Parents at two northwestern Queens schools are gearing up for a fight after the city announced students in a highly competitive program may no longer be guaranteed middle school spots.
The city is considering requiring all students in District 30 to be re-tested to remain in the gifted and talented program. Students from Public School 150, in Sunnyside, and PS 122, in Astoria, were previously guaranteed seats.
The Community Education Council District 30 will discuss the issue at its Thursday meeting.
But parents are already mobilizing, circulating petitions and threatening lawsuits.
“Parents are extremely upset,” said Elli Ventouras-Onaldin, 42, of Astoria, whose son is a kindergartner in the gifted program at PS 150. It’s “closing kids out of schools they were promised.”
She said she would have sent her son to another gifted program where he was guaranteed a middle school seat had she known of the potential policy change.
Isaac Carmignani, co-president of CEC 30, said the rules shouldn’t be changed “midstream.”
Families “already made life decisions with regards to their children’s education,” he said.
The CEC is pushing the city to open an additional gifted middle school program to accommodate all of the local elementary school students seeking to continue.
Instead, the city is looking into opening a screened program at Intermediate School 126, in Long Island City.
“That’s not necessarily addressing the needs of the gifted and talented” Carmignani said.
But city education officials called District 30 an anomaly. Most of the city’s brightest middle-schoolers attend screened schools instead of gifted programs, officials said.
Officials also stressed that this is far from a done deal.
“To create a more equitable admissions process, we are proposing that all District 30 fifth-graders have the opportunity to apply for admission through the same selection criteria for the selective programs,” said agency spokeswoman Deidrea Miller.
But Betty Law, 38, of Jackson Heights, whose daughter is a third-grader in the gifted program at PS 150, said she doesn’t want the anxiety of prepping her child through another test period.
“She’s doing work that’s one grade above her level,” said Law, who wants to keep her daughter in the gifted program. “We don’t have the kind of funding to send our kids to private school.”
If you think the DOE should not go back on its word, please support us and sign this petition. http://www.change.org/petitions/nyc-department-of-education-petition-against-changes-in-the-current-district-30-g-t-program#share
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