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Chart from Comptroller John Liu's audit of the Absent Teacher Reserve.

The Department of Education could potentially be doing more to help teachers whose positions have been eliminated find new jobs.

That’s one conclusion of an audit conducted by Comptroller John Liu of the DOE’s efforts to help members of the Absent Teacher Reserve, the pool of teachers whose jobs were lost to budget cuts, enrollment changes, or school closures. The audit concluded that the vast majority of ATRs — 95 percent — are working full-time in teaching jobs, but that the department doesn’t maintain data sufficient to conclude whether its efforts to help the teachers find permanent positions are paying off.

“Without such information, we believe that DOE is significantly hindered in its ability to evaluate the success of its efforts in helping ATR teachers find permanent positions,” the report concludes.

The audit is not meant to dictate policy and is intended only to draw attention to what the report said was an information gap within the DOE on the ATR pool.

But an unwritten conclusion also seems to be that the city is wasting money by hiring new teachers when ATRs are licensed to do the job. (more…)

The United Federation of Teachers is gearing up for its annual struggle to wrangle classes down to their contractual size limits.

As schools work to pinch every cent out of their compressed budgets, there are few safeguards in place to ward off swelling class sizes, and the UFT is asking members to be especially vigilant this year.

In the Sept. 1 Chapter Leader Weekly Update, the union urged its school representatives to monitor class size closely from the first day of classes so that after an “informal resolution” period ends on Sept. 21, the union can begin filing grievances.

One element of the UFT’s bid to challenge the city’s class-size efforts is in legal limbo. In 2010, the union sued the city over its spending of class size reduction funds, charging that the Department of Education had used the funds for other purposes. But this summer, an appeals court threw out the suit, ruling that the issue should be handled by the State Education Department.

Dick Riley, a UFT spokesman, said the union was still weighing how to proceed. But he said that putting pressure on the DOE early has traditionally paid off for the union, with schools rectifying many class size violations as the chaos of the first days of class wears away.

“In practice the DOE, particularly in high schools, often exceeds these limits at the beginning of the school year, but under pressure from the UFT, generally brings them down to the contractual limit, though it can take weeks for some schools to do so,” Riley said. (more…)

Teachers union president Michael Mulgrew talks with teachers from P.S. 51 in the Bronx

For his first school visit of the new year, United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew chose P.S. 51, where teachers and students recently learned they were exposed to a toxic chemical.

The Bronx school abruptly relocated this summer in the wake of news that high levels of a toxic chemical had been detected at its former building. The new location, chosen just three weeks ago, is a stone building that until June housed a Catholic school. Now a sign for P.S. 51 sits atop a freshly-painted red front door.

As teachers around the city began sprucing up their classrooms and planning their first lessons, P.S. 51 teachers spent last week hauling supplies to their new building and reassuring families at an open house.

Moving “was a huge task. The teachers were working tirelessly last week,” said Eileen Bernstein, the UFT chapter leader who has taught at P.S. 51 for two decades.

Rick Romain, another P.S. 51 teacher, said he was grateful that the school was able to stay together instead of being dispersed across multiple sites. But he said there were some downsides to the move. “Some kids are a little afraid to get on the school buses,” he said. “Some parents are inconvenienced because they have to find a way to get to work.”

Mulgrew sat with teachers in the school’s basement cafeteria for close to an hour this morning. Speaking to reporters afterwards, Mulgrew repeated his criticism of the Department of Education for failing to test the school’s building, and 31 other sites, for trichloroethylene, a carcinogen.

“There is an obligation on behalf of the city to make sure that every school site is safe for children,” he said.

He said the union wants teachers who worked in the building, where students were said to frequently complain of headaches and breathing problems, to be monitored over time for medical conditions: “To not have that monitoring would be irresponsible.”  (more…)

News from New York City:

• The police department is a month late in giving the City Council school arrest data. (Daily News, NY1)
• On the city’s internal metrics of success, the Department of Education fell short last year. (Daily News)
• Some principals, including at Manhattan Village Academy, are simply fined after breaking rules. (Post)
• A center for suspended students will open inside the teachers union headquarters this week. (WNYC)
• Teachers at the Urban Assembly School for Applied Math and Science are making house calls. (Times)
• Even as teachers report for duty today, some teachers are still looking for permanent positions. (WNYC)
• Budgets have shrunk at 51 low-performing middle schools promised extra financial aid. (Daily News)
• Some city schools are asking parents to chip in more to cover what slashed budgets used to. (WNYC)
• The DOE helped a middling Brooklyn secondary school solicit aid from public relations firms. (Post)
• As GothamSchools reported in June, teachers this year didn’t get school supplies funds. (Times, WNYC)
• More than $100,000 in technology was stolen from a Bronx campus over five nights. (Daily News)
• SchoolFisher, a site GothamSchools covered in March, offers school data real estate brokers can’t. (Post)
• Michael Winerip: Teachers in city Catholic schools haven’t gotten much help from their union. (Times)
• Chancellor Walcott ran with the Port Richmond High School girls cross country team. (S.I. Advance)
• Alumni of Stuyvesant High School are upset they can’t use the building for a 9/11 commemoration. (WSJ)
• Private schools in the city are tightening policies that give siblings a leg up in admissions. (Times)

• Schools are putting more money into technology but aren’t getting a payoff in test score boosts. (Times)
• Cheating was found at two top-performing schools in Los Angeles, a district and a charter. (L.A. Times)
• Houston is adopting strategies from KIPP schools to see if they work outside of charter schools. (Times)
• A second outpost of Manhattan’s games-themed Quest 2 Learn school is open in Chicago. (Sun-Times)
• Changes in instruction in Montgomery County, Md., show a Common Core influence. (Washington Post)
• Chicago is letting students and their parents travel for free to school on the first day today. (Sun-Times)
• D.C.’s schools chief is under fire for embracing growth in white student enrollment. (Washington Post)
• Charles Blow: Teachers are often maligned when they should be honored instead. (Times)

• Young Baltimoreans aim to reshape the debate about school reform away from achievement. (Urbanite)
• A teacher meets a 17-year-old student who is just hoping she won’t be killed. (Charting My Own Course)
• Comparing the Common Core approaches of Chicago and Cleveland. (The Quick and the Ed)
• A burnt-out D.C. teacher suggests that D.C. bring back binary teacher ratings. (Answer Sheet)
• Principals burn out in high-intensity charter schools, just like teachers. (Mr. Dolan via Mike Goldstein)
• Comparing the lessons of marriage to the lessons learned in the classroom. (Cooperative Catalyst)
• A principal says the problem facing Salon’s “bad teacher” was not simply bad advice. (Practical Theory)
• “May you see him for whom he is,” a teacher’s prayer to her son’s first teacher begins. (Tween Teacher)
• Most states don’t have 9/11 in their social studies standards, but it’s taught anyway. (Curriculum Matters)
• Are Americans “Koala Dads,” preferring joy and well-roundedness in their children? (Flypaper)
• We’re sneaking an extra day into the long weekend and resting up for next week. Have a great weekend!

As the city prepares to observe the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that took place on Sept. 11, 2001, the Department of Education is making curriculum materials — and grief counseling — available to teachers.

“As educators and parents of children who grew up in the years before and after 9/11, we have a responsibility to help them learn that the attacks of 9/11 were an attack on all New Yorkers, our nation as a whole, our freedoms, and our way of life,” Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott wrote in an email to teachers today announcing the new materials.

High school seniors had just started second grade on 9/11, and most city students have “little or no recollection” of the day, Walcott noted in the letter to teachers. That’s one reason why a team of teachers and administrators at the DOE worked with the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, scheduled to open next year, to develop a collection of 9/11-themed lesson plans. Those plans went online today.

The lesson plans are meant to be used in social studies, history, English, and art classes across all grade levels. The 10 to 20 lessons for each grade level are divided across the themes of “historical impact,” “community and conflict,” “heroes and service,” and “memory and memorialization.”

Children in kindergarten through second grade might learn about bravery and examine mementos, now in the museum’s permanent collection, that children sent to firefighters after 9/11. Middle schoolers might analyze memorial songs released shortly after 9/11. And a high school class might study the recent history of Islamist extremism or develop museum exhibitions of their own. Each lesson is connected to new Common Core curriculum standards being rolled out this year.

The department is also planning to offer counseling services to teachers, staff, and students who need them, Walcott said.

Walcott’s letter to teachers is below. (more…)

The city has underestimated both the scope of its bedbug problem in schools and the response needed to deal with it, say critics who have followed the parasitic pests’ resurgence in recent years.

More than 3,500 cases of bedbugs were confirmed in an untold number of schools last year, but city officials said just one school was actually infested. Now, the city is on the verge of finalizing long-awaited contracts with three pest control companies — but the contracts don’t reflect last year’s spike in bedbug cases, and critics say they are inadequate to deal with the problem.

Department of Education officials have long maintained that schools aren’t hospitable environments for the nocturnal insects, but one pest control executive who has done business with the city says they aren’t looking hard enough.

“I don’t think they’re serious about the problem,” said the executive, who asked to remain anonymous. “They don’t want to know there’s a problem. They don’t want to spend money on the problem.”

He said his company didn’t try for the new contracts because he thought the contracts were ”woefully underbudget” to deal with the problem. In fact, he said, the costs associated with the task would put have put his company at a loss.

Two of the contracts are worth $14,999 and estimated 225 hours of work for each pest management company — an hourly rate of $67 — according to price quotes that the DOE published when it began collecting bids from vendors. (more…)

Collin Lawrence is a former — and now present again! — New York City teacher who is recounting his four years working at a Brooklyn high school. Read Collin’s previous posts.

When I walked into school on Thursday, June 24, 2010, I knew that my final two days at the Brooklyn Arts Academy were not going to be the glorious ones I’d imagined. Word had been sent out that morning from the administration that no teacher would be allowed to leave the building without the permission of the payroll secretary, and that we’d no longer be allowed to stream world cup games in our classrooms. It was clear that the principal had not reacted kindly to the letter that we had written him the day before, outlining our concerns about being asked to sign documents acknowledging error in recording student attendance. We were being punished.

There was a meeting for returning teachers held at 10 a.m. I did not attend, but the teachers who did reported that the principal berated them. I was told that he walked in, held up the letter, and said it had made him “sick to his stomach.” He had taken particular exception to the first line of the letter, which spoke of the “unified staff of [the Brooklyn Arts Academy].” He said that, since he and the office workers were also part of the staff, the letter did not speak for everyone. He also said that he’d been planning to have an end-of-year celebration for the teachers, but that now he couldn’t do it. And he said that the Brooklyn Arts Academy would never be the kind of school he hoped it would be if teachers wrote letters like this. Then he walked out, leaving the assistant principal to finish the meeting with the stunned teachers. She gave the teachers an assignment to write a 2-4 page reflection about how they might integrate “key cognitive strategies” into their curriculum for the next year. The deadline was 3 p.m.

Those of us milling about got the lowdown as soon as the meeting was dismissed. All of us, teachers who were leaving and teachers who were returning, decided to have another meeting and see if we could think of any way to defuse the situation. We elected to call the network leader, essentially the supervisor of our principal, and ask him to mediate a conversation for us (the principal had outright rejected our request for a group meeting to address the attendance issue, saying instead that he’d be happy to meet with teachers as individuals). This was the same network leader who’d come to our first staff meeting of the school year and told us to communicate our concerns to our principal rather than taking out our frustrations in other ways (i.e. the learning environment surveys).

When we heard back from him, he essentially hung us out to dry. (more…)

A school on its first day of classes is, ideally, a well oiled machine.

Before teachers report for duty Tuesday and students for class on Thursday, computers must be upgraded, textbooks distributed, and lunch schedules set. Staff must be hired, instruction planned, and services put in place for students with special needs.

To help principals stay on top of all of the moving pieces involved in planning for the first day of school, the Department of Education has distributed a checklist of start-of-school tasks, similar to the compliance checklist that principals use to make sure they have completed required management tasks over the course of the year.

The 50-plus tasks on the start-of-school list fall into broad categories of staffing, school organization, physical environment and security, technology, and instruction. Elementary and middle school principals must also oversee student enrollment. (High school enrollment is managed centrally.)

Most of the jobs on the list must be completed perennially, but one is unique to this year. The checklist asks, “Are plans in place and materials ready for the September 7th Professional Development day for teachers?” That’s when all schools are supposed to offer training for teachers on how to bring new Common Core curriculum standards into their classrooms. The start of classes was pushed back one day to make room for the planning.

The complete checklist is below. (more…)

• Parents at PS 70 in Astoria are upset about how the city handled a bedbug infestation there. (Daily News)
• Opportunity Charter School has become the city’s 13th unionized charter school. (GothamSchools)
• The head of a Brooklyn electrical-contracting firm helped design a new vocational school. (Post)
• The Times says New York should appeal the ruling limiting the role of test scores in teacher evaluations.
• In England, new charter-style schools started by parents and nonprofits open this week. (BBC)
• The ex-head of Los Angeles’s union is planning a charter school with fewer labor rights. (L.A. Times)
• Education Secretary Arne Duncan says he is newly optimistic about Detroit’s schools. (Free Press)