GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• The barrage of civil rights complaints over school closures recall an earlier era. (American Prospect)
• Mayor Bloomberg said longer school days would be great, if the city doesn’t have to pay. (Capital NY)
• City student and special education advocate Bryan Stromer got into college, with a full ride! (The Choice)
• Americans “haven’t thought much” about Obama’s education initiatives, a new poll finds. (HuffPo)
• Maryland is the latest state to have its Race to the Top funding at risk over compliance. (Politics K-12)
• There are more reports from D.C.’s cheating investigations that are still under wraps. (Class Struggle)
• The principal of a school that’s finally reopened after Sandy describes the homecoming. (SchoolBook)
• Almost all of the teachers at a Seattle high school decided not to administer a state test. (Answer Sheet)
• A teacher calls out the Gates Foundation for combining data points to prove a point. (Gary Rubinstein)

Readers found no shortage of news to air their thoughts, grievances, and gripes this week. Most opposed city’s move to close 26 schools, but were more split over the union’s ongoing offensive on Mayor Bloomberg.

But it was our exclusive stories detailing the acute anxiety that principals felt as the city prepared to yank special education funding that drew the reactions that we’ll highlight in our weekly roundup of reader comments. Principals learned this week they could lose up to hundreds of thousands of dollars because of changes made to the special education funding formula. For those catching up, here’s how we explained the funding shift yesterday:

The new model allots funds based on the percentage of time students spend in each kind of special education class. Students who spend more than 60 percent of their time in Integrated Co-Teaching classes — which mix special education and general education students and have two teachers, one with special education certification — each bring their school $7,100. Students who spend less time in the classes, which are expensive to run, bring their schools fewer dollars.

Principals and teachers helped us a lot with our stories, but we learned more a lot from those of you who chimed in afterward. Comeonnow estimated the staggering mid-year cuts that some large high schools could be forced to sustain, suggesting that something more nefarious was at play:

As it stands right now, some large schools with large numbers of special education students stand to lose $500K in the middle of the year because DOE counts Phys Ed as one of the classes a school should offer to non-PE adaptive students. This is nuts and the DOE knows it. (more…)

The teachers union has planned a series of meetings to sign off on a teacher evaluation system in the event that union and city officials agree on one by next week.

The union’s negotiating committee on evaluations, a team of about 150 teachers, is meeting this afternoon with union officials. It’s the committee’s second meeting of the school year.

The union has also moved up a meeting of its Delegate Assembly from Jan. 22 to Jan. 17, the deadline Gov. Andrew Cuomo set for districts to adopt new evaluations or lose state funding. The Delegate Assembly is a large group of chapter leaders and union officials that must approve changes to work rules.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew announced the date change in an email to union members this afternoon. The email stressed that union officials planned to participate in negotiations through the weekend and that there is still a chance that a deal might not come.

“If no agreement is reached with the city, the [Delegate Assembly] will serve as a planning and operational meeting to push back against the mayor as we have so many times before,” Mulgrew wrote.

But insiders say they suspect that a deal is imminent — or perhaps even complete except for the final touches to make it official. (more…)

Chancellor Dennis Walcott and City Councilman Al Vann joined Boys and Girls High School Principal Bernard Gassaway to honor the school's boys basketball team for winning the city championships last year.

Among the dozen high schools the city spared from closure this week despite lagging scores, one stands out as lower-performing than almost all of the rest.

It also stands out for having an unusually powerful set of political allies.

Brooklyn’s Boys and Girls High School has poor student performance, an abysmal graduation rate — 38.6 percent last year  — and few applicants.

“If one looks at the data and the metrics by which all principals and schools are graded, it is very apparent that we are all not measured by the same yardstick,” said Geraldine Maione, the principal of William E. Grady Career and Technical High School, a higher-performing school that the city briefly proposed for closure last year.

It’s a fact that Principal Bernard Gassaway has acknowledged. “Statistically, they’ve closed schools that have better stats,” he told community members at an event in June, before the city’s latest round of performance data.

The secret to the school’s survival, people inside and outside the school say, appears to be a tight-knit advisory board of political and community heavyweights from the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn who say they have pulled strings at the school for years. (more…)

• A Chicago commission advised that closing high schools could exacerbate gang violence. (Tribune)
• The threat of midyear special education budget cuts has city principals anxious. (GothamSchools 1, 2)
• A report found that poor schools have more low-rated teachers. (GothamSchools, Post, WSJ, Daily News)
• The Daily News says the report proves that the city’s contract with the teachers union needs to change.
• Investigators found that a Brooklyn school aide asked a student to make pornography with him. (Post)
• Citizen Schools NY chief: A “second shift” of educators lets schools add time at low cost. (Daily News)