GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Nearly six months after the city saw students’ failure rates spike thanks to new, tougher state tests, Mayor Bloomberg is directing extra funding to ready those students for another round of exams.

The mayor announced today that the Department of Education will distribute $10 million to 532 schools where more than two-thirds of students failed the state’s math and English tests last year. The funding will target nearly half of the more than 100,000 students who did not meet the state’s newly heightened proficiency bar. Bloomberg said he expected 48,000 students to receive extra tutoring and in-school help as a result of the new funding.

DOE officials said schools should receive the money by February 8. Principals will be able to spend it on weekend classes, lessons after school, tutoring during the school day, and online programs that will help students cram for the upcoming exams. They will have to race to spend it in time for it to have an effect, as the English and math exams will be administered in early May. (more…)

When a Brooklyn elementary school principal sunk her school nearly $180,000 in debt and was eventually removed from her post, teachers expected a fresh start.

Instead, they experienced the city’s typical solution for bankrupt schools: a payment plan.

P.S. 114 in Canarsie, Brooklyn was given four years to repay the city. Now that the city plans to begin closing the school next year, the teachers union, parents, and teachers are blaming the school’s decline on the debt left by a principal they asked the city to fire. City officials are calling this claim is unfair, since other schools manage to pay the city back while keeping their test scores up.

City schools can easily overspend if they don’t factor budget cuts and enrollment decreases into their spending plans. When this happens, the city doesn’t eat the loss and give the school a clean slate the next year. Instead, schools are put on payment plans in which they’re given several years to pay the city back. A spokeswoman for the Department of Education said some schools emerge from this process unscathed, while others struggle with painful cuts.

P.S. 114 falls in the second category. In the last year, its students’ test scores have dropped. About 35 percent of its students tested proficient on the reading test, compared to 53 percent citywide. And 34 percent passed the math test, whereas citywide, that number was 61 percent. The low scores earned the school a D on its annual progress report and a spot on the city’s closure list. (more…)

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein hasn’t weighed in on a state political race in several years, but he’s doing so now.

According to the New York State Board of Elections website, Klein gave $1,000 last month to Upper East Side Assemblyman Jonathan Bing. The chancellor’s wife, Nicole Seligman, a Sony executive vice president, also gave Bing $1,000.

The chancellor and his wife live in Bing’s district, where he’s being challenged by Gregg Lundahl, a government teacher at Washington Irving High School. And it can only have helped Bing’s relationship with Klein that he introduced a bill last spring to eliminate seniority-based layoffs for teachers. At the time, teacher layoffs seemed inevitable to the Department of Education and Klein was pushing for an end to the policy that lays off the newest teachers first. (more…)