Chancellor Joel Klein
New York City Department of Education
52 Chambers Street
New York, NY 10007
May 10th, 2007

Dear Chancellor Klein:

We, the parents of Central Park East I Elementary School in East Harlem, would like to respond to your parent survey. We feel that a bubble-in survey is an offensive way to ask parents for their input. From the beginning, you have dismissed the voices of students and parents in your restructuring plan, and have kept information from us all. We do not want our school to be given a letter grade based primarily on test scores. We do not want our children to be seen as numbers on a piece of paper. We disagree strongly with the ARIS system, which is too intrusive on the lives of our children and the teachers that work with them. All of these initiatives are costing millions and millions of dollars, which we would rather see used for professional development, services for our children, and better functioning schools with excellent technology and generous supplies.

What would we like you to know about our school that isnít covered by your survey?

CPE I creates life-long learners and life-long readers

CPE I teaches our children how to work together as a community

CPE I helps our children become problem solvers

CPE I gives our children an excellent education in the arts

CPE I welcomes parental involvement

CPE I supports multiple learning styles

CPE I looks at the whole child-not just a score

CPE I values diversity and difference

This is just the tip of the many things that CPE I gives to our children, and the reason that we chose this school over many others. If you really want to make schools work and children succeed, partnerships need to be formed between parents and schools. Your initiatives shut out parents, and that will make the schools fail and ultimately our children fail. If you really want to put the children first, bring parents fully into this process!!!

Sincerely,

The parents and families of CPE I