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I met James Subudhi, the environmental policy and advocacy coordinator at WE ACT for Environmental Justice in Harlem, last month at the City Council hearing on the Department of Education’s school food policies. I was shocked to learn during James’ testimony that through a simple Google search he had accessed a portion of the Office of SchoolFood’s website not normally available to the public — a directory that contains the ingredients of nearly all the food products served in city schools.

You may be wondering, as James and I did, why the DOE didn’t made this webpage accessible to the general public from SchoolFood’s main site, particularly to the parents and students who are the consumers of school food. Because NYC Green Schools believes strongly that parents and students have a right to know the ingredients of the food served in our city’s schools —  that this transparency is a must to ensure the food in our schools is safe and nutritious — we invited James to write about his discovery.

Information The DOE Is Not Sharing With You About School Food

By James Subudhi

Have you ever wondered what’s in the “wheat” bread of the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches served in New York City public schools, or where the tuna in our schools comes from? As the environmental policy and advocacy coordinator at WE ACT, I began looking for answers to these questions while conducting research on the corporate supply chain for the food purchased by the New York City Department of Education. I couldn’t find anything online beyond the basic nutritional information provided on the DOE’s SchoolFood website. Weeks later, however, while trying to figure out the manufacturing locations of the suppliers of the schools’ hamburger meats, I stumbled on a portion of the SchoolFood site through a simple Google search that, surprisingly enough, provides the ingredients for all their food products.

I thought at the time, “This is weird. How come I’ve never seen this page before?” But the page is not meant to be available to the public. If you try to enter it from the SchoolFood site, you would be prompted for a password and official credentials. (more…)

• The Department of Education plans to spend more on computer consultants next year. (Daily News)
• CUNY’s community colleges are devoting more resources to students’ academic deficiencies. (Times)
• Gov. Cuomo said he supports Mayor Bloomberg’s bid to prevent seniority-based layoffs. (WNYC, Post)
• Education Secretary Arne Duncan said layoffs based only on seniority are not good policy. (Times)
• Members of CB 10 said they oppose a Hebrew-language charter school on ethnic grounds. (Daily News)
• Principals are distressed about the DOE’s bid to halve their savings. (GothamSchools, WNYC, NY1)
• City Councilman Dan Garodnick: The city should let principals keep the fruits of prudent budgeting. (Post)
• The Washington Post says the question of “last in, first out” is separate from broader union rights issues.
• Staten Island teachers, like their colleagues citywide, are nervously waiting layoff news. (S.I. Advance)
• A participant in one of the civil rights movement’s first sit-ins visited PS 195 in Queens. (NY1)
• A risk analyst says there’s no evidence to suggest that classroom exposure to PCBs is dangerous. (Post)
• Eleven special education schools run by the state face an uncertain future under Cuomo’s budget. (NY1)
• N.J. Gov. Chris Christie unveiled his proposal for a new teacher evaluation system yesterday. (WSJ)
• After Chicago canceled plans to merge two schools, parents and students were left confused. (Times)
• Tempers are flaring over a bill in California that would require textbooks to promote gay history. (Times)

• Gov. Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg racheted down the heated layoff debate. (State of Politics)
• P.S. 22 hasn’t had a single chorus student ever need to take summer school. (NY Mag)
• Principals who saved money for next year are fighting the city’s plan to take half away. (WNYC)
• Sec. Duncan says tests are not the best way to measure art and gym teachers. (Dana Goldstein)
• He also gave his most definitive, and negative, take on seniority rights yet. (WSJ)
• Ruben Brosbe: wanting LIFO gone doesn’t mean supporting the ouster of senior teachers. (GS)
• Miss Eyre hopes the backlash to the anti-teacherism is coming soon. (NYC Educator)
• On class size: districts should go smaller for some students, larger for others. (Time Magazine)
• Valerie Strauss: Diane Ravitch takes a lot of heat for someone without policy power. (Washington Post)
• Is it better to focus on local issues, or should Eduflack run for the State Senate? (Eduflack)
• Proving “comparability” under ESEA should mean more than transferring teachers. (Ed Money Watch)
• Providence’s mayor explains his decision to fire all of his city’s teachers. (NPR)
• Michelle Obama read “Green Eggs and Ham” yesterday for Read Across America Day. (Jezebel)

Principals who want the full benefit of the funds they’ve squirreled away have just weeks to spend it all.

The Department of Education’s announcement last month that it would take back half of any funds principals choose to save for next year gave principals the incentive to spend down their last cent. The city has extended until March 18 the deadline for principals to choose between spending their entire budget this spring or saving money for next year — and losing half of it.

But while principals technically have until the end of the school year to spend any funds they don’t roll over, DOE spokeswoman Barbara Morgan confirmed today, their spending sprees actually have to take place in the next eight weeks. That’s because the city’s school budgeting system requires principals to lock in their spending plans by the end of April.

“The department has all but ensured that a hasty spending spree on non-essential items will in two months decimate the reserves principals have built over years, leaving everyone (from the the most prudent to the most reckless) equally unable to cope with even larger budget cuts to come,” the principal of a small high school told me today.

The principal’s comments are worth reading in full. Here they are:

I am not sure the public fully appreciates the implications of the recently announced change to the “Deferred Program Planning Initiative.” Deadlines on purchasing computers and furniture are in three weeks and deadlines on most other purchases are in mid-April. Given the late announcement of this shift in policy, principals have no choice but to give back 50 percent (something I can’t imagine any significant number doing) or spend the bulk of it on equipment and supplies (even facilities upgrades will be made impossible due to the timing).

Last year, principals saved $80 million. This year, I’m sure it would have been substantially more. (more…)

Education historian Diane Ravitch is appearing on “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart tonight — and her supporters want to make sure she has company.

We just received an email from the New York City point person for the Save Our Schools March, meant to draw parents and teachers to Washington, D.C., this summer to assert their voices in education policy. She is asking Ravitch’s supporters to greet the outspoken critic of the Obama administration’s education agenda when Ravitch arrives at Stewart’s 11th Avenue studio at 4 p.m. today.

Ravitch will spend an hour and a half in online conversation with Save Our Schools supporters next week, according to the email.

If Stewart’s lampooning of those who criticize teachers for their job perks earlier this week is any indication, he could go easy on Ravitch tonight. The pair also found common ground when Ravitch appeared on “The Daily Show” in 2003 to discuss the strange taboos shaping standardized tests.

If you go to Ravitch’s taping (or to the late-night, ticketed viewing party that Parents Across America is organizing), please send pictures. Here’s the entire email message we received: (more…)

It’s been a busy week with plenty of stories to share. There was the student of mine who transferred schools abruptly without a chance to say goodbye, my post-observation meeting, and the girl who basically extorted $20 from another student. In all it hasn’t been the easiest week back from break. But as I’ve read the discussion surrounding layoffs and seniority, there’s a recurring thread of half-truths that’s too frustrating to ignore.

As usual, both sides of the issue are guilty of manipulating facts in favor of emotion. On the one hand, the argument that seniority-based layoffs, aka “last in, first out” (LIFO), will disproportionately hurt high-poverty schools seems overblown. On the other side, people arguing that without seniority, principals will simply fire the most expensive (e.g. most senior) teachers, are exaggerating the incentive to do so.

Most frustrating about the discussion surrounding LIFO however, is the false insinuation that if we don’t stick to LIFO, therefore laying off the least senior teachers, we’ll lay off the most senior teachers instead. There are legitimate arguments about the changes being proposed. However, the idea that ending LIFO will put senior teachers on the chopping block instead is untrue, and it’s much more harmful than some of the others floating out there, because it fundamentally distorts the conversation.This is not what Educators 4 Excellence’s white paper on LIFO, nor the Flanagan Bill passed by the State Senate earlier this week, propose to do. (I am a member of E4E, and I took part in the group’s lobbying effort in support of Flanagan’s bill.)

While there are some differences between E4E’s policy paper and SB3501, they would both change layoff policy essentially by first losing U-rated teachers, teachers with chronic absenteeism, and teachers who haven’t found jobs after six months in the Absent Teacher Reserve first. This doesn’t mean we’d just go out and summarily fire any teacher with 20 years experience, but that’s precisely what advocates of the current seniority system are arguing. (more…)

• Across the country, mayors are attacking teachers, their rights, and their value to society. (Times)
• Mayor Bloomberg said how much experience a teacher has doesn’t say anything about his skills. (NY1)
• Bloomberg also said Gov. Cuomo’s teacher evaluation bill just defers the issue of seniority. (WNYC, Post)
• The Daily News says Cuomo is “working against the kids and for teachers” on the layoff issue.
• Wisconsin’s labor battle isn’t just about union rights; it’s about how to fix schools. (Washington Post)
• A state review lambasted conditions at Jane Addams, August Martin, and Maxwell high schools. (Post)
• Parents at PS/IS 128 in Queens are protesting the city’s bid to take back rainy-day funds. (Daily News)
• A new report says students with disabilities are not getting the legally mandated help. (Daily News)
• Stuyvesant HS students who made a racist video are being disciplined, city officials say. (Daily News)
• State budget cuts might force a school for deaf students in Brooklyn to shut down. (Daily News)
• Bill Gates is calling on states to revise their health care and pensions to save public schools. (WSJ)

• A map tracks facilities owned by the city schools in Philadelphia. (Notebook)
• A new concept: What if CMO’s could give teachers charters for their classrooms? (Hechinger)
• A veteran city educator who was fired in the 70s fiscal crisis defends LIFO. (NYCPSP)
• Sixteen protesters challenging budget cuts were arrested in Albany today. (Gotham Gazette)
• A student, learning about layoff threats, asks her teacher if she is worried. (GS Community)
• A Calif. school’s parent-sponsored teacher appreciation day coincides with pink slips. (Ms. Chew)
• The short-term federal budget ok’d to keep the gov’t open slashes education. (Politics K12)
• 11 senators are signing onto an ESEA plan that reads very similar to Duncan’s. (Politics K12)
• A rebuttal to Bill Gates’ rock-star proposal for teacher pay reform. (The Answer Sheet)
• Insideschools is posting video school reviews and would like feedback. (Insideschools)
• Why did the P.S. 114 protesters succeed at keeping their school open? (Ed in the Apple)

The argument that heated up today between city officials, Governor Andrew Cuomo and members of the state legislature over abolishing the state’s seniority-based layoff system for teachers essentially boils down to one thing: timing.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Department of Education officials want to do away with the “last-in, first-out” system immediately so that they can use new criteria to lay off teachers at the end of this school year. Cuomo and other state officials — several of whom support changing the layoff system generally — counter that abandoning seniority-based layoffs must wait until the state has a better system it can use instead.

Yesterday, Cuomo introduced a bill that would speed implementation of the teacher evaluation bill that Albany passed last May up by a year but did not propose any changes to the layoff system. City officials immediately blasted the bill as “a sham” and a distraction, and Bloomberg said today the governor’s proposal “simply kicks the can down the road.”

Part of the disagreement lies in whether or not the city and the state have time to kick that can. City officials speak of the need to change the layoff system with a sense of urgency, arguing that a budget crisis necessitates laying off more than 4,000 teachers this year. (more…)

Do New York City principals have a financial incentive to get rid of veteran teachers?

That’s been a fiercely disputed accusation as the teachers union and city have traded shots over layoff threats in recent weeks. While the union embraces the claim as evidence that senior teachers need to be protected from layoffs, Chancellor Cathie Black denies that senior teachers are penalized at all.

Black recently told the Staten Island Advance that if a highly paid teacher is let go, a principal can go out and hire another veteran teacher without any repercussions. ”It really doesn’t matter if it’s a more senior teacher making more money, or a younger teacher,” she told the newspaper. “It doesn’t change the equation. I think the UFT has really distorted that.”

The dispute is even more confusing because different Bloomberg administration officials appear to take different positions on the matter. According to a report in the New York Post, one of Black’s deputies has described the incentive structure as a problem and floated a plan to eliminate it, at least temporarily. (more…)