GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Education-related budget adjustments proposed by the City Council.

As the City Council hunkers down to vote on the city’s budget today, it appears that schools aren’t going to get a big last-minute budget boost.

The council included about $25 million for the city schools in a list of budget adjustments (pdf) released last night. That’s about a fifth of what the council added into last year’s budget at the last minute, when it restored more than $120 million in budget cuts in addition to making sure council members’ pet projects got funded.

One restoration that looks like it will happen this year is for Teacher’s Choice, the program that gives classroom teachers discretionary funds to use for supplies. (more…)

• Reports of crime are down at city schools, the city said yesterday. (Post)
• Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver issued a public statement supporting his own mayoral control bill. (Post)
• The UFT withdrew as the bargaining unit for teachers at a KIPP school in Harlem. (Post)
• Juan Gonzalez says the City Council shouldn’t simply rubber stamp the capital plan. (Daily News)
• Jay Mathews writes that community colleges have widely varying standards. (Washington Post)
• Concern is mounting about a new “separate but equal” school building in Park Slope. (Brooklyn Paper)
• The bankruptcy of a Lower Manhattan museum makes more room for schools. (Downtown Express)
• The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation is giving schools extra money. (Downtown Express)
• Students at a Chinatown school are celebrating the first year of their newspaper. (Downtown Express)
• Los Angeles won’t be able to afford a single Teach for America teacher next year. (L.A. Times)
• About 250 D.C. teachers will be fired this week because they aren’t up to snuff. (Washington Post)

• Randi Weingarten told NY1 tonight she’ll make a decision about her future by Wednesday.
• A teacher activist on mayoral control: “Don’t mourn. Organize!”
• Clara Hemphill in the Huffington Post reminisces about neighborhood high schools.
• A survey for teachers on testing inside the city’s public schools.
• The Economist sees mayoral control in black and white, and says Albany chaos is bad.
• A Page Six report on Weingarten’s private life.
• Norm Scott pushes Leonie Haimson for UFT president.
• Cyber charter school teachers in Philadelphia decided to unionize.
• That makes a WSJ review of the Chubb and Moe book, Liberating Learning, bad timing.
• Examining an under-used pot of money for early childhood: “advisory councils.”
• Breaking out TIMMS scores by state and city shows which parts of America are behind.
• New sortable online data about charter schools, by state and other factors. (Via Smarick.)
• A teacher-trainer argues that “Stand and Deliver” didn’t really display good technique.
• Ed Week hears that ATR members are being placed as substitutes, not full-time teachers.
• Rotherham wonders how the centrality of urban school issues for Obama will play out.

As the fate of New York’s school governance legislation shifts to the Senate, groups advocating for language that would curb the mayor’s power are left to weigh their options.

Initially, many hoped that the bill passed in the Assembly would contain fixed terms for members of the Panel for Educational Policy, or would prevent the mayor from appointing the majority of the panel’s members. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s bill that sailed through the Assembly on Wednesday did neither.

Yet groups like the Parent Commission and the Campaign for Better Schools remain optimistic that the bill that is eventually enacted will look different.

Some opponents believe that they’ve oddly benefited from the Senate meltdown. With the Senate Republicans saying they’ll support Silver’s bill, Democrats there could perceive going along with the Speaker’s bill as capitulation, the opponents reason. Instead, opponents hope Democrats will seek to distance themselves from the Republican position by offering amendments to the bill. (more…)

The Department of Education failed to follow more than 200 orders to give disabled students extra services in a timely fashion, an independent audit released today concludes. The audit was the first-ever comprehensive look at how the city follows through with special education orders.

Parents of children with special needs can argue that their children are not receiving enough services at independent hearings where both the parent and the Department of Education testify. Hearing officers either determine that the current services are adequate — or order the city to do more.

The audit is a result of a lawsuit filed by the nonprofit group Advocates for Children, which often represents parents in these hearings, in 2003. The lawsuit accused the city of not following through with hearing officers’ orders, which range from demanding that children receive extra tutoring to mandating a special program for helping children with autism.

An agreement that settled the suit out of court required regular audits of the Department of Education’s efforts to improve responses. The audit released today, the first in a series required by the settlement, found that school officials failed to meet a pre-determined goal. If the failure is repeated in follow-up audits, it could send Advocates for Children and the city to court. (more…)

The City Council’s education committee voted today to recommend closing schools on two Muslim holy days observed by as many as 10 percent of the city’s schoolchildren. But the advisory vote is unlikely to change the city schools’ calendar, unless Mayor Bloomberg has a change of heart about slimming down the school year.

Several council members said during the vote this morning that they were conflicted about recommending that schools be closed for any length of time. But only one, Oliver Koppell of the Bronx, voted against the resolution during the main round of voting. Ten council members cast yes votes at that time, and at least three others added their yes votes as the committee continued its main hearing, on high school graduation requirements.

The vote followed a hearing nine months ago on the subject, when dozens of people testified in favor of having the days off and not a single person testified against them, committee chair Robert Jackson said today. Muslim families and religious leaders have been pushing for the holidays since 2006, when students were scheduled to take state tests on the first day of Eid Ul-Adha, one of Islam’s holiest days. (more…)

Image courtesy of the Center for New York City Affairs

The City Council’s education committee this morning is taking up concerns that the city could be in for a rude awakening in the coming years as high school graduation requirements become more stringent.

In the past, students could opt for either of two diploma types: The local diploma requires scores of at least 55 on five state Regents exams, while the more challenging Regents diploma requires those scores to be 65 or higher.

Starting with this year’s ninth-graders, all students will have to earn Regents diplomas. Some advocates are warning that the state’s new requirement could slash the city’s graduation rate, particularly for needy students. They point out that if that requirement had been in place five years ago, the city’s graduation rate would stand at just 37 percent. (more…)

A spokesman for Randi Weingaten says she won’t make a decision until the end of the school year, but my sources say the same as the Daily News’ and the Post’s: Next Wednesday she’ll announce her resignation from the New York City teachers union. Above is a photo from 11 years ago, when she first became president of the United Federation of Teachers.

Next up: Michael Mulgrew, to whom I introduced readers 11 months ago to the day.

• The Assembly voted basically to preserve mayoral control. (GothamSchools, Times, Post, NY1)
• The State Senate’s disarray is still threatening the next step on mayoral control. (Crain’s NY, Times) 
• Randi Weingarten won’t say she’s leaving, but her deputy is taking over. (Post, Daily News 1, 2, EdWeek)
• Chancellor Klein said graduation rates aren’t on the decline in new schools. (GothamSchools, WNYC)
• The Post says Weingarten should usher mayoral control through the Senate as a goodbye gift to the city.
• A parent-son team from Townsend Harris HS in Queens argue against the budget cuts. (Queens Gazette)
• Girls soccer fans are nervous the city’s fall sports schedule will shut them out. (Staten Island Advance)
• A California charter school advocacy group says many charter schools aren’t up to snuff. (L.A. Times)
• A teacher’s aide from PS 178 in Washington Heights was charged with sexual abuse. (NY1) 
• Parents are lobbying for a new writing high school on the Upper West Side. (West Side Spirit)
• Kids helped design a new playground at PS 81 in the Bronx. (Riverdale Press)

• The Department of Education is eroding democracy, according to public advocate hopeful Bill de Blasio.
• Pissed Off Teacher, who teaches math, developed a logarithmic logistic model for school overcrowding.
• Ultra-elite Stuyvesant High School suffers from overcrowding too, a parent says. 
• Progressive educator Herb Kohl tells Ed Sec Arne Duncan what he thinks, in an open letter.
• Randi Weingarten says she wants national standards but isn’t sure Duncan is the man to make them.
• Is Weingarten really going to resign right before UFT contract negotiations? Speculation abounds.
• A teacher says he finally has the freedom to teach, with just seven days left in the school year.
• Michelle Rhee’s first two years as D.C.’s schools superintendent draws mixed reviews from bloggers.
• A call for focusing on school models that regular people can replicate.
• Norm Scott says the last frontier in the mayoral control fight is the time before the law sunsets again.
• A report from Chicago says Roland Fryer’s cash-for-grades experiment there is over. (Via Russo)
• A reporter says he got “misty-eyed” watching the Assembly vote today on its mayoral control bill.