GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Arne Duncan declined a last-minute plea from Joel Klein to push for mayoral control.
• The Brooklyn appointee to the Board of Ed is a former community school board member.
• What do the borough presidents have in common with the Honduran military?
• Blogger Accountable Talk, no fan of the chancellor, mocked up a resume for his then-possible job hunt.
• The Parent Commission on School Governance responds to the sunset of mayoral control.
• The Senate Democrats say they’re ready to start talking school governance now, maybe.
• Norm Scott proposes an entirely different governance system: One by the people at each school.
• A state charter schools blog disputes suggestions that Arne Duncan is softening on charter school caps.
• On the age-old question of why parents usually like their low-performing schools.
• A teacher asks why a no-fault ATR didn’t get first shot at a vacant teaching spot in her area.
• A call for change in what city schools serve students at breakfast and lunch.
• Women are as likely to become principals as men, according to a new database.
• Maybe Arne Duncan and Michelle Rhee are not that different after all, says Andy Rotherham.
• That’s food for thought during Duncan’s speech to the NEA tomorrow. (Will they boo merit pay?)
• In Chicago, 1,000 central office employees will be fired from the city’s school system.
• A committee is forming to figure out how to create national standards. Forward march!

A day after mayoral control’s expiration, the Board of Education has been resurrected, but there are no signs of life for community school boards.

Instead, the Department of Education is planning to continue the Community Education Councils — despite the fact that they no longer legally exist. These parent councils replaced school boards in 2003 and, with the law’s expiration, have been legally stripped of their authority and responsibilities.

Chancellor Joel Klein, who was voted back into office unanimously today by the new Board of Education, sent a memo to principals today outlining his plans for the CECs. He said he is urging the CECs to continue meeting “at least until September when we hope to have more clarity.”

“If the Councils decide not to continue their work, we’ve asked them to notify us immediately,” Klein wrote.

The decision to create of a Board of Education and vote in a chancellor while leaving the rest of the power structure as it was under mayoral control has divided the system into old and new. The school system’s top half is in compliance with pre-2002 law, while its lower quarters legally don’t exist. (more…)

A screenshot from the Insideschools homepage.

Mayoral control is not the only city education institution that lapsed yesterday. The Web site Insideschools.org, which for years has provided independent information about schools for parents and teachers, has dramatically scaled down its operations beginning today.

The site launched in 2002 with funding that was always set to run out now. Unfortunately, in a year when advertisers, philanthropists, and foundations alike are keeping their pocketbooks close, Insideschools hasn’t been able to raise the capital to keep going. The site’s downsizing comes at a time when both critics and supporters of the Bloomberg administration say parents need more good information about their schools. 

I worked at Insideschools for three years, from 2005 until I helped launch GothamSchools last year. Yesterday was the last day of work for many of my former colleagues and this morning, Helen Zelon, the site’s lead blogger, posted for the last time. Insideschools’ few remaining staff members and volunteers will continue to collect basic information about each school and monitor admissions news, a sometimes-herculean task in itself. But they won’t be able to visit and review schools or provide many of the services that their readers, tens of thousands of city parents, desperately seek.

Here at GothamSchools we eschew editorializing. But when it comes to getting school news to New Yorkers, we don’t mind saying more is better.

The speedy pace and the unnervingly scripted feeling of today’s Board of Education meeting is captured in this video I took, which at four minutes documents almost half of the meeting.

The video starts just as board members are voting for Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott as president. Walcott leads the rest of the meeting. After he takes over, you’ll see the group vote to elect the Department of Education’s chief lawyer, Michael Best, as its secretary and hear the resolution proposed that would make Joel Klein chancellor. We all know how that vote turned out: 7-0 in support of extending to Klein “all powers under law … that may lawfully be delegated to the chancellor.”

The board members, from left to right: Jimmy Yan, Patricia Harris, Carlo Scissura, Walcott, Edward Burke, Edward Skyler, and Fernandez. Sitting just behind the board on their left (our right) was Klein, who looked on but never said a word during the proceedings or the press conference that followed.

The full text of the resolution to rehire Klein is below: (more…)

Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott, center with his head bowed, was elected president of the new Board of Education.

This piece was reported by Philissa Cramer and Anna Phillips.

The mayor’s top education aide is the new president of the Board of Education, Joel Klein remains chancellor, and Mayor Bloomberg is vowing to stay the course of his reforms to the public schools — even though mayoral control expired at midnight yesterday.

“We’re trying to continue on as though mayoral control was approved,” Bloomberg said at a City Hall press conference this afternoon.

The actions occurred at a speedy meeting of the new Board of Education, which was hastily put together early this morning during a meeting at Gracie Mansion. (Read our live-blog of the meeting here.) Seven new Board members, appointed by the city’s borough presidents and the mayor, voted unanimously to keep Klein as schools chancellor. They also elected Dennis Walcott, Bloomberg’s deputy mayor for education, as its president.

Despite the meeting’s air-tight pace and agenda (it lasted only nine minutes and allowed no public comment period), there were small signs of dissent. The appointee of the Bronx borough president, Dolores Fernandez, abstained from votes to make Walcott president and to endorse a revised version of mayoral control that passed the Assembly two weeks ago.

In an interview after the meeting, Fernandez said she abstained from voting because she was caught off-guard by the quick, seemingly pre-determined pace of the meeting. Ruben Diaz Jr., the Bronx borough president, said the meeting was scripted, but Fernandez wasn’t looped into the plan. Diaz added that he might request that the Board convene again before September 10, the date members this afternoon set for their next meeting. (more…)

I’m conveying live reports from Philissa and Anna, who are at Tweed Courthouse, where the reconstituted Board of Education is having its first meeting in seven years. UPDATE: As of 1:30 p.m. the show moved to City Hall, and we’re still updating from there.

2:15 p.m. Meeting adjourned.

2:11 p.m. Bloomberg: “This is so obviously right, that’s why there’s unanimity.” He also just declared that New York City offers a model for how government should work.

2:05 p.m. Ruben Diaz Jr., Bronx borough president, said he might want to convene the Board of Education before September 10. The Board earlier voted not to meet again until that date. “I’ve never had a problem with telling the chancellor what’s on my mind,” Diaz said.

That prompted Queens president Marshall to step in and announce she’s already convened a parent advisory panel. She said she dislikes Bloomberg’s third-grade retention policy. The last time school board members opposed that policy, Bloomberg voted them off the board as it was known under mayoral control, the Panel for Educational Policy.

2:03 p.m. “If we disagree with the mayor, there isn’t a borough president here who wouldn’t stand up and do something,” Scott Stringer, the borough president of Manhattan, said. Stringer’s appointee, Jimmy Yan, is a former attorney for Advocates for Children, the nonprofit that supports students with disabilities. He now serves as Stringer’s legal counsel.

2:01 p.m. Asked what he’ll do about community school boards, which are also supposed to resurrect under the pre-2002 law, Bloomberg punted. “How can we convene them?” he said. He said officials have not considered what to do about school boards yet.

1:59 p.m. “We’re trying to continue on as though mayoral control were approved,” Bloomberg said.

1:52 p.m. Bloomberg earlier thanked Helen Marshall of Queens for appointing Walcott. She smiled and laughed. Now the mayor is warning of a significant risk that the Senate will drag its feet, since the law has expired. He also declared that no chancellor ever lasted more than a year and a half under the old governance structure. That’s not true. Harold Levy, the previous chancellor, served two years; his predecessor, Rudy Crew, served for four.

1:47 p.m. Mayor Bloomberg is now flexing his foreign-language muscles, summarizing the situation en Espanol. Of his riot threats, he said, “It’s a euphemism.” Huh?

1:46 p.m. Randi Weingarten: “So I guess I should have resigned effective June 30.”

Bronx borough president Ruben Diaz Jr. offered the lone voice of (some) dissent at today’s City Hall press conference.

1:42 p.m. Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz fumbled, referring to the Department of Education. He then paused and said “Board of Education.” Even the DOE legally was called the Board of Education.

Bronx borough president, speaking at City Hall, was the only person to foreshadow possible disagreements inside the new Board of Education. “It doesn’t mean we’re always going to agree,” he said.

1:40 p.m. Before the mayor spoke, parent activist Jane Hirschmann stole the podium. “We want the voice of the parents to be heard,” she said. She has since been escorted from the room by City Hall staff.

1:35 p.m. Mayor Bloomberg, at a press conference at City Hall, said of the revived Board of Education, “These are Band-aids, not solutions.” He said, “The temporary school board has attempted to sidestep the worst consequences” of mayoral control’s expiration.

1:14 p.m. All board members have waived their salaries, says Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz. The law outlines $15,000 a year for board members and $20,000 for the board president.

1:08 p.m. Why Walcott? “He’s from Queens, he knows a lot about education,” Queens borough president Helen Marshall, who appointed Walcott, told Anna. “He’s still obligated to me, and if he crosses that line…” The borough president gave Anna a meaningful look.

Meet the new Board of Education president, Dennis Walcott. (Center)

1:06 p.m. The entire meeting lasted nine minutes, by Philissa’s count.

1:01 p.m. The Board of Education voted to endorse the Assembly’s mayoral control bill, passing a motion, 6 to 0, to support the Assembly’s version of the revised law. (Fernandez abstained.) Then it voted to adjourn until September 10.

12:58 p.m. Chancellor Joel Klein will remain in office, following a 7 to 0 vote of all Board members. Fernandez voting in favor this time.

12:57 p.m. Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott was just voted president of the new Board of Education, and Department of Education counsel Michael Best was voted secretary. The Bronx appointee, Dolores Fernandez, abstained from voting both times.

12:52 p.m. Carlo Scissura, the Brooklyn borough president’s Board of Education appointee, served on a community school board in 1999. Then he “led the district in making the transition to mayoral control” as president of District 20′s Community Education Council in 2004, a press release stated.

12:48 p.m. Meanwhile, James Merriman, executive director of the city’s charter school advocacy center, is in the room.

12:47 p.m. A Community Education Council president, for District 1 in Manhattan, is among those unable to get inside the meeting. Lisa Donlan’s CEC passed a resolution this morning asking that it transform into a community school board. The CEC also requested that its superintendent be appointed the community district superintendent under the pre-2002 rules.

A crowd of people who aren’t being let in to the Board of Education meeting. Police shut the door to the meeting right after Philissa snapped this photo, she reports.

12:44 p.m. A crowd of parents and others are waiting outside the room, unable to get in. See the photo on the right. Police shut the door to the meeting just after Philissa snapped that picture, she reports.

12:36 p.m. The meeting is in the same Tweed Courthouse room as Panel for Educational Policy meetings were held. But this time the audience gets fancy plush chairs with wheels. Used to be folding chairs. Philissa says Department of Education staffers are dressed extra-nice.

12:30 p.m. Weingarten to reporters: “The ironic part here is there were a lot of checks and balances in the Assembly bill that would have gone into effect starting today.” The checks would have specifically given superintendents more power in their districts, she said.

12:19 p.m. I just got a call from two parent activists who aren’t being let in and wanted to see if I could help. I can’t.

12:16 p.m. Famously tardy Randi Weingarten, who’s still president of the United Federation of Teachers for one more month, just walked in smiling. But no more people will be let in; staff say the room is full.

12:14 p.m. The meeting will start late. The Bronx borough president’s appointee, Delores Fernandez, is stuck in traffic. She’s the only appointee who’s indicated, via borough president Ruben Diaz Jr., that she’ll criticize mayoral control and Chancellor Joel Klein.

12:07 p.m. There will be no public comment at the board meeting. Haimson, with a laugh: “This is the real Soviet Union!”

12:02 p.m. Reporters and new Board of Education members have settled in their seats. Leonie Haimson just placed the book she and other mayoral control critics produced at every member’s seat. No one stopped her.

12:00 p.m. The room at Tweed is so packed that Department of Education employees have been asked to listen on loudspeakers outside.

As borough presidents prepared to gather at Gracie Mansion to convene a new-old Board of Education last night, city principals received a newsletter in which the biggest news had to do with kindergarten waiting lists.

No mention whatsoever of mayoral control’s expiration.

Here’s the weekly newsletter: (more…)

It’s all happening: The newly recreated Board of Education is meeting today at noon, inside Tweed Courthouse, the headquarters of the city schools administration. As we reported last night, convening the board is the first step to getting the new, post-mayoral control governance system up and running.

The media advisory I received underscores the confusion that is sure to rule today: The event is billed as an emergency meeting of the Board of Education, but the logo in the e-mail is the multi-colored one used by the Department of Education.

We know three of the seven people who will be sitting on the board when it meets: We reported yesterday that Dolores Fernandez, a former college president and critic of the mayor’s policies, is Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr’s pick. Scott Stringer of Manhattan is appointing his counsel, Jimmy Yan, on an interim basis and Brooklyn’s Marty Markowitz picked his chief of staff, Carlo Scissura, according to the New York Times. Queens Borough President Helen Marshall is announcing her pick right now and Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro will name his nominee at noon. Mayor Bloomberg hasn’t yet said who he’ll choose to fill the two seats he controls.

Update: The DOE just sent out the full line up and there are some interesting choices.

• First Deputy Mayor Patricia E. Harris (Mayoral appointee)
• Deputy Mayor for Operations Edward Skyler (Mayoral appointee)
• Dr. Dolores Fernandez (Bronx appointee)
• Carlo Scissura (Brooklyn appointee)
• Jimmy Yan (Manhattan appointee)
• Deputy Borough President Edward Burke (Staten Island appointee)
• Deputy Mayor for Education and Community Development Dennis M. Walcott (Queens appointee)

Here’s the announcement that just came from the communications office at “NYC DOE”: (more…)

New York Skyline at Sunset, by Flickr user Ampshot

• Mayoral control no longer exists under state law. (NY1, WNYC, Daily News, Crains NY, SI Advance)
• Mayor Bloomberg is likely to keep much of his school power even under the new law. (Times)
• Bloomberg told the borough presidents to prepare for an emergency meeting today. (Post)
• Here’s a step-by-step guide of what’s likely to be next for school governance. (GothamSchools)
• And a comprehensive summary of how we got here and where we’re going. (Gotham Gazette)
• Under the mayor’s control, the schools added lots of high-paying jobs. (Times)

IN OTHER NEWS:

• The City Council wants schools to close for two Muslim holidays. (Times, GothamSchools, Daily News)
• A Queens teacher who had sex with a student at her school isn’t getting her job back. (Post)
• Some community groups say the city hasn’t done enough to curb bullying. (WNYC)
• Demand for community colleges is up, but their budgets are down. (Washington Post)
• Louisiana is introducing a less rigorous “career diploma.” (Christian Science Monitor)