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• Gov. Cuomo made comments that imply sympathy to calls for changing seniority layoff rules. (Post)
• The Panel for Educational Policy voted to close 12 more schools. (GS, Times, DN, Post, NY1, WSJ)
• Parents are pushing for more comprehensive action on the presence of PCBs in schools. (Times)
• The principal of Staten Island’s PS 30 threatened to fine teachers who were late due to weather. (Post)
• The television show “Glee” has drawn new voices to youth choirs. (Times)
• California parents moved one step closer to converting their school into a charter school. (L.A. Times)
• Both sides in the education war are right, and both can be unfair, a columnist says. (Washington Post)
• A conflict with chef Jamie Oliver caused Los Angeles to bar reality TV shoots in schools. (L.A. Times)
• Ed tech types say Joel Klein’s NewsCorp endeavor is hardly assured success. (EdWeek)

Supporters and opponents of school closures were among those attending tonight's Panel for Educational Policy meeting.

For the second night this week, Anna is stationed at Brooklyn Tech High School, sending us dispatches from the meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy. The meeting is once again likely to be a long marathon of a night as the public lines up to comment on school closures and space changes proposed by the Bloomberg administration.

At the end of the night, or maybe the beginning of tomorrow, members of the panel — the latest version of the city school board — will vote on whether to adopt the proposals, which could close up to 12 schools and make significant changes in another nine. The panel is controlled by a majority of members appointed directly by the mayor.

School safety officers filling out overtime sheets after the PEP meeting.

1:20 a.m. One final update, with a visual: The last people left at Brooklyn Tech were about a dozen school safety officers submitting their overtime. The first bell rings at 8 a.m.

1:04 a.m. She won’t be speaking with reporters, but Chancellor Cathie Black did make sure to have the last word. “We all want to say a very large thank you to the parents, the teachers, and the students who came out earlier this evening,” she said. “These are never early decisions. A great deal of time and thought and  angst has gone into them. A big thank you to everybody.”

By “early,” Black probably meant “easy,” Anna notes. And with that, our reporter heads into the night.

1:02 a.m. All of the contracts under the panel’s review have passed.

12:51 p.m. Often, the panel makes quick work of any proposed contracts. But tonight, panel members are questioning a three-year, multi-million-dollar proposal for a package of 16 contracts to provide online coursework. The largest, a $4.5 million bid from Apex Learning, would allow schools to offer Advanced Placement courses virtually.

Investing in online learning would allow schools that are phasing out to offer advanced courses even as their student bodies and teaching rosters dwindle, says Deputy Chancellor John White.

But Lisette Nieves, one of the panel’s eight mayoral appointees, is challenging White’s logic. She says that would be true only if the department urged phase-out schools to challenge their students — but it doesn’t.

“I did vote for the phase out,” Nieves says. “But there’s a difference between saying leadership is committed to providing a basic service versus an advanced servive. I just want to make sure there’s an incentive. I don’t inherently buy into the idea that there’s an incentive.”

12:40 p.m. Despite pressure from reporters, Chancellor Cathie Black is “unavailable for comment,” DOE officials are saying.

This is a particular problem for television and radio reporters, who couldn’t hear a word of what Black said during her introductory remarks because she was being booed so loudly. The only journalist who can use the audio, Anna reports, is the Spanish-language NY1 Noticias reporter, who plans to translate Black’s comments and run the script.

Last year, then-Chancellor Joel Klein huddled with reporters after the school closure Panel for Educational Policy meeting ended — and that was at 4 a.m.

12:35 p.m. The voting is over, just 10 minutes after it started. The panel voted to close 12 more schools, bringing the total closures approved this week to 22. (more…)

A Marist College poll released this evening shows that new Schools Chancellor Cathie Black has less public support than her predecessor, Joel Klein, did when he took the job eight years ago.

Current poll results show that 21 percent of registered New York City voters think that Black has done a good or excellent job of handling of the public schools. When Quinnipiac University first surveyed the public on Klein in 2003, a month after he took office, its results showed that 46 percent of  New Yorkers approved of him.

The two sets of poll numbers aren’t a perfect comparison, as the Marist poll found that 35 percent of New Yorkers think Black has done a “fair” job, while the Quinnipiac poll only allowed respondents to approve or disapprove of the chancellor. Because of this difference, Klein had more detractors than Black does. In 2003, 27 percent of people disapproved of him, while the Marist poll has 19 percent of respondents rating Black’s performance as “poor.”

Though she has garnered plenty of headlines in the month she’s been in office, Black is about as unknown as she is liked. The poll shows that 26 percent of respondents don’t have an opinion of her yet, or haven’t heard of her. In 2003, roughly the same number — 28 percent — of people didn’t have an impression of Klein.

Klein’s early approval rating of 46 percent was the highest he earned over the eight years he as in office.

When Mayor Bloomberg named Black to the post in November, a Quinnipiac poll found that 51 percent of voter surveyed didn’t think she was fit for the job. That number rose when the pool was whittled down to just public school parents: 62 percent of whom disapproved of her selection. (more…)

One of my roommates brought home a copy of Fortune‘s “100 Best Companies to Work For” issue. Shockingly, when I looked over the list which included companies like Google, Zappos and the Mayo Clinic, there was no mention of the New York City Department of Education. How could this be? We might not have on-site wine bars like one of the companies listed, but we get to shape America’s future. How does that opportunity not make the cut?

In all seriousness, I’d be curious to know how Fortune would assess the prospects of working for the NYC DOE. It would be ridiculous to knock teaching for a lack of flashy perks like life coaches, on-site gyms, or paid sabbaticals. Still, the NYC DOE falls short in one very real and significant way. All of the companies on Fortune’s list are hiring. Meanwhile, the NYC DOE and school districts across the country will be laying off thousands of teachers by the end of this year. At a time when we need the best and brightest to consider education an option, this doesn’t make teaching very appealing.

Hiring and retaining quality teachers is one of the fundamental components to fixing our schools. Education as a profession may not be able to offer the same money or incentives as the companies on Fortune‘s list, but there is a lot schools and the DOE can do to attract and keep the best teachers possible. Here are a few ideas inspired by Fortune‘s list:

• Better starting salary. This is a no-brainer.
• Use the incoming 4-tier evaluation system to reward excellence in the classroom. (more…)

• Tonight’s PEP meeting on the fate of 13 schools could go longer than Tuesday’s. (Daily News, WNYC)
• More than 3,000 students are adjusting to the news that their schools will be closed. (Post)
• Plans are already in place for IBM to open a new school to replace Paul Robeson HS. (NY1)
• The Daily News says the PEP can’t do its job if its meetings feel like wrestling matches.
• Mayor Bloomberg’s pension proposal would bar teachers from getting checks before age 65. (Times)
• A poll done for Education Reform Now found that New York voters oppose “last in, first out” rules. (Post)
• The Post says fighting “last in, first out” is a worthier battle for Bloomberg than pushing for more money.
• State Assemblyman Jonathan Bing reiterates his case against seniority layoff rules. (Post)
• Andrea Peyser: Minority parents are hurting their own kids by opposing the new Millennium HS. (Post)

• The mayor released his pension tier reform plan; UFT chief Michael Mulgrew called it “insane.” (DN)
• The leaders of the CFE lawsuit say Cuomo’s budget cuts undermines commitment to equality. (T-U)
• Cathie Black’s crowd-control tactics: booing her booers right back. (Daily Politics, City Room)
• Here’s video of last night’s closure-themed “What a Wonderful World” parody. (NYC Parents)
• Parents at two closing schools argue that the city failed their children’s schools. (EdVox)
• DOE employees are among those facing docked pay for staying home during the snow day. (City Room)
• A new Harvard ed school report says the “college for all” goal is harming students. (Flypaper)
• The Council of Chief State School Officers asked Congress to reauthorize ESEA soon. (Politics K-12)
• Joel Klein gives Rick Hess more details on his job at NewsCorp. (AEI)

For the first time, the city is assigning grades to a set of schools for students who have fallen behind and are well into their late-teens, but still hope to get their high school diplomas.

All but two of these 23 schools, known as young adult borough centers, were opened during the early years of former Chancellor Joel Klein’s tenure, when the city was searching for ways to help overage, under-credited students graduate. With afternoon and evening classes and more individualized attention, the centers are the city’s last effort to give students diplomas before they age out of the school system.

They’re also among the last schools in the city to get progress reports — the signature element of the city’s accountability system — which are created annually for elementary, middle, and high schools, as well as transfer schools.

Because YABCs only admit students older than 17 who have enough credits to be a high school sophomore, their progress reports are slightly different from the average high school’s. (more…)

Seven takeaways from last night’s marathon Panel for Educational Policy meeting, for those who don’t have time for 6,000-plus words, minute-to-minute updates, or actually traveling to Brooklyn Tech in the storm:

1. Bloomberg’s agenda was unsurprisingly approved: 10 schools will phase out, four new co-locations will occur. But on the panel, opposition now comes from more members than simply the Manhattan and Bronx appointees.

Patrick Sullivan, the Manhattan borough president’s appointee, is no longer the sole voice of opposition on the panel. And while Bronx borough president Ruben Diaz Jr.’s appointee has been making opposition known for a while now, the other borough representatives are beginning slowly to join.

Only mayoral appointees, for instance, voted in favor of proposals that would benefit the Success Charter Network schools run by CEO Eva Moskowitz, a former City Council member and perennial mayoral hopeful.

Besides ‘no’ votes, another manifestation of opposition to Bloomberg came in the form of a skirmish. From 9:53 p.m.:

Audience members told Anna that they saw Sullivan push Morales from behind. Then Tino Hernandez, the panel’s chair, and Deputy Chancellor Santiago Taveras got between them and escorted Sullivan back to his seat. Sullivan then told the audience that one of the mayoral appointees on the panel had approached him to “taunt” him, kicking off the clash. He proposed that the panel postpone their votes to another day on account of the bad weather, but this motion failed.

When the parents behind Anna saw the tussle begin, they started yelling: “Security! Where is security?” A few security guards did edge onto the stage but then backed away, Anna reports.

Sullivan told the Daily News that he was just tapping Morales on the back.

2. Families reached out across the closure aisle, sometimes poetically.

From Anna’s 9:12 p.m. report:

… some MCA [Metropolitan Corporate Academy, slated for closure] kids are rapping about racism and school closure. The charter school kids and parents are clapping the beat. (more…)

• A disproportionate number of city students received the lowest passing score on Regents exams. (WSJ)
• The city school board voted to close 10 schools. (GothamSchools, Times, Daily News, Post, WNYC, NY1)
• Students who are undocumented immigrants help each other apply to college. (Daily News)
• At Bronx Success Academy, teachers appear obsessed with time and students are quiet. (Village Voice)
• State Assemblyman Jonathan Bing: Politicians can oppose the teachers union and keep their jobs. (Post)
• Gov. Cuomo’s budget proposal would freeze school funds and cut the city’s take. (GothamSchools, WSJ)

Back in November, I sat down to read the American classic “To Kill a Mockingbird” to commemorate its 50th anniversary. Little did I know that I would be reading Harper Lee’s story of a trial in a fictional southern town in the midst of real-life drama swirling around the appointment of Cathie Black as New York City schools chancellor and the proposed shuttering of more schools.

I couldn’t help but draw parallels between the hero of the legendary novel, Atticus Finch, and Black, whose nomination recently cleared legal hurdles posed by parents objecting to her lack of educational credentials.

In ”To Kill a Mockingbird,” Finch has no history with the accused. He has no interaction with the African-American world except through his servant. By defending an accused black rapist, he’s taking on great reputational risk.

Ms. Black has no history with the public education system but faces an even more daunting challenge — the skepticism of parents and teachers unlikely to cheer her on simply for walking into the classroom like Mr. Finch was applauded in the courtroom. And just because a state Supreme Court judge last month ruled in her favor doesn’t mean she’s off the hook with parents and the public. She still has a long way to go toward earning our respect and has a lot to learn about the city’s schools and the policies that have come under attack during former Chancellor Joel Klein’s tenure. (more…)