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Charter Parent Action Network Director Valerie Babb addresses charter school parents and students in Albany. (Photo courtesy of the New York City Charter School Center)

An annual caravan of charter school parents to Albany took place today with a specific mission: convince legislators to approve a bill allowing charter parents to run for the city’s local parent councils.

It’s a battle that charter advocates will have to fight without the Department of Education’s help. The city has never supported allowing charter parents to run for parent councils, even as it has encouraged the proliferation of charter schools and allowed them to operate in district space.

State law requires that each school district in the city field an elected parent council, known as a Community Education Council, to provide an avenue for parents to weigh in on schools policy. Some of the council’s duties, such as presiding over public hearings about co-locations, involve charter school issues. But the Bloomberg administration has constrained the councils’ authority and their only statutory function is to redraw school zone lines, which do not affect charter schools. They do not actually approve or reject co-locations.

Still, the CECs are seen as one of the few formal venues for parents to voice opinions about department policies, and charter school parents see the exclusion as an equity issue. They have convinced two legislators — Assemblyman Peter Rivera, a Bronx Democrat, and State Sen. Marty Golden, a Republican from Brooklyn — to introduce a bill that would reserve one of the 11 seats on each council for a charter parent.

“In order to protect our children and their continued access to a great public education, charter parents need and deserve a seat at the table to help inform the decisions about the schools in their neighborhoods,” said Valerie Babb, director of the Charter Parents Action Network, in a statement. “By supporting this legislation, our lawmakers will send a strong signal to families that their voices carry just as much weight as other public school parents in their districts.” (more…)

The three schools released from the UFT and NAACP lawsuit this week followed different paths to legal freedom.

The case for one of the schools relied on a broad base of community support, but a single man, Geoffrey Canada, made the case for the other two schools.

Charter school advocates believe Canada’s profile as a well-regarded, African-American education reformer made him an unpopular target for the NAACP. They say the decision to drop these schools from the lawsuit, which charges that the co-locations give preferential treatment to charter school students, weren’t made on legal merits.

“It makes it pretty clear that it’s not about equity. It’s not about the children,” said Rafiq Kalam Id-Din II, whose new school in Bedford-Stuyvesant is named in the suit. “This is about politics.”

Girls Preparatory Academy was unique from the other 17 schools named in the suit because its co-location plan had already received widespread community support. At the initial public hearing in February, both of the schools’ leaders endorsed co-location, as did Lisa Donlan, the district’s Community Education Council president and a frequent charter school critic.

“There was not one person who opposed this co-location,” Donlan said. (more…)

Lower East Side parents who want to ensure their pre-k students stay in the same school for kindergarten will now be able to do so, though a citywide policy bans schools from giving admissions preference to their own pre-k students.

Parents in Manhattan’s District 1 have been lobbying for the exemption for more than a year. The district’s parent council, elected officials and the Department of Education have hammered out a nearly-final deal, presented to parents at a public meeting last night.

Last school year the DOE began barring schools from giving admissions preference to students already enrolled in their own pre-k programs.

Lisa Donlan, the president of the parent’s council, said that the policy ran counter to the district’s historical commitment to having full-day pre-k programs that are considered fully integrated into the school’s culture, whereas many districts have half-day pre-k programs that are almost considered separate from the school itself. (more…)

In a move that could shake up the debate over school space, a mix of charter and district parents is pushing to bring charter school parents into local school districts’ parents councils.

Such a change would mark a significant departure from charter schools’ separation from the traditional school district. It could also change the dynamics of the thorny debate over school space. Last year, a group of community education councils sued the Department of Education for trying to convert a district school into a charter school.

Members of District 1′s Community Education Council said at their meeting last night that they would welcome a charter parent representative onto the board, even though there is no formal mechanism for doing so.

“We consider ourselves representatives of all of the parents in the schools,” council president Lisa Donlan said in an interview today. “It’s really all about building bridges and finding common ground and finding ways to work together.” (more…)

We’ve reported that people are upset with Randi Weingarten for her school governance position. But we haven’t reported the various reasons they’re suggesting for why the teachers union president is not joining mayoral control’s fiercest critics in their push for major changes to the law.

Arthur Goldstein, a teacher who was recently elected to be the union chapter leader for his Queens school, speculated that President Obama’s preference for mayoral control could have influenced Weingarten. “It could indeed be that Randi sees this is the way this is going and Randi is deciding to go with the flow,” he said. He added, “But it is actually her job to move the flow in our direction,” referring to the teachers Weingarten represents.

Other people I spoke to said the evolution of Weingarten’s position on whether the mayor should control the majority of seats on the city school board could reflect a political calculation intended to improve the union’s position for this fall, when it must negotiate a new contract. The contract variable is unique to the United Federation of Teachers among all groups who have made recommendations about how to improve school governance.

“Nobody else has changed since their initial proposals,” said Lisa Donlan, a parent activist from Manhattan. “But nobody else is in a contract negotiation position.” (more…)

Randi Weingarten testifying at a mayoral control hearing in February. (GothamSchools)

A group of parent activists and union members is expressing anger with teachers union leader Randi Weingarten, telling her that she has dropped the ball in fighting for checks to the mayor’s power over schools.

The frustration began with a May 21 New York Post column, in which Weingarten indicated that she is open to allowing the mayor to continue appointing a majority of members to the citywide school board. A union task force recommended in February that the state legislature reverse that majority as a way to strengthen the board, known as the Panel for Education Policy or PEP.

Weingarten’s Post op/ed dismayed some members of her own union. “I was quite disappointed and angry, actually,” said Lisa North, a teacher who sat on the union’s task force to consider revisions to mayoral control.

North said the task force never seriously considered recommending that the mayor keep his majority of appointments, and so when union delegates ratified the committee’s final recommendations, she expected Weingarten to promote them. “The delegate assembly is supposed to be the highest authority of the union, and it voted for it,” she said.

In an interview today, Weingarten acknowledged that people have reached out to her with concerns about her position, including her own union members. ”I did get a couple of e-mails from members saying, ‘Why are you doing what you’re doing?’” she said. She said that she empathizes with those concerns. “I totally and completely understand and concur with the frustrations that many have that this mayor and this chancellor have not listened to and respected enough the voices of those who go to our schools, their parents, and those who teach them,” she said.

But she also said that she has to weigh concerns about checking the mayor’s power against the reasons she supported giving the mayor control in 2002. “It’s always been a balance of stability, cohesion, and responsibility, which is what mayoral control brought us, and modifying it to create sufficient checks and balances and transparency,” Weingarten said. (more…)