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New York City’s new chancellor Cathie Black spent most of her first day on the job today in listening mode, peppering the students, teachers and principals she met on her whirlwind tour of schools in the five boroughs with questions.

Possibly as a result, Black didn’t give many concrete details about her plans for the school system. She did say that preparing for drastic budget cuts will be the biggest challenge she will face. “The last thing we want to impact is any sense of impacting any individual school or the teachers,” she said.

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Today marks Cathie Black’s first official day as chancellor of the city’s public schools and she’s following in former Chancellor Joel Klein’s footsteps by taking a five-borough tour. We’ll be following her throughout the day as she makes her way from Brooklyn to Staten Island and back to Tweed.

Stephan Zuvich, a student at the Richard Hungerford School gives Black a tour.

3:00: And that’s all folks… We’ll post video once Maura returns from Staten Island.

2:40: Black’s visit to the Hungerford School may seem like a deviation from the rest of the day, but it is, yet again, another high performing school. Hungerford is the only special education school in all of New York State to be recognized as a national blue ribbon school.

In the sensory motor center, aka game room, Black and the remaining reporters watch one student play on a pinball machine while another plays Wii sports and a third shoots a basketball.

“I’m so excited,” Hecht says. “The questions that she [Black] was asking were so poignant and so on the mark for the students that we’re serving. I’d love to see the D75 schools become more integrated, so its not like D75, it’s part of the whole system.”

2:15: The press van has landed at Richard H. Hungerford School, a District 75 school with about 350 students in Staten Island. D75 schools like this one serve students with severe disabilities. Black is led around the school by Stephan Zuvich, a 21-year-old student at the school. She goes into a classroom where half a dozen students, all in wheelchairs, are getting physical therapy, and she walks around introducing herself to each student.

Maura reports that the PT class has Christmas music playing quietly in the background, and the ceiling is draped in white and colored lights, hanging mobiles, and planets. Principal Mary McInerney tells the group that the room is set up this way to stimulate the students.

D75 Superintendent Gary Hecht tells Black that she’s the first chancellor to visit one of his schools on the annual (or this year: biannual) five-borough schools tour. McIerney says that when chancellors have come in the past, it’s always been at the end, not the beginning, of their tenures. Black says that DOE officials picked this school because she told them she wanted to see all the different kinds of schools.

Black visits a second class where students are communicating through a machine called an ACD (augmented communication device).

One student asks her if she was nervous on her first day of work. Another, Sara Watson, compliments the chancellor on her outfit. She asks: “Did you buy it for your first day of work today?” Black says no, it’s not a new dress.

A third student, Anna Incantalupo, shows Black a picture of her family. “And guess what, I’m the prettiest!” she says.

1:20: And now to Staten Island, the very last leg of this tour. Most reporters usually hop out of the press van after three or four schools, but Maura says a surprising number are sticking around for the bumpy ride.

1:00: Black visits a Korean language class, which all Democracy Prep students take. Andrew says that the school chose Korean because it’s phonetic and has an alphabet (unlike Chinese and Japanese where there are thousands and thousands of characters) so it is actually possible to learn to read and write anything in Korean pretty quickly. Also, he figures it will give his students an advantage when they apply to college, as very few black and Latino students have studied Korean. (more…)

The chancellor change:

• Cathie Black will spend her first school day as chancellor touring schools. (NY1, AP, Post)
• The State Supreme Court okayed Black’s appointment last week. (Post, Daily News, Times, WSJ, NY1)
• Before that, opponents of Black’s appointment made their case before a judge. (Daily News, Post, Times)
• Six principals offer Black advice, from minimizing budget cuts to boosting writing instruction. (Times)
• NY1 looks back on Joel Klein’s eight-year tenure as chancellor. (Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
• In an exit interview, Klein said he might have done well to explain himself better as chancellor. (Times)
• Mayor Bloomberg praised Klein during his weekly radio address. (Daily News)
• The Post says Klein performed magic in improving schools during his tenure as chancellor.

Other news from New York City:

• Since August, the city has enrolled more than 1,300 students in schools it hopes to close. (Daily News)
• A ruling on whether the city can release teachers’ value-added scores could come any time. (Post)
• New York City’s value-added experience shows just how problematic the approach remains. (Times)
• Principals on the Jamaica HS campus canceled a student play that criticized Joel Klein. (Daily News)
• But the city says Klein had no problem with the play being performed. (Daily News)
• A look back at the year 2010 in New York City’s public schools. (GothamSchools)
• Among the problems at Ross Global Academy: 77 percent teacher turnover. (Post)
• Prostitution surrounds West Farms elementary school in the Bronx. (Times)
• Ira Weston, embattled principal of Paul Robeson HS, is under investigation again. (Post)
• The Times says New York City’s efforts to improve the national GED are good but not enough.
• Prompted by a Bronx mom’s lawsuit, the EPA issued new rules for school toxin cleanup. (Daily News)
• PS 142 on the Lower East Side credits its arts program with helping students succeed. (Times)
• The teacher suspended for blogging about being a sex worker is telling her story in Marie Claire. (Post)
• The Post says the teacher’s case shows that rubber rooms are alive and well under a new policy.
• Francis Lewis HS principal Musa Shama explains why the school isn’t failing. (Bayside Times)
• A Middle College HS secretary used school funds to pay for personal purchases. (Post)
• A consultant, Charles Barron’s goddaughter, distributed racy poetry to PS 279 students. (Daily News)

And beyond:

• Some school districts used their edujob funding as a safety net instead of to save jobs. (Times)
• Shanghai’s high PISA scores stem from discipline, long hours, and lots of practice. (Times)
• Education Secretary Arne Duncan lobbies for national education law reauthorization. (Washington Post)
• Companies that guard against standardized test cheating are cleaning up in the current climate. (Times)
• Students in poor areas are getting to college with help from early college programs. (Times)
• Science fairs are struggling in the recession. (Times)
• Some universities are thinking about how to communicate grade information better. (Times)
• Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million to Newark schools lands atop competing visions for reform. (The Nation)
• Economist James Heckman thinks schools can be improved by investing in early childhood. (Times)
• Virginia’s new social studies textbooks are full of egregious errors. (Washington Post)