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A month after taking over a Department of Education hemorrhaging its leadership, Chancellor Dennis Walcott today announced a slew of high-level appointments.

For two deputy chancellor slots, Walcott turned to veteran educators who made their careers in the city schools.

David Weiner, a one-time city principal who is currently Philadelphia’s chief accountability officer, will become deputy chancellor for talent, labor, and innovation. In that position, he will manage hot-button issues including labor relations and the city’s Innovation Zone of schools experimenting with technology. The founding principal of PS 503 in Brooklyn, Weiner succeeds John White, who took over the Recovery School District in New Orleans at the beginning of May.

A 30-year veteran of the city school system, Dorita Gibson will take on a newly created position, deputy chancellor for equity and access. She will supervise District 79, the network of alternative schools previously headed by Cami Anderson, who was named Newark’s next schools chief last week. District 79 will still get a new superintendent, according to DOE spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz.

Gibson will also lead initiatives that “focus on ending long-standing racial, ethnic and socioeconomic disparities and directing supports to communities most in need,” according to the city’s press release. Some of those initiatives previously fell under the purview of Santiago Taveras, the deputy chancellor for engagement who departed for the private sector earlier this year.

The appointments signal that Walcott is moving to stabilize the department, which has experienced rapid leadership change at the top since ex-Chancellor Joel Klein left at the end of last year. They also confirm Walcott’s intention to continue policies established during Klein’s tenure while also asserting new priorities. (more…)

The latest city schools official in the running for a top post outside New York is someone who has kept her name out of the headlines. Cami Anderson did this while overseeing the education of some of the city’s most challenging students: high school drop-outs trying to earn GEDs, students in prison, and others in drug rehabilitation programs.

Anderson is one of two candidates being considered for the job of Newark schools chief, the Star Ledger reported today.

Appointed superintendent of the alternative schools district, known as District 79, in 2006, Anderson immediately began shaking up the schools under her control. She closed the city’s remaining schools for pregnant women, known as P-schools, and overhauled the Department of Education’s programs for students studying for the GED exam. As part of a district-wide reorganization, she helped negotiate a deal with the teachers union that required many District 79 teachers to reapply for their jobs.

Yet despite these changes, Anderson has largely worked out of the public eye.

“People have made a lot of comparisons of her and [former Washington D.C. schools chief] Michelle Rhee,” said someone who worked for Anderson. “Michelle was this very vocal ‘I’m not going to do this with these people anymore’ leader, and Cami really took a different route.” (more…)

Teachers at the only two schools on Rikers Island learned today that their schools will close next year. In their stead, a new school will open — one with a smaller and possibly new set of teachers.

The change is part of a wider attempt to end programs under the city’s alternative schools office, known as District 79, that city officials believe are ineffective, Department of Education officials said today. Earlier this year, the city announced it was also closing its only school designed to transition students from detention back into mainstream high schools.

“Despite some of our best efforts, we’re not making the gains for the students in some of the specialized programs,” said Timothy Lisante, District 79′s deputy superintendent for corrections and detentions.

In an interview today, Lisante and District 79 Superintendent Cami Anderson said that consolidating the two programs would allow for smoother day-to-day operations of the school. Restarting the program will also give the city the opportunity to redesign its placement process, directing some students towards coursework that will prepare them to return to their community high schools and giving others more vocational training.

“The prime vision here is to do everything we can to create a program that will accelerate [student's] progress so they can return to their home school or, if they’re older, go into a rigorous GED program,” Anderson said.

But teachers union officials are crying foul at the city’s timing, arguing that the last-minute announcement was disrespectful to the school’s teaching staff. (more…)

At a LYFE center at Urban Academy. Picture by Los Dragonnes via Flickr.

A report out today by the New York Civil Liberties Union says the Department of Education should bolster its daycare program for students with young children of their own. But because of budget cuts, the DOE could actually move in the opposite direction, cutting off young parents’ access to free DOE-run daycare centers currently housed in 40 public schools across the city.

The programs, called LYFE centers, have existed since 1982. Last year, after the city eliminated special schools just for pregnant and parenting teens, saying that the schools were academically weak, the LYFE centers became the centerpiece of the DOE’s services for young parents.

Now the centers could also be on the chopping block, a possibility that has one editor of the report worried.

Without the LYFE centers, “the DOE would lack any real meaningful services for this very high-risk population,” Galen Sherwin, director of NYCLU’s Reproductive Rights Program, told me. “The outcome would be devastating.”

The LYFE centers have already taken a hit from the faltering economy. (more…)

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein called on more than 1,000 Teach for America alumni at a conference Saturday to “wield cudgels” and see themselves as “warriors in the fight for educational equity.”

But some alumni questioned the feasibility of the warrior lifestyle that Klein said is embodied by TFA grads such as D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee and KIPP charter school founder Dave Levin.

“We want to be like you,” a TFA alum told who now works for the DOE stood up to tell his current boss, District 79 Superintendent Cami Anderson. But he asked how it’s possible for a regular person to make a difference and still have a personal life. Anderson, a former TFA regional director for New York City, has a reputation for putting in long hours and having almost limitless energy.

Confessing to her own struggles with burnout, Anderson acknowledged that closing the achievement gap isn’t going to happen in just a few years, so the work must be sustainable. Before taking her current DOE position, she said, she set personal goals for herself, such as leaving work twice a week at 6 p.m. and sometimes reading frivolous books. (more…)