GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

An advertisement for Learn NY that appeared on the New York Times' web site yesterday.

Learn NY, the nonprofit group lobbying to preserve mayoral control, has added a fourth member to its board: Rossana Rosado, the publisher of the Spanish-language daily newspaper El Diario/La Prensa. That’s good news for Learn NY, which said months ago it wanted to recruit more board members but had instead so far stuck to its original group of three (Geoffrey Canada, CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone, Sister Paulette LoMonaco of Good Shepherd Services, and the Reverend Calvin Butts III, a Baptist minister in Harlem).

The appointment could help Learn NY reach out to Latino families and lawmakers (although I can think of at least one who almost certainly won’t be persuaded). The organization’s major goal right now is to reach out to parents, a push that already includes online advertisements at the New York Times’ web site (see graphic).

Rosado’s appointment to the board raises questions about El Diario’s coverage of mayoral control and the city schools. It isn’t the first time a major newspaper publisher has taken a stance. Mort Zuckerman, who publishes the Daily News and my old employer, U.S. News & World Report, is on the board of the Fund for Public Schools.

Rosado’s statement about why she is joining Learn NY is after the jump: (more…)

One of the free e-mail providers that could soon give an account to every New York City student and parent. (Via Flickr.)

Connecting with students over the phone may soon become totally passe. The Department of Education is looking for a technology company — think Google’s Gmail or Microsoft’s Hotmail — to create e-mail accounts for every public school student and parent, at no charge to parents or the city. Google already provides free e-mail services to the Los Angeles public schools, and Microsoft provides e-mail to students in Miami, according to Bruce Lai, the chief of staff for the city DOE’s division of instructional information technology.*

Lai said that e-mail addresses are meant to encourage teachers and principals to engage with parents and students outside of the classroom. He said the program is also an “equity issue.” While some schools pay companies to help them set up e-mail accounts for their students and parents (I know I had one at my relatively affluent public high school, in Maryland), other schools can’t afford the cost. “We wanted to make sure that all schools had the opportunity to engage parents as well as create a stronger home-school connection,” Lai said.

Companies have until March to write proposals pitching themselves as the best possible vendor. Lai said he doesn’t expect that the city would have to pay any fee to the vendors. The guaranteed exposure of students to, say, Gmail’s layout and product is enough of a value on its own to entice a company. Gmail and other free e-mail providers splash advertisements on the screens of regular users, but Lai said that city students and parents will see no advertisements when they use the e-mail servers.

*This sounds like a different title than the DOE’s technology staff had before. (Used to be the Office of Instructional Technology, as the web site still says.) I’m looking into it.

A postcard Democracy Prep sent out inviting other schools and parents to their Harlem Armory inauguration party.

I’m planning to spend next Tuesday at this event in Harlem, where a bunch of charter schools — more than 30 last I heard — will be gathering to celebrate inauguration day. School leaders at Democracy Prep Charter School in Harlem planned the event after being disappointed in their first plan, to take the whole school to Washington, D.C. The day will include student performances, art projects, and some political work too.

As the postcard Democracy Prep sent out to advertise the day makes clear, the party will also be a chance for charter school supporters to make a political statement in favor of school choice.

Now that the ELA test has been postponed, I’m guessing other schools are making inauguration plans, too. Leave yours in the comments section.

• New York State might introduce a new diploma for special education students. (WNYC)
• A system-wide review of special education is set to begin at the DOE. (GothamSchools)
• Chancellor Klein visited Greenwich, Conn., to tout accountability and pay incentives. (Greenwich Citizen)
• Downtown Express profiles the two new elementary schools opening at Tweed in September.
• NYU hasn’t moved forward with plans to provide space for a new public school. (The Villager)
• Parents of children with special needs spoke out at a Staten Island forum. (NY1)
• A state appeals court ruled that the state comptroller can audit charter schools. (Newsday)
• The D.C. teachers union is trying to find out which members are at risk of being fired. (Washington Post)
• Nationwide, schools are planning to bring the inauguration into the classroom. (AP)

• Charter schools have lost their court battle against the state comptroller: They must be audited.
• Did the NEA really get into the Duncan hearing by hiring homeless people to stand in line for them?
• Sara Mead is upset that the stimulus package seems to cover building K-12 schools but not early ed ones.
• Mike Petrilli says it’s not an education stimulus package but a buffer against budget cuts.
• The Special Commissioner for Investigations, Richard Condon, makes $179,168, and Chaz says boo.
• Teachers unions are rolling up their sleeves for … health care reform.
• Say goodbye to the head of the DOE’s school food office.
  

Remember that reorganization? Another part of it is that a former McKinsey consultant with no experience in special education is now launching a total review of the Department of Education’s special education services.

Garth Harries has been tasked with figuring out “how to clear up all the clutter” in the hard-to-navigate special education system as part of the department’s ongoing reorganization, which is intended to cut costs, DOE spokesman David Cantor told me. Harries, currently the head of the DOE’s Office of Portfolio Development, will begin his new position in a matter of weeks, Cantor said. “He’s going to basically try to make our entire provision of special education better, more effective, and more efficient.”

Harries, who is a lawyer, came to the DOE from McKinsey & Company, the consulting firm. “He does not have credentials in special education,” Cantor said. “What he is is an unusually talented analyst and mechanic of large operations.”

“I think I have a pretty good reputation for effective problem-solving and getting things done and treating people fairly,” Harries told me this evening. About special education, he said, “I think it’s an area where I can help. I have a lot to learn, obviously.” (more…)

I just got off the phone with one of the KIPP AMP charter school teachers who led the school’s organizing drive, Emily Fernandez. Maybe the most interesting part of our short conversation was the fact that, during it, Fernandez took two phone calls from students, both homework questions.

Thus is the world we live in now. I can only imagine what my type A peers in Montgomery County, Maryland, would have done with that kind of information, back in the day. Fernandez, for her part, said she likes it that students have her cell phone number. Answering their homework questions makes sure they learn best, she said.

Fernandez was more vague on the subject I called her to discuss: why she and other teachers decided to unionize. She said that she wants to improve the school’s “sustainability” — “making it a school that has longevity for kids and families aas opposed to not,” she said. Against some of the speculation about the school, she said that there hasn’t been an “extreme amount” of turnover at KIPP AMP since it opened. (The school is now in its fourth year.)

More from her:

We really want to see how much we can cooperate and make the school better. We’re not looking to antagonize and change everything. We all signed onto KIPP and support what they want to do.

Those who think we in New York City have an unconventional schools leader in Joel Klein might be interested to hear about the latest appointment to the state board of education in Connecticut: Linda McMahon, the CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment (formerly WWF).

Here’s a look at McMahon’s family, who run WWE with her. She appears — and does some teaching — at about minute 3 and a half:

Confirmation hearings by the state legislature will determine if McMahon really joins the board.

Mayor Bloomberg's address, scheduled to begin at 1pm, is being broadcast online.

Mayor Bloomberg will give his annual “State of the City” address this afternoon. On the subject of education — you better sit down before reading this — Bloomberg is announcing his intention to lobby the legislature to preserve mayoral control of the public schools, according to a press release preview City Hall just sent out. Bloomberg’s other education-related announcements are two parent-outreach initiatives that seem designed to target one of the biggest concerns about mayoral control: that it’s left parents out of the schools.

One new program, called “Parent Connect,” will expand 311 services for parents, so that they can find information about admissions and transportation by calling the free city hotline. The other program is the fact that parents are going to have access to ARIS data some time this year (something we already knew from school officials).

You can watch the speech on NY1 or online here.

In the Village Voice, Wayne Barrett fact-checks the Bloomberg administration’s party line on how Caroline Kennedy reinvigorated the Fund for Public Schools.

What Kennedy and Chancellor Joel Klein claim:

Kennedy told the Times that the Fund was a mere “pass-through,” collecting “an average of $2 million a year” before she got there. “We kind of re-launched it and revitalized it, you know. Now, we’ve raised $238 million since then,” she said. Klein’s CNN article said that Caroline “took over an office that previously oversaw donations to PTAs and alumni associations and re-created it around a model of a public/private partnership,” claiming that “under her leadership, the Fund has raised more than $240 million.”

What Barrett found in actual documentation:

But the Fund’s tax forms show that the $11.2 million it raised in Caroline’s first fiscal year—which ran from July 1, 2002, to June 30, 2003 (she started the job that October)—was very similar to the $10.7 million raised the year before. The total actually dropped to $10.9 million in 2003-2004, the only full fiscal year that Kennedy was on staff. It grew to $14 million when she left, and then exploded nearly two years after she was gone, to $39.6 million. Kennedy and Klein’s figures of $238 million and $240 million credit her for everything the Fund raised for the four years that she was merely a board member, an absurd exaggeration.