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Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, a 2013 mayoral candidate, talks about school closures at a press conference outside City Hall.

A press conference about the city’s school closure policy looked a lot like a campaign stop for four men eyeing 2013 mayoral runs.

Four leading mayoral candidates — Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, Comptroller John Liu, and former comptroller and 2009 mayoral runner-up Bill Thompson — spoke at the event on the steps of City Hall. The press conference was organized by the Coalition for Educational Justice, a nonprofit that has spearheaded protests against many of the 25 closures proposed this year.

Flanked by advocates and parents, the men echoed concerns outlined in a report CEJ released last week about the inclusion of students with special needs in new small schools. (That report responded to a report by an independent research firm that found the schools had increased students’ chances of graduating.) The candidates all said the Bloomberg administration had been too quick to close schools without trying other interventions and had “warehoused” high-needs students in schools that are now facing closure.

They also demanded that the city release details about what happened to students who had not yet graduated when their schools closed — information that is required by law to come out tomorrow.

But they stopped short of explaining how they would do things differently if they became mayor and gained control of the schools. The closest anyone got was Stringer, who took aim at an Achilles’ Heel for Bloomberg: the way the Department of Education engages parents and communities. (more…)

A rally against the planned layoffs of school aides who belong to DC-37

Using new strategies, City Council members are mounting a final push to stave off the school aide layoffs that are scheduled to take place at the end of the week.

Speaker Christine Quinn spoke to Mayor Bloomberg today about the layoffs, according to a Quinn spokesman, who said she plans to schedule a joint public hearing with the Finance and Education Committees to find out more about the scale of the proposed cuts. The DOE has maintained that the layoffs would save at least $38 million, but union officials dispute that total.

“By our calculations, it should be closer to $22 and $25 million,” said District Council 37′s Local 372 president Santos Crespo at a press conference today. The event brought dozens of union and elected officials out in support of Crespo’s union workers. It was then followed by a larger rally this evening that attracted Occupy Wall Street protesters.

Quinn’s announcement comes just days after the Black, Latino and Asian caucus discussed the option following a meeting with Chancellor Dennis Walcott in which little progress was made. Quinn has kept the issue at arms length up to this point, but inveighed against any future teacher layoffs last month on the first day of school.

Crespo, who has offered three concession proposals to Walcott, said the council’s intervention is the union’s best option at this point.

“What’s going to make [the DOE] respond is going to be the City Council. If that happens, then we’ll get to the bottom of this and see where the money is really going.” (more…)

The job status of more than 700 Department of Education employees remains in limbo after a meeting between City Council members and education officials yesterday yielded no progress towards a deal to prevent layoffs, according to people who attended.

Council members said they remained optimistic that the layoffs, which affect school aides who are among the lowest paid workers in the city could be averted. But they said any deal would require more energy from education and City Hall officials.

“I know that there’s a strong effort being made on the members’ part,” said Leroy Comrie, of Queens. “I’m not sure that the administration feels wedded to the need to get anything done.”

The meeting was convened by the council’s Black, Latino and Asian caucus. They invited Chancellor Dennis Walcott to explain why the layoffs were primarily affecting low income minorities, according to several members who attended. Council members also complained they were not given notice before the layoffs were announced in August.

Letitia James, of Brooklyn, called the process “an attempt to circumvent the City council. They could have come to us before and asked for some assistance and approval.”

The layoffs actually came from individual principals, who had to cut an average of 2.4 percent from their budgets in July. Rather than eliminate teacher positions, which were spared as part of concessions made by the United Federation of Teachers, many principals chose to cut the school aides. (more…)

In his first major policy speech, Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott called for major changes to the ctiy's worst middle schools.

To shake middle schools from mediocrity, the city is turning to school reform strategies it considers tried and true.

In the next two years, the Department of Education will close low-performing middle schools, open brand-new ones, add more charter schools, and push more teachers and principals through in-house leadership programs, Chancellor Dennis Walcott announced today in a 30-minute policy speech, the first of his six-month tenure.

For 10 schools, the city will ask for $30 million in federal funds to try a new reform strategy set out by the federal government, “turnaround,” in which at least half of staff members are replaced, Walcott said.

The efforts—which the city plans to pay for with a mixture of state and federal funds—are meant to boost middle school scores that are low and, in the case of reading, actually falling.

“People have tried and struggled with the complicated nature of middle schools for decades,” he said. “But the plan I’ve laid out is bolder and more focused than anything we’ve tried here in New York City before.”

Experts and advocates who helped engineer the last major effort to overhaul middle schools, a City Council task force that produced recommendations but short-lived changes at the DOE in 2007, disputed Walcott’s characterization. They said Walcott’s announcement reflects a change in style but not substance.

“Much of what he said is not new,” said Carol Boyd, a parent leader with the Coalition for Educational Justice, which has long urged more attention for middle schools. ”There is a definite party line, except Joel [Klein] wasn’t able to deliver it with the same believability that Chancellor Walcott does,” she said. Boyd sat on the task force.

“There’s nothing new [or] interesting about this plan,” said Pedro Noguera, the New York University professor who chaired the council’s task force and has spoken out against school closures. “It sounds like more of what they’ve been doing, shutting down failing schools.” (more…)

Since becoming chancellor in April, Dennis Walcott has made many public appearances but few policy pronouncements.

That’s set to change tomorrow morning, when Walcott is set to deliver the first policy address of his tenure, a speech at New York University titled “Why We Can’t Rest: How To Move the Middle.”

The city is mum on what exactly the speech will be about, but it’s clear that Walcott has spent some time talking about middle schools in the last week. On Thursday, he met with roughly a dozen principals of high-scoring middle schools — both district-run and charter — to ask them a question that has long bedeviled educators and policymakers: How to curb the performance drop-off that takes place after students leave elementary school.

The 2011 state test scores released last month told a familiar story: Middle school students scored proficient at a far lower rate than students in the elementary grades.

“We still need to increase our focus on those years,” Walcott said at the time.

It wouldn’t be the first time that the city has made improving middle schools a priority.  (more…)

City Councilman Robert Jackson, Council Speaker Christine Quinn, and UFT President Michael Mulgrew addressing students at P.S./I.S. 187.

With a new round of budget projections already on the horizon, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn sent a clear message to City Hall today, warning Mayor Bloomberg that teacher layoffs would not be on the table to close gaps at the Department of Education.

“I cant imagine why you would go back to that idea again,” Quinn told reporters outside P.S./I.S. 187 in Washington Heights, where she spent more than an hour greeting students on their first day of school. “It didn’t work.”

It was just a couple of months into the last school year that Bloomberg announced his intention to lay off thousands of teachers in order to balance the city’s budget. But layoffs were ultimately averted after the city struck a deal with the UFT and City Council.

Quinn, who is planning a 2013 mayoral run, said she hasn’t discussed the prospect of teacher layoffs with the mayor yet this year. But she signaled that she would reprise last year’s fight if the mayor again levels a layoff threat.

“I think, and I certainly hope, that they saw how clear and strong we in the council felt about the idea of layoffs last year,” she said.

Quinn was joined by Councilman Robert Jackson, chair of the education committee, and United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew at the school. (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…)

Underscored by an intervention from the council’s top budget broker, education committee members rang a unified tone at their hearing today, telling schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott they won’t support his final budget if a plan to eliminate thousands of teaching positions isn’t reversed.

Sources and council members said Mayor Bloomberg’s current budget proposal would not have enough votes to pass at the end of the month because of the layoffs. The city has maintained the layoffs are necessary to eliminate a $350 million education deficit.

“I just don’t see how I would vote for a budget that lays off 4000 teachers,” said Brad Lander, of Park Slope, echoing a sentiment shared by several other members.

The chorus of opposition started an hour before the hearing, when no less than 15 council members from the committee joined protesters on City Hall steps to punctuate their opposition to the cuts.

Walcott repeatedly defended the budget as members challenged ballooning contract costs and bureaucratic waste. They said that curbing those expenses could make up the difference to save teaching jobs. (more…)

To avoid laying off teachers, the Department of Education should cut technology spending, reduce cost estimates, and condense some central offices, according to a proposal set forth today by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.

With Domenic Recchia, chair of the council’s finance committee, Quinn unveiled the proposal today at a hearing on the DOE’s proposed operating budget. The proposal came with a stern warning that council members are unlikely to approve a city budget that requires teacher layoffs.

“Make no mistake — we well do everything in our power to prevent teacher layoffs,” Quinn and Recchia said in a statement.

Mayor Bloomberg has said since November that the city will have to cut more than 6,000 teaching positions to balance the budget, and that 4,100 of the job losses would come from layoffs. His proposed budget reflects a $350 million gap for teacher salaries.

Council members think that money can be found elsewhere in the department’s budget and have already identified $75 million in cuts the department should make, Quinn said.

Quinn is not the first to suggest that the department could prevent teacher layoffs by cutting its budget elsewhere. But her voice is significant because she is the one who must broker a deal between council members and the city to get a budget approved before the end of this month. Identifying new cost-cutting options for the DOE is “a top focus of our budgetary negotiations,” she said in a statement.

The city budget for the next school year could have ended up invalidated as illegal, were it not for a few pointed questions from a Manhattan father.

Patrick Sullivan, who in addition to being a dad is the only member of the citywide school board who regularly votes against the Bloomberg administration’s proposals, approached a City Council member this Monday after reading newspaper accounts that the mayor and the council had reached a budget deal. Stories said a vote was planned for this week (in fact, it’s happening today).

“I was kind of surprised, because we hadn’t approved the budget yet,” Sullivan told me today.

Indeed, the 2002 state education law that is under the microscope in Albany right now requires that school board members approve the city schools budget before the City Council can vote on it. But as the Council readied to vote in a budget this week, the Panel for Educational Policy had not yet voted its own approval — and wasn’t scheduled to do so until next week. (The panel members had been offered three briefings on the budget by school officials.) (more…)