Families applying to the city’s public high schools will now have until Monday to list their top-choice programs — an extension of the original Wednesday deadline after a technology glitch with the online system.
At issue was a new feature that misstated students’ chances of getting into two highly selective Manhattan high schools. A smaller group of families directly impacted by problems with the MySchools tool will have until Jan. 10 to submit applications, education officials told affected parents Tuesday night.
“This issue, which only impacts a small percentage of students, has been resolved, and we apologize for this inconvenience,” public schools spokeswoman Jenna Lyle said in a statement.
The incident marked the second time this cycle the city had to push back an application deadline because of technical troubles. In October, families applying to middle school experiencing delays with the MySchools portal were given an extra week to make their choices.
The high school application tool projects if a student has a low, medium or high chance of getting into a program, reflected by an icon in the online portal with a varying number of orange bars. The feature — developed alongside economists affiliated with MIT — is based on historical enrollment trends and designed to help families build a balanced application.
But the chances of an offer shared with applicants interested in NYC Lab School for Collaborative Studies and Millennium High School were incorrect due to an error in the programs’ seat availability. With the deadline stretch, families can now reorder, remove or add choices from their applications.
The source of the error, first reported by the nonprofit news site Chalkbeat, was not immediately clear. Both Lab and Millennium had changes in their application processes this year after former Schools Chancellor David Banks reinstated a priority for Manhattan-based applicants.
The city’s public school system stood by its newly released feature as giving families a better sense of their odds.
“We’re proud to provide resources like the new chance of offer tool, which help to provide more guidance and insight as students make exciting decisions about where they’d like to attend High School,” Lyle said. “While we address an initial implementation issue, we are glad that families are finding the tool helpful and are always eager to hear from families about how the tool can be refined.”
High school offers are expected to be released on March 6.