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A veteran teacher who disrupted an Educators 4 Excellence panel last month has learned that he isn’t welcome at the group’s future events.

Stuart Kaplan, a nine-year teacher at High School for Law and Public Service in Brooklyn, joined Educators 4 Excellence because he believed that the teaching profession could be improved by more dialogue.

“I feel that there needs to be discussions between educators. It was my hope that they wanted to foster a real conversation,” Kaplan said of E4E. He signed a pledge required of all members to agree to certain policy positions help by E4E and he attended several events, which are closed to the general public.

But he publicly disavowed his membership last month after a blow-up with founder Evan Stone at a teacher evaluation panel. Annoyed that the group had released a teacher evaluation proposal earlier in the day because he believed too little feedback from E4E members was solicited, Kaplan repeatedly interrupted Stone, prompting an early end to the event

But E4E did not remove him from its email list, and he received invitations to additional events, including one tonight, which he accepted.

Last week, Stone personally called him to inform him he wasn’t welcome unless he recommitted to E4E’s core principles. Kaplan refused and Stone said that he would be barred from attending future events. (more…)

• New York is one of only two states to win millions of federal dollars to open more charter schools. (Post)
• A new lawsuit challenges the finances behind charter co-location. (GothamSchools, Times, Daily News)
• Visiting a co-location site, Chancellor Walcott said he plans to maintain the controversial policy. (NY1)
• The Department of Education’s unique art collection includes 1,500 pieces that can be overlooked. (NY1)
• Malfunctioning airconditioners at a Staten Island school sent 13 disabled students to the hospital. (Post)
• The Daily News says the state must improve its teaching force to make mentoring more effective.
• A once-homeless student who finished high school last year is now helping other students. (Daily News)

• After a report that DFER supports Hakeem Jeffries, Jeffries gets slightly defensive. (PolitickerNY)
• Previously, Jeffries has indeed criticized the Bloomberg administration on education. (GS, GS)
• The ideologies of teacher groups make it hard to know what teachers really want. (Jeff Henig)
• A new documentary shows how teaching became an esteemed profession in Finland. (Salon)
• Turnover is high among charter school teachers in Los Angeles, a study finds. (LA Times)
• Chicago Public Schools and Groupon partner to help donate school supplies. (Catalyst)
• Putting the teacher layoff wave in perspective: “it could have been far worse.” (Quick and the Ed)
• A new radio series reminds that roughly one million students drop out of school every year. (NPR)
• Another legal challenge urges co-located charter schools to pay rent. (CityRoom, GS)

The lead plaintiffs on a new lawsuit against the Department of Education stand on steps of Tweed (from left: Arthur Schwartz, of Advocates for Justice; Mona Davids, of NYC Parents Union; Noah Gotbaum, District 3 Community Education Council President; and Leonie Haimson, of Class Size Matters

Just days after the city received some good news in a lawsuit targeting its policy on charter school co-locations, another legal battle has arrived.

A group of parent activists filed a long-threatened lawsuit against the Department of Education today, charging that it is in violation of state law that requires school districts to collect rent and utility money from charters schools that occupy public school buildings.

The state education law cited in the lawsuit, Section 2853(4)(c), asserts that charters may rent public space and be provided with basic maintenance services, such as custodial work, utility payments and safety measures. But the law also states that the expenses from these services should be provided to charters “at cost.”

The exact amount of “at cost” is not clearly explained in the law – and state education officials did not respond to emails seeking clarification – but the city currently charges $1 in annual rent to about 80 charter schools that operate in public school buildings. It also waives fees for utilities and provides operational services.

The lawsuit estimates that these costs add up to $100 million per year and should be shouldered entirely by charter schools. (more…)

The movement to revolutionize teacher training by showing teachers video clips of themselves in action is losing its original tool: the Flip video camera.

As the dean of Hunter College’s education school, former State Education Commissioner David Steiner pioneered the use of Flip cameras as a teaching tool. Instructors coaching teachers-in-training could offer documentary evidence of what they did right and wrong.

Now, each student at Relay, a new education graduate school that grew out of Hunter’s program, receives a Flip camera to document their lessons, according to a long article about the movement to revamp teacher education in this Sunday’s New York Times Education Life supplement. The article’s main featured a Flip video camera atop a miniature tripod.

But production stopped this spring on the low-cost, one-button, no-cord digital video camera. (more…)

• Founding principals at new schools got higher ratings from their teachers on a city survey. (NY1)
• The state has hired a new company to make its annual tests, which have been called too easy. (Post)
• Michael Winerip: The city’s system of school choice might be segregating students by test scores. (Times)
• A former teacher who went to jail for having sex with a student says he acted properly in school. (Post)
• The New York Public Library is offering children a fine amnesty to get them reading again. (Daily News)
• Mayor Bloomberg attacked the UFT and NAACP during his weekly radio show. (GothamSchools, Post)
• A deputy chancellor announced a happy hour to celebrate but didn’t invite Walcott. (GS, Daily News)
• The Daily News praises Judge Paul Feinman for ruling in the city’s favor.

• PS 9 parents say the city’s space use plans don’t do their job if they’re written in legal language. (EdVox)
• A Teaching Fellows exec and a teacher delayed their same-sex marriage to make it legal. (Vows)
• A member of a state arts task force illuminates internal discussions about assessment. (Dewey 21C)
• Looking for a job? The DOE’s Strategic Response Group is looking for a new member. (Simply Hired)
• Two stories suggest that sports writer Alan Schwartz might be joining the ed beat at the Times. (Russo)
• A Eugene Lang professor describes her semester teaching in an upstate prison. (Dissent Magazine)
• Teachers implicated in the Atlanta cheating scandal are resigning and retiring in droves. (HuffPo)
• A long, hot walk takes a teacher past Ruben Brosbe’s school and a high school info session. (JD2178)
• Teach for America reminded alumni that most corps members belong to teachers unions. (Teacher Beat)

Being able to move forward with plans to close and co-locate schools isn’t enough for Mayor Michael Bloomberg — he said this morning that the UFT and NAACP should feel ashamed for trying to stop the changes.

Bloomberg used his weekly appearance on “The John Gambling Show” to celebrate yesterday’s late-night decision by Judge Paul Feinman to allow the city to move ahead with 22 school closures and 15 charter school co-locations. The UFT and NAACP sued in May to stop the closure and co-locations.

“There are thousands of families whose children have been in limbo because of this lawsuit, and now we can give them a clear direction. This is a big victory for the kids, and I think those that brought the suit should be ashamed of themselves. There’s no other way to phrase it,” Bloomberg said.

UFT officials bristled at the suggestion, saying that the lawsuit — which will now move into a new phase — was meant to address inequities introduced by Bloomberg’s school policies.

“If there is any shame in this matter, it belongs to the mayor and the administration that sat back and made no attempt to help schools and students that were struggling, an administration that favored charter schools while it ignored the needs of public school students,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew said in a statement.

The radio show’s segment on education began this way: (more…)

The Department of Education official in charge of opening and closing schools has proposed drinking to the news that some of his plans can go forward.

In an email to at nearly 80 top-ranking DOE employees — but not to Chancellor Dennis Walcott — Deputy Chancellor of Portfolio Planning Marc Sternberg announced a happy hour to celebrate last night’s State Supreme Court ruling in the lawsuit filed by the UFT and NAACP. He wrote:

Last night:

New York Supreme Court Justice Paul Feinman denied the UFT and NAACP’s request for a preliminary injunction preventing the Department of Education from moving forward to close 22 failing schools and co-locate 15 public charter schools in DOE buildings. The judge’s ruling allows the DOE to move forward with the closings and co-locations.

Tonight:

Come join us for a drink to honor this important moment for New York City’s public school families! Please forward —all are welcome!

The email was sent just before 1 p.m. today and was later posted to the NYC Education News listserv run by parent activist Leonie Haimson. Natalie Ravitz, the DOE’s chief spokeswoman, confirmed the message’s authenticity.

“We have no problem with our employees getting together with friends after work for a happy hour, as people do in companies and organizations across America,” Ravitz said.

The full email, including its addressees, is below. (more…)

Hours after a judge ruled that the city can go ahead with a controversial slate of school closure and openings, union lawyers are starting to sketch out their response.

Department of Education officials said construction projects planned to ready school buildings for co-locations were free to begin. At PS 308 in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, workers were painting classrooms. But Rafiq Kalam Id-Din said he was still waiting for the city to approve construction for the school he runs, Teaching Firms of America Charter School.

Meanwhile, lawyers for the United Federation of Teachers, one of the leading plaintiffs in the lawsuit, are studying the decision and deliberating their next steps. The ruling last night denied a preliminary injunction that would have barred the city from moving forward with its plans, but it did not assess the merits of the UFT and NAACP’s claims that the city’s plans would lead to inequities among schools.

Last night, the union said it would not drop the lawsuit, and any future adjudication would focus on those equity claims. But it could take some time for union lawyers to wade through questions that could influence how they proceed.

One question is just what the union would seek to get out of such a suit. With the start of the school year just weeks away, the chance of any further action preventing the start of phase-outs and the beginning of co-locations is virtually nil. (more…)