UFT Claims "Overcrowded" Classrooms Are Down In NYC Schools - Is This True?

From the State of Politics "Here and Now" update for the day:

At 1 p.m., an annual UFT survey has found that for the first time in five years the number of overcrowded NYC classrooms has shown a significant decline, UFT President Mike Mulgrew and elected officials will call on the state meet its obligations under the Contract for Excellence, including lowering all city classes to the state average, steps of Tweed Courthouse, 52 Chambers St., Manhattan.

Mulgrew and Company see themselves as co-leaders in the NYCDOE these days, so anything they say about the NYCDOE is suspect.

What experiences are NYC teachers having out there?

Are the number of "overcrowded NYC classrooms" really declining?

Bloomberg Scoffs Over Classroom Overcrowdedness

At yesterday's press conference where the Mayor of Money repeatedly told reporters he is not interested in this year's mayor's race, isn't following it and won't answer any questions about it, we get this exchange:

To another scribe who asked about overcrowding in the city’s classrooms, the mayor responded with dripping sarcasm.

“Let’s just go back to when the school system was loaded with crime,” he said.

Uh, Bloomie, one thing there in that answer has nothing to do with the other.

The public school system in NYC is overcrowded as a direct result of your policies - overbuilding, rezoning, refusing to build new school buildings, charter school co-locations, closures, etc.

Too bad you don't want to take responsibility for that - or even acknowledge it.

DOE Tells Parents Of Wait-Listed Kindergartners To Send Their Kids To $16,000 Private School

With the NYCDOE, it's "children first...always":

Officials at a popular lower Manhattan public school have outraged dozens of parents whose kids are wait-listed for kindergarten by suggesting that they consider a $16,000-a-year private school down the block instead.

In an e-mail to prospective parents, PS 276 staffers gave parents scant hope of landing an open slot while touting the opening of “The Learning Experience Children’s Academy,” a new private school set to open next week.

The sales pitch hailed the private school’s class-size limits of 16 kids, and noted that it models its program on the Department of Education’s “core curriculum” for kindergarten.

Unmentioned in the e-mail from parent coordinator Erica Weldon — on which PS 276 principal Terri Ruyter is copied — is the private school’s price tag of $1,600 per month for 10 months, with summers off.

Well, I guess this solution is better than the last one the DOE came up with - birth control for parents to keep the kindergarten population down.

But something the NY Post fails to mention is just how "hot" this new Learning Experience Children's Academy chain is - and indeed, it is a "chain."

Here's a press release from the company crowing over their new Manhattan location:

NEW YORK, April 18, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- The Learning Experience® (TLE®), the nation's top growing early learning academy for children 6 weeks to 5 years old, announced today it has opened its first Manhattan location. The newest TLE® Children's Academy, the 150th location nationwide, is located at 20 West Street, New York City, NY.

On the heels of a study released by the Education Department stating that nearly 5,000 children qualified for gifted and talented kindergarten seats in New York City public schools in the fall (22 percent more than last year), TLE's® Brooklyn location reported that 100 percent of its center's children that qualified for kindergarten passed the New York City Gifted and Talented test and 85 percent were already performing at the first grade level.

"In spite of, or possible directly related to our economic displacement, parents are stressing advancement through early education as a high priority for their children," says Richard Weissman, TLE® President. "Our nationally proven platform is best suited to instill preschoolers with the necessary tools for future academic and life successes."

The 9,600-square-foot state-of-the-art center in the landmark Art Deco building, formerly the Downtown Athletic Club in Battery Park City, Manhattan, will serve the growing demand of parents who wish for their children to be fully prepared for grade school, and beyond. The exceptional, high-quality curriculum - including yoga, early reading program Fun with Phonics®, sign language for infants, foreign languages such as Spanish, and manners and etiquette - has 90 percent of children enrolled at TLE® reading before the age of 4.

Averaging a center opening every 15 days, TLE® has a growth rate of 81 percent for the past 7 years. "We recognized the continuing demand for high-level preschool education in Manhattan and sought to bring our centers to key locations throughout the city for some time," said Mr. Weissman. "We bring more than 30 years of educational and business success to the market, which makes this a perfect fit for an established city."

Headquartered in Boca Raton, Fla., TLE® is thriving and continues to be a leader in the advanced preschool industry with a mix of company-owned and franchised locations. In addition to the Manhattan location, TLE® has a prominent presence throughout the Tri-State area with over 60 centers in New Jersey, 5 in Connecticut, and 13 in New York, including one in Brooklyn, and several more scheduled to open throughout the 5 boroughs including Staten Island.

Gee, it sounds wonderful. I mean, who wouldn't love a school that offers yoga for four year olds.

And yet, I seem to remember that the DOE letter to parents with wait-listed kids stated how the Learning Experience Children's Academy stresses a "core curriculum," you know, like the Common Core curriculum the NYCDOE uses to indoctrinate, er, educate children for 21st century feudalism, er, challenges.

Is yoga for four year olds part of that "core curriculum"?

Or do you have to pay $16,000 a year to get that?

Just wondering.

Oh, and you know what else I noticed about the Learning Experience Children's Academy?

It doesn't seem to be obsessed with standardized testing and test prep.

Indeed, they still have something call "playtime" on what they call Make Believe Boulevard, an indoor Main Street, USA playset that allows for socio-dramatic play.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but most NYCDOE kindergartens don't have this kind of thing anymore, do they?

I can't say for certain, but I just don't there's a "socio-dramatic play" component in the Common Core curriculum.

Not in between all that test prep and drills they're doing...

NYCDOE Screw-Up On Kindergarten Seatings Will Cost The City Millions

Heckuva job, Dennis and Mayor Mikey:

The city is on the hook for millions of dollars in private school tuition after failing to find seats for thousands of kindergartners with special needs, the Daily News has learned.

The Department of Education missed a June 15 deadline to find spots for thousands of kindergartners with disabilities - and now the city could be liable for their tuition in private schools, officials acknowledged.

The holdup is also causing panic for families who are still waiting to hear where their kids are going to kindergarten next year.

"We're still in limbo," said Maria Farano of Staten Island, who still doesn't know where her daughter, who has autism, will attend kindergarten in the fall.

"We can't go on with our lives because we don't know what's going to happen," said Farano, a stay-at-home mom who is losing sleep because of the stress.

Education officials said they were still figuring out precisely how many kids were without seats and therefore unable to provide a firm number of how many children are left without assignments - and how much it will cost the city.

"We are committed to identifying appropriate placements for all incoming kindergartners with disabilities, and we're confident that the majority of parents will choose to send their child to a public school this September," said Deidrea Miller, a department spokeswoman.

While most public school kids already have seats, education officials were struggling to find assignments for the 15,500 incoming kindergartners with special needs because of changes to the city's special education program.

The kids who don't have seats yet are entitled to a private education paid for by the city under a 1988 legal ruling.

The city already spends about $100 million to educate about 4,000 kids in this situation - and now the cost could skyrocket.

"I haven't seen a single kid get a placement letter," said special education advocate Patricia Connelly. "As far as I can tell, they haven't found seats for any of these kids."

Not to worry - they'll just add another couple of thousand teachers in the layoff numbers and pass the savings on to the private school operators.

What a mess.

Maybe if they worried about building more schools and less about firing "bad" teachers and adding dozens of tests to the school year in order to get the "data" to do just that, there wouldn't be this problem.

But as it stands now, the overcrowding problem in the school system is horrendous.

Ultimately, they plan on solving it by doing more online instruction via Wireless Generation and other Bloomberg/Klein education provider cronies.

Online instruction via Wireless Generation ought to work great with five year olds with special needs.

Both Walcott and Bloomberg ought to be run out of town.