Parent leaders ‘school’ Banks on ramifications of new HS admission rules
City Schools Chancellor David Banks appeared stunned this week when parent leaders gave him a lesson on how the new lottery-admissions system — which minimizes the importance of good grades — led to more than 5,200 incoming freshmen failing to land any of their high school choices.
“Woah! Hold on! Wait a second!” Banks exclaimed during a meeting Thursday of the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council, upon learning that a school district representing much of Manhattan’s East Side saw 18% of its students applying for high school seats fail to land any of their maximum 12 choices.
“Those percentages you gave me … You are saying it’s for kids who didn’t get into any of their 12 choices?!” he asked.
The Department of Education chancellor was responding to CPAC Co-Chairperson Shirley Aubin, who was repeating an earlier question by Leonard Silverman, a CPAC representative for Manhattan’s District 2.
“My district had the [worst] percentage of unmatched [students] with just 82% getting their 1-12 school choices,” Silverman told Banks. “Other districts … are also in the 80s-percent range. Is there any update you can tell us to help?”
Instead of answering the question, Banks veered to other, related topics for seven minutes, including that he wants to cut back on how parents of special-needs kids “game the system”by getting the DOE to pay for a costly private school education.
Aubin then pushed the chancellor to answer Silverman’s question and also asked Banks what he plans to do to ensure the same thing doesn’t happen next year.
Banks seemed surprised, again asking aloud, “Out of all 12 choices? They didn’t get any of [them]?!”
“Parents are hurting, and they’re looking for help,” Silverman fired back.
Banks said he’d meet with his staff to get more information “because that has not been brought to my attention just yet.”
The data Silverman cited was actually widely released last month by the DOE and reported by The Post.
In all, 5,256 — or 7% — of applicants failed to land any choice and were deemed “unmatched,” leaving their designations at the mercy of the DOE. That’s nearly 300 more “unmatched” students than the previous year when city high schools had nearly 3,000 more applicants.
Excluding the city’s nine specialized high schools – which fall under a separate application process — students can list up to 12 choices in order of preference.
When factoring kids accepted into specialized schools, 6% of all incoming freshman still failed to be matched to a high school — including a citywide-low 11% in District 2 and two other districts.
Banks has done an “admirable” job “far better than his predecessors” during his first year as chancellor, but “based on his comments one has to wonder if there is a disconnect between those responsible for student enrollment and DOE leadership,” Silverman said.
“I found his response quite surprising given all of the things that are going on,” Silverman said. “My reaction was ‘did he just say that?’”
Kaushik Das, a vice president of Manhattan’s District 2 Community Education Council, was also shocked Banks was apparently unaware of the district’s low percentage of getting local kids into high schools of their choice.
He provided video of a February town hall meeting where he informed Banks that 18% of District 2 students also failed to score any of their 12 high school choices heading into the previous academic year.
“I don’t think his enrollment, data and community-engagement teams are feeding him the right information or explaining to him the severity of certain ongoing problems,” Das said.
Debbie Kross, a parent advocate who sits on the Citywide Council of High Schools, agreed, saying she believes the chancellor would be better informed “if he listened to … parent leaders” — rather than relying on briefings from his staff.
DOE spokesman Nathaniel Styer said Banks’ “message was clear” at the CPAC session: “we must end the era of scarcity in our public schools, and ensure that students have excellent educational options in their neighborhood.”
He also said “it is wildly inappropriate to mislead the public without complete admissions data” that includes specialized high schools, adding District 2 saw a slight improvement under this metric compared to the previous year.
The Post reported last month that DOE data also shows Asian students were the biggest losers under the new admission rules with only 70% of applicants failing to land any of their top 5 high school choices. By comparison, 90% of black kids and 89% of Hispanics — two groups that together totaled more than 45,069 of the 71,349 applicants — scored one of their top 5 choices.
Seventy-six percent of the city’s white applicants landed one of their top 5 choices. The citywide average was 83%.
DOE officials have blamed the discrepancy on Asian and white students tending to rank more high-demand schools on their applications compared to students of other ethnicities, meaning each student in many cases is competing against 18 or more applicants per seat.
