GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• A teacher documents the emotional roller coaster of the first 24 hours of the school year. (Jose Vilson)
• A city teacher says he’s not asking parents for much — just to respond occasionally. (Insideschools)
• Chicago’s teachers union is taking steps to stop the city from blocking its looming strike. (Catalyst)
• Texas shunned Race to the Top and the Common Core, but it wants an NCLB waiver. (Politics K-12)
• A watchdog of education media notes that the New York Times branding is off SchoolBook. (Russo)
• Some background on the “near-bankrupt school district” Michelle Obama extolled. (Answer Sheet)
• Rick Hess says he returned from Finland with less faith in international comparisons. (Straight Up)
• Dozens of city educators started the school year as Math for America’s newest Master Teachers. (MFA)
• On the first day of space-sharing, teachers at the original school say they sweltered. (Inside Co-Location)
• Teachers unions across America have donated to Republican candidates with right-wing views. (HuffPo)
• Newark’s plan to boost struggling schools with hand-picked staffs has created an ATR pool. (Hechinger)
• Speaking of ATRs, a new one describes her first day of the year in a temporary position. (NYC Educator)

Deputy Chancellor David Weiner talks to two first grade students at Young Scholars Academy in Brooklyn.

With another school year underway without a deal on new teacher evaluations, officials in charge of hammering out the evaluation system seemed only to agree on one thing: be optimistic.

That was the mantra for Chancellor Dennis Walcott and Mayor Michael Bloomberg as they toured the halls of the New Settlement Campus in the South Bronx this morning.

“I’m always optimistic,” Bloomberg told reporters in the spotless new library. “If we don’t get a deal by January we will forfeit a lot of state funds.”

Teachers Union President Michael Mulgrew told a similar story when he spoke this morning in Brooklyn.

“We are definitely having conversations, pretty good conversations,” he said, “and we’re hoping to get it done.”

The city and union have been negotiating over evaluations for more than a year with the as-yet-unfulfilled hope of securing federal funds that are not available to districts without evaluations. Now they are under the gun from the state, too. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said he will withhold state aid increases from districts that do not adopt new evaluations by January 2013. (more…)

Chancellor Walcott greets parents this morning at the New Settlement Campus in the Bronx.

Most folks have a first-day-of-school ritual, from sharpening pencils for teachers to taking pictures for parents to donning a fresh outfit for students. For us at GothamSchools, it’s racing across the city to visit as many school communities as we can.

Rachel is joining Chancellor Dennis Walcott for his annual five-borough bus tour, and Geoff will be zipping around by bike to see schools the chancellor didn’t put on his agenda. They will file dispatches throughout the day here. (Remember, the reports are posted in reverse chronological order, so if you want to read from the beginning of the day, start at the end and scroll up.)

But we need your help! In 2011, we had three reporters on the ground, but this year, we’re down to two. That means we will have to cover less ground and visit fewer schools. You can help us make up the loss by sending pictures and stories about the first day of school where you are.

5:25 p.m. And with that, we’re over and out. Homework awaits!

5:13 p.m. Most students and teachers had left Stuyvesant High School by just before 5 p.m. But a few stragglers said they could tell that the new principal, Jie Zhang, was making changes at the school, the city’s most elite.

Zhang was appointed just a month ago, less than a week after Stuyvesant’s longtime principal, Stanley Teitel, announced his retirement. Teitel’s departure came amid an investigation into a cheating scandal at the school and how the administration handled it.

Students said there were signs of the scandal today. In each class, students were required to sign contracts saying that they would not cheat or plagiarize, some said. One student who declined to share his name said some of his teachers were also stricter about how students could take notes: While teachers still allowed students to use iPads and phones, others laid down the law. Zhang said she intended to enforce the city’s policy barring cell phones from school buildings.

“He told us, ‘I found in the past that using electronics was not a good idea,’” the student said of his teacher.

4:43 p.m. Things are slowing down for the day. But it’s worth noting that not every single student in the city was in school today. We just got a press release from Democracy Prep, the network of charter schools in Harlem, announcing that four students are in Charlotte, N.C., for the Democratic National Convention. One of them, Alize-Jazel Smith, sent a Twitter message this morning with a picture of her and her classmates with Sen. Charles Schumer at a breakfast for convention delegates.

2:55 p.m. Students trickling out of Murry Bergtraum High School in Manhattan said big changes since last year were already evident on the first day of classes.

The school is no longer requiring uniforms, as it did last September. Early dismissal on Wednesdays is no more — a good move, said Stefani Sanchez, because “we didn’t really learn anything.” And there is a new principal: Lottie Almonte, a former principal who replaced Andrea Lewis at the helm of the massive and troubled school. Lewis was hired in 2010 as an executive principal with a hefty bonus and a three-year contract, but she left with a year left on the clock.

Almonte was outside the building to wish students well on their way home. When one trio of students told her they had been placed in classes they had already passed, she sent them inside to get their schedules fixed. She declined to speak to reporters about the programming snafu.

But it wasn’t the only one students reported. Sanchez said she had been placed in a class for ninth-graders that she took last year and plans to meet with a guidance counselor on Friday to switch out of it.

Even with the bumpy start, several students in a college preparation program said they thought the school felt more under control than it did last year, when video of a hallway fight went viral. The brawl came a year after Bergtraum students rioted over bathroom privileges.

”Reporters think we’re the worst school ever, but if you go inside we’re really not,” said 10th-grader Lexis Mercado.

Still, the school’s performance has slipped enough that it was one of 123 city schools to land on the state’s new list of schools that could face closure by 2015. Mayor Bloomberg said today that the city would use the state’s list to inform its own decisions about which schools to propose for closure this year.

2:10 p.m. Chancellor Walcott’s final school visit is focusing on extracurricular activities. Staten Island Tech has a robotics team that last spring got attention for building a basketball-throwing robot.

That robot, named the Russian word for “thirteen,” rolled out to greet the chancellor — after Walcott took three tries to sink a free throw that the robot is programmed to make in one. The afternoon ended with a photo opportunity uniting Walcott, the robotics team, and Staten Island elected officials.

Walcott and most of the press coterie are going home (or at least back to their offices). But we have a couple more schools to visit. Stay tuned.

2 p.m. Chancellor Walcott might not be visiting struggling schools today, but we are: Geoff just stopped by Williamsburg Charter High School for dismissal. Citing deep mismanagement and financial improprieties, the city tried to close the school this spring, but a lawsuit kept it open for at least another year. (more…)

• Curriculum and special ed reforms arose during officials’ first school visits. (GothamSchools, Daily News)
• Chancellor Walcott says his goal for the new school year is to expand on past progress. (Daily News)
• With many city elected officials at the DNC, few are around for the first day of school. (GothamSchools)
• Cuts to special education providers’ pay means some say they are forced to stop helping students. (NY1)
• Plus, city funds are increasingly going to private companies, not educators who provide services. (NY1)
• Investigators found that a Brooklyn teacher looked at porn and otherwise misbehaved. (Post, Daily News)
• Even after the investigators launched the first inquiry, the teacher was not reassigned. (GothamSchools)
• A report shows that immigrant students graduate at a higher rate than native-born students. (Daily News)
• Cuts to special education providers’ pay means some have to leave students without services. (NY1)
• Plus, city funds are increasingly going to private companies, not educators who provide services. (NY1)
• The Daily News criticizes the UFT for allowing the city to start a new year without new evaluations.
• Chicago dropped its demand to tie some teacher raises to merit but did not end strike plans. (Sun-Times)
• Strike contingency plans include using other city employees to keep school buildings open. (Tribune)
• In Buffalo, N.Y., plans to transfer dozens of teachers from weak schools are proceeding. (Buffalo News)
• An analyst for a libertarian institute laments that charter schools cut into the private sector. (Daily News)