GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Chancellor Joel Klein conducted at least one of his meetings with lawmakers in his office at Tweed Courthouse.

After suffering a beating from legislators who accused him of being rudely unresponsive to their concerns since taking office in 2003, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is taking the hint and reaching out.

In the last few weeks, Klein has walked  Mark Weprin, a Queens lawmaker who is one of his sharpest critics on the Assembly’s education committee, through his Tweed Courthouse headquarters; sat down with a handful of other lawmakers; and made appointments with more, including the committee’s chairwoman, Catherine Nolan. He has also begun, through his staff, to send out prompt replies to lawmakers’ requests.

“We’re getting letters answered, we’re getting information that we’ve asked for,” a spokeswoman for Nolan, Kathleen Whynot, said. “We have a really good working relationship right now with some of the DOE staff, which has been a nice addition.”

Assembly members said the outreach began after they launched a series of five hearings on the subject of mayoral control — the governance structure that Klein strongly supports, but which several lawmakers have criticized as authoritarian. The state legislature handed the mayor control in 2002, but the law they wrote sunsets this year, and so many in Albany are rolling up their sleeves and hoping to revise it.

The hearings were a chance for citizens to give their thoughts on how they’d like the law changed (or not). They also became opportunities for the lawmakers to air their concerns. Several of the complaints had to do specifically with Klein and his staff, who lawmakers said frequently failed to respond even to basic questions and concerns. The complaints accelerated at a hearing held in Manhattan where Klein himself testified, sitting before a row of lawmakers who took turns rebuking him. (more…)

Earlier today I wrote about budget cuts at Tweed Courthouse, the Department of Education’s headquarters, which have somehow managed to coincide with an increase in staff there. David Cantor, the DOE press secretary, just called me to clarify some of what he told me about internal decisions.

I’ve updated the post to reflect the new intel, the juiciest bit of which I’ll paste here:

as the scope of the crisis was sinking in late last year, Chancellor Joel Klein ordered every department at headquarters — from teaching and learning to the press shop — to draw up a proposal under which it would cut 10% of its budget.

But the plans were precautionary to begin with. According to David Cantor, a DOE spokesman, every department hoped it wouldn’t have to make all of the cuts it proposed. As school officials began to get a sense of how much money they had available, they decided the full 10% across-the-line cut would not be necessary. Cuts happened according to a master priority list crafted by top school officials, who decided which programs should be the first to go and which should be the last.

Yesterday’s Quinnipiac poll results showed the chancellor’s popularity holding steady. But no one would call him popular — his approval rating has never broken the 50 percent mark.

Not true for charter schools. The poll results Quinnipiac released today show that 67 percent of registered voters in New York City want to see more charter schools open. Among public school parents, the number rose to 72 percent. Support for an expansion was highest in Brooklyn and the Bronx, where charters are prevalent. One caveat: Only registered voters were polled. In a city of immigrants, many public school parents are not registered to vote.

As far as I can tell, this is the first time Quinnipiac has asked about charters. (more…)

Yesterday, I wrote about parents who are protesting what they fear is a Department of Education plan to move their school, the Clinton School for Writers and Artists. This morning, I spoke to a mom who wouldn’t mind seeing the move happen.

Greenwich Village Middle School is on the top floor of PS 3.

The mother is a parent at Greenwich Village Middle School, where parents and school officials have been hoping for a larger space. They might have gotten just that had Clinton vacated its space in Chelsea. Instead, the Greenwich Village school will open this fall in the same space it now occupies. Parents say the space, on the top floor of PS 3, is overcrowded and stressful.

According to the DOE, Greenwich Village Middle is only at about 93 percent capacity. But school leaders say the tight quarters have left the school without a library, up-to-snuff science lab, or dedicated gym. (It shares a gym with PS 3.)

Plus, parents say the crowding causes stress, especially for teachers, who can’t have their own classrooms because every space must be used every period of the day. When one teacher is almost finished with a class, another teacher has to “sneak in at the last minute” to start preparing for the next period, PTA President Marianna Mott Newirth told me.

On top of that, there are no dedicated classrooms where students can receive special education or English as a Second Language services. Those services happen in a broom closet or in the hallways, Mott Newirth told me.

“There’s no breathing space between classes,” she said. “It’s like traffic: When there’s gridlock, it’s stressful.”

New York State United Teachers, the state chapter of the city teachers union, just announced that the union is on the brink of adding about 500 1,200 lifeguards into its fold. The lifeguards used to belong to another union, but they sought out NYSUT hoping it would offer “stronger representation,” according to the press release below.

Most of NYSUT’s 600,000 members are teachers (and most of those are in New York City) but the union also represents some groups that aren’t affiliated with schools, including hospital nurses, group home workers, and day care providers. Read background on how lifeguards got unionized here.

Here’s the NYSUT press release:

Lifeguards join NYSUT seeking a voice, better pay & improved safety
ALBANY, N.Y. February 25, 2009 — Along with their whistles, sun block and rescue buoys, some 1,200 state lifeguards, including nearly 500 who protect beachgoers on Long Island’s shores, will be carrying something else on their stands this summer — a NYSUT union card.

New York State United Teachers announced today that state-employed lifeguards who protect pools, lakes and beaches from Lake Erie to Montauk are affiliating with the 600,000-member union.  The NYSUT Board of Directors will formally vote to accept the new local union — known as the New York State Lifeguard Corps — on Saturday, ending a nearly six-year legal odyssey that started when lifeguards began seeking better pay, improved training and safety equipment, and a voice in their working conditions. (more…)

The Daily News reported yesterday that Tweed Courthouse, the Department of Education’s headquarters, added bureaucrats to its staff as the city schools underwent millions of dollars of budget cuts. That’s true: Official records show that there were 30 more people working at Tweed this January than in January of 2008.

But outside of Tweed, in a set of administrative offices scattered across the five boroughs, DOE bureaucrats are losing their jobs. These other offices — a mix of “integrated service centers” and “school support organizations,” which help schools with tasks like managing payroll, providing food, and teacher training — lost a combined 114 staff in the last year. I don’t know the breakdown between SSO and ISC cuts, or what kind of jobs were lost; I’ve asked the DOE, and would love reader advice on this. (more…)

President Obama talked quite a bit about education last night in his address to Congress and the American people, setting out a number of priorities that will soon be backed up with resources from the economic recovery package.  But there’s something about the staging of this that makes me very nervous:  most of the key positions in the U.S. Department of Education that involve policy development and implementation, and the administration of the Department’s resources, are not yet filled by individuals chosen by the new administration.

It’s now been more than a month since President Obama’s inauguration, and more than two months since he nominated Arne Duncan to be Secretary of Education.  Yet here is a list of just some of the key positions that remain open or staffed by acting individuals on the ED organizational chart: (more…)

• President Obama says every student should be able to attend college. (Times)
• A new trend in classroom design is desks where students can stand. (Times)
• Juan Gonzalez weighs in against the symbolic vote now given to parents in council elections. (Daily News)
• Randi Weingarten said she considers Michelle Rhee’s recent kind words “an apology.” (Washington Post)
• A new study says text messaging improves literacy. (Daily News)
• Schools nationwide are cracking down on families that don’t pay for lunch. (AP)

• The DOE today launched its third annual survey of parents, teachers, and students.
• Azi catches a Google ad for Mike Bloomberg 2009 that looks a lot like Fund for Public Schools ads.
• Leonie publishes some lists to help you count all the bureaucrats who work at Tweed.
• The DOE today released a new innovative test for students whose formal educations were interrupted.
• Rumblings that an Illinois teachers union leader might join Arne Duncan’s team.
• Norm Scott wonders whether patronage is responsible for problems at a South Bronx school.
• How Obama will confront his party’s edu-divide: “make progress without causing further polarization.”
• A guide for school districts on how to spend the stimulus dollars.
• The gender achievement gap (in which girls out-perform guys, naturally) extends to private schools.
• The teachers union will have a rally to urge powers that be to spend the stimulus funds wisely.

Chelsea families have been organizing for weeks to oppose a city plan to relocate their middle school. But city school officials say no such plan has ever existed.

In fact, they say they never even made a formal proposal to move the Clinton School for Writers and Artists, a small school currently sharing space with an elementary school on West 21st Street.

The apparently mistaken idea has its roots in the popular school’s desire to expand. Department of Education officials suggested moving Clinton to PS 33, a nearby, lower-performing elementary school that has classrooms to spare. But Clinton’s principal, Jeanne-Marie Fraino, convinced DOE officials that the move would not be good for her school, so they dropped the idea, DOE spokesman Will Havemann told me today.

“We have no intention of moving Clinton for Fall 2009,” Havemann said.

The news has not gotten to Clinton parents, who are sending frenzied e-mails in advance of a meeting tomorrow of the Community Education Council for District 2, the elected parent council that is supposed to advise the DOE on school siting decisions. “We should dress in red so we can make our presence felt,” read one e-mail sent to Clinton parents. (more…)