Next year, only the top-scoring 25 percent of elementary and middle schools will receive A’s, with just under a third of schools each getting B’s and C’s. A tenth of schools will be handed D’s, and 5 percent will receive failing grades, according to the plan outlined today by the city’s accountability chief Shael Polakow-Suransky.

(More than 80 percent of elementary and middle schools took home A’s on their progress reports for last school year.)

The change comes as part of the first step of a gradual recalibration of the way schools are rated in the city’s progress reports system and is also a by-product of the wider state effort to overhaul tests given to New York’s third through eighth graders.

State education officials are redesigning tests this year, both to make them more difficult and to judge a wider set of skills. Students are also taking state test in May this year for the first time, where in the past they’ve sat for exams in January.

Suransky said the curved grading system was to account for the uncertainty of how the variety of changes in the state exams are going to affect schools’ performances. The city wants to let principals know how their schools will be graded at the start of each year, but given the haze that still lies over the coming tests, Suransky said it wouldn’t be fair to schools to guess what bars for success should be set.

“We could well end up in a situation where most of the schools could be D’s and F’s” if the city guessed wrong, Suransky said in an interview. “And that wouldn’t be an accurate depiction of how schools are doing.”

Suransky said that the curved grading system was likely to be temporary until the DOE can accurately gauge what scores the most successful schools should receive. Because state exams for high school students are not changing this year, high schools will continue to be graded as they have in the past.

Some school principals said that despite the effort to account for the x-factor of the new state tests, there is still plenty of uncertainty in the new system.

“My concern is that an A means a school is outstanding, and can we all be outstanding?” asked Janet Heller, principal of M.S. 324, the Patricia Mirabal School. “What does outstanding mean?”

“Will a school that is outstanding not be given an A because the quota of 25% was met?” Heller continued. “Are they saying that any school that has a 90 to 100 grade is outstanding, or are they saying that we will only allow 25% of our schools to be called outstanding?”

Another principal, Stacey Gauthier of Renaissance Charter School, said that the ambiguity leaves principals unsure of how to prepare for their year.

“If [the report card system] keeps changing and the criteria isn’t clear, it’s a little bit unfair to the schools,” she said. “It’s like saying to a kid, I don’t really now what kind of test I’m going to give you, but when things come out I’ll figure it out. That’s not really the best assessment.”

Gauthier said that because city report card grades have concrete repercussions for schools, knowing in advance how a school will be evaluated matters. “Schools are closed based on this information, schools go on remediation, schools lose funding, parents look at this — it is high stakes,” she said.

The change in grade distribution was one of several changes to the report card grading system announced today, some of which are likely to be welcomed by schools and advocates.

For example, the report cards will now grade student progress in a way that controls for students’ scores the year before and compares each students’ progress with other students who started at the same place.

In previous years’ reports, students were grouped by whether or not they scored above or below state tests’ proficiency bar, and each student was compared against others in their group. “That was a blunter version [of comparisons], and this is going to get more granular,” Suransky said.

Another change will alter the way schools are judged for their work with disabled students. The reports will set specific goals students must reach to boost special education students’ academic achievement, and will consider gains made by students differently according to level of need.

“We want to make it really clear that if you do well with these students, you will be rewarded,” Suransky said.

But the element of the report card program that has drawn perhaps the most criticism since its introduction in 2007 — that grades are weighted too heavily on the results of standardized tests — remains unchanged.

The plan released today isn’t yet final. Suransky’s accountability office will be meeting with groups of principals and parents for feedback, and will announce the final changes to the progress report system in March, he said.

Along with the changes to report card grading, Suransky’s accountability office also released a clarification of new state guidelines for granting high-school students course credit. Among the changes will be a new way to monitor how schools are granting credit recovery, which gives students credit for classes they have failed. The DOE has not previously tracked credit recovery programs or the numbers of course credits gained in them. The city will also begin randomly auditing the scoring of Regents exams at 10 percent of the city’s high schools, Sursansky said.

Here’s the letter that Suransky sent to principals today, along with memos detailing the changes to the report cards and credit accumulation:

Charter cap:

Throughout the fight over whether and how to lift the state’s charter cap, state education officials and the Board of Regents advocated for more than doubling the number of charters allowed in New York. Lifting the cap would not only improve the state’s chances at winning federal money, they said, it had become necessary as New York was closing in on its 200 school limit.

In December, Chancellor of the Board of Regents Merryl Tisch told GothamSchools: “My opinion is that the charter cap is now at a place where it will prevent us from opening great charter schools.” Yet the state’s application paints a distinctly different picture of the charter cap’s effect:

“Article 56 of New York’s Education Law does include a cap on the number of charter schools that may be formed, other than charter schools formed by conversion of an existing public school, but such cap does not prohibit or effectively limit the number of high-performing charter schools in the state.” (emphasis mine)

It’s commonly known that the state’s charter law allows for 200 schools, but there’s a little-known provision that doesn’t count conversions — district schools that opt to become charter schools — in that limit. With this in mind, the application states that while there may appear to be 200 allowable charter schools, but there are actually 4,740 if you include all the district schools that could convert.

“The total number of charter schools that currently may form in New York are 4,540 conversion charter schools plus 200 non-conversion charter schools, or 4,740.  This represents approximately 104 percent of the total schools in the state that are allowed to be charter schools.”

The wording has charter advocates like New York Charter Schools Association policy director Peter Murphy more than a little flummoxed.

“If New York had a 10-year record of converting its schools into charter schools, that would be one thing and they could make that argument come off as more plausible, but it’s a very legalistic argument to make. And it should not be taken seriously,” he said.

Charter conversion is a rarity in New York, in part because schools that convert remain under the teachers union contract, an idea that most charter school operators find unappealing. In total, there are only 6 conversion charter schools in the state.

“In fairness to the department, the legislature didn’t give them anything to work with,” Murphy said. “They’re putting their best argument forward and it’s a hollow one.”

Tisch defended the application’s language.

“The application clarifies exactly what New York State allows, and frankly conversions are tools that are used,” she said.

SUNY charters
New York’s application gives the number of charter schools that are currently open, but it downplays the number that are set to open next year. It states:

As of the 2009-10 school year-to-date, New York has 140 charter schools currently operating (with an additional 14 charter schools approved to begin operating in 2010-2011 or later).

According to Murphy, there are an additional 17 authorized schools that will open next year, bringing the total to 31. The application doesn’t count schools that were turned down by the Board of Regents and will open under SUNY approval. Under state law, SUNY can independently authorize charter schools, meaning that if the Board of Regents vetoes a charter application, SUNY can override the decision.

Test scores and teachers

In the months that led up to the Race to the Top and in the face of opposition from state and local teachers unions, SED officials said linking test scores to teacher tenure would be part of the plan. But up until now, it they never said how much weight the test scores would have in determining which teachers were successful.

The state’s application says it plans to use five factors in coming up with an “education effectiveness score” for teachers and principals, one of which is test scores. Districts that signed onto the plan will use student data as 30-40 percent of that score, placing “student growth at the center of their evaluation system.

We’ve heard from several people in the special ed world that the Department of Education could be announcing major initiatives, though the DOE is publicly characterizing the meeting simply as “part of a continuing conversation” on how to best serve special needs students.

In advance of the meeting, one important set of stakeholders has put together a list of things they’d like to see. The ARISE Coalition, a group of activists and advocacy groups, published today its recommendations for the DOE, which include better reporting of how schools educate special needs students and giving schools more resources to do it. The document also lists ways schools can better work with parents “as true partners”:

Finally, but perhaps most important, with regard to parent engagement and participation in the special education processes, while we recognize there is a spectrum of parent ability to participate in intensive planning and progress for their child, the fact is that most parents want to be fully included in the process.   It is the task of the DOE to provide information about educational rights, programming options, and a wide range of ways for parents to participate in the process of developing IEPs and selecting appropriate programs for their children.

Read more of the ARISE Coalition’s recommendations for change in the city’s special education programs here.

Initially claiming that releasing the state’s bid to win $700 million would compromise its ability to compete in the second round, New York became one of four states (out of about 40 competitors) to withhold its application. Now SED has changed its mind after officials from the U.S. Department of Education said they’d make all states’ applications public in April before the second round of the competition began.

“Recent information from USDE indicates that releasing the application will not compromise New York State’s competitiveness,” said the department in a statement released today.

According to the City Room blog, the state’s application run some 1,000 pages.

In a letter sent to parents on Tuesday, Sheila Joseph, superintendent of the East New York Preparatory school, called the DOE’s allegations that she artificially inflated her salary, violated its charter by shortening the school year and expelled nearly 50 low-performing students before they took state tests “unfounded and untrue.” Joseph also argued in the letter that the school’s high faculty turnover rate was necessary to preserve high standards for the students.

“No one enjoys faculty turnover, but just as we have high and uncompromising standards for our students we also will not compromise on faculty performance,” she wrote. Between the end of last school year and the beginning of this one, the school lost every teacher it had.

“Some of our best teachers are now here because others had to be let go,” Joseph continued. “I don’t take lightly the fact that there has been turnover. However, I will never allow your children to have anything less than the absolute best.”

Former teachers at the school reacted angrily to Joseph’s explanation to parents.

“She’s lying,” said one former teacher who was dismissed in June.

“You’re saying you let go of 100 percent of your staff last year because they were bad, but all of your students passed the test?” the teacher said. (The school had 100 percent of its students score proficient on state math exams last year.) “If so, you must have done something with the scores.”

Teachers accused Joseph of firing them in retaliation for wanting to leave and for reporting abuses at the school to the DOE, which put the school on probation last February.

“I knew this was coming,” the teacher said. “We opened this can of worms.”

Teachers described a school in which teachers were fired arbitrarily and replaced with staff with neither teacher certification nor undergraduate degrees. The principal of the school was fired almost immediately after announcing she wouldn’t return the following year after having differences with Joseph, teachers said. A former teacher described a main hallway decorated with pictures of the teaching staff. “You’d come in and you’d see another picture gone,” the teacher said. “You’d be like, oh no.”

In addition to expelling students, a teacher said, low-scoring third graders were sent back to second grade to avoid being tested. Teachers said that students with disabilities were either counseled out of the school or taught by teaching assistants who lacked proper certification.

One teacher said the school never gave her a copy of its charter; when she finally received it from the DOE’s charter school office, she discovered the school had received funds for technology and project-based learning that were never implemented. Another former teacher said that, even as Joseph gave herself a raise, she cut teachers’ hours and solicited donations from parents, citing budget cuts.

Mona Davids, head of the New York Charter Parents Association, who has argued that charter schools need to be more transparent and held accountable for more than just test scores, said the case of East New York Prep underscores the need for better parent grievance processes and teacher whistle-blower protections in charter schools.

“If you’re trying to tell us that everyone of those 48 [expelled] students’ parents didn’t want to complain about it — they couldn’t complain about it, because they have nowhere to go in the charter school system,” Davids said. The DOE opened its investigation of the school in response to complaints from parents, but Davids said the process must be more formal.

Davids said that as a charter school parent, she also hoped that teachers would one day be able to report improprieties they see in their schools without fear for their jobs.

“There should be whistle-blower protections for teachers in charter schools,” she said. “I’m not saying that all charter schools should be unionized, but with every job, there should be some some protections.”

The school and parents received a letter from the DOE on Monday night detailing the reasons behind the closure. The school has 30 days to respond before Chancellor Joel Klein makes a final decision. In the letter, Joseph says she will reply to the charges in that time.

Joseph is also convening a series of meeting with parents to defend herself and the school. The first of those meetings was held tonight, with three more to follow through the weekend. One former teacher also reported that the school’s parent coordinator is organizing a petition for parents who want to save the school.

The DOE is holding a meeting of its own at the school, next Wednesday, to explain the closure and offer help placing students in other schools.

A former teacher said she was confident that the schools’ students would weather the changes and find spots at other schools.

“The school doesn’t even need to be shut down, in my opinion,” she said. “[Joseph] just needs to go.”

Here is the full text of Joseph’s letter:

It’s a bittersweet moment for school staff, who could lose out on the 4 percent pay raises other unions have received, but won’t see their schools stripped of money for classroom supplies and technology midyear. The city’s plan rests on its ability to pressure the United Federation of Teachers and the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators into accepting to two percent raises over two years, half of what the unions expected and a proposal both union presidents have met with angrily worded statements.

Marc LaVorgna, a spokesman for the mayor, said the city will swap the savings from halving teacher and principal’s pay raises with the savings that would have come from a midyear 1 percent cut to schools and a planned 4 percent cut for 2011.

If CSA — whose contract doesn’t expire until March — and the UFT don’t accept the lowered pay raises, the city could lose 2,500 teachers through attrition and layoffs, LaVorgna said. Mayor Bloomberg has also warned that if the state goes ahead with Governor Paterson’s budget, 8,500 teachers will be lost.

In a statement sent to reporters last night, UFT President Michael Mulgrew called the proposal “unacceptable.” CSA President Ernest Logan said he was “shocked” by the plans.

“The salary package for my members will not be independently announced by the mayor or the chancellor; it will be reached at the bargaining table with the CSA,” he said.

For Edward Tom, the principal of the Bronx Center for Science and Mathematics, the midyear cut would have amounted to about $33,000, and the subsequent 4 percent cut would have meant losing over $100,000 dollars.

“What would have initially required me to consider reducing spending in terms of professional development, supplies, technology, all of that is restored,” he said. “It’s big news for me, big news for my colleagues.”

Ann Forte, a spokeswoman for the DOE, said some principals had already submitted budget cut plans. “If that’s the case, the funds will be back in the budget sometime today,” she said. “The planning work they’ve done will help prepare them for the future,” when they may have to adjust to other cuts, she said.

Though he’s happy to see his school’s budget intact, Tom said he was concerned about taking a pay raise cut.

“I’m just worried about what type of precedent this would set in terms of collective bargaining agreements,” he said. “But one of the things I heard in the State of the Union last night is we all need to contribute our share. If this our share then so be it.”

Chancellor Joel Klein’s email to principals follows:

Dear Colleagues:

Several weeks ago I informed you that due to the City’s economic constraints every school was required to take a mid-year budget cut. In an effort to help you maintain vital programs and resources, however, Mayor Bloomberg and I have identified a combination of savings in the DOE’s operating budget that will prevent reductions at this time.

As you know, last month I informed DOE managers and other non-unionized staff that I would not fully fund raises already approved for these employees. That decision will help save the Department approximately $12 million this year. Additionally, following our lead, the Mayor has proposed new compensation agreements with the United Federation of Teachers and the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators that would save another $148 million this year, for a total of $160 million. Currently, the City’s collective bargaining reserve includes funds to provide a four percent raise for educators this year and an additional four percent next year. Given budget shortfalls, however, the Mayor has asked the unions to accept a reduced increase of two percent on the first $70,000 of salary for the next two years. This increase would be slightly larger on average than the one that DOE managers received and would recognize the dedication of our educators while allowing their schools to maintain current levels of spending.

These moves will not solve all of our budget problems. The State faces huge deficits, which will likely lead to significant reductions in funding that will impact our schools. But at a time when the City-indeed, the entire country-is being forced to make do with less, this plan allows us to reward educators for their hard work while protecting our schools-allowing them to continue providing the highest level of instruction to our children.

Sincerely,

Joel I. Klein

The story changed of course once her mom explained to me that she hadn’t given her daughter any money, and her daughter wouldn’t have any money otherwise. When her mom took charge of the inquisition Mastermind tried a new performance. Now the wallet was a gift from the guidance counselor and the money was given to her by her friend (aka follower), another student of mine.

I’m looking forward to getting to the truth tomorrow. It’s been a while since I’ve gotten to try out a good old fashioned prisoner’s dilemma with eight-year-olds. I’m sure however, the experience will be less than enlightening and somewhat anticlimactic. Relying on these two students to tell the truth will probably be something like a reenactment of Rashomon, but with third graders instead of samurais.

It’s not the first time I’ve faced a situation like this obviously, and they always begin and end practically the same. This is actually one of the rare cases where I’ve resolved who took the money. Still, even with this pretty much settled, the resolution remains unclear. What will the consequences be? Her mom already knows about the incident (and every problem we’ve had prior) but seems in complete denial. There’s very few privileges or rewards to take away. Recess? The kids spend lunch time in the auditorium. Choice time? She won’t earn it anyway. Field trip? Can’t be taken way because of Chancellor’s Regulations. Suspension? She can’t afford to miss instructional time, and even if she could, it’s doubtful she’d take any lesson away from the experience.

In the end I’m asking myself how many second chances a kid should get. I believe in building relationships with students based on trust and a willingness to forgive. When a student makes a mistake, I’ll explain why it is wrong (or more often ask them to explain themselves) and give them a chance to make a change. But with a student like Mastermind there doesn’t seem to be any lag time between one transgression and the next. It begs several questions. Does she even understand right and wrong? Does she totally lack impulse control? What is going on at home after each of these problems?

I’m not sure I can answer the first two questions yet, but Mastermind’s fairy tale draft gave a glimpse of an answer to the third. Her writing told the story of a princess who was badly treated by her parents the King and the Queen. She wanted to go to the scary castle, but they wouldn’t let her, so she cried. When they got home, they punished her and she learned to be a good girl. Maybe the fairy tale is just a fairy tale, but it seems like Mastermind’s developing a somewhat strange sense of morality. And it’s hard not to feel sorry for her, even as she acts out day after day.

So how will I handle the theft of two dollars? It doesn’t shock me like it might have two years ago, but it still bothers me deeply, because it shows a flagrant, purposeful act against the classroom community I’ve worked to create. And I really believe that even an eight-year-old who may lack empathy for others should be able to understand the wrongness of stealing. If she doesn’t see that already, somehow I’ll have to teach her.

In a letter sent to school principals last week, Chief Schools Officer Eric Nadelstern offers more details on what the reorganization will look like and puts the savings at $13 million. The savings will come, in part, through the elimination of 80 administrative positions, Chancellor Joel Klein told network leaders last week.

Last week, I reported that the DOE is planning to dismantle the Integrated Service Centers in each borough — places principals turn to when they need help with budgeting and the paperwork that comes along with special education and safety regulation compliance. In place of ISCs, principals will work with Children First Networks, small groups of about a dozen DOE employees who work directly with schools’ existing support organizations.

Another element of the reorganization is the dissolution of the city’s School Support Organizations and their rebirth as six new networks. In his letter, Nadelstern assures principals they’ll likely be working with same people as they do now. Many of the new network leaders, such as Judith Chin and Jose Ruiz, currently oversee support organizations. Others include Vincent Brevetti, Vincent Clark, Anthony Conelli, and Deborah Maldonado.

Nonprofits that run their own support organizations, such as New Visions and Replications, Inc., will continue to do so until their contracts expire in 2011.

Clara Hemphill, senior editor at the New School’s Center for NYC Affairs, has mapped out the many reorganizations the DOE’s bureaucracy has done through under Klein.

Dear Colleagues,

As you know, in this challenging budget climate, we are all being asked to do more with less. While schools are currently finding ways to reduce their budgets by one percent, central and field budgets are being cut by 2.5 percent, including a five percent reduction in headcount which follows last year’s eight percent reduction in headcount. As difficult as this climate can be, it has also provided an opportunity for the Division of School Support (DSS) to take a look at how we provide support to our schools. Our goal is to provide the highest quality services at the lowest cost while maintaining our focus on providing you with the supports you need to improve student achievement. To accomplish this goal, we are going to maintain networks as the primary support for schools and drive maximum resources to the network teams. We will do this by:

* Expanding the Children First Network (CFN) model to all networks citywide

* Transitioning operational supports from Integrated Service Centers (ISCs) to networks as of June 2010

* Consolidating the School Support Organizations into six smaller management teams, which will each oversee 10 CFN networks of approximately 250 schools; schools that work with Partnership Support Organizations will continue to do so and there will be similar CFN alignment to the PSOs. This consolidation will eliminate duplication of services across the ISCs, networks, SSOs, and central offices. It is a critical step that will save approximately $13 million dollars that otherwise would have been pulled from school budgets. This will help reduce the need for even deeper school-based cuts.

I understand how important stability is to your relationships with your network team. You will remain in the same network, work with the same network leader, and, in most cases, your network leader will continue to report to the same person. Also, until the ISCs transition in June, you will continue to work with ISC staff except in those cases where the network is already CFN.

This spring, you will have the opportunity to help your network leaders hire additional instructional and operational support staff for your network team for the 2010-2011 school year. For the following school year, you will participate in a network-based selection process and will be able to switch networks in July 2011 based on your specific and changing needs. There are over 500 schools that already work under the CFN structure and their experience leads me to believe that by expanding this model system wide, we will increase efficiency, service quality, and overall principal satisfaction. I am confident that by further empowering those closest to schools, we will enable even more of our students to succeed. If you have any questions about this transition, feel free to email me, discuss with your network leader or e-mail DSSquestions@schools.nyc.gov.

Sincerely,

Eric Nadelstern

Chief Schools Officer

Only five four! states have not publicly posted their Race to the Top applications (out of 41 who submitted), and New York is one of them. State education officials say that publishing the application will dull the state’s competitive edge if it doesn’t receive a prize in the first round and officials re-submit the application in the next phase. The public editor of the Education Writers Association, Linda Perlstein, asked U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan today if that was true:

“Absolutely not,” Secretary Duncan just said in a conference call with reporters, in response to my question. “This is about maximum transparency.”

Duncan told Perlstein that as soon as any personal information that might be included in the applications has been redacted, USDOE will be posting all states’ bids “in the not too distant future.” Even if federal education officials wait until the first-round grants are announced to post state submissions, as they originally said they would, the applications would go online two months before the second-round deadline in June.

Unfortunately the theory of accountability for everyone has had some very detrimental practical effects for high-need students and their teachers. On Friday I discussed the problems with standardized testing. But while the debate over standardized testing is somewhat abstract, the creation of a new testing-centered culture, particularly in high need schools is indisputable.

You might argue that creating a high-stakes environment based around testing is essential for these failing schools. But that assumes that 1) these schools have been failing mainly because a lack of effort and 2) the high-stakes culture benefits the students. Both assumptions are false, but still they allow the general degredation of public schools and the educators who work in them.

It is important to understand the actual consequences of the NCLB testing culture. Namely the reallocation of energy and resources toward test prep materials, test prep instruction and test prep professional development. This is especially egregious during a time of economic downturn when principals are being told to “do more with less.” The result is that schools like my current and former workplace no longer have after-school arts and sports programs but still have the latest test prep books.

As for the day-to-day effects, I can attest personally that the testing culture eventually subsumes all other aspects of teaching — more and more so as the test day approaches. Starting this week my school is beginning its test “blitzing,” one period each day of math or ELA test prep. Something inevitably takes a back seat in this case, whether it’s social studies, science or just an extra 45 minutes of the math or reader’s workshop.

Then you have to take into account the lowest performing students and how test prep affects them. I have three students taking the students who are reading at a kindergarten level. Getting them to a third-grade level by April would be nothing short of a miracle. But schools like mine can’t afford to let anyone fail. So in the interest of time students like these are given the shortcuts to get through the test in place of reading interventions that might better help these students over the long term. If they do manage to pass, they’ll move forward another grade, only to face a bigger deficit the next year.

Perhaps worst, the testing culture trickles down from the testing grades (3rd and up) to the lower grades. In many schools, even though these kids aren’t yet testing, test prep is still encroaching on more worthwhile instruction. Too many schools are investing energy in turning kids into test-takers at an earlier and earlier age, rather than helping them to be good readers and critical thinkers (abilities that make a student a natural test-taker). In the worst case, there are kindergarteners taking standardized tests, a trend some studies (click the link to the Alliance for Childhood) have linked to depression, poor self-esteem and antisocial behaviors later on.

I understand there needs to be a system of accountability. There needs to be a way to measure efforts to close the achievement gap. But the way testing has permeated school cultures, has too often come at the expense of approaches to education that would benefit students beyond standardized tests and outside the classroom.

The Panel for Educational Policy votes to close one of 19 schools slated for phase-out by the DOE, as school supporters look on.

4 a.m. After a two-hour protest that closed the streets in Fort Greene; nearly nine hours of testimony by concerned elected officials, parents, teachers, and students; and a series of votes that underscored the divide between Mayor Bloomberg and panel appointees from most of city’s boroughs, the Panel for Educational Policy determined early this morning that 20 city schools, both young and old, small and large, will begin to close this fall. We’ll have more about the implications of the panel’s decisions starting sometime tomorrow afternoon.

But for now, with Brooklyn Tech empty, at least for a few hours, and Anna and Maura safely in taxis, we’re closing the blog for the night. Be sure to scroll through all 70+ entries to see exactly how the marathon meeting unfolded.

3:43 a.m. Maura managed to corner mayoral appointee David Chang before he left the building. “These are tough decisions but I think they’re all thoughtful,” he said. “I’m convinced the change is for the better.”

3:42 a.m. City Hall just sent out a press release with statements from Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein. The release is dated Jan. 26 — the day the PEP meeting began, but not when it ended.

Here’s what Bloomberg had to say:

This morning, following a 45-day consultation period in which thousands of New Yorkers participated in dozens of hearings and parent meetings or registered their views online, the Panel for Educational Policy took the difficult but necessary step of voting to phase-out and replace chronically underperforming schools. I’ve listened to the arguments carefully, and I appreciate the traditions of these schools, but we cannot continue to send our children to schools that have failed them for years. They deserve better, and tonight, the Panel for Educational Policy made the right decision, which will allow us to continue opening new high quality schools for students throughout the city.

And here’s Klein’s official statement:

The vote to phase-out and replace schools that were not meeting the standard of success we demand for our students will allow us to create far better opportunities for children in these communities and Citywide. Since 2003, we have phased out 91 schools and created 335 schools. While high schools citywide graduate 60 percent of students, our new high schools graduate 75 percent of students. When we know we can do better for students, we must. The vote today will pave the way for us to build on the remarkable progress we’ve made and continue to best prepare students for the next phase of their lives.

3:32 a.m. The meeting is officially adjourned, more than nine hours after it began. Chancellor Klein is about to take questions from a gaggle of very tired reporters.

The auditorium empties after the vote.

3:28 a.m. The auditorium is quickly emptying, and few are interested in talking. “We have work in three hours, thank you,” said one teacher on her way out.

3:27 a.m. And it’s over. The panel has voted to close all 19 schools and passed all of the 32 total utilization changes the city had proposed.

The changes to the chancellor’s regulations that were supposed to be on the PEP’s agenda tonight will instead be voted on Feb. 10, per a resolution proposed by mayoral appointee David Chang and voted up by the entire panel. Everyone’s ready to call it a night.

3:25 a.m. The panel has just voted to close Jamaica High School, which mounted a spirited defense in recent weeks. The final count was nine in favor of closure and four opposed.

3:20 a.m. The votes are barreling along, and we’ll have a full accounting shortly. Every closure is going through. The panel just finished voting to close Beach Channel High School in Queens.

Patrick Sullivan, trying to put pressure on panel members, is having them give their votes individually rather than by a show of hands. Every time a panel member votes to close a school, audience members yell, “Puppet!” When a panel member votes against a closure, he gets a shout of “leader!”

PEP members voting 'yes' to closing a school.

3:16 a.m. So far, the panel has voted to close Christopher Columbus High School, Paul Robeson High School, and Maxwell High School.

3:14 a.m. Anna writes that almost every school is being closed with nine votes, from the eight mayoral appointees and the Staten Island representative. All of the other four borough representatives are voting against the closures.

“Shame on you,” people are yelling. “You’re on the wrong side of history.”

3:07 a.m. Scratch that. Linda Lausell Bryant, a parent whom Mayor Bloomberg appointed to the panel in August to satisfy new requirements of the school governance law, is speaking. “We all want to vote our conscience,” she says. “We’re not just here to rubber stamp anything.” She has recused herself from two votes, one about closing New Day Academy and the siting of PAVE Academy. It’s not clear why.

3:04 a.m. Now David Chang, a mayoral appointee, says he wants to do the votes item by item. The panel is about to start voting and not one mayoral appointee has spoken about the content of the proposals.

3:01 a.m. Gbubemi Okotieuro, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz’s representative on the panel, says he’ll also vote no. “I have never been so disappointed in my life until this afternoon,” he said. Then he corrected himself: “This morning.”

Okotieuro says he’s mostly disappointed in the rush. There’s no reason to vote today, he argues. “I thought that after hours of testimony my colleagues would have supported my resolution to seek some kind of a time for the IBO to help us make decisions,” he said. “I do not understand for the life of me why we’re rushing this through.”

Leonie Haimson, a parent advocate, argues that there’s a reason for the rush in the school governance law itself. She says the law requires the PEP to vote on school closures six months before the school year when the phase-outs start. If the proposals were tabled tonight, the city would have only one more PEP meeting, next month, to push the closures through. After that, it wouldn’t be able to close any of the schools for another year.

2:59 a.m. Patrick Sullivan, the Manhattan borough president’s representative and one the only voices of dissent on the panel, says he’s voting no. He says his vote is based on DOE’s violations of the school governance law; the department presented error-ridden data, failed to consult stakeholders, and backdated documents, he charges.

Sullivan asked the mayoral appointees to defend the city’s school closure plans and to explain how they would vote if the proposals were actually brought to a vote. “We’ll vote and you’ll find out,” answered David Chang, one of the mayor’s appointees.

Sullivan received big cheers from the remaining audience members.

2:54 a.m. The voting is underway. Dmytro Fedkowskyj, the Queens borough president’s appointee, says he’ll vote no. “There may well come a point when I will raise my hand in support of closing these schools, but it has not come to that point,” he said. “Tonight I vote no and I urge my colleagues to do the same.”

2:52 a.m. Anna just got a behind-the-scenes tour of the DOE’s planning for tonight. It turns out that the department had prepared for the audience to be so loud that the meeting wouldn’t be able to go forward. Plan B would have removed the panel members to the gym, where five speakers would be brought in at a time. The audience would have watched the proceedings on a screen in the auditorium.

2:51 a.m. The remaining crowd is huddled together in front of the stage as the panel members debate whether to vote on the 32 proposals one at a time or in bulk.

2:45 a.m. Public comment is over. Now the panel has to vote on 32 school utilization plan changes, which include school closures. David Chang, a mayoral appointee, wants them all voted on at once, but Patrick Sullivan and Anna Santos, borough presidents’ appointees who favored tabling tonight’s vote, are objecting.

2:40 a.m. The penultimate speaker was Jeanette De Jesus, a parent of children in both district and charter schools who delivered an impassioned, reasoned defense of school choice. “Public schools aren’t the best option for everyone,” she said.

Now the remaining audience members are moving up to the front of the auditorium to watch the vote, at the urging of sock-puppetmasters Lisa Donlan and Jane Hirschmann. “So they’ll have to look in our eyes,” Donlan explained.

2:35 a.m. We’re closing in on the very end of the public comment session. Next up is discussion among the panel members.

According to officials, there were 100 police officers and security guards working the PEP meeting tonight.

2:24 a.m. Finally, PAVE Academy head Spencer Robertson’s number has been called. Like Mona Davids, he emphasizes that charter schools like the one he runs aren’t the reason for the anger tonight. “The young who attend both our schools are innocent in this,” he said. “They don’t not like each other because they go to different schools, they model the behavior of the adults around them.” He is booed until he stops speaking.

2:21 a.m. After hours of listening to people bash charter schools, charter school parent advocate Mona Davids got up and tried to make the case that charters are not at fault for school closings. She was booed. Then she appealed to the DOE: “What happened in East New York Preparatory is systematic. Charters need to be more accountable and transparent.” The DOE revealed today that it would close East New York Prep, a charter school, in June because of serious financial mismanagement.

2:06 a.m. “Teachers, do your principals know where you are?” asked a science teacher.

2:03 a.m. The crowd is smaller, but there are still about 100 people scattered throughout the auditorium. Right now it’s just a matter of waiting until the speaker list is exhausted and the panel can get down to a vote. To pass the time, DOE press secretary David Cantor is analyzing Jennifer Medina’s report about the meeting for the New York Times, which has gone to press without a resolution.

1:50 a.m. Klein is back, but the crowd is still angry. “How dare you? Twice in one night!” they’re shouting. DOE spokesman Daniel Kanner has confirmed a second trip to the bathroom. Department officials are debating who should take the blame.

1:48 a.m. Joel Klein took another break — hey, it’s been four hours — and the remaining crowd has spent several minutes demanding his return while the at-bat speaker waits.

1:38 a.m. It took a few hours, but someone has finally hurled a Yiddish word at Joel Klein. Marcy Lican, a teacher at Clara Barton High School, which is not at risk of closure this year, yelled out the word “shonda,” which means “shame.” Said Lican about Clara Barton, “They’re already starting to destroy us.”

1:24 a.m. Maura explains that because of a happy quirk in the speaker number system, we’ve actually powered through just over 200 speakers, well over half of the people who signed up to comment.

1:16 a.m. William Hargraves, the Harlem parent who made an impassioned speech during a walkout of the PEP meeting last May, is standing at the microphone, which is off, and yelling for the right to speak. He has already spoken once tonight.

1:10 a.m. Attrition has ramped up in the last few minutes. The last 10 speakers called have all been no-shows, Maura reports.

1:03 a.m. Anna says that the lights in Brooklyn Tech’s auditorium have begun to flicker. The evening is turning out to have some similarities to the plot of “Gaslight.”

1:01 a.m. Spencer Robertson, the head of PAVE Academy, says he plans to stay until the final vote. He looks exhausted, Maura reports. He’s speaker number 124, but the count is currently only at around 80.

12:56 a.m. One last word from the NYC Student Union’s Chris Petrillo: He’s serious about the union suing the city if the panel votes tonight to close schools. Union members met with Norman Siegel on Tuesday morning to plot their legal strategy.

12:50 a.m. Could a second wind blow through Brooklyn Tech? We just heard from a Paul Robeson HS teacher who had to stay home with her child tonight and couldn’t attend the PEP meeting. But now her husband is home from work, and she wants to know if it’s too late to head over.

12:45 a.m. I’m just going to go ahead and say it: Don’t expect Remainders tonight.

12:40 a.m. Just a reminder that there are a number of items on the PEP’s agenda that don’t involve school closures. One of those is the space plan for PS 15 and PAVE Academy in Red Hook. Julie Cavanagh, the PS 15 teacher who tried to win the right to picket outside Mayor Bloomberg’s house last week, explained why she’s still out on a school night: “I am going to make them look me in the eye when they vote.”

12:38 a.m. Lisa Fuentes, Columbus High School’s principal, just had her turn at the microphone. “We all know how important data is, but what’s also important is context,” she said. “How would you feel if you were diagnosed with cancer and given no treatment plan?”

12:30 a.m. Anna reports that over in the Paul Robeson HS camp, several students have fallen asleep.

12:22 a.m. Chris Petrillo, the high school student who testified on behalf of the NYC Student Union, is back. He dropped his mother off at home in Far Rockaway and then jumped right back on the train. Why isn’t he studying? “I started this, and I want to be here until the end,” he told Maura.

12:12 a.m. Pretty much all the people who signed up to speak are making their way to the microphone when their number is called. If someone on the list had to leave, there’s someone ready to speak on his behalf. There just hasn’t been the attrition we saw at other hearings that went late.

12:06 a.m. “Thank you and good morning,” said Carla Phillip, a District 13 mother who ushered in Wednesday. Phillip doesn’t have a child at any of the schools that might be closed, but she says she’s concerned about the welfare of the children who do attend those schools.

Sometime around midnight: Please pardon our formatting errors. This little site just couldn’t take all of our updates. There won’t be any pictures for now but we’re committed to continuing to update until every last PEP member and speaker goes home. More to come in just a moment.

11:54 p.m. Khem Irby, a parent on District 13’s CEC, said she and others aren’t giving up hope, despite the panel’s decision not to table the vote tonight. ”We want to see them do the wrong thing” she said of the panel. “We want to witness it. It’s a part of history.”

The Columbus HS contingent stood and raised signs whenever one of their school supporters spoke.

11:37 p.m.: The principal of Global Enterprise High School, a small school located in Columbus High School that could be closed tonight, says the only justification she has heard for her school’s closure was that it lacks capacity for improvement. “As an educator I do not know what that means,” said Michelle Joseph. “I am in the business of seeing potential.”

11:36 p.m. James Devor, of District 15’s parent council, asks, “Wouldn’t this have been a great night for a bake sale?”

11:34 p.m. Lots of squabbling within the ranks on the PEP. Patrick Sullivan asks, ”Do you have anything to say in defense of your policies?” He wants to know whether the crowd will ever hear a response from the DOE or the mayor, considering the “extraordinary amount of opposition to these plans.”

“Deputy Mayor Walcott?” he asks. No dice. Chang moves on.

11:29 p.m. Chang put the resolution up for a vote. All five of the borough presidents’ representatives voted yes, but none of the other appointees agreed. So we’re back to public comment now. But it does look like there will be a vote tonight.

11:28 p.m. Gbubemi Okotieuro, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz’s representative on the panel, just asked David Chang to bring to a vote the resolution to table the school closure vote. Patrick Sullivan, the Manhattan rep, and Ana Santos from the Bronx are backing Okotieuro up. So is the crowd.

11:22 p.m. First Klein Blackberry sighting of the night. The crowd shouted for him to put his device away.

11:18 p.m. A graduate of Paul Robeson High School delivered stirring testimony about her school earlier tonight. Stephanie Adams, 22, described being born with fetal alcohol syndrome, getting turned away from school after school in a couple of states, and eventually enrolling at Robeson in the 10th grade. She started out in ninth-grade special education classes but was transferred to general education classes the following year and later graduated 11th in her class, despite being homeless for two years while in high school.

Adams told Maura that Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott approached her after her testimony and told her to be in touch if she needed anything. She said she plans to take him up on the offer. What is she going to say to him? “That you’re not just giving up on institutions, you’re giving up on the kids, you’re giving up on the teachers.” Pointing to all of the student speakers, Adams said, “The fact that they’re here and speaking shows that these schools are helping them.”

“Without Robeson to light the way I don’t know where I’d be,” Adams told Maura.

11:15 p.m. Anna just had a conversation with Michael Mulgrew, the president of the teachers union. He said the UFT has kept a close eye on all the DOE’s paperwork surrounding school closures, and especially all the notices around the public hearings. Tomorrow union officials are going to sift through it and by the afternoon, they’ll make a decision about whether to sue.

“I can tell you there are real discrepancies,” he said, meaning that the DOE didn’t absolutely follow the school government law passed in August. The law set out new requirements for public notice about major policy changes and is the reason that tonight’s hearing is taking place at all.

The DOE expects the suit, Anna reports.

11 p.m. Maura snapped a picture of the thinned-out-but-still-strong crowd at Brooklyn Tech. A speaker just told panel members that he hoped they had read the transcript from the public hearing about Norman Thomas’s proposed closure. Let’s hope panel members were able to figure out that the Norman Thomas transcript was mislabeled as coming from another school on the department’s Web site.

10:57 p.m. Christine Rowland, a Columbus teacher who wrote about the DOE’s move to close her school on GothamSchools, is here with a number of her colleagues. She says she’s still hopeful that the PEP will vote down the proposed school closures. ”I’m an optimist,” Rowland said. “It’s been important that I go all out on this. That way whatever happens, my conscience is clear.”

10:45 p.m. About 30 teachers from Columbus are waiting to speak. They’re number 70 — but it could be midnight before they get the microphone. Without the students around, speakers are losing their focus on individual schools, Anna reports. There’s starting to be a lot more talk about how the system isn’t working, and how schools aren’t funded fairly.

10:40 p.m. Almost all of the students have left. The speaker list was rearranged so that they could catch their buses home. Soon we’ll switch back to hearing from teachers and other adults.

10:23 p.m. WNYC’s Beth Fertig sent over a picture she took of Anna and Maura hard at work. Anna reports that the press corps is flagging in the hot auditorium. About a third of the original audience members are still in their seats. Maura just ran into Chris Petrillo, the NYC Student Union representative, on his way out the door. He was headed home to study for a Regents exam.

9:55 p.m. Four hours into the hearing, it’s mostly students who are still sticking around, despite this week’s Regents exams, Anna reports. The president of Columbus High School’s Muslim student group just spoke eloquently about the school. “Christopher Columbus was my lifeline away from ignorance,” the student said.

The Panel for Educational Policy convenes at Brooklyn Technical High School.

9:45 p.m. Maura just dropped hundreds of photographs from tonight into GothamSchools’ Flickr feed, including the first we’ve had of the panel itself.

9:44 p.m. The chancellor is back, after nearly five minutes of angry chanting from the audience.

9:40 p.m. Chancellor Klein isn’t in his seat, and the audience is angry about it. The entire audience is standing, and many members are shouting, “Where is Klein?” According to a DOE spokesman, Klein is on a bathroom break.

9:30 p.m. If city officials weren’t moved by Michael Mulgrew’s lawsuit threat, then maybe Chris Petrillo’s testimony has them scared. Petrillo, representing the NYC Student Union, a group of activist high school students from across the city, told the panel,

We will bring the full force of the law down on you. Every person in here deserves an answer. And until there’s another set of public hearings to better explain this, this should not happen. This is injust to everyone. In closing, we will join with the UFT and we will sue you guys. I’m not joking.

9:20 p.m. The number of people who have spoken is into the sixties now. Only about 250 left to go.

9 p.m. We’ve borrowed a Blackberry charger. Which is good, because people weren’t joking about spending the night: The permit for the meeting lasts until 8 a.m. And just in case anyone was worried, panel members are getting sandwiches, cookies, and water courtesy of the DOE.

8:52 p.m. Does anyone inside Brooklyn Tech have a Blackberry charger? Ours are running low on juice.

8:50 p.m. City Councilman Charles Barron, who last summer tried to evict Chancellor Klein from Tweed Courthouse, wants a stronger response to the education department’s policies. “Let’s shut down Tweed,” he said. “We’ve got to get more militant in this town.”

Then he warned, “If you shut off this mic, I’m going to take your mics. I don’t care how many cops you got here.”

8:40 p.m. Anna just spoke with Michael Ross, a social studies and special education teacher at New Day Academy, a new small school that could be closed tonight. He arrived with a bus of 16 students and 10 teachers, who have been at Brooklyn Tech for hours and ordered pizza to eat in the hallway. (Full disclosure: Anna ate a piece.) Ross said the school has seen three principals in five years. The newest principal arrived in November.

“This is a priceless experience for these students,” Ross said about attending the PEP meeting, where New Day Academy students are among many students of color in attendance. “If they didn’t think this was about race and class, now they know it.”

8:20 p.m. Anna reports that the crowd in balcony is thinning out, two hours into the hearing. She also notes that in that time, she hasn’t seen Chancellor Klein look at his Blackberry once.

8:10 p.m. Lenore Krieger, a guidance counselor at the School of Business, Computer Applications and Entrepreneurship in Queens, testified about the conflicting information her school has gotten. First, she read aloud a congratulatory letter the DOE’s accountability office sent in September: “To your credit, your school has beaten the odds by being designated as a school in good standing…”

Now the school is on the closure list.

8:04 p.m. NY1′s education reporter, Lindsey Christ, sometimes has five cameras trailing her. But a GothamSchools reader who’s watching the station writes that it’s not actually cutting away from normal programming that much. “Their promo promised far more than they are delivering,” our reader says.

7:58 p.m. Newly minted City Councilman Jumaane Williams spoke:

I’ve been a City Council member for 30 days. My proudest moment was watching the outpouring of aid to Haiti. My least proud moment is now because I’m part of a city government that, even though there are thousands of teachers and parents here, has already made up its mind.

7:55 p.m. Some of the speakers offer a reminder of how students feel when the city tells them their schools are failing: They take it personally.

Rebekah Freeman, a 17-year old-student at Paul Robeson High School is here with her 1-year-old daughter. “I started Paul Robeson last year and I\’m graduating next year,” she told the PEP. “You’re telling me I’m a failure. I am not a failure.”

7:50 p.m. A side note: School closing season must be boon for T-shirt printers. Robeson HS has custom shirts, as does the School for Community Research and Learning.

7:45 p.m. Are we really going to see a PEP vote tonight? Everyone from the DOE says yes. DOE press secretary David Cantor jokes, “If we’re still here at 3 tomorrow afternoon we’ll recess until 6.” Maura notes that a security guard told her he’s been at Brooklyn Tech since 7:30 a.m. and is drawing overtime for working the PEP meeting. Staying overnight could be a problem for high school students, who are taking Regents examinations this week.

7:42 p.m. Patrick Sullivan, the Manhattan borough president’s PEP appointee, caused a stir when he told Michael Best, the panel’s secretary, who was appointed by Chancellor Klein, to turn moderation over to David Chang, a panel member. “Michael, if you’re going to turn the mic off on the NAACP, have the mayor’s appointee do it,” Sullivan said. Best has not ceded control.

7:38 p.m. All the comments are divided into two streams: Why didn’t you do more to help us? Where will our students go?

7:36 p.m. Are you watching NY1? The station is covering tonight’s meeting in real time, cutting in on its regularly scheduled programming to bring live updates from Brooklyn Tech’s auditorium.

7:33 p.m. An update on the PAVE Academy charter school space-sharing plan, which is also up for a vote tonight. According to James Devor, a member of District 15′s CEC, the DOE is only going to ask for PAVE to be allowed to stay in PS 15 for three years, instead of the five it originally proposed.

7:32 p.m. The final speaker count for tonight is 32o, plus 27 elected officials, according to the DOE’s Ann Forte. Paul Robeson High School appears to have brought the largest contingent, Anna says. A science teacher told her that about 150 students had come to Brooklyn by subway and bus.

City Council education committee chair Robert Jackson edits his remarks as he waits to speak.

7:30 p.m. Robert Jackson, head of the City Council’s education committee, has joined the chorus of people calling for the PEP to delay voting on the closure proposals. “Please do not stamp a rubber red stamp on the foreheads of our children,” he said.

7:21 p.m. Abby Fenalon, the mother of an autistic child who attends a charter school: “My child goes to charter school but charter schools are not the answer. Whatever you did to make the charters successful, do for these teachers and students.”

7:17 p.m. The treasurer of the Citywide Council on High Schools, a Nigerian immigrant, is the first person to speak out in favor of closing the schools. He is booed.

7:15 p.m. Anna just sent another installment from the puppet conversation:

Puppet 1: Education puppet, did you visit the schools?
Puppet 2: “I don’t go there, my kids go to private school.”
Puppet 1: “Education puppet, did you go to the schools and listen to the parents and students and teachers?”
Puppet 2: “Listen? No no no, I am much too busy on my Blackberry.”
Puppet 1: “Education puppet, do you really feel you’re qualified to take this vote tonight?”

And then the microphone was turned off.

7:09 p.m. Here’s a conversation that just took place between two sock puppets, manned by CEC 1′s Lisa Donlan and Jane Hirschmann, the head of Time Out From Testing. “We thought if we were going to come to a puppet show we might as well bring our own,” said Donlan, referring to the PEP’s record as a rubber stamp for the mayor’s policies.

Puppet 1: “Hi everybody, I’m a parent.”
Puppet 2: “I’m a puppet from the panel of education policy.”
Puppet 1: “Education puppet, did you actually read all the written testimony?”
Puppet 2: “Read? I’m a puppet, I don’t read!”

6:55 p.m. Comparing this meeting to some of the public hearings about school closures she attended earlier this month, Anna says tonight is turning out to be more orderly, perhaps because there are more adults and fewer students.

Presidents of 11 of the 32 CECs are gearing up to speak, including Lisa Donlan and her sock puppet.

6:43 p.m. The president of the Community Education Council for District 1, Lisa Donlan, who is wearing a sock puppet on one hand, says CEC representatives were allowed to sign up as elected officials rather than parents, so they’ll get to speak first. According to DOE spokeswoman, Ann Forte, 320 people have signed up to speak, and they’re all going to get a chance. At two minutes a pop, that’s nearly six hours of public comment.

6:41 p.m. Michael Mulgrew is speaking now, and he’s making a threat. “My organization has been watching this process closely at each school,” he says to the panel. “If we feel that the provisions of the school governance law were not followed, I assure you and everyone in this audience that we’ll be seeing you court.” He gets a standing ovation.

6:34 p.m. Several state senators, including Eric Adams, Malcolm Smith, and John Sampson, have sent representatives to read statements into the record.

6:25 p.m. Bill de Blasio and Scott Stringer, the first two speakers, both called for the vote to be postponed. Stringer says his PEP appointee, Patrick Sullivan, has not received any of the information he requested about school closures. “This meeting looks good,” Stringer said. “It may feel good. I don’t believe it’s legal on the face of it.” Now the DOE has turned his microphone off, as it’s doing to all speakers who exceed their alloted time.

6:20 p.m. State Sen. Martin Dilan is speaking about PS 332 and Maxwell High School, two schools in his district that are on the chopping block tonight. “If the school is failing, why did you leave an administration in place for 7 years?” he asks about PS 332. Then he’s out of time. “This is a farce,” he says.

6:17 p.m. The first names called are Bill de Blasio and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, who released his testimony earlier tonight. It could be a while before teachers and parents get a chance to speak.

6:15 p.m. Speaker comment is starting now. Each speaker has two minutes, and the DOE brought a countdown clock. Half an hour ago, there were 100 people on the speaker list and 250 more waiting to sign up, according to a DOE spokesman, Daniel Kanner. The audience has been warned that anyone who is disruptive will be thrown out.

6:13 p.m. David Chang, a panel member since 2002, has just proposed that the panel skip straight to the school closing comment session.

6:11 p.m. “This is totally out of control,” Anna reports. The mention of Joel Klein’s name drew loud shouts and boos. Anna is sitting right next to the stage and can’t hear Klein, or anything else, over the yelling.

6:09 p.m. Chants from the audience are drowning out PEP secretary Michael Best’s attempt to call roll.

And now a banner has been draped from the auditorium’s second level. It reads, “Fund education, not war.” Earlier, a high school student, surveying the antiwar protesters scattered throughout the crowd told Anna, “The connections between stopping the war and this are simple.”

6:02 p.m. We’re in! Finally, Anna and Maura are starting to thaw out after being outside in the cold for two hours. Brooklyn Tech’s 3,500-seat auditorium is about half-full right now, they report.

5:55 p.m. GothamSchools has still not been allowed into the auditorium. The meeting is 5 minutes away.

5:51 p.m. Anna and Maura are standing behind Michael Mulgrew in line to get into Brooklyn Tech through the press entrance. Mass confusion is reigning: First the police officers wouldn’t let Mulgrew, Anna, or Maura inside without press IDs. Now Mulgrew is in but Anna and Maura are still shut out, and the meeting is supposed to start in 10 minutes.

Note to NYPD: Maybe now we’ll get the press IDs you’ve stonewalled us on for nearly a year?

5:47 p.m. Michael Mulgrew just closed out the protest with lots of fist-pumping. The closing song: Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.”

5:40 p.m. Anna says most of the people she’s meeting don’t actually have anything to do with the schools that could get closed tonight. Instead, they’re mostly teachers who think the DOE’s school closures have been arbitrary.

Says Angela Locantore, a first-year speech therapist from PS 14 on Staten Island: “I’m here because my school is similar to the schools being closed. They’re closing the neediest schools. We’re in Stapleton, we’ve got kids from projects, kids from homeless shelters.”

5:35 p.m. Here’s that line. Audience members are entering Brooklyn Tech on Elliott Place. The line to speak turns onto Dekalb. And the line just to get in and watch is stretching down the long block toward Lafayette.

The drumline is courtesy of Paul Robeson High School, whose future is likely to be decided tonight, Maura reports.

5:30 p.m. There’s some confusion about how to enter the building for the PEP meeting, which begins at 6 p.m. One police officer just told Maura that people who want to watch the proceedings but not speak could go straight in. But it turns out that the long line stretching out of the building and around the block is just to get in. Maura also reports that a school might have brought its drumline, judging from what she can hear.

5:24 p.m. Anna just spoke to a speech teacher from Automotive High School, a vocational school in Queens that isn’t among the proposed closures tonight but where teachers fear they could find itself on the chopping block soon. Janice Ellsworth, who joined the school last year after years working as a computer programmer, said about 20 teachers from Automotive are at the rally. “I was horrified” to see Automotive on the state’s newest list of failing schools, she said. “It’s just shocking. Our school is doing better every year. I heard we’re on the list based on statistics from several years ago.” Ellsworth said a quarter of students at Automotive require special education services.

5:18 p.m. Public Advocate Bill de Blasio is speaking now. “We need to slow down” on closing schools, he says, citing the report the Independent Budget Office released this week. He seems to be joining the chorus of people calling for a delay on the vote.

EBC High School for Public Service students rally against closing schools.

5:12 p.m. Maura reports that a busload of students from EBC High School for Public Service, a Bushwick high school that’s not under threat of closure tonight, just arrived with their teacher. “Instead of helping us they’re just making us all drop out,” says Andrea Galindo, 17. She says she doesn’t know students at the potentially closing schools but doesn’t want more Brooklyn schools to be phased out because overcrowding is already a problem.

5:10 p.m. There are a lot of officers from NYPD’s Community Affairs division in the street tonight, Anna reports. She says there’s also a lot of UFT bling on hand: hats, buttons, T-shirts, posters.

5:02 p.m. A busload of students from the School for Community Research and Learning, a small high school in the Bronx, has just arrived. The students have been invited onstage for a quick chant. And we hear that busloads of students are on their way from Columbus High School right now.

5 p.m. The city’s message for today: Not grassroots. They want the message out that the protest today is totally manufactured by the UFT.

Supporters cheer as UFT President Michael Mulgrew speaks.

4:55 p.m. After being introduced to the strains of what sounded like a power ballad, UFT President Michael Mulgrew is now addressing the crowd, flanked by the union\’s borough deputies. “The community is speaking and they’re saying you are wrong,” he said, addressing his words to the city. “There’s no other way to say it: You are wrong.”

Overheard in the crowd: “They have never had to hear from the community like they will tonight.”

4:50 p.m. Comptroller John Liu is speaking now. “We need to actually educate the kids and stop playing musical chairs,” he says. To lots of cheers, he pledges to audit the Department of Education’s school closure process. And he says there’s nothing wrong with big schools, which have been decimated under Mayor Bloomberg. Liu says he went to a school with 3,000 students. “I like to think I turned out okay,” he said. “It’s not size that matters; it’s investment of resources.”

4:45 p.m. Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz is speaking at the UFT rally. Reminding the crowd that he has instructed his PEP appointee to vote against the proposed school closures, Markowitz also says he’ll oppose the expansion of PAVE Academy, the controversial charter school in Red Hook, calling the situation there “a textbook example of how not to go about placing a charter in a district school.”

4:35 p.m. The UFT has a large turnout for a protest outside Brooklyn Tech, even bringing in a Jumbotron and parking it in the middle of the street, Anna reports. Protesters are wearing orange hats that say “UFT Marshall.”

The crowd on DeKalb Avenue rallying against the city's proposed closures of 19 schools.

]]> http://gothamschools.org/2010/01/26/brouhaha-in-brooklyn-live-blogging-the-peps-school-closure-vote/feed/ 42 http://gothamschools.org/2010/01/26/are-you-ready-to-rumble-pep-coverage-starts-now/ http://gothamschools.org/2010/01/26/are-you-ready-to-rumble-pep-coverage-starts-now/#comments Tue, 26 Jan 2010 21:20:10 +0000 Philissa Cramer http://gothamschools.org/?p=31678

Brooklyn Technical High School, via Flickr

We’re less than two hours from the start of the long-anticipated meeting of the city school board, known as the Panel for Educational Policy, to decide the outcome of 20 proposed school closures. We’re heading to Brooklyn Technical High School right now, where the meeting was moved following complaints about its Staten Island location, and will be providing to-the-minute updates from the scene.

Markowitz’s appointee, Gbubemi Okotieuro, is planning to introduce a resolution calling for the panel to delay its vote on school closures until the Department of Education publishes more information about the criteria it used in selecting the schools.

The resolution (below) would postpone the vote until Chancellor Joel Klein gives the Independent Budget Office the DOE’s phase-out criteria, as well as a description of efforts it made to turn the schools around. In Markowitz’s preferred scenario, the IBO would become an Advisory Committee on School Utilization to the PEP and the panel’s vote would be delayed by at least three months.

The IBO released a report on the proposed school closings yesterday that compared the schools slated for closure to others throughout the city. Generally, the analysis found that while the 20 schools are among the city’s lowest performing, they are not all the worst of the worst. The report also looked at overcrowding and demographics and determined that the schools the DOE wants to close did experience more overcrowding several years ago than other schools did and have greater concentrations of high needs students.

Markowitz has one of 13 votes on the panel, which is dominated by Mayor Bloomberg’s eight appointees, but he already has the support of other borough appointees. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer has also called for the panel to delay its vote, as has Queens appointee Dmytro Fedkowskyj. Joining him today is the Queens delegation, though Borough President Helen Marshall is noticeably absent.

Markowitz’s resolution:

Resolution Regarding Significant Changes in School Utilization

WHEREAS, pursuant to Educational Law § 2590-g the Panel for Educational Policy has the power and duty to approve proposals for all school closures or significant changes in utilization including the phaseout, grade reconfiguration, re-siting, or co-location of schools; and

WHEREAS, the Chancellor recommends that the Panel for Educational Policy approve the phaseout of twenty schools listed in Appendix A, attached hereto; and

WHEREAS, the mandated Proposals for Significant Changes in School Utilization for each of the twenty schools listed in Appendix A use different sets of school closing criteria; and

WHEREAS, year-to-year comparisons of school Progress Reports have been rendered impossible due to changes in scale score cutoffs from 2007-08 to 2008-09; now therefore be it

RESOLVED, that the Panel for Educational Policy table the aforementioned twenty school phaseout resolutions until the Chancellor provides the Independent Budget Office with the phaseout criteria and description of  efforts to help these schools avoid closure, at least three months prior to requesting Panel for Educational Policy vote; and be it further

RESOLVED, that in accordance with Education Law Section § 402-a, the Independent Budget Office be appointed to serve as an Advisory Committee on School Utilization to the Panel for Educational Policy and provide a report analyzing the Chancellor’s recommendations according to the statutory factors including but not limited to whether these schools meet the requisite school closing criteria, whether they received the resources necessary to avoid closure, and the possible impact of such action on other schools.

(Number of speakers at each school's public hearing taken from DOE hearing transcripts.)

School-closing-season has thus far been loud and rowdy, but certain corners of the city have been louder than others.

Though howls of protest over the Department of Education’s plans to shutter 20 city schools have come from large community schools like Columbus and Jamaica High Schools, there are schools that could close with barely a whimper.

According to transcripts of the public hearings released by the Department of Education, most of the school closure hearings drew between 20 and 40 speakers. At many of the large high schools, the hearings drew hundreds of attendees and over 100 speakers to defend the schools.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is KAPPA II.  Although the middle school has the smallest enrollment of any of the schools slated for closure, only three people spoke at the public hearing on the plan to shutter the school (including a representative from the principals union who spoke at hearings throughout the city). No members of KAPPA’s School Leadership Team attended.

KAPPA II is the first school opened under the Bloomberg administration that the DOE has slated for closure. The school was opened in 2004 as part of the city’s shift towards small schools. But the school has struggled since it opened and has gone through five principals in its six years of operation. The school has also seen its test scores decline, and just 14 percent of its parents bothered to participate in the school’s Learning Environment Survey (the citywide average for participation is 45 percent).

According to transcripts of the school’s public hearing, a representative from the district’s parents council and a parent said that because of the high administrator and teacher turnover, the school had not been given enough support or time to turn itself around.

“We all know Rome wasn’t built in a day,” said the parent, Glenn Simmons. “And a school is like a child. You have to raise the child from the bottom up, but it takes adults to do that.”

John Elwell, the president of Replications, the school development organization that launched KAPPA II before it entered the Empowerment Network for school support, also attributed the school’s struggles to its high principal turnover and a lack of support.

The principal of the school, Sean Dunning, did not return phone calls.

Note: an earlier version of this post mentioned Norman Thomas High School as another with a disproportionately low number of speakers at its closing hearing. That information was drawn from hearing transcripts posted on the DOE website that we later realized, though labeled for Norman Thomas, were in fact transcripts of a hearing at a much smaller school.