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Today marks Cathie Black’s first official day as chancellor of the city’s public schools and she’s following in former Chancellor Joel Klein’s footsteps by taking a five-borough tour. We’ll be following her throughout the day as she makes her way from Brooklyn to Staten Island and back to Tweed.

Stephan Zuvich, a student at the Richard Hungerford School gives Black a tour.

3:00: And that’s all folks… We’ll post video once Maura returns from Staten Island.

2:40: Black’s visit to the Hungerford School may seem like a deviation from the rest of the day, but it is, yet again, another high performing school. Hungerford is the only special education school in all of New York State to be recognized as a national blue ribbon school.

In the sensory motor center, aka game room, Black and the remaining reporters watch one student play on a pinball machine while another plays Wii sports and a third shoots a basketball.

“I’m so excited,” Hecht says. “The questions that she [Black] was asking were so poignant and so on the mark for the students that we’re serving. I’d love to see the D75 schools become more integrated, so its not like D75, it’s part of the whole system.”

2:15: The press van has landed at Richard H. Hungerford School, a District 75 school with about 350 students in Staten Island. D75 schools like this one serve students with severe disabilities. Black is led around the school by Stephan Zuvich, a 21-year-old student at the school. She goes into a classroom where half a dozen students, all in wheelchairs, are getting physical therapy, and she walks around introducing herself to each student.

Maura reports that the PT class has Christmas music playing quietly in the background, and the ceiling is draped in white and colored lights, hanging mobiles, and planets. Principal Mary McInerney tells the group that the room is set up this way to stimulate the students.

D75 Superintendent Gary Hecht tells Black that she’s the first chancellor to visit one of his schools on the annual (or this year: biannual) five-borough schools tour. McIerney says that when chancellors have come in the past, it’s always been at the end, not the beginning, of their tenures. Black says that DOE officials picked this school because she told them she wanted to see all the different kinds of schools.

Black visits a second class where students are communicating through a machine called an ACD (augmented communication device).

One student asks her if she was nervous on her first day of work. Another, Sara Watson, compliments the chancellor on her outfit. She asks: “Did you buy it for your first day of work today?” Black says no, it’s not a new dress.

A third student, Anna Incantalupo, shows Black a picture of her family. “And guess what, I’m the prettiest!” she says.

1:20: And now to Staten Island, the very last leg of this tour. Most reporters usually hop out of the press van after three or four schools, but Maura says a surprising number are sticking around for the bumpy ride.

1:00: Black visits a Korean language class, which all Democracy Prep students take. Andrew says that the school chose Korean because it’s phonetic and has an alphabet (unlike Chinese and Japanese where there are thousands and thousands of characters) so it is actually possible to learn to read and write anything in Korean pretty quickly. Also, he figures it will give his students an advantage when they apply to college, as very few black and Latino students have studied Korean. (more…)

Cathie Black, Mayor Bloomberg's nominee to replace Joel Klein, arrived at Tweed Courthouse today for the first time. Photo courtesy of the Department of Education.

New schools chancellor appointee Cathie Black visited Department of Education headquarters at Tweed Courthouse for the first time today, exactly a week after Mayor Michael Bloomberg surprised the city with her appointment.

Black met with the members of the chancellor’s cabinet, which includes all of the deputy chancellors and heads of various departments, said spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz. She also introduced herself to many of the staff, Ravitz said.

If Black becomes chancellor, she will enter the department as a virtual unknown to many of its staff. Black has almost no experience in education, and her appointment came as a surprise even to some of current Chancellor Joel Klein’s senior aides.

Since Bloomberg announced Black’s appointment last week, the chancellor appointee has been sequestered from the press and the public. Yesterday, Deputy Mayors Harold Wolfson and Dennis Walcott, as well as the city’s chief lobbyist Micah Lasher, were spotted by Times reporters at Hearst’s headquarters meeting with Black.

More photos from Black’s visit, courtesy of the Department of Education: (more…)

What do we know about Cathie Black?

Most of the profiles of her published so far focus on her management style, her similarities to her new boss, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and her lack of substantive experience in education.

But other details are beginning to surface. Here are some things we’ve learned so far:

This is not the first time she has walked into a management situation as an almost complete outsider.

Seven pages into her memoir-like business advice book, newly-appointed city schools chancellor Cathie Black recounts an episode that suggests yesterday’s events may have felt like deja-vu.

In the book, Black describes the first time she walked into the offices of USA Today to meet the staff. She had just been named president following the newspaper’s tumultuous first year:

I was also a female, non-newspaper person and an absolute unknown quantity to these people — many of whom had just learned about my hiring moments beforehand. As I looked around the room, I could feel the questions in the air: Was I a savior, a marketing genius who could turn the paper around? Or would I be a flop? (more…)

In an e-mail to teachers union members sent Friday afternoon, new UFT president Michael Mulgrew outlined his priorities for the coming year. At the top of his list is dealing with a budget situation that he says is not likely to improve:

Huge deficits are again on the horizon, and since education consumes a large chunk of the state and city budgets, it will inevitably be a target of the budget cutters again this year. Our job will be to make the case clearly and compellingly to parents and the wider public that more cuts will be devastating for kids. 

Another of Mulgrew’s concerns — how teachers use data about their students to improve instruction — could shape up to be pivotal this year. The Obama administration plans to distribute $4.3 billion in federal education funds based in some way on the way states use student test scores to evaluate teachers. Mulgrew writes:

The volume of paperwork remains unmanageable, and now teachers are being asked to use the enormous data being generated about their students to drive their instruction without being given the time, training or access to computers they need to do that task effectively.

Mulgrew also addresses the upcoming contract negotiations, saying that a survey is soon to go out to union members to help guide leaders during negotiations with the city. Mulgrew’s full letter to UFT members is below the jump: (more…)