She was referring to the School Construction Authority, the city agency that builds and maintains public schools citywide.

P.S. 9, helped in part by the gifted program, was ranked 49th in reading last spring out of 633 elementary schools citywide.

Depending on who is asked, the city's Department of Education may or may not be planning big changes for gifted-and-talented programs in schools citywide.

"This is not going to have a drastic impact in terms of the composition of schools citywide," Dr. Payzant said.

In 1996 as part of a citywide school building plan a new school located on Everett was opened.

To save money, schools citywide are following a similar process called redeployment, in which teachers with seniority are given a preference in jobs.

(Last year, the school ranked 453d out of 676 elementary schools citywide based on its performance on the city's third-grade test.)

The organization's goal is to rebuild 52 fields at schools citywide.

They have shown less improvement on reading tests in the last year than all other schools citywide.

At the middle school level, there are zoned schools, district choices, borough choices and a group of citywide schools.