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Advocates are trying to preempt Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s State of the State address with a seven-minute “State of the Schools” speech of their own.

The Alliance for Quality Education, an advocacy group that Cuomo’s office has disparaged in the past, released their address by YouTube video today. (more…)

It’s not the millionaire’s tax that some parents have pushed for, but it’s something.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced today that he would overhaul the state’s tax code to reduce the tax rate on middle-income earners and increase taxes on the highest earners. Cuomo estimates that the changes will add $2 billion a year to the state’s coffers — funds that can go to schools and other public services.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew was among the chorus of people who quickly signaled their support for the proposal. He called the plan “a wide-ranging solution to the state’s budget problems” and said it would “help ensure that children in our public schools will begin to see restorations from the devastating education cuts of recent years.”

But a separate tax on high earners known as the millionaire’s tax, which Cuomo has vowed not to renew when it expires at the end of the month, has generated significantly more, about $4 billion a year. That means the state is still facing a funding shortfall of as much as $1.5 billion, and schools are likely to feel continued budget pressure. (more…)

For Natoshia Wheeler, the argument that schools do better when they have more resources is proven every night in her living room.

Wheeler has three children in Brownsville schools. Her youngest and oldest attend two low-performing schools that share a building, the General D. Chappie James Elementary and Middle School of Science, where she is PTA president. Her middle daughter attends I.S. 392, a selective middle school located just six blocks away.

Recently Wheeler’s middle daughter brought home a new laptop that her school provided, equipped with a tools for free online tutoring. The tools allowed her to complete complicated projects, such as building a model island with different biomes on it, that enthralled her siblings.

But at the Chappie schools, Wheeler said after-school programs have been cut, the art teacher was let go, and students can’t always bring books home to use while completing homework. What’s more, she said, the three-year-old schools are only just finding their feet after replacing P.S./I.S. 183, a perennially failing that closed in 2008. Last year, on their first progress reports, both schools got D’s.

So when the elementary school got an F and the middle school got a D on their most recent progress reports, Wheeler said she was not shocked — but she was surprised that the city said it was considering shuttering the school. The city has not yet announced any closures but has named 20 elementary and middle schools that are eligible according to the Department of Education’s guidelines. (more…)

The city official in charge of closing schools and the union chief who has sued to keep schools open are both set to speak at a conference tomorrow about what can be done to help schools without shuttering them.

The conference, “Effective Alternatives to School Closings: Transforming Struggling Schools in NYC,” was organized by the Coalition for Educational Justice, the Alliance for Quality Education, and the Urban Youth Collaborative, all advocacy organizations. The event is meant to send a message to city policymakers that there are ways to reform failing schools without shutting them down, according to Ronnette Summers, a parent and CEJ member who helped organize it.

The city Department of Education has closed 117 schools since 2002 and Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said this week that he plans to close additional schools, particularly middle schools, that do not meet the department’s standards.

“Every year there’s more and more schools on the closing list and that seems to be the only reform strategy that the Department of Education uses to improve schools,” Summers said. “People in places where they know [closure] is not working felt that it was important to bring it to New York City to let them see that there’s other ways to improve schools.” (more…)

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, speaking today on the steps of the Department of Education

When two courts halted the city’s plans to close 19 public schools this year, judges ruled that the city didn’t follow state law that requires it to engage parents and report the impact that the changes will have on students’ educations.

Now Public Advocate Bill de Blasio is arguing that the city is making the same mistakes when it decides to place multiple schools in the same buildings.

In a report released today, de Blasio charges that the city did not give parents enough information about how changes to space usage would affect instructional programs or about public hearings on the changes.

“They’re just doing the minimum amount of parent outreach so they can say they did,” de Blasio said today.

De Blasio’s office and the Alliance for Quality Education surveyed nearly 875 parents at 34 schools, about half of those that the city proposed moving into new, shared space last year. (Roughly half of public schools citywide currently share building space with other schools.) (more…)

The city’s Department of Education will likely lift the ceiling on class sizes this year, a department official said today.

DOE chief operating officer Photeine Anagnostopoulos told the City Council education committee this morning that it was realistic to expect the city to “adjust” its class size targets. How dramatic the increases will be is still unclear, she said.

“We have to go back and do some more homework,” Anagnostopoulos said.

Anagnostopoulous’ comments came during a hearing on the department’s use of state Contracts for Excellence funding. The funds are given to school districts that prove they will spend the funds in six key areas, one of which is class size reduction. (more…)

On the eve of what looks like an imminent vote by legislators to approve a state budget, two education advocates are asking Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to consider halting the process immediately. Their concern: That the current budget does not give enough of the stimulus dollars to needy districts like New York City.

The budget erases two years of planned increases in funds to New York City and other needy school districts, postponing them to the future. In a letter sent to Duncan yesterday, the groups, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity and the Alliance for Quality Education, also criticize the way the budget spreads out the state’s pot of federal education stimulus dollars, a $2.5 billion total, between the state’s school districts.

The call for Duncan’s intervention hinges on language in the stimulus law passed by Congress, which urges states to prioritize “equity and adequacy adjustments” passed in state laws when doling out their stimulus dollars to schools. The groups argue that New York’s budget “appears to be in violation” of that language. (more…)

UFT President Randi Weingarten at today's rally

“We must even in tough times invest in our city, invest in our most vulnerable, invest in our children,” UFT President Randi Weingarten said at the inaugural press conference held today on the steps of City Hall by a coalition formed this week to advocate for the “neediest New Yorkers” during the economic downturn.

Weingarten described the devastating effects of the 1970s budget crisis on the city’s schools, when teachers were laid off and class sizes swelled. “It took decades to turn [the schools] around, a turnaround we’re only starting to make” now, she said. “If I sound passionate it’s because those of us who are history teachers know what the history was.”

Other members of the “One New York: Fighting For Fairness” coalition today described the mid-1970s as a time when the city forced its poor to shoulder the burden of financial crisis, a situation the coalition is trying to guard against as the city enters another era of economic austerity. Billy Easton, who heads the Alliance for Quality Education, told me the coalition originated at an emergency meeting held on Monday in response to the mayor’s instruction that city agencies make across-the-board budget cuts of 2.5 percent. The coalition — which includes more than 80 community organizations, unions, and policy groups — is growing “almost hourly,” he said.

On “Sex and the City,” they were BFFs, but when it comes to public school funding, Carrie Bradshaw and her red-headed, Brooklyn-bound buddy Miranda are more like frenemies.

Sarah Jessica Parker, who played Carrie, last week helped kick off Shop for Public Schools, an annual event thrown by the city’s star-powered Fund for Public Schools, which focuses on “attracting private investment in school reform.”

Chances are relying on shoppers to maintain school libraries might not sit too well with Cynthia Nixon, who played Miranda — she’s the face of the Alliance for Quality Education, which since 2000 has fought for improved and equitable public funding for schools across the state. Last spring, Nixon took to the streets to protest the mayor’s proposed school budget cuts.