GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Dozens of organizations are teaming up to press mayoral candidates to explains their plans for arts education.

Lately, mayoral candidates have been quick to share their positions on “community schools” and merit pay. But they have so far stayed pretty quiet about the role of arts in schools.

A coalition of dozens of arts advocacy organizations is hoping to get them talking. Today, the groups called on the candidates to complete a questionnaire about their plans to support arts education.

Under the Bloomberg administration, the arts have not been a top priority. Schools got a new “blueprint” for arts instruction from the Department of Education, but budget cuts have meant that schools have had to turn to outside partnerships to help them offer arts programs, and many students still do not spend as much time in arts classes as state regulations require. (more…)

UFT President Michael Mulgrew's name appears on a fundraising letter for a mayoral candidate. Mulgrew has told all four likely Democratic contenders that they can use his name in their appeals.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew said today that he hasn’t picked a candidate for mayor to endorse. But he has decided that he will lend a hand to all four people vying for the Democratic nomination, at least for now.

For political candidates, the UFT’s endorsement is valuable. Landing it means an influx of funds, supporters in every neighborhood in the city, and an army of potential volunteers to fuel the political ground game.

So the four likely candidates for the Democratic nomination for mayor — City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Comptroller John Liu, former comptroller Bill Thompson, and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio — have been courting the union for some time.

At a panel discussion on education policy last month, each promised to depart from Mayor Bloomberg’s critical tone when talking about teachers. And each showed up to an event last week held by New Yorkers for Great Public Schools, a coalition formed to oppose Bloomberg’s education policies during the mayoral campaign, to emphasized where their policy positions line up with the union’s. (more…)

New Yorkers for Great Public Schools took aim at StudentsFirstNY's ties to Mitt Romney during a rally at Department of Education headquarters today.

Hours after the union-backed New Yorkers for Great Public Schools launched a campaign to tie the education advocacy group StudentsFirstNY to the political ideologies of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, 2013 mayoral candidates began chiming in on whether they would accept StudentsFirstNY’s support.

Of the three campaigns that responded to requests for comment from GothamSchools, one said no StudentsFirstNY money would come into its coffers. The other two said they would have no problem accepting support from the group, which seeks to advance many of the Bloomberg administration’s education policies. A fourth candidate says he hasn’t made up his mind yet.

Comptroller John Liu said he would reject any support, although a spokesman acknowledged that funds from StudentsFirstNY were unlikely to be directed toward Liu’s campaign.

“I doubt the group would send us any contributions,” said the spokesman, Chung Seto. Liu, who hasn’t declared for mayor and whose campaign finances are the subject of a federal investigation, is considered a candidate likely to align with the teachers union.

Speaker Christine Quinn, an early favorite in the Democratic primary bid, would happily accept support from education groups, no matter their school reform ideologies, a campaign consultant said today.  (more…)

People with an interest in the city’s school system are beginning to throw their support behind prospective candidates for the 2013 mayoral race, according to Friday’s campaign finance filings.

Campaign finance filings released on Friday showed that two top officials with Democrats for Education Reform, a major education lobbying group, donated exclusively to Scott Stringer, who defeated charter school operator Eva Moskowitz in the 2009 Manhattan Borough President primary with support from the city teachers union.

Joe Williams, executive director of DFER, gave a total of $1,500 to the Stringer campaign in two different donations. Elizabeth Ling, DFER’s New York State political director, gave $150, according to the filings. Stringer was the only candidate to whom Williams and Ling donated.

Ling, who serves on the board of one of Moskowitz’s Success Charter schools, said it was too early for DFER to endorse anyone just yet and that the group is “continuing to build relationships at all levels.” (more…)

The most recent entrant to the 2013 mayoral race is a media publishing executive with no prior experience in government and a promise to run as an independent, business-minded pragmatist on a strong education platform.

But Tom Allon is no circa-2011 Michael Bloomberg, who was similarly green to politics when he became mayor in 2002. Instead, Allon, who operates a network of local newspapers that include politics-heavy City Hall and The Capital, is more of a community media mogul and his education proposals are more of a reaction — for better or worse — to the last nine years of Bloomberg’s leadership.

In an hour-long conversation at his small, cluttered corner office at Manhattan Media, Allon detailed his still-evolving education platform.

“I think Mayor Bloomberg has been an outstanding game-changer in education,” he said. “In the same way that Rudy Giuliani made this a safer city, I think that this mayor has pushed the needle dramatically and made education a priority. And for that he should be applauded.”

Winning mayoral control, lifting the charter school cap, and hiring Joel Klein to lead the city’s school system were among Bloomberg’s best accomplishments, in Allon’s opinion. Maintaining these policies, he said, are crucial to carrying that momentum into the next administration.

“You can’t neglect something and have it wither for 50, 70 years, which is what our public education system has done, and then expect that one man in 10 or 12 years is going to correct all those ills,” Allon said.

And yet Allon wants to roll back Bloomberg’s very first education reform: centralizing the Department of Education’s headquarters at Tweed Courthouse, on the same block as City Hall. The centralization has left the DOE detached from the diverse needs of individual schools, according to Allon, who wants to operate the agency across distinct offices in each borough. (more…)