.”

Kayla Allen, a senior, disagreed, arguing that the school should stay open. But she seconded Rivera’s complaints about student behavior.

“It’s not the school that’s doing bad,” Allen said. “It’s the students in the school not doing stuff.”

4:19 p.m. Earlier today, Geoff filed an in-depth report about City Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s sharp words about teacher layoffs this morning at P.S./I.S. 187.

Other elected officials also turned out for the first day of school. (more…)

Department of Education staffers filing back into Tweed Courthouse after being evacuated today.

City schools joined the rest of the East Coast in being jolted out of the workday by a 5.8-magnitude earthquake this afternoon.

Most schools are not in session yet, but some of those that have already opened evacuated their staffs and students when the quake struck just before 2 p.m.

In Harlem, most Democracy Prep Charter School students had been dismissed at 1 p.m., superintendent Seth Andrew said, but those who remained evacuated with their teachers, then were dismissed until tomorrow.

At Teaching Firms of America in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a school that opened yesterday, staff gathered all of its students into a hallway, but school safety offices instructed them that they didn’t need to evacuate.

The Department of Education’s headquarters at Tweed Courthouse was evacuated, along with most buildings in the area. Staffers gathered on the steps and on the Chambers Street sidewalk.

Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott was one of the last people to reenter the building after DOE employees were let back into Tweed just before 2:30 p.m. He told us that the department would be checking on school employees working in the field, including many custodians who are in the process of touching up school buildings for the new year.

DOE staffers said they noticed their chairs shifting beneath them, chandeliers swaying above them, and City Hall’s position shifting in their windows. But other educators said they weren’t even sure an earthquake had struck. (more…)

As he does every year, Chancellor Joel Klein takes a five-borough tour on the first day of school. For the second time, we’re chronicling his journey and the first day of school for the city’s 1.1 million students in 1,600 schools. Anna and Maura will be sending dispatches from the road all day.

Want to add your own first-day-of-school stories or pictures? Email us.

2:59 p.m. And that’s a wrap. PS 65 has broken out the celebratory pizza, and Klein is taking a slice of his favorite snack. “That’s what you should blog about,” he said to Maura, who’s now on the way back to the GothamSchools office, the year’s first first day of school complete. Only 179 more school days until summer vacation.

2:58 p.m. A final note about the PS 65 Dolphins. Why are you like dolphins? Principal Scamardella asked a group of third-graders. Their answers ranged from “because we’re nice” to “because we keep our hands to ourselves.”

2:57 p.m. Teachers union president Michael Mulgrew just called to respond to Klein’s claim that he didn’t come along on Klein’s first-day tour for political reasons. The real reason was purely logistical, he said.

“Yesterday they invited us and I had already told people I was going to different schools,” Mulgrew said. “I don’t know why he’s trying to make this about him and I.”

2:50 p.m. The city just posted a peek into what reporters missed while they were stuck in traffic earlier today: Manhattan Village Academy students discussing the importance of leadership.

2:43 p.m. Principal Scamardella says familiarizing PS 65 teachers with the “common core” standards for what students should learn is the biggest task ahead of her. She also says PS 65 is devising a new way to grade students that allows students to participate in the grading process.

2:36 p.m. Klein pops into a science class where the teacher is reading aloud from The Secret Science Project that Almost Ate the School, a children’s book that she paints as a cautionary tale for students who don’t take their schoolwork seriously — “especially in science!” Unlike most of the teachers Klein visited today, she doesn’t interrupt her instruction. She’s animated, and her students are engaged. (more…)

School of One students speak to remote tutors. (GothamSchools)

I reported earlier today about the School of One, a new program to personalize instruction for every student. This morning I got to see the program in action.

Inside the library at MS 131, where bookshelves had been covered with canvas, one set of students dialed in to distant tutors by phone while another set worked one-on-one with teachers in a section of the room called “The Bronx Zoo.” At the same time, data analysts manned a behind-the-scenes command center, where a powerful computer calculated exactly what each student needed to learn.

For a classroom being revolutionized by technology, some of the interactions between teachers and students were decidedly low-tech. In a partitioned area of the library called “Brooklyn,” a teacher patiently redirected several of the dozen students sitting around a large table when they shouted out. “I want to play games,” one boy called. “I want to go home,” another interrupted.

In another part of the library, a girl talking with a distant tutor through a headset raised her hand and summoned a teacher. “I need a pen!” she said.

School of One founder Joel Rose said today that tasks that can be uniquely accomplished by teachers should be all the teachers do. “What we want our teachers to focus on is the hardest part of the equation, which is delivering great lessons,” Rose said. (more…)

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, and others in an East Harlem classroom yesterday. (Anna Phillips/GothamSchools)

I didn’t post all day yesterday because I was on the move, following Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and Washington, D.C., Mayor Adrian Fenty on a school visit in East Harlem in the morning, checking in on Vice President Joe Biden’s speech in Midtown in the afternoon, and chatting with charter school operators from New Jersey at a bar late into the evening.

I’ll have plenty of reports next week, but for now I want to share one exchange I observed during the morning school visit that’s missing from Javier Hernandez’s account in today’s Times. In the same class where Fenty described eating hot dogs with President Obama, Klein asked the children to name their favorite thing about their school. Their answers: Gym, art, music, assembly, “choice time” when they play games every Friday, and “cook shop,” where the class simulates a restaurant. 

Klein then revealed his own favorite thing about the school: ”You have great teachers, a great principal, and great students, and that really matters.” Then the two school leaders and their retinue moved on.