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The special pot of federal stimulus dollars for schools known as the “Race to the Top” money should go toward extra services outside of education, like health clinics, child care, and immigration advice, teachers union president Randi Weingarten suggests in her latest paid New York Times column (PDF).

The idea is to infuse the federal stimulus effort with Weingarten’s favored “community schools” concept, in which schools function not just to teach children but also as service centers for the wider neighborhood around them. Weingarten calls the idea “a model for the best use of mayoral control.”

She also discloses that she has asked Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to join the United Federation of Teachers in supporting the “broader, bolder mission” of what she is calling Active Communities Enabling Success, or ACES.

From the column:

The network of schools, open evenings and weekends, would be a locus for health and mental health services, either through the co-location of clinics, mobile clinics or partnerships with local providers and hospitals. After-school tutoring and enrichment programs would be closely aligned with the instructional day, but the schools would also include opportunities for exercise, sports, arts and culture, and community service. For families and members of the community, childcare, pre-school, ESL, GED and vocational classes would be available. Finally, referrals could be made for housing issues, employment opportunities, immigration issues and legal problems. …

And for those who say this approach tries to do everything but teach, that is far from the truth. There is no conflict between emphasizing academics and tending to children’s broader needs. For our most disadvantaged kids, our schools can and must do both.

The proposal is consistent with what Weingarten told me the day after the stimulus bill was announced in February. It’s also a part of broader efforts to tie better social services to mayoral control: A representative of one of the city’s oldest social service agencies told me she thought improved social services are the promise of mayoral control.

I asked teachers union head Randi Weingarten today whether she shares Mayor Bloomberg’s optimism that the city will be able to use its federal stimulus funds to avert thousands of threatened teacher layoffs. “I’m glad the mayor is optimistic,” Weingarten said. But she said the stimulus money is “a big, big step forward but not enough” to insulate schools and children from budget cuts this year. The video above shows Weingarten’s complete response.

Weingarten also told me she’s hopeful that the city will use some of its stimulus money to build up social services at some schools with particularly needy families. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan didn’t say today whether he’d like to see stimulus money used that way. But as the head of Chicago’s school system, Duncan promoted that city’s “community schools” model, where schools act as neighborhood centers that offer medical, mental health, and family support services. Weingarten pushed the model in her first speech as president of the national teachers union; that speech took place last July in Chicago.

Most supporters of mayoral control list similar reasons for why they prefer the governance structure: it consolidates accountability in a single person; it reduces corruption that can proliferate in a decentralized system. But there’s also a less prominent argument: that mayoral control could facilitate a new breed of full-service schools that tackle both poverty and low academic achievement.

Teachers union president Randi Weingarten made this argument last year when she said mayors could create “community schools” by linking city agencies in innovative ways. But I hadn’t heard it again until today, when I spoke with Katherine Eckstein, a public policy expert who works at the Children’s Aid Society, one of the city’s oldest social services agencies.

“When kids are hungry or depressed, or have no place to go, or have chronic medical problems, they have no way to take advantage of opportunities put before them,” she told me. Eckstein, the public policy director for the organization’s National Technical Assistance Center for Community Schools, said many services exist that can help students deal with such issues, but they are not always effectively delivered.

“I see this as the promise of mayoral control — harnessing the power of city agencies,” she said, adding that the Children’s Aid Society plans to promote this idea as the debate over mayoral control’s future picks up. (more…)

Another recommendation from the Suozzi report I wrote about earlier today, the one recommending ways for state schools to cut costs, is that the mayors of the Big Four cities — Rochester, Syracuse, Buffalo, and Yonkers — be granted control of their public school systems, like Mayor Bloomberg was in 2002. How could mayoral control cut school costs?

The commission makes two arguments. One is that handing control to the mayor would allow for more efficient spending. The schools could be linked with other services under the mayor’s purview, like parks, recreation, and social programs. The second argument is more long-term:

Most importantly, if mayoral control is successful in improving school performance, there may be a positive effect on economic development, retention of middle class families, and protection or expansion of the property tax base.

The arguments are interesting — especially because they provide two good yardsticks to measure New York City’s mayoral control experiment. (more…)

Randi Weingarten (via Flickr)

Randi Weingarten, the teachers union president, hopes to be known as an unconventional labor leader. She will be sending that signal strongly on Monday, in a speech at the National Press Club that she is hyping as a big deal — both to reporters and to D.C. education insiders. Mayor Bloomberg is introducing her speech, which is titled, “Making the Right Choices for Education and the Economy.”

Janet Bass, a spokeswoman for the American Federation of Teachers, the national union that Weingarten recently became president of (she’s holding onto her local New York City presidency too), told me that the speech will be “provocative”:

She’s going to be talking about provocative ways — interesting, unconventional ways — to improve schools and student achievement, and will be putting forth some recommendations that some people would not think are typical of a teachers union.

Any guesses on what Weingarten will endorse? Keep in mind that in her big speech accepting the presidency of the AFT, she promoted the idea of “community schools.” In case you’ve forgotten, below the jump is a video clip with the key description: (more…)