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City officials won’t be heading to Albany this week after all to petition State Education Commissioner John King to restore federal funding for 33 struggling schools.

King cut off the funds, known as School Improvement Grants, last month when New York City failed to settle on new teacher evaluations by his end-of-2011 deadline. Nine other districts lost their funding for the same reason.

All asked for hearings to appeal King’s decree, and those hearings were set to begin last Friday. City officials were due to make their case for the funds Wednesday morning.

But starting just hours after the news broke on Thursday that the state and its main teachers union, NYSUT, had agreed on a framework for new evaluations, all of the districts asked for their hearings to be adjourned, according to an SED spokesman, Dennis Tompkins.

It’s not clear exactly how the state’s evaluations deal would change what districts planned to say during their hearings. (more…)

The Bedford-Stuyvesant building that houses the Academy of Business and Community Development, which could close in June.

It was bad enough news when staff and students at the Academy of Business and Community Development in Bedford-Stuyvesant found out last month that its middle school grades might phase out.

But on Thursday, the all-boys student body was herded into the auditorium for an end-of-day assembly and received a more jolting fate from the school’s principal, Simone McIntosh: Not only would both the middle and high schools be closed, but both would be shuttered by the end of the year.

Shutting down a school in a single year is an unusual plan for the Department of Education, which usually phases out schools one year at a time until no grades remain.

The change in plans at ABCD came once DOE officials had a chance to look under the hood at the school and concluded that it didn’t make financial sense to keep either school open any longer. The school was in low demand from new students in the community – just 5 percent of fifth-graders in the district ranked it as their top choice – and its existing student population has dwindled in each grade. (more…)

A change in the state’s testing program meant to close an $8 million budget gap could have far-reaching consequences for city students and schools, principals say.

The Board of Regents voted yesterday to do away with the January administration of the state exams required for high school graduation. The tests will still be given in June and August.

City school officials criticized the change, which had principals across the city lighting up their colleagues’ e-mail inboxes with protests of the change. “The state shares our belief in high standards that prepare students for college — so it is somewhat disheartening that the Regents would make a decision that undermines the hopes of high school students who take courses and exams to graduate mid-year,” said Chancellor Dennis Walcott in a statement.

In 2010, about 360 students used January exams to graduate midyear, out of about 3,800 total midyear graduates, according to Matthew Mittenthal, a Department of Education spokesman. Under the new system, those students would have had to wait until June to try to graduate.

But principals say those figures underestimate the effects of the change. Many students use the January dates to increase the number of times they take the Regents exams, which in turns increases their chances of passing in the long term. Students also use the January administration to spread out their tests and avoid burnout. (more…)

Responding to principals’ ire, the Department of Education is reducing the portion of funds it plans to recoup from schools that save for next year.

Schools will now get to keep 70 percent of the money that principals elect to roll over to next year’s budget, according to an email that Chancellor Cathie Black just sent to school leaders. That’s up from the 50 percent that the DOE originally announced last month it would reclaim for administrative spending. Principals still have until March 18 to decide whether to participate in the rollover program, known as the Deferred Program Planning Initiative, or go on a spending spree right now.

The take-back plan angered principals and parents who felt penalized for budgeting prudently in tough times. It was in response to their “thoughtful feedback” that the change was made, Black wrote.

Last year, then-Chancellor Joel Klein also made a bid to take back every cent principals set aside in rainy-day funds for the subsequent year. After protests, Klein reversed his decree. Mayor Bloomberg yesterday suggested that he favored a similar change this year, saying during a radio interview that criticism of Black’s plan contained “some merit” and that he would be discussing the plan with Black early this week.

Today, Bloomberg said in a statement, “The chancellor came in this afternoon and briefed me on her plan, and I immediately signed off on it.”

Black’s complete email to principals is below: (more…)

Earning the most rigorous of the state’s diplomas just became a little bit harder for thousands of students.

To get a Regents diploma with advanced distinction, the gold standard of New York State high school diplomas, a student must pass eight Regents exams, including one in a foreign language. But earlier this month state officials decided to cut costs by slimming down its testing program. Among the casualties: the exams in Latin, German, and Hebrew, taken last year by nearly 4,500 public school students statewide.

Nearly 17 percent of last year’s city graduates, or 7,857 students, earned the advanced diploma, and the vast majority studied French or Spanish. But more than 11,000 city students took Latin (3,409), German (4,698), or Hebrew (4,287) classes last year.

They can still get credit toward the advanced diploma, but they’ll have to demonstrate proficiency another way, according to Jane Briggs, a State Department of Education spokeswoman.

“They’d follow the same procedures already in place for students who study other languages not tested by the Regents, such as Chinese,” she said. (more…)

The Citizens Union has backed away from a push to give fixed terms to members of the citywide school board, following lobbying from Mayor Bloomberg and President Obama’s secretary of education, Arne Duncan, according to sources familiar with the watchdog group’s stance.

Bloomberg has vigorously opposed fixed terms. He says he needs to be able to dismiss school board members at his pleasure in order to have real control over the public schools.

Members of the Citizens Union had previously voted to endorse fixed terms. But the position the Citizens Union, a nonprofit good-government group, will recommend tomorrow backs away from the fixed-terms power check. As a compromise, it would force the mayor to give 90 days’ notice before dismissing a board member, sources said.

Bloomberg reached out to the group after it briefed City Hall on the first proposal last week, urging board members to reconsider their stance. The group subsequently re-started its process of debating and voting on a position, sources said.

Duncan also weighed in during that period, writing a personal letter urging the group to preserve the mayor’s power over the schools, sources said. Duncan has previously said he supports mayoral control as a way to improve urban schools. (more…)

Principals and reporters who thought they were going to get a first look at Mayor Bloomberg’s school budget proposal this afternoon were just told that the Department of Education has cancelled its two planned budget briefings. The reason for the cancellation, according to a DOE spokeswoman, is that the department doesn’t yet know exactly what Chancellor Joel Klein would be able to tell them.

A City Council source told Liz yesterday that the executive budget proposal Mayor Bloomberg is scheduled to reveal on Friday is likely to contain substantial school budget cuts.

But a DOE spokeswoman said the budget situation remains “fluid,” making a briefing for principals today impractical. “We’re just waiting until we have a better sense of what the actual numbers look like,” said Ann Forte of the DOE. She said the event would be rescheduled, but no time has yet been set and it is unlikely that the DOE will be able to brief principals before Bloomberg is scheduled to present his budget on Friday.

Right now, the DOE is frantically reaching out to principals to let them know that they shouldn’t come to Manhattan’s Norman Thomas High School later this afternoon after all. Forte said the department is contacting principals by phone and e-mail, and network leaders from external school support organizations are also trying to spread the word about the cancellation.