Thank you all for attending.
On Mar 14, 2013, at Mar 14, 2013Thu 11:03 AM, Michal Melamed wrote:
3/13 - Meeting was at Igloo (thank you Igloo for last minute booking of the back room). About 30 STEM parents were in attendance.
1 - Results of the survey were presented (distributed earlier in the day on google group and posted on blog). There were no questions.
2 - Michelle went through the Athena plan (also distributed earlier in the day on the google group). First a summary of the plan:
a - STEM needs a middle school
b - more citywide seats are needed
c - there appears to be space available at PS 17Q which is on 30th Avenue and 28th Street (1 subway stop from PS 85Q). Over the past 4 years PS 17Q has had declining enrollment (possibly due to issues with a previous principal who was replaced this year with a new principal who came from 122, also PS 234 opened just a few blocks from PS 17Q probably also decreasing enrollment). Last year there were 561 kids in the school where the capacity (there are 2 different methods for calculating - historic (bigger class sizes) and target method (smaller class sizes) is either 899 or 776 depending on the method used. Currently there are 215- 338 seats available (depending on the method) - no one knows if enrollment will continue to fall - but if it does - there should be enough room for eventually a separate K-8 school with 2 classes per grade.
In the proposal that was distributed there were 2 options for how the school would be populated. Briefly, option 1 - all STEM classes from PS 85 move the first year the new school opens. Option 2 - new school starts with 2 Ks, 1 1st and 2 6th grade classes and adds each year till eventually all classes from 85 transition to new school after 5th grade.
There are pros and cons to each option. These are not exhaustive pros and cons but are the ones discussed at the meeting.
Option 1 -
Pros - fundraising all in one location
pick-up and drop-off all in one location
PA/ learning leaders all in one location
school is up and running faster
One principal coordinating curriculum
Cons - we will lose clusters currently available at PS 85
We will need to hire many certified g&t teachers and this may be very hard
Kids will lose out on finishing what they started (PS 85)
Everyone will get a rocky start in the new school, not just 5 classes
Option 2 -
Pros - 1. plenty of time to hire new teachers, etc.
2. kids get to graduate from where they started school (PS 85)
Cons -
-families will get split up (if have currently 1 in 4th and 1 in lower grade)
-There will not be enough students at new school to have all the clusters which we think are important. 85 will still have Science, Art, Music, Gym, Chess/Robotics, Technology, Library but student in the new school will likely have no more than 2 clusters to start.
-the last kids will leave 85 in 2020 - which is a long time for the DOE to change its mind about thing
At the end it was decided that we should present the plan without the options for population of the school and if they accept the plan, we can work with the DOE on acceptable solutions.
There was some discussion about what things can be shared between colocated schools - some of these are - a library and a librarian, a nurse, cluster teachers (but they won't be g&t certified), psychologist.
Some questions that came up:
1 - Can some kids leave 85 while others choose to stay? No - this cannot be done on a per child basis. The DOE will ultimately decide how it will be done (which grades will move) but having parents choose for their kids individually will not work.
2 - Can our kids go to 122? This is a very important point - all of our kids because they attend a district 30 school are district 30 kids. They can apply to PS 122 just like any other kid in the district (they will not automatically articulate there). Michelle thought that our kids could potentially automatically articulate into 126 if we pushed the issue. Also, they can apply to any other district 30 middle school - so if you don't want your kid in g&t any more and would rather them go to a more arts focused program you can apply to Louis Armstrong.
3 - Do the principals at PS 17 (and 85) know about this plan? - When creating the plan, Michelle talked to Dr. Composto, the Superintendent of district 30. He is OK with the plan. She called him today and told him the plan was being presented publicly and he was going to talk to the principal at PS 17. Ms. Chang was included on the e-mail that was sent out to the STEM group that included the plan.
4 - What if the DOE takes our plan and makes us into a program again at PS 17? - They won't/ can't do that because PS 17 is a K-5 school - it cannot have a K-8 program in it. It needs to be a different school co-located.
5 - What about Success Academy? - Success Academy has filed to create 2 new K-8 schools in district 30. We are competing with them for space. We need to make sure the politicians/ DOE know that our kids have been in district 30 for years and need a solution before Success Academy gets their schools.
6 - What happens if PS 17 doesn't decrease in enrollment as we expect? - Then we move again. Anderson had to do this recently when PS 9 where it was previously housed needed more room for the gen ed students. Anderson was moved to another location in district 3. If we are a separate school at PS 17, then even if we get moved again, we move with our own administration and teachers.
7 - How do we explain to the bigger PS 85 community what is happening? - Whenever we talk about this, we need to make sure that we say that this proposal is not a reaction to PS 85 it is to a problem that the DOE created when it put the program at PS 85 which did not have the room to have the program grow. We are very happy with everything that PS 85 has to offer except that we need a middle school and the DOE does not split site programs, so the whole program will eventually need to move somewhere else. It was decided that a member (or a few) from the middle school task force will present at the next SLT meeting.
Finally, Maria Duda talked about next steps - also outlined in a paper distributed to the STEM google group. We need everyone in the next day to write e-mails to the DOE requesting a meeting with STEM parents about middle school (see separate e-mail from Maria Duda). It is not acceptable that this wait till June, our kids need an answer sooner. In addition to writing the DOE, we will need to start getting letters from our elected officials again.
