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The Campaign for Fiscal Equity, the advocacy organization whose historic, years-long lawsuit brought increased funding to the New York City schools, is closing its doors — at least in its current format, The New York Times reported this afternoon.

The organization’s last employee, Executive Director Helaine Doran, will leave at the end of the month because the group has run out of funding, the Times reports.

The development comes despite the fact that the dollars won by the group’s lawsuit have fallen far short of what was promised in a settlement between the group and the state in 2007.

The Times is right to describe the development as part of a greater shift in the way that philanthropists think about education advocacy, one that has made groups like former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee’s Students First active in New York City while the Campaign for Fiscal Equity struggled. The old mantra was that urban districts failed because they have been historically under-funded; now, advocates are more likely to argue that funding is necessary but not sufficient. (Another budget watchdog, the Educational Priorities Panel, dissolved in 2007, also due to a loss of funding.)

But it’s also possible that the dissolution of CFE could actually signal a renaissance of its original efforts: litigation aimed at forcing New York to spend more on needy school districts. (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…)

Here’s a good barometer of the mood this morning among parent activists who were fighting mayoral control, via an e-mail I just got from one of them:

We parents feel like we’re being sucked down a vortex here.  Any chance you would consider calling assemblymembers and asking them point blank if they support fixed terms for the PEP?  A week ago that looked like it was in at least.  Please, please, please?

Silver’s plan, announced to lawmakers last night and leaked to the Times, does not include fixed terms for members of the citywide school board, known as the Panel for Educational Policy.

Another sign of growing frustration: Leonie Haimson, the executive director of Class Size Matters and a leader among the parent activists, has these frank remarks about teachers union president Randi Weingarten in a City Hall News interview this week:

CH: What do you make of UFT President Randi Weingarten’s change of heart about mayoral control?
LH: I find it very disappointing. I don’t think she’s looking out for the real interests of the teachers, who overwhelmingly in surveys have expressed their dissatisfaction with Joel Klein and the current system. They are as concerned as parents with overcrowding, excessive class sizes and the fact that our schools are being turned into test-prep factories. This is really diminishing their ability to do their job effectively, and they have expressed that in many ways, in many forums.

Other parents criticized Weingarten’s position on mayoral control last week.

Meanwhile, Billy Easton, a director of the Campaign for Better Schools, remains optimistic. “There is no bill yet; there is still time to fix some of the shortcomings,” Easton said in a statement e-mailed out just now. The statement says Silver’s plan fails to strengthen the citywide school board, the Panel for Educational Policy, and fails to add in enough parental involvement.

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…)

Lots of state education funding news today. First, Governor Paterson removed his proposal to enact mid-year cuts. From a letter he sent to school leaders today:

While school aid reductions remain on the table, it is unlikely the Legislature will consider them any time soon. Therefore, we would be well into the final quarter of our fiscal year and even further into the school year before any action would likely occur.

So mid-year is off the table, but Paterson says that means cuts next year will have to be much worse; the state simply cannot afford to ramp up school spending as it had been doing, he wrote.

The Campaign for Fiscal Equity has already pushed out a response to this letter. The group, which led the 14-year-long lawsuit asking for more funding for New York City schools, asks Paterson to find ways to raise revenues before cutting budgets. One idea is to raise income taxes on wealthy New Yorkers.

The full letter is below the jump, and for a review of all planned budget cuts, see my cheat sheet here. (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.