GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Mulgrew trying to save a teacher stipend used to purchase school supplies in May of this year. Full NY1 report here.

The man who is on the brink of becoming one of the city’s top power brokers nearly got lost in a crowd earlier this week.

Michael Mulgrew is the designated successor to teachers union president Randi Weingarten, who will announce her departure from the union today. If union leaders select him to fill her shoes, as is expected, he will become the president of America’s largest union local and one of the most influential labor unions in the state.

On Monday afternoon, at a press conference where Mayor Bloomberg announced the city’s rising graduation rates with a pack of advocates, the mayor ticked off every one of their names in gratitude but one.

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein leaned in to Bloomberg’s ear. “And Michael Mulgrew,” he reminded the mayor.

The tall, bald man with a bouncer’s build hardly registered the oversight.

Bloomberg can be forgiven for not remembering Mulgrew’s name. Unlike other top brass at the teachers union, Mulgrew is a relative newcomer. Just four years ago he was teaching English and filmmaking to high school students in Staten Island. He was not seen as a possible successor to Weingarten inside the union until she abruptly vaulted him into the limelight last year, making him one of three candidates in a dramatic internal run-off race.

Even now that he’s on good terms with deputy mayors and had his photograph pasted across the pages of the union’s most recent newspapers, Mulgrew remains obscure. He would be the first non-Jewish president of a union that over the years has been stereotyped as a Jewish haven. A trained electrician and carpenter who ran a contracting business on the side for several years, he would also be the first vocational teacher to become interim president of the UFT. (Vocational teachers represent just a small fraction of the union.)

All this makes him a far cry from the stature of the woman whose shoes he’ll fill.

“Anybody who thinks that they can just walk into New York City and become the next Randi Weingarten is smoking something,” Weingarten warned last year, amid speculation about her successor.

Mulgrew, 44, also couldn’t be more different from Weingarten. Tall and apple-cheeked, he has the physical presence of Mr. Clean (both shave their heads) and a quiet charm. “Women seem to like him,” noted one union member.

Still, he’s often bullish and he gained renown in the union for being one of a small number of people to stand up to Weingarten. At a City Council hearing on mayoral control in early June, Mulgrew barked his testimony. Weingarten’s critics, who sometimes criticize her for favoring the middle ground, like Mulgrew’s puggishness.

“He comes across as a non-waffler,” said union activist Norm Scott. “For people who despise Weingarten, there’s already a sense of, ‘Oh, maybe Mulgrew will be better.’ But while this change in style will work for him for a while, it is a change in style not substance.”

Mulgrew grew up on Staten Island and still lives there, a fact he can hold responsible for his heavy New York accent. He graduated from St. Peters High School, an all-boys Catholic school, and then went to the College of Staten Island, the borough’s CUNY school.

In 1990, while doing construction work as a member of the carpenter’s union, he began working as a substitute teacher at the William E. Grady Career and Technical Education High School in Brooklyn. After several years, he began working full time, teaching English and then an audio-visual class for at-risk students. He taught how to use recording equipment and computers to write, produce, and edit films.

Colleagues from his teaching years describe Mulgrew as a natural leader who has found himself  reluctantly thrust into power by virtue of being in the right place at the right time.

Tom Dorso, a social studies teacher and the current UFT chapter leader at Grady High School, shared a classroom with Mulgrew. They became such close friends that Mulgrew built Dorso’s kitchen cabinets for him.

According to Dorso, Mulgrew was hesitant to run for chapter leader, a position he won in 1999. “He went in kicking and screaming,” Dorso said. “He took the chapter leader’s position because no one was really running. We had a principal at the time who was trying to get away with some stuff and Michael said, ‘I just won’t allow it.’”

From then on, Mulgrew was “relentless,” Dorso said. He took a “divide and conquer” approach to the school’s new principal and the assistant principals, playing them off each other to his benefit.

“Whenever one of the suits was coming into the building, Michael would always make sure he was well dressed, and would barge into the meeting and introduce himself. He was very proactive,” Dorso said.

“When Mr. Mulgrew ran for chapter leader and won, the staff embraced him,” said Christopher Manos, a shop teacher at Grady High School who took over as chapter leader when Mulgrew became a vice president in 2005. “Everybody knew that he was very smart, he was articulate, and very personable.”

While serving as chapter leader, Mulgrew established himself as one of the more vocal members of the delegate assembly. “He made himself noticed,” Dorso said, and he soon attracted the attention of Frank Carucci, then vice president for vocational and technical high schools. Mulgrew began working for Carucci after school, stuffing envelopes, answering phone calls, and running errands. Following the UFT tradition of naming a successor before the members vote, when Carucci decided to retire, he endorsed Mulgrew as interim vice president.

Once again, Mulgrew wasn’t certain he wanted the job, but he ran after others egged him on, and he “won big,” Dorso said.

As vice president, Mulgrew also quickly crashed meetings with men in suits. When Klein seemed uninterested in his passion for “career and technical education” — next-generation vocational schools that emphasize academic rigor — Mulgrew took his case directly to then-Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff. Soon, Mayor Bloomberg was announcing a new initiative to expand career and technical education.

A question Mulgrew and those watching his ascent face is whether he’ll be able to hold his own against Weingarten.

Supporters have characterized Mulgrew as having an independent mind and a forceful personality, but critics suggest that he rose through the ranks by being a loyal foot soldier to the party that supports Weingarten, the UNITY caucus. They say he will not stray from party line.

“He’s demonstrated his total loyalty to her and that’s what you get when you’re loyal,” said Jeff Kaufman, a member of ICE’s steering committee. “He’s going to sit there and give a couple of sound bites and the heavy lifting is still going to be done by Randi.”

Some of Mulgrew’s colleagues from his early days in the union saw him as an obvious choice for the UFT’s top job.

“I was calling him Mr. President about a year ago,” Dorso said. “I teach social studies, I know how politics works, he’s the fair-haired boy even though he shaves his head.”

Mulgrew declined to comment for this story.

“I think he’s a great person. I think he has a lot of guts,” Weingarten said. “He’s a great teacher, came up through the ranks. … He’s willing to break a lot of glass.”

Our newest calendar item has the details, which include $2 drafts and 2 for 1 margaritas. Plus, there’s an uptown and downtown Manhattan location. We understand teachers are the target audience, but teacher-sympathists are invited, too.

Four nonprofit groups catering to young teachers are sponsoring the event: the Critical Educator Network (which does professional development), Link-Ed (which is a social network), RISE (which does professional development), and Show a Teacher Some Love (which we non-judgingly think is simply a party-throwing outfit).

• Principals are angry about a schedule change for teachers. (GothamSchools, Times, Daily News)
• A bill proposed in the Senate (!) would require fixed terms for school board members. (Post, Daily News)
• The UFT announced a contract deal at Green Dot Charter School. (GothamSchools, Post, Daily News)
• At the selective Townsend Harris HS in Queens, 99.3 percent of kids graduate. (Daily News)
• Bronx Science has the highest graduation rate in the Bronx; it’s also super-selective. (Daily News)
• A pro-Bloomberg principal says going back to 32 school districts would be disastrous. (Post)
• The city’s deal with the teachers union isn’t necessarily a blueprint for other union negotiations. (Post)
• At a 200-student school in Williamsburg, the grad rate jumped more than 25 points. (Daily News)
• Despite gains, the graduation rate is still under 50 percent for Brooklyn schools. (Daily News)
• Undocumented immigrant students protested being shut out of college financial aid. (Washington Post)
• Arne Duncan is set to announced streamlined financial aid procedures. (Washington Post)
• A new poll shows that 61 percent of New Yorkers want mayoral control renewed. (NY1)
• A girl says she was booted from graduation because she was wearing a dress. (Staten Island Advance)
• The L.A. Times takes a hard look at Green Dot’s first year running Locke High School. (1, 2, 3)

• English and math tests will move to May, Philissa reports. An educator sums up early reaction.
• The UFT-Green Dot contract has finally arrived. Leo Casey summarizes the details.
• Teachers and management at Civitas Charter School in Chicago are preparing for bargaining.
• But a teacher at an upstate charter school wants to give her union the boot. (Via Murphy.)
• A Hunter College High School senior is Mayor Bloomberg’s dog-walker.
• A Staten Island public school chorus appeared on Good Morning America.
• Richard Rothstein’s son is an economist, and he’s challenging value-added teacher evaluation.
• A mom blogging for WSJ recalls her family’s Year of the Bad Teacher. (Via Pondiscio.)
• Joel Klein’s keynote address at a national conference on charter schools pumped people up.
• A teacher catches McGraw Hill reading his blog and begs for better quality textbooks.
• The Board of Regents approved a new charter school for Albany after a five-year drought.
• A student in California was suspended for videotaping a rowdy class. (Via Detention Slip.)
• U.K. schools are banning the “I before E…” spelling rule; too many feisty exceptions.
• An innovative science-testmaker told Bill Tucker he’s finding interest in China, but not here.
• Columbia journalism students want help understanding a charter school fund in Newark.
• A Chicago group is putting out a fact sheet challenging Arne Duncan’s statements.
• And Leonie Haimson argues that the city is an educational banana republic.

Teachers union president Randi Weingarten today signed her name to a work contract free of the word “tenure” — and then heralded the contract as a model for American schools.

The contract is for a new charter high school in the Bronx run by Green Dot Public Schools, a California-based organization that manages charter schools. In a twist from most other charter school operators, Green Dot encourages its teachers to be represented by unions, and the United Federation of Teachers is representing teachers at the new Bronx school.

The agreement itself — all 29 pages plus appendices of which you can read here — is also a departure from typical practice. Charter school leaders often shun teachers unions’ involvement as hurting their schools’ ability to focus on students, while labor leaders fight against charter schools, accusing them of union-busting.

Weingarten and Steve Barr, the leader of Green Dot, said they came together because they both believe that students can only learn more if teachers are treated as professionals. They said that unions help make that possible. “We need to grow up politically,” Barr said, referring to charter school leaders. “If we’re going to actually … respect the idea that this is the civil rights issue of our time, we’ve got to get rid of this adult dysfunction.”

Weingarten said that while she supports the concept of tenure, it should never be mistaken for “lifetime job security.” She said the contract should become a “national model.” “I love signing this contract!” she said while penning her name to the document. (more…)

Image courtesy of the Center for New York City Affairs

The city’s complicated high school application process makes low-income and non-English-speaking students more likely to wind up in low-performing schools, some advocates and researchers say. (more…)

Principals are furious that the teachers union bargained away two of the most important work days of the school year, according to principals union president Ernest Logan. But teachers union president Randi Weingarten says Logan shouldn’t complain, because he hasn’t come up with a better plan.

“My members are livid,” Logan said about the agreement that would have teachers and students reporting to school on the same day for the first time this fall.

Principals use the two teacher work days at the beginning of the school year to finalize schedules, register new students, set up classrooms, get staff members on the same page about discipline and curriculum, and integrate new teachers into the community, he said. “When are we going to do all of that if everybody’s popping in there the same day?” Logan asked.

Logan said he first heard about the agreement at 6:05 a.m. today on NPR, which he was listening to while shaving. “I almost cut myself,” he told me. “Nobody used common sense here. The educators did not make this decision.”

The decision to have students and teachers start school on the same day was Schools Chancellor Joel Klein’s preference, according to Weingarten. (more…)

One provision has gone unnoticed in the widely discussed school governance bill that sailed through the Assembly last week.

Though much has been made of language dictating independent oversight and new power for the district superintendents, scant attention has been paid to a sentence that may end up kicking a member of the citywide school board out of office.

The bill states:

No appointed member of the city board shall also be a member, officer, or employee of any public corporation, authority, or commission where the mayor of the city of New York has a majority of the appointments.

Currently, members of the school board, known as the Panel for Educational Policy, cannot be “employed in any capacity by the city of New York,” but Mayor Bloomberg has evaded the law by naming people he appointed to city agencies.

This includes Alan Aviles, president and CEO of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, who serves at the pleasure of the mayor. (more…)

Principals union president Ernest Logan. (Photo from GothamSchools Flickr.)

The city principals union is condemning the labor deal announced by City Hall and the teachers union yesterday.

They’re zeroing in on a plan to scrap two work days from teachers’ load that were added in the last contract negotiation, to many teachers’ frustration. The change moved the working school year for teachers to before Labor Day and added two extra days to students’ year.

The deal announced last night would have school begin on the same day for teachers and students, leaving no official preparation days for teachers.

In a statement just released, principals union president Ernest Logan said the arrangement would leave schools unprepared for students. The “surprise move,” he said, “certainly does not put children first.”

Logan’s full statement: (more…)

This is the memo Governor Paterson sent out listing the order of business for today’s special Senate session. He’s called the items “basically non-controversial.” Mayoral control is No. 3, and Paterson plans to introduce a copy of the bill the Assembly passed last week — the one that Mayor Bloomberg supports, without too many “tweaks.”

The session starts at 3 p.m., but of course, in order to vote, the senators have to know who’s in charge. And they still don’t.

(Postscript: Here’s why people don’t like the Wicks Law.)

The full agenda: (more…)