Parents: So Many Issues, So Little Time

The 2007/2008 school year promises to be a momentous one for MCSM. At the same time our school will be celebrating its 25th anniversary as a high school, we will be searching for a new Principal, trying to figure out how to operate in an empowerment network of 20 schools, and working to requalify as a Title I school. Remember, the Region 9 office no longer exists – MCSM will work through a new DOE superintendent of high schools named Francesca Pena and a network coordinator named Sanda Balaban. MCSM parents still face continuing issues as well with school safety and the Title I program management approach (Targeted Assistance versus the Schoolwide Program option).

As if these changes weren’t substantial enough by themselves, MCSM will be trying to educate children at the same time Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein are introducing or continuing enormous changes to the school system. Some examples of those changes?

1. Fair Student Funding – which promises to reduce MCSM’s budget by over $425,000.
2. More Standardized Tests – which would force our children to take five more standardized “progress monitoring” exams per year in Math and English, with five more each in social studies and science in another year or two. That’s 20 more standardized exams each year!
3. Pay for Performance – the Mayor wants to pay students $500 or more per year for showing up to school on time, passing Regents exams, and getting high grades on their standardized tests.
4. ARIS – a new, $80 million IBM computer system designed to track every student’s standardized test results.
5. School Report Cards – a new system intended to compare each school to other, similar schools and give each school a letter grade ranging from A to F.
6. Continuation of the cell phone ban and planned introduction of kiosks in which students would presumably leave their cell phones in small rented lockers outside the school building.
7. Criminalizing the classroom – a recent ACLU study and editorials by Bob Herbert have made it clear that the NYPD has introduced an entirely new level of abusive police enforcement behavior in NYC schools, especially in schools populated by children of color.

If these items are unfamiliar to you and you want to learn more, or if you want to participate in discussion with our new principal and other parents about how we should deal with them, please come to the MCSM PTA meetings on the second Tuesday of every month at 6:00 pm.