We hope to see you tonight at 6 pm at the community meeting with District 28 Superintendent Mabel Muniz-Sarduy and representatives from the Queens district planning office. The meeting is at PS 303. This is our opportunity to ask questions about the proposed Educational Impact Statement ahead of the June 5 public hearing. The statement officially approves the expansion to grades 4 and 5, but also makes changes to the kindergarten admissions priorities to help alleviate crowding at PS 196. The PTA has formed the Expansion Impact Subcommittee to keep an eye on this process.
If you haven’t seen the revised document yet, it’s here: https://on.nyc.gov/
The good news is that our pleas have already been heard and sibling priority has been restored in the revised document. That means, for the 2019-20 school year, if you have an older child who will be attending PS 303, your younger child will have priority for kindergarten admissions above all other children, no matter where you live. Should this plan pass, it will keep siblings together.
The not-good news is that pre-K students still don’t have kindergarten priority. That means pre-K students who live outside the 196 zone would be in danger of not getting a seat for kindergarten — even after spending a year at 303. This still seems unfair. It seems especially unfair for the students who were just enrolled this spring for entrance in the fall. If we can’t get the pre-K priority restored overall, we would like to see a grandfathering clause to allow this group of students to continue under the old rules.
Our other concern is keeping PS 303 a choice school into the future — which means rolling back the PS 196 priority after its addition opens. The language in the revised Educational Impact Statement is more favorable toward keeping 303 as a nonzoned school, but we’d like to continue pressing the point with DOE leaders: AEA is special, and one of the reasons that’s so is our openness to kids across the district.
Hope to see you tonight!
The PTA Subcommittee on Expansion Impact
If you haven’t seen the revised document yet, it’s here: https://on.nyc.gov/
The good news is that our pleas have already been heard and sibling priority has been restored in the revised document. That means, for the 2019-20 school year, if you have an older child who will be attending PS 303, your younger child will have priority for kindergarten admissions above all other children, no matter where you live. Should this plan pass, it will keep siblings together.
The not-good news is that pre-K students still don’t have kindergarten priority. That means pre-K students who live outside the 196 zone would be in danger of not getting a seat for kindergarten — even after spending a year at 303. This still seems unfair. It seems especially unfair for the students who were just enrolled this spring for entrance in the fall. If we can’t get the pre-K priority restored overall, we would like to see a grandfathering clause to allow this group of students to continue under the old rules.
Our other concern is keeping PS 303 a choice school into the future — which means rolling back the PS 196 priority after its addition opens. The language in the revised Educational Impact Statement is more favorable toward keeping 303 as a nonzoned school, but we’d like to continue pressing the point with DOE leaders: AEA is special, and one of the reasons that’s so is our openness to kids across the district.
Hope to see you tonight!
The PTA Subcommittee on Expansion Impact