Do the Right Thing (Thoughts on Middle School Admissions)

I am a parent of three children, serve on CEC 13, live in weird hybrid of NYC DOE Community School District 13 for elementary and D15 for middle, and serve as Youth Chair for CB6 which overlaps mostly D15 and a bit of D13. I am an aspiring policy wonk (though have a long way to go to reach Brad Lander levels). Of my three kids I have one in middle and two more on the way. I think about middle schools and admissions policy a lot, especially in the D13 and D15 parts of Brooklyn. With this as context…

A couple years ago when I’d say to a friend that this area of Brooklyn has among the very most segregated schools in the nation they’d look at me like I had three heads.

Now, a few years later, and after the contentious PS 8 / 307 rezoning, for which I was one of the votes (and which, I should note, was presented to the CEC by the DOE as about capacity but quickly became a segregation story in the media) the staggering Brooklyn school segregation is no longer new news. Google the topic and there are all sorts of stories. Here’s a few:

Last month Patrick Wall wrote an article for Chalkbeat that appeared in The Atlantic about District 15 middle school admissions – it’s a good and important read.

The one article that I keep coming to though is the one published in Vox last February, perhaps because it comes after the CEC and by extension me personally a bit because of our advocacy for MS One Brooklyn.

I keep coming back to it too mostly though, I think, because the narrative – maybe inadvertently on the author’s part – hits on one of the most troublesome part of this discussion, especially when it comes to middle school admissions in District 13 and 15. Which families, if any, are to blame? And what does it mean, to do the right thing, both for your child and the community at large?

I want you to imagine two families. Let’s for now leave race out of the picture. In both families, both partners work and both partners have masters degrees. In both families one spouse makes $125,000 and the other makes $175,000, so both families have a household income of $300,000. This may sound like a lot but in Brooklyn in 2016, this is really not that rare any more.

Both families have one 4 year old child and decide to move to Clinton Hill from Williamsburg to buy a home. The homes are, in fact, next door to each other and both cost $1.3 million. Even at $300,000 in household income affording a $1.3M home is a stretch, but they pull it off. The mortgage makes private school not an option, and both parents in both sets of families tell each other, perhaps somewhat unconvincingly, that their belief in the importance of public school matters more anyway.

Both families secure a seat for pre-K in an official privately run NYC DOE Pre-K center in Clinton. In the winter of their children’s pre-K year though, with Kindergarten approaching, the stories start to become different.

One family, we’ll call them “Family A”, has made friends with another couple, “Couple C” also in Clinton Hill. Couple C’s 3rd grader attends PS 321 in Park Slope and their oldest is a 6th grader at MS 51, also in the Slope.

Couple C insists to Family A that PS 321 is the best elementary school in Brooklyn, and “really the only option”. Family A responds that they are not zoned for 321 or even in its district (15). How can we get our child in, they ask. “Couple C” insists that “everyone finds a way in … everyone does it. Everyone gets their kids into 321” (including, it must be noted here, the parents of the author of the Vox piece by her own admission – “In 1990, I started kindergarten at PS 321 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, the borough’s best elementary school, because my family lied”).

Couple C further explains that “while you used to be able to just borrow an electric bill from a friend, the DOE has started to get more strict” and explains that the way most people do it is now is by renting an apartment in the PS 321 zone for a few months at the start of the kindergarten year, before moving back to Clinton Hill, as once a child is at a school they can stay there through graduation. While it feels like a financial stretch to Family A to pay for a few months of rent in center slope, figuring all told it’ll cost them about $12,000, it’s far less money than private school would have been for 6 years, which they had given up as an option when they bought their home. They decide to do as Couple C has suggested – they find a small studio in Center Slope, rent out their home in Clinton Hill via Airbnb for a few months, and enroll their child at 321 for the fall. Come the holidays they are back in Clinton Hill and getting used to the walk to 321 each day, which takes just under a half hour.

Back to “Family B”. They also have friends who have told them about different ways to get a seat at schools like 321 or 29 in District 15, as well as at PS 8. They’ve also visited PS 20, both Family A and Family B’s zoned school (remember, they are next door neighbors), and like what they see. They see a diverse community and like that. While they recognize PS 20 may not have a million dollar PTA budget like PS 321 does, they’re ready to “roll up their sleeves” and work hard to raise money for the school. They like that the school is in the neighborhood and an easy 3 minute walk from home. Off to PS 20 their child goes.

Let’s next fast forward 5 years. Our two families’ children are now ready for middle school.

Because Family A’s child went to a District 15 school, PS 321, Family’s A child is entitled to apply to District 15 middle schools, including and especially the “Big 3″ (447, 51, New Voices) cited in the Chalkbeat / Atlantic article. Family A’s child applies to 447, 51, and MS 88 and gets accepted at 447, the first choice of the family.

Family B’s child is still in District 13 and applies to middle schools there. Family B decides their top choices are MS 8 and Arts & Letters. These two schools have the highest test scores in District 13, and to Family B, who are thinking a lot about academics with high school and then college on the horizon, test scores matter. Moreover, having spent much of their past five years working bake sales nearly every weekend to raise money for PS 20′s PTA, they are ready for a school with a larger PTA budget, as is the case at both PS/MS 8 and Arts & Letters. PS 20 was great, but Family B also put in a lot of work, time, and commitment and don’t know if they can sustain the same pace of volunteering.

Family B recognizes though, that because both MS 8 and A&L give admissions preference to students continuing on from those school’s respective lower schools, Family B’s child’s chances of getting a seat at either MS 8 or A&L are low – perhaps even lower than the odds that the Family A student – still their next door neighbor – faced at 447 and 51. Family B decides to also apply to a citywide admissions district middle school in Manhattan a couple friends have recommended – it’s a stretch but the school has a reputation for solid academics and it’s another option to put in play. It’s a both a reach and backup plan in one.

As it turns out, come May of 5th grade, Family B’s child does not secure a seat at either A&L or MS 8. Instead the Family B child is offered by the DOE a seat at Unisons, AP Piller’s school, as the DOE algorithm will do when it can’t make a match to a preference listed on the application. Somewhat unexpectedly though, Family B’s child does get offered that seat at the Manhattan citywide public school. While they are worried about the commute to Manhattan every day, Family B decides on the Manhattan school over Unisons, largely citing the test scores and even more than the test scores that the Manhattan middle school places many of its graduates at Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, or Brooklyn Tech. Family B, like Family A, has every expectation their child will go to post-grad and they are starting to think about how to get from here to there.

So, at the end of 5th grade, Family A’s child leaves 321 for MS 447 in Boerum Hill; Family B’s child leaves PS 20 for a school in Manhattan. Come 6th grade, neither student is attending school in the neighborhood or even District 13.

These two scenarios are both very common and ones I drew up to protect anonymity rather than to create a work of fiction.

Let’s now fill in the picture a bit more on Family A and B and assume that in both Family A and B, both partners are white. And, at both of their new middle schools, the children will be in the majority racially.

Through their choices – by ultimately not choosing for their child Unisons or another D13 middle that is majority students of color, both Family A and Family B made more entrenched the segregation of our schools. Both families could have helped integrate Unisons, which AP Piller says in her piece is essential (”…(S)egregation is unacceptable. No amount of curriculum magic, or experienced teachers, or school choice, can overcome the fact that to overcome educational inequality, white students need to be in school with minority students”).

And then I wonder which family, A or B, AP Piller might fault more, if either, for their respective “contribution” to segregation and in turn the impact of their decision to Unison. Family A? Family B?

It’s Family B that was still in District 13 at 5th grade, and who would have seen the Unisons’ presentation at a PTA meeting. It was the child of Family B that was offered a seat at Unisons – a seat Family B turned down.

And Family A? They left D13 years ago. Do they get a pass? What culpability do they own? When they opted out of their zone school, PS 20, to pursue PS 321 at Kindergarten, they were effectively opting out of District 13 as well. Perhaps going into Kindergarten, middle school was the furthest thing from their mind. Or, just maybe, they were very aware (perhaps because Couple C told them) that not only would they get the benefits of 321 but also the privilege to apply to the “Big 3″. Remember too – because Family A still lived in D13 they’d have retained the option apply to Unisons. Do you think the Clinton Hill family with a 5th grader at 321, Family A, applied to Unisons? In my fictitious example, do you think they even visited or even thought about the school? What of MS 266, a District 13 in Park Slope they might have walked by every day on the way to 321. Was that ever on Family A’s list?

While Family A was enjoying the dividends accrued at 321 from privilege, money, and power, Family B was building up their local neighborhood school. Do Family B’s sweat equity and financial contributions, in the “calculus” of political correctness and “doing the right thing”, somehow balance out their not choosing Unisons for their child? Or should we nonetheless indict Family B for “selling out” on some idealized progressive vision for our schools and the choices that we think parents should unilaterally make in the name of the greater good? And if so, what then of Family A? What is their “culpability”? Should they have returned to D13 after PS 321 in order to “do the right thing” an help integrate Unisons?


Of course, this all isn’t really about AP Piller, a dedicated educator here in our district, or her thoughtful piece in Vox. This isn’t about our “fictional” families or the families you and I might know that are a lot like them.

What this is all really about is living our publicly espoused values in our own lives and with our own children’s futures. It’s one thing for a white parent to stand up at a “town hall” and decry the segregation and demand changes. It’s quite another for that same parent to send her child to a majority-minority school.

This is also about this constant “calculus”, as I call it above, that permeates how Brooklyn parents size up each other, day by day, interaction to interaction. Here in Brooklyn, we like judging others and their choices almost almost as much as we do fresh cheese from the co-op and sledding the hills of Prospect Park in the winter. The progressive purity test of our neighbors is one we never opt-out of.

I hope we can get a discussion going about how the different scenarios and dynamics are playing out in our schools, especially in district 13 and 15 middle schools, and crucially between the districts instead of looking at them as islands. Ultimately the patterns of school choice we see are the aggregate of lots of individual choices which after time form well-trodden paths. I think many of us want the same thing – schools with strong academics that foster character growth and social-emotional welfare within the context of diverse, integrated settings that draw on the melting pot of Brooklyn.

But how do we get there? Can we maintain a full choice model and integrate our schools at the same time? Should we focus on “quality” first? What does quality even mean? What does it mean to implement controlled choice models that purportedly will not constrain choice? How do we implement policies that encourage more students to stick around in districts like 13 for middle rather than policies that end up only driving more families away?

Have the districts outlived their usefulness and appropriateness as constraints of middle school choice, especially considering the arbitrary nature of many district lines in the context of Brooklyn in 2016?

Much of the DOE integration policy seems to assume voluntary integration by families like “A” and “B” above – is that realistic? Can integration happen without removing some form of choice?

How do we do the right thing, for both our own kids and the community at large?

North Slope Middle School Admissions Policy

A couple days ago I stumbled upon a Brownstoner post from May entitled “From the Forum: How Do I Navigate Park Slope’s Public Schools?” which was in fact a question about North Park Slope middle school admission policies specifically. I live in North Slope, have sent all three of my kids to the North Slope zone elementary school (PS 282) and have been through the middle school process with my oldest child. I’m also an elected member of CEC 13 and the Youth Chair of CB6 (which overlaps mostly with District 15, but overlaps D13 in North Slope).

Public middle school admissions in NYC are notoriously complex, but they are especially confusing in North Park Slope (by which I mean the District 13 portion of North Slope, which is the PS 282 zone as well, bound by – and please, look at the district map on NYC School Search – Union St between PPW and 6th Ave, 6th Ave, President from 6th to 3rd Ave, 3rd Ave to St. Mark’s, St. Mark’s to 4th Ave, 4th Ave to Bergen, Bergen to 5th Ave, 5th Ave to Flatbush and then Flatbush to Plaza and Union St at GAP).

I posted a response – albeit a few months after the original post. I am sharing it here as I hear a lot of questions from parents in the Slope and surrounding neighborhoods about this policy. It’s very confusing, but the headline is that if your LIVE in the 282 zone, your child is conferred District 15 (e.g., schools like 447, 88, 442, 51, etc.) middle school choice, even though technically North Slope is part of District 13. This is a function of where you live, not where your child goes to elementary school. 

Anyway, here’s my response which includes 4 examples that are the most common scenarios I hear about:

… (Y)ou should always go to schools.nyc.gov/schoolsearch/ first to check to see what the situation is with your home address and its elementary zone and overall district, which constrains (somewhat) 1) your child’s movement [choice] among elementary schools and 2) your child’s middle school choice.

First, know that middle school is a function of 1) the district of your child’s elementary school and 2) the district of your home address. In many cases these are the same, but when they are not, you will get access to BOTH sets of school[s] and the middle school form that will be generated by your child’s elementary school will include the union of the two districts’ middle schools.

Regarding the 282 zone [District 13 portion of North Slope], it is correct that the 282 zone (i.e., addresses in the 282 zone – a.k.a. “North Slope ”) “flips” to D15 for middle school. [Note Inside Schools also validates this – “Because of quirks in zoning, children who are zoned for PS 282, part of District 13, are eligible to attend District 15 middle schools and many take advantage of that option.”] 

That is, while PS 282 is a (D)istrict 13 elementary school, (home) addresses (i.e., student who live IN, not attend school AT) PS 282 zone will get District 15 choice.

Here are 4 scenarios:

1. You live in the 282 zone and your child goes to PS 282 for elementary school (my first hand experience): Your child will get D15 schools (e.g., 442, 447, 136, 51) because of your address AND will also get D13 schools (Arts & Letters, the Dock Street school, eventually the new middle at Atlantic Yards) because 282 itself is a D13 elementary. (D15 + D13 = D15/D13)

2. You live in the PS 9 zone [Prospect Heights] and your child goes to 282. Your child will ONLY get D13 choice because the PS 9 zone does not have this “quirky” rule [about D15] and 282 is a 13 school.  (D13 + D13 = D13)

3. You live in the 282 zone and your child attends 321 [not getting here into the how of how you pulled that off]. Your child will ONLY get D15 choice because you live in the 282 zone (which flips to D15) and PS 321 is a D15 school.  (D15 + D15 = D15)

4. You live in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens (D17) and your child attends 282. Your child will get access to both D13 and D17 middles (but NOT D15) (D13 + D17 = D13/D17)

[Adding four scenarios – three scenarios for PS 133 and one for PS 9…

5. You live in the 282 zone and send your kids to PS 133. Your child will get D15 middle school choice (because of your address) AND D13 choice (because PS 133 is technically a D13 elementary school, even with its dual-district elementary school admissions policy). (D15 + D13 = D15/D13)

6. You live in, say, South Slope – i.e., D15 – and you send your kids to PS 133. Your child will get D15 middle school choice AND D13 middle school choice. (D15 + D13 = D15/D13)

7. You live in, say, Clinton Hill – i.e., D13 – and your kids to PS 133. Your child will ONLY get D13 middle school choice (D15 + D13 = D15/D13).

8. You live in North Slope (i.e., the 282 zone) and send your kid to PS 9. Your child will get D15 choice from your home address and D13 choice because PS 9 is a D13 school. (D13 + D13 = D13)]

Note, 282 also has a middle school – MS 282. MS 282, along with MS 266 on Park Place and 6th in Park Slope [but temporarily relocated to the PS 93 building in Crown Heights for two more years while the building is refurbished], are D13 schools (despite being located in the D15 middle school choice catchment, to make it even more confusing) and adhere to the same policies as other D13 middles such as MS 113, Unisons, Fort Greene Prep, etc … with one additional wrinkle — MS 282, like MS 8 and Arts & Letters also in D13, give an additional admissions preference to “continuing on” students from their respective lower schools, as these 3 schools have, to some degree or another, a K-8 model.

I hope this helps clear up some of the confusion around this policy a bit (and note I’m not getting into out of district variances, which is a hole other matter). Again, this policy is something parents ask about a lot. While North Slope parents have lots of reasons for choosing other elementary schools than their zone school, 282 (or nearby 133, also in North Slope, which is de-zoned), I always cringe a little bit when someone who lives in North Slope cites D15 middle school choice as the only reason they did whatever they did to secure a D15 elementary school seat since their home address had already conferred to their child District 15 middle school choice regardless of the district of their child’s elementary school.

Tonight’s PS 8 / 307 Rezoning Vote: Capacity, Funding, Race, Class, Integration, Segregation, and Quality

Tonight is the “big” rezoning vote. See today’s @wnyc​‘s write-up ahead of the vote here

I am one of the ten CEC 13 members voting at PS 56 this evening. I do not intend to reveal my vote here but did want to go through my thoughts.

These are my observations from over a half year of hearings plus my reading of over 200 submitted comments; impressions as a white D13 public school parent whose kids attend a school that is 90% students of color; and hopes for where we go from here.

I am sincerely in awe of the hard work of so many parents, teachers, school leaders, fellow CEC members, and dedicated DOE civil servants and leaders throughout this process – let’s not stop this dialogue.

These thoughts below are partially a follow-up to my tweet storm last week. I’ve also sought to expand on and revisit some thoughts about the rezoning I shared three months ago. They are intended to be provocative and insightful about what I’ve seen, and hopefully to give us some things to talk about further.  

1. Zoning, capacity planning, funding, integration, segregation, diversity, and school quality are a huge Gordian knot.

Looking at and addressing only one element, one facet, of the education “problem” is not enough. It’s all inter-connected. For example, If the rezoning is approved, that doesn’t necessarily mean any more parents from DUMBO will send their kids to PS 307 next year than did this year. Zoning lines alone can’t fix segregation, increase funding, or change people’s perceptions about school quality. 

Zoning is simply an admissions preference policy. It’s not a mandate. The intent behind the hybrid NYC elementary school policy of a zone school and district choice is, I assume, to give parents the best of both worlds – a good choice nearby, and a few other compelling choices further afield.

But in reality what happens often, especially in areas impacted most by gentrification, is that the zoned schools that serve the wealthiest and most privileged communities are able to pay for the broadest and deepest set of enrichments and, critically, attract top talent from graduate schools of education. Parents are able to hold lavish fundraisers and, through their networks, attract top artists, musicians, and business leaders to visit and support their school.

With school choice, parents who live in nearby zones, but not in the zone itself, “vote with their feet”, sending their children to the affluent school they perceive as more desirable. Over years these patterns codify and calcify. One school in a neighborhood is considered “the IT school” (e.g., PS 321 in Park Slope or PS 87 in the UWS), a couple others are “good”, and a few others are considered by parents, the blogosphere, and the tastemaker consultants as less desirable. No surprise, these distinctions end up getting correlated with race and class. 

Meanwhile principals at Title I schools in gentrifying neighborhoods are faced with a very tough choice. Do they continue to preserve their Title I funding – often hundreds of thousands of dollars, by maintaining a high FRL student population, even if that means marketing their school to students in other districts instead of within their own zone? Or do they take the risk of existing for years, perhaps a decade or more, in the funding “doughnut hole” between Title I and the million dollar PTA? Our current budgeting process, which must also consider PTA resources, benefits most the schools on the extremes, and punishes the schools in the middle (those with, say, 40-60% FRL), which are also the schools that are the most diverse. 

As I wrote about in August, we live with not just segregated schools, but in entirely parallel education universes in Brooklyn and NYC as a whole. This rezoning process has only made me despair more about the current state of affairs.

2. The most urgent issue in D13 remains middle school quality and diversity.

There are twelve district middle schools in D13. Several are part of 6-12 programs, such as MS 265. Three are the latter portions of K-8 models – these schools are MS 282, Arts & Letters, and MS 8.

Looking at ten of the twelve schools – i.e., all those other than MS 8 and Arts & Letters (MS 282 plus M.S. 113, MS 265, M.S. 266, MS 301, MS 313, MS351, Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women, MS 596, and Fort Greene Preparatory Academy) here’s a data point that astonished me: the total white student population across these ten middle schools is just 45 students. (source: https://data.nysed.gov/profile.php?instid=800000045563). 

So, what’s different about MS 8 and Arts & Letters from the other ten schools? Three differences:

  • MS 8 and Arts & Letters (along with MS 282) are part of K-8 programs. I.e., while these three schools are open to any 5th grader in D13, they give first preference to students “continuing on” from their K-5 schools
  • Arts & Letters and MS 8, despite active opt-out movements at both, especially at the former, have much higher state test scores than the other 10 schools (NOTE: I’m not including this data to endorse state tests, but rather simply to compare one measure of academic outcomes):
    • MS 8 Grade 7 ELA Proficiency Rate (3 or 4): 61%
    • Arts & Letters Grade 7 ELA Proficiency Rate (3 or 4): 45%
    • District 13 Overall Grade 7 Proficiency Rate (3 or 4): 25% (I’ve chosen ELA only for space reasons – the math results follow the same pattern)
  • Both schools have higher white populations than any of the other 10 schools
    • At MS 8, nearly half (42%), 76 students, of the 6-8 population are white. At Arts & Letters, the 6-8 white population is less – 23 students (10%) – but still higher than the district average (6%)
    • Together MS 8 and Arts & Letters have a total white student population double (76 at MS 8, 23 at A&L) that of the other 10 schools combined (45). 

Here are some data points about the other ten schools. I’ve not mentioned the specific middles by name/number given the many sensitivities around quality but this is all public data:

  • At one D13 middle, 4% of the students were proficient (3 or 4) in math in 2015, down 3 points from 2014 when the school scored 7%.
  • At another D13 middle, 8% of the students were proficient (3 or 4 on the state test) in math; in 2015 it was 7%.
  • At still another middle, 10% of students rated proficient in reading; 6% were proficient in math (down from 8% in 2014)
  • The enrollment at one of our largest middles – 6th: 140 / 7th: 169 / 8th: 244 – is trending significantly downward YoY.
  • At another school, 33% of the students are chronically absent.
  • Three D13 schools are on the persistently dangerous list – i.e., 10% of the statewide list of 32 “persistently dangerous”, which includes both middle and high schools, are D13 middle schools.

So this leads to a few questions:

  • Why is it that white parents in particular are avoiding the D13 middles (other than MS 8 and Arts & Letters)? Given that the underlying population in D13 is year over year becoming more white, is this sustainable?
  • It’s widely known that many D13 parents, of all races, seek District 15 middle schools in lieu of their D13 options. D13 is a huge source of D15 middle school overcrowding. What is being done to create better options to retain kids in D13 as they transition from elementary to middle? 
  • While I recognize that in D15 the near obsession of some parents with MS 447, MS 51, and New Voices comes with its own set of problems – and that many capable parents are working on associated diversity and admissions issues in that district that are correlated with the popularity of these three schools – there are simply no equivalent middle schools in D13. There are no middles in D13 like 447 and 51 in D15, that are at once truly open to the entire district (i.e., no “continuing on” preferences), with high level academics, deep enrichments, and a track record of graduates securing seats at sought-after specialize high schools such as Brooklyn Tech and Stuyvesant. Schools like MS 51 – where our Mayor’s kids went to middle school – have the additional benefit of larger size and their own campus. To quote Inside Schools, “The district (D13) is still lacking strong middle schools, especially for academically advanced students.”
  • According to pubic school data, MS 313 (Satellite West), the school being moved from the PS 307 building to Dock Street, had zero white students last year. What is being done as part of the re-design of that school to promote diversity? I was disappointed that the DOE did not stick with its plan to create a new school (IS 611) at Dock Street but that decision is in the past now and I am eager to work with our DOE partners, parents, teachers, and other stakeholders, such as the developer, to help the MS 313 redesign succeed.
  • When will the DOE commit to a plan for the new school proposed for Atlantic Yards / Pacific Park to be a middle school, ideally one based on the MSOneBrooklyn vision, overwhelmingly endorsed by Brooklyn elected officials? A new middle school at Atlantic Yards / Pacific Park is critical to a long term plan to improve the D13 middle school portfolio.

Finally, any attempt to implement a controlled choice plan for D13 middle schools in the absence of a serious, comprehensive plan to address quality will be doomed. 

3. All our schools are NOT overcrowded.
I’ve heard a lot of people say “all our schools are overcrowded.” As a Park Slope resident (most of Park Slope is D15; North Slope is D13) who is also the CB6 (which overlaps almost entirely with D15 but for North Slope in D13) Youth Committee Co-Chair, I see and hear a lot about both D15 and D13 “overcrowding”. To be clear, some schools are definitely overcrowded. But not all.

At my daughter’s pre-K at PS/MS 282, there are 10 kids in her class. We can’t give Pre-K seats away at 282, and the school is in the middle of Park Slope, one of the neighborhoods supposedly most burdened with overcrowded schools and generally considered a pretty desirable place for child rearing. 

What’s different about 282 than the rest of the Park Slope schools? 282 is 90% students of color. 

As PS 307 parent Faraji Hannah-Jones has said several times at public hearings, PS 307, like PS 282, does not annually fill its Pre-K. Now, with the Dock Street building (which will house both a Pre-K center and MS 313) coming on line, Hannah-Jones has expressed concerns that the 307 Pre-K will only further struggle to fill its seats – a valid concern.

But why is it that 307 can’t fill its Pre-K seats in the first place? We hear our elected officials continue to push for more Pre-K seats, and use waitlists for Pre-K as the rationale, but the first hand experiences at schools like PS 307 and PS 282 tells us that there are strong school-based Pre-K programs, in convenient locations in or near wealthy neighborhoods, that can’t fill their Pre-K programs. Why? These may be inconvenient facts to the “overcrowding narrative” but they exist nonetheless. We can’t ignore 282 and 307′s pre-K when we say “all the pre-k’s have waitlists.” It’s just not true.

There’s another form of under-enrollment too – the “soft” under-enrollment of schools that perennially rely on students rely from other districts, especially districts such as D17, D16, and D32, further east in Brooklyn, to fill rosters. PS/MS 282 is a good example here too – there are many more students from Crown Heights and Prospect-Lefferts Garden than there are Park Slope students at 282.

As a 282 parent, my kids and me have made lifelong friendships with many great families from the Caribbean community of central Brooklyn that embraced and nurtured 282 when Park Slope parents couldn’t be bothered to even do a tour. But 282′s reliance on out-of-district kids to fill its roster is also a form of under-enrollment in that this represents additional potential D13 capacity. When parents demand more elementary schools be built in D13, the SLA and ODP will somewhat justifiably point to schools like 282, 287, 307, 46, 67, etc. and the fact D13 is not using all the elementary and middle capacity it already has. 

4. We do need better long term planning (as there could be a day when all of our schools WILL be overcrowded).

To my previous point, we need to use the capacity we already have first. It’s not ok, in D13, D15, or anywhere in the city, to have one school at 140% capacity while another school just blocks aways can’t fill its register. There are parts of Queens and even neighborhoods closer to home such as Sunset Park, with true overcrowding crises. Let’s maximize the use of the space we already have in our district.

But the long term trend is clear, and when people point to the new development projects happening and proposed for Brooklyn and conclude we will need more school capacity they are right. So, as many elected officials have said, we need to expect and demand more of developers when they build new buildings in terms of also creating new schools. And, crucially, we need to remember that all babies become middle schoolers and high schoolers too. Too often the capacity discussions have seemed to be only about elementary school. 

5. What does diversity mean?

After six months of a rezoning that, according to the DOE, was not supposed to be about diversity, but was clearly about race and class from the outset, I don’t really know what is meant by diversity any more.

Coming into this, I thought diversity was more or less the opposite of segregation. My general rule of thumb was that if a school is 80-90% of one race, that school is probably “segregated”, at least if the underlying communities (e.g., the zone and district) are more integrated.

A couple things I have learned through this rezoning:

  • Intent matters more that data. It’s bad form to call schools that are 81% white “segregated” if the members of the school community have stated publicly that they wish the demographics were different. Essentially, the actual hard data of a school can be – and is expected to be – disregarded if the stated intent around diversity is otherwise. I don’t think this political correctness is useful to having candid conversations.
  • Schools that are 90-95% students of color may be called “Apartheid Schools” by academics but should be referred to only as “diverse schools” by non-academics – even if the white population at the school is in the low single digits or non-existent. I think these schools are also segregated and avoiding using that term stifles conversation.
  • “Diversity” appears more about preserving communities and patterns that once were than developing policies that reflect the community as it exists today and likely will tomorrow, in large part because gentrification is such a complex and toxic topic. 

I’ve also discovered what I believe is the present de facto diversity policy. To be clear, I don’t think this is something designed by anyone at DOE, but rather simply the result of inertia, momentum, the law of unintended consequences, and a lack of policy tools. This policy appears to be:

  • Leave the majority white schools, including and especially the overwhelmingly white schools (e.g., PS 8 in D13; PS 321, PS 58, PS 29, etc. in D15; PS 199 in D3), the way they are, because, apparently, we are helpless to do anything about these schools and their lack of diversity. 
  • Do not – or only very minimally – market the schools that are at once under-enrolled and majority students of color to those affluent and/or white families who may be new to the zone. The current bogeyman is “flipping” (i.e., a school that is historically majority students of color becoming majority white). We’ve heard a lot during the 8/307 rezoning that “307 can’t go the way of PS 8 and ‘flip” to majority white”. “Flipping” seems right now to be a huge concern in Brooklyn.
  • Instead develop plans and create policies to preserve majority student of color populations at schools that are currently majority students of color, even if the underlying zone is or soon will be majority white (e.g., the FRL set-aside policy idea proposed for PS 307) – perhaps to preserve Title I funding (See my point about this above). 

District 13 recently was awarded a $1.4 Million Socio-Economic Integration Pilot Program Grant focused primarily on middle schools, and MS 113 in particular. I hope this money is used prudently to develop concrete, measurable outcomes for the district related to improving diversity. Getting a common understanding of what “diversity” means would be a good place to start. 

6. I’m not sure there is much reason to believe the enrollment of DUMBO (e.g., white, affluent) families at 307 will increase just because the zone lines change.

Some of the things a small group of people, including some in DUMBO – have said in public meetings and in submitted comments about 307, Farragut, and people of color has been stomach-churning bigotry. It’s reprehensible (though also entirely consistent with what I’ve long heard other parents say about my own kids’ school community).

Beyond the outright bigotry directed towards the Black community from some white community members, the underlying racial tensions overall have cut both ways. 

There has been FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) brought forth by DUMBO parents about 307. It’s also been surprising and at times disappointing the degree which some DUMBO families are unfamiliar with a school in their own neighborhood – to be clear, it’s not up to the school or DOE to go door-to-door to market a school. It’s a two-way street and it’s up to parents to learn about community and public institutions in their neighborhood. Take a tour.

There has also, though, been several statements made at public meetings that could only be construed that DUMBO parents, especially white DUMBO parents, are not welcome at 307. Thankfully these comments have been only a small part of the conversations, but I couldn’t fault a DUMBO parent who attended a couple of the more heated meetings for leaving with a sense that they were not welcome (a great irony and shame given the open and welcoming approach of the wonderful Principal Davenport). Media outlets, from the New York Times to Brooklyn Heights Blog, have picked up on the race and class tensions – tensions I worry will provide further headwinds to DUMBO families embracing 307.

During these same public hearings, and this was also expressed a lot in the submitted comments, many people asked why more DUMBO families weren’t already sending their kids to PS 307. My CEC 13 colleague and great friend Ed Brown has raised this question about PS 307 many times. It needs asking.

That PS 8 is over-crowded and PS 307 has seats is not new news. During last year’s waitlist, PS 307 was always an option for PS 8 families. In fact, one could plausibly argue that the (in my view entirely unfounded) fear of ending up at PS 307 was in fact a major reason many parents wanted the DOE to take up rezoning. 

So what’s changed? I know Roberta Davenport. I know PS 307. This a wonderful school with deep enrichments. And yet DUMBO parents have largely avoided the school despite its proximity to their homes. Changing lines on a zone map, given our choice model, does not magically change enrollment patterns and preferences. 

Another consideration is the “Pied-à-terre” maneuver. As one parent said in a submitted comment “People (who will be rezoned to 307 in DUMBO) who want to go to PS 8 can simply move into Brooklyn Heights for a year, get their spot and then leave”. 

We see this in Park Slope all the time. The conventional wisdom about how so many (150-200 is the most common estimate I’ve gotten) 282 zoned families get into 321 (which involves crossing not just a zone line, but also a district line from 13 to 15 as well – technically choice is constrained to within your district with the exception of unzoned and/or magnet schools that have in place multi-district policies, e.g., Brooklyn New School, or citywide G&T Programs like NEST+M) is that they borrow utility bills of friends. But the DOE now has mechanisms in place to dissuade and curtail much, though not all, of this practice. What they are powerless to stop though is a family living in the 321 (or 8) zone for a month or two in Kindergarten, moving away, and keeping their child there. This is actually a well intentioned policy to allow for continuity of a child’s education due to a move a few blocks away, but in fact is a giant loophole that allows clever (and often white, affluent, and/or politically connected) parents to rent an apartment for a couple months to secure a seat while keeping their actual residence in a brownstone on condo in the less “desirable” school zone. 

PS 287 is another interesting data point. As cited in the New School segregation study, “In downtown Brooklyn, the estimated household income of children enrolled at PS 287 is less than half that of all households in the school attendance zone. The school enrollment is 89 percent black and Latino; the zone, just 43 percent.” During the rezoning, the CEC was told by the DOE, ODP in particular, that 287 was not included in the rezoning because of the large scale development work happening in the 287 zone. But based on my visits to the school I’ve suspected that very few if any of the new (and many white) residents in the many new condo towers on Flatbush Avenue Extension are sending their kids to 287. The New School study concludes he same. And when I asked the principal of 287 if “many, some, a few, or none” of the residents of these new towers are sending their kids to 287 she told me, without missing a beat, “none.”

So I remain troubled by an assumption that lines on a map change personal educational preferences and macro-educational enrollment trends. 

7. We have spent entirely too little time talking about school quality.

Every parent wants a great school for her child.

Talking about what makes a school “good” is really hard, and, as WNYC said, very much “in the eye of the beholder.” 

But we’ve just not talked enough about quality during this process. We’ve talked around the issue, and too often when plausibly objective measures like standardized tests have been brought up – including the large gap in the results between 8 and 307 or the overall performance of many of the D13 middles – they’ve been dismissed for a host of reasons or turned into opt-out discussions.

But quality is a real issue. So are academic outcomes such as high school and college graduation rates. I think we too often avoid talking about quality in D13 in large part of because of the uncomfortable correlations with race and class that sometimes (though not always) stubbornly exist. I think in recognition of the degree to which our teachers are underpaid, under-appreciated, and over-worked (and as the son of a special education teacher of 30 years I feel this acutely), we also appear loathe to talk about anything that could ever be perceived as in any way critical of teachers and, to a lesser degree, school leaders.

But face these topics we must, for, as the New School Center for New York Affairs study, widely cited last month, says (emphasis added):

This analysis suggests that many parents, dissatisfied with their neighborhood schools, vote with their feet and send their children to public gifted programs, schools of choice, charter schools or private schools.  It follows that some racial and economic integration can be achieved without changing zone lines or assigning kids to schools outside their neighborhoods—measures which are often politically fraught. The key is to improve these schools to motivate more middle class parents who live in economically mixed neighborhoods (or white and Asian parents living in racially mixed neighborhoods) to send their children to the neighborhood schools. Research shows that attracting higher-income students to such schools typically improves classroom education for all the students.

This means we must have the courage to talk not only about funding, and how to get schools, principals, and teachers the resources they need, but also about what’s happening in the classrooms themselves. To be effective representatives of the districts’ parents, CECs must be willing to ask questions about what’s being taught and how.

I also think throughout the PS 8 and PS 307 rezoning we’ve largely and unfortunately avoided hard topics about different expectations for schools, school pedagogy, and school culture that correlate with race and class. This article from Education Next is a must read about these topics. We need to deal with these issues as well.

IN CONCLUSION …

This was a hard process. I want to thank my fellow CEC 13 members for their thoughtfulness and hard work. I also want to call out and thank the hard work of our great Superintendent, Superintendent Freeman, as well as the Office of District Planning, in particular Tim, Greg, Meg, and Jonathan. Thank you as well to DOE leaders such as Olivia Ellis, Deputy Chancellor Rose, and Deputy Chancellor Gibson for their personal involvement and leadership. A huge thank you of course to parents and community members who have come out to be heard, as well as Principals Vaughn, Carroll, Davenport, and Phillips. And thank you to the many elected leaders who represent D13 and who have made time and provided leadership, especially Borough President Eric Adams and his office; State Senators Montgomery, Squadron, and Hamilton; Assembly Members Mosley and Simon; and City Council Members Cumbo, Levin, and Lander.

I think we have a huge opportunity, here in D13, the ground zero in many ways of gentrification and segregation, to build off the 8/307 rezoning, no matter what the vote turns out to be, and to start really working together on these very big, very complicated challenges. I think we have the right leadership at Tweed, in the Mayor’s Office, in Brooklyn at the Borough Hall and City Council level, and at our schools and in our communities to make a difference. 

Dock Street, IS 611, MS 313, and the #D13 Rezoning

The following post is co-authored by fellow cec13brooklyn council member Maggie Spillane and myself. (Please note these statements solely reflect those of Maggie and me and do not reflect the thoughts of the entire CEC.)

The CEC13 Brooklyn​ calendar meeting is this Wednesday, September 30th – 6:30pm (we suggest you arrive by 6pm to get a seat) at PS 307.

At this meeting we expect the CEC will get a formal proposal from the NYC Department of Education​ regarding the #D13rezoning of PS 307 and PS 8.

Assuming the proposal is the same as the draft proposed scenario shared on September 1, and while we will continue to solicit and consider any additional information and viewpoints, we believe the current proposal merits our support with respect to the two elementary schools involved.  

HOWEVER, we are very concerned by the continuing uncertainly surrounding the new middle school, IS 611, previously committed to the CEC and scheduled to open at Dock St. next year (September 2016).

The long-term viability of the rezoning is premised in part on re-siting M.S. 313, which is presently co-located with P.S. 307, in an allocated footprint of hundreds of seats. Conversations with the DOE over the summer indicated they planned to propose re-siting MS 313 to Dock St.  We raised concerns about both the vagueness and the timing of this concept and asked that any rezoning proposal contain specifics about the re-siting.  

Further discussions with the District Superintendent clarified that the plan would be to open IS 611 as a new middle school into which MS 313 would subsequently merge. The Superintendent stated that the DOE would conduct meetings with the MS 313 community to ensure a merger plan that was welcoming and viable to the ongoing families at that school. Additional meetings would be held across the district to solicit input about what current elementary school families wanted in their new middle school at Dock Street.

Last week, DOE officials represented, in verbal responses to the public, that M.S. 313 would be re-sited into the Dock Street building, be re-named, and possibly receive new programming and a new admissions policy.  Neither the CEC nor the public has been provided with any information about these contemplated changes and we are not aware of any efforts the DOE has made to involve families in these decisions.  

There is no information in the Middle School Directory that would indicate these type of changes to prospective families.

In informal further discussion with the DOE, we received no additional detail about these changes, but the DOE indicated that, in contrast with prior representations, it no longer expects Dock Street to house a new middle school but simply to house only MS 313 (along with the 100-seat pre-k space also to be sited in the Dock St building).

While we understand re-siting is important to the rezoning proposal, we also believe that the middle school quality crisis is the the biggest problem in District 13 right now, more important and more urgent than even the PS 8 waitlist. Accordingly we cannot support a rezoning plan that does not come along with specific commitments with respect to IS 611 and MS 313 that are more in-line with prior representations about the Dock Street middle school. We request:

  • A commitment that IS 611 will be a choice middle school open to all of District 13;
  • An explicit admissions plan for IS 611 that will promote diversity;
  • An academic plan that will serve the academic needs of a diverse student body, including and especially students who are lagging in their academic performance AND students who are accelerated and need advanced academics;
  • A concrete, specific plan for how MS 313 students, staff, administration, and families will be transitioned into IS 611;
  • A communications and change management strategy to make prospective D13 middle school parents (i.e., 5th grade parents) aware of the changes coming to MS 313 and of the IS 611 option and how to apply, including by making IS 611 an option on the New Schools Application expected in March 2016 for September 2016 enrollment;
  • 100% Fair Student Funding, as is uniformly provided to new schools;
  • Clarity that neither MS 8 nor Arts & Letters are being moved to Dock St.

Additionally, we know that with additional pressure for middle school capacity, IS 611 alone will not fully remedy the middle school crisis in District 13.  We also call on the NYC DOE to clearly and publicly endorse the M.S. OneBrooklyn​ vision for a dedicated middle school at the new school facility recently approved by the City Council at Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park in Prospect Heights.

We believe the lack of clarity around the use of Dock Street has fueled much speculation and political maneuvering that is needlessly and destructively adding to the tensions concerning rezoning PS 8 and PS 307. This must end.  

Simultaneously, the DOE’s delay in engaging the community and creating and announcing a viable plan for IS 611, and the merging of MS 313 into 611, is inexcusably contributing to the challenges of our D13 middle schools.  It is adding to the already considerable uncertainty for families across the entire district who are in the middle school choice process.  In so doing, it is creating barriers to diverse recruitment into the new school that it may struggle to overcome.

It is not acceptable that the very important opportunity of Dock St, and especially IS 611, be treated as an afterthought to any PS 8 and PS 307 rezoning. District 13 was committed a new middle school at Dock Street open to all D13 students and that’s exactly what we expect delivered for next year.

Signed,
CEC13 Elected Members Maggie Spillane (PS 9 parent) & Rob Underwood (PS/MS 282 parent)

Thoughts on the PS 8 and PS 307 #D13Rezoning

The proposed #D13Rezoning of PS 8 and PS 307 is now garnering national attention. Both the NY Times and Wall Street Journal have done stories about the rezoning topic in the last day.

Given the attention being paid to this potential rezoning, I wanted to post some of my comments I’ve made about the many issues each of us as cec13brooklyn members, including myself, need to weigh once we have a formal proposal presented (expected September 30th) and we prepare to vote.

As I’ve written about before, I’m dismayed by Brooklyn’s educational parallel universes (i.e., the Mayor’s “two cities”) so evident in this discussion, as well as the contradictions and conundrum inherent in advocating for the opt-out movement and yet citing test scores as a reason to not send your child to a particular school. Some of the most difficult issues core to this discussion – segregation and racism – were the initial impetus for my interest in district planning and the CEC (especially in 2009 as the new 133 plan was being developed) and have been a critical factor at my children’s school, psms282 (itself the subject of several NY Daily News opinion pieces on the topic of NYC school segregation here and here.)

Here first is a comment I posted originally to Facebook last week.

I applaud Mayor Bill de Blasio for speaking up on the Brian Lehrer Show about the need to demand developers build schools in and around new residential construction. (Also – Both CEC13 Brooklyn and myself are big fans of the ‪#‎CS4All‬ initiative and applaud that announcement).

This in mind, and as we discuss collectively and respectfully the PS 307 / PS 8 rezoning with each other, we should keep in mind my great friend and fellow CEC member Ed Brown’s point towards the end of the PS 307 town hall about the under utilized schools in and around Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO, Fort Greene, and Downtown Brooklyn. We all see the high rises going up, and the potential is clearly there for a need for more middle and elementary seats. But while downtown schools like PS 46, PS 67, and PS 287 – even D13 schools further afield such as Park Slope School PS/MS 282 (my kids’ school) – go under-used by the community and their surrounding neighborhoods, the SCA is unlikely to make new elementary school buildings in D13 a priority, as planning happens at a district, not zone, level. When demanding new elementary schools be built, and thinking from a district planning perspective, we need to be mindful of the schools nearby that have unused seats. And as Ed challenged us, we should ask why are these schools struggling to fill their roster.

We also need to keep in mind that all elementary school students become middle schools students. When we’re asking about more elementary capacity, we must think ahead to middle school capacity. This is why initiatives such as M.S. OneBrooklyn are so important. All our kids in D13 deserve to have great middle school choices after they complete their elementary school education.

Today I reiterated some points above, expanded upon others, and made some points anew, in a Facebook comment:

(A)s CEC member who will be voting on this, I hope we use this as an opportunity to call attention to a few other issues, especially school funding, the billions owed by the state to the city in school funding (the state owes PS 307 $880K, PS 8 $2.1M), and the implicit expectation that PTAs must pick up much of, among other things, the cost of core enrichments important to attracting new parents and growing young lives. Many D13 schools are in a “doughnut hole” where they no longer have Title I status but still can’t produce the hundreds of thousands of dollars in PTA funds that some celebrated Brooklyn district public elementary schools can and do.

I hope too we look at testing and how test scores are used to evaluate schools. I struggle to get my head around white parents who are active in the opt-out movement and then use test scores as their rationale to avoid a school that is majority students of color. I also urge us to stop using phrases like “good school” and “bad school”.

I hope we also keep mindful of district wide needs and planning including that (and why) we have under-utilized elementary schools nearby. I also hope we can stay mindful of middle schools and the need to plan for strong middle school communities throughout the district. It’s great to advocate for more and stronger elementary schools – we also need strong middles for all those kids too.

I challenge all of of us – not just Black and White but our Asian and Hispanic sisters and brothers too – to think hard about diversity and segregation and what it means to live our values in our own lives and with our own children.

Finally I hope we can look more at how developers have come into communities like downtown and Prospect Heights getting huge tax breaks, public funding, and the power of eminent domain to tear down existing housing and offices to be replaced with gleaming towers. The developers much be held to account to the existing community, not just the one to which they market and is yet to come to Brooklyn.

Two closing points:

  • While I write this primarily in my CEC 13 capacity, I’m also a board member of Community Board 6, which mostly overlaps with District 15. As we think about middle and elementary school planning for Downtown Brooklyn, I urge everyone – including and especially the Downtown Brooklyn Schools Planning Working Group (DBSPWG) – to consider the District 15 portion of Downtown Brooklyn (primarily the PS 261 and PS 38 zones) as well as more broadly the impacts of new residential growth in developments such as Fortis/LICH. A coordinated, rationalized plan considering both District 13 and District 15 is crucial.
  • I really hope folks use this rezoning to reflect on educational equity. ALL kids deserve a great education at a safe school. I generally disagree with the negative characterizations of PS 307 – this is a school I know pretty well and there are amazing things happening there. But I find it troubling that only now that DUMBO children might be zoned for 307 that some DUMBO parents are taking an interest in a school in their own neighborhood, just blocks from their home. Did not the educational prospects of those children matter before the rezoning? If a school is not good enough for your child, is it good enough for any child? Again, I think PS 307 is a strong school community so I’m not asking these questions to imply I agree with the negative characterizations. I just am bothered that apparently few to any of these concerns with the school (307) were brought up by the DUMBO community when it was “other people’s children” going there. Do the educational opportunities we create for brown and black children from NYCHA houses – our neighbors – matter less? Do young #BlackLivesMatter?

The Parallel Universes of Education in Brooklyn

Take a look at this article today in DNAInfo. This article illustrates a primary reason for the urgent need for improved middle schools in Brooklyn District 13. 10% of the “persistently dangerous” middle schools in all of New York State are in D13.

Our Brooklyn schools are not just segregated – they existing in separate educational worlds within common neighborhoods. These are parallel universes on shared blocks. One of these 3 “persistently dangerous” middle schools is in Park Slope (MS 266), just blocks away from MS 447, widely considered one of the best middle schools in all of Brooklyn. Another is in DUMBO (Satellite West). Park Slope and DUMBO are two of the most affluent neighborhoods in Brooklyn and New York City as a whole.

One universe is that of majority white schools, with well funded arts programs and other enrichments, strong parental involvement, active opt-out movements, and the other many benefits that accrue with privilege and power. These are schools where principals can be vocal, highly visible spokespeople against the testing regime and teacher evaluation process.

The other universe is that of majority student of color schools, nearly always Title 1, struggling to get both sufficient DOE and PTA funding for even the most basic of supplies. These schools often have significant percentages of ELL, IEP, and other extra need students. These are schools that frequently poorly perform on the same tests the majority white school students no longer even take (since their parents are opting-out). In some cases these schools are unsafe as this report illustrates. At these schools principals live in fear they’ll lose their job if they can’t raise test scores – for them it’s unimaginable to speak out against the DOE or NYS tests, even in private.

Especially if you label yourself “progressive”, but even if you’re just a human, you should care about this. You should be outraged. I am.

I have every intention of making addressing these inequities my top priority in my continued work on CEC13.

(8/16 Update: I’d be remiss in not pointing out the amazing bit of reporting by fellow District 13 parent Nikole Hannah-Jones on “This American Life” about the topic of school segregation. It’s also worth your time to check out 3 pieces about school segregation in NYC, and in particular in Brooklyn, today on the Daily News – “Mix Match and Learn”, “Separate. Unequal. Still.”, and “Lander and Torres: Breaking the Cycle of School Segregation.”)

Occam’s Razor Takes on the NFL Refs to Explain #DeflateGate

A caller on WFAN 660 this evening hinted at what I believe to be the most plausible explanation for #DeflateGate.

Summary: The refs never measured (or set) the PSI of the balls before the game. Or, if they did, they only did so for a couple balls, but not all. The footballs were delivered to the refs under inflated and left the refs under inflated.

This idea reconciles the Brady narrative, the Belichik narrative, the Kraft Godfather 2 “This committee owes an apology, Senator” bit and, crucially, the delay on the part of the NFL in announcing something. It reconciles Bill Nye the Science Guy. It also fixes the problem that the deflation (or, perhaps more correctly, the lack of inflation) would have been much more easily done before inspection than after.

Essentially the theory is that the balls were prepared in the elaborate way, focused on feel, that Belichick went into at the Sunday presser. The theory further holds that the Patriots never measured the PSI of the balls before they were handed to the refs. The Patriots prepared the balls based on feel – I never heard Belichick say that the Patriots themselves checked the balls’s PSI before handing them to the referees on game day.

A critical quote from BB: “When the balls are delivered to the officials’ locker room, the officials were asked to inflate them to 12.5 PSI. What exactly they did, I don’t know.”

He continued “But for the purposes of our study, that’s what we did. We set them at 12.5. That’s at the discretion of the official, though. Regardless of what we ask for, it’s the official’s discretion to put them where he wants.”

This implies that 1) on game day the Patriots ball crew was not in the habit of checking the PSI – this was something new they did for the “study”, and 2) that the refs are not only supposed to check the balls but also inflate them (or, conversely, deflate them in Aaron Rodgers’ case) as needed to make them in compliance. The burden of checking and preserving inflation lies with the refs. This MMQB article and video seems to back that up, including a video of the process: http://mmqb.si.com/2015/01/22/deflategate-video-how-nfl-officials-check-game-ball-pressure/

The implied theory of the caller and my now working theory: the refs examined some of the balls, mostly by hand. If they checked any balls with a gauge, it was only a couple (essentially a sample). It was fewer still, if any, that they further inflated based on readings.

Simply put, the auditors – the refs – dropped the ball. They were sloppy. A rigorous check of all 12 balls never happened. The balls were under inflated all along. Perhaps the footballs further deflated during the game due to atmospheric condition, but that’s a margin of error stuff.

This brings up a question around “sin of omission”, i.e., should the Patriots have checked the PSI of the balls before they were handed over to the refs? So far as I can tell, teams are not obligated to hand over balls they are certain are above 12.5 PSI (read the official rules about balls yourself at http://static.nfl.com/static/content/public/image/rulebook/pdfs/5_2013_Ball.pdf) and if they were, there would have to some margin for error before a penalty is issued – would a team handing the referees one ball of twelve at 12.4 PSI to inspect be penalized just as much as a team handing a ref 12 balls at 10 PSI? It sounds like a team could hand the ref fully deflated balls if they’d like – the burden of checking AND inflation lies with the referees.

Let’s assume that giving under-inflated balls to the refs to inspect is not a violation. If that is so, were the Patriots “gaming” the system by purposely giving balls that “felt” right but in fact were objectively a little under-inflated to the refs in the hope they’d pass inspection? Were they seeing what they could get away with? Or was this simply the process they had always followed, focusing on feel and not the PSI, leaving the PSI up to the refs? That’s the area where interpretation of intent and motive may lie.

But I think this is what happened.