By Julie Shapiro
I.S. 276, the new middle school opening next fall in southern Battery Park City, will use a lottery rather than student performance to determine who gets in.
The school will be “unscreened,” which means Principal Terri Ruyter will not be allowed to use test scores, teacher recommendations, interviews or student attendance in making admissions decisions, said Will Havemann, spokesperson for the Dept. of Education. However, students who live in southern B.P.C. and the southern Financial District will get priority, as will those who attended an information session about the school.
The city has not yet decided how many sixth graders will be admitted to I.S. 276’s inaugural class next fall. Rather than applying through the regular middle school choice process, those who want to attend I.S. 276 will fill out a special application for new schools early next year.
So far, the city has not communicated the I.S. 276 admissions information to parents or school administrators. At a meeting on Monday, Ruyter said she was confused about how she was supposed to select and prioritize students.
In a subsequent interview with Downtown Express, Havemann described the series of priorities that will determine who gets a seat in I.S. 276: First priority for the sixth-grade seats next fall will go to students who live in the P.S. 276 zone (southern B.P.C. and the southern Financial District) who attended an information session about the school. Next priority will go to students in that area who did not attend an information session. Then, the school will open up to all District 2 students who attended an information session, and, finally, to District 2 students who did not attend a session.
Whenever the school gets too many applications at a given priority level, a lottery will be used as a tiebreaker, Havemann said.
Several parents whose children are applying to I.S. 276 next fall were unhappy to hear that the school would use a lottery.
“That’s unfortunate,” said Scott Scovel, whose daughter is in fifth grade at P.S. 89. “Lotteries have a way of destroying the culture a school is trying to create.”
Karen Miller, another south B.P.C. parent, agreed. “They should be allowed to do some kind of testing for [the student’s] fit into the overall school environment,” Miller said. I.S. 89 in north B.P.C. interviews students before making admission decisions.
P.S./I.S. 276 is a K-8, which means that fifth graders graduating from P.S. 276 will be guaranteed a seat in the school’s sixth grade. However, until P.S. 276 graduates its first fifth graders in 2015, the school will likely be able to take many children from other neighborhoods.
Many Downtown parents think I.S. 276 ought to prioritize students who live in any part of Lower Manhattan, not just southern B.P.C. and the southern Financial District. One of the strongest advocates for this change is Jeff Mihok, whose daughter is in fifth grade at P.S. 89. This week, Mihok suggested that rather than using a lottery as an admissions tiebreaker, the school could use geographic proximity instead. That would give children in Lower Manhattan a leg up on kids from the rest of District 2, which stretches through Midtown to the Upper East Side.
The city has resisted giving more of Lower Manhattan priority, because District 2 middle schools generally do not give preference to students who live nearby.
Not everyone is opposed to the idea of a lottery for I.S. 276. Deborah Somerville, another B.P.C. parent, said she was glad to hear that attendance would not be used as an admissions factor, since health and other issues can sometimes result in a poor attendance record.
“A lot of parents will be relieved,” Somerville said.
Julie@DowntownExpress.com
