GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

The city’s bid to “turn around” 33 struggling schools is politically motivated and should be quashed, according to the head of the city’s principals union.

The city is days away from submitting a formal request for State Education Commissioner John King to release millions of dollars in federal funding for the 33 schools even though the city has not yet negotiated new evaluations with the teachers union.

Ernest Logan, president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, sent a letter to King Tuesday urging him to reject the city’s request. Logan charges that the city’s announcement last month that it would abandon two in-process school improvement strategies, “transformation” and “restart,” was meant only to sidestep a requirement that the city negotiate with CSA and the United Federation of Teachers. Without an agreement, King froze federal funds to the schools last month.

“Simply stated, if the Turnaround model were the most educationally sound plan of intervention for the 33 schools, it would have been selected for any or all of them in 2010 and 2011,” Logan writes. “It was not. It is being proposed now only as a means of evading the … evaluation requirements.”

The city is required to negotiate new evaluations in order to receive federal funds and, in a plan Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced last month, additional state school aid. But Cuomo also said he would push changes to the state’s 2010 evaluation law if districts do not adopt new evaluations by mid-month. City officials are lobbying legislators to take that route, even though a statewide teachers union, NYSUT, has said it is on the verge of agreement for nearly all districts other than New York City. (more…)