New York State Capitol, photo via Flickr.

One consequence of the charter cap legislation passed in Albany today is clear: it’s now possible for 114 new charter schools to open in New York City over the next four years, more than doubling the number of charters and students in them. Statewide, the door is open for 260 new charter schools to open by 2014.

But the new law also includes a slew of changes to the way the schools are opened and run, leaving advocates, officials and observers with at least five big unanswered questions.

1. What’s the deal with the new Request for Proposals process?

Under the old charter school law, educators could ask to open charter schools simply by applying to do so. Now, prospective school leaders will have to formulate their applications as responses to Request for Proposals. These will be issued by both the Board of Regents and the State University of New York’s Charter School Institute.

Advocates and union officials today disagreed on exactly how the RFP’s will be used. One school of thought is that the RFP will be a tool for limiting charter school leaders’ freedom to open in a location of their choosing. Indeed, the law declares that operators that receive an endorsement of their school district will have a leg up in the RFP process. That could make it harder for operators to open schools in some upstate districts whose school boards strongly oppose charter schools. (Or imagine a less charter-happy mayor in New York. Mayor de Blasio?)

In an interview today, city teachers union President Michael Mulgrew said that the union plans to “advocate through the RFP.” He meant, he explained, that the UFT will lobby authorizers not to issue RFPs for schools in neighborhoods deemed overwhelmed with charter schools.

But charter school advocates said they aren’t concerned about the RFP process. Beyond creating more bureaucratic hurdles for authorizers and new charter schools, they said, the process will not significantly change how authorizers determine which schools should open. “The difference may appear larger than it actually is,” said James Merriman, head of the New York City Charter School Center.

2. Can the New York City schools chancellor continue to authorize charter schools?

Until today, the city Department of Education’s charter school office played a similar role to SUNY: It accepted applications for new charter schools, reviewed and approved them, and then passed the applications on to the Board of Regents for final approval. The city acted as the main authorizer for those schools, monitoring the schools and shutting them down for poor performance.

Under the new law, the schools chancellor can still recommend charter school applications to the Regents — and now can also recommend schools to SUNY for approval. And that recommendation matters to some degree: The rubric authorizers must use to evaluate applications gives preference for schools with a district endorsement. But it’s unclear whether the city will retain the power to oversee and shut down failing charters.

John White, a deputy chancellor for the city, noted that the law still names the chancellor as one of the state’s three “charter entities” who legally have power to oversee schools.

But Jonas Chartock, the head of SUNY’s Charter School Institute, said that his reading of the law suggests that his center will retain the ultimate oversight over schools it authorizes.

“To me, it’s not exactly clear,” said Merriman. “A reading of the bill would allow either interpretation at this point. It’s something that I think we have to see how counsel for the various parties…view that.”

3. How does the law force charter schools to accept more English language learners and special education students?

The law requires that charter schools maintain a certain number of English language learners and special education students over time. Schools are supposed to hit targets for both student enrollment and student retention that match neighborhood schools. Here’s what the law says authorizers have to make sure of:

THAT SUCH
   37  ENROLLMENT TARGETS ARE COMPARABLE TO  THE  ENROLLMENT  FIGURES  OF  SUCH
   38  CATEGORIES  OF  STUDENTS  ATTENDING THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS WITHIN THE SCHOOL
   39  DISTRICT, OR IN A CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT IN A CITY HAVING A POPULATION  OF
   40  ONE MILLION OR MORE INHABITANTS, THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT, IN WHICH
   41  THE  PROPOSED  CHARTER  SCHOOL  WOULD  BE  LOCATED;  AND  (2)  THAT SUCH
   42  RETENTION TARGETS ARE COMPARABLE TO THE RATE OF RETENTION OF SUCH  CATE-
   43  GORIES  OF  STUDENTS  ATTENDING  THE  PUBLIC  SCHOOLS  WITHIN THE SCHOOL
   44  DISTRICT, OR IN A CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT IN A CITY HAVING A POPULATION  OF
   45  ONE MILLION OR MORE INHABITANTS, THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT, IN WHICH
   46  THE PROPOSED CHARTER SCHOOL WOULD BE LOCATED; AND

But it’s not clear how that requirement will be enforced. Among other implementation problems is data-keeping. “SUNY’s going to need access to data we’ve never been able to obtain,” Chartock said.

4. Does the law change relationships between charter schools and district schools that share space?

The new law creates a “building council” to coordinate collaboration between schools housed together. Right now, co-located schools have building councils that include only principals from each school. The new councils will include principals, teachers and parents from each school in a building.

The council does not have the power to veto the city’s co-location plans. But it will be able to draw public attention to the plans. And public attention isn’t without its own kind of power: The new mayoral control law created public hearings when schools were recommended for closure. The hearings created quite a firestorm and arguably played a role in the recent court decision overturning city-enforced school closures.

5. Where does the money come from?

The increased bureaucracy and oversight required by the new law will require resources. Given the state’s doomsday fiscal climate, it’s unclear where that money will come from. Already SUNY’s Charter School Institute, which will see the number of charters it oversees double, is facing a proposed 70 percent funding reduction under budgets proposed by both the Senate and the Assembly.

The law also includes a provision requiring that any improvements to a charter school facility worth more than $5,000 must be matched in the district schools that share its building. The measure was widely praised on all sides as a way to assure equity between charter and district school students.

“But I want to be very, very clear,” Merriman said. “We do expect that the mayor and the chancellor step up and meet their commitment to provide such funding so that charters and district school students attend school in equal and high quality facilities.”

“I now hope that the entire legislature and the governor we can focus all of our energies on getting a budget that will have major education restorations,” said union president Michael Mulgrew in a phone interview today.

Both union and city officials are hoping that lawmakers will iron out a budget deal over the long weekend that will prevent them from having to lay off 4,400 teachers. Public school principals are expecting to have budgets next Tuesday and if the economic forecast does not change by then, layoff announcements could shortly follow.

The UFT’s ad, which will run throughout Memorial Day weekend, will air on radio stations WCBS, WINS, WBLS, WKTU, WSKQ and WPAT.

The full script of the ad is below the jump:

UFT  — “Pomp and Circumstance” – 60 second radio -

SFX:  Pomp and Circumstance.

ANNCR:  Graduation.  It’s a time of celebration….and hope.  But this year, looming budget gaps threaten our children’s future.

SFX:  Music turns dark and sad.

Some politicians in Albany and New York City want to cut more than $1.4 billion from our public schools. And that’ll mean overcrowded classrooms, an end to tutoring and after-school programs, and the loss of thousands of great teachers and school staff.

Yes, times are tough.  But our kids shouldn’t have to pay the price for a budget crisis they didn’t create.  It’s up to our leaders to protect our children’s education by cutting government waste and asking the wealthiest to pay their fair share.

SFX:  Music turns hopeful.

Our kids don’t get a second chance.  They need good schools, good teachers and leaders who stand up for them.

Go to protectingourkids.org.  Join with parents, teachers and community members.  Tell the legislature and City Hall to stop the budget cuts and save our public schools, now.

Paid for by the United Federation of Teachers, Michael Mulgrew, President.

To figure out the answer, I looked at NY State Accountability Report Cards, the Special Education Service Delivery Report for P.S. 149, as well as special education invoices provided to the UFT by the New York State Education Department. I chose these data sets because they seemed to be the most reliable and the most comparable. By “comparable” I mean that both Harlem Success and P.S. 149 have to submit to the state as part of their Accountability Report Cards data on students who receive free or reduced price lunch (an indicator of economic need), whereas, for instance, only P.S. 149 lists something known as the poverty rate (which is slightly different.)

According to this data, Harlem Success Academy does appear to serve fewer needy students, both in terms of economic status, limited English proficiency, and special education needs.  On the other hand, Harlem Success dramatically outperforms P.S. 149 on 3rd grade test results.

For a more comprehensive evaluation, the tables below compare 2008-2009 demographic data and 2008-2009 3^rd grade state test scores. (Harlem Success only had this one testable grade.) The second table compares test scores overall and the third table looks at test scores broken down by subgroups like economic need and special education status.

DEMOGRAPHIC DATA:

3^rd GRADE TEST DATA: ALL STUDENTS

3^rd GRADE TEST DATA: SUBGROUPS*

The vote was 45 to 14, with a handful of senators who had been vocal opponents of charter schools swinging to the pro-charter side. Among them was Senator Bill Perkins, whose Harlem district is home to one in five of the city’s charter schools, and who is facing a primary against a candidate put up by charter school supporters.

Opposition to the bill came from Senate Republicans, who opposed a provision in the bill that bans more for-profit charter schools from opening.

The no votes (via Liz Benjamin) were: Farley, Flanagan, Golden, Griffo, O. Johnson, Larkin, Lavalle, Libous, Maziarz, McDonald, Nozzolio, Padavan, Saland, Young.

With both the union and charter school supporters declaring victory, let the spin begin.

The deal, hammered out in negotiations that lasted into the early morning, raises the cap on charters from 200 to 460. But charter operators hoping to open new schools will have to jump through a new hurdle, a new Request for Proposals process managed by the Regents and the State University of New York charter authorizers.

The bill includes several measures dear to charter school critics. It bans for-profit charter operators from managing schools, allows the state controller to audit the schools, and creates new regulations around how the schools serve special education students and English language learners. And the bill sets up new rules that govern how New York City charters share building space with district schools.

The bill includes one change from the version of the bill that was being circulated this morning. The Assembly passed a chapter amendment that clarifies that SUNY can act as an authorizer independently from the Regents.

The bill now heads to the Senate, where sources tell us that Democratic Conference Leader John Sampson is ready to vote the bill up. But Republicans are holding up the bill because they oppose its prohibition of for-profit charter operators.

Many of the key players in the debate, including authorizers, are just seeing the legislation in detail for the first time this morning. Lots of questions, including exactly how the RFP process will work and how the bill will affect where charters will be able to open, should become clearer over the course of the day.

The full press release from Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s office is below. The full text of the bill that just passed is here.

ASSEMBLY APPROVES SWEEPING EDUCATION REFORMS TO SUPPORT NEW YORK STATE’S APPLICATION FOR RACE TO THE TOP FUNDING

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Education Committee Chair Catherine Nolan today announced the passage of legislation to reform the state’s charter school system.

The legislation (A.11310) would raise the cap on charter schools from 200 to 460, helping to ensure that New York State will have one of the nation’s most competitive applications for federal funding under the Race to the Top (RTTT) grant program in time for the June 1 deadline. This measure, in conjunction with a strong teacher evaluation system authorized earlier in the week and funding for long-term assessment of student achievement, will help ensure that New York State receives maximum RTTT funding.

“These sweeping reforms will help put an end to divisive fighting over school space and give a meaningful voice in the process to traditional public school parents,” said Silver (D-Manhattan). “The legislation also increases transparency by giving the State Comptroller auditing power over charter schools, while ensuring that they enroll and retain children with special needs. This measure will undoubtedly encourage the creation of more successful charter schools in New York State.”

“This bill will allow New York State to submit a competitive application for federal Race to the Top funding and increase our chances at receiving up to $700 million for our schools,” said Nolan (D-Queens). “I would like to thank New York State Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch, New York State Education Commissioner David Steiner and Senior Deputy Commissioner John King for their leadership, cooperation and hard work.”

The legislation creates a new request for proposals process for the creation of 260 new charter schools. The new system favors applications which best respond to certain Race to the Top objectives such as increasing high school graduation rates and addressing student achievement gaps in reading/language arts and mathematics. Requests for proposals for new charter schools would be issued by the Board of Regents and SUNY trustees after undergoing a public review process.

In addition, the legislation would:

• Institute a four-year period over which the 260 new charter schools would be created;

• Prohibit for-profit organizations from operating or managing any new charter schools;

• Ensure that charter schools serve more children with disabilities, English language learners and free- and reduced-price lunch program participants;

• Require the chancellor to develop building usage plans for fair allocation and usage of space;

• Require matching capital improvements to the traditional public school portion of a building when such an improvement is made in excess of $5,000 to the co-located charter school;

• Authorize the State Comptroller to audit charter schools at his or her discretion; and

• Increase accountability by new disclosure and ethics provisions.

The Assembly also passed legislation today that would provide financial support for a state longitudinal data system to measure long-term student achievement (A.11309). Earlier this week, the Assembly passed legislation enhancing the statewide evaluation system for teachers and principals (A.11171).

Since last year she’s moved to a new neighborhood that requires her to travel almost an hour to school each day. Her sister told me she’s often late, because she doesn’t want to get going in the morning. When I asked about her plans for next year, I hoped she would list one of the better middle schools available in the Bronx or even Manhattan. Sadly, her mom forgot to fill out the applications, so she doesn’t know where she will be next year.

When I decided to teach, it was based on a cliched, middle-class, white liberal “save the children” fantasy. While my expectations of teaching have been tempered over the past three years by reality, my hopes for my students remain ever-lofty and idealistic, if not naive. It’s hard losing touch with my former students and wondering what will become of them. In the case of truly extraordinary students like the girl on the train, the hopes are all the more elevated.

It’s tough to think a girl as innately talented as my former student might get lost in the shuffle in middle school, without having a chance to really challenge herself. I hope that even if she doesn’t get to attend a top middle school, she’ll come across some teachers who help her tap into her potential and fight through the challenges of her circumstances. I hope she’ll take me up on the offer to help her in any way if I can. If she doesn’t, then I hope I still run into her again someday.

That’s probably unlikely though. I guess that’s one of the tough parts of teaching. You don’t get to help your students for more than one or two years. After that all you can do is hope for the best and trust that your colleagues will pick up where you left off.

The full text of the bill in the most updated form we know of is here. Background on Race to the Top is here.

This bill would raise the cap on charter schools to 460 from 200, but change the way schools are opened. Prospective charter school operators would have to respond to Request for Proposal documents, like contractors, rather than applying on their own. Exactly how this process would work is unclear, but one effect could be slowing the pace of charter school growth. The bill puts a cap on the number of newly approved charter schools that could open by September 2011 — 32.

The deal also aims to ease the tensions (and sometimes all-out wars) that have happened when charter schools are placed inside traditional public school buildings. Now, before schools are placed together, the city’s Department of Education would have to write up a new document called a “building usage plan” outlining exactly which rooms would be used by which schools, and proposing how the schools can share common spaces like cafeterias, libraries, playgrounds, and auditoriums.

The two schools would also have to set up a “shared space committee” — comprised of representatives from each school — to make sure they follow the plan. As far as I can tell, though, in this version of a deal charter school critics lost their battle for parents at the traditional public school get a say in whether or not charter schools can move into their buildings.

Finally, the bill as it’s now written explicitly allows the state comptroller to audit charter schools. It also ramps up regulations forcing charter schools to reach demographic targets that match nearby public schools. That means that charter schools would be expected to have similar numbers of special education students, students still learning English, and students eligible for free lunch because of family poverty.

In order to be eligible for any grant funds that the state might win, school districts, charter schools and unions are required to submit a Memorandum of Understanding agreeing to participate in programs proposed by the state’s application. This round’s deadline to sign onto the application is 5 p.m. tomorrow.

In the first round, the MOU listed individual tenets of the state’s Race to the Top plan and allowed districts to choose a la carte which provisions they supported. The teachers union agreed only to provisions that would not require a change to its contract. Though the state claimed to have the full support of the city union, Race to the Top judges said that the qualified agreement would hurt the state’s ability to enact its plan. (You can read more about the state’s failed first-round application here.)

This round’s MOU is an all-or-nothing deal — districts, schools and unions must agree to everything in the state’s plan or not sign on at all. That won’t be a problem if union and city negotiators hash out a deal tonight to raise the charter cap and smooth the way for full passage of the teacher evaluation deal struck by the state and union earlier this month.

But if a deal falls apart, the city and union will be forced to choose whether to sign onto the application anyway. In the first round, the city unsuccessfully tried to use its MOU signature as a bargaining chip to pressure legislators into lifting the charter school cap.

A copy of the current MOU, as well as the state’s “Frequently Asked Questions” document about it, is below the jump:

Quick reminder: That would mean that the state’s cap on the number of charter schools allowed to open would rise to 460 from 200, and the teacher evaluation deal worked out by state officials and the union would become law. In return, New York might rake in $700 million in federal grants.

Then again, the deal might not come today at all. When asked what he meant by a note telling us that a deal could come “tonight,” Assemblyman Sam Hoyt of Buffalo sent the following Blackberry reply:

Lol. It is conceivable that tonight could be midnight or 10 a.m. Tmrw.

Nobody’s talking about exact sticking points in negotiations, which are mainly between Mayor Bloomberg (who enjoys support in the state Senate) and the city teachers union (which enjoys support in the Assembly). But presumably they’re similar to the ones raised in the last week of back-door negotiations. For more background on what Race to the Top is, read this.

Liz Benjamin has more on the details of when the Assembly and the Senate will actually do this (late tonight and tomorrow, respectively).

The emergency funds are folded into a larger spending bill that the House Appropriations Committee was scheduled to vote on this afternoon, but the vote was postponed. The measure has had a rocky start after its sponsor, Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, couldn’t find enough support in the Senate to introduce it there. Wisconsin Democrat David Obey then announced he would introduce a version of the measure in the House.

If Obey’s measure passes the House — which is not certain — its passage through the Senate becomes far more likely, as senators will be unable to amend it without voting the whole bill down.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has been pushing the legislation aggressively, both in Washington and at local stops like the one he made in New York last week. At a City Council hearing on the Department of Education’s budget earlier this week, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein said that if the bill is passed, $400 million would fund New York City teaching jobs and help plug the department’s anticipated $750 million budget gap.

Plans to stage a walkout (read a history of student walkouts) began with a high school sophomore who realized that her school’s newest teachers — and in her opinion, the most effective — could be laid off. Add that to classes packed with 35 students, not enough textbooks, and no air conditioning, and you have the catalyst for a Facebook group: New York City Public High School Walk Out!

Almost 3,000 students have said they plan to walk out of their high schools at 10 a.m. and stage a protest in Union Square. The boycott’s organizer, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of angering her school’s administration, said some teachers had advised her to cancel the protest.

“It’s mainly the teachers with seniority that will stay in the schools,” she said. “The younger ones are all like, ‘Do it, do it.’”

Check out the group’s comments section, where you’ll see every possible reaction a student could have to the suggestion that he or she skip a few hours of school. I have finals, says one student, “and this will most likely do nothing.”

“Guys seriously we have to let ourselves be heard,” counters another student. “It might not seem worth it but dont complain later on about the conditions if your not willing to do anything about it.”

Other comments taken from Facebook:

Among thought pieces by Diane Ravitch, Linda Darling-Hammond, Noguera, and Susan Eaton are three reported dispatches from our own Philissa Cramer.

Her story is under the headline “Bright Ideas.” One idea is the city’s new iZone, where one innovator says of his efforts:

“We’re not trying to replace the teacher,” Ben-Dov says. “We’re trying to empower her…. Our belief is that computers can help the teacher do her job better.”

The magazine also includes a piece by David L. Kirp profiling community schools run by Children’s Aid — right here in New York.

That leaves tomorrow and Friday for lawmakers to figure out a way to boost the state’s chances in the Race to the Top competition — without throwing away their concerns with charter schools. The final deadline for submitting an application is June 1, next Tuesday. Lawmakers have Monday off for Memorial Day.

As the deadline nears, a standoff is developing between the state Senate and the Assembly. Each chamber has passed its own legislation tied to Race to the Top: The state Senate already passed a bill that would raise the cap on charter schools to 460 from 200. And yesterday the Assembly passed legislation to build a new teacher evaluation system.

The Senate could easily sign on to the teacher evaluation legislation and make it law. But we’re hearing that some senators might not sign off so easily. The idea is to prevent Assembly members from taking an easy way out by passing a teacher evaluation bill, but no new charter school laws. Then the Assembly could say something like, “Well, we did at least one thing to help our state’s schools win the contest!”

To prevent that, some senators, we hear, might threaten to treat the two bills as a package. They’ll either pass the charter cap and teacher evaluation along with the Assembly, or they’ll do nothing at all.

That would make the Assembly members look like the ones standing between New York children and the $700 million the state could win in the federal competition. Which is not what Assembly members want. This, at least, is the calculation charter school supporters are making.

“If it is the state Assembly that the finger is pointed at for failing to pass a bill, it would be a public relations disaster,” Assemblyman Sam Hoyt of Buffalo, a staunch charter school supporter, told me today. “And you know at a time when we’re all facing tough elections, there’s already an anti-incumbent, anti-government mood … I think that all involved know that if it doesn’t get done and the Assembly is blamed, it’s not going to look good for our house or our conference.”

George Banning canvasses for charter school advocates in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

As next week’s Race to the Top deadline approaches, pro-charter advocates are marshaling all their resources to lift the state’s cap on charter schools. George Banning is one of their foot soldiers.

It’s been hard to miss the advocacy group Education Reform Now’s pro-charter, anti-teachers union ad blitz. The group, backed by millions of dollars raised largely from hedge fund managers, spent $750,000 on a television ad buy last week, for example. Its web ads plaster Google, Facebook and news websites.

But the group is also trying to rally support for its efforts in Albany by sending roughly 40 canvassers like Banning literally to voters’ doorsteps.

To persuade lawmakers to support their issues — many of which clash with the powerful teachers union — Education Reform Now has to argue that its positions enjoy a groundswell of public support. But the true extent of public support for its position is unclear. The last independent poll that asked found that more than 60 percent of New Yorkers wanted more charters, but that was in March 2009. A recent poll reported that public support for Chancellor Joel Klein, a charter school cheerleader, is declining.

And so one afternoon last week, Banning hit the streets of the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn armed with postcards and petitions addressed to the neighborhood’s assemblyman and senator. On a clipboard, Banning carried a list of names and addresses of registered voters.

Face of the campaign

Banning is a tall man in his early 30s with a posture that gives away his history as a dance graduate of LaGuardia High School. After an injury, he gave up his dancing career, got an undergraduate degree in biology and is headed to medical school this fall. He got this job through connections made as a canvasser for Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s reelection campaign, and goes out canvassing five afternoons a week.

Each of the postcards Banning carried asked lawmakers to vote “yes” on a measure that would more than double the number of charters allowed in the state. Banning, who has canvassed in all the city’s borough’s except Staten Island, is also hoping to build support for an effort to do away with the city’s seniority-based layoff system.

George Banning in Crown Heights, Brooklyn

The day I tagged along, Banning was covering friendly territory. Crown Heights’ Assemblyman, Karim Camara, introduced the cap lift bill that Education Reform Now supports and that the Senate already passed earlier this month. Banning also happened that day to be canvassing the neighborhood where he grew up; his elementary school, P.S. 161, was a few blocks away. (One man mentioned that his mother-in-law had taught there for many years. “Mrs. Alexis?” Banning replied excitedly. “I know her.”)

The roughly 15 voters who opened their doors for Banning in Crown Heights in a three-and-a-half hour canvassing shift are clearly not a representative sample. But their responses to Banning’s pitch suggest that at the very least, the lobby’s public relations campaign has succeeded in capturing attention, if not creating deep knowledge of the issue.

Banning’s script typically went like this: First, he introduced himself as a representative of a pro-charter advocacy group and assured that no, he was not with the census. Banning then asked if the person knew that New York had lost $700 million because state lawmakers had not lifted the cap on charter schools.

Responses varied:

— “I saw the commercials, but I don’t know the politics of it.”
— (Blank stare.)
— “Is that what they were showing ads for on the TV?”
—”Mayor Bloomberg came to my church Sunday talking about this, so what the heck!”
— “What does Karim think of this?”
— “Is this that $700 million thing?”

Making the pitch

For some of Ed Reform Now’s canvassers, it’s just a job, Banning told me, but he’s a true believer. Banning is the father of a student at Excellence Charter School and has a personable, persuasive manner as he explains that he thinks all parents deserve strong public school choices, including charter schools, for their children.

He convinced most voters he encountered to sign their names and addresses to pro-charter school postcards with relative ease, often arguing that doing so would help the state secure the $700 million Race to the Top funds state officials argue New York’s schools desperately need. “Anything for the kids,” several people said as they signed without asking questions.

Not everyone was so amiable. “So we’re going to sell ourselves to Washington for this?” asked one man, suspicious of the federal government’s push to dangle funds as a way of influencing state educational policy. He took a flier but did not sign.

If he secured a signature on a pro-charter school postcard, Banning moved to stage two. “Also, have you heard about the crisis in Albany with budget cuts?” he asked. (“Which one?” one woman deadpanned.) Around 6,400 teachers face layoffs, he explained. “That’s really sad,” he said, “and what’s more sad is that they’re going to fire first the teachers who have been hired most recently.”

“Do you think that’s fair?” he asked.

“I’m on the fence about this,” responded Ann Rollins Boyd, the mother of a P.S. 161 student who had signed Banning’s charter school postcard. “In the corporate sector when they downsize, that’s how they do it, too.” Banning pushed, and Boyd eventually assented that she thought there should be a way to pinpoint the best teachers and spare them. She signed the petition.

At one house with day care signs in the window and mail from the national teachers union peeking out of the mailbox, Banning got a surprising answer. “No, I don’t think that’s fair,” said the middle-aged teacher who answered the door. “I’m not supposed to sign this, but I’m going to,” she said.

Jason Hayes, left, and George Banning debate charter schools and seniority-based layoffs.

The last visit of Banning’s run was also the only one where Banning encountered serious opposition. “This, to me, is a jaded issue,” said Jason Hayes, a filmmaker and former teacher. “If you’re giving people a choice between a charter school that’s extremely well funded and a public school that’s extremely underfunded, what kind of a choice is that?”

Banning spent the next 20 minutes trying to convince Hayes that charter schools don’t weed out students and are not a form of privatizing public education, and that the push against seniority-based layoffs is not a union-busting strategy. It didn’t work. “At the end of the day, this campaign for me is not about educating kids in the best possible way,” Hayes concluded.

But Hayes’ opposition won’t show up in Education Reform Now’s records. Later on the train, as Banning tallied all of the responses he’d received on a scale of 1 (signed a petition) to 5 (extremely opposed), I noticed that he didn’t include Hayes at all. He wasn’t the registered voter at that address and so wouldn’t be counted, Banning explained.

I asked how Banning would have rated Hayes if he had been the voter at that house. To my surprise, Banning told me he would rate Hayes as a 3.

He seemed pretty opposed, I said.

“He took some literature,” Banning said optimistically. “And he said he’d think about it. Maybe he’ll change his mind.”

In just four weeks (Jan. 15-Feb. 12, at peak winter energy use), PS 166 reduced its energy consumption by 17.75 percent.  ”The school saved $1,845 on its electricity bill (15,380 kilowatt hours) and prevented 20,609 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) from being released into the environment,” according to Ozgem Omektekin, the Department of Education’s director of sustainability. Katy Perry, the competition’s program director, used a carbon calculator to assess PS 166′s impact, and she found that PS 166′s energy saving was equal to taking two cars off the road for one year, planting 10 trees or replacing 374 incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent ones. And the school accomplished all this in just four weeks!

What extreme measures did PS 166 take to win? As it turns out, none. They posted signs reminding everyone to turn off unnecessary lights, to set thermostats to 68 degrees Fahrenheit, to power down computers, and to close windows and doors. Custodial staff turned off heat and boilers at night.

Although no extreme measures were taken, a little vigilance and visual incentives were required. A Green Team composed of parents, science teachers, and fifth-grade “Climate Captains” walked through the school every Wednesday to make sure community members were doing their part. Parents and teachers received weekly communiqués about the school’s progress. And a large 3-D “Powerometer” was displayed in the school lobby to show whether meter readings were going up or down.

Perhaps more important than reducing energy consumption by nearly 18 percent, the kids learned about the impact their behavior has on the environment. Emily Fano, co-chair of PS 166′s Green Committee and the school’s Green Cup Challenge coordinator, said she received numerous emails from fellow parents who said their children were now turning off lights at home. Imagine if the 1,600 public schools in New York City took the Green Cup Challenge and reduced their energy consumption by nearly 20 percent. Think of the numbers of trees we would be planting or cars we would be removing from the road.

We hope educators and parents will be inspired by PS 166′s example and take the simple steps listed above to reduce their energy consumption. But relying on people’s altruism is not quite the same as instituting a policy that will guarantee success. We discovered that the Department of Citywide Administrative Services pays the utility bills for the New York City public schools. We’d like to propose a policy whereby the money a school saves on its electric bills is given to the school. Such a policy would not only give schools a huge incentive to reduce their energy consumption, it would also give our city schools money they need at a time of severe budget cuts. Opportunities to raise money for our schools that do not cost our government anything which also help to fight global warming are few and far between. The mayor should seize this idea and make it happen.