GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• The City Council scrutinized the DOE’s proposed operating budget. (GothamSchools, Post)
• Council members told DOE officials to avoid layoffs and suggested how. (Daily News, Times, GS)
• The city’s independent budget monitoring office said the city budget requires only 2,600 layoffs. (NY1)
• The city has ended a contract with a consulting firm found to be embroiled in improprieties. (Daily News)
• Parents visited the NAACP’s local offices to ask the group to exit the school closure suit. (GS, Post)
• The head of the United Negro College Fund: The NAACP is wasting its clout on the lawsuit. (Daily News)
• A substitute is being investigated after a parent made a misconduct accusation. (Riverdale Press)
• Cami Anderson was officially approved to be Newark’s new schools superintendent. (Star-Ledger)
• The city’s private Calhoun School has adopted extra-long periods so studies can go in depth. (Times)

• Exactly what Christine Quinn is proposing the DOE should cut instead of teachers. (City Room)
• The company under investigation for a city contract to run city payroll has folded. (City Room)
• In addition to making harder tests in the future, maybe we should evaluate past tests, too. (City Limits)
• The principal of Boys and Girls HS explains why he doesn’t want the school to “restart.” (Bed Stuy Patch)
• What to do if the high school you got into isn’t one you want to attend. (Insideschools)
• Why did the city choose to close some low-performing schools and revamp others? (Edwize)
• A California high school will have fancy new facilities but no students next year. (Joanne Jacobs)
• The “chiefs for change” group of state ed heads endorsed a critical look at ed schools. (Teacher Beat)
• Introducing a new newsletter covering the crazy fast-growing field of education technology. (EdSurge)
• A New Jersey bill would have local referendums determine which charter schools are approved. (edspresso.com)”>Edspresso)

Underscored by an intervention from the council’s top budget broker, education committee members rang a unified tone at their hearing today, telling schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott they won’t support his final budget if a plan to eliminate thousands of teaching positions isn’t reversed.

Sources and council members said Mayor Bloomberg’s current budget proposal would not have enough votes to pass at the end of the month because of the layoffs. The city has maintained the layoffs are necessary to eliminate a $350 million education deficit.

“I just don’t see how I would vote for a budget that lays off 4000 teachers,” said Brad Lander, of Park Slope, echoing a sentiment shared by several other members.

The chorus of opposition started an hour before the hearing, when no less than 15 council members from the committee joined protesters on City Hall steps to punctuate their opposition to the cuts.

Walcott repeatedly defended the budget as members challenged ballooning contract costs and bureaucratic waste. They said that curbing those expenses could make up the difference to save teaching jobs. (more…)

The president of the NAACP’s New York chapter kept her word to meet with angry charter school parents today — after 20 of them appeared at her Midtown office.

The parents traveled to president Hazel Dukes’ office this morning, four days after a large rally against the civil rights group’s involvement in a lawsuit that could negatively affect several charter schools.

A day before the rally, Dukes told GothamSchools, ”Any parent that wants to meet with me, I will meet with them anywhere they want.” Since then, more than 2,000 parents have signed on to a letter asking for a meeting with Dukes, according to Kerri Lyon, a spokeswoman for the New York City Charter School Center.

But Ny Whitaker, whose child attends Harlem Success Academy, said she tried twice last week to schedule a meeting before telling an assistant that she would bring a group to Dukes’ office today. When the group arrived this morning, Dukes invited its members in for a conversation.

Dukes didn’t accede to the parents’ chief demand — that the NAACP withdraw from the lawsuit, which seeks to prevent 17 charter schools from opening, moving, or expanding. But parents in the meeting said Dukes signaled a willingness to engage them in dialogue. (more…)

To avoid laying off teachers, the Department of Education should cut technology spending, reduce cost estimates, and condense some central offices, according to a proposal set forth today by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.

With Domenic Recchia, chair of the council’s finance committee, Quinn unveiled the proposal today at a hearing on the DOE’s proposed operating budget. The proposal came with a stern warning that council members are unlikely to approve a city budget that requires teacher layoffs.

“Make no mistake — we well do everything in our power to prevent teacher layoffs,” Quinn and Recchia said in a statement.

Mayor Bloomberg has said since November that the city will have to cut more than 6,000 teaching positions to balance the budget, and that 4,100 of the job losses would come from layoffs. His proposed budget reflects a $350 million gap for teacher salaries.

Council members think that money can be found elsewhere in the department’s budget and have already identified $75 million in cuts the department should make, Quinn said.

Quinn is not the first to suggest that the department could prevent teacher layoffs by cutting its budget elsewhere. But her voice is significant because she is the one who must broker a deal between council members and the city to get a budget approved before the end of this month. Identifying new cost-cutting options for the DOE is “a top focus of our budgetary negotiations,” she said in a statement.

Protesters against teacher layoffs during a rally on the steps of City Hall.

Under a blazing sun, protesters rallied on the steps of City Hall today before the City Council’s education budget hearing against the Department of Education’s plans to lay off more than 4,000 teachers.

Speakers at the rally included elected officials, union leaders, parents, community advocates, and even a star of the sitcom “Third Rock From the Sun.” Dozens more — including at least 15 City Council members, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer — stood behind to cheer their support. Robert Jackson, chair of the council’s education committee, led the rally.

“Protect our children, not millionaires,” the protesters chanted in between speakers. (more…)

• More teachers than expected appear to be retiring or otherwise leaving this year. (Post)
• Michael Goodwin: In many city schools, students are failing but teachers pass them anyway. (Post)
• A foster child is among 35 students graduating from the early-college Hostos-Lincoln Academy. (Daily News)
• Students from PS 124 in Chinatown won a national high school chess tournament. (WNYC)
• Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. will lead a bid to push education in the 2012 campaign. (Ad Week)
• Diane Ravitch: The “miracle” of school reform recently is merely a triumph of public relations. (Times)
• Jim Dwyer: The cost of cutting foreign language Regents exams is more than the state will save. (Times)
• PS 73 in the Bronx has suffered a string of technology thefts that’s left it laptop-less. (Daily News)
• People are protesting charter schools in many cities, even though some of the schools are good. (CNN)
• The Post says the school closure lawsuit shows how Albany fails by legislating terms that can be litigated.
• The Daily News says Chancellor Walcott must fire Andrew Buck, a controversial high school principal.
• Chicago plans to give poor students low-cost, high-speed internet access at home. (Chicago Sun-Times)