GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• A court upheld an earlier ruling barring the city from closing 19 “failing” schools. (WNYC, Times)
• Obama threatens to veto the edujobs bill if it cuts his education initiatives. (Edweek)
• Weingarten says the president’s “pet projects” shouldn’t be immune to budget cuts. (Edweek)
• Talk of cuts to Race to the Top is making some state officials very worried. (Edweek)
• If we make cuts to save teacher jobs now, we’ll have to make even deeper cuts next year. (Eduwonk)
• Jonathan Chait looks at how the left and right are reacting to education cuts. (The New Republic)
• Valerie Strauss asks how Rhee can see the problem with turnover, then threaten to leave. (WaPo)
• Early education advocates believe the school turnaround craze misses the point. (Early Ed Watch)
• On her last day on the job Chicago’s teachers union president talks school funding. (Fox)
• Brazil might beat the Netherlands in futbol, but what about in the classroom? (Flypaper)

The city has no plans to fight an appellate court ruling that will keep open 19 schools marked for closure, Chancellor Joel Klein said today. But it does plan to open new schools in the same buildings.

That’s despite the fact that the same closure proposals that judges deemed inadequate were also used to justify opening 17 new schools in those buildings.

Whenever the city wants to shut down a school or make several schools share the same building space, state law requires city officials to prepare “educational impact statements” (or EIS’s) that examine how the changes will affect students and the surrounding community. The EIS’s that the citywide school board approved in January included, in the same documents, both the plans to close the 19 schools and replace many of them starting next year.

Today, five appellate court judges unanimously ordered the city to reissue those EIS’s with more detail than what the court called “boilerplate information about seat availability.”

But Department of Education officials said today that ruling does not mean the city has to re-start the public approval process to co-locate the new schools in the buildings where they had planned to shut schools down. “The court’s decision relates to the phase-out of failing schools, not the siting of new schools,” said DOE spokesman Danny Kanner. (more…)

If Joel Klein handed over the reins of the Department of Education to its top graduates, we’d soon see stronger arts offerings, less tracking, and an end to the policy of assigning schools a letter grade.

The suggestions came from a panel of students who won scholarships available at schools managed by the nonprofit New Visions. Asked what they would do if they became chancellor, the students, and a few of their teachers, offered this advice:

“You should totally let us have cell phones in school,” said Karina Melendez, the cancer survivor who aspires to the Supreme Court. But then she got serious, saying she’d do away with the letter grades that schools are assigned annually. (more…)

As the city’s investigation into grade tampering by a high school principal enters its second year, morale at the school has taken a turn for the worse.

A majority of teachers at Herbert Lehman High School who took the city’s annual survey said they don’t trust the school’s executive principal Janet Saraceno. And 81 percent said the principal is not an effective manager.

Results from the survey of teachers, students, and parents also show that in the “safety and respect” category, Lehman is getting poor marks. In total, 23 percent of the school’s teachers and 63 percent of students took the survey, which is below the city’s average participation rates.

Lehman has struggled with student safety this year and is likely to have full-time scanners installed by next fall. While most teachers said they feel safe at the school, a majority also said that crime, violence, and gang activity are a problem.

After I reported on teachers’ complaints that Lehman’s principal was changing students’ grades, Department of Education officials responded by threatening to investigate the teachers. Since then, teachers report that the DOE has not contacted them, nor has the Office of Special Investigations, which is tasked with following up on complaints. (more…)

For the second time, the city’s attempt to close 19 schools has been foiled by the courts.

Five appellate court judges unanimously upheld a lower court ruling today that voided the city’s attempt to shut down the schools. The ruling means that the city will have to re-start the lengthy and arduous process to shutter the schools next year, when the city had hoped to begin closing them.

In March, a state Supreme Court judge ruled that the city did not follow the proper school closure process laid out in state education law. State law requires that the city prepare “educational impact statements,” or EIS’s, that analyze the effect that closing a school will have on the students and surrounding community, as well as hold a series of public hearings with local parent boards.

In their decision (available in full below the jump), the appellate court justices unanimously agreed, saying the city did not follow the legal requirements for a hearing, nor did the city prepare detailed enough impact statements. (more…)

When we joined the wellness committee at our schools, we were concerned parents with the simple agenda of wanting to improve the food in our school cafeteria. We never dreamed we’d become ardent food activists meeting with PTA presidents, community boards, nonprofit organizations, and other impassioned food mamas about how to change the food system in our public schools. But thanks to Chancellor’s Regulation A-812 banning the sale of home-cooked foods in our schools while allowing highly-processed foods, like Doritos and Pop-Tarts, to be sold instead, that is what we’ve quickly become.

Since our bake-in rally protesting the regulation in March, NYC Green Schools has been on the ground advocating for a repeal of the ban on the sale of home-cooked food in our schools at meetings of PTA presidents councils, community boards, and community education councils. We are happy to report that a resolution urging the Department of Education to repeal the ban  has been passed by several community boards in Manhattan and will be voted on by all Manhattan community boards at their Borough Board Meeting in July. Community Board 6 in Brooklyn has also passed a resolution asking the city to repeal the ban, and we are working on having the resolution introduced at Brooklyn’s borough meeting as well.

What is the role of community boards in the political process? That was our question when Community Board 2 in Manhattan invited us to speak about Regulation A-812. (more…)

• A report finds that spending on art supplies is down by two-thirds in recent years. (Daily News)
• The pool of teachers without positions is set to rise. (GothamSchools, Wall Street Journal)
• A mother who says her son’s mouth was duct-taped as punishment is suing the city. (Post)
• The outgoing principal at Muscota New School gave out a flood of “U” ratings. (Times, WSJ)
• Valedictorians attended a barbecue in their honor at Gracie Mansion last night. (S.I. Advance)
• Some say Chelsea High, which will get new help next year, is already improving. (The Villager)
• The Times says the new small schools report should embolden the city to open more small schools.
• Among Stuyvesant’s valedictorian’s achievements: Starting a Harry Potter club. (Downtown Express)
• Students at JFK HS, where officials stole money, said the school is “always broke.” (Riverdale Press)
• Detroit’s money manager fired the schools chief, over the school board’s objections. (Free Press)
• D.C schools chief Michelle Rhee says she’ll leave if D.C.’s mayor isn’t reelected. (Washington Post)