Who can forget last year’s troubled middle school application process? Parents and kids didn’t find out until mid-June where their children were accepted. Some people found out that their children were on no list, that they’d been zapped from the computer; that there child had not been placed.

Sure, those problems were rectified (some more quickly than others) but still it was a challenging situation and enormously dispiriting for the children who had to wait.

Worse, children with IEPs (Independent Educational Programs) who wanted Collaborative Team Teaching classes, were not placed until the end of June leaving parents and kids feeling like second-class citizens and in a state of suspended animation weeks after their peers learned where they were going. 

It was so bad that a group of parents of students with IEP’s organized a public meeting with Sandy Ferguson, who is the DOE’s point person in charge of admissions, as a way to public ally register their complaints and demand action.

Now I hear there’s a new middle school application. Perhaps the Department of Education (DOE) is trying to correct some of the mistakes of last year. But you know how it is with improvements: things can sometimes backfire, or at least go way wrong.

On Friday, parents received an application in a sealed envelope, which already has the student’s name, address, phone number, parent’s name, school, and other pertinent information typed in.

On the new application, there is also a list of the schools in district that the student is eligible to apply to. For instance, if a  child did not receive a particular test score, the list will not include a school that requires that test score.

On the form, there is also room for teacher’s to answer multiple choice questions about the child’s fifth grade performance. I’m not sure if there’s an area for written notes as well. That was never a teacher evaluation of the middle school application. There was some talk that this time-sensitive element adds to teacher’s already overwhelming work load.

So what happened on Friday when the applications went out:

I heard anecdotally that 35% of the applications had incorrect addresses on them. That can be corrected but it is, as you can imagine, a laborious process, which involves going to the middle school application office in the basement of Brooklyn Tech in Fort Greene.

As you can imagine, parents had mixed reactions to the new applications.  In some cases, lists included schools that the student is really not eligible for. This caused confusion. "Does this mean we should apply there anyway?" one parent asked. Likely that would be wasting a first choice was the reply. There may have even been cases where the child is eligible and their list does not reflect that.

Here are the issues I think the DOE was trying to address with this new application:

–With all the student-specific information automatically entered on the application, the DOE can make sure that they have all students on file with their correct information and scores: Entry mistakes can be caught early.

–If a parent does not receive an application it probably means there’s some kind of computer glitch or other problem that needs to be addressed now.

–By listing the schools a child is eligible for, the DOE is trying to stem the problem of parents putting a school first that will not consider the child due to test scores. Consequently, a child’s first choice is squandered.

I don’t know if there are special applications for the kids with IEPs, who want to be in Collaborative Team Teaching classrooms.

Stay tuned. The envelopes went out on Friday and there’s sure to be mayhem on Monday. Let’s hope it is an improvement that parents and administration will benefit from.