GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Unlike Bloomberg, Christine Quinn is okay with setting a teacher evaluation sunset date. (Capital NY)
• A teacher says he resolved mixed feelings about catching a cheater by eating the cheat sheet. (Yo Mista)
• Michael Powell: Mayor Bloomberg is imperiling his education legacy by fighting with unions. (City Room)
• The head of the Children’s Aid Society points out that “community schools” are nothing new. (HuffPo)
• A Montessori school in Crown Heights aims to be a new model for ultra-Orthodox yeshivas. (DNA Info)
• A report from a union activist handicaps the UFT’s soon-to-be-scheduled elections. (Ed Notes)
• The Obama administration’s education reach far outstrips that of its predecessors. (Hechinger)
• All evidence suggests that not only does high school suck, but its suckiness lasts forever. (NYMag)
• The group that’s carrying the CFE lawsuit’s torch is pushing the state not to penalize city schools. (ELC)
• Researchers assessed Democracy Prep’s efforts to teach “operational citizenship.” (AEI via Rick Hess)

Students who participate in the Beacon after-school program at J.H.S. 302 in Brooklyn served healthy food after learning about nutrition. The nonprofit that runs the program wants to help the school improve, but the city wants to close it down. (Photo: Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation)

As the new year began, J.H.S. 302 in Brooklyn thought it was on the right track.

Principal Lisa Linder had worked with a local nonprofit to apply for a federal grant to flood the low-performing school and the surrounding neighborhood with extra help for students and their families. In late December, the nonprofit, Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation, found out it would get $371,000 from the U.S. Department of Education to move forward with the project.

Then the other shoe dropped: The city Department of Education announced on Jan. 7 that it planned to close J.H.S. 302.

The news has thrown the nonprofit partnership into question — and it has also put J.H.S. 302 at the center of a tug-of-war between two competing visions about how to improve struggling schools. (more…)

Gov. Andrew Cuomo's proposed budget, set out earlier this week, would distribute significant school aid in unorthodox ways, rather than through the state's regular funding formula

In some ways, Gov. Andrew Cuomo fulfilled state education officials’ wishes this week when he allocated even more money to cash-strapped school districts than they asked him to.

But Cuomo’s state aid proposal was, in another way, the worst-case scenario that the Board of Regents sketched out last week at their monthly meeting. The Regents wanted new funds to be distributed according to the state’s regular school aid formula, but Cuomo said he would dole out the increased funding according to his own rules.

Knowing that Cuomo already had allocated $75 million in grant funding for this year’s schools budget, state education officials asked him to use the entire amount to help districts expand pre-kindergarten offerings and to distribute the funds mostly to low-income districts. They asked that he put the rest of his education dollars into the foundation aid formula, which doesn’t require districts to apply and compete for funding.

Cuomo’s budget proposal did not fulfill those requests. (more…)

• While DeWitt Clinton High School isn’t closing, the city does intend for it to shrink. (Riverdale Press)
• Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s education budget proposals are receiving a mixed response from advocates. (AP)
• A Stuyvesant High School senior is the city’s only finalist in a national science competition. (Post)
• Mayoral candidates joined a broader call for a school closure moratorium. (GothamSchools, Post, NY1)
• As temperatures drop, the city is devising school bus strike workarounds. (Post, GothamSchools, NY1)
• A bus company training replacements for striking drivers had its buses vandalized. (Daily News, WSJ)
• City and union officials took a softer tone on the teacher evaluation fight. (GothamSchools, SchoolBook)
• UFT President Michael Mulgrew says again that the union really wants new evaluations. (Daily News)
• A principal and a former teacher from his school scuffled over the teacher’s online offensive. (Post)
• A higher education commission wants colleges to evolve as they serve a new kind of student. (Times)
• Families at local Catholic schools are protesting as the Archdiocese proposes closures. (NY1 1, 2)