N.Y. Backs Increased School Choice : Education: City officials approve plan allowing public elementary or junior high students to transfer outside their district. It’s the largest open enrollment effort in the nation.

Education officials in New York City began working Thursday to implement what they said would be the most sweeping school choice program in the nation, one allowing students to apply to attend any elementary or junior high school in the city outside their own district.

A modified form of the plan already exists at the high school level.

“I am delighted that the Board of Education has adopted a resolution to implement a policy of increased school choice,” Schools Chancellor Joseph A. Fernandez said Thursday. “This sends an important message to parents and to the community at large. . . . As I have always maintained, choice is not a panacea. It is not the only strategy to employ. It is part of a school improvement program.”

Before the Board of Education approved the new plan Wednesday night by a 6-0 vote, Fernandez told members in a memo: “I believe it is incumbent upon us to begin to move in the direction of providing meaningful choice to parents of public school students.”

New York City schools are divided into numerous districts. Starting with the new school year in September the parents of students in elementary schools and junior high schools will be able to enroll their children in any school outside the district where they reside--if that school has sufficient classroom space.

But under present law, Board of Education officials can not order open transfers within each district--a situation Fernandez pledged to try to change.

Fernandez said he would seek extra funds to help pay added student transportation costs and said he believes that there are adequate safeguards to prevent wholesale shifts from struggling schools where teachers are trying to improve the curriculum.

Some principals said Thursday they feared the new program could set off a stampede of parents seeking to remove pupils from troubled schools.

“It certainly could mean there will be a frenzy,” said a principal who asked not to be identified. “People will be trying to pull their children out.”

The principal noted, however, that the availability of spaces in schools noted for academic excellence could limit the number of transfers.

James S. Vlasto, a spokesman for the schools chancellor, said the new program was the largest open enrollment effort in the nation. But he cautioned that transfers would be made only on the basis of available space.

“We do not expect that many (transfers) the first year from all the analysis we have done,” Vlasto said. “It will not be a large number until parents get used to it.”

The chancellor’s office said that, based on national studies, it was anticipated that only a small number of students would pick schools in other districts during the initial stage of the program.

In situations where more students apply to a school than there are places available, the new regulations call for a lottery.

Schools that lose large numbers of students will be required to make a comprehensive improvement plan and a schedule to implement the plan.

Board of Education officials hope competition derived from school choice will stimulate local district superintendents to scrutinize their schools, identify those which are failing and take steps to improve them quickly.

Choice already is in effect at the high school level in New York. Students fill out an admissions application, listing the high schools they wish to attend. Last year, more than 39,000 students were assigned the school of their choice. Some elite schools like the Bronx High School of Science and Stuyvesant High School, providing special academic programs, require high scores on a very competitive entrance examination.

Approximately 990,000 students are enrolled in New York’s public schools, and officials said the choice program clearly dwarfs any such effort in other cities.