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Hundreds of principals who objected to their initial budget funding last month will learn today if their appeals were successful.

An unusually high number of principals filed official appeals of their budgets this year, some requesting hundreds of thousands of dollars of additional funding. They said the third consecutive year of budget cuts would have forced them to cut vital staff members, they explained in their appeals.

It’s not clear how many of the 253 principals will have funding restored, or even where all of the money will come from. Last year, the Department of Education spent $23 million from a centrally-funded emergency pool to restore money to about two-thirds of the 166 schools that filed appeals.

Principals are getting emails with the results of their appeals today, according to Barbara Morgan, a DOE spokeswoman. But at least one principal said he’s already been told his appeal was successful.

Joe Nobile, a principal whose budget plight we wrote about last month, said initial funding allocated for his school, P.S. 304, “was not enough to run the school effectively.” He would have had to replace seven staff members.

But thanks to his appeal, Nobile said he will be able to keep most of those staff members — a teacher, three school aides, and one paraprofessionals  — in the school. He’s still losing two special education teachers, he said.

A meeting among the city’s public unions over a proposal that would help avert more than 4,100 teacher layoffs erupted in “fireworks” today, leaving prospects for a budget deal uncertain.

According to a union official who attended, dissension was sparked over the proposal to withdraw millions of dollars per month from a union-controlled health insurance fund. That money would be redirected toward closing a $270 million budget gap in the education department.

“Let’s just say there was a lot of fireworks,” the person said.

The meeting was called by Harry Nespoli, President of the Municipal Labor Committee, an umbrella organization of all of the city’s public unions. Earlier this week, he floated the idea of tapping into the fund – known as the Health Insurance Stabilization Fund – at a smaller meeting between just union leaders.

The meeting today, which was open to a larger swath of union members, was also planned by Nespoli. He said he hoped to build consensus on whether or not to move forward with negotiations. Now, it’s clear that’s not the case. (more…)

A frequent critic of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and friend to the teachers union is backing the mayor’s much-debated layoff estimates.

City Council Education Committee Chairman Robert Jackson said today that he believes Bloomberg’s estimates are probably an accurate reflection of the impact of the governor’s current proposed cuts.

Some critics of Bloomberg have accused the mayor of exaggerating the city’s financial straits in order to press the legislature to end the state’s seniority-based teacher layoff system. Governor Andrew Cuomo has said repeatedly that his proposed cuts to education spending should not necessitate layoffs in local districts.

“I believe Mayor Bloomberg and not Governor Cuomo,” Jackson said, saying that he has heard from local elected officials in other New York cities who have said that their communities are also facing teacher layoffs in spite of Cuomo’s insistence that none are necessary.

“The mayor has a better handle on New York City’s budget,” he said.  ”The local executives and the local representatives have a better handle on their municipalities.”

That’s not to say that he won’t have any objections to the mayor’s budget, Jackson cautioned, saying that he wanted to focus on preventing cuts to the state budget first. “And then I’ll turn my energies to Mayor Bloomberg,” he said.

Jackson’s comments came after a press conference in which he gathered with public school parents to urge both the governor and the mayor not to slash state education spending. Parents argued that the governor should seek out other revenues to avoid education cuts. And they said the mayor should be fighting the cuts harder, rather than focusing his energies on changing the current layoff system. (more…)

Reports on the death of the charter school funding freeze may be exaggerated.

The reports have to do with a surprise side effect of Governor David Paterson’s decision to veto an education spending bill this week. Among the provisions that the veto eliminated was language that would have kept charter school funding at 2008 levels.

The change would require the city to give charter schools an additional $42 million next year. But the additional funds are not necessarily guaranteed.

“This is not a celebratory moment,” said Peter Murphy, policy director of the New York State Charter School Association. “This fight goes on.”

The ultimate fate of the charter school funding increase will depend on whether the governor and legislature reinstate the freeze during final rounds of budget negotiations. (more…)

The state organization commonly cited as a national model for approving and overseeing charter schools is facing quietly proposed cuts that would slash its budget by nearly 70 percent.

The State University of New York’s Charter School Institute (CSI), which oversees charter schools from the union-run UFT School to the popular KIPP schools, is slated to lose $1.7 million of its $2.4 million budget under budgets proposed by both the Assembly and the Senate.

CSI is one of the groups that are the prime oversight bodies for the state’s charter schools. Known as “authorizers,” the groups are responsible for reviewing proposals for new charter schools, monitoring the schools they approve, and closing charters they deem under-performing. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has praised CSI for its rigor and willingness to shutter schools that don’t live up to high expectations.

“All of that takes real human resources,” said Jonas Chartock, the agency’s executive director.

The cuts are a serious threat but far from a done deal. The institute has historically been a target of political efforts, often supported by the teachers union, to weaken its authority to open charter schools. But the union is not supporting these cuts. Rather, the proposals appear to be more prompted by the state’s financial duress. (more…)

New York’s State Senate voted this afternoon to make deep cuts to public school funding, eliciting immediate protest from teachers unions, school boards, and New York City’s mayor.

The $1.1 billion in cuts, proposed by Governor Paterson, passed the Senate today by a vote of 32-29, with Republicans voting against it. Even before senators took the vote, rumor that they would pass the governor’s proposed budget filled the state capital, causing education groups to forecast disaster in the coming years. The cuts are far from finalized — the State Assembly still has to come up with its own budget proposal.

President of New York City’s teachers union, Michael Mulgrew, released a statement saying that as a result of the cuts, class sizes for first graders would rise to 28 students, after-school programs would disappear, and summer school would become unaffordable. (more…)

New York City is facing major cuts to its public schools, but there’s debate about exactly where in the Department of Education’s budget they should fall.

According to Chancellor Joel Klein, the only way to make a dent in the DOE’s budget is to lay off teachers. Teachers union president Michael Mulgrew has repeatedly rejected this idea and suggested that fewer no-bid contracts, payments to consultants, and a new retirement incentive, are the way to go.

Part of the challenge in figuring out where to make cuts is the haze surrounding where money is spent in the first place. (more…)