Future Queens Superintendents
Have Strong Borough Ties

By Shams Tarek

As part of the sweeping reforms that the Department of Education (DOE) has been implementing since January, the borough’s high school district and seven community school districts will be consolidated into one of three “instructional divisions” led by three “regional superintendents” starting on July 1.

The Tribune recently got a chance to talk to Superintendents Judith Chin, Reyes Irizarry and Kathleen Cashin, who will have jurisdiction over every public school in Queens within less than four months.

While Cashin doesn’t live and has never worked in Queens, Chin and Irizarry have strong Queens ties, particularly to Districts 25 and 26, which are in the northeastern parts of the borough and are commonly cited by parents as the “best” in the city.

Following are brief profiles of the three superintendents.

New Title: Regional Superintendent, Division 3

New Jurisdiction: Current Districts 25, 26, 28 and 29, which include all the neighborhoods east of and including College Point, Flushing, Forest Hills and Richmond Hill.  The division has 135 schools and almost 130,000 students.

Current Title: Supervising Superintendent for DOE Center for Recruitment and Professional Development

Experience: A classroom teacher who later served as the principal of three schools in Manhattan’s District 2.  She was also the executive director of the DOE’s Division of Instructional Support for four years.

Queens Ties, Other:  Chin, a Little Neck (District 26) resident, said her three children have gone to public schools in District 26.  Two of them are currently teachers in Districts 24 and 25, she said, and she has a second-grader in District 26.

        “Being a Queens resident I have a vested interest in making sure that these programs work,” Chin said of the DOE’s sweeping new changes.

Chin’s new division includes some of the highest and lowest performing schools in the borough.  She said it will be her biggest challenge.

Chin also said that she doesn’t expect there to be a mass migration of students from Districts 28 and 29, which have many underperforming schools, to her other two districts, which have seats open to receive transfer students under the new No Child Left Behind Act.

“From what I understand,” Chin said, “parents want to remain in their neighborhoods.  It’s really my job to improve the schools.”

New Title: Regional Superintendent, Division 4

New Jurisdiction: Current Districts 24 and 30, which include all the neighborhoods west of and including Corona, Elmhurst, Middle Village and Glendale.  Division 4 also includes Brooklyn’s District 32.  The division has 96 schools and over 107,000 students.

Current Title: Superintendent for BASIS, the Brooklyn and Staten Island High Schools

Experience: Spent 20 years as a teacher and assistant principal in the Bronx before becoming principal of Brooklyn’s Canarsie High School.

Queens Ties, Other: Irizarry said he lives in Fresh Meadows.  He said his two daughters went to District 26 schools and graduated from two borough high schools – Flushing’s Townsend Harris and Bayside’s Benjamin Cardozo.  His daughter from Cardozo is currently a teacher in Southeast Queens’ District 29, though he wouldn’t name the school.

Irizarry said his biggest challenge will be “to continue to find good leadership for the schools, to find good instructors” and to manage his division’s overcrowding and future budget cuts. 

Irizarry is interviewing candidates right now for his 10 “instructional supervisors,” and said that his main priorities once starting his new job will be professional development and doing a division-wide assessment of academic performance in his district.

“I think we need to rather than start from the beginning, as if there’s nothing there, build on the strengths of what [already is].”

New Title: Regional Superintendent, Division 5

New Jurisdiction: Current District 27, which includes Ozone Park, South Ozone Park, Richmond Hill, Howard Beach and all of the Rockaways.  Division 5 also includes Brooklyn’s Districts 19 and 23.  The division has 101 schools and over 91,000 students.

Current Title: Superintendent for District 23

Experience: Principal of Brooklyn’s P.S. 193 for 16 years.  Was a teacher before then.

Queens Ties, Other: Cashin, who lives in Bay Ridge and worked in Brooklyn school districts her whole life, doesn’t have any direct Queens ties.

But she may soon.  While the DOE couldn’t officially confirm this by presstime, a DOE administrator currently working in Cashin’s district said that Division 5’s main office, called a “Learning Support Center,” will be on Queens’ Rockaway Boulevard.

Cashin has been spending the last few weeks meeting with staff and parents from all three of her districts, she said, including a March 3 meeting in a Brooklyn school that brought all 101 of her new principals together in one room. 

“I don’t see challenges from the vantage point of having districts in different boroughs,” Cashin said.  “The challenge for me is to get the best possible staff and to build a community of people with good relationships.”

Cashin said she’d like to run regular public meetings in each of her districts to meet with the community.  Her next public appearance in Queens is a March 13 meeting at 7 p.m. at South Ozone Park’s J.H.S. 226. The meeting, organized by Assemblywoman Michele Titus, will address the education of children who live in homeless shelters.

Let Them Choose:
Thousands Of School Parents
Can Transfer Their Children

By Shams Tarek

 The parents of about 282,000 students throughout the City—including those in 48 Queens schools—started to get letters from the Department of Education this week telling them not only that their children are in underperforming schools, but that the federal government says they have the right to transfer to better ones, too.

The new privilege isn’t that new—the DOE said it has already gotten 3,500 requests for transfers since the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which is mandating the school choice, was signed into law this January.

But with this week’s letter campaign, entire school districts are about to wake up to a whole new world of possibilities for its students.

Queens parents will have three options under the new school choice laws.  They can keep their students in their underperforming schools, a designation made by the State Education Department based on low standardized test scores.

Parents can also keep their children in the underperforming schools and request federally funded “supplemental services,” which include after-school tutoring by providers from outside the schools, like the community school districts or independent agencies like the Queens Child Guidance Center or Princeton Review.

The most controversial option is that of transferring.  Parents have the right to request that their kids go to better schools.  The DOE said that if parents choose that option, they will be given a choice of schools that have seats open for their children.

Because the U.S. Department of Education sees all of New York City as a single local school district, choices for transfers could span across the city.  The City DOE has said, though, that it will determine transfer choices based on distance to the home.

Once parents receive their options for transfers, they will have the right to either pick one of the schools offered by the DOE or keep their children in their existing schools.

Students from the following Queens schools have the legal right to transfer to better-performing schools under the NCLB Act’s school choice guidelines.  The schools are those identified by the New York State Education Department as “In Need of Improvement,” meaning that most of the students are not passing standardized exams:

Students from the following schools may transfer to others under federal law:

Chancellor’s District 85
P.S. 40 Samuel Huntington School

Community School District 24
I.S. 5 Walter H. Crowley School
I.S. 61 Leonardo da Vinci Intermediate School
I.S. 77
I.S. 93 Ridgewood Intermediate School
I.S. 125 Woodside Intermediate School
P.S. 89 Elmhurst School
P.S. 199 M.A. Fitzgerald School  

Community School District 25
P.S. 201 Kissena School
Community School District 27
M.S. 198 Benjamin Cardozo
M.S. 226
P.S. 42 R. Vernam School
P.S. 43
P.S. 45 Clarence E. Witherspoon School
P.S. 104
P.S. 108
P.S. 155
P.S. 183 Beach Park School
P.S. 197 Ocean School
P.S. 223
P.S. 225 Seaside School  

Community School District 28
J.H.S. 217 R.A. Van Wyck J.H.S.
M.S. 72 Catherine & Count Basie Middle School
P.S. 140 Edward Ellington School  

Community School District 29
I.S.192 Renaissance School
I.S. 238 Susan B. Anthony School
P.S. 34 John Harvard School
P.S. 37 Springfield School
P.S. 52
P.S. 116 William C. Hughley School
P.S. 134 Hollis School
P.S. 136 Roy Wilkins School
P.S. 147 Ronald McNair School  

Community School District 30
I.S. 10 H. Greeley School
I.S. 126 Astoria Intermediate School
I.S. 141 Steinway School
I.S. 145 J. Pulitzer Intermediate School

Queens High School District Office
Arts and Business High School
Far Rockaway High School
Franklin K. Lane High School
Humanities and The Arts Magnet High School

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