Post a comment about the budget cuts at your school on our interactive comment map. more »
GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools
school aid
October 23, 2009
East Harlem parents call for city to save their school aides
Sheanica Davis is set to lose her job at Mosaic Preparatory Academy.
Parents and staff at an East Harlem elementary school are protesting the city’s plan to lay off all of their school aides.
Rallying outside of the entrance of Mosaic Preparatory Academy as school let out this afternoon, parents, students and staff called for the city to save their five school aides’ jobs. The school is slated to lose the five people who currently hold the positions, not the positions themselves.
Parent coordinator Maria Torres said that Mosaic’s principal, Lisette Caesar, has money in the school’s budget to preserve the aide jobs. But because the aides were all hired just a year ago when the school opened, they are among the most junior aides in the district, and thus the first to receive pink slips.
“Our principal has been trying to keep them, and the parents have been doing everything they can,” said Rose Jimenez, the president of Mosaic’s parent association. “If we can afford to keep them, it sounds unfair.”
One of Mosaic’s aides, Sheanica Davis, said that her main job is to keep students safe. She scrolled through a list of parents in her cell phone’s contact list, saying that she keeps in regular touch with many of them, assuring them that their children have arrived to school on time and are eating healthy meals.
Jimenez emphasized that the loss of aides who have developed strong personal relationships with students and teachers will have a debilitating effect on the school. “[The cuts] aren’t just affecting the aides who are losing their jobs,” Jimenez said. “They’re also affecting the kids emotionally.”
Parents, students and staff rallied to save the jobs of Mosaic Preparatory Academy school aides targeted for layoffs. (Photo courtesy Amelia Adams)
Torres said that economic disparities meant that the layoffs would hurt schools like Mosaic more than wealthier schools in other districts. “They’re just setting us up to fail,” she said.
Davis said that she wasn’t sure what she will do if she loses her position. Her husband just went through spinal fusion back surgery, she said. “But my main concern is that I’m a parent here too,” she said.
The rally this afternoon was put together by the controversial community organizer group ACORN.
School aides around the city targeted for layoffs were originally told their jobs would end last Friday. But a last-minute restraining order against the Department of Education kept the aides on the job this week.
In the order, State Supreme Court Justice Carol Edmead singled out Mosaic as one of the low-income, high-needs schools that would be disproportionately harmed by the layoffs. Lawyers for the aides’ union, D.C. 37, have argued that the city is illegally replacing union workers with temporary employees without benefits.
All five of Mosaic’s aides are going to court Monday to testify against the layoffs, Davis said. The State Supreme Court will rule that day whether to continue the restraining order and further pursue the matter in court.
-
October 23rd, 2009 8:22 pm
There’s a very serious policy question here that Maura has left out.
Do people who work in schools work for the school or for the system? Are they employees of their individual schoool, or employees of the Department of Education?
This is related to the question of whether principals should be viewed like CEOs or like branch managers.
It’s a big question with lots of implications. This situation is just one of them.
-
October 23rd, 2009 9:18 pm
Principals are CEOs of their schools, but branch managers of the systems. They receive a budget with allocations from various souces (Tax Levy, Federal, State Aids, Grants, etc.). They must allocate the fundings as per the guidelines of each funding source with some flexible to squirrel monies for per session and OTPS. Principals have the final say on how the money should be spent at the school level , once principals have consulted with their chapter leaders. and the SLT members. But, the final decisions to pinkslip school aides, DC37, is from the DoE because it’s a system-wide. If a principal hires 2 new school-aides and there are cuts, then the principal becomes the branch manager and have to abide by the DoE’s decision to pinkslip those individuals. Therefore, CEO of a school is a local title within that school.
-
October 24th, 2009 6:40 am
And there you have, in a nutshell, why people start charter schools.
It’s the autonomy, stupid!
-
October 24th, 2009 9:14 am
KS,
I’m confused.What’s the logic? Charters are the answer to school aides being cut, but UES parents can’t pay for school aides? Charter money can pay for aides but not non-charter money?
I’m on record here as PRO-AIDE regardless of who pays. I’m just having a hard time finding the principle hidden in your pro-charter pragmatism.
Autonomy? When the charter-lovin Bloomberg announced that aides would be cut MONTHS ago? Sorry, the word that comes to mind is autocracy. Or hypocricy.
-
October 24th, 2009 10:20 am
Kitchen Sink wants it both ways, constantly asserting that charters are public schools bound by the requirements of state law, etc., - laws that in practice no one seems to enforce upon them - and then when its convenient extolling their independence.
Which is it? It can’t be both.
-
October 24th, 2009 10:47 am
I feel that school aides are desparately needed in each school. They make pittance yet have many tasks. At the school where I teach the school aides are hard-working, dedicated, people. It would be a sad day in my school if the principal was forced by the DoE to pinkslip any of them. The absurdity is that we have too many F-status people at the school using up the funding that can be used to save their jobs. As previously stated, the principal has the final sayso about the budget, but not when it is a directive from the DoE regarding system-wide pinkslips. Who do we really blame? If the principals receive a budget cut and they are directed to get rid of aides, but the school has too many F-status employees, shouldn’t the DoE tell the principals get rid of the F-status employees so as to protect those aides who have meager salary? Just a thought.
-
October 24th, 2009 2:09 pm
QUESTIONS
Isn’t it the right of a Principal to hire as many or few aides as they see fit? If a principal has money in their budget, why can’t they hire an aide? What happens to the money in a Principal’s budget that they save when the aide is taken of the payroll? -
October 24th, 2009 8:29 pm
The charter law includes a few ingenious advantages that could be a model for public school governance going forward.
It allows for local control, by de-centralizing decisions such as budgetary allocations and staffing decisions.
I don’t want it both ways; I want control, by my school community, of our staff and our budget. Charters aren’t affected by this chancellor’s decision to cut school aide positions. When we have to deal with budget cuts - as we did with the state legislature’s senseless and politically motivated freezing of our per-pupil allocation this spring while using stimulus money to continue to increase district funding - each school makes the best decision for its mission, its team, and its families.
In response to the quote that I assert that “charters are public schools bound by the requirements of state law, etc., - laws that in practice no one seems to enforce upon them - and then when its convenient extolling their independence”: Charters are bound by a brilliant state law that allows for independence.
-
October 24th, 2009 9:28 pm
What about the “emphasis on at risk students” part of the law cited below, and the inequitable admissions to charters of ELL/Special needs and others, KS?
Article 56 - NYS Charter Law
NYS Charter Law indicates that the purpose of creating new charter schools across the state is to:Improve student achievement
Increase learning opportunities for all students, with an emphasis on at-risk students
Encourage use of innovative teaching methods/educational designs
Create new professional opportunities for teachers, administrators, school’s staff
Provide families with high quality choices
Change from rule-based to performance based accountability
-
October 24th, 2009 10:19 pm
It’s great to see a community get together to fight to save the jobs of those school aides, but whenever there’s a layoff it is by seniority. School aides do a very important job in the school system, but the DOE will cut everyone else before they lay off a teacher.
The DOE can save a lot of money if they stop creating all these small schools within a school. It appears that every time they close a large school because it is failing, they open 4 or 5 small schools within that one building. That means 5 principal salaries that they have to pay now instead of the one that they paid before. Why does the DOE just spend the extra money to help the school improve.
The layoff of the 500 school aides is just the first round of cuts. Who is going to be next on the chopping block? Why doesn’t the DOE do away with some of the AP positions in a school. Some schools have 3 or 4 AP’s and deans, but not many school aides or even secretaries.
If the DOE is laying off aides this year what kind of mess will next year be like when principals have to cut 5 percent off their budgets for the next school year? There won’t be anybody left to cut except to cut teachers and that will just increase the number of ATRs.
The mayor should just invest some of his millions into the school system that he already controls.
-
October 25th, 2009 7:35 am
I wish that dc37 would put the info out there of what aides and family workers really do.yes,they make sure kids eat healthy,etc. But the titles need to be revised.SO much more goes on than the what is being talked about.The days of school aides watching the kids,making sure they play nice,caling the home and making some home visits are way done.The aides are involved in all the day to day runnings of a school.It is a much more involved job than in the past.The commercials dc 37 has aired and press releases make the job sound like its the 1950’s.The schools can not run properly w/o the aides and family workers. How about getting rid of the business managers who the schools hire and pay a fortune?
-
October 25th, 2009 10:19 am
Yes,
In my experience, school aid quality varies far more than teacher quality. Of course, that’s should not be too surprising, given the lack of regulation/certification. I have no doubt that some schools have worked hard to include them as part of the faculty, worked hard to select them and worked even harder to help them be valuable members of their communities.
But we shouldn’t universalize either good experience or bad experiences.
-
October 25th, 2009 2:40 pm
The DOE has another alternative to the school aide problem. Instead of laying off school aides they should reconsider the number of parent coordinators that they have. Right now they have a parent coordinator in each and every school. The salary of one parent coordinator can more or less cover the salary of two school aides.
When they first created the parent coordinator position, it was supposed to be on a trial basis and if needed they would do away with the position. It’s not fair for anyone to lose their jobs, but they can teach the school aides to handle some of the work that the parent coordinators do. Schools ran without parent coordinators for years, but a school can’t be run without school aides.
The DOE can have 2 or 3 parent coordinators per district instead of one per school. The parent coordinators can be located at the district offices and make visits to the schools in the district that they work for. This way they can keep the school aides and parents can still receive information that they need.
-
October 25th, 2009 10:39 pm
DOE employee,
You are mistaken. Not all schools have a parent coordinator. Many of the smaller schools do not.
-
October 26th, 2009 4:11 pm
The schoolwide bonuses to teachers and principals this year cost the city an absurd $33 million, which was $13 million more than last year, because of the ridiculously easy state tests and ridiculously easy scoring.
That money should have and could have been used to save the jobs of all the school aides — whose firing, coincidentally, was estimated to save about $13 million. -
October 26th, 2009 7:04 pm
Luckily, such a model already exists — outside the charter world, with its stink of hype, scam, unaccountability and corruption.
(Kitchen Sink says:) “The charter law includes a few ingenious advantages that could be a model for public school governance going forward.
It allows for local control, by de-centralizing decisions such as budgetary allocations and staffing decisions.”)
The Site-Based Budgeting system was implemented here in the San Francisco Unified School District 7 or 8 years ago (by then-Superintendent Arlene Ackerman, now Philadelphia schools chief — Ackerman was controversial here and is controversial in Philly, but even her detractors here praise Site-Based Budgeting).
For a bureaucratic term, Site-Based Budgeting is relatively self-explanatory. The School Site Council — an elected state-mandated governing body with representation by parents, school staff and sometimes outside community members — does the school’s budgeting. Here in California that’s a tough situation because our school funding is so shockingly low — New York’s is so high by comparison that it almost looks like a joke to us — but the fact is that in San Francisco, budgeting decisions are not centralized.
That may or may not be connected with the fact that our district is the highest-performing urban school district in California.
-
October 26th, 2009 9:13 pm
If only the SLTs were that functional in NYC, CarolineSF. I once had hope that they would play a role in budgeting, I was even an SLT officer. Nope.
Lisa, I’m with you. Let me remind everyone that charter schools are different across the city, with different approaches and philosophies, student populations and level of compliance with IDEA.
I’ve seen charters that basically say, “We don’t do special education here.” Yikes! On the other hand, you have schools that actually ARE doing innovative things with ELLs and students with disabilites. In my district, over-referral to the CSE is not only common but rampant.
Charters allow for the opportunity (not saying all or even MANY but at least SOME act this way) to actually use RTI and follow the mandates in IDEA.
Leave a Reply
Mapping the Budget Cuts
17 Comments
Subscribe to comments with RSS or TrackBack