OSFO soldiers on but it’s her mom who is beginning to weary of this whole matter. No being on any middle school master list is very frustrating. It’s like we don’t exist. Bureaucracies are so good at extinguishing people. Poof, you’re gone. You don’t exist.

This afternoon I spent some time in the guidance counselor’s office at PS 321. She is almost as frustrated as I am as she’s been trying to reach the principal of one of the schools that OSFO applied to to see if she is on their list. I heard her leave a message and specifically spell out OSFO’s name.

She told me: “Maybe you’ll get the letter this weekend.” You can imagine that I am a bit dubious.

So far her calls have not been returned and District 15 seems not to be returning calls.

On another note, people are receiving their letters. Woo hoo: there really are letters after all. As I reported earlier, one family received two letters for one child (one said she got into a school she didn’t apply to; the other said she wasn’t placed).

Another family found out today that their daughter is, in fact, on the data base in another district.

While I was in the office with another parent and child who are are on NO LIST, a girl came running into the office with her dad and a gaggle of friends.

“Where did I get in?” she asked. Her friends stood by excitedly while the guidance counselor checked the list.

The girl’s name was there and she got into the school she wanted to. Their were screams, hugs, and yelps.

I told them to leave the room because it seemed unkind to the young girl in the office who still doesn’t know where she’s going. She was a very cute girl.

“All my friends are saying where they’re going. I keep wondering where I’m going next year,” she told me.

She seemed resilient and upbeat. I admired her for that and was glad that the sqealing girls left the room.

In all the many years that this guidance counselor has been working at PS 321, she’s never had to be the one to personally tell parents where their children got in.

Except for one year when the Education Department sent the acceptance letters to the school, the letters always go home. Last year the problem was that the parents got their letters before the guidance counselor got the list; she found that frustrating when the parents needed her assistance.

Because things were centralized this year — pre-K, middle school and high school were all handled out of one office—there have been many problems. As the director of OSEPO told the New York Times:

“Part of the challenge is that we took on about 28 individual district processes and created a standardized timeline,” said Elizabeth Sciabarra, the director of the Office of Student Enrollment, Planning and Operations, referring to how middle school admissions were changed. Her office, which handles high school admissions, added prekindergarten admissions and notification of middle school admissions this year. “I know that there are parents who are upset that they haven’t gotten a letter yet. Rest assured they will by the end of the week, and we have committed to parents we will work to get this done earlier next year.”

Another problem I am hearing about is children being placed in schools they didn’t apply to. The guidance counselor tells me that the Education Department reserves the right to place a child in a school that is not on their list if necessary.

This is outrageous. The school asks parents to carefully select the right school for their children and do whatever those schools require for entrance. Children with their parents go to open houses, small tours, fill out applications, audition, do interviews.

To be treated like this is a slap in the face.