GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

It’s been a good year for GothamSchools. (We’ll have more to say about how 2011 treated the New York City schools next week, in our annual end-of-year review.)

Thanks to your support, the scrappy site we started in 2008 is now an institution that thousands of New Yorkers depend on for smart, trustworthy information. We want to keep up the good work in 2012, and also to get even stronger. As always, that will require help from our readers.

And so we’re asking you to consider making a donation to ensure that our reporting only gets stronger in 2012.

Here’s a brief review some of what we were able to do in 2011:

• We informed more than 500,000 people who visited GothamSchools directly. We informed more when our stories got picked up in media outlets, such as the New York Times, the WPIX nightly news, and the national radio show “This American Life.”  (more…)

The “imminent” strike that Mayor Bloomberg warned New Yorkers about three weeks ago won’t happen ― for now.

Michael Cordiello, president of Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, said today at a rally in front of City Hall that while a strike remains on the table as a bargaining tactic, school bus drivers will continue to come to work until at least the holidays are over.

After that, Cordiello said, “we will explore all options” toward having their work demands met.

Cordiello’s union, which includes 9,000 bus drivers, first threatened a strike three weeks ago after Chancellor Dennis Walcott informed them that a new busing contract bid would not include a job security provision for current drivers. In response, Walcott and Bloomberg held a joint press conference detailing the Department of Education’s contingency plan, a move that some observers criticized as unnecessarily showy. (more…)