By Gavin Aronsen

Twenty-one years ago, when Lily Woo first arrived at P.S. 130 Hernando de Soto, she was seen as an outsider and greeted with suspicion.

The previous principal had retired, and the district superintendent had just finished the search for a replacement who could bring the underperforming school up to speed. Assistant Principal Howard Epstein, a 30-year veteran of the school, was a prime candidate for the job. But the superintendent chose Woo.

“Of course, I was very disappointed in not having gotten the school,” recalled Epstein, who is now in his 51st year at the school in the same position. “We had to come to grips with the situation.”

Epstein and Woo set aside their differences and successfully rallied the school’s staff around the new principal.

Today, Woo’s peers credit her for transforming P.S. 130 into one of the city’s finest. Once complacent with a 38 percent passing rate, the Chinatown school now ranks in the 98th percentile for student performance and has been recognized by the city, state and U.S. Department of Education for its achievements.

In addition to a supportive staff, Woo gave special credit to Kaye Lawson, an education consultant who works in Australia, as well as in the U.S. Lawson has been helping the Chinatown school for the past 14 years.

Said Epstein, “If [Woo] wasn’t instrumental in trying to seek the person who could meet the needs of the staff in the building, it would never have worked the way it did. She always considers the total picture.”

Woo, 59, uses her own background to relate to her students, about 90 percent of whom are Asian and most of whom come from families that do not speak English.

The principal was born in Hong Kong and came to the states with her parents and younger brother, unable to speak English. The family settled in a Chinatown tenement house where they lived for the next 27 years.

“I lived the lives of the children who live around me,” Woo said. “I lived in a three-room railroad apartment, where the bathtub was in the kitchen and the bathroom in the hallway.”

Her father was a restaurant worker whom she barely saw because he worked seven days a week. Her mother ran a dry-cleaning business, where Woo would go after elementary school to help out.

Woo later went to middle school on the Lower East Side before graduating from the Bronx High School of Science. She studied elementary education at Queens College, got her masters at New York University in English as a Second Language and took a fellowship on leadership at Columbia.

When she came to P.S. 130, Woo brought with her an impressive resumé: elementary and alternative high school teacher, adult basic education instructor, high school staff developer, ESL project director and state education department associate.

After taking some time off when she had her children, Woo returned to what she called her “first love”: elementary school. That’s when she started at PS 130.

Today, Woo lives in Queens with her husband, who is also an educator, and two children. However, she said she spends about 15 hours each day at her school in Chinatown, where 1,020 children in pre-kindergarten through the 5th grade receive their education.

Because Woo’s school is both Title I—82 percent of its students are on the free and reduced lunch program—and high achieving—which reduces available need-based assistance—funding for its ambitious arts programs can be hard to come by. The programs, which include dance, music and visual arts, cost on average $15,000 each year, Woo said.

Last year, parents stepped up to the plate, raising nearly $100,000 through fundraising to keep the programs afloat.

“That should give you an inkling about the kind of support I have in this school,” Woo said.

That support won Woo the honor of being among a select group of New Yorkers who helped carry the Olympic torch in its around-the-world trip for the 2004 Summer Games in Athens. She passed the torch off at Ground Zero, about a mile from her school, as a representative of the city’s education system.

Said Epstein, “The personnel that she has put in place, the ideas that she has taken and that she has made herself, have made P.S. 130 what it is today.”

By Isha Dandavate

Most schools help recently immigrated students transition into an English-based education system. P.S. 75 promotes a bilingual learning environment instead. The dual language program integrates both native English-speakers and native Spanish-speakers into one classroom so both groups of students can learn from each other.

“The program is considered an additive program, because you’re adding Spanish rather than replacing the second language with English,” said Assistant Principal Tori Hunt. P.S. 75 on West End Avenue was one of the first in New York City to implement a dual language program, Hunt said. Many schools have transitional bilingual programs or ESL programs, which help non-native English speakers to transition into an English-taught curriculum, but P.S. 75’s dual language program is different in that it also encourages students who are fluent in Spanish to continue developing their native language as they learn English.

Students must opt into the dual language program—no one is required to participate. First priority is given to children who come from only Spanish-speaking families, and aren’t exposed to English at home. Extra spaces are then extended to students from English-speaking families who can support speaking Spanish at home, whether it’s because the family is already bilingual, or because they commit to learning the language.

Jennifer Friedman, 37, enrolled both her children in the dual language program. Her 9-year-old son Jack and 6-year-old daughter Celia began their bilingual experience at home—Friedman spoke to them only in Spanish, and her husband spoke to them in English. When her son entered kindergarten, Friedman considered various programs throughout the city. “P.S. 75 was in our zone and we looked at other schools, but we really felt this was the best school,” she said. Among her reasons for choosing P.S. 75, Friedman lists the dedication of the teachers, the principal’s strong leadership and the level of diversity.

Teacher Mayra Fernandez says that in dual language classrooms, not only is there ethnic diversity, but socio-economic diversity as well. “Many of our kids come from poor homes,” she says. “It’s nice that there’s a mix because they learn from each other.”

Fernandez, a teacher in the dual language program since 1991, has a class that also includes some students with learning impairments. She works with a co-teacher to help each student achieve his or her individual best. “In a general education class, you’re going to have diversity in terms of ability anyway,” she said. “In this kind of a classroom it’s just a bigger range.”

All teachers in dual language classrooms are bilingual and have dual language certification. They are committed to maintaining the balance between the languages. “If you are learning to add decimals in Spanish one day, the next day you’re learning to subtract decimals in English,” said Hunt. “We’re really deliberate—dividing the language that way, you’re not repeating what you did the day before but you’re extending it.”

Another deliberate move by the school is encouraging parent participation. Events are conducted in Spanish and English. The parent coordinator is also bilingual. “Sometimes we have workshops that focus on Spanish-speaking families,” Hunt said. “We focus on how important it is to maintain Spanish in the household, since the kids can practice English in other places.”

According to Fernandez, the school has also held Spanish classes for parents in past years. “A lot of the parents who take that class are parents of dual language kids,” she said.

The administrators at P.S. 75 have worked hard to make sure the dual language program benefits both English- and Spanish-speaking students. “You’re giving them two languages and opening up many doors in multiple ways—overall academics, a better understanding of multiculturalism,” said Hunt. “There’s research to show it helps kids to perform better academically overall, just like if you learn to play a musical instrument. It’s a wonderful opportunity for the kids.”

By Max Sarinsky

On one side of a 2nd-grade classroom hangs a collection of students’ writing assignments in English; on the other side, a world map in French. Some bathrooms are marked “Bathroom” while others are marked “Toilettes.” A copy of the minutes in the main lobby from the latest board meeting is in both French and English.

These are just a few of the most visible examples of the bilingual identity of the New York French American Charter School, which opened on West 120th Street earlier this fall. The school’s mixed identity extends to its teaching—the majority of classes are taught in French using the French curriculum, while others are taught in English with the American curriculum.

“We take the best of each one,” said Principal Katrine Watkins, who conceived of the school two years ago. “It’s neither fish nor fowl.”

Watkins said that she expects the integration of the French education systems to improve the quality of education. She noted that the French system emphasizes neatness and structure. For instance, 1st-grade students are taught to write in cursive, she said.

“We’re way down there in quality as far as the world is concerned,” she said about American education. By borrowing from the best French teaching methods, Watkins said that the charter school is “pushing kids to the top, no matter who they are.”

Watkins, who is American, is a veteran of both French and bilingual private education—she taught at the Lycée Français de New York on the Upper East Side and also co-founded the French-American School of New York in Westchester 30 years ago. She said that the French American Charter was unique among all area French schools not only through its free admission, but also its emphasis on Francophone culture. Many of its students belong to Harlem’s sizeable West African community, and Watkins said that class work will emphasize a few different French-speaking countries each year.

“It’s a type of celebration, saying we all count,” Watkins said. “My hope is that [students] will develop an identity that is much different than it would have been otherwise.”

In its inaugural year, the school serves only grades K-2, with about 150 total students. It plans to add a grade each year, until it is a K-12 school with an International Baccalaureate program.

Watkins said that all of the challenges of leading the new school—including planning for expansion, maneuvering city bureaucracy, managing expectations of parents from dozens of different countries—have been keeping her extraordinarily busy. Nonetheless, she still has time to work with the students. Upon entering a kindergarten classroom on a recent morning, many of the students flocked to the entrance.

The first student who approached her spoke in French, and she responded in French. Another student greeted her in English. Without hesitation, Watkins responded in English.

By Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke

The Brooklyn School of Inquiry held an open house in 2009 at the Brooklyn Historical Society because its own building was not ready yet.

“We moved into our building two days before school started,” said Principal Donna Taylor. “I brought a picture of the school building to show parents what it would look like.”

Since then, the Brooklyn School of Inquiry in Bensonhurst has had to cap the number of open houses because of a surplus of interested applicants. The school currently goes from kindergarten through 2nd grade but will eventually go through 8th grade. Two kindergarten classes will be added each year until the school reaches capacity.

As one of five citywide schools for children who qualify for the Gifted and Talented program, and the only one in Brooklyn, the Brooklyn School of Inquiry only accepts applic ations from students who score in the 97th percentile or higher in the Department of Education’s Gifted and Talented testing process. Even so, the interest from those qualified students exceeded expectations.

“I was surprised by the huge demand, and by how quickly we became a destination,” said Taylor.

Taylor left a 20-year career in book publishing to work in education. After teaching for several years, Taylor attended the Department of Education’s Leadership Academy, which trains principals.

At the Brooklyn School of Inquiry, emphasis is placed on incorporating art into the school day. In addition to visual arts classes, all students study violin by the Suzuki method. The school also has an optional homework policy. Students are given activities that can be done at home, but are not mandatory.

“We use the inquiry model so that students are interested in learning, rather than teacher-directed learning,” said Taylor. “There is no correlation between high academic achievement and homework.”

Interest in the school has helped make it a success, but Taylor cautions against judging the outcome too soon.

“It is such a happy occasion when the mission and vision of a school is so aligned with what parents want for their kids,” said Taylor. “Still, until we reach capacity, it remains to be seen how it all bears out.”

By Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke

P.S. 452 opened last fall in order to alleviate overcrowding at P.S. 87 and P.S. 199. Both Upper West Side schools had waiting lists. Located in the M.S. 44 building on West 77th Street, the school currently has three kindergarten classes. Eventually, the school will go from kindergarten through 5th grade.

Principal D. Scott Parker jumped at the chance to start a school from the beginning. He was an assistant principal and, before that, a 4th-grade teacher at P.S. 199.

“The opportunity to lead a new school doesn’t happen that often and this is the first new school on the Upper West Side I can remember,” said Parker. “It was a really unique opportunity to create something brand new that is engaging for the little kids.”

Some parents were disappointed at first that their children could not attend P.S. 87 or P.S. 199, but this year has been off to a good start. Eight kindergarteners who had been waitlisted at the other schools were offered spots at the beginning of the fall. All but one stayed, according to Parker.

“We had bad press before we even started. It is not easy to be the new kid on the block, so it is especially great for us to be considered new and noteworthy,” said Parker.

P.S. 452 employs an integrated approach to the curriculum across disciplines.

“We integrate reading and writing and science and use a unit-based approach,” said Parker. “For example, during a science unit on trees, teachers will also use trees in reading and writing and art.”

The school also employs a social-emotional program with psychologists. For kindergarteners, this involves learning to empathize and to recognize their own emotions. The program will continue to grow as the school does.

“This year has been very exciting and receiving a Blackboard Award is very encouraging to the community,” said Parker.

By Patrick Wall

In their first weeks at P.S. 267, the kindergarteners learned how to sketch structures, then make them out of blocks. They found that building something new might be exciting, but it’s not easy.

Medea McEvoy, principal of P.S. 267, or the East Side Elementary, is learning the same lesson. “Opening a school, you can get a lot of support and a lot of advice,” McEvoy said, “but it’s still very challenging.”

The school opened with three kindergarten classes this year, and will add another grade level each year until it offers kindergarten through 5th grade. It currently shares a building with P.S. 158 on York Avenue, between East 77th and 78th streets, and is expected to move to its permanent home on East 63rd Street in 2012. Its students were pulled from the waiting lists of overcrowded schools in the area.

McEvoy, who taught at P.S. 6 in the Upper East Side for 10 years, said that choosing the new school’s teachers was one of her most difficult duties. “The most important people in the school are the teachers,” McEvoy said, “who are in front of the children every day.”

She spent five months sorting through over a thousand resumés to select the school’s three full-time teachers. But, McEvoy said, “It was worth the search.” The educators she found all have previous teaching experience, as well as such diverse interests as yoga, scuba diving and ballroom dancing.

Learning at P.S. 267 is project-based and tied to the real world. During their months-long study of trees, students will visit John Jay Park several times to collect acorns, leaves and twigs to be sorted out back at school. Next week, an architect will show the children real blueprints. Then they’ll go visit the actual building.

“Kids at this age really need to have hands-on experiences,” said teacher Ariel Ricciardi. “You see a huge difference in kids when you let them explore.”

Because funding is based on enrollment, P.S. 267 is starting off with limited resources. Parents have been making up the difference by planning fundraisers through the PTA and volunteering on special projects. One parent is designing the school logo, while another is building the school’s website.

Starting a new school is exhausting, but it’s thrilling too, McEvoy said. Even when the job calls for opening dozens of milk cartons and fork wrappers every day at lunch.

“That’s the joy of spending each and every day with so many four- and five-year-olds,” McEvoy said.

By Gavin Aronsen

When the former P.S. 151 shut its doors on a nearby corner in 2001, parents had no option but to crowd their children into schools in surrounding neighborhoods.

The new P.S. 151—aka Yorkville Community School—began reversing the exodus when it opened in September last year, after the city’s Department of Education leased a former Catholic school building on East 91st Street and renovated it that summer.

A teacher helps a student with his classwork at P.S. 151. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

Under the leadership of Principal Samantha Kaplan, the cash-strapped school now teaches 179 kindergarteners and 1st graders on the building’s first four floors. The fifth floor is under construction for 2nd graders next year, and there are plans to add another grade each year after up to 5th grade.

“I had to write a proposal about what my vision for the school would be if I had the opportunity to open it,” Kaplan said. “My proposal was based on creating a school that was centered around the community, and using the community to develop our curriculum. That was our starting point.”

After getting the job, Kaplan said her first move “was to develop partnerships with community-based organizations to provide enrichment opportunities.”

Without enough money to hire gym or music instructors, the school has relied on funding secured by City Councilmembers Daniel Garodnick and Jessica Lappin, who both represent the Upper East Side, to afford outreach to community-based and other organizations.

The fitness club Asphalt Green now helps keep P.S. 151’s kids in shape, and the non-profit Arts Connection runs a music and movement program, to name just two examples. The school is actively seeking new grants as it continues to grow.

An integrated curriculum model, in which math and writing fuse with a common social studies theme, drive the school’s lesson plans.

“I think it’s really exciting that the curriculum is so engaging, because it’s all child-based,” Kaplan explained. “ Everything we do is based off how they respond, and the teachers are flexible and willing to look at the work they’ve done and are willing to change it.”

First-grade teacher Tara Torre came to P.S. 151 for this reason.

“I thought it would be a great opportunity to start from the ground up and watch something really develop,” she said. “And it has been. Creating the curriculum has been an amazing experience.”

She also embraces the theme of community on which Kaplan founded the school.

“It really helps the kids with building a sense of knowledge about the world around them,” Torre said.

By Ellen Keohane

Students at the Hamilton Heights School gathered in the cafeteria for the weekly sing-a-long on a recent Friday morning. As the children plopped onto the red, blue and green linoleum floor, more than half a dozen parents and younger siblings watched from the sidelines.

Principal Alva Buxenbaum. Photo by Andrew Schwartz.

“Shake hands around the world down by the riverside,” sang 1st-grade teacher Kristin Taylor into a microphone in front of more than 200 students. The children echoed the lyrics back while moving their bodies along with the music. One teacher played a Casio keyboard, while other faculty members sang and danced along. Another teacher roamed the crowd with a microphone, which she shared with various students.

Started by parents in 2002, the school first opened as Hamilton Heights Academy. Since then, the school has grown, and in 2007 it was granted full school status and changed its name. After sharing space in multiple buildings for years, the school, also called P.S. 368, relocated all grades to the second floor of 1750 Amsterdam Ave. at West 147th Street this September. “This is the first school year where all grades are together,” explained Alva Buxenbaum, who came on board as principal in 2007. About 250 students attend the school, which has two sets of classes for kindergarten through the 5th grade.

Later that morning, Buxenbaum walked through the yellow and green hallways of the school and pointed to various writing, art and science projects displayed on bulletin boards. One project posted in the hallway consisted of a 1st-grade project called “What is it? It’s air!” Experimenting with feathers, cotton balls and paper with air blown through straws, the students recorded what they discovered about air. “You can trap air inside a bag,” wrote one 1st grader named Alysha.

Buxenbaum described her school as “progressive,” but clarified that this does not mean that “everyone does their own thing.” The goal is to create an educational climate where everyone respects one another, she said. The teachers encourage students to explore and actively participate in their education.

The school is diverse—just over half of the students are Hispanic, about one third is black and nine percent is white.

In the school’s mission statement, family involvement is described as the “heart” of the school’s program. As they say, it takes a village to raise a child, Buxenbaum said. “Parents and staff work together to get the job done,” she said. “Parents are welcome in our school.”

“We have a lot of parental involvement,” said Beth Venn, one of the founding parents of the school, who attended that Friday’s sing-a-long. Venn’s daughter graduated from Hamilton Heights and her son is in the 5th grade there. “Parents are really engaged.”

“We try to do a lot of community activities where all the grades get together,” added Tom Wood, co-president of the school’s parents’ association. The older kids often mentor the younger ones, he said. Wood’s daughter and son both attend Hamilton Heights.

Earlier that morning in the cafeteria, Buxenbaum weaved between and around the crowd of parents, teachers and students. A few cafeteria workers also lingered nearby to hear the music. “Ever since the beginning of the school, we have a community sing-a-long on Fridays,” Buxenbaum said.

Many of the songs taught on Friday mornings are incorporated into the curriculum. This Friday, for example, the students learned a song about the Freedom Riders, a group of Civil Rights activists who challen ged segregation laws and customs on buses while riding through the South in the early 1960s.

“We come together every Friday to celebrate our togetherness and our differentness,” Taylor said as she introduced the lyrics of the Freedom Rider song to students. “But there were times when people were kept separate,” she said. “Come on over to the front of the bus, because I’ll be riding up there,” she sang.

After a few more songs, including one in Spanish and another about a chicken who laid an egg, the students started filing out of the cafeteria class-by-class. “When they get back to class, they’re ready to work,” Buxenbaum said.

By Gavin Aronsen

“It’s a magical place,” said P.S. 40 Principal Susan Felder, settling on the proper words to define her school. “There’s something really special about our kids.”

Felder has been at the elementary school for the past seven years, during which time she has helped mold it into one of the best in Manhattan’s high-performing second district.

A teacher helps one of her students at P.S. 40. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

The key, she said, is the theme of community, evident in the class curriculum, school staff and active relationships with parents and others in the vicinity of the school on E. 20th St. The theme, she added, is “also how we live our lives in the building.”

As an example, during a tour of the school, Felder pointed out two 1st graders who held a door open for her on their way back to class.

“How many kids do you know who would do that for us?” she asked.

P.S. 40, also called Augustus Saint-Gaudens, is home to 589 students from pre-kindergarten through the 5th grade, with an average class size of about 25 students.

In addition to the standard reading, writing and arithmetic, children in each grade enjoy an outside arts program. Some students visit local restaurants and apply what they learn to open a restaurant of their own at the school. Others put on stage performances with help from the National Dance Institute or start a circus.

Over the lunch hour, while walking down the kindergarten hallway—grades are divided physically by corridors—Felder made it sound as though some teachers might wish the students’ restaurants were open in their rooms at that moment.

One teacher stood near her classroom door eating a small fruit cup. Another, 40-year veteran Roni Morris, sat on the ground—fruit cup-less—designing a chart for an afternoon class.

Said Felder, “When you talk about our school, it’s basically based upon three fundamental concepts: academic excellence, our curriculum and the way we live together as a community.”

Another mission statement, penned last year by the student council, simplifies it: “At P.S. 40 children are learning, safe, and happy.”

In a 5th-grade classroom, students spoke about a recent activity involving a mock newsletter designed to give them a sense of how British American colonists might have felt about the Stamp Act of 1765.

“We expressed our feelings of how we felt about five cents for a piece of paper,” a boy in the class explained. “We found that we were trying to relate to the colonists.”

In a computer lab, students worked on computer diagrams that described their classmates. A sign on the door outside read “Media Literacy”—a recent name change that came with a full-time lab instructor.

“Which is really what elementary school’s all about: literacy,” Felder said.

It comes as no surprise, then, that after teaching for 12 years on the Upper West Side and before serving as principal of an Upper East Side school, Felder spent time as a literacy staff developer.

The school’s focus on literacy is evident from the moment one enters. An easel just inside the front entrance, signed with a heart and the name “Ms. Felder,” greets people with the word of the week. At the beginning of November, that word was “elect.”

“Today we elected a new governor, Andrew Cuomo,” the easel read. “What would you do if you became governor of New York State?”

Felder said teachers would “always celebrate” when students begin using a word of the week on their own.

“We want to create independent learners,” Felder said. “Upper grades have electives once a week on Thursday afternoons where they get to go off, almost like middle schoolers, to that class.”

As an example, one of the school’s science teachers leads a class where students get to learn about outer space. Other options include continuing Spanish education—mandatory in early grades—and music.

Lukas Yurasits, a 5th grader who recently helped give a tour of his own for prospective parents of new children to the school, said he enjoyed all the opportunities for independent learning.

“I really like that all of the special activities are really fun,” he said.

Lukas, who has spent more than five years at the school now, said that although he was excited to continue touring middle schools he will potentially attend, he would miss his elementary.

“I’ve been in this community and I love it so much,” he said. “I’m kind of sad that I have to go middle school now.”

Third-grade teacher Laurel Nyeboe said the school had a real “spirit of camaraderie,” which lingered among many students who have graduated to middle school and their parents.

Nyeboe has spent the past seven years at P.S. 40—three years as a mentor for new teachers and then four more as a classroom teacher. That bucked the trend of her colleagues, she said, who found work as school principals after mentoring.

She said she has no intentions of leaving, and she credited Felder for her dedication to her job.

Last year, parents clashed over a plan to move the Center School out of P.S. 199’s building to alleviate crowding (that controversial move took place over the summer). This year, parents seemed far more united in urging the department to create more space in the district and, in particular, in asking education officials to treat the situation as urgent.

“There’s only so much we can do by moving pieces on a chessboard as we did last year,” said the parent council’s chair, Noah Gotbaum. “We need elected officials and the DOE to work with us to address this acute situation district-wide. It’s not pocket overcrowding, it’s a systematic problem.

Gotbaum opened the Oct. 21 meeting, held at P.S. 76 on West 121st Street, by saying that district crowding had many sources, from the construction of new residential buildings to the economic downturn, which has caused families to turn to public schools, to uptown schools being elbowed out by charter schools.

P.S. 199: verging-on-overcrowded. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

John White, the department’s interim acting deputy chancellor for strategy and innovation, pointed to internal statistics on local schools, which indicate that district-wide there is only a small uptick of students, but that individual school enrollment has fluctuated widely.

“Across the district, enrollment is growing slightly,” White said. “But when you dig under this, enrollment in some schools is growing significantly. In others it’s shrinking significantly.”

White listed several potential, unofficial solutions, many of which he said would be “hard tradeoffs.” These included merging sister elementary schools P.S. 185 (serving grades K to 2 on West 112th Street) and P.S. 208 (serving grades 3 to 5 on West 111th Street), and re-evaluating the district’s kindergarten admissions process. He recommended creating new plans for the Harlem building that houses P.S. 241 and two charter schools, and for the lower part of the district, which includes three verging-on-overcrowded schools: P.S. 9, P.S. 199 and P.S. 87. Finally, White noted that the uneven distribution of English language learners and special education students should be adjusted.

But several parent council members said they felt the department’s numbers did not reflect reality at many neighborhood schools. The department’s estimate of a school’s capacity, they suggested, did not take into account the fact that many schools had lost rooms for art and music, cut back on gym time and had to serve lunch as early as 10 a.m., which has had an adverse effect on education. Members also said that vacancies in the district caused by phased-out schools or under-enrollment in special programs did not appear to free up any more spaces for young children, who are entering the schools in larger numbers.

State Sen. Bill Perkins, Assembly Members Linda Rosenthal and Daniel O’Donnell and Council Member Gale Brewer all attended the meeting, and largely supported the parents’ sense of urgency.

“You can’t fix a problem unless you acknowledge it’s there,” said O’Donnell, who sits on the Assembly’s education committee.

The parent council intends to convene a “war room” of concerned parents and public officials to lobby for change in time for the 2010-2011 school year. They hope to find “incubator space” for a new school.

Will Havemann, a spokesman for the department, said education officials are preparing for the next parent council meeting.

“We’re going to establish a set of discrete issues that we need to plan around by the next regular CEC meeting,” he said. “We are very committed, and it is a high priority to make sure we are responding to concerns of parents in this district.”