If you’re interested in enrolling your child who is entering kindergarten through third grade, in a gifted and talented program in District 10 or any other Bronx district, you’d better act quickly.

Parents must fill out a one-page “Request for Testing” form and return it by Nov. 19. If your child is in public school right now, then you can get the form at the school and submit it there. If your child attends a non-public school (say a day care program or a parochial school), then you must submit it in person to a borough enrollment office. Parents can also pick up the forms there or get it on-line at http://schools.nyc.gov/Academics/GiftedandTalented/EligibilityApplications/.

Parents in the Norwood News readership area can submit the forms to the DOE office at One Fordham Plaza. You will be given a receipt.

The test, administered in January and February depending on your child’s age, is really two separate tests – the OLSAT (Otis-Lennon School Ability Test) and the BSRA (Bracken School Readiness Assessment). The BSRA, which only takes 10 to 15 minutes to administer, measures “accumulated knowledge,” while the OLSAT tests cognitive and reasoning ability and takes a little longer.

Any child going into kindergarten or first grade who scores at the 90th percentile or above is guaranteed a spot in a gifted and talented classroom in your child’s district (second and third graders are place as room allows). Kids who score at the 97th percentile are eligible to attend a citywide gifted and talented program in Manhattan. The DOE is expanding the citywide program next fall to include schools in Brooklyn and Queens, and in the Bronx and Staten Island the following year.

Chancellor Klein revamped the controversial program last year by standardizing the eligibility requirements citywide, rather than allowing individual districts to administer the program as they saw fit. The goal was to increase enrollment and increase the number of minorities admitted to the program, but enrollment declined by half this year. Stiffer enrollment requirements and programs situated too far from eligible students contributed to the problem.

So now the DOE vows to create programs in every district starting with kindergartners. In District 10, a program for first graders at PS 54 on Webster Avenue began last fall, but it was discontinued this year reportedly because of poor participation. The only other program was also for first graders at PS 24 in Riverdale. That school is stretched to the max and the DOE will determine if the program at that school will continue and where else programs may be launched. Previously, parents who wanted to send their eligible kindergartners to a gifted and talented program had to send them to highly-competitive citywide programs in Manhattan.