The city will re-run its high school matching process to enroll ninth-graders in the 14 high schools that a state judge last week blocked the city from closing, Chancellor Joel Klein said today.
About 8,500 students listed one of the high schools the city had planned to shutter among their top 12 choices, and more than 900 students had listed one of the schools as their first choice. In a statement released to reporters today, Klein said that students who are matched to one of the formerly closing schools can choose to attend that school, or the school to which they were originally matched.
On Friday, when the city began mailing out high school acceptance letters, Klein indicated that no students would be matched to any of the schools that the city had planned to close, though he said students could choose to attend them if the city loses its court appeal. The president of the city teachers union, Michael Mulgrew, threatened to sue the city again to force them to enroll students at those schools.
Here is Klein’s full statement:
“We have now sent high school acceptance letters to more than 70,000 students–nearly 90 percent of students who applied. To provide options for those students who selected a school originally slated for phase-out as one of their choices, we will run the matching process again including schools originally slated for phase-out. If a student is matched to one of those schools, he or she will be able to choose between that school and the school he or she was matched to in the main round. If the court’s decision is overturned on appeal, the student will attend the school he or she was matched to in the main round.”