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More litigation could be targeted at Tweed’s plans to close struggling schools, even as one lawsuit seems to be headed toward an amicable settlement.

The New York City Parents Union announced this afternoon that it plans to file a separate lawsuit against the Department of Education, charging that its policy of closing low-performing schools and co-locating charter schools in district space was illegal. The lawsuit, according to the announcement, would effectively stop all school closure and co-locations from moving forward.

“We, the public school parents, challenge the cynical chicanery of Chancellor Walcott and the DOE. We reject the privatization agenda supported by Mayor Bloomberg and his appointees. Our children deserve the best education and a supportive administration, and we will fight for all children to receive equal access to a quality education,” the statement said.

The lawsuit would also seek to reverse charter school co-locations because they aren’t charged market rent for space in district school buildings. (more…)

Did teachers union president Randi Weingarten really switch her position on mayoral control? I reviewed exactly what she said when she first introduced the union’s position in February, courtesy of my notes from her briefing to reporters.

She laid out two main checks on the mayor’s power. Here’s the first (the emphasis is mine):

Probably the biggest difference between this report and what you’ve seen thus far and what the mayor would argue is to have an independent – to have some more representatives on the policy board so that for the mayor to have a policy that he or she wants adopted, he or she would have to convince a couple more people. Not simply his or her representatives. And the couple more people that he or she would have to convince are people who are already elected as representatives of the people, whether it be the City Council speaker whether it be the public advocate whether it be a city comptroller. That’s really the change: Trying to figure out an institutional check and balance so that things don’t go awry.

Later, a reporter asked Weingarten if the proposal was a bargaining position. She suggested that it wasn’t. (more…)

After more than 15 years arguing in courts that the city’s public schools are illegally under-funded, a long lawsuit that ended in 2006 in a victory, could the financial crisis and the budget cuts it’s causing pull education advocates back to court? Hard to imagine, but increasingly it does seem possible.

When I talked earlier this week to the Helaine Doran, the deputy director of the group that filed the lawsuit, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, she was cautious about legal action. “We have no process of like, ‘Oh yes, we’re going back to court immediately,’” she said. “You have to look at the numbers and figure it out.” But there’s growing momentum suggesting court may be a possibility.

Michael Rebell’s editorial in the Daily News today uses stronger language. (more…)