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The city is renaming its office that oversees parent groups, partly in response to concern that Spanish-speaking parents are tripping over its title.

The Office of Family Engagement and Advocacy (OFEA) is now the Office of Family Information and Action (OFIA). Its role of overseeing communication with parents and parent groups is staying the same.

A spokesman for the DOE said one of the reasons for the change is that Spanish-speaking parents were confused by it. Parents were reading the acronym OFEA and getting caught on the last three letters which, strung together in Spanish, are “fea,” meaning ugly. Parent coordinators and district family advocates thought the name was distracting parents, the spokesman said.

A second reason for the new name is policy-driven. The office and its new director Ojeda Hall want to focus on giving information to parents rather than organizing them. (more…)

For years, the High School for International Business and Finance has been one of four schools in the George Washington campus, each named the High School for Something and Something. But over the summer, the school changed its name, rebranding itself as College Academy.

New York City public schools can re-name themselves only by jumping through a series of bureaucratic hoops that ultimately lead to Chancellor Joel Klein’s final approval.

Once a principal approves or initiates a change, it’s voted on by the parent association, which then passes it on to the school’s superintendent. In cases where a school is part of a community school district, the superintendent makes a recommendation to the community education council, which holds a public meeting and then votes on the change. But for most high schools and other schools that are not zoned for a district, the decision goes straight from the superintendent to Chancellor Klein. (more…)