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Michael Mulgrew has won election to his first full three-year term as the president of the city’s teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers announced today.

Mulgrew was elected with 91 percent of the vote over James Eterno, a candidate from an opposition group within the union. UFT spokesman Dick Riley said the union was still waiting to hear the final vote tally, which will be released tomorrow.

Mulgrew, 44, became union president last year, when the UFT’s executive board appointed him to serve the remainder of then-president Randi Weingarten’s term after she left to run the national union. A relative newcomer to the union — only five years ago he was a high school teacher in Staten Island — Mulgrew became Weingarten’s designated successor after winning an internal run-off race she held.

UFT presidents typically win reelection by huge margins, but Mulgrew’s win is impressive even compared to his predecessors. In 1999, the first time former UFT president Randi Weingarten ran for office, she won with 74 percent of the vote. (more…)

City school officials are scouring the budget for ways to close a budget gap that could be as large as $600 million. But one realm is likely to escape their scrutiny: the city’s force of more than 5,000 school safety agents.

That’s because it’s not clear who controls the $300 million school safety budget, which is set for a $5 million increase next year. The Department of Education says the police department does, but the NYPD claims it just manages the funds the education department sends them.

City Council financial analysts laid this conflict out in a report presented to the council at a DOE budget hearing late last month. According to the report (pdf):

“The refusal of each agency involved in school safety to take accountability for the division’s budget does nothing to assure one that the school safety budget should be left untouched, while other key service areas should be cut.” (more…)

Mayor Bloomberg made the landmark decision to ban trans fats from city restaurants to protect the public’s health. He should take the same bold step of banning corn syrup from foods in our schools that don’t need to be sweetened.

If a student chooses a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich with chocolate milk for lunch (an option that is offered every day in our schools), he’ll essentially be eating corn syrup disguised as a meal. That’s because the wheat bread and buns served in our schools contain high-fructose corn syrup; the second ingredient in the peanut butter is dextrose (another form of corn syrup); the first ingredient in the jelly is corn syrup, not what you might expect, fruit; and the second ingredient in the chocolate milk is high-fructose corn syrup.

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• The city is planning a big boost in online classes, with 80 schools set to launch virtual programs. (Post)
• With their lotteries drawing near, charter schools are recruiting as many applicants as possible. (NY1)
• A plan to place schools in military space in the Bronx has hit some bumps. (Daily News, NY1)
• The Post says the DOE shouldn’t negotiate with a bus company whose owner pulled a gun during talks.
• The Daily News ridicules Randi Weingarten’s suggestion that newspapers helped doom NY’s RttT bid. 
• Ed Sec Arne Duncan and a predecessor outline Obama’s education law revamp plan. (Daily News)
• Young adults who “age out” of foster care are plagued by problems for years, a study shows. (Times)
• Some schools are modeling good behavior by cracking down on adult-to-adult bullying. (USA Today)
• The contract set to be approved in D.C will include a merit pay program and (Wall Street Journal)
• A new report suggests that students learning English have benefited from being tested more. (AP)
• The Obama Administration will give $350 million to states that revamp their testing programs. (AP)

• The New Teacher Project released its thoughts (pdf) on the lessons of Race to the Top’s first round.
• Here’s USDOE’s own analysis of why Delaware and Tennessee walked away Race to the Top winners.
• David Steiner says he plans to spend the next two months building union support for New York’s RttT app.
• D.C.’s new teachers contract will debut soon; $65 million in funds from Broad, Walton are paying for raises.
• Obama’s new budget trades guaranteed Reading is Fundamental funding with a contest for literacy dollars.
• The next round of Race to the Top will include a new “Race to the Common Test” subsection.
• Race to the Top judges paid close attention to high-priced line items in state’s applications.
• Mr. Talk argues that if seniority-based layoffs disappear, fewer people will want to become teachers.
• For-profit charter manager Victory Schools charges schools twice as much per pupil as non-profit CMOs.
• Chicago is launching a standardized test to gauge preschoolers’ readiness for kindergarten.
• In a new study, economist Eric Hanushek argues high turnover in tough schools may not be so bad.
• And on this Tuesday before the end of spring break, one teacher has the Sundays.

In part three of a rough guide to the upcoming teachers union elections, here’s a look at what happens tomorrow when the ballots are counted.

The ballots — or at least those belonging to the minority of teachers who vote in union elections — are in.

Due today to the American Arbitration Association, which oversees the city’s teachers union election, the ballots will be counted tomorrow and results should be in by the end of the day. The counting is set to take place in an unlikely setting: the Manhattan Skyline room at the Park Central Hotel.

Every election cycle, the AAA rents a hotel room and fills it with employees who run the thousands of ballots through scanners to count them. Hundreds of those votes are rejected for reasons that include casting conflicting votes (e.g. checking off a slate box and then also voting for individual candidates).

At 9 a.m. tomorrow, the counting of the valid ballots will begin in front of a live audience. Though the event is closed to the press, members of the UFT’s three caucuses — Unity, ICE/TJC, and New Action — are allowed to watch the counting. (more…)

My first year of teaching I used to get “the Sundays.”

The Sundays would strike early Sunday afternoon right around the time I knew that having another cup of coffee would affect my sleep, rendering me a grouch at school the next day. These afternoons were spent stuck in a mixture of anxiety and guilt: anxiety that I wasn’t prepared enough for the week as I could be, and guilt that I didn’t use my weekend more fully to get work done so that I was more prepared.  Ironically, one symptom of the Sundays is that you have a hard time falling asleep, because you keep thinking about the week ahead (as well as how you could have had that last cup of coffee anyway).

I’m now in my third year and so my Sundays are a lot milder (although I still limit the coffee intake). I’m a more efficient planner, and I have a better sense of what’s worth stressing over and what isn’t.

If you’re a teacher (and even if you’re not), you’ve probably experienced the Sundays. (more…)