‘I Want to Go Back to My Old School’

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Christopher and Dylon Parisi might just be 5 years old, but they know one thing for sure: They want to go to a different school.


“I don’t like my school. There’s bad people there,” said Christopher, squirming on the wood floor of his family’s Far Rockaway apartment. “I want to go back to my old school.”


Christopher and his twin brother, Dylon, loved P.S. 114, where they attended prekindergarten last year. But the zoned school where they now go, P.S. 225, is one of 328 schools in New York City that made the state Education Department’s “schools in need of improvement” list, and it’s proving a literal nightmare for the Queens family.


Christopher has been having bad dreams about school and throwing tantrums for hours before drop-off time. Dylon, who is the tougher of the two boys, has been wetting his bed at night. Plus, their mother Jessica Lopez says, Christopher and Dylon aren’t learning anything beyond what she taught them at home before they even started preschool last year.


“They have to write their names three times. They knew how to write their names before pre-K,” Ms. Lopez said. “They’re not going to learn anything. It’s a failing school.”


Along with tens of thousands of other New York City parents, Ms. Lopez found out last month that her sons’ school hadn’t accomplished what the federal No Child Left Behind law considers “adequate yearly progress.” That gave her the right to transfer her sons into a better school – a right she’s been doggedly pursuing for weeks.


But Ms. Lopez’s family, which lives in an apartment chock-full of toy cars, Fisher-Price castles, board games, children’s books, and crayon portraits of Pokemon, is finding that the right to school choice is not as simple as it sounds.


Last year, all 7,000 children who requested transfers were granted them. The limitless policy meant that some schools were stuffed full of students they didn’t have seats for. It also meant that some children ended up transferring from poor struggling schools to other struggling schools that didn’t count as “in need of improvement” because they were not financially needy.


This year, the city is capping transfers at the number of slots available in legitimately good schools. That means thousands of students who want to transfer will be turned down.


Parents had until October 4 to apply for a transfer, and they will find out if they get one next week. In the next week, Department of Education officials will work with regional offices to maximize the number of transfer seats, education spokeswoman Michele Mc-Manus said.


In the meantime, mothers, fathers, and grandparents are holding their breath, waiting for what they hope will be good news.


“I’m hoping and praying that for the best interest of my children, it works,” Ms. Lopez said. If they can’t transfer out of P.S. 225 under No Child Left Behind, Ms. Lopez said she hopes she is able to secure a safety variance and transfer the boys out of P.S. 225 because their abusive father has been spotted lingering outside of the school.


Ms. Lopez has been doing everything she could think of to help Christopher and Dylon switch schools since the beginning of the school year.


The day after the twins came home with notes in their backpacks about their school’s failure to make adequate yearly progress, Ms. Lopez drove 40 minutes to Region 5’s headquarters and dropped off completed transfer requests. Since then, she has asked for help from the principals at P.S. 225 and P.S. 114. She even tried calling the city’s help hotline, 311.


When it became clear that Christopher and Dylon weren’t getting out of P.S. 225 anytime soon, she packed up bagged lunches and her boys, bundled them onto the A train, and traveled two hours to Lower Manhattan to try to convince Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to make a quicker decision.


The chancellor wouldn’t see the family, but a Department of Education official told Ms. Lopez everyone would find out about transfers at the same time. In the meantime, she had to hang tight.


Ms. Lopez said that explanation doesn’t make much sense.


“The longer this is, the more traumatizing it is for my babies,” she said.


Meanwhile, the boys’ grandmother, Frances Lopez, has been writing letters to everyone from Senator Clinton to Rep. Anthony Weiner to City Council Member Eva Moskowitz, begging for help. As far as she knows, the only help she’s received so far is a letter from Ms. Moskowitz’s office to the education department, supporting the transfer request.


She also is also counting down to the 18th in bold, red letters on a hanging calendar.


“I want them to be back in 114 as soon as possible,” she said. “I want them out, like, tomorrow….This is going to affect them for the rest of their lives.”


The education department will notify families about transfers during the week of October 18.


The New York Sun

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