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The agenda items before the Panel for Educational Policy Wednesday night were relatively uncontroversial. But that didn’t dissuade the teachers union from staging a mass protest.

The protest was aimed at Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to remove half of teachers at 33 low-performing schools, which he announced during his State of the City speech last week. It began when more than 100 members of the United Federation of Teachers flooded the front rows of Brooklyn Technical High School’s auditorium, breaking into chants of “Save Our Schools!” and blasting whistles to delay the meeting’s start.

Michael Mendel, a union official, took the microphone to lambaste the panel, which has approved hundreds of school closure proposals since Bloomberg gained control of the city’s schools in 2003.

“You should be removed from office,” Mendel said. “You are a disgrace to public education.”

Then, in the middle of the public comment period, the group of teachers stood up and walked out en masse.

Plans to close and reopen struggling schools won’t start appearing on the panel’s agenda until next month. Last night, the agenda focused instead on proposals to move or expand schools, including Community Roots Charter School and the Academy of Young Writers. (more…)

A popular Brooklyn charter school is backing down from its expansion plans after facing fierce resistance from local officials.

Allison Keil and Sara Stone, co-principals of Fort Greene’s Community Roots Charter School, sent a letter to parents today announcing that they had decided to delay the school’s plans to add a middle school starting in September. Expressing surprise at the intensity of opposition to Community Roots’ expansion, they wrote, “The impact of the reactions of the press, politicians and the other schools in our shared campus make it impossible to proceed in good faith.”

Keil and Stone’s response is unusual: Resistance sometimes seems only to redouble the city’s determination to open or expand charter schools. In nearby Prospect Heights, for example, the city is pushing forward in its bid to move a charter school into the PS 9 building, even after PS 9 parents won a judgement from the state against the city’s original plan.

Families of fifth-graders at Community Roots will now have to search for middle school spots for their children, more than a month after the city’s middle school application deadline.

Community Roots, which attracts families from both Brownstone Brooklyn and local housing projects, received a five-year renewal of its charter in January. In early March, the Department of Education gave notice that it planned to expand the school inside PS 67, where it is currently housed, and scheduled a Panel for Educational Policy vote for the end of this month.

But recent weeks witnessed a surge of opposition to the school’s expansion. (more…)

A public school principal in Fort Greene is asking for a public, face-to-face meeting with concerned community members after Internet and newspaper reports described dissatisfaction with his leadership.

One report, in the Brooklyn Paper, said unhappiness with the principal, Sean Keaton, of the Clinton Hill School, P.S. 20, is behind a surge of interest in the nearby Community Roots charter school. Another report, at Insideschools.org, includes a parent describing Keaton as “authoritarian,” “hostile,” and “abusive.” The frustration comes as a flood of middle class families are moving to the Brooklyn neighborhood – and often searching for options outside P.S. 20, their zoned school. The Brooklyn Paper reported that only 27% of kindergarten-aged students zoned for P.S. 20 attend it.

Parents posting in the comments sections of the Times blog and at Insideschools said they feel Keaton shuts them out of the school. One said that he has a “closed door policy to the parents.” (more…)