GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Chart from Independent Budget Office report about schools slated for closure. (Click to enlarge.)

For the third year in a row, the city’s data watchdog has concluded that the schools the city is trying to close serve especially needy students.

In 2010 and 2011, the Independent Budget Office put together longer reports about the city’s school closure proposals on the request of Robert Jackson, chair of the City Council’s education committee. But this year, the office, which has a special mandate to scrutinize the Department of Education’s facts and figures, compiled details about the demographics, performance, and funding of schools on the chopping block on its own. Then it released the statistics in an easy-to-read, stand-alone format.

Among the many people who are receiving the IBO’s 13-slide presentation by email today are the members of the Panel for Educational Policy, who are set to vote on the closure proposals tonight, according to spokesman Doug Turetsky.

“It’s an accessible format so people can see the stats and come to their own conclusions,” he said. (more…)

As the city school system faces another round of budget cuts, a new report details which schools suffered the most under last year’s cuts — and which saw their budgets grow.

The analysis, prepared by the Independent Budget Office, compares the September budget allocations each school received this year to the same time last school year. It found that while the majority of schools — 864 out of 1,464 — saw their budgets drop, nearly 600 schools received greater per-pupil allocations this year.

Schools’ budgets change not only when their enrollment fluctuates, but also when their demographics shift. A school with a sudden influx of students who need special education services will see a budget increase. Schools receive less money per student as more of their students meet state academic standards. In some cases, schools that saw their overall budgets grow actually lost money per student.

How much money each school receives is determined in large part by a formula known as Fair Student Funding, which the city has used since the 2007- 2008 school year. The formula calculates the amount of money a school receives per student, but gives more money for each student with higher needs. Because of state cuts to education aid, however, the formula has never been fully phased in and some schools still receive more or less money than the formula calls for. And last year, to implement a 4 percent budget cut systemwide, the city changed its method of allocating funds so that no school would receive more than a 4.2 percent total cut.

The result is that the amount of money individual schools gained or lost this year varies considerably. Most schools saw less than a 3 percent cut or under a 3 percent gain. But just over 100 schools received more than 3 percent more money per student this year, and 150 schools lost more than 3 percent.

Read the IBO’s analysis and search individual schools’ budget allocations here.

Joining 6,400 teachers on the chopping block are 350 parent coordinators whose schools will no longer be required to employ them, Chancellor Joel Klein announced today.

For the first time since the position was created in 2003, high schools will be allowed to go without a parent coordinator, Klein told principals today, saving up to 350 schools just over $40,000 a year each. Parent coordinators whose jobs are eliminated will be at high risk of layoff, according to Department of Education spokeswoman Ann Forte. Elementary and middle schools are still required to keep a parent coordinator on staff.

The instruction is a stark example of how budget cuts could undo some of Mayor Bloomberg’s most ambitious education initiatives. The creation of the parent coordinator position in January 2003 was a central element of Bloomberg and Klein’s early reforms.

Klein also announced today that the Fair Student Funding formula the city devised to fund schools according to their students’ needs no longer covers some schools’ essential costs. (more…)

As mayor, City Councilman Tony Avella would undo Mayor Bloomberg’s trademark school funding program, Avella told GothamSchools in a an exclusive interview.

Currently, the city uses a program called Fair Student Funding to give schools money based on the needs of the students they serve. Under Fair Student Funding, a school with more students scoring at the lowest level on state tests would get more money than a school where the majority of students are meet the standards for proficiency, for example. (more…)

Principals will receive school budgets tomorrow that include a new 5 percent cut, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein announced today. The cuts are so deep that the department is temporarily abandoning its plan to finish adopting a new funding formula that it said would make school budgets more equitable.

The cuts, totaling $405 million across the city schools, could threaten non-teacher staff positions, after school programs, and training for teachers. But roughly 60 percent of schools will not actually experience cuts of the maximum size, Klein told reporters at a briefing today. That’s because slightly more than half of all principals chose not to allocate every dollar in their budgets for this year, instead “rolling over” a total of $95 million. The rainy day funds are being wiped out by the new cuts but are also softening the blow of next year’s cuts for many schools.

In addition, about 80 schools receiving the largest amounts of federal anti-poverty funds will actually see a slight increase in the size of their budgets, Klein said. The remaining 40 percent of schools will see their budgets drop the maximum 4.9 percent, he said.

Today’s cuts are on top of a total average 3 percent cut made to school budgets over the last year and a half.

Because of the cuts, the DOE is suspending its plan to start charging schools the real salaries that teachers make, a change that had been the cornerstone of the department’s Fair Student Funding formula. (more…)

Today’s City Council vote all but assures that Mayor Bloomberg will run for a third term as mayor. If he does, and especially if he wins, the city schools will feel a strong impact.

The three consequences I went over this morning remain true. We can still expect an outcry from opponents of his school efforts, maybe even from the state level. (Or the text message level: Kelly just got one from a teacher friend, Ira, that read simply: “That sucks.”) We can still expect charter school leaders to be happy (and perhaps for there to be more charter schools in public school buildings). We can still expect for the debate on mayoral control to become a referendum on the mayor, which could hurt his argument for keeping the current governance structure fully intact, since many legislators are unhappy with his school record.

Another thing that is slowly dawning on the educators I talk to is that all the proposals Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein talk about for the future might actually happen.

Here’s an example of a realization already kicking in: I heard from two sources today that schools this week are starting to think about how the full implementation of Fair Student Funding would affect their budgets. The new form of budgeting was supposed to redistribute school funds to schools with more students in poverty, and it would have taken away a lot of money — hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases — from schools with more affluent students.

But before it could take effect, the city and the teachers union negotiated a “hold harmless” provision that preserved budgets for two years. That provision is set to expire next year, something everyone knew all along, but which for a while didn’t feel too real. Assuming that without Bloomberg in office Fair Student Funding would quietly disappear, opponents were unworried, while proponents, who felt the city had given in on an important equity question, were frustrated.

Now, of course, things look different.