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Wall Street marches are nothing new for Michael Mulgrew. In May, Mulgrew and his predecessor at the United Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, marched with thousands from City Hall to Wall Street in protest of a budget deficit that threatened to lay off more than 4,000 teachers.

Last night, Mulgrew and members from the UFT were back in the familiar setting.  This time, they were in a 15,000-people march that was part of Occupy Wall Street. After meeting at Foley Square for a rally, where leaders from more than a dozen unions spoke (Here’s Mulgrew’s complete speech), the crowd chanted, sang and danced its way downtown to Liberty Square, where a smaller contingent has taken up residence for the last two weeks. (more…)

Tensions ran high at the United Federation of Teachers Brooklyn office on Tuesday, as union officials volleyed questions, demands, and some cries of exasperation from nearly 100 teachers without permanent positions.

The union office was hosting the second in a series of meetings for members of the Absent Teacher Reserve — the large pool of teachers whose jobs were eliminated when their schools closed or cut costs.

The union is holding the meetings to explain changes to the way teachers in the ATR pool are deployed, based on an agreement struck this summer between the UFT and the Department of Education that stipulates that ATRs must travel to a different school each week. The first weekly assignments are set to start going out today.

But union officials spent much of the meeting deflecting criticism from teachers who charged that the constant upheaval would not make use of their expertise and make them less likely to land permanent positions.

Amy Arundell, a UFT special representative, told the roughly 100 teachers at the meeting that the point of moving teachers weekly is to position them for jobs that could open up at the schools where they are temporarily assigned. The previous arrangement, in which members of the ATR pool often stayed at one school for an entire year, allowed principals to use them as free labor, she said, without necessarily incentivizing them to offer the ATR teachers permanent jobs. (more…)

• Ongoing bad blood between the city and DC-37′s leadership has toughened layoff talks. (Times)
• Chancellor Walcott said the school aide layoffs would definitely happen on Friday. (GothamSchools)
• Downtown parents panned District 2 rezoning plans. (GothamSchools, Tribeca Trib, Downtown Express)
• Chancellor Walcott said he wants to double schools’ private partnerships. (GothamSchools, NY1)
• Mayor Bloomberg criticized a City Council bill that seeks to boost oversight of city contracting. (WNYC)
• Tennessee teachers and administrators say new evaluations are pushing them to resign. (Tennessean)
• New York State has settled with a company accused of overcharging for school lunches. (NY1)

• Wondering whether the city’s latest hiring freeze will change the situation for ATRs. (Chaz’s School Daze)
• Video of New York City parent activists speaking at NBC’s Education Nation event. (NYC P.S. Parents)
• The new kid who thinks he knows everything actually doesn’t know anything at all. (NYC Educator)
• Coney Island Prep offered carrots and nags to get parents to do the DOE survey. (Starting an Ed School)
• A view into the open-ended college counseling at Renaissance Charter HS for Innovation. (Eduwonk)
• Diana Senechal: Evidence, which the Common Core standards exalt, isn’t everything. (Core Knowledge)
• A math scholar offers a candid take on the Common Core’s math standards. (Rick Hess Straight Up)
• Kevin Carey: The Republicans are proposing education policy like it’s 1990 to 1994. (New Republic)
• An overview of the need, the path, and the plan behind the city’s new sex ed mandate. (Gotham Gazette)
• Happy World Teachers Day! Experts weigh in on teacher training and quality. (Learning Matters)
• Joe Williams notes that a chief NCLB tenet, transfer from failing schools, never caught on. (DFER Blog)
• The author of the blog-turned-book “Fed Up With School Lunch” revealed her identity. (Chicago Tribune)

City Council members, union officials, and parents spent yesterday agitating for a last-minute deal to avert layoffs planned for more than 700 school aides.

Council Speaker Christine Quinn said she would hold a hearing on the layoffs, the largest ever under Mayor Bloomberg, and a late-afternoon rally to oppose the firings attracted a large crowd.

But Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said this morning that nothing could be done now to avert the layoffs, set to go into effect on Friday.

“DC-37 layoffs will still happen. I’ve been very consistent about that. It’s unfortunate but it’s the reality of the budget situation we face now,” he told reporters after a breakfast to honor the nonprofit organization PENCIL.

“I’ve tried not to send out mixed signals to DC-37,” Walcott said. “The reality is Friday will be the last day for roughly 700 individuals who are members of DC-37.”

Yesterday, Occupy Wall Street protesters joined the rally to support the school aides. But DC-37 is not among the many city unions participating in this afternoon’s massive Occupy Wall Street rally, according to a list posted on the protest movement’s website.

Sharon Greenberger

The city Department of Education is losing its top operations official and gaining a chief information officer in the latest spate of leadership changes announced today.

In keeping with a hiring freeze that Mayor Bloomberg has imposed on all city agencies, the department is filling all of the open positions with people who are already on its payroll.

Sharon Greenberger, who became the DOE’s chief operating officer in 2010 after heading the School Construction Authority for four years, is leaving to become a senior vice president at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. She’s being replaced by the department’s chief financial officer, Veronica Conforme, who has worked at the DOE since 2003, and another DOE official is moving up to fill Conforme’s role.

Greenberger is the first top deputy to resign since Dennis Walcott became chancellor six months ago. Several top officials, including Conforme’s predecessor in the department’s financial operations, left during the tumultuous months between ex-Chancellor Joel Klein’s resignation last November and the resignation of his successor, Cathie Black, in April.

The department also announced that it has filled the chief information officer position that had been open since March. (more…)

Chancellor Dennis Walcott indicated today that he wants his central administration to take the brunt of midyear budget cuts.

But he did not explain how the Department of Education would be able to handle even deeper cuts that Mayor Bloomberg said are on the way for next year, when the city faces a $4.6 billion shortfall.

Yesterday, Bloomberg instructed city agencies to figure out how to cut 2 percent from their current budget and 6 percent from next year’s projected budget. He included the DOE in his directive, unlike last year, when he insulated schools and public safety from the full extent of midyear cuts imposed on other agencies.

Walcott said today that DOE officials had already started talking with the city’s Office of Management and Budget about ways to cut spending. Proposals are due Oct. 18.

“I’m confident that we’ll be able to submit something and have that announcement in time for the deadline,” he said. “What we’re doing is working collectively with our staff to find where savings could be and make sure we’re minimizing the impact to schools.”

Midyear budget cuts are doubly disruptive to schools because most expenses are fixed for the whole year, meaning that only certain costs, such as after-school programs or tutoring, can go on the chopping block.

And this year, many principals are operating with less of a cushion against midyear cuts. (more…)

Yet another charter school is on the path to unionization after a majority of its teachers voted to seek representation from the United Federation of Teachers.

Teachers at Fahari Academy Charter School, a third-year school in Crown Heights that currently serves fifth through seventh grades, announced the vote in a press release today. They said they hoped the decision would “help foster a positive school culture.”

“The union is vital for Fahari,” teacher Jeffrey Embleton said in the release. “Having union recognition will give us the voice we need to best serve our students.”

Fahari had its charter authorized by the Department of Education in 2008 and opened its doors in 2009. In its inaugural report card, released last month, the school received a D, including an F on the student progress component. In April, the New York Post reported that the school was trying to expel a student with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder for offenses such as name-calling and roughhousing.

The staff notified the school’s executive director, Catina Venning, of their vote in a letter today. At the same time, the UFT has begun the legal process that will allow the union to negotiate as a third-party bargaining unit for a contract for Fahari teachers. (more…)

A map of proposed new school zones for Lower Manhattan

Tribeca’s P.S. 234 is no stranger to overcrowding, but last night the packed auditorium was full of stressed downtown parents instead of their children.

The parents were there to speak out on the Department of Education’s rezoning proposal for downtown Manhattan during the first of multiple public hearings held by the Community Education Council for District 2.

It is the third time District 2 has been rezoned in as many years as new schools have come online to serve the district’s growing number of families. In 2009, the department offered up multiple rezoning options, pitting parents against each other based on how their children would be affected. This year, the department released a single proposal for the council to revise and approve.

“We went through some wars together,” Elizabeth Rose, from the DOE’s department of portfolio management, told the parents at last night’s meeting. “Tonight, I’m mostly here to listen.”

Rose, CEC members, and other officials heard parents complain that they had moved to Tribeca in order to send their children to the popular P.S. 234, only to find out that they could be rezoned and see the value of their homes fall. They heard concerns about changes to a longstanding policy of treating the West Village as a single zone shared by multiple schools. And they heard worries about the “sketchy” neighborhood that students might have to walk through to get from Tribeca to P.S. 3 in the West Village.

Together, the parents argued that the rezoning proposal did not meet downtown’s real needs: for the DOE to bring school zones in line with neighborhood boundaries, ensure students’ safety during their commutes, and build more schools in Lower Manhattan. (more…)

Chancellor Dennis Walcott praises the Pencil program at a breakfast meeting to honor the parternships the program has created between local principals and business leaders.

Addressing city principals and business leaders this morning, Chancellor Dennis Walcott said pro bono partnerships between schools and local businesses could alleviate some of the pressures of mounting budget cuts.

Walcott was speaking at a breakfast event held to celebrate more than 300 school-business partnerships that have been created through the PENCIL program, and to announce plans to expand the partnerships to twice as many public schools this year.

PENCIL, a non-profit founded in 1995, facilitates relationships between principals and local business leaders, who offer schools free consulting and guidance to boost student achievement through field trips, internships and school-based projects, according to organizers.

“These leaders can meet principals around their specific needs,” Walcott said. “One of the principals said she was doing something and her corporate partner said, ‘there’s a better way you can do it.’ That’s the type of value these partners are adding to the system.”

Talana Bradley, principal of the Young Women’s Leadership School of Brooklyn, said her school’s partnership, Jayun Kim, a business consultant, has helped her develop a long-term strategic plan for the growth of her school, which was founded in 2008, and plan for coming budget cuts.

“There’s never enough money. I’m so upset that they’re going to continue making cuts,” she said to the audience. (“So am I!” Walcott called back from his seat.) “It’s hard to stay motivated. What this partnership does is help us see the forest for the trees.” (more…)