I hope no one came to this morning’s Special Committee on School Admissions, Attendance and Boundaries meeting expecting solutions to chronic overcrowding at the city’s hills schools.

What the committee did seem to conclude, however, was this:

• Moving from full-day to half-day kindergarten isn’t the best or most effective way to increase a school’s capacity.
• To make sure all neighborhood families have a home school, the district will have to add classrooms to various schools (Montclair was mentioned), move attendance boundary lines, or both.
• The district needs to balance out the number of special education students at various schools (Some schools, if I heard correctly, have none; in others, special needs students make up to 30 percent of the student population).
• District staff needs to address “split-street” Read the rest of this entry »