Hong Zheng got a tip from a school official on how to get her rejected kid into Hooker School: Go to the registration office every day for months — or plan a sneak attack with a neighbor.
Zheng (not pictured) was one of 20 parents who gathered in the basement of the “little” (K‑2) Hooker School on Canner Street Monday evening for a lesson from school officials.
Hooker K‑2 Principal Evelyn Robles (at left in photo) and Debbie Breland, who oversees student recruitment at the school system’s registration office, tried to clarify for parents the confusing process of getting their kids into East Rock’s neighborhood school, Worthington Hooker.
Zheng, who lives in East Rock and works at Yale, is trying to get her daughter into kindergarten at Hooker in the fall. Her tale is the latest example of what has become a yearly hair-pulling experience for East Rock parents who set their hearts on the city’s top-ranking public school, then fail to land a spot for their child. (Click here for a past story and reader debate on the subject.)
When Zheng went to enroll her daughter on the May 4 designated registration day, she was denied a slot.
Hooker serves grades K‑8, with the K‑2 grades housed on Canner Street and the others in a swing space at State Street’s former St. Stanislaus’ School. Fall enrollment for grades K‑2 is already full, Breland said Monday.
The kindergarten slots filled up with students who live within the designated boundaries for the neighborhood school, Breland said. Those students (called “in-district”) are placed first before kids who live outside those boundaries (called “out-of-district”), she explained. In the transient neighborhood, with many Yale affiliates, applications sometimes swell: This year, there weren’t enough spots in kindergarten for all the neighborhood kids who applied, she said. Registration for grades 1 – 8 doesn’t open until July 1, but Hooker grades 1 and 2 have already filled with pre-registrants, Breland added.
With its high-ranking test scores and unique international community, the school can attract a lot of competition.
“People come from other countries, and the only words in English they know are ‘Hooker School,’” Breland told the room. When they move into the neighborhood, they think registration is “automatic,” she said, but it’s not.
Can you add more students to the school? asked Zheng, who’s from China. Breland said no: By union contract, the school accepts only 52 students in grades K and 1, and 54 in grades 3 – 8.
If a spot opens up at Hooker, how does the school system decide who gets it? Zheng asked.
“There is no waiting list,” said Breland. “The only way you’re going to get the seat is to come into the office every day and ask.”
She was referring to the registration office at 54 Meadow St. (946‑8501). Parents should visit the office every day, bringing proof of residence and the child’s birth certificate or passport, Breland said. The office is open Monday to Friday between 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 a.m.
“It’s first come, first served,” Breland said. She said there’s no sibling preference: If a seat opens up, whoever gets there first would get that seat.
She encouraged parents who didn’t make the cut to try other “fabulous” schools in the system. Magnet school applications will be accepted until November.
Sneak Attack
Zheng wasn’t sold. She had an idea.
“I’m pretty sure there’s one spot open” at Hooker, she said. A friend of hers pre-registered but has decided not to attend the school. Zheng asked Breland what would happen if she took her friend’s hand, marched down to the registration office, then applied for the seat the moment after her friend’s child withdrew.
The plan gained surprising approval.
“You would get the seat,” said Breland.
Reached by phone after the meeting, Will Clark, the schools’ chief operating officer, said the process isn’t quite so simple.
“That person would be in the mix,” he said, “But there’s no guarantee that person would get in.”
He said no one is allowed to give away their spot at Hooker: when a seat opens up, he said, schools chief Reggie Mayo looks at the people who have registered for the school. Mayo then personally decides whom to give the seat to, based on existing transfer requests. Special preference is given to those who have a sibling at the school or have transportation needs, and, at Hooker, kids who speak English as a second language.
Some advantage is given to students who enroll in public pre‑K programs or private pre‑K programs that use Head Start funding, Clark added. Those students are allowed to pre-register for kindergarten, but out-of-district kids can’t jump the queue over kids who live in-district, he said.
While he declined to use the word “waiting list,” the system he described appeared to have more rules than the one Breland portrayed to parents.
Daily Campaign
Parents at Monday’s meeting balked at Breland’s description of the enrollment process, where parents who are rejected on registration day must physically show up at the Board of Education every subsequent day to get a spot at the school. The campaign could last until October, she said, depending on whether departing students notify the school of their plans.
Parents are sent a letter home at the end of the school year asking if the student plans to return to school. Even if a parent responds no to the letter, the withdrawal isn’t official unless the parent files official paperwork, Breland said. If a student leaves town but forgets to tell the school system, the spot will remain held until Oct. 1, she said.
A parent pointed out that that could mean three to five months of daily school board visits.
“That would be the idea if I don’t get a spot — I just don’t go to work?” scoffed one father.
“That’s how it works,” said Breland, tossing up her hands. She said the school system does not allow parents to inquire about vacancies even by telephone anymore. They must go in person. Any other system wouldn’t be “fair,” she said.
Parent Pirro Saro replied that the system is fair to no one. “The solution you’re using makes absolutely no sense.”
“There must be a better way than having these parents go down and talk to a person on a daily basis,” agreed Amy Smoyer, a mom with two kids at Hooker. “It’s an inefficient use of our resources.”
A man in the audience called out a solution: “It’s called a waiting list!”
Breland replied that waiting lists cause problems because they lead to fights over who’s ahead of whom. With only two women in the registration office handling registration for over 20,000 students, she asked who would maintain that list.
“There’s no better way,” she said.
Elusive Boundaries
Parents seeking basic info on the school — which homes lie in the coveted Hooker district, and which don’t — came up short on that quest, too.
Zheng said when she went to enroll her child, she found out that her home at 107 Cottage St. lies just outside the Hooker boundaries. She said she was told that the boundaries have changed this year: now they begin at 120, not 107 Cottage St.
“I’m shocked at the moment,” she said after the meeting. “I thought it was 100 percent sure we were in the Hooker School [district]. Two of my neighbors go to Hooker.”
Other parents at the meeting seconded Zheng’s confusion. Which streets are in the boundaries? Which aren’t? Isn’t this public information?
Breland said she doesn’t have the map and it’s not available on the school website. In order to find out whether a certain home lies in the Hooker district, parents or realtors must come to the registration office and ask about a specific address, she said.
The Independent obtained this map last year of the boundaries (click on the map to download it), and this list of in-district addresses, which include Zheng’s home. NHPS’s Clark said the boundaries have not changed; which leaves Zheng’s situation a mystery.
Schools spokeswoman Michelle Wade said the number of out-of-district kids enrolled at Hooker for the coming year remains the same as when the Independent checked last fall: Click here to view a breakdown. All new students admitted since then are “in-district.” “In-district” includes students who live within the Hooker boundaries, as well as those who may live further afield but are part of the English Language Learners program.
“Ripe For Corruption”
The one-hour meeting left parents and one politician reviving a call for reform, including a publicly posted waiting list.
“This is ripe for corruption,” said Smoyer (pictured). She said the system, where parents have no way of knowing when a vacancy emerges except by showing up in person, leaves a lot of power for clerks to tip off their allies when a spot opens up.
“The system seems like it lacks transparency everywhere,” added Justin Elicker, who’s running for alderman in East Rock’s Ward 10. He said he was very concerned about why there is no publicly posted map of the Hooker district, and whether the school system changed that map without alerting neighbors.
Breland said she “absolutely” agrees with parents that the list of addresses within the Hooker boundaries should be put onto the school system website. New Haven has an extensive website detailing how to apply to its magnet schools. As New Haven shifts to a magnet-based school system, only a handful of neighborhood schools, like Hooker, remain. There’s no comparable website explaining how to apply to those schools.
Asked when the site would be upgraded, Breland said she hoped it would be one or two months. Asked what neighbors can do, she suggested directing comments not to her office, but to the superintendent, aldermen, or the school board.
Meanwhile, Zheng she said she has already rented an apartment on Prospect Street in order to change her address. She said her next step is to ask around the Chinese community to see if anyone who signed up for kindergarten is planning to leave.
Another parent jokingly floated another plan of attack: What about posting an ad on Craigslist, offering money to whichever departing Hooker parent agrees to giving up their child’s spot to a fellow neighbor?
“It could go for the highest price,” he said.
At least NHPS admits that Reggie handpicks kids to fill open seats. This is a travesty. In the NY suburb where I grew up, you went to a neighborhood school based on where you lived. If you moved, you switched schools. Everyone knew in which district their home was located. The end. Why does New Haven find it so difficult to implement such a simple system? At a minimum there should be complete transparency -- maps, waiting lists, and an on-line/phone system that lets you know where you are on the waiting list at any moment in time.
The NHPS isn't the only entity to blame. Parents glorify Hooker. If East Rock Magnet School attracted East Rock parents the same way Hooker does, it would have the same success rate that Hooker does. (East Rock Magnet School should be a neighborhood school.) And if Celentano were just renamed Hooker II and the student populations from Hooker and Celentano were integrated, we could make some headway there, too. This is at some level about marketing and branding, both areas in which NHPS lacks serious skills. Parents are completely risk-averse, as one would expect, and rely on the Hooker name even though their children would fare just as well at other NHPS schools.
Note, based largely on neighborhood gossip, I'm also pretty sure that Wade's comments about Hooker's in/out of district make-up is false. There were definitely new enrollees this past winter. Not sure if they changed the in/out of district ratios.