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Momentum is mounting against the state’s decision to eliminate the January administration of Regents exams required for high school graduation.

City officials have pressured the state to restore the testing period, Mayor Bloomberg said at a press conference today about the city’s graduation rate. He called the elimination of January Regents exams “a very big deal” and said restoration would cost the state only “a trivial amount of money.”

More than 100 city principals have petitioned the state to restore the testing date. At today’s press conference, principals union president Ernest Logan also emphasized the relatively low price tag of maintaining the January testing date, often used by students making a final push for graduation.

“The state — for a pittance — has decided to take away that option,” he said.

This year, Chancellor Dennis Walcott said today, 2,400 students took a Regents exam in January and then graduated — roughly the same number of students represented by this year’s graduation rate climb. “If January Regents disappear, those students unfortunately will not be able to graduate,” he said. (more…)

The principals union is fighting against a federal program that calls for improving struggling schools by firing their principals.

As part of a three year federal grant program to “turn around” the city’s lowest-performing schools, the city can choose from four intervention plans, all of which call for removal of the schools’ principals. Even the least intrusive option — the transformation method — keeps the schools’ staff in place but requires the principals to be replaced.

Department of Education officials said on Thursday that they were lobbying the state to allow them to keep some principals in place. Schools that are showing signs of progress and others that have principals hired in the last three years, may be able to keep their principals, officials said. (more…)

The day before principals were due to submit midyear budget cut plans, the city has decided to fill their budget holes with money set aside for teacher and principal pay raises.

It’s a bittersweet moment for school staff, who could lose out on the 4 percent pay raises other unions have received, but won’t see their schools stripped of money for classroom supplies and technology midyear. The city’s plan rests on its ability to pressure the United Federation of Teachers and the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators into accepting to two percent raises over two years, half of what the unions expected and a proposal both union presidents have met with angrily worded statements.

Marc LaVorgna, a spokesman for the mayor, said the city will swap the savings from halving teacher and principal’s pay raises with the savings that would have come from a midyear 1 percent cut to schools and a planned 4 percent cut for 2011. (more…)

Principals union president Ernest Logan is raising questions about Schools Chancellor Joel Klein’s threat to take money away from principals who don’t fill their vacancies by Oct. 30.

The point of Klein’s threat, made in an e-mail to principals yesterday and first reported by the Web site Insideschools, is to get principals who might be trying to outlast the hiring freeze to pick up “excessed” teachers from the ATR pool. Those teachers, who currently number more than 1,500, are drawing full salaries even though they don’t have permanent positions in schools. Their salaries are “a fiscal liability we cannot sustain in this budget climate,” Klein said in his letter.

But principals can’t hire teachers who aren’t eligible for their vacancies or who don’t apply for jobs, Logan emphasized in a response today to Klein’s hiring deadline. “We would like to know more about what the DoE will do if appropriate licensing matches are not made or if excessed teachers fail to show up at the recruitment fairs,” he said.

The Department of Education is requiring teachers in the ATR pool to attend borough-based hiring fairs next week, according to an e-mail obtained by union activist Norm Scott. Ann Forte, a DOE spokeswoman, confirmed that the fairs are compulsory for ATRs. (more…)

The city is reversing a back-room deal that would have had teachers and students returning to school on the same day in September, giving staff no official planning time.

Now, instead of starting school on the day after Labor Day, students will have their first day on Wednesday, Sept. 9. That will give principals and teachers one day together to plan for the opening of school.

Principals union president Ernest Logan had attacked the plan to eliminate the beginning-of-the-year planning days, which he said were the most important days of the year. “No one used common sense here,” he told me.

After today’s schedule adjustment, Logan declared, “Common sense prevails,” in a message to principals. He also said his union would continue to discuss the effects of the schedule change with the Department of Education.

One effect of the change will be a stray school day for students at the end of next year. Instead of finishing on the last Friday in June, as they are this year, students will be required to report to school the following Monday, as well.

Below are Logan’s full statement and the city’s press release, which emphasizes that other components of the teachers union’s deal with the city will save the city $100 million a year.  (more…)

Principals are furious that the teachers union bargained away two of the most important work days of the school year, according to principals union president Ernest Logan. But teachers union president Randi Weingarten says Logan shouldn’t complain, because he hasn’t come up with a better plan.

“My members are livid,” Logan said about the agreement that would have teachers and students reporting to school on the same day for the first time this fall.

Principals use the two teacher work days at the beginning of the school year to finalize schedules, register new students, set up classrooms, get staff members on the same page about discipline and curriculum, and integrate new teachers into the community, he said. “When are we going to do all of that if everybody’s popping in there the same day?” Logan asked.

Logan said he first heard about the agreement at 6:05 a.m. today on NPR, which he was listening to while shaving. “I almost cut myself,” he told me. “Nobody used common sense here. The educators did not make this decision.”

The decision to have students and teachers start school on the same day was Schools Chancellor Joel Klein’s preference, according to Weingarten. (more…)

Renaissance students organized a protest against the freeze in their budget. (Lisette Lopez, Renaissance junior)

Staff at a Queens charter school that is represented by several city labor unions are growing frustrated with the unions, which they worry sat quietly by while state lawmakers slashed charter school budgets two weeks ago.

The school, Renaissance Charter School in Jackson Heights, is expecting a cut of between $500,000 and $600,000 from what was projected for next year after state lawmakers froze planned funding increases to charter schools two weeks ago.

Charter school activists have said that they’re hopeful that Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, who founded another unionized charter school in Queens, will yet restore the extra funds to charter schools, but no deal has been struck yet.

That leaves teachers at Renaissance planning for possible teacher layoffs and big program cuts. (The $500,000 cut from the increase the school was expecting is especially hard to shoulder given that pension costs are skyrocketing by $300,000 next year and teacher salaries are slated to go up.)

A main frustration, a Renaissance administrator said, is that the unions to which Renaissance’s staff belong did not give them a heads up about the cuts — even though staff repeatedly asked union leaders if they should expect a cut. “Our members here feel shafted,” Nicholas Tishuk, Renaissance’s director of programs and accountability, said. “We were told that this charter school cut was mentioned two months ago, and it hasn’t been on anyone’s lips. And then we find out the Sunday night before the vote on Tuesday that not only was it on everyone’s lips; it’s actually happening.”

Most charter schools in New York City are not represented by teachers unions, since the schools operate outside of the Department of Education and therefore do not see their staffs unionize automatically. But the union has fought to bring charter schools teachers into its fold. Their slow but steady inclusion has put the union in the tricky position of on the one hand lobbying for limits on charter schools, while, on the other hand, representing some charter school staff. (more…)