Cool or Not Cool: Parents Trying to Ban Standardized Exams?

This week Park Slope parents hit the street to protest a very important issue: standardized testing. Their kids don’t need the pressure from these “high stakes” test and they refuse to take the matter sitting down! So they are organizing a boycott, gosh darnit.

Nevermind the fact that studies --  like one conducted by Martin Carnoy and Susanna Loeb of Stanford -- show that standardized tests do make a difference... just not to students who typically come from the socioeconomic classes you find in Park Slope. But for sub-par teachers and low-income students, the structure imposed by standardized tests make a significant difference. Studies done by the University of Michigan found that these system closed a quarter of the gap in math achievement between black and white fourth graders.

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There's a Facebook Page For People Who Hate the Park Slope School Rezoning Proposal

Last week, a bunch of parents were up in arms after a rezoning proposal threatened to keep some of their kids from attending highly sought-after Park Slope schools by way of geographical re-mapping. The Community Education Council (CEC) has over a month to decide whether or not to move forward with the rezoning, and in the meantime, at least one group has formed in protest.

"The Coalition of Residents for Fair Rezoning is a grassroots effort to protect the future of Brooklyn's children and our community. The current DOE proposal seeks to rezone the boundaries of PS321, PS39, PS107, and PS10 in an unfair, elitist, and ineffective manner." - Via the group's Facebook page.

The mission statement is lengthy, but describes in detail possible holes in the current rezoning plan, and how it will affect the community as a whole. So if you want to stay up to date on rezoning news, or just have an outlet to bitch about how you paid $2.5M for a brownstone that may not fall in P.S. 321's boundaries by the time your toddler's old enough for school, consider liking then bookmarking the group's Facebook page. 

The ReZoning Proposal for P.S. 321 and P.S. 107 Has Been Announced

Park Slope parents pray... or, clap...Photo by Katie Orlinsky for The New York TimesLast night, the Department of Education laid out its plans for new proposed school zones for P.S. 39, P.S. 10, P.S. 321 and P.S. 107 schools which, if approved, would take effect during the 2013-2014 school year. Rezoning of the highly sought-after 107 and 321 is what most people have been up in arms about, because when you drop a shit ton of money on real estate in large part because of the school zone it falls in, you kind of expect your kid to go to that school.

The NY Times reports on the school zones' shrinkage:

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ARE ALL YOUR PARK SLOPE KIDS GOING TO BE GOING TO SHITTY SCHOOLS NOW?

image via Flickr

ATTN ALL PARENTS AND REAL ESTATE AGENTS: Time to freak the hell out over the prospect of having your whole nabe rezoned!

As we all well know cause it's been a hot topic forevs, P.S 321 on 7th Avene and P.S 107 on 8th Avenue are two elementary schools that are busting at the seams. Apparently the Community Education Council for District 15, which controls the zoning in our neighborhood, is in a standoff with the Department Education over a potential proposal to shrink our school zones! Which means more kids will get shut out of these two allegedly awesome schools! Which means your 1 billion dollar brownstone purchase was all for naught!

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Potty Drama! Still No love for PS 124’s Bathrooms

Currently the girls' bathroom, which lacks stall doors.

Back in April, Park Slope’s sense of community was revitalized when nearly 2,200 of you showed up in hopes of free food dropped your busy schedules to vote on which community projects should receive municipal funding from $1M in tax payers' dollars . 

Seeing that there is no Starbucks -- and therefore a nice Starbucks bathroom -- directly across the street from P.S. 124, we collectively elected to renovate two of the school's dysfunctional bathrooms at the cost of $150,000. Currently, the girls' bathroom is without any stall doors, and its floor is crumbling. The girls also get the pleasure of having a MacGyver-esque-heated toilet seat, which is actually just a scalding toilet placed directly next to a radiator leaving it unusable in winter. The boys' bathroom only has one stall and gets zero heat in the winter (also: with $150,000 and Park Slope moms in the mix, these kids better be getting a bidet when this shit finally happens).

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