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The city won’t strike a deal on new teacher evaluations just to get millions of dollars in federal funding, Chancellor Dennis Walcott said last week.

The city and teachers union are supposed to settle on new teacher evaluations by the end of the school year. An agreement would bring the city into compliance with state law and also enable it to receive millions of federal dollars that have policy strings attached to them.

Earlier this month, a New York Daily News editorial said Walcott “has committed to surrender $60 million in federal school improvement grants unless he and the teachers union have agreed by the end of the year on a pilot system for evaluating teacher performance.” The newspaper, which praised Walcott’s tough-on-unions sentiment, did not report the chancellor’s exact words in its news or editorial pages.

Last week, Walcott told me that the editorial accurately paraphrased a comment he made. Coming to an agreement that satisfies both parties is so important, he said, that he does not want the federal funds to force his hand prematurely.

“I’m not going to be hampered by money being the sole force of what a decision will be,” Walcott said. “So at the end of the day if we have to return money, I will be willing to do that. I’m not going to be beholden to money as determining a decision.”

Last summer, as a federal deadline loomed, the city and UFT struck a last-minute, limited agreement on teacher evaluations at 33 low-performing schools, enabling the schools to receive millions of dollars to fund “restart” or “transformation” improvement processes. (more…)

In the Community section last week, teacher Brent Nycz said his sense of loss after his school lost four aides to layoffs was mitigated only by rumors that the aides could get by without their meager salaries.

In response, a commenter identifying as a laid-off worker said being able to “collect” without working is little consolation for having to leave a meaningful job.

“Only those of us who work in a school and know the relationships you form with the children … understand how staying home while school continues without you is the most difficult thing to deal with,” the worker wrote. “This experience has been awful and I wake up everyday hoping to be called back and everyday I realize it’s never going to happen.”

It seems that some school aides might have gotten calls to come in to work— against labor rules. Last week’s edition of the Principals Weekly newsletter cautioned principals against trying to use the laid-off workers as substitute teachers. (more…)

• A new report says most students who enroll at CUNY’s junior colleges drop out before graduating. (WSJ)
• Students protested their school’s subbing of online classes for regular teaching. (Daily News, Daily Mail)
• A leaked email suggests the state doesn’t want to adjudicate a local school busing battle. (S.I. Advance)
• An East Harlem nonprofit is evicting the charter school it has housed for 11 years. (GothamSchools)
• The city and school bus drivers union warn of a strike. (GothamSchools, Times, DN, Post, NY1, WSJ)
• Across the city, afte-rschool programs help give students extra school help and resources. (Daily News)
• Michael Winerip: A nonprofit called Let’s Get Ready prepares low-income students for college. (Times)
• A teenage girl who attends Transit Tech HS offers a view into the sex ed climate at her school. (Post)
• A Pennsylvania private school offers a model for sex education that doesn’t downplay pleasure. (Times)
• New England prep schools are encouraging students to take courses in agriculture. (Times)
• An increasing number of universities, including Stanford, are operating online high schools. (Times)
• New York’s efforts to open college doors for undocumented students face obstacles. (Daily News)

• The city’s schools budget is projected to take a $301 million cut to narrow a budget gap. (Business Week)
• Scheduling problems at Queens H.S. raise questions about the DOE’s network system. (EdNotes)
• Laid-off school aides return to a high school for an unlikely exit interview. (SchoolBook)
• NYSED’s Amy McIntosh will be one of 21 judges on the NCLB waiver apps. (EdWeek)
• A brief history of every city teachers union contract starting in 1962. (DOENUTS Blogs)
• A great photo captures the excitement of seniors mailing off college applications. (SchoolBook)
• A charter school lobbyist responds to a recent report on rising class sizes. (NYFERA)

The principal of the High School for Environmental Studies prepares to accept a check for her school's science program

On Wednesday, we highlighted seven math and science teachers who received awards for their teaching. They were formally honored on Wednesday night, and yesterday the Fund for the City of New York launched a tour of their schools. We joined the tour’s first day to ask students what qualities make a math or science teacher great.

At Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School, juniors and seniors gathered in the library were told that math teacher Kate Belin had won $5,000. Several students whooped with glee and one shouted, “You could go to Africa with that!” Principal Nancy Mann rejected the students’ request to use the school’s $2,500 reward to build a second gym.

Next, at a highly selective school that the Department of Education does not manage, Hunter College High School, members of the math team praised Eliza Kuberska, their Math Team Advisor. Noting that Kuberska exhorts them to “do it for the love of math” and challenges them to tackle problems more complex than most high schoolers typically face, the students brought their teacher to tears.

At the High School for Environmental Studies in Manhattan, it was science teacher Marissa Bellino who made her students cry. Senior Alejandro Vinueza, who has Bellino as his teacher for the third time and traveled with her to Japan to learn about lowering carbon emissions, read a prepared speech but paused shortly after beginning to rub his reddening eyes. “Damn, I’m getting emotional now,” he said. Later, he told me how Bellino inspired him to pursue a science major in college and how she has opened his eyes to environmental awareness. “You know when someone says that they had an experience that changed their life forever? I didn’t believe that could happen until I went to Japan,” Vinueza said.

I asked students from the three high schools what makes for a great math or science teacher. Here’s what they said:

Fannie Lou Hamer receives a framed portrait of math teacher Kate Belin

Good teachers connect:

• “A good teacher understands that every student has their own problems and it takes that one on one interaction, that personal connection, for the students to learn in his or her own way.”
  Tulio Santos, senior, Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School

(more…)

Francis Lewis High School

The principal of the city’s second-largest high school is hoping a community-building event he is throwing tomorrow will set a trend for his colleagues across the city.

Francis Lewis High School Principal Musa Ali Shama has organized a “networking fair” for the Queens high school tomorrow that will convene education providers, city agencies, and private vendors to offer resources for families at the school. Shama recruited local elected officials, community organizations, and Queens’ brand-new branch of the Fairway supermarket to support the event.

One goal, Shama told me, is to provide resources for Francis Lewis families, who include immigrants from 60 countries, to help their children succeed in school. That goal fits perfectly into the city’s priorities: Chancellor Dennis Walcott has said that the city wants to see more parent engagement aimed at boosting academic performance.

“If I want my parents to be more engaged I have to build the tools,” Shama told me last month when he described early plans for the networking fair.

But a second goal, to establish Francis Lewis as a community hub for its section of Queens, is a bit more of a stretch for most high school principals to attain. (more…)

School buses at Coney Island in 2008.

The bus drivers union that Mayor Bloomberg warned earlier today could wage an imminent strike on the school bus system confirmed that a strike was “likely” but disputed that there were “immediate plans to do so.”

A labor dispute between the city and the union, the Amalgamated Transit Union’s Local 1181, is over job protections for school bus drivers that would essentially guarantee employment for current employee regardless of which bus contractors win an upcoming contract for busing services.

The city says it considers the strike illegal and is asking the National Labor Relations Board, which adjudicates conflict between employers and employees, to seek a court injunction to stop it. A strike would affect 152,000 of the city’s 1.1 million students, including more than 50,000 students with special needs, according to the city.

At a hastily assembled press conference today, Mayor Bloomberg said the union had not officially informed the city that it would strike but had signaled the intention strongly in conversations beginning Wednesday. The conversations took place because the city said it planned to announce that it would consider hiring new companies to provide pre-kindergarten busing. That announcement happened today.

“They were very clear to our people that they would intentionally strike the system,” Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said about Local 1181 at the press conference.

In a statement, Amalgamated Transit Union’s Local 1181 President Michael Cordiello confirmed the threats but said it would not happen right away and he criticized Bloomberg for painting a doomsday scenario.  (more…)

One of the city’s oldest and highest-performing charter schools is being evicted by an unlikely landlord: the community organization that founded it.

Harbor Science and Arts Charter School, which opened in 2000, will have to find a new space in coming years after Boys & Girls Harbor, a 74-year old nonprofit that serves East Harlem youth, told the school’s board that it was ending an 11-year partnership.

The sudden news has jolted school administrators and unnerved families — and also illuminated a strange irony: While charter schools are sometimes criticized for disrupting other schools’ space, they too are at the financial and operational mercy of their landlords if they rent private space, as Harbor Charter does.

For Harbor Charter, which has paid $150,000 a year for use of two floors in the nonprofit’s building and access to its pool and gym, the shift could come at significant cost. Some charter schools in private space spend up to $1 million annually for their facilities.

The “decision to dissolve its current partnership/relationship” was Boys & Girls Harbor’s alone, according to a letter that Joanne Hunt, Harbor Charter’s principal, sent to parents last week. In the letter, Hunt assured parents that the school’s existence was not in jeopardy and that it planned to stay in the district. But she said she did not know where it would be located next year. (more…)

A family firewall around discussing school issues has Chancellor Dennis Walcott taking a hands-off approach to managing trouble at a chaotic Queens school.

Walcott’s daughter, Dejeanne Walcott, is a physical education teacher at Queens Metropolitan High School, where an organizational crisis has caused schedules to shift frequently and left some students without instruction, including in physical education classes.

After last night’s Panel for Educational Policy meeting, where he vowed that the problems would be solved, Walcott said he had first heard about the troubles at the school “a couple weeks ago.” He said his top deputy, Chief Academic Officer Shael Polakow-Suransky, had heard complaints around the same time.

But Walcott would not say whether his daughter mentioned the issues to him, emphasizing that he and Dejeanne try not to talk shop.

“My daughter and I have established a protocol with each other with respect to business,” he said. “We try not to mix our respective lives as far as education is concerned.” (more…)

• P.S. 150 in Brownsville is launching a “Walking School Bus” program to keep students safe. (Daily News)
• The DOE has promised change at the school where we reported disorganization. (GothamSchools, Post)
• Manhattan’s borough president is seeking changes to kindergarten admissions. (GothamSchools)
• Students and teachers praise Juan Morel Campos Secondary School, which could close. (Daily News)
• More on the dust-up over Chicago’s union head’s mocking comments about Arne Duncan. (Times)
• Across the country, more and more states are, like New York, changing how teachers are evaluated. (AP)