GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Pace High School's Chinatown school building

Until last week, Tejiana Lee, a senior at Pace High School, didn’t have to start her day until 10 a.m. After three years with a heavy course load, she was enjoying the late start her two consecutive free periods were giving her.

But now she must arrive at the school 45 minutes before the regular day begins to log time in the weight room.

Lee is one of dozens of second-semester seniors whose schedules were jolted last week when they found out the school had not required them to take the correct number of gym courses. State and city regulations require high school students to be enrolled in physical education classes for seven semesters, but Pace had scheduled them for only four semesters and still counted the requirement as complete.

Simply put, “the school granted students more credit than allowed,” said Marge Feinberg, a Department of Education spokeswoman.

So until the recent schedule change, most seniors were not actually on track to graduate in June. Now, they are scrambling to enroll in a variety of P.E. classes – and creative alternatives – that began this week.

Some, such as Lee, are enrolled in P.E. classes before and after the school day. One student, Chrystal, said she’s making up one P.E. credit through her part-time job as a dance instructor and plans to earn another by joining Pace’s flag football league in March. Another senior, Michael Thompson, said he’s getting credit by going to his local gym and showing up to school on Saturdays.

“We’re mad, but there’s nothing we can do about it. I just have to put on my tough face,” Lee said. (more…)

Teacher Christian Ledesma leads his running group at P.S. 244, one of four schools to win a national fitness award.

City children have shed pounds faster than children anywhere else, according to five years of health data released today.

Mayor Bloomberg brought Chancellor Dennis Walcott and a team of commissioners and elected officials to P.S. 218 in the Bronx to announce, over the cafeteria salad bar, that obesity rates among elementary and middle school students have declined in the last half-decade. They touted an array of recent efforts to boost students’ health.

But the Centers for Disease Control, which identified the trend, said it could not say that interventions in schools had driven the decline in obesity.

In the 2006-2007 school year, 21.9 percent of children in kindergarten through eighth grade were obese. Last year, that figure was 20.7 percent. In contrast, according to the CDC, children’s obesity rates are stagnant nationally.

The decrease spanned all racial and economic groups, but obesity rates for black and Hispanic children fell by less, according to the CDC, which released the data in its weekly report today. And still, one in five New York City children is considered obese. (more…)

A family firewall around discussing school issues has Chancellor Dennis Walcott taking a hands-off approach to managing trouble at a chaotic Queens school.

Walcott’s daughter, Dejeanne Walcott, is a physical education teacher at Queens Metropolitan High School, where an organizational crisis has caused schedules to shift frequently and left some students without instruction, including in physical education classes.

After last night’s Panel for Educational Policy meeting, where he vowed that the problems would be solved, Walcott said he had first heard about the troubles at the school “a couple weeks ago.” He said his top deputy, Chief Academic Officer Shael Polakow-Suransky, had heard complaints around the same time.

But Walcott would not say whether his daughter mentioned the issues to him, emphasizing that he and Dejeanne try not to talk shop.

“My daughter and I have established a protocol with each other with respect to business,” he said. “We try not to mix our respective lives as far as education is concerned.” (more…)

Chancellor Dennis Walcott took a break from parent town hall meetings, protests and policy speeches this morning to visit Central Park and greet more than a thousand public school students for a citywide running event.

Walcott is three days away from running a race of his own – the New York City Marathon – and took the chance to hype healthy lifestyle habits as one way to boost student performance in the classroom.

“As far as wellness is concerned, that’s what makes for a student to be able to perform in the classroom,” Walcott said. “And that’s our goal.”

The event was one of dozens hosted annually by the New York Road Runners in partnership with the Department of Education as a way to encourage running in the public school system. For more than six years, NYRR’s Mighty Milers program has provided equipment and training resources to teachers who want to start running programs in their school. It now counts more than 50,000 students, including ones from The Active Learning Elementary School, which we wrote about in June after it won a national award for its health-conscious curriculum.

“Running is becoming the sport of choice for New York City schools,” said NYRR President Mary Wittenberg. “It’s easy, it’s accessible, it’s affordable. That’s what we’re teaching, even when there’s limited resources.” (more…)

City students aren’t getting the physical education they’re supposed to, according to the latest Department of Education audit out of Comptroller John Liu’s office.

The audit — which follows others in recent weeks about the DOE’s space planning and handling of the Absent Teacher Reserve — concludes that the DOE is doing too little to monitor physical education compliance at individual schools.

According to state law, students in kindergarten through sixth grade must have at least two hours total of physical education each week, with daily instruction until third grade and at least three times weekly after that. But of the 31 elementary schools that auditors surveyed, only two appeared to be meeting the requirements for all students.

Some principals told Liu’s office that they didn’t know the state’s physical education requirements. Others said they lacked the space or personnel to offer as much physical education instruction as they would like, especially after budget cuts. And still others said they had felt pressure to curtail physical education in favor of academic subjects.

In their response to the audit, DOE officials said they would do more to make principals aware of the state’s physical education requirements and would create a formal plan for delivering physical education within the next year. But they emphasized that they do not monitor the amount of time that schools spend on any single subject. (more…)

James Horan is used to being creative, after spending years teaching physical education at an elementary school without a gym or outdoor space of its own.

Now, like many other city teachers, he’s going to need to use that creativity to find another position.

Horan was recently excessed after teaching for four and a half years at PS 68 in Ridgewood, Queens. Even though the school’s population has been shrinking for years, Horan thought his job was safe because it wasn’t included in the list of projected layoffs that the city circulated in February.

When layoffs were averted, he joined the cheers — only to be told one month later that budget reductions made his position too expensive for the school to maintain. The city has not yet released details about how many teachers shared Horan’s fate this year, but after three straight years of cuts, the number is sure to be significant. Principals eliminated nearly 2,000 positions last year.

“I just find it very frustrating,” Horan said. “Now that I’m excessed, it’s just very unexpected. Until June, everything’s great. I would have planned differently.”

Horan came to PS 68 as a first-year teacher in the spring of 2007, teaching 30 to 50 students at a time in an empty classroom that served as the school’s gym. The school hadn’t offered physical education in at least three years, he said, and he bought the program’s only supplies himself using Teacher’s Choice funds. (Those funds were also eliminated this year.) (more…)