GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Parents who battled the mayor over school governance and lost are regrouping and redirecting their efforts to electing sympathetic city candidates.

The new organization, NYC Kids PAC, announced a roster of candidates for City Council, Comptroller and Public Advocate they will support in the fall campaign season. Ann Kjellberg, president and spokeswoman for the PAC, said that the group has begun to collect donations and will distribute them amongst the candidates they endorse.

Many PAC steering committee members were also active in the Parent Commission on School Governance, which lobbied heavily for stronger outlets for parent involvement during the debate over mayoral control. Kjellberg said that many members were disillusioned by their experience as parents fighting for the ears of Albany lawmakers. Rather than continuing to lobby their opponents, she said, they decided to boost their political allies.

The PAC’s steering committee looked for candidates whose voting records align with the organization’s mission, which includes strengthening local control and community involvement in schools, reducing class size, opposing private sector influence in public schools and reducing standardized test preparation in classes. But the deciding factor, Kjellberg said, was each candidate’s stance against the city’s school capital program.

“We were very, very grateful and moved by those officials who stepped forth under considerable pressure from the mayor and voted their consciences on the capital plan and we wanted to encourage other officials,” she said. (more…)

Mayor Bloomberg’s school critics are joining up today to protest how little has changed since the mayoral control technically ended last week.

All spring, local activists who oppose mayoral control have been urging people to contact their lawmakers. But after the mayoral control law expired and Bloomberg packed the new Board of Education with his appointees anyway, it became clear that a more powerful protest was needed, according to Jitu Weusi, a longtime activist from Brooklyn.

A protest being held at 5 p.m. today outside Tweed Courthouse, education department headquarters, will highlight widespread opposition to “the mayoral control dictatorship,” Weusi said. He told me that community activists from all five boroughs have signed onto the event.

City Councilman Charles Barron, who has called for Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to be fired, helped organize a planning meeting last week that about 40 people attended, Weusi said. (more…)

This Daily Hornet flier was passed out at a recent District 2 parent meeting.

A West Village father is promoting a new web site he says will help working parents transport their thoughts on the public school system to elected officials. Eric Zerof says he built the site, called the Daily Hornet, after repeatedly finding himself with opinions to share, but no time to voice them at public hearings.

The site, promoted at a District 2 parents meeting last night, promises “Direct Democracy in Action,” and it focuses on topics close to Zerof’s heart. His wife, Ann Kjellberg, is closely aligned with Class Size Matters, and in turn one of the first issues the site is taking up is school crowding. The site’s goal is to collect parent opinions through surveys, and then send the survey results to city and state lawmakers.

“A lot of people I talk to are frustrated by the process, but they’re also very busy parents who don’t necessarily have time to [attend] all these meetings,” Zerof told me after he launched the site earlier this month. “So I’m trying to make it so that they don’t have to go to all these meetings to be heard, but can just go on the site.”

One note: The Daily Hornet links to GothamSchools reports, but we’re unaffiliated.

Hundreds of New York City parents are writing directly to President-elect Obama with their opposition to Schools Chancellor Joel Klein as a Secretary of Education pick.

Organized by the Public School Parent Advocacy Committee, the parents are hoping to balance out the spate of positive media attention the chancellor has enjoyed in recent days. Today, for example, the New York Times noted as the only downside of Klein’s prospective participation on Obama’s “new team” his bitter relationship with Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers.

PSPAC, a consortium of PTA political advocacy committees, plans to deliver a letter to the Obama’s transition team that calls on the president-elect to choose an education secretary who has “deep practical experience in teaching and learning.” As a businessman, Klein has “disastrously neglected the fundamental needs of children,” the letter says.

Ann Kjellberg, a leading PSPAC member, told me she’s gotten about 100 signatures since Friday, when she first released the letter. Other parents are now circulating the letter by e-mail as well, she said. “I do seem to be getting some people new to this,” Kjellberg said. “A few have told me their stories of frustrations with the DOE that drive them to question a Klein nomination.”

PSPAC’s entire letter is after the jump. (more…)