GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Thousands of students are preparing for their first day of school tomorrow with placements so freshly in hand that they may not yet have worked out their commutes.

Rising ninth-grader Shomari Sutton, 13, left the enrollment registration center at Brooklyn Technical High School with an assignment at a school so new that he and his mother Anisa barely knew where it was located.

“It’s still supposed to be a good school, though,” Shomari said.

The Department of Education’s twelve enrollment centers have seen just shy of 11,300 visitors since they opened this year on August 31, said department spokesman Andrew Jacob. That’s about 300 fewer families than had used the centers at this time last year.

Families rushing to find a last-minute spot in a school at the city’s enrollment registration centers might have expected to be harried by long lines and complicated bureaucracy. But although frustrations with the complex system haven’t disappeared, lines seemed to have gone more smoothly this year than in years past. (more…)

P.S. 47 / The American Sign Language & English Secondary School

Every year before students are packed off to school, hundreds of parents and children pass through the city’s dozen registration centers in hopes of finding new schools.

Often, they are recent arrivals to the city, looking to enroll their children before the new school year begins. Others are long-time residents trying to shift a child from private to public school or from a school many subway transfers away to one closer to home.

In the auditorium of the American Sign Language and English Secondary School — one of the three centers in Manhattan — families waited for hours today as DOE officials examined their documents and searched for open slots. We’ll be following their and others’ efforts to find an empty seat before September 9.

• Maxine Shivers was making her second trip to the center  in two days. Shivers, who is in the Army, has deployment orders that will take her overseas within the month, but before she goes she’s scrambling to transfer her daughter to a high school closer to where they live. Currently, her daughter is slated to begin ninth grade at the Bronx High School for Writing and Communication Arts (she wants to be a reporter), but that’s a long subway ride from their home in lower Manhattan, and one Shivers doesn’t want her daughter making alone. Distance is one of three reasons (along with safety and health) the DOE finds acceptable for requesting a transfer. Tomorrow her daughter has interviews at two high schools. “It’s up to her now,” Shivers said. If neither of those schools has an open seat, she’ll have to return to the registration center and assess what’s left. (more…)

At the end of last week, GothamSchools checked out the situation at several registration centers in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn. We saw a lot of tired, frustrated families, but in general the centers appeared to be working, albeit slowly.

But apparently not all of the registration centers have been getting the job done. Early this morning, on the fourth day of the school year, Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum visited the Bronx Integrated Service Center — and found more than 150 people in line to receive school placements, according to her blog. Some of the families had returned every morning this week but still hadn’t been offered schools for their children, many of whom have special needs, she reported. To make matters worse, Gotbaum writes, she couldn’t find out what was inhibiting the ISC from helping the families, because employees told her they weren’t permitted to speak to her.

Outside the registration center at Brooklyn Tech

Most of the kids who started school today spent last week enjoying the waning days of summer vacation. But those who moved to the city this summer or hoped to transfer from one city school to another spent at least some time at a DOE registration center figuring out where to report for classes today.

The 13 temporary centers, located in schools in every borough, range in size and tone, with some centers struggling to assist a huge volume of families each day since opening Aug. 25 and others with such sparse attendance that DOE officials are able to offer each family in-depth personal attention.

On Friday afternoon, about a dozen families sat scattered throughout the auditorium at the South Bronx Educational Campus, waiting to be called to register or apply for transfers for their children. Norma Nonis, director of borough enrollment for districts 7, 9, and 10, said the registration process was working quickly and painlessly at the site, which opened last year, in part because it serves comparatively few families. Before last year, the 75 families that the South Bronx site registers each day would have had to travel to Manhattan to register their children for school.

At other sites throughout the city, the process was not moving so fast when we visited last week. (more…)