GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Klein ordered principals to cut their budgets by 1 percent. (GothamSchools, Daily News, NY1)
• Paterson wants to abolish the state cap on charter schools. (GothamSchools, Daily News, Post, Times)
• Harlem Success Academy II is set to leave P.S. 123 and move into P.S. 30. (GothamSchools, Daily News)
• Assemblyman Richard Brodsky predicted the MTA will back off its plan to cut student passes. (Post)
• Hundreds rallied to protest plans to close Jamaica High School. (NY1)
• Parents at the Bronx’s P.S. 106 disagree with the DOE’s assertion that their school is now mold-free. (Post)
• Parents at another Bronx school, P.S. 8, say a dangerous intersection puts their students at risk. (NY1)
• A Massachusetts bill will allow Boston to open charter schools without union approval. (Boston Globe)
• Schwarzenegger signed a bill designed to make California competitive for RttT. (L.A. Times)
• Minnesota charter schools are often housed in facilities that violate fire code. (Star Tribune)

• If many districts drop out after a state wins RttT money, the state’s plans will be in jeopardy.
• If much of a state’s RttT app is based on past accomplishments, are states like New York in trouble?
• The UFT will only fight the charter cap lift if it doesn’t get the restrictions on enrollment it wants.
• Students from India won the city’s “NYC Next Idea” competition for their business plan.
• District 2′s CEC has to choose between two rezoning options, weighing safety and proximity.
• Peter Murphy says if the UFT and NYSUT backed off, Paterson’s charter bill would pass quickly.
• Norm Scott has a write-up of last night’s closure hearing at Beach Channel High School.
• Ed in the Apple: Paterson may not like lobbyists, but they’re part of any democracy.
• A teacher recommends sending positive notes home to improve parent-teacher relations.
• And anytime money enters the classroom, even on field trips, things get complicated.

The Department of Education is proposing to bring one Harlem space war to a close by moving one of Eva Moskowitz’s charter schools to another building.

Under the proposal, to be released tomorrow, Harlem Success Academy II would move out of the building it currently shares with P.S. 123 and into the East Harlem building currently occupied by KAPPA II, one of the 20 schools the DOE plans to shutter.

The new proposal is likely to be greeted with cheers by parents and teachers at P.S. 123. Whether it will be embraced by P.S. 30 and P.S. 138, the two district schools that currently share their building with KAPPA II, is less clear.

Harlem Success Academy administrators were also not enthusiastic about the plan. Jenny Sedlis, spokeswoman for Success Charter Network, which operates the charter school, said the school considered its possible move a setback.

“The union has won this space war,” Sedlis said. (more…)

With roughly a week to go before the deadline to apply for Race to the Top funds, David Paterson proposed a bill he hopes will put New York State in a better position to win the $700 million grant.

The bill calls for eliminating the state’s charter cap, which currently limits the number of charter schools to 200, and offers several other proposals, many of which are deeply unpopular with the state teachers union. Among these is a proposal to move up the sunset date for a state law that bars the use of student test scores in teacher tenure decisions from June to January 15, four days before the grant application is due.

Two other proposals in the bill call for giving the Board of Regents the power to temporarily takeover failing school districts by appointing a “receiver” to oversee them, and giving the state Dormitory Authority the power to give charter schools money to build facilities. (more…)

Beach Channel UFT chapter leader David Pecorado spoke against the Department of Education's plan to close the high school, as parents, alumni and other teachers waited behind him to speak.

Parents, students, teachers and alumni of Beach Channel High School asked Department of Education officials last night not to close their school, arguing the phase-out would be arbitrary, unnecessary and devastating for the Rockaway Park community.

The crowd that turned out to Beach Channel’s auditorium for the public hearing on the DOE’s plan to shutter the school wasn’t huge, but it was energized. Audience members jeered at DOE officials, including Deputy Chancellor Kathleen Grimm, and speakers frequently ignored officials’ requests to limit their speeches to two minutes.

When senior Chris Petrillo approached the front of the auditorium, asking to give a presentation originally intended for Chancellor Joel Klein, Grimm initially asked him to wait until after a group of elected officials commented on the proposal. A chant grew in the audience: “Let the student speak.” Grimm ceded the floor.

Petrillo, who spent the evening of his 18th birthday at the meeting, proceeded to present a slide-show of reasons not to close the school, questions about the closure and photos depicting programs cut from the school during his time there.

“Why can’t the money being used to open up a new school be used to fix us?” Petrillo asked. (more…)

• Students and teachers at Jamaica HS say their school has promise, but the DOE has lost faith. (WNYC)
• Students at a L.I. middle school won a performance by teen singer Justin Bieber. (Post)
• The principal of a Queens high school has been fired for soliciting sex from students. (Daily News)
• James Merriman: a new charter study is “fresh proof” the charter cap must be lifted. (Post)
• The Buffalo school board refused to endorse the state’s RttT application. (Buffalo News)
• Massachusetts’ House of Reps passes a bill that will make it more competitive in RttT. (Globe)
• Gov. Deval Patrick writes that the bill is a “rescue mission” for students in the state. (Globe)
• More than half of public school students in the South are poor or members of minorities. (NY Times)
• Nicholas Kristof: Costa Ricans are the happiest people because they invested in schools. (NY Times)
• Schwarzenegger’s proposal to spend more on colleges than prisons faces tough opposition. (LA Times)

• Obama announced he will spend $250 million to train new math and science teachers.
• Room Eight says the UFT helped redirect class size reduction money and its lawsuit is a fraud.
• A former Queens high school principal is being accused of soliciting sex from his students.
• The popular principal of the Ethical Culture Fieldston School is leaving after only two years on the job.
• The UFT exaggerated the free and reduced price lunch gap in the South Bronx because of missing data.
• A new blog is satirizing schools’ focus on technology integration (via Robert Pondiscio).
• Jay Mathews thinks Obama ought to make a call and end the furloughs in Hawaii’s schools.
• Peter Murphy offers his own ideas to increase the number of special ed students in charter schools.
• As if the Jan. 26 PEP meeting wasn’t already impending chaos, the UFT will protest across the street.
• Edwize looks at how the schools that are slated to be closed have some of the most difficult students.
• Weingarten says union push-back to RttT is the fault of state governments taking too much control.
• Flypaper suggests NYS’s charter cap may be responsible for the city’s high-quality charters.
• Is “reprimanding” a teacher who proselytizes to students enough of a punishment?
• A teacher trying to improve a data sheet has to jump through bureaucratic hoops to get it approved.
• Sending your child to a public school doesn’t always mean the principal won’t know their name.
• Richard Blumenthal, a contender for Dodd’s seat in CT, is not a fan of NCLB.
• New Jersey is really scrambling to send in a RttT proposal and the teachers union isn’t happy.
• As part of Cleveland’s new school reform plan, a third of the city’s schools could be shuttered.
• And apparently it’s school closing season in Chicago, too.

Bowing to pressure from both internal and outside groups, the state has abruptly reversed a policy that banned charter schools from giving admissions preference to students who are not fluent in English.

On December 23, two days after I wrote about the New York State Education Department’s policy, state education officials informed the city’s Department of Education about the change in plan. The new policy, which will allow charter schools that want to focus on English Language Learners to give them preference in their admission lotteries, will directly and immediately affect one school: Inwood Academy for Leadership.

Initially, Inwood Academy’s principal Christina Hykes applied for a charter that would set aside 50 percent of the school’s seats for ELL students, creating two separate lotteries. But state officials told Hykes that only students “at risk of academic failure” could be singled out and given admissions preference. ELL students were not among these, officials said. (more…)