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With 4,100 teacher layoffs written into Mayor Bloomberg’s final budget for next year, Department of Education officials are beginning the task of counting their teachers. First, they are freezing the system.

In an email sent to a Manhattan principal today, the school’s network leader announced that the city is freezing all “personnel transactions” immediately. This means that any requests from schools to change a teacher’s seniority history or license area cannot go through. A teacher’s license cannot be switched from art to a science, for example, even if that designation is incorrect.

A spokeswoman for the department said the change allows the DOE to determine the exact size of its labor force and how many teachers are working in each subject area. The freeze will not prevent teachers from transferring from one school to another.

The department does not have a date set for when it will release updated projections of how many teachers each school could close to layoffs. In February, it sent out a list of how many teachers each school would lose, but that list is no longer accurate.

The email from a network leader to a principal:

“Based on the release of the Executive Budget and the potential for staff reductions, the Chancellor has directed that a freeze be implemented on all personnel transactions effective immediately, including requests for license changes and changes to service history affecting seniority. No such requests should be submitted given he need to clearly assess current system information as staff reductions are considered. Please communicate this to information to principals as soon as possible. This notification is also being sent to Network Staff and Superintendents by the Division of Assessment and School Performance.”

Community Education Council 14 President Tessa Wilson said the city should extend the delay of this year's bungled parent council elections.

A day after this year’s troubled parent council elections were postponed by one week, some of their leading critics say the election process is completely on hold.

Yesterday, a group of parents filed a lawsuit asking for a restraining order to halt the elections. Chancellor Dennis Walcott immediately responded by saying he would postpone elections for a week.

After a meeting this afternoon between city lawyers and the lawyers representing the parents who sued over the election proceedings, the elections are now on hold “indefinitely,” according to Chris Owens, executive director of Advocates for Justice, the law firm that filed the suit.

The DOE disputed the account, saying that nothing has changed since yesterday.

“We continue to have discussions with interested parties regarding this matter, but we have not made any further changes to the process and we have a responsibility to ensure that Council members begin their terms on July 1st,” said Deirdrea Miller, a DOE spokeswoman, in a statement.

At a press conference today, elected officials called for the elections to be delayed further, contending that a week was too little time to undo the damage and that the Department of Education has neglected the parent councils, called Community Education Councils.

“The DOE doesn’t care to get it right,” said Public Advocate Bill de Blasio. “The CECs never get the support they deserve.” (more…)

As a NYC Teaching Fellow I attend graduate school simultaneously with being bombarded and overwhelmed with the daily responsibilities of teaching itself. In my first year of teaching, I had a group of students who presented extremely challenging behaviors, and I often found myself losing my self-control and becoming angry. There was one day in my first month when I began yelling, and I felt as though I never really stopped yelling thereafter for that year. (I liken that moment in September to the moment in J.M. Coetzee’s “Waiting for the Barbarians” when the magistrate is swung through the air in a noose, bellowing for mercy, and he is made to know the “meaning of humanity.”)

So when one my graduate classes was a seminar on action research, it was a no-brainer for me to focus my research on the concept of self-control — both for myself and for my students. My idea was, if I could identify what methods and strategies of self-control would work for me in the face of a constant barrage of tantrums, cursing, personal insults, and other forms of misplaced aggression, then I would be able to not only model self-control for my students, but be able to explicitly teach it to them. (You can view my research here; the actual research itself isn’t very useful, but if you are interested in the concept of self-control, you might find the literature review of value.)

One of the interesting things that I have found is that the more I build and cultivate my own self-awareness regarding my self-regulation of emotion, the less that student behaviors present a challenge. In other words, when I really listen to my students and to myself and look beyond and through their behavior, I discover that what is really going on is that they are trying to teach me about what it is that they need.

Perhaps that sounds fairly self-evident to you, dear reader, but let me tell you, when one is not trained professionally in the art of therapy, it can be extremely daunting when you are faced with a classroom of students who live daily lives exposed to extreme levels of stress. To see through the surface behavior and into the child is not as easy as it seems. It might be easy if you were sitting with that child in a clinical setting, observing and analyzing them. But in a classroom, you don’t have that luxury of distance. You are confronted, nearly every single moment, with the challenge of a student who needs far more than you often yet know how to handle.

So I have become slightly more adept at being a good listener. (more…)

• The mood at Paul Robeson HS is vastly improved, but the school is still being closed. (City Limits)
• Amid criticism, the city is delaying parent elections by a week. (Gothamschools, Post, Daily News)
• A mother whose child got in to Upper West Success Academy is worried the school won’t open. (Post)
• Joel Klein recounts the issues he faced as chancellor and offers a prognosis for education. (Atlantic)
• Youth advocates are pushing to get back $23 million in after-school funds in the city’s budget. (WNYC)
• Sandy Socolar, a 94-year-old policy analyst, is working on a kindergarten space study. (Daily News)
• Los Angeles’s ambitious school turnaround plans has observers worried about capacity. (L.A. Times)
• Chicago’s teachers union says the state’s reform bill includes an appeals rule it didn’t agree to. (WSJ)
• Eli Broad’s involvement in school reform in Charlotte, N.C., is drawing scrutiny. (Charlotte Observer)
• The Post criticizes the criticism being leveled against Newark’s new superintendent, Cami Anderson.

• A city dad makes his kindergartner eat school lunch, which is both healthy and $1.50. (Insideschools)
• The teacher forced to resign after blogging about her past as a sex worker explains all. (Salon)
• A Bronx teacher chronicles his school’s visit from a Common Core consultant. (The Reflective Educator)
• Eight years ago, Mayor Bloomberg wanted experienced teachers; now he wants newer ones. (Ed Notes)
• The new City Hall editor at the Daily News, Erin Einhorn, used to be on the ed beat. (Daily Politics)
• Looks like the nation’s largest teachers union will endorse President Obama’s reelection. (TPM)
• One of Obama’s opponents? Newt Gingrich, a major Education Equality Project backer. (Politics K-12)
• A teacher explains the steps she took to address low motivation among her grade-schoolers. (Mrs. Ripp)
• More than 100 people have attached their names to a petition against the Common Core. (Rick Hess)
• “Critical thinking” has been replaced by “deep thought” among education jargon users. (Flypaper)
• Satire alert: A clerical error resulted in school districts nationwide being funded adequately. (The Onion)
• Theater teacher Kate Quarfordt offers part one of her tumultuous “Guys and Dolls” saga. (GS Community)
• Class sizes would be sure to grow if the city loses 8 percent of teachers. (NYC Public School Parents)
• Diana Senechal: What urban students need is not saving but more classroom challenges. (Flypaper)
• A wealthy family, the Devoses, is underwriting a push for school vouchers. (Alternet via Norm’s Notes)

The city and teachers union still have not reached an agreement on how to overhaul more than 30 struggling schools. But city school officials said that, deal or no deal, they will announce those plans at the end of this week.

Though the original due-date for submitting school improvement plans was today, state education officials granted the city’s request to postpone the deadline to Friday. That leaves the city and teachers union four days to reach an agreement on which of three federal improvement strategies each of the schools should undergo.

Of the 43 schools that are eligible for school improvement grants, but have yet to begin using them, 31 are waiting to be told if they’ll be transformation, turnaround, or restart schools. Under each of these three plans being considered, schools would receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal grant money.

A spokesman for the city’s Department of Education, Jack Zarin-Rosenfeld, said that the city had asked for an extension in part to have more time to negotiate with the union.

Last week, union officials said they were hopeful a deal would be reached by today, but that has not happened. (more…)

Under pressure from elected officials and organized parents, the Department of Education is delaying elections for district parent councils until next week.

For weeks, parent leaders have been simmering with anger over problems in the city’s handling of elections for district Community Education Councils. They have charged that the city did too little to recruit candidates, turned away some eligible parents, and hid the names of candidates behind password protection.

The criticism escalated today, as Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio announced plans for a press conference Tuesday to demand that the city halt the elections, which they called “deeply flawed and undemocratic.” At the same time, a group of parents, spearheaded by Mona Davids of the New York City Parents Union, filed today for a restraining order to halt the elections.

This afternoon, the city announced it would delay the election proceedings by a week. “After reviewing concerns raised by parents and public officials about this year’s Citywide and Community Education Council elections, I have concluded that the process could and should have been handled better,” Chancellor Dennis Walcott said in a statement. (more…)

The nation’s second-largest school district, Los Angeles Unified, opposed press efforts to publish teacher evaluations, according to a letter from the school district (PDF) to the Los Angeles Times that was obtained by the writer Alexander Russo.

The letter urges the Los Angeles Times not to publish a second batch of teacher evaluations that the newspaper calculated and published anyway on Sunday. It was signed by LA superintendent John Deasy as well as the president of the city’s school board and two civic leaders, the president of the city’s chamber of commerce and its United Way chapter.

“The individual evaluations, in our opinion, should be private conversations that are intended to help professionals improve their performance in the classroom,” the letter argues.

Deasy’s position stands in sharp contrast to the one New York City school officials are taking in a court battle with the teachers union. School officials here argue that teacher evaluations calculated with value-added formulas are statistics that are subject to public information laws and therefore can be released to the public. (more…)

After eight years of making theater with urban teenagers and witnessing how challenges can be turned into fuel for creativity, I know that Orson Wells was onto something when he said that “the true enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” That’s all well and good, but I’m pretty sure my man Orson never tried putting on a full-length Broadway musical with a hundred South Bronx teenagers on a tiny stage in a school gym while pregnant and raising a 2-year-old.

Poster advertising the performance outside Room 201

Here’s Part 1 of a condensed 100-day countdown to our production of “Guys and Dolls,” in performance at Bronx Prep May 24-26. Witness the mayhem, the misery, and the small moments of grace in the midst of it all, and stay tuned for Part 2 next week.

100 days until opening night

We haven’t even decided which show we’re doing this year and already we can’t seem to catch a break. I find out today that we can’t get a performance license for the “The Color Purple,” which is the musical the student leaders of the Bronx Prep Performing Arts Academy have been clamoring to put on at school ever since they saw it on Broadway two years ago.

I’m sorry that kids who’ve shown such strong initiative won’t get their first choice, and that the now-tight timing means that teachers, not students, will choose the show this year, but I can’t say I’m personally devastated by the news. Deep in the grip of first-trimester crankiness and bracing against  one of the coldest, dreariest winters on record, I have to admit that swapping out an emotionally wrenching drama for some good old fashioned jazz-hands sounds like a great idea to me right now.

98 days until opening night

In keeping with tradition, we announce the spring show with a dramatic unveiling of a bulletin board outside of room 201. This year’s crowd of curious kids and teachers is bigger than ever. (more…)

Budget news:

• At a conference Saturday, union officials and members vowed to fight layoffs. (Daily News, NY1, Post)
• The 4,000+ layoffs are part of Mayor Bloomberg’s budget plan. (Times, GS, Daily News, NY1, WSJ, Post)
• Bloomberg’s budget fight with the City Council is likely to focus on a $2 billion rainy-day fund. (Post)
• If the layoffs go through, they are likely to imperil what’s left of Bloomberg’s education legacy. (Times)
• Bloomberg’s accompanied his budget announcement with a renewed call to change layoff rules. (Post)
• Teachers and parents are terrified that layoffs could mean chaos and larger classes. (Daily News)
• Also in the city budget: A plan to cut library funding by nearly a third. (Post)
• The Post says cutting school spending seems like a reasonable move given increases in the last decade.

In other news:

• Williamsburg Charter High School fired staffers midyear and is in serious financial trouble. (Post)
• Changes to the city’s gifted program meant to add diversity actually yielded fewer black students. (Post)
• A school aide at IS 98 in the Bronx was arrested for trying to force a student to sell drugs. (Post, NY1)
• The city’s high school admissions process is daunting, and many students are shut out. (Times)
• The chairman of Publicolor’s board regularly spends his weekends painting school buildings. (WSJ)
• Private schools in the city and area are increasingly offering haute cafeteria food. (Times)

Elsewhere:

• No one can agree on how to count per-pupil spending in New Jersey’s urban districts. (WSJ)
• Outgoing DOE deputy Cami Anderson expounds on her plans for Newark’s schools. (Star-Ledger)
• Federal officials reminded districts that they cannot ask about students’ immigration status. (Times)
• A new study that looked in part at New York City finds performance benefits to arts education. (AP)
• The Los Angeles Times is releasing new value-added ratings for twice as many teachers. (L.A. Times)
• Readers, including a city principal, weigh in on the way that the country values teachers. (Times)
• A program that curbed violence and boosted attendance in Chicago schools is out of money. (Times)