GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Among the press releases that went flying after the city announced its first set of school closures earlier today, the one from principals union president Ernest Logan stood out for its stridency.

In a statement the length of a short essay, Logan decried school closures as “a losing strategy” that traumatizes needy students, shuts out educators, and prevents scrutiny of the city’s reform efforts. Adding eight months to mayoral control’s age, he said twice that the Bloomberg administration has had a decade to fix all schools but has not.

Nine of the 15 schools whose closures or truncations were announced today have opened since Mayor Bloomberg took control of the schools; one replaced a failing elementary school just three years ago. Logan suggested that at least two additional Bloomberg-started schools would show up on the second installment of the closure roster when it comes out tomorrow.

“The fact is that closure is an admission of failure by City Hall, whose weak or non-existent interventions amount to either a cynical statement of indifference to children of poverty or an inferiority complex about their own ability to come up with solutions,” Logan said.

The statement elicited a rebuttal from Chancellor Dennis Walcott, who called Logan’s statement “embarrassing” for the union. (more…)

A State Supreme Court judge has ruled that the city can move forward with its plans for 22 school closure and 15 co-locations.

In May, the UFT and NAACP filed a suit charging that the city had not adhered to the law and its own promises when planning the closures and charter school co-locations.

In a decision released late tonight, Judge Paul Feinman denied the UFT and NAACP’s request for a preliminary injunction that would have stopped the city from moving forward with its closure and co-location plans while those charges are considered. A temporary restraining order preventing the plans from advancing had been in place since early June.

Feinman’s decision came just hours after State Education Commissioner John King approved 12 of the closures, of schools on the state’s list of “persistently low-achieving” schools. The UFT and NAACP suit had argued that the city could not close schools on that list without state approval.

Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott applauded the decision, which he said validated the Bloomberg administration’s approach to fixing low-performing schools. (more…)

People with an interest in the city’s school system are beginning to throw their support behind prospective candidates for the 2013 mayoral race, according to Friday’s campaign finance filings.

Campaign finance filings released on Friday showed that two top officials with Democrats for Education Reform, a major education lobbying group, donated exclusively to Scott Stringer, who defeated charter school operator Eva Moskowitz in the 2009 Manhattan Borough President primary with support from the city teachers union.

Joe Williams, executive director of DFER, gave a total of $1,500 to the Stringer campaign in two different donations. Elizabeth Ling, DFER’s New York State political director, gave $150, according to the filings. Stringer was the only candidate to whom Williams and Ling donated.

Ling, who serves on the board of one of Moskowitz’s Success Charter schools, said it was too early for DFER to endorse anyone just yet and that the group is “continuing to build relationships at all levels.” (more…)

A small window of opportunity to resume settlement talks between dueling sides in the charter school co-location lawsuit has been slammed shut.

On Tuesday, an attorney for the teachers union publicly invited charter school supporters to discuss a deal on the condition that the group apologize for staging rallies against the NAACP, which is a fellow plaintiff along with the union. Today, a group of those supporters released a strongly worded statement declining the offer.

The union attorney, Charles Moerdler, made his comments after Tuesday’s hearing. Moerdler called the negative sentiment that has surrounded NAACP’s involvement in the lawsuit “disgraceful.”

“What they did to they NAACP is one of the most disgraceful acts I’ve ever seen,” Moerdler said, referring to a large rally organized last month. “This is an entity that made our education what it was. They opened the boundaries and cleared the way for people to get an education.”

He then presented NAACP’s critics a way out: Apologize.

“They’re not sitting with me until they apologize to the NAACP,” he said. ”I don’t even want to talk to them.”

But a statement released this afternoon and attributed to Joe Williams, of Democrats for Education Reform, James Merriman, of New York City Charter School Center and Eva Moskowitz, of Success Charter Network, makes it clear that no apology is coming:

“While the leadership of the UFT and New York City chapter of the NAACP have demanded an apology from the same charter schools that their lawsuit threatens to close before even sitting down to talk, the only people who should be apologizing are those trying to deny families the right to choose the best education for their kids.”

Mayor Bloomberg said today that if he’s able to convince Albany to reduce the city’s deficit, he won’t promise to use the money to avoid teacher layoffs.

During his presentation of the city’s budget for 2012 this morning, the mayor blamed deep cuts from the state and federal governments for his decision to layoff 4,100 teachers. Saying that it was unlikely that lawmakers in Albany would increase aid to the city at this point, he called on them to trim public employees’ pensions and cut programs it mandates the city offer, but doesn’t help the city pay for.

But if he succeeds in extracting cuts and more funding from Albany, that money isn’t necessarily going to save teachers’ jobs.

“Any moneys that Albany manages to get back to us…don’t automatically go to education,” Bloomberg said today.

“There are a lot of first priorities. There are a lot of agencies that are very important to the city. You may decide that you need one more policeman or one more fireman… there are plenty of things in addition to education,” he said. (more…)

Four of the 15 campaigns the lobbying group Democrats for Education Reform is targeting this fall are in New York.

The group is actively raising money for Andrew Cuomo’s gubernatorial campaign, the re-election campaigns of State Senator Craig Johnson and Assemblyman Sam Hoyt, and for Basil Smikle’s race against State Senator Bill Perkins. DFER also wants to raise money to run other campaigns to influence other state senate races, but a report the organization released today didn’t specify which races.

Hoyt and Johnson led Albany’s efforts to pass legislation that helped New York win the federal Race to the Top competition. Both supported lifting the cap on charter schools early on, ignoring fierce opposition from the teachers’ unions — which aren’t endorsing them in this election. Cuomo has been less vocal so far on education, but DFER’s financing is a sign that he might favor the kind of policies the group endorses: the spread of charter schools, the introduction of merit pay, and the weakening of teacher tenure policies.

DFER has spent more than $17 million in three years trying to influence local elections, according to the report. The amount appears to have jumped recently. Last year, the group’s executive director told GothamSchools that DFER had spent “a few million” since 2006. The energy stems in part from the Race to the Top, President Barack Obama’s grant competition that prompted 34 states to change their laws to match Obama’s reform goals, which DFER vigorously supports.

Read DFER’s six-page report (in pdf) on its political goals here.

The legislative battle over whether and how to raise the state’s cap on charter schools could begin again as early as next week.

The State Senate’s Rules Committee, which is chaired by Senator Malcolm Smith, introduced a bill today that would lift the charter school cap to 460, more than doubling the number currently allowed under state law.  It also would require schools to make more of their financial practices public and increase the number of special education and English language learners they serve.

Charter school advocates are hailing the bill as a compromise between supporters of the speedy growth of charter schools and critics who argue that a cap lift should come only with changes to how the schools are run. But perhaps the most vocal skeptics of charter management practices, the teachers unions, are crying foul. Union officials are complaining that the bill was developed without union leaders’ input and that its regulatory provisions are too weak. (more…)

Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch yesterday called on city charter school operators to move away from elementary education and take on the problems of fixing large failing high schools.

Speaking at Hunter College, Tisch said that charter schools have benefited from being the political “darlings” of the city and state, blessed with the most qualified teachers and some of the highest-achieving students. Instead, Tisch said, charter schools need to branch out to serve more struggling high school students, English language learners and special education students.

“It’s really time for charter schools to say to me, ‘I don’t want to just grow my own, I don’t want to operate in this zone where I am the darling,’” Tisch said. “I want them to dig in and say, ‘what can we do to help?’”

Currently, thirteen of the city’s roughly 100 charter schools serve high school students, though more are slated to grow to include ninth through twelfth grade classes.

Tisch was speaking on a panel organized by the group Democratic Leadership for the 21st Century about the future of the city schools post election. The panel also included teachers union head Michael Mulgrew, founder and CEO of Success Charter Network Eva Moskowitz and Democrats for Education Reform director Joe Williams. (more…)

Mayor Michael Bloomberg delivered a victory speech last night promising, among other things, that the city’s schools would see even more changes in his third term.

“If you think you’ve seen progress over the last eight years, I’ve got news for you, you ain’t seen nothing yet,” the mayor whooped, his face flush with triumph.

Despite these declarations, many observers wonder if the mayor’s greatest overhaul of the city’s schools isn’t already behind him. The last eight years have seen Bloomberg win mayoral control of schools, wrestle work rule concessions out of the teachers union in 2005, and give principals power over how they apportion their budgets. The mayor has staked his claim to a third term on the idea that he needs more time to transform the schools, but whether he’ll add a few touch-ups or knock down walls is the subject of intense speculation.

Some, like executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, Joe Williams, believe the mayor will make good on his promise of delivering more of the same, and therein lies the problem. (more…)