Some Queens parents who are against vaccinating their kids on religious grounds have sued the city to get rid of the policy which keeps kids with communicable diseases out of school. "It is my opinion that resorting to vaccinations demonstrates a lack of faith in God, which would anger God and therefore be sacrilegious," said Fabian Mendoza-Vaca, the father of two students at P.S. 107, who sued the city last week in Queens Supreme Court to overturn principals’ decisions to send his kids home. more ›

Apparently the Supreme Court's decision is not good enough to the NY State Legislature when it comes to allowing religious groups to worship in city schools. Last June, the U.S. Second Circuit of Appeals ruled that NYC public schools can prohibit religious services, and the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, letting the Second Circuit's decision stand. But, still, the State Senate will consider a bill to allow religious services in schools. And the NYCLU wants to remind lawmakers why it's a terrible idea. more ›

At what point do you start teaching kids the complicated geopolitics of the Middle East and how much detail on each side do you give? That is the question brought up today by public school parent Dana Milstein, whose 10-year-old recently came home from school with what Milstein found to be an alarming, propagandist "fact sheet" on Israel. Now she's taking her concerns to the public—and she has some points. more ›

Man, Occupy Wall Street is really going after the youth! Say you're a parent, not quite ready to sign off on a Camp Zuccotti kids sleepover, but you still want Sally to vive la revolution firsthand. No problem! Schools across the city are taking field trips to OWS, where your precious can learn about pepper spray under the watchful eye of a trained educator. more ›

As anyone who has seen the documentary Dangerous Minds knows, teaching is pretty difficult. But a few simple guidelines will make getting tenure easier: don't tell your students about your sexual exploits, brandishing a box cutter isn't a good idea, and cut back on the compulsive hugging. The Daily News looks into the more than 20 DOE employees who were disciplined over the last 24 months and they make our 6th grade English teacher's habit of shaving her eyebrows seem normal. more ›

Now that the city is a week into the school year and everyone's eardrums are growing accustomed to the early-morning shrieks of hyped-up children, it's time to play the classic back-to-school game "School Bus Horror Stories." more ›

Yesterday was the first day back in class for millions of New York City public school kids, and while most used the day as an excuse to socialize, meet their new classmates and, uh, show off their tuxedos, it wasn't that way for all of them. Like poor Mamadou Barry, who was supposed to have his first day of pre-kindergarten at PS 289 in Crown Heights yesterday...except his mom accidentally put him on the wrong bus! Luckily, everything worked out in the end. more ›

Are public schools secretly trying out a new form of corporal punishment? Or is it really just bad luck that, in separate incidents in Queens and Brooklyn this week, two young students severed their fingertips in doors at school? And that both schools initially lost the tips, ensuring that they couldn't be reattached? more ›

Yesterday, U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that New York City public schools can prohibit religious worship services from its premises. The New York Law Journal reports, "Ruling for the fourth time in a decade on a lawsuit brought by a Christian church in the Bronx, the majority concluded that the rule does not constitute viewpoint discrimination under the First Amendment because it 'does not exclude expressions of religious points of view or of religious devotion, but excludes for valid non-discriminatory reasons only a type of activity—the conduct of worship services.'" more ›

The mayor won't be winning over many public school parents with his latest comments: “Unfortunately there are some parents who just come from—they never had a formal education, and they don’t understand the value of education...the old Norman Rockwell family is gone." more ›

The NYPD has a zero-tolerance policy toward students, and hasn't hesitated to cart kids out of school in handcuffs for such offenses as doodling on their desks. But one Queens mother thinks the NYPD went too far when they dragged her 7-year-old son out of his special-ed class in handcuffs. The Daily News reports that Joseph Anderson, a first-grader at P.S. 153 in Maspeth, had been wetting himself throughout the morning on April 13th, and then became upset when he was dyeing Easter eggs and "the color on the egg he was painting didn't look the way he wanted." Yes, it's a sad story. more ›

In an adorable photo opportunity yesterday morning, new Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott walked his grandson Justin to school, PS 36 in St. Albans, Queens. Walcott, who also attended PS 36 when he was a boy, told reporters, "I don't want him to be late on my first day." Of course, parents and teachers said they couldn't recall seeing Grandpa Dennis there before, but that's okay, with one dad telling City Room, "It makes me feel good because we’ll probably get some more money for the school." The good times ended because then Walcott had a four-hour meeting with an irritated City Council! more ›

Sometimes, we just don't know how good we have it. Even though our new Schools Chancellor has abysmal ratings, our elite public schools aren't diverse and our principals can't remember that students need gym to graduate, the city's public schools are still so hot right now. This school year 298 of public school students weren't city residents, something Bloomberg calls, "one of those problems of success." Maybe the kids just have stage parents. more ›

Three public high schools are so bad, an independent external review commissioned by the state Department of Education has recommended that they be shut down. The review lambasted Jane Addams High School in the Bronx, August Martin High School in Queens and W.H. Maxwell High School in Brooklyn, three "persistently low-achieving" schools who have been flagged previously by the city for bad performance. But what did the state see that could have caused such harsh recommendations? more ›

[Update below] You know how the EPA keeps saying "there are dangerous PCBs in New York City schools!" And the Department of Education keeps saying "that's nice but we don't really have the money to deal with that right now?" Well, the dance continues! The results are in from the EPA's latest spot check of city schools and once again the results are not good. On Saturday, February 12, the federal agency checked out P.S. 45 in Brooklyn and found a whole mess of leaking lighting ballasts containing the suspected carcinogens. more ›

The furor over the old lighting fixtures and other installations in the city's public schools has boiled over into a page A1 NY Times (NYC edition) article about the potential dangers of PCBs. A parent says, "You don’t send your children to school thinking, ‘My kid is going to be exposed to a chemical that’s toxic enough that they ban it in building materials.'" more ›

The parents of a 6-year-old autistic boy enrolled at PS 168 in Mott Haven are suing the school for not keeping track of an 11-year-old boy who was caught abusing and sodomizing their son in the school bathroom. On November 2nd another student caught the two in the school bathroom "and the victim cried out," according to lawyer Richard Sules. He told the Post, "My client’s non-verbal and autistic. His mother was telling me he was getting on the bus every day with this kid. He cried every day when he got on the bus, but she didn’t know why." more ›

For the second day in a row, some Staten Island public school students have ditched school—with the EPA's permission. Ten classrooms in two schools were closed yesterday because higher-than-acceptable levels of PCBs were detected. Notably, when a PS 36 teacher complained about fluid leaking from a lighting fixture, "more 200 times the accepted amount of 50 parts per million" of PCBs were found in two classrooms. While students in those two classrooms were pulled, other parents removed their students from the school— the attendance rate was 26% at PS 36. more ›

When Cathie Black was first introduced to the city, one of the most obvious signs of her lack of city school knowledge was that her own children attended a private boarding school in Connecticut. But when asked whether she would put her kids in a public school today, she favored honesty instead of the obligatory pro-public schools soundbite, saying, "I don't know what we would be doing. I would love to look at all of the schools. It's about choice for parents." How lovely it would be if everyone had the option to spend $30,000 a year on high school. more ›

It looks like a lot of those kids waiting to find Kindergarten spots over the summer are still waiting. A 4-year-old boy in Ridgewood spent the first two weeks of the school year listed as "inactive" at P.S. 75, even though he spent the entire summer in a pre-K program there. After numerous complaints, the DOE gave up on finding him a spot and handed his mother a voucher for a private special-education school. More prying from the Post got him back at P.S. 75, but all we hear is that if you bug the DOE enough your kid can go to private school for free. more ›

As if it isn't tough enough being a "Special Needs" student in the city's public school system, some students are finding the buses are making getting a good education even harder. Parents say the school buses are running so late that they've made some students miss their first classes almost every day of school, and are making students return home hours late. Matt Berlin, director of the Office of Pupil Transportation, told the Daily News, "We're going to fix it for all the children in New York City schools like we do every year. Late buses are our failure." Until then, homeschooling? more ›

This week, NYC's millions of public school students returned to class on Wednesday...only to stay at home yesterday and today, due to the Jewish holidays. The one-day school week was ridiculed and even boycotted by some parents. But then there are the parents didn't know their kids didn't have school. more ›

The polls are really not being nice to Mayor Bloomberg today. Though he once said improving the city's schools was his top priority, a new poll says 49% of New Yorkers believe he failed in doing that. But we thought graduation rates were grea—Oh. Right. more ›

According to New Jersey's Governor Christie, their loss in the competition for Race To The Top funding was a federal government conspiracy. Christie says that the feds should have just called if they wanted to know how much the state spent on school funding in 2008 and 2009 (instead of the projected numbers for 2010 and 2011 the state provided). And according to NJ.com, he also says officials could have easily "found the information on the internet." more ›

Looks like all that drama and work actually paid off! After failing the first time, New York just secured itself about $700 million in public school funding as a part of the Race to the Top program. Mayor Bloomberg said in a statement, "New York State's selection is a testament to what we've accomplished in our City's schools over the last eight years. Our students have shown tremendous improvement and now—as a Race to the Top participant —we will work with our teachers and school administrators to raise the bar once again." more ›

Because of a few U.S. Supreme Court decisions, parents of special-needs children can ask that the DOE pay for private school if public school options aren't adequate. Last year, the city's department spent $116 million reimbursing parents, mainly in the wealthier areas of Manhattan and Brooklyn. However, many parents never tried sending their kids to public school before squeezing the DOE for their pennies. Michael Best, general counsel at the DOE, told the Wall Street Journal, "No one begrudges parents the right to send their children to private school. But this system was not intended as a way for private school parents to get the taxpayers to fund their children's tuition." Well, how do you think they stay rich? more ›

Reacting to a drop in test scores this school year, angry parents decided that bullhorns were a necessity at an education panel last night. “Where is the accountability?," asked one parent whose son's scores had dropped. “Do your work for our children" said another. The ruckus was enough to make Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and the members Panel for Educational Policy walk out of their own meeting. DOE spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz told the Times, "Their shouting and screaming proved too disruptive for the panel to continue meeting, and rather than be heard, these individuals sabotaged their chance to speak and derailed important public business." more ›

A federal court ruled blocked the city's controversial plans to close 19 underperforming schools (including Jamaica High School, right, in Queens) by upholding "a lower court finding that the city’s Education Department did not comply with the 2009 state law on mayoral control of the city schools because it failed to adequately notify the public about the ramifications of the closings." And since students thought the schools were closing, few applied, so some schools may only have a few dozen students! Mayor Bloomberg was not happy with the ruling, "There's a whole bunch of kids that at least for one year will get a terrible education that ... they'll probably never recover from." more ›

Today is the last day of the 2009-2010 school term, but many schools aren't expecting to see kids in class today. According to MyFoxNY, "Teachers were predicting that some parents would keep their children home or get a jumpstart on their vacations. They won't be missing any education. The schools generally hand out report cards and learning who their teachers will be in the fall." And the first day of the 2010-2011 term will be September 8. There was an effort to move the first day to September 13, because it's believed parents will keep kids home until then anyway since school is closed on September 9 and 10 for Jewish holidays. But the DOE and teachers union couldn't come to an agreement. more ›

Due to a significant drop in the number of black and Latino students accepted into the city's gifted student programs, the Department of Education is considering changing test makers when the current contract expires next year. Deputy Chancellor Marc Sternberg said at an appearance before the City Council, "With this window of opportunity to rethink the kind of [calculations] we're using on the test, maybe we help to resolve this question." more ›