Getting into high school felt a lot like losing the lottery this year.
Many high-performing New York City students and their parents were devastated and outraged after receiving high school admission letters Wednesday night — blasting the revamped system that no longer puts a premium on good grades.
“I feel like the [Department of Education] betrayed my daughter and every kid that’s in this position,” said Greg Melli-Jones, who lives in Battery Park.
Melli-Jones’ daughter Mia was placed at Richard R. Green High School for Teaching — a school they’d never heard of before — after failing to get into any of her 12 choices.
Now, the dad is weighing leaving the Big Apple altogether over the snub.
“We are either going to have to find a private school that we cannot afford or think about leaving the city because I’m not going to have her go to that school,” Melli-Jones told The Post.
His wife broke into tears over the news and his eighth-grader is distraught, he said.
“She asked me if it’s going to be OK. ‘Are we going to find a school for me?’ And I don’t have an answer for her,” he said.
The application and selection process has been a rite of passage for kids, with building anticipation for the big day when they’re told where they’ll be going in the fall.
But the process this time around was stressful throughout because of delays and confusion over what the new process would be at the end of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration.
Eighth graders had until March 1 to submit an application listing up to 12 high schools or special programs of their choice in order of preference.
After months of delay about how this year’s application process would unfold, the city Department of Education unveiled its new admission system just a month before the deadline — lowering the bar to get into many competitive high schools and tossing kids with a range of academic achievement into a random hopper.
A former DOE enrollment official said the changes and deadline amounted to “the most stressful year I can recall.”
“More than ever, it was less of a meritocracy than any year in memory,” said Maurice Frumkin, who now runs the private NYC Admissions Solutions.
“You have families that were getting information at the last moment and a process that is the least based on academic record in the history.”
Manhattan resident Lauren Bernstein said she was also considering moving out of the city after her daughter didn’t get any of her 12 choices.
“I didn’t apply to any privates, but now I’m calling them all like crazy,” said Bernstein, who has two other kids she is putting through college.
“It’s going to be very hard to afford two in college and one in private school. We may have to sell my apartment and leave the city.”
Bernstein said her daughter is crushed.
“She cried all night, doesn’t want to go to her prom tomorrow, never wants to step foot in school again.”
The timing of the decision means parents probably can’t do much to fight, she added. Admission letters used to come out in March before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The new formula takes a student’s top mark out of English, math, social studies and science in seventh and eighth grades, then assigns a point value to that mark. The points are then averaged to determine which of four lottery groups the student falls into.
Standardized test scores and attendance — used in prior years — were not a factor this time.
Supporters have said the system should increase diversity in the city’s most coveted schools, but opponents have slammed the program for deemphasizing student performance.
One Staten Island mom said the DOE was playing “Russian roulette with our kids’ futures.” Her daughter, who has a 97 average, got her fifth choice.
“I’m so sad for her. My heart is broken,” said the mother, who requested to remain anonymous cause she works as a city teacher. “She would pray every night for this school and just like that — for no logical reason — it was taken away from her.
“She was spit out of a bad algorithm,” she said. “So the kids that work so hard and get lousy lottery numbers suffer.”
The DOE didn’t immediately respond to a request for data on how many students received their first or top three choices.
Frumkin, the former DOE enrollment official, said he was convinced the process was only an interim solution that “didn’t make many families pleased at all.”
But the system did open the door to many families who felt shut out of the city’s highest performing schools in years past, he said.
DOE officials have stressed the process is not permanent and could change as soon as next year.
