Still, Alonso says that he is concerned. A committee of system officials has spent this academic year establishing the criteria for student transfers, requiring the school to first provide extra assistance and ensuring that parents are involved in the process. While parents can withdraw their children at any time, schools can remove students only if all other options have been exhausted and the evidence is clear that the setting isn't meeting the students' needs.
Parents at the schools have mixed feelings about the change of practice. Some pointed out that, unlike schools without entrance criteria, the elite schools are not designed to keep students in high school for longer than four years, making it difficult to serve those who are falling behind.
Karen Stokes, an executive board member on City's PTA, said the system needs to look carefully at the schools' admissions requirements if it is going to make it harder to remove a student.
Admissions decisions are based on students' middle school attendance, grades and scores on a standardized test. But Stokes said that an "A" at one middle school isn't always equivalent to an "A" at another and that some middle schools are sending students who are more prepared than others. She would like to see the test scores weighted more heavily.
"As a City College parent, I'm perfectly comfortable with keeping kids who get into City. I think we have an obligation to make this work for students who get in," said Stokes, executive director of the Greater Homewood Community Corp. "At the same time, we have to be really scrupulous about whether the criteria we're using is appropriate and whether it needs to be changed over time."
System officials said they asked the schools' principals this year whether they wanted to recommend a change in entrance criteria, and none did.
Stokes said she's seen students who are struggling at City but whose parents don't want them to leave because it is a safe school and the neighborhood schools they would otherwise attend are perceived as unsafe.
Anthony Williams, the PTA president at Western, said he sought extra help for his daughter when she was a freshman because her middle school hadn't offered algebra and she felt she was starting off behind her classmates. During his tenure as PTA president the past three years, he said, he's referred at least a few dozen parents to outside tutors to help prevent their children from having to leave the school. Williams protested a few years ago when the city school system admitted students to Western and Dunbar who hadn't met the admissions requirements.
