GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Queens Metropolitan High School under construction, April 21, 2010. Jim Henderson/Creative Commons

A year-old Queens high school that expanded to meet community demand is struggling under the weight of its own ambitions.

Located in a suburban section of Queens, Queens Metropolitan High School promised rich course offerings and a rigorous academic program to its 650 ninth- and 10th-grade students. But the ambitious plans left little room for error, and because of staff changes, space issues, and poor planning, Queens Metropolitan students have gotten new schedules as many as 10 times since September.

On Monday, up to three periods of classes were canceled for many 10th-grade students, who sat in the auditorium and cafeteria as administrators feverishly worked to hash out new schedules, according to accounts from parents, students, and staff.

At a PTA meeting Tuesday night, parents also complained that some classes are without teachers, physical education instruction isn’t happening, and that their students aren’t receiving grades for some coursework.

Principal Marci Levy-Maguire told the two dozen parents at the meeting, who included City Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley, that she is working “night and day” on fixing the schedule debacle.

“Programming has been problematic. I fully admit it. We are continuing to work to address it so students are programmed properly,” Levy-Maguire said. “I can say nothing more than I apologize, and I wish it were different. We are making plans to have this resolved.”

Several teachers who had been assisting with trouble-shooting schedule revisions pulled out of the process on Sunday, saying that they did not want to give up teaching time to complete administrative tasks, according to an email that GothamSchools obtained. (more…)

At a time when the Obama administration is rewarding efforts to improve math and science instruction, seven city math and science teachers are being lauded for the work they already do.

For the third straight year, the Fund for the City of New York and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation are giving city teachers awards for excellence in teaching science and mathematics. The teachers will receive their prizes — $5,000 each — at an award ceremony tonight and their schools will celebrate the awards, and the $2,500 that their math and science programs receive, at a series of assemblies tomorrow.

The teachers were nominated by students, parents, colleagues, and administrators and then selected by a committee made up of representatives from local science museums and universities, based on their students’ achievement, their involvement in extracurricular activities, and their efforts to promote math and science inside and outside the classroom. The recipients’ high schools range from the city’s highest-performing to some of the weakest, including one that the city is trying to turn around using federal funding.

Here are this year’s recipients, along with a highlight about each that we pulled from longer biographies compiled by the Sloan Awards:

Teacher: Kate Belin
School: Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School
Subject: Geometry, Functions
Why her school thinks she’s great: Belin makes math relevant and interesting for students at Fannie Lou Hamer, where 90 percent of entering freshman are below grade level in math or English, by connecting math to the world outside the classroom. (more…)

A rally in October against planned layoffs of school aides.

Five weeks after more than 650 school workers were laid off, their union is filing suit to restore their jobs — and teachers across the city have picked up their responsibilities.

In the GothamSchools Community section, Washington Heights special education teacher Brent Nycz describes how his elementary school coped after losing three of its six school aides and its family worker to layoffs last month. The departures came after three years of budget cuts that have left teachers squeezed and students without essential help, he writes.

Nycz writes:

The first few days after the layoffs left my school in a state of confusion. I heard rumors from the staff that the school was waiting for an influx of more senior school aides to fill in positions, but no one new came. …

The cafeteria that was once run by school aides is now run by every out-of-classroom, non-cluster staff member, regardless of position. Both the school psychologist and the school social worker complain about having to cover lunch duty for one period each day, leaving both of them scrambling for time to finish a plethora of new referrals. I’ve seen more of the IEP teacher with my students in the cafeteria than providing IEP support.

Nowadays, our school has adjusted to the loss of the school aides just as we have adjusted to the loss of resources and staff members over the last couple of years. With the loss of any staff member with no replacement, the staff picks up more tasks and our jobs get harder. We lose more time to focus on our teaching practice and helping our students.

Today, District Council 37, the union that represents the laid-off aides, is filing suit over the layoffs. The suit, which the union announced on Monday, argues that the Department of Education acted in bad faith during its negotiations with DC-37 over the jobs and did not give the City Council or principals a chance to stave off the layoffs. It also argues that the DOE violated state law by conducting layoffs that disproportionately affected schools with many poor students.

As a special education teacher at a Washington Heights elementary school for the last three years, I’ve made a number of professional connections that have aided me in getting adjusted to the school and to the contours of my job. One of those connections was the family worker. She assisted me with my questions about my students’ services and how to best work with SESIS, the Department of Education’s unwieldy special education data system. Her remarkable memory supplied me with essential details about every one of my students, their parents, and their Individualized Education Plans. Frankly, she was my biggest support in the special education department.

Last month, she worked her last day at my school.

On Oct. 7, three school aides and the family worker worked their last day at my school, cutting the number of aides at my school from six to three and leaving us without a family worker entirely. Losing our school aides unfortunately was just another cut our school of 700+ students and 50+ staff members has had to endure over last three years of budget cuts, which have also shrunk our teaching staff and caused us to lose intervention teachers. But my colleagues and I have been feeling the loss of our school aides every day since the layoffs.

The aides at my school served many functions throughout the school day. The most visible area where the school aides were the greatest help was in the cafeteria. With four periods of lunch with students ranging from pre-kindergarten to fifth grade, the aides were watchful eyes and the go-to people if there were troubles at any of the tables. The school aides also helped make copies for over 50 teachers, phone calls to parents to assist the parent coordinator, and plans for parent workshops and special events.

In addition, the family worker worked to make sure CAP (another special education database system) and SESIS were up-to-date and compliant to state and city requirements. She was also the first welcoming face any new student coming to our school after a placement change would see and interact with, and she provided as smooth of a first day as she could. With over 70 students with IEPs and constant new student influx, this was no small undertaking. (more…)

• State education officials say they want more scrutiny into how city schools use credit recovery. (Post)
• Even when city schools contracts aren’t disastrous, they still raise questions about spending. (City Limits)
• A report by AQE concludes that state budget cuts have hit poor school districts hardest. (Reuters)
• City data confirm that class sizes rose again across the city. (GothamSchools, SchoolBook)
• A Fort Hamilton High School student who doused a classmate with acid won’t face jail time. (Daily News)
• The UFT’s bid to keep teachers’ scores private suffered a setback. (GothamSchools, SchoolBook, NY1)
• The school reform group that Joel Klein started has been folded into a national group. (GothamSchools)
• Four of the 11 states that applied for NCLB waivers this week were Race to the Top winners. (Times)
• Under lobbying pressure, Congress blocked new school lunch rules meant to boost food value. (Times)

• Parents suggest ways to simplify the city’s labyrinthine high school admissions process. (Insideschools)
• The New York Times’ education editor faces attendance issues as a P.S. 11 class parent. (SchoolBook)
• A teacher outlines five contradictions he sees in the teaching strategy of “differentiation.” (Jose Vilson)
• About a third of disabled New Yorkers live in poverty, where they are largely stuck. (Gotham Gazette)
• Aiming to encourage more conversation, CNN has launched a new education blog. (Schools of Thought)
• The Walton Foundation donated $25 million to help KIPP charters double enrollment. (Denver Post)
• Eleven states officially filed first-round applications for No Child Left Behind waivers. (Politics K-12)
• An upstart force among Los Angeles’s teachers wants a referendum on its platform. (Teacher Beat)
• A charter school founder continues her series on applying for authorization. (Charter Notebook)
• In Germany, a kindergarten building is shaped like a kitten, complete with a tail slide. (ohdeedoh)

Chart showing trends in K-3 class size. From Class Size Matters PowerPoint presentation. (Click to enlarge.)

Preliminary class size data that the city released today confirms what the teachers union has tallied: Class sizes are on the rise.

Classes grew most this year in kindergarten through third grade, where the average size increased by just under one student since last year to 23.1. On average, classes in those grades are now three students larger than they were in the 2006-2007 school year. They are largest in Queens and Staten Island and smallest in Manhattan.

Classes in those grades are now the largest they have been since 1998, according to a PowerPoint presentation prepared by parent activist Leonie Haimson for Class Size Matters, a group that she runs to advocate for smaller classes.

Class sizes have also inched up in upper elementary, middle, and high school grades, but not by as much, according to the city’s new numbers.

In all grades, average class sizes exceed the goals set forth in the 2007 Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit settlement, which required the state to earmark extra funds for New York City schools to use for six different purposes, including reducing class size. (more…)

John Legend Talks About Stand for Children from Stand for Children on Vimeo.

With both of its founders off the education stage, the Education Equality Project gracefully closed its doors this week when its remaining board members joined Stand for Children, a national school reform advocacy group.

Board members announced the news in a press release today, although insiders said the partnership was considered a done deal for several months. EEP has been without a staff since December and has been looking for suitors to meet its lofty national ambitions ever since.

By tapping into EEP, Stand For Children will gain three board members — including Grammy Award-winning R&B singer John Legend — and access to a powerful and diverse Rolodex of influential people who could help it establish beachheads in more states. (more…)

Today’s biggest news story — the city’s crackdown on “Occupy” protesters occupying Zuccotti Park — got some of its legs from inside United Federation of Teachers headquarters.

The UFT has been hosting support for the protesters for some time in its Lower Manhattan offices, just blocks from the epicenter of the Occupy Wall Street movement. That won’t stop, according to UFT President Michael Mulgrew.

Here’s what Mulgrew said in a statement just now:

Occupy Wall Street isn’t a place – it’s an idea, a movement that has brought national and international focus to the danger to our economy and our nation that we face because of growing income inequality.

The UFT is happy to continue providing logistical support for the Occupy Wall Street in our building, and we will be joining the OWS protestors in their continuing efforts around New York City to bring economic fairness and opportunity.

UFT officials told me earlier this week that the union had been planning to participate in a series of rallies on Thursday at Zuccotti Park. The future of those actions is not yet clear.

Today’s crackdown on the protesters had another education angle: NY1 education reporter Lindsey Christ was on the scene in the middle of the night — and then throughout the day, indefatigably, even as police officers warned her away — sending Twitter updates. (more…)

The UFT is going to plan B in its latest legal appeal to keep Teacher Data Reports under wraps.

The fight over a Freedom of Information Law request by several city news organizations to release the reports, which calculated “value-added” scores for some teachers, is still making its way through the courts, even though the city has said it will not produce new reports.

The union sued to stop the city from releasing the scores, with teachers’ names, to the news organizations. But in August, confirming a lower-court judge’s ruling, the state’s second-highest court ruled that the scores are a matter of public interest and should be released. To appeal that ruling, the union had to follow a complicated set of legal procedures.

Here’s how we described the steps at the time:

Because the four judges on the Appellate Court ruled unanimously against the union, there’s no guarantee that the Court of Appeals will hear the case. Instead, the Appellate Court has to give permission. Within days, the union will ask the appellate court for permission to have the case heard in the Court of Appeals. If permission isn’t granted, the union can also ask the Court of Appeals itself.

The second scenario — that the Appellate Court would not refer the case to the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court — played out today. Now the union must convince the Court of Appeals to hear the potentially precedent-setting case, which UFT President Michael Mulgrew said it would try to do quickly. (more…)